The Sound of Chickens Roosting

Do you hear it, too?  The sound of silence in America is deafening this Sunday afternoon.  Shallow breathing and nervous coughs are all that break through while we all pretend to go about our business. 
At 5:00 p.m. on Sunday July 31, 2011, the world awaits the announcement from Washington that a catastrophic event has miraculously been averted.  It has happened many times in our young country’s history.  Surely, it will happen again.  It has to.  Right?

Tick, tick, tick, tick.  Some guy on CNN says we have passed the point at which we can avoid a downgrade of our nation’s credit rating, even if the Congress finds a way to compromise before August 2.
The chickens are coming home to roost.  A great man by the name of Malcolm X told us that decades ago.  He said it at a time when a black telling the world that the President of the United States had been assassinated as a result of the climate of hate in America and “the chickens came home to roost” was interpreted as a statement of his happiness over the leader’s violent death.  He was vilified.





Malcolm X would be saying the same thing this Sunday afternoon in July had he not met the exact same fate as President Kennedy did so very long ago.  The Ugly Americans who are the selfish members of private club of the rich have allowed their greed and blatant disregard for the well-being of those less fortunate, will now know what it feels like to be suddenly second and third class in the eyes of the world.  If it weren’t for the fact that I know as surely as I sit here they will find a way to make you and me pay for their mistakes, I would say to the chickens “what took you so long?”

Here I Go Again…

 

I try, God knows I do. Ever since I made the mistake of writing a blog post lamenting the frequent disregard for the fundamental rules of the English language, I have tried to remain silent while people who should know better assert how badly they feel about this, that, and the other.

Many of my fellow writers left comments of thanks for explaining the proper use of bad vs. badly and a host of other pitfalls of the language. I have no way of knowing if they were being sincere or if they were typing with that look on their faces that says “Thank you soooo much, you smug b*tch.”

Several other commenters left no such ambiguity for me to entertain. I was called old in two or three different languages; uptight; old-fashioned, and irrelevant. At least they used adjectives properly.

Today, however, a writer I respect mentioned feeling badly about the pain caused by yet another mistake, or something along those lines. Last night, a television journalist admitted to feeling badly about the way things are deteriorating in Washington, D.C.

I’ m beginning to think I only imagined I learned a specific rule about the use of bad and badly. I’m also beginning to wonder why I allow it to bother me, since I hear the misuse more often than not. Sooner or later it will fall into that language category called common practice, and the few of us still saying “I feel bad about that” will be the oddballs.

Here’s the thing: the verb to feel, like so many other verbs in our convoluted and difficult language, has two distinct meanings. The first meaning is in the realm of the physical and relates to the act of touching another person or object with one or more parts of the body. When to feel is used to describe physical touching, an action, the adverb badly is indicated, if, in fact one can do that in a less than good way. Somehow, “I felt the texture of the fur badly” just doesn’t seem to make much sense.

The second meaning of the verb to feel relates to emotions or states of being. No one I know would ever write this sentence: “I felt so goodly when the child handed me the flowers.” They would say they felt good. And that is because the verb to feel is in this case a linking verb and functions very similarly to the verb to be.

Linking verbs show no action. Their primary purpose is to connect an adjective with the subject noun or pronoun. “I feel bad.” “He seems nice.” “You smell great!”

Other linking verbs include appear, look, become, and verbs that describe senses, such as feel and smell.

As we are discussing here with feel, some verbs can go both ways. A quick and dirty test to determine if you have a linking verb on your hands is to try the same sentence substituting the verb with the correct version of to be. “I am bad.” “He is nice.” “You are great.”

If it still works, you have a linking verb. If it sounds totally wrong, it is an action verb and requires an adverb to describe the subject.

Don’t feel bad if you realize you have been badly mistaken about how to use the two words correctly. How bad could you be if 80% of the people around you badly mangle the same grammar? Hmmmmm. Maybe I am a dinosaur.

