1990: The year my dad put me in the deer stand and then went home and left me there

When we moved into the new neighborhood in Lakeville in 1988 we were one of the first houses to be built.  We were surrounded my cornfields and woods.  My parents house sits at the bottom of a giant hill and at the top of the hill was an old farmhouse with Do Not Tresspass signs posted every six feet.  You know what curious kids do when they see those?  They tresspass.  All day and night, do they tresspass.  They sneak out of their house at night during summer vacation and they tresspass because it's easier to sneak around someone's farm at night when there's nobody to catch you!  Except for the farm cats that would shreak and scream at you and give you away, no matter what time of day.  The closest we got to the farmhouse was one of the outbuildings and it had a saggy roof and broken windows.  And if you got close enough you could see through those broken windows there were kids toys hanging from the rafters of the building!  Bicycles, rocking horses, wagons, shovels, some kind of inflatable swimming pool and pool toys! Why would an old farmer have kids toys hanging from the rafters of his old building?!  Because he would kidnap kids and murder them and hang their toys in his building as a keepsake for his evil deeds!  Oh course he did!!  I thought this story was about how my dad left me in a tree stand?  Oh yeah, here comes that part.  So my dad had some sort of agreement with the child-murdering farmer that he could deer hunt on his property.  One day in the early fall it was time to go scouting for good spots for deer hunting and good trees to put your deer stand in and I tagged along with my dad.  Like I said, the farm was just up the street, not even 1/4 mile away.  So we drove up there in dad's old red Chevy pickup and proceeded to find good sturdy trees.  It was getting to be dusk and my dad was just about done hanging his second deer stand when he realized that he forgot something at the house.  He told me to climb up in the deer stand and sit there and not move and he would be right back.  As he backed the truck away I watched the headlights fade and the unmistakable feeling of dread worked its way into the pit of my stomach.  Every single sound in the woods was magnified by a thousand.  Every twig snapping reminded me of the child murderer, breaking the little arms of innocent kids that he found dangling from deer stands.  Coyotes howled and yipped about fifty yards from me and I'm suprised that I didn't pee myself and pass out.  Even though I was safe up in the tree, I felt like a sitting duck, waiting to be discovered by the creepy farmer and my toys would be added to his evil collection.  Dad wasn't gone for more that 5 minutes but it might as well have been 5 hours to a petrified kid.  I was still in the same spot where he left me, frozen in absolute fear.  He reached his arms up and told me to jump; I dove out of that tree so fast.  He could sense that I was upset and asked me what was wrong.  Nothing, I said.  I went straight to the truck, climbed in and blasted the heat.  Even though it was sixty five degrees outside I had goosebumps and felt like I just climbed out of a grave.  I patiently waited until he was done.  We drove home in silence and I went straight to my room when we got home.  And you can believe I never ventured to the top of the hill again until the next spring when we got word that the farm had been sold and they were tearing everything down.  I watched with fear and awe as dumptrucks and bulldozers and chainsaws flattened the old building with all the toys until there was nothing left.  That summer they began developing the rest of the neighborhood and the old farm has been gone for more than twenty years but I still remember it with fear and amazement, just like I was ten years old again.