Ken invited me out to the Elks last night for their monthly men’s night dinner. It was essentially as Ken originally described: A five course meal for $18 plus tip, plus whatever drinks you paid for. But last night was a bit of an adventure.
Just as they started serving the food, the lights began to flicker. After the salad, the lights went completely out, along with the rest of the building’s power. Outside, a storm was kicking up. The winds were blowing fiercely, and the distant lightning’s thunder rolled in with an appreciable delay.
Dinner miraculously rolled forward, through servings of some kind of tasty sausage-and-strange-meat dish, pasta, beans, half of a chicken (very well seasoned), and dessert. All of this came without aid of air conditioning or electric lights in the kitchen, which is a feat in itself.
After dinner, we retired to the patio with some beer to watch the lightning. The rain drizzled lightly at the patio’s edge as we sat in candle light around the outdoor table. Outside, the week’s overbearing heat has dissipated.
Lightning cascaded across the sky in odd jagged forks. Sometimes it lighted the clouds from behind, and sometimes it appeared quite clearly in the foreground with a loud snapping thunder.
Dinner was great, and the company fine. Most folks had left the dinner early to check on their homes. Some of the more distant folks had fallen trees or hail-shattered windows to tend to. We bid them care on their travel home, leaving only a handful to watch the lightning. The powerless night carried on without the usual sounds of the city, and enhanced the wonder of the sky.
The loss of power reminded me of some nights back in our house on Logan Avenue, when I would sit in the livingroom with my mom, brother, and - for unknown reasons that seem strange now - the girl across the alley, Angie Brown, and light candles to wait out the storm. We’d tell stories or sing songs to pass the time and withstand the childhood fear of the thunder outside.
When I finally got home, after avoiding no less than two downed trees, Berta and the kids were huddled in our bed aroudn one of our lantern flashlights. With the power out and the AC off, the upstairs was too hot for sleeping, so I fetched our camping equipment from one of the boxes packed in the garage. We set up a makeshift camp in the livingroom to sleep in the remaining cool.