Oh, and one more thing. If something isn’t making sense or fitting into a model you have come to expect, please don’t say it doesn’t jive, unless you mean to say it doesn’t do a blues inspired dance or style of music. The word is gibe.

Could somebody please come and help me down from my high horse?

My So-Called Life after Fried Chicken

 

 

In 1972 I gave up cigarettes, which I had been smoking since the fall of 1962 when I entered college at 17 and *needed* to appear more grown up. I never even smoked an entire pack a day, but quitting for my three-year-old proved to be very tough for a while. Morning coffee, after dinner and barstools remained a problem for years, which is why I developed my habit of chewing swizzle sticks. One for one swap.

Playing tennis was my life for the entire decade of my thirties. Pre-dawn practices and weekend tournaments required me to squeeze my paid work into the times in between, while continuing my obsession with being the world’s most conscientious single mom, until I remarried when I was 33. Then I played tennis with my equally-driven husband. When degenerative disk disease put an end to my fantasies about becoming Martina Navratilova (we are both lefties), I put my purists’ wooden racquet in its press for good and took up pain pills.

When shooting, searing pains in my breasts from the lightest brushes of fabrics and other lightweight stimuli convinced me I had breast cancer or cancer of the milk ducts, I was relieved to be told by my doctor it was neither, but something about the nerves in my dense breast tissue. She recommended I avoid caffeine and chocolate, which both exacerbate the condition. Quit coffee, colas AND chocolate?! She might as well have been telling me to quit breathing, those things were so much a part of my life. But quit them I did – eventually – and replaced them with non-caffeinated Diet Coke. Like a fiend.i

I was in my fifties by then, and giving up things I really enjoyed was starting to get pretty old. It would be slightly inaccurate to say here that I actually *gave up* sex by then, but for all intents and purposes, I had. My relationship fatigue, which didn’t feel all that much like giving something good up, caused me to take a breather from that madness. No sex, or insanely infrequent sex, was a side effect of that decision that bothered me far less often than I would have expected.

Last summer I was faced with that ages-old dilemma of a college reunion. I had avoided looking at photos of myself and I had tried to focus my gaze on my head when passing a reflective window or mirror for the years following the severe injury of my foot in 2006. The physical activity levels since then had diminished because the foot has never completely healed and the matronly poundage inched its way on while I rationalized about how *healthy* my diet was. It actually was, for the most part, but I had a system by which I allowed myself to indulge my passion for fried chicken.

Every trip I made to my local Publix supermarket triggered bargaining sessions within myself so that I could exit that store with some quantity and version of their deli’s deep fried, heavily seasoned and breaded chicken wings. I have loved chicken wings since I was a small child who was never allowed the privilege of selecting a breast, which was saved for the adults at the table. Since I naturally disliked the oilier, darker meat of fowl, my only choice was the wing.

When I became more conscious of nutrition and weight management, I realized the meat of the breast was far less fattening than even the wing meat, so I switched. I was thrilled because of the larger expanse of crispy skin on the breast and I chose to ignore the inherent fallacy of that swap. As soon as I left my car, the aroma of frying chicken would waft out through the ventilation system to the Publix parking lot. I was powerless to resist it.

When I “called Jenny” Craig in March 2010, I had to kiss fried chicken goodbye. There is not a weight-loss program on earth, with the possible exception of the cockamamie Atkins Diet, that includes fried chicken on its menu. After a withdrawal period that I am convinced rivaled that of coming off a heroin habit, I learned to “enjoy” skinless chicken breasts, cut in half to make 3-ounce servings, seasoned only with Mrs. Dash. It was then that I also recognized my addiction to salt, because without it, all foods tasted the same for several weeks: awful.

