Not Exactly Gone with the Wind

Not Exactly Gone with the Wind

About 1,000 words or 3 pages

                Most people living in the United States today, including myself, haven’t really lived through much of anything in terms of earth-shattering historical experiences.   We squirm and squeal like we’re either victims of some huge tragedy or smug heroes of an advanced technology era, but we’re powder puffs in terms of historical catastrophes or even having seen significant events of the ages.   We would do well to remember that as we carry on about our causes celebres and other nice social fine tunings; these are all well and good, but let’s get real, we experience but faint echoes of troubles past or far away. 

I was reminded of this when visiting a remarkable woman recently:   a Southern belle, now in her 80’s, having risen from poverty in the middle of Georgia to live many years in Europe and now retire in a comfortable setting back to the South.   I remember having visited this fine lady once during a storm.  We were catching up on the latest in her small town and the fact that high-speed Internet wires were just installed when sleet and freezing rain came down and the power went out while we were sitting in the den.   It went dark; I heard fumbling around, and then the strike of a match.

“Let’s move to the parlor,” she said, lighting a candle and walking us to the next room.  She lit an oil lamp, two sconces on the wall and a standing candelabra by the piano.  She went to the fireplace and deftly lit the tender and kindling.   We finished our chat, and she insisted I play background music on the piano while she read the paper.  One of her dogs curled up by the fire, the other by the piano as I played.  

“What’s really changed most in the past 70 or so years for you?”  I asked, partly to make conversation but mostly from genuine curiosity. 

“Well, for one thing, if you go into the kitchen right now, it’s completely dark like when I was a little girl.  Normally, when the power’s on, it seems like there’s this glow from all the little blue and green ready lights and digital clocks on everything,” she said.  About that time a grandfather clock chimed, followed by a few quaint cuckoos of another clock, telling us the time without us even having to look at any blue or green lights.

“And I’ll have to say,” she added, “that cars start a lot better than they used to.  It seems like we had to pump the gas, turn the ignition and coax them to get them started.  Now they just start with the push of button.  Every time.”  She thought some more,  “And TVs don’t wear out like they used to.   Remember when we had to go up to the TV and bang on the side of it and fiddle with the vertical control to keep it from endlessly rolling up?”   I had forgotten about that; once upon a time everyone had to fiddle with the television to get a steady picture on one of the three or four channels available. 

“I believe I left my cell phone in the other room, and that’s a big change of late, I suppose,” she said.  “It’s cute and handy, but really not that big a deal,” she added.  “I have an alarm system that’s state of the art,” she said, “but I’m not sure it’s as effective as the dozen dogs that lived under the house and the shotgun under every bed.”  I remember those dog and shotgun days; they were still around in my grandparent’s old farmhouse when I was a boy.

I had just finished a tome of a book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, and indeed there were several chapters about what had really changed since the middle of the last century.  Most all of the everyday life advances in the past half-century have been in the form of improvements in communication and entertainment.  We may all think things have really progressed, but it’s not really earth-shattering when things go from one computer operating system to the next.  For the most part, we get minor updates of things invented a couple of generations ago—and the updates seem to be for sales purposes, nothing really new. 

                  The phone call came early in the morning from my little brother about this very lady of which I speak, our mother, a couple of weeks ago.  A tornado, an F3, hit mom’s house and neighborhood.  I was the closest son and should get there pronto.   I did.  Once I got through the workers’ freshly chain-sawed paths, I got to the remains of my mother’s home.  Two of the fifteen rooms had survived as evidence of mercy in the fury:  the dining room and kitchen.  The rest of the house was demolished.  Forlorn, fine-laced curtains hung some twenty feet up in snapped-in-half pine trees.  Thirteen rooms of finery and memories were drenched and scattered.

                My mother was with her dogs in the dining room, warming coffee on a silver chafing dish.  She poured me some in a Limoges cup and saucer.  Apparently, she had spent the night on a pile of coats with her dogs and her .22 Beretta (lady’s edition) pistol by her side and alerted us with her cell phone.  She had run water in a bathtub at the beginning of the tornado watch; and now even though the toilet was open air, there was at least a handy reservoir of water to use for flushing. 

                “See if you can find yourself a chair,” she said, “We can’t sit but a moment.  I’m afraid I’m terribly busy.”   And I instantly saw the strength of a generation whose brothers had fought the largest war in history and whose great grandparents had told stories of the War Between the States.   Her cell phone had come in handy, but it would not have changed things much if the wind had taken it too. 

                               

               

©Copyright. 2018.  JP Harrison.  All rights reserved.