My Story

Jake Cluff (My Father)

My name is Jake and I was born in 1950. I am the only boy of 6 children, which means, yes I have 5 sisters. Five sisters!!!! I was born and raised in a small eastern Arizona city and there was not a lot to do there. There was a movie theatre, but there was only one screen and the movie only changed once a month. The good thing was I could get into the movie, buy a popcorn, soda and a candy bar for a quarter. My best friend and I would keep ourselves busy by playing little pranks on my sisters. We never did anything really bad, just snakes in the lunch pales and threw worms on them and such. Then one day my sister told on me for skipping school. Now, I did skip school, but for good reason. We were square dancing that day and I have two left feet. Well I got in trouble and I decided that I had to get my sister back by playing a good prank on her to teach her a lesson. I knew it had to be something really good so that she would never tattle on my again. Well me and my buddy were watching Tom and Jerry one day and got an idea. We were going to dig a hole and trick my sister into falling in the hole and then she would have to beg us to help her out and we would make her swear to never tell on us again. We went to the shed and got some shovels. We picked the perfect place, right on the pathway between my back door and her playhouse. We dug and dug and dug all day. Finally after we thought it was deep enough, we cover it up with grass and sticks and such. Then we hid behind the play house and called for her- Julie, Julie. We were ducked behind the play house when we heard the back door slam. It took everything we had not to laugh. We heard the foot steps getting closer and closer. Then I heard the most terrifying scream I had ever heard in my life. Now you probably think that it was so terrifying because my sister was so scared falling in that hole but the truth is the reason it was so terrifying is because it wasn’t my sister screaming. IT WAS MY MAMA!!! Me and my buddy looked at each other and took off running as fast as we could. We ran all the way to his house, ran up the stairs and into his room. We sat in silence for about an hour when my buddy said “So are you going to go pull your mama out of that hole?” I decided to take a walk and walked until I decided the only place I had to go was home. When I walked into the front door, I saw my mama sitting on the couch with her foot propped up on the coffee table and crutches laying next to her. Now I will spare you the details of what happened that night, but lets just say that that boring Arizona town was not nearly as boring after that day! I had plenty to do!