I lost the weight I wanted to lose in time for the reunion and I felt quite happy with myself. In the 14 months since the reunion, I have managed to keep that weight off by continuing to eat the way I did when I was on Jenny Craig; i.e., small portions, lots of whole fruits and vegetables, non-fat milk, yogurt, and sour cream, sugar-free everything, and NO FRIED CHICKEN.

Now I would love to tell you I’m over my love affair with fried chicken, but that would be the biggest lie I’ve ever told. I still crave it. I sometimes dream about it. The aroma still causes excess saliva to flood my mouth. Others say things like “Surely, you can have one piece of chicken, Lezlie.” Just like my grandpa’s cronies did the first time he dried out and went on the wagon. But I learned all things great and good from my grandpa, and I know when I am whipped. There will be no fried chicken for me, ever again, or I will be powerless once again.

What, you ask, is my substitute passion now? Rainier cherries.

Ok, You Guys. Knock it Off!

unreformable, obstinate, wayward, cussed, obdurate, unrepentant, unregenerate, refractory, perverse, stubborn, contrary, infantile, boneheaded, moronic, meatheaded, infuriating, off-pissing
 
And these are the nicer adjectives that come to mind when describing the antics of the insufferable politicians in our embarrassingly asinine nation’s capitol.

When I was younger and stupider, I was a “right fighter.”  I would argue my position relentlessly and endlessly, even with glaring examples of my wrongness dangling in my face.  Unless and until my opponent conceded unequivocally, my heels remained dug, my guns remained stuck and my mind, what there was of it, remained as rigid as a cinder block.

Fortunately, mostly for me, but also for those who had to try to live and function around me, I learned with age to entertain the unlikely possibility that there could be another way of looking at the situations.  My teacher? A brutal combination of hearing the words of my parents in spite of my efforts to the contrary; overhearing myself being described in terms that make the list above seem complimentary; and learning the concept of win-win.

Somebody must have noticed by now that the so-called leaders in our Congress are acting like recalcitrant ninnies while the rest of us sit trembling in fear of what will happen when our national finances enter the same territory as the finances of Joe the Plumber and the disgraced educators in Atlanta Public Schools. 

Now that I have temporarily plunged headlong back into the odiferous darkness of corporate America, I am all too conscious of the fact that I am paid to spin the English language to the benefit of my master client, just as Boehner and Company choose ad nauseum to convert the word “revenues” to “taxes,” regardless of context.   Now that I am being influenced by the results compiled from focus groups conducted by so-called public affairs experts and compelled to couch my words so as not to step on the  land mines of loaded buzz words, I realize that the game of chicken being played in DC has a bunch of turkeys as players.

I fail to understand how the Republicans live with themselves, knowing that millions of disabled and/or elderly citizens could possibly go without their Social Security payments because their billionaire corporate ringmasters don’t want to go back to their pre-George W tax levels .  Is the concept of compromise only useful to them when it is applied to the Democrats?

It is time for the children in Washington to put on their big-boy and big-girl underwear and get on with the business of grown-ups.  I am all for spending cuts.  They have been needed for decades anyway, but the times call for the same austerity in government as they do for the mini-budgets of normal people like you and me.  But to ask the elderly and sick to bear the brunt of everything while fat cats and their kittens continue to amass millions is just wrong. 

And what does Boehner do?  That paragon of conservative virtue stomped his drunken big foot like the school ground bully he’s trying to be and ran home to pout.  Good job, Johnny!  Good job.

NOTE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Don't even think about caving to these megalomaniacs!  The majority of the people -- the ones who voted for you and the ones who didn't -- are behind you on this one.

You Call THAT Art?!?

 

My trendy in-town Atlanta neighborhood is known for its liberal politics, fierce loyalty to the ‘hood and propensity for all things artistic.  We have several little theaters, music venues that draw the tattooed and pierced types with crayon-colored hair, and all the architectural amenities that earned it its Historical District designation.

