You may have heard this tale because it was one of my sister Clarice’s favorites. She was especially attached to our brother Cleo when he was little. She would laugh every time she talked about him and what he did one summer morning when he was about three or so.
It was a very busy time. Mom, Clarice, Alline, and Hazel were totally occupied with work in the kitchen, getting ready to do some canning while doing ordinary work and looking after Ronald and Donald who were toddlers at that time. I can understand how it was rush, rush, busy, busy. For a little while everybody seemed to forget about Cleo. Nobody had noticed that he was no longer around. When they did notice, they sort of panicked, I guess. They said they started calling for him, checking every corner of the house upstairs and down, then out in the yard and toward the barn and the peach orchard and finally way out in the fields. There would have been crops all around and tall grass, so it would have been hard to spot a little boy. You can imagine how frightened my sisters and Mom were. It was Hazel who went all the way across the field on the west side of the house toward a split-rail fence which used to run from the corner of the tobacco barn to the bottom of the hill (near where the pond is today). I don’t know when they noticed that the dog was gone, too. Finally when Hazel reached the fence, she still could not see Cleo, but she climbed up on the rails to make herself taller. Sure enough she found him and the dog heading further away in the tall grass on the other side.
This tale could have had a serious turn, of course, but we’re so glad it didn’t. I wish I could have been there to ask Cleo how it happened that the dog went with him. All I know is what Clarice said. She said that when they asked Cleo where he was going, he said, “I was gonna catch a ‘wabbit.’