global warming worries
What with all this global warming this year, the South End’s been inundated with snowstorms, monsoons, windstorms and bad craziness – all of it culminating in power outages that last for days. The neighbors who didn’t snowbird it to Phoenix or Baja are about half deranged breathing generator fumes and cursing the PUD, the government, God and the day they retired to a backwash like South Camano.
I try to reassure em, being the Good Samaritan I am. I tell em about the good old days where we lost the Grid for even longer, even more often. I tell em how the missuz came to my love shack in ’81 in a raging storm. Power out, trees down, tide lashing the beach, practically had to cut our way home to a dark shack she’d, fortunately, never set eyes on.
I tell em, think romantic. Think oil lamps and candlelight, quiet conversation, flickering shadowplay and the haunting strains of a banjo gently weeping. Think, this is how it once was. The wind strumming the fir boughs and the world vibrant and pulsing in a way TV pretty much dulled. Think of that old lovelight rekindled and warming like a cookstove, the dreams rising once again, yeasty and full of glutinous potential.
That’s how this old codger thinks of the South End. And if I have to be reminded of it every storm, every power outage, every candled memory, well, it’s a welcome few days. And Ma and Me, we think of em sort of as anniversaries. Course, after 3 or 4 days, we’re ready for TV. Or divorce. Or maybe just a generator of our own.
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