Humor

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The Thomas Factor
(Ghosts, Goblins, and Hoot Owls)

The Thomas Factor is a well-known phenomenon that occurs in the Baton Rouge - Holden areas of Louisiana. It is even known to have happened as far west as Houston, TX and as far east as Caesar, MS., a small hamlet in south Mississippi and my home town. This plague seems to be spreading fast across the country and there is no cure for it. As a youngster growing up in the Caesar community I came in contact with the Thomas Factor several times and didn't know what was happening. I just laid it off as pure bad luck or that the Good Lord was punishing me for something I thought I had gotten away with.

The Thomas Factor is similar to Murphy's Law that says that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong", only the Thomas Factor is more predictable and things will go wrong. An explanation is needed here to give a little history of the Thomas Factor. This phenomenon started shortly after the world was created, faded out and was not mentioned in the History Books of the early writers, but for some unknown reason resurfaced some 75 or 80 years ago in a small community in SE Louisiana know as Thomas. The name of the community comes from the fact that most of the residents living there are called Thomas. Most of the people who lived there have spread out from the community due to the lack of work in that area. The Thomas Factor bug bit my son-in-law, whose name will remain anonymous, at an early age. We found out later that it can be passed down from generation to generation, especially among the male members. As far as we know it doesn't affect the female descendants. My wife and I found out about the Thomas Factor some years ago after my daughter married into the Thomas family.

Thomas Factor first event-

The first time we noticed that the Thomas Factor had invaded the Holden community was just prior to a Hurricane entering the Gulf of Mexico. My son-in-law, who is an avid fisherman, decided to go fishing in South Louisiana. He persuaded me to let my youngest son go with him. Remember, the hurricane was in the Gulf of Mexico churning up the waters and headed straight for the Louisiana coast.

"Boys, don't you know that a Hurricane is on the way to the Coast".

"In the canals where we will be fishing the Redfish will really be biting because the hurricane will push water upstream and the fish will be in a biting frenzy" or so my son-in-law said.

So, off they go before daylight, headed to the Bayous some place below a small Cajun town in south Louisiana called Bayou Chene.

About 10 pm the telephone rings-"Dad, we need you to borrow a boat and come get us. The motor on the boat won't crank and Stan is with the boat tied up to the shore somewhere on the Bayou. I hitched a ride with another boat that was fleeing the hurricane and am waiting at the dock. He wants you to come with a boat and tow us in".

"Why don't you get someone down there to pull you in".

"There are no other boats around. Everybody has moved out because of the Hurricane".

Thomas Factor event 2-

I borrow a boat from a friend and leave out about 11 pm to somewhere in South Louisiana. Before I left my friends house I picked up the gas can to make sure there was gasoline in it. I finally get to the location where my son is waiting, we back the boat down to the boat ramp, I get out to put gasoline into the gasoline tank and the tank is half full of water. I begin to get the impression that things were not going so good. Here we are, an approaching hurricane, a boat without gas and my son-in-law and his boat somewhere out in the Marsh waiting to be rescued. And on top of that they had launched the boat at another boat ramp some several miles away and my son didn't know where. The Thomas Factor had struck again! My son-in-law finally hitches a ride into the boat dock and we head back home.

Thomas Factor event 3-

See "Maw are you awake" a related story on faithwriters.com!!

And now on with my story-

I was about 13 years old and one of my favorite pastimes was to hunt rabbits using an old carbide light and my 16-gage shotgun. My friend and comrade in trouble, Tater Bug, usually went on these hunts with me. However, on this particular night he was unable to go because of some meanness he had gotten into that day. His dad had grounded him for the rest of the week.

Let me regress here just a little-the favorite pastime around our Caesar, MS home was to tell ghost stories while setting around on the front porch of our old home place on Saturday nights. Most everyone in the community knew that the ole Hershel Lee abandoned home just down the road from us was haunted. My sister, who is next in line to me in age and several years older, swore that one night she was coming by the old house and she heard someone dragging a sack of bones across the rafters. How she knew it was bones I do not know. I took her word for it. Another theory was that the Goblins we had read about in Kindergarten had moved from under the bridge into the house. Anyway, I made it a point to never go by the house after dark, just in case she knew what she was talking about. I knew that there was no such thing as a ghost but I could put forth a pretty good argument that they did exist, especially after dark, around the old house, and near the Caesar graveyard. Why take a chance!

Granny Rachel Lee had lived in a small log cabin near the woods at back of our cornfield. Granny died when I was just a youngster and the cabin was abandoned to just rot down. No one wanted to live there after her death. I can't blame them because it is a known fact that the dead occasionally revisit their previous homes just to make sure all it well.

The incident I am about to disclose still makes what is left of my hair stand on ends when I think about it. I had fueled my carbide light with plenty of carbide and water, got my ole 16-gage shotgun down from the gun rack, picked up a couple of number 8 rabbit shot, and headed out across our cornfield, looking for rabbits. I crossed over the fence and headed for Granny Rachel's abandoned cabin, intent on killing me a rabbit for the morning meal. That is when I realized where I was and that is when chills ran up and down my back and I began to shake like a leaf in the wind. I knew that Granny Rachel would not hurt a hair on my head but I did not desire to see her since she had been dead for several months. There was an ear-piercing scream; such as you would hear from a woman in great distress and pain! I jumped immediately to the conclusion that Granny Rachel was back and was trying to get my attention. That is when the Thomas Factor kicked in. The scream did get my attention, causing me to turn my head at such a speed that the carbide flame went out. My immediate thought was that Granny had blown the flame out and was standing next to me and waiting to invite me to come in. Not in this lifetime, I thought, as I turned to make tracks. When I turned my gun hit something solid, such as you would expect from hitting a corpse that had been lying in the grave for a long time. The gun was knocked out of my hands. I immediately shifted from park to after burner a condition that exist when total panic hits, and that is when something grabbed me and slammed me backwards, throwing me to the ground. I immediately got up, my feet churning like the Roadrunner cartoon when he falls off a cliff. Once again something grabbed me and slammed me to the ground again. I gained my senses to discover I had run into a small Pine sampling. The woman screamed again and that is when I left at breakneck speed, barely touching the top of the grass as I sped toward home. The Hoot Owl then hooted and I remembered that my dad had told me that occasionally an Owl would scream like a woman. I never hunted rabbits around Granny's ole home place again!

The Thomas Factor still lives today!! My daughter and son-in-law came up this past Saturday for a short visit. Shortly after they left, I went to turn my computer on and guess what, it crashed!

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