Another hazard of our mountainside croquet was the two goats. Mother had acquired them soon after we moved in, and had tied them casually to a post in the backyard. Give them enough rope and they'd clear quite a good piece of property, she figured.It's true that by dint of inexhaustible appetites they eliminated the worst grass clumps, which is more than my brother and I did. On the other hand, none of us children ate the clothesline and three suits of my father's underwear, so this makes us all about even. The goats were named Belle and Beauty, perhaps to delude the neighbors about the way they smelled. They had been given to us, along with a little red goat cart, by a family leaving Franklin who had managed to contain their joy as they bid the goats good riddance.

Theoretically, one of the goats' chief duties, besides mowing the grass, was to pull Bobby, Sally and me, one at a time, in the goat cart. However, for some curious reason, Belle and Beauty were always confused and thought it was we children who were supposed to pull them. After we'd ridden a few hundred feet, both goats would sit down and wait to be hauled home. It was an awful unsatisfactory arrangement, and nobody cried when Belle and Beauty were given to a farmer who came to sell us eggs each week and admired the red goat cart. After he'd had the goats a week, he stopped bringing us eggs, probably to get even.

--from We Shook the Family Tree (1941)

The chairman waved away these loose ends. He wore a red-jeweled ring on his little finger, and his sport jacket was so tight he looked rather like a sausage encased in madras plaid. "Fellow citizens, the PTA has asked me to make a top-priority announcement. Due to the sudden increase of child molesters, mothers are organizing volunteer watches at all school bus stops. This will continue till summer vacation, June twentieth. Volunteers may call Mrs. Hinck."

"What if the mothers are molested too?" somebody asked.

Mrs. Hinck stood up, or popped up. She looked very flushed and determined. "The mothers will go in pairs and they will be armed-- with paralyzing nerve gas."

"But that stuff is illegal."

"Not this brand," a man said. "It's on sale in the hardware store-- doesn't have much effect anyway except maybe make you sneeze." Somebody sneezed but changed it hurriedly to a nose-blow.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hinck," the chairman said. "I'm sure you'll get more volunteers than you can handle."

-from Heat Lightning (1969)