Our house is situated at the end of the road on a farm on the lower slopes of the Elkhorn Mountains.  Eight thousand-foot-high Hunt Mountain rises from our back yard.  It's so close and so high that one can't see the summit when sitting in the living room and looking out the picture window to the west.  The window is 4' x 8' and makes a magnificent framed picture of a breath-taking mountain scene.

Opposite this window, to the east, is a 5' x 8' picture window.  It frames an equally impressive scene of the valley which our house overlooks.

The windows are focal points.  They're the main features of our home.  By day they serve as natural landscapes to decorate the room.  By night they make top-notch mirrors for girls to dance in front of, and in front of which boys can perform their antics while watching themselves on the big screen.

Those are the good things about the windows.  They have their drawbacks as well.  One of the problems is that from a bird's-eye view the windows look like an open passageway leading from one side of the house to the other.  A resounding thud against the glass brings us running, and sends surprised birds reeling.  The abrupt stop is most often fatal to the unsuspecting robin, which is the most common species to fall victim to the false pass-through.  At certain seasons one curtain has to be drawn to prevent the bird/glass collisions.

The other drawback to the windows is that they're magnets for various flying projectiles.  For several years I warned the little people that if anyone should ever break either of those picture windows, they'd pay for them—possibly with their lives.

Such rash threats should never be made.  One distinguished acquaintance, a college professor, became fed up with the frequent milk spills at the dinner table.  He told his clumsy kids that the next person who knocked a glass over would finish his meal while sitting under the table.  Predictably, the next spill was made just minutes later, not by the kids, but by the father, himself.  In a very sportsmanlike way he swallowed his pride, quietly took his plate, and meekly crawled under the table.

I broke the tension about the windows in a similar fashion.  Wood for the fireplace is stacked on the porch just outside the back door almost under the west window.  Carrying an armload from the woodpile to the porch, I dropped my bundle onto the pile.  One of the dropped pieces struck a piece already on the pile which flipped into the air and cart wheeled into the window, leaving a large hole.

Breaking the window also broke the spell.  Thus was started a long string of mishaps involving the two picture windows which has yet to reach its conclusion.  Both windows have been replaced several times, and both are currently in need of yet another replacement.  Each has a crack or small hole.  Oddly enough, of the 32 other windows in the house, only one has ever been broken.  That particular breakage took place during a pillow fight in the boys' bedroom.

One day matt shoveled snow off the front porch which an east wind had deposited there.  Having finished, he dropped the shovel which hit the floor and bounced against the window.  When his brothers and sisters arrived home, he took them into the living room and gleefully had them guess what was different in the room.  The fact that we had a large cardboard window wasn't hard to figure out.

Nathan and his B-B gun were responsible for another breakage.  He didn't shoot the window directly, but his ricocheting B-B accomplished the same purpose.  The small, round hole through the glass of the outer thermal pane was livable for a while.  It even provided months of entertainment as the family watched a crack progress slowly from one side of the window to the other.

Even when the crack finally reached the other side there seemed to be no pressing need to replace the window.  The glass was firm, and the crack was low where it didn't affect the view.  All was fine until one winter day when Heidi scored a bulls-eye on the B-B hole with a snowball.  The tiny hole with its single crack was instantly transformed into a multi-rayed star which could no longer be ignored.

The glass store was called, measurements were taken, and in a few days the men arrived to make the replacement.  The frame was removed, the new window put in, and the frame was carefully replaced.  As they nailed the frame back in place, a nail nicked the glass, thus starting the next exciting episode of a slow-moving crack.

The other window currently sports a tiny hole in the outer pane which was put there by Danny's ill-aimed wrist rocket.

I began the breakages.  I have a history of window problems.  My first was a small pane that received a toy gun thrown at my older brother's head.  Even though my brother had been tormenting me, I was the one who got in trouble.  I'd have nailed him right in the head if he hadn't ducked.

Next came the lesson that one should never choose a windowed-door as base for a game of hide-and-go-seek.  My brother was "it."  I left my hiding place and raced for the base, reaching it a split second before my brother, who crashed into me, sending my right arm through.  The blood and shattered glass on the other side were not a pretty mixture.

In adulthood I spent many hours helping a sane, but slightly "off," single mother.  My help was expected and demanded, but rarely appreciated.  I allowed myself to be used, in the hopes that I would be able to give her kids a chance at a normal life.  I was consistently nice, but always came away extremely frustrated.

One day while cutting and loading firewood I went over the current situation again and again in my mind.  I got madder and madder.  I slapped and slammed pieces of wood onto the back of the pickup until one piece, thrown particularly hard, shattered the back window with thousands of cracks.