When the City of Atlanta decided to sponsor a new public-art project, one of our prominent gallery owners was given the honor of choosing a muralist to do his magic on the exposed and blank side of a local building in the upscale retail area of the neighborhood.  The corner building is located at one of the busiest intersections around, so it is virtually impossible to miss the mural.

One of the residents who is also a real estate agent has taken exception to the idea, calling the massive mural an invitation to graffiti artists to deface even more of the surfaces along our leafy streets and avenues.  He even claimed he had a carload of buyers in his car who practically lost their lunches upon viewing the unfinished mural.  He claims they refused to buy because of the graffiti that already exists, and he thinks the mural is negatively affecting the area’s property values.  And, he says, it doesn’t resemble anything, so it’s no better than graffiti, commissioned or not.

Really? Seriously, sir?

Let me go on record with my personal critique of the mural:  It’s not speaking to me.  It’s not pressing any of my visual buttons so far, but the thing is still under creation.  I probably won’t be buying a print of the finished product to hang in my living room.  Big deal!  There are plenty of paintings hanging in the Louvre at this very moment that I wouldn’t hang in my living room or any other room in my house.  That doesn’t make the art any less valid or valuable.  It just means it doesn’t appeal to my unsophisticated eye. But given the choice between the bare, blank, brick wall and the mural, I lean toward the mural.  It is colorful and it is the expression of the creativity that is the hallmark of our community.

Our online Yahoo Group has been buzzing for the past three days over this controversy and most commenters are in favor of public art, no matter what they think of the piece in question.  I’m beginning to think this guy is one of the handful of Republicans who live among us.  He seems to think things need to stay pristine and sterile so that he can make his money, above all else.  That is his right, but he’s going to have to move to the suburbs or some other area of the City of Atlanta, because he is losing the argument here big-time.

What do you think of public art in general and this unfinished piece specifically?

Musings on My Death

Most of the time I won’t allow the thoughts to break through to consciousness.  There is a vague sense of them, a nagging little knock at the partition in the part of my brain that controls such things.  But these are thoughts that are better left sub-conscious.  They are just too unsettling, too morbid.


Today was different for some reason.   Today I walked by the house that was owned by a woman who collapsed in the local coffee shop several months ago and never woke up.   Her name was Holly.

Holly was a couple of years younger than I am, but for the most part we were contemporaries.  We had similar careers, similar lack of success with marriage and only one child, a son for each of us.  I’m sure when she woke up that morning she hadn’t planned for it to be her last sunrise.  When she turned the key in the lock on her Victorian gingerbread front door, I’m pretty sure she thought she’d park her Jeep Cherokee in front of it later that day, like always.

I thought about that for the rest of the walk.  I thought those thoughts, the ones that contemplate my own mortality.   I let them come and sit a spell.  


One of my childhood “posse” members is very sick.  He’s probably dying, because he is a 70-year-old man who is suffering from anorexia nervosa, of all things.  I guess I thought that was a young woman’s disease, which explains my initial shock at hearing that news.  But he is obsessed with his looks and with staying young.  He always has been.  It sort of makes sense, but it is so distressing to think about.
I feel great.  I’m not *suffering* from anything.  If I fail each day to take the fistful of my prescribed pills, I would risk a stroke or a heart attack or both from my high blood pressure. But I’m good about that.

Now that I’m a bona fide senior citizen, I do wonder what is in store for me in that regard.  Death, I mean.  If I had my druthers, I would choose Holly’s route, although I am embarrassed thinking about passing out in public like that.  Would I lose control of my bodily functions?  Would I have remembered my mother’s admonitions about clean underwear?  What if my tongue were hanging out?  I swear to God, those are thoughts I actually have!

I fear the kind of lingering death I’ve watched my friend “R” endure.  Ovarian cancer is a deadly son of a bitch ordinarily, but apparently it has found its match in “R”.  No matter what that bastard throws her way,”R” continues to fight.  She’s been fighting for more than 10 years now.  I doubt I would have that much fight in me and I fear the pain far more than I fear the death.

