Fun in the Dark

Greetings from Poosey.

Poosey is the electrical version of the canary in the mineshaft. If there’s a lightning storm within a hundred miles we’ll be the place that loses its electricity. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky last week when about 8 o’clock at night the area was flung into darkness. Nothing was running but Herb’s sinuses, so we went out onto the front stoop and sat in the porch swing.

That’s when it happened… nothing between Herb and I, some things are beyond magic… but in my imagination. With the whole ridge and valley sitting silent I went on a memory trip. I had a vision of the days when we all had something in common to talk about on Monday morning because we’d all heard Walter Cronkite read the news in measured, fair tones that weekend and we’d all watched the same Ed Sullivan show. I thought of the day before computers owned us.

A single car came down the road, Floyd Henry checking to see if the lights were out on our end of the world. I thought back to when Floyd and Maxine first moved here. They didn’t know many folks so a group of us converged upon their doorstep one summer night with jugs of iced tea and a couple of tubs of homemade ice cream. June bugs eventually drove us indoors and since the Henrys still hadn’t unpacked completely we pitched in and by 10 o’clock that night they’d made themselves a home christened by an evening of laughter and shouts from their new neighbors. In the course of an evening they’d made friendships that have lasted for over 40 years now. That was before friends became virtual on Facebook.

Herb’s stomach always begins to growl around 9 p.m. and he usually gets up to graze the refrigerator before bedtime. The lights were still off, so I told him to grab a flashlight and feel around for a bag of chips while I held down the front porch. As I heard him stumbling and bumping his way around the kitchen I thought of Grandma’s house on Sunday noon. Fried chicken was the main staple of every Sunday meal along with authentic milk gravy and hand-mashed potatoes. When we’d arrive after church, grandma’s apron would already be liberally dusted with flour. By the time the entire family had arrived, the smell of chicken and biscuits absolutely filled her neat white farmhouse. After grandpa’s prayer we’d dig in and then spend the rest of the afternoon playing ball in her luscious expanse of yard. Those still lingering around by evening were treated to leftovers every bit as scrumptious as when the food first appeared on grandma’s table. This was before ball games, dance recitals and school events had taken over the Sabbath.

Herb finally blundered his way back on the porch to complain that the light had gone out in the fridge. After I reminded him that lights often need electric current to operate, he plopped back into the swing and began dropping potato chips onto his shirt. I thought of the evenings playing Old Maid around the card table and how grandpa was always stuck with the jinx card because he didn’t have the heart to pass it to one of his grandsons …of how a good game of monopoly could take up an entire evening without benefit of YouTube …of nights when a family would simply pick up and go “visiting” with no agenda in mind other than friendship …when the major nighttime sport was catching lightning bugs, an athletic activity that involved no expensive uniforms, practice seasons that took all summer, and no parents yelling from the sidelines for you to try harder when jumping for a firefly…of the days when giving a candy treat to a little one was a great gift back before most kids had enough cash in his pocket to buy out the store …back in the days before our schedules owned us.

As the clock approached 10 p.m. Herb and started to think about turning in for the night. But as I rose from the swing I caught I whiff of lilac. I remembered the days when people would purposely plant flowering bushes near their windows to enjoy the fragrances all summer. Now we only smell the lilacs on our way to the car. I miss the days before our air conditioners owned us.

The whole experience may have been a quick reminder from the Almighty for a soon as we stepped inside the lights came back on, the television blared into life, my computer restarted and the fun was pretty much over.

You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.