Scary Dreams

Frieda my mom is sharing another family favorite story today!

We visited Uncle Grady and his family in Long Beach again a few months after the peeping tom incident. We had been traveling across the country speaking in churches and meeting lots of people in preparation for going to Central America as missionaries. We were again sleeping in the garage bedroom. This time it was the middle of the summer and the weather was sweltering. Hal laughed at me when I wanted him to close the big garage door. We would smother! Furthermore, he was insulted that I didn’t think he could take care of me.

Hal was raised on ranches in Western Oklahoma. He and his brothers thought it was just the thing to sleep outside “under the stars,” even when the weather was cold, and especially when it was hot. Ever since we were married, he would try to talk me into sleeping outside. He even offered to run a long cord so I could use the electric blanket when it was cool. I never claimed to be brave, and always wanted the door locked wherever I slept. When I was a senior in high school my class went on a camping trip, and I slept in the school bus rather than be out in the open.

I had to sleep in that garage with the big door wide open, and after our earlier experience with the peeping tom, I slept fitfully. Sometime in the night had a terrible nightmare from which I awoke terrified. I lay there frozen for a minute, but Hal said something to me, and I relaxed. “Oh, Honey, I feel so much better now that you are awake. I had the most awful dream!”

His answer: “We’ll keep in touch through correspondence.” He was talking in his sleep! It struck me so funny that I laughed until I went back to sleep.

Over the years, that sentence has become a family “insider” expression. When someone says something irrelevant that seems to come out of nowhere, someone else will say, “Okay, we’ll keep in touch through correspondence!”