By the time I returned to my own house I had come to terms with the annoying little truth about human mortality; i.e., nobody ever really knows which sunrise will be their last sunrise, unless, of course, they take their own life.  Nobody gets to leave a “living will” that specifies where, when and of what her death will be.  Not yet, anyway.   

I suppose it is only natural for someone who has lived a pretty full life to ponder the details of The End.  I wonder if it is the writer in me that causes that.  Today could even be a milestone for me, the moment in time when I fully accepted my own mortality.  I pray there will never be a moment when I actually wish for it.

Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal Worsens

Ordinarily, a headline such as the one above would portend a story about a group of high school students who have stolen the answers to a test, or something similar.  Not this time.

In what can only, in my opinion, be blamed directly on government pressure on school systems nationwide to either improve test scores or lose funding, the scores on standardized tests administered to students throughout the State of Georgia were altered or otherwise fudged by teachers and/or administrators in 44 of the 56 Atlanta Public Schools (APS) examined by special prosecutors appointed by former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue before he finished his term in 2010.  There are a total of 100 schools in APS.

The two special prosecutors were asked to look into allegations of cheating by Atlanta Public Schools on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) state exams. The appointments were made after a locally-appointed Blue Ribbon Commission failed to determine what happened.

The investigation determined that 178 teachers and principals cheated, with 82 of that number confessing.  Thirty-eight of the 178 were principals. Many of the 140 teachers questioned in the probe reported overt and highly inappropriate threats to their jobs and, in at least one case, to their person issued by individual school principals or instruction directors.

When I owned the home across the street from where I now live, my property taxes were more than $6,000 annually.  About $1500 of that amount went directly to APS for its operating costs, whether or not I had children in school.  The schools were notoriously poor to begin with, and I really had to take a deep breath each time I wrote that tax check, because it seemed like tossing money into the four winds.


I worked with APS in my official capacity as AT&T’s Community Relations Director for the Southeast.  I initiated appropriations for millions of dollars of investment to bring that system into the technological present by sending employee volunteers to wire schools for the internet and by funding other programs designed to instruct teachers in the application of technology in the classroom.

I was appalled by the relative quality of those schools.  There is no way anyone visiting these places could ever allege there is a level playing field among public schools.  Yes, there were far too many teachers I met who seemed woefully inept.  But there were also highly-effective teachers who spent a large portion of their paltry salaries on basic supplies for their classrooms.  I'm talking mundane supplies such as pencils and staples.

Children arrived at school each day from homes with all manner of dysfunction and deprivation.  Some had to dodge bullets (literally) just to stay alive long enough to arrive at school.  Some went days without a meal outside the school-provided breakfasts and lunches. Parents in some cases had to be bribed with incentives just to get them into parent-teacher conferences. 

So these under-funded, under-supported and under-staffed schools were getting dismal results in the classrooms of Atlanta and producing under-achieving students.  What a shock!

Anyone with only a passing knowledge of human nature could have predicted what would happen when the No Child Left Behind Act was implemented. When faced with only two choices – fail for reasons beyond anyone’s control OR cheat – those 178 folks decided they couldn’t fail.

I would submit that the principals involved are the more culpable of the group.   Although I’m sure there were teachers who became creative with their own results in order to avoid disfavor with the principal, some of them were probably pressured into changing answers by an equally motivated principal.  As a leader, they should be more resistant to the temptation.

In the end, who loses more than the children themselves?  They are still poor, they are still under-educated and they are still likely to fall through most or all of society’s cracks.  And on top of that, if they should find the moxy to actually get through high school, they will have diplomas from soon-to-be unaccredited schools. 

Shame on the adults responsible for this mess.  What a fine example they have all set for the children of Atlanta.

This is Justice?

I’ve only felt like this once before, and it won’t take long for you to guess when that was.  O. J. Simpson’s smirking face at the reading of the verdict in his murder trial should be all the hint you need.

