“Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

“No, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.”

“Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down,” said the wolf.

It was in Bellevue, Washington, in 1947. I had been sent to live with my brother Matt and his new wife Barbara, while my widowed mother, age 50, sorted her life out.

All four of my brothers, ex-sailors, were busy far away doing the sorting out of their own, so Matt, the oldest, won the family lottery.

Me.

Matt — the hardest, the wisest, the tough survivor of Pearl Harbor and four of the hardest years in the Pacific — had married Barbara Smith, the daughter of another widow, Beatrice Smith, a prominent Seattle city official who gave the newlyweds a piece of property surrounded by miles of very tall trees.

The details of all that are murky, and have drowned in my fragile memory.

What’s this got to do with the fable of the Big Bad Wolf? It’s what Barbara, Matt’s new bride who had won me in the “lottery,” said as she sat me down in front of the fireplace on that stormy night deep in those woods away from the lights of Seattle, to calm me.

That night, a “big bad wolf” blew out of Lake Washington, darkened the entire city of Seattle, and came for the three pigs in an old house at the foot of a hill, a coral with two frightened horses, and the new fragile growing structure of Matt’s new home.

By 7 o’clock that dark evening, the “wolf” shook every giant tree for miles around us. Imagine how the heart and soul of a city boy on the banks of the Mississippi felt.

Barbara sensed my fear, held me in the front of the fire and recited the ancient fable.

When one of the giant trees came down taking his small boat to the bottom, Matt piled us into his car and drove us into town to sit in a movie theatre with a few other nervous townsfolk. I chewed popcorn while Matt chewed his nails, and Barbara prayed.

December 2023: The first night of the 75 mph winds howled about us, tossing and surrounding us with our neighbor’s forest of 15 or more waving, snapping giant trees.

Three little pigs — She, and I, Ms. Kramer, the tiny yellow cockatiel — sat by the warming fire of the Sony television, the Christmas tree lights and the furnace below.

I reached over, touched her and softly whispered, “And the big bad wolf said, ‘Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down.'”

There was no popcorn, so I chewed my nails, wondering how fast I could get She and Ms. Kramer out to the car in the garage, provided there still was a garage and a car.

Then, surrounded by total darkness, we sat and listened to the snap, crackle and pop of the towering giant limbs falling about our house.

Today, as I write for you, the young neighbors and their crew and our brave gardeners are sawing and loading. And the wolf?

To be continued.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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J.P. Devine Podcast: Listening to the snap, crackle and pop of the trees