Me and my son who was 3-4 at that time were taking a lot of long walks in order to avoid my controlling loving mother.

That was in the fall of 1990 and collective farms will still in effect. One of the things they did was to gather all the straw after combine harvesters harvested the rye and wheat -- into huge, about 6 meter high 50 meter long, stacks. We would climb up the stack and slide down like from a snow hill.

Thus we played there till some conscientious collective farmer chased us off.

The next day one of the stacks was gone.

-- Where did it go? -- I asked my son.

He shrugged his shoulders.

Then my mother's genes hit in. "Excite imagination in your child" -- her lesson flashed through my brain.

-- Some witch took it! -- I said, excited. -- She put it at the end of her broom and flew the stack over to her barn!

My son listened with interest.

-- She needs so much straw because in the barn there is a cow to feed -- a cow so large that the witch doesn't reach even to her knees,-- I continued.

The next day another stack was gone.

-- Look, the witch! -- my son pointed to the empty place.

-- How big is the cow? -- he asked.

-- The cow is so big, that when she moves her tail, the wind created by that move blows the witch away for kilometers and kilometers. It takes her a few days to come home, because her broom stayed at home, -- I explained.

-- Why is the cow so big? -- he asked.

I didn't know but another exciting thought hit my mind.

-- You see how much straw the cow eats? Can you imagine what happens when the cow shits?

My son laughed.

-- Then you need an excavator to clean up after her, and a bulldozer, -- he said.

My son had a technology oriented mind.

-- Every time when the cow shits, the witch drowns in the shit. -- I told him. -- and a crane has to pull her out from it.

Then another thought hit my mind.

-- Imagine what happens when the witch is trying to milk the cow?

and so on...

I had a very good time conceiving the story, it united me and my son but I didn't think it was worth anything till Ansis Berzins picked it from the three storyboards I proposed in the spring of 1991....