POWER OUTAGE TRIGGERS A MEMORY
By: Glynn Harris
Having lost power for several hours last weekend due to a storm, memories emerged of acolumn I wrote years ago for Louisiana Conservationist magazine. With your indulgence, I’m sharing that column with you.
DRAGGING A TEENAGER DOWN MEMORY LANE
As I have experienced more and more birthdays, I have noticed that I seem to possess the uncanny ability to dredge up and bring into sharp focus vivid details of things that happened to me ages ago. It thus seems a paradox that I can’t ever seem to remember where I laid my glasses. It takes very little to get me off on a stroll down memory lane taking with me, whomever happens to be within earshot. My most recent, if reluctant, companion for a trip down the lane was Melissa, our teenager. She actually had no choice because a brief but savage storm had zapped us, rendering inoperative everything electrical. And that included TV, stereo and jam box. With no juice, there was no “Night Court” re-runs; no screeching disc jockey spinning such ditties “I’m Too Broke To Pay Attention, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”. Boredom was closing in on her, so I mercifully came to her rescue. Sitting her down, I began blazing a trail down memory lane, kicking off with a phrase teens love to hear from thelips of their parents…”When I was your age…”
Not wanting to appear overly eager to hear my “back when” stories she masked her gleewith a facial expression like the one you get when the dental assistant comes to the door, callsyour name and asks sweetly, “Ready for that root canal?”“Back when I was your age, we didn’t have electricity, television , running water, indoorplumbing but boy, did we have fun!”(I’ll bet…).“You wouldn’t catch us sitting around the house bored. No sir-ree, we’d go down to thecreek and catch frogs, crawfish and bugs.”(I think I’m going to be sick…)“We’d take the shovel and dig in cow patties for fish bait. Then we’d go catch us a bunchof mudcats.”(Well WHOOP-de do…)“And we’d go snipe hunting down in the deep woods after dark. You talk about scary,especially when the rest of the kids went off and left you all alone there in the dark holding thesack and waiting for a snipe. Bet you’d get a kick out that, wouldn’t you?”(I can’t believe I’m missing Three’s Company…)“And the games we played…deer and dog, red rover, pop-the-whip. Then for some realexcitement, we’d sneak over after dark and turn over a neighbor’s privy.”(Dear Lord, PLEASE make the power come back on!)
“If you can find an old inner tube, I can make us a sling shot. When I was your age, we’dget us a pocketful of rocks, take our sling shots and shoot snakes, turtles and frogs.”(Personally, I’d rather have chicken pox…)Without warning, the power came back on and, like a shot, she was up to the television.“Wait,” I called after her, “I didn’t get to the good part about how we made flying jennies andcars out of grandma’s snuff bottles. By the say, have you seen my glasses?(You’re wearing ‘em….)“Oh….”