The shattered but intact window rode around with me for several weeks as a reminder that getting mad never accomplishes anything good.  I laughed a good deal over the incident, and used it as an object lesson for my kids.

Amy, for one, failed to find it amusing.  An object lesson it might be, but it was also an embarrassment.  No one but poor folks would go around with a window like that.  And why in the world would I insist on picking the kids up from the bus stop in that pickup when it looked the way it did?  I laughed for days over her "let's get out of here!" as she reluctantly jumped in the pickup with all of her school bus friends looking on.  If she could have denied knowing me and the pickup at that point, she would have.

Poor Amy.  That was not the last vehicle and broken window that was to embarrass her.  There was the time that Grandpa's Scout pickup was blocking the driveway and Matt was trying to leave on the tractor.  While backing up and concentrating on not hitting Grandpa on the one side, his front-end loader swung around on the other side and crashed through the back passenger window of our station wagon.

I told him to clean up the mess and, since it was winter, to cover the window hole with something.  Cardboard is the normal material used to cover broken windows, and I probably had that in mind when I issued instructions to Matt.  However, not being precise in my instructions, Matt was left to choose his own method of repair.

He chose an afghan.

A loosely-woven afghan does not make an air-tight hole covering.  Matt simply shut the blanket in the door.  What it lacked in effectiveness, however, it made up for in interest.  In the first place it was striped orange and white.  In the second place it breathed in and out and flapped in the wind when the car was moving.  In the third place it looked quite ridiculous.

Even the little boys were mortified by the transformation that the afghan wrought upon the car.  "Just let us out at the store, and we'll walk to school," they said.

Amy simply refused to get in.

Glass can be a dangerous thing, but Aaron is the only child to have had a close shave—and it was literally that.

The little boys and I were at Phillip's-Long Ford thinking about new cars.  The salesroom is mostly glass on the two sides facing streets.  The entrance door and the big door through which cars gain their admittance are also glass, thus allowing potential customers to view the shiny, new cars inside.  It was a warm, summer day.  The doors stood open to admit breezes and browsers.

With waiting being the only activity happening inside, Aaron thought of something to do outside, and abruptly stepped through an open door.  At least that's what he thought he was doing.  He learned firsthand how the robins feel that attempt to fly through our living room.  His velocity being somewhat less than a robin's, he neither went through the glass nor bounced off.  He simply crashed into the 8-foot tall pane and dazedly watched huge pieces of sharp glass slash past his nose and shatter into thousands of pieces at his feet.

I was stunned.  I knew instantly that Aaron had just been horribly wounded, but a close examination revealed that his only loss had been a lock of hair neatly sliced off at the scalp and removed from his bangs.  It was a several-month reminder of how close a call he'd had.

Grandpa Kerns lives a half mile up the hill, right at the end of the road.  There are no houses between his and ours.  Traffic is a rarity, unless it's one of us; and Grandpa, being a lonely widower, always welcomes company to break up his dull days.  To entice grandkids to drop in, he keeps his freezer stocked with ice cream and Popsicles, and his cupboard packed with cookies.  Kids love to visit, and he loves to have them.

To encourage frequent visits, I allow the kids to learn to drive when still very young.  I teach them in a vehicle having power steering, power brakes, and an automatic transmission.  I sit next to them to help and coach them for several weeks until I feel comfortable with their skill level and reaction time.  Then I turn them loose for solo trips to Grandpa's.

Eight-year old Danny thus says, "Can I go up to Grandpa's?"

Four-year old Ivy blurts out, "I want to go, too."

Permission being granted, two tiny children jump into a big station wagon and take themselves up to see Grandpa.

All the kids have learned to drive this way, and all have proven to be completely safe and responsible once they've gotten the hang of driving.

The only mishap occurred while Heidi was still in training with me sitting beside her.  Aaron was also in the front seat, sitting forward on the edge, and watching out the front window.

As she came down the hill, someone said, "Slow down for the driveway."

Being unused to how quickly power brakes grab hold, Heidi pressed the pedal down too hard.  Aaron's head, already fairly close to the windshield, crashed into the glass.  He was uninjured, but that half of the windshield was instantly transformed into a mass of spider-web cracks that were impossible to see through.

That was the first time the windshield had to be replaced on the station wagon.  The second time was when Amy picked up Amber, the Jersey cow, as Amy sped down our gravel road one night.  Amber had recently calved, and I had allowed her to stay with her calf by the haystacks.  That gave her access to the road.  Amy was unaware of this arrangement and was not expecting a cow to be in her line of fire.  The impact broke the right headlight, lifted Amber onto the hood, spider-webbed the windshield again, and slid her back off the right side of the car, bruised but apparently uninjured.