IT WAS A DARK & STORMY NIGHT

     An ancient and huge maple tree shaded the bathroom window from the sun, but when the dark winds blew, the limbs knocked and scratched like a boogeyman looking for a way in.
      The storm was sending leaves skirling, and witches flying. I ran through the big ol' dark dining room and the cavernous dark living room, past the gaping, chunk toothed mouth of the stone fireplace and into my parents' bedroom.
      Daddy was holding Mama close, standing at the window overlooking the alley that ran between  our house and the loading dock at the rear of the Missouri Farmers' Association or MFA. Safe and dry, we watched the storm pitch it's fit.
     The loading dock, as always, was lit up waiting for late and early milk drop off, live caged poultry arrivals, and miscellaneous feed, seed and fertilizer business. The rain made waves across the windows, obscuring the truck pulled up to the dock. It wobbled in the sheeting water, blurbing up there and bluping out here.  Shades moved from dock to truck and back again, then closed the truck up and drove off into the storm, Daddy said a little prayer for their safety on such a night, and with the calming of the storm, we returned to bed.
     The next morning, Mama was still making the coffee when Daddy answered the knock at the door. At the preacher's house we expected visitors both early and late, but it wasn't usually the sheriff.  Someone had broken into the MFA, wheeled the safe out onto the dock and loaded it into a truck. The preacher's family didn't need the story to dine out on, but it didn't hurt.
     The safe was discovered 3 days later on a rural road. It was basically intact, but with signs of applied hammers and chisels and such. All that work, in all that rain, and all that frustration, just to end up as one of God's littls jokes.
     The thieves my father blessed on their way were never found. Who says prayer isn't powerful?