Lightning Bugs

Welcome , all you new friends! Come on up here on the sun porch and set a spell! I’ll git you a glass of sweet milk cold from the spring house and some of them big tea cakes I baked along about daylight this mornin. That old wood cook stove jist heats up the house so nice on these cold winter mornings..Thought I might just as well make some cookies while I was baking them cat head biskits for breakfast…..
 
Since ye asked, Pa made them rockers out of willer branches he cut down along the crick , and I sewed up them softening pillers out of odds and ends from the rag bag. If we was to run out of things to talk about setting here of an evenin, it’s sorta fun to pick out one or t’other of them quilt patches and talk about the dress or shirt that patch come from….
 
It’s almost beyond believing that them youngens all moved off to far places and have families of their own now. Our kind Lord saw to it that memories of them growin up in this old log house linger here to pull out and smile over when we set around the fireplace and listen to our thoughts…
 
Them sparks a popping off the logs in that old sooty fireplace remind me of  lightning bugs on hot summer nights. Seems like if I close my eyes and listen hard I can hear them youngens laughin voices as they run round the yard catchin them lightnin bugs. They always let em loose the next morning, but liked to lay there on their pallets in the loft watchin em flash in the dark till sleep overtook em….

 
I hope you’ll read something that brings back a happy memory …

On  warm summer nights you can hear the frogs croaking in the side ditches and down in the shallow pond among the cattails. Listening to the wee peepers and the ‘belly deep’ croak of the bull frogs is one of my favorite memories. It seems like they all croak in their own key, making up a wonderful country chorus, with Katydids, crickets, and other bugs adding courting calls in the background. Lightning bugs flicker down in the pasture signaling to their mates hidden in the tall weeds and grass..and June bugs keep banging against the screen trying to get to the  lamplight…Till the cats catch and eat them….
 
I will admit it can get a little annoying when the Mockingbird decides midnight is a good time for a serenade! I have always enjoyed the sound of the Whippoorwills lonely call, AND Hoot owls, as long as they aren’t courting in the trees near the house. Another favorite memory is of lying in bed listening to the Canadian geese honking their way across the sky in Spring and again in the Fall…It’s such a lonely sound…
 
On a stormy summers night in the country you can hear rain hitting the roof and gurgling down the drain pipes–It’s soothing music interrupted by thunder and flashes of lightning. After the storm has moved on out the sound of the gentle rain is better than any sleeping draught …Especially if your house has a tin roof!
 
Other noises that I am afraid others take for granted are, the woodpecker pecking a hole in the tree in the backyard, the wild turkeys on the ridge across the river gobbling every morning at the crack of dawn, kids running