At Weeks End
Over the years, and with increasing frequency more recently, Ive mentioned to friends Id willingly forego the technological marvels of today if I could go back and relive my life in the 1950s.
In some measure I got a chance last weekend.
Angus and I were on the couch, he sleeping and I reading with a TV news program playing in the background, when a bolt of lightning hit within what seemed a few feet of my back door. The house shook and lit up from the flash. Immediately, the TV coughed and went black.
Angus darted to the back bedrooms bath and hid; he is deathly afraid of thunder and lightning.
I went to my room and found the TV set there black as a moonless night, and not a light showing on my computer.
What to do?
Fortunately, I had just started a fascinating autobiography of Peter Arnett, the AP newsman and later CNN reporter, who spent a dozen years in Vietnam, from the time in 1962 when American advisors began to take a more active role in combat.
Even so, Saturday evening was a challenge, with nothing but radio to break the silence. As it turned out not watching the Royals was fine; the Yankees splattered them all over Kauffman Stadium.
I retired early. As it were, the silence wife Beverly is in New Mexico was deafening. I continued my journey with Arnett through the Vietnam war, reaching the point where Gen. Westmoreland and he nearly came to blows. Arnett was reporting the war as it was; Westmoreland and others in the American hierarchy preferred a vanilla version, with U.S. missteps overlooked.
After church Sunday morning Angus and I motored to Iola so I could do a little writing and he could trace every smell in the Register office.
Back home I went, returned to Arnett, and by then the lack of TV wasnt much of an issue. Maybe, I thought, I really could adjust to the more simple times of the 1950s, before I ever saw a TV screen and computers were a fantasy of science fiction.
However, I did take my computer in to see what was the matter, and began thinking about replacing the TV sets.
Beverly and I, as a cost-cutting measure, have talked about skipping out on television, particularly during the summer when we are outdoors, she gardening and me finding anything better than being stuck indoors.
Our house, by the way, wasnt the only one victimized by the lighting storm. Neighbors living on either side had problems. One lost power we didnt and the other had some glitch I surmised from an AT&T truck sitting in the driveway Sunday morning.
Soon, I suspect the Johnson household will return to the way it was before the storm, but I will remember the interlude of silence and book-heavy days for some time with a happy heart.