It has been three hours since I watched the clerk of Judge Belvin Perry’s court read the verdicts in the Casey Anthony murder trial, and I am still trying to recover.

I wish I could say I was truly surprised by the fact that this jury of Casey’s so-called peers weren’t able to conclude it was Casey who killed her tiny little daughter three years ago and threw her in a swamp.

When I remove all the emotion that surrounds that visual, I have been aware all along that the prosecution, while doing a stellar job at presenting and arguing their totally circumstantial case, were not able to answer the critical question:  how and where was Caylee killed?
 
When I sat listening to the much-maligned (including by me) Jose Baez deliver his impassioned closing argument, far more eloquently than anyone suspected he could, I realized he was driving home the one element of our capital murder trial process that could derail the conviction.  Reasonable doubt.

I was so convinced of Casey’s diabolical nature, I didn’t want to allow my own doubt to break through.  I dismissed the questions that nagged at me when I thought through the evidence: the can of foul air collected with brand new scientific technique; the seeming conflict between chloroform as the murder weapon and duct tape as the murder weapon; the lack of a seamless timeline, even if it was true that Caylee drowned in the family pool.  Maybe I thought those were unreasonable doubts.

However that jury arrived there, they found something about which they could agree was reasonable doubt and let that selfish, immature brat of a woman off, scot free.  She will more than likely be sentenced to time served for the four counts of lying to the police for which she was convicted.  She will more than likely join the rest of us as a citizen free to walk the streets of Orlando (if she dares) with no chance of ever being tried again for the death of that precious child.

I think I agree with Jose Baez, who, during the post-trial press conference, said he believes the reason for the outcome is the ill-advised use of the death penalty in this country.  “Murder is wrong, no matter who commits it,” he said, or something close to it.  I happen to agree with him on that, too.

We will never know for sure, but I keep wondering what the verdict might have been if the words “death penalty” had never been associated with this trial.  Despite all his efforts, the judge was not successful in removing the specter of death from the lesser charges of manslaughter and aggravated child abuse.  I think the jury overreacted to the idea that this young, tiny and obviously troubled woman could be killed for what she had done.

By the way, on the subject of “peers.”  The only jury of Casey Anthony’s true peers would have been made up of sociopaths who were permanently damaged and unable to find a conscience.  I have thought for many years that our jury system is broken and irreparable.

Muggy Memories of the Porch

It was as hot as hell in Atlanta today.  No surprise there, but it has been above 90 degrees every day since sometime in May.  That's pretty relentless, even for Atlanta.

I opened the door to let Coqui out for her evening relief and a blast of hot, humid air smacked me between the eyes with a damp whomp.   I quickly closed the door and retreated into my 77-degree environment, thanking the genius who invented air conditioning.  According to Wikipedia, it was  an American, Willis Haviland Carrier in 1902.  That would explain the ubiquitous appearance of that brand name on condensers throughout the land.

The next thing I knew I was traipsing down the lane called Memory, thinking about how we ever managed to survive without Mr. Carrier’s contribution.  And that’s when I felt the need to see that porch, the wide expanse of wood and metal chairs where suffocating July evenings would be spent eavesdropping on “grown-up conversations.”  I  wanted to see the place in my Illinois hometown again, where all those memories were begotten.

When I Googled the address I was shocked to see the very first image was from Zillow.com, the on-line real estate site.  The side-by-side two-story duplex was barely recognizable to me.  The pristine white enamel paint it wore from the time it was built in 1940 has been replaced by some ugly, faux-stone siding.  And the house has shrunk!  The house I remember with my 1950s eyes seemed enormous, one of the biggest houses on the block.  The one in this picture is…well, dinky-looking. 

