The stolen kittens

I grew up on a dairy farm in the small town of Denver, Lincoln County. Like most small towns in the late 1940s and the 1950s, there wasn’t a lot to do outside of what we did on the farm. Everything we did, we pretty much made an adventure.

One of our favorite things away from the farm was a trip to one of the nearby country stores, Shug Killian’s or Keistler’s store. You could find just about anything you needed there — clothes, shoes, bathing suits, household items, candy and bubble gum. My cousin Gail recalls a memorable trip we made to Keistler’s store when we were quite young. We grew tired of waiting for our mothers to finish shopping and wandered outside to a building where, lo and behold, we found a litter of kittens. We each helped ourselves to one and got in the car without mentioning it to our mothers.

We were on our way home when the kittens started meowing. Mom turned around and headed back to the store to make us return the kittens and apologize to Mr. Keistler. Turns out he didn’t mind us taking the kittens after all, as you can see from the picture.

Sandra Sherrill Auton, Lincolnton, Rutherford EMC