Zillow has the house listed as condos selling for $133,000.  It isn’t clear if that is for one or both sides of the building, but I suspect it is for both, given the condition of the general neighborhood these days.  My grandparents paid $7,000 for it in 1948, I believe, and allowed my uncle’s family to occupy the right-hand side.  Sheer organdy curtains made the windows seem much wider than they appear in the photo.  Or maybe it’s just those 1950s eyes of mine again.

Every night after we sat down to supper at 6 p.m. sharp, everybody would pitch in to clear the table and get the dishes done so we could escape the hot kitchen and retire to the equally hot front porch, hoping to “catch a little breeze.” On the rare occasions when Grandpa wasn’t “in his cups,” he would sit in His chair on the far left and literally twiddle his thumbs.  Every now and then he would grumble about some “cowboy” driving too fast down our street.

But on most nights he had a snoot full, as Granny used to say, and he would be hilarious.  Instead of grunting at the cowboys, he would yell at them or whistle that piercing sound men get when they use their thumb and forefinger as instruments.   Granny would reach over from Her chair and tap him gently on the elbow, hoping to shush him.  It never worked.

Then there was my friend Betty’s big sister, Rosalie.  She was a teenager, much older than we were and she spent a lot of time walking up and down the street.  She had the most bodacious behind of any woman in town, and when she walked it did all sorts of tricks.  

Grandpa would stage-whisper “Here comes Flutter Butt!”  We would all get quiet in order to hear what sounds he would emit as she switched and swiveled her way past our house.  

“Hee, hee, hee,” he would say in a weird falsetto voice.  “Looks like two basketballs in a pillowcase fighting for space.”  Once again, Granny’s right hand would flick his arm.  “Stop hitting me, woman.  I’m busy.  Hee, hee, hee.”

We kids would giggle and titter like the silly people we were supposed to be at that age.  Then I would get up, after I was sure Rosalie was all the way past the house, and try to imitate her fluttery derriere.
By now I am dripping with sweat and feeling a little sick.  
“What’s the matter Punkin?  The heat got ya?”

I have never done well in humidity.  It gives me a pounding headache and I sweat like a pig from the simple act of breathing.  The only thing that revived me back then was the sound of the ice cream boy, jangling those three bells on the front of his pedaled cart, cooled inside with dry ice.  I’d listen, without turning from my perch on the stairs, for the sound of clinking change coming from Grandpa’s direction.  He was always good for a Popsicle, especially when the heat had me.

As the sun went all the way down and the lightning bugs started blinking, I would stay as quiet as I could so as not to remind the adults of the time.  Going to bed on a night like that was the worst.  Even with the giant box fan droning at the highest speed, the sheets felt like they had been washed and put on the bed wet.  Despite my mother’s belief that I would catch cold if I allowed the fan to blow directly on me, I would turn it in my direction as soon as she left the room.  Every few minutes I would toss and turn until I found a spot on the bed that was only damp and not yet soaked with my sweat.  I was miserable.

Sometimes we would all be driven inside by the mosquito truck.  The canopy of elm trees that graced our avenue back then was a haven for voracious blood-suckers, so the village sprayed the trees and shrubbery with DDT periodically.   People and pets were not supposed to breathe that smelly chemical cloud, so we would have to endure the convection oven that was our house.

It really sounds horrible, I know, but it didn’t feel that way then.  I loved those nightly porch gatherings.  Sometimes the neighbors would stop to chat on the way to the corner butcher shop or the drugstore on the other corner.  After they left one of the grown-ups would invariably have something to say about them.  They would spell words like p-r-e-g-n-a- n-t and s-e-x, and I wouldn’t let on that I knew exactly what they were spelling.  I felt so mature.

Once in a while, though, Grandpa would have had a few too many and pick a fight with Granny.  Those nights weren’t fun at all, because all the grownups would act all disgusted and go to their respective sides of the house, leaving us out there by ourselves.  We’d have to amuse ourselves by catching lightning bugs and making lanterns out of Mason jars with holes in the tops.  We had to pretend we didn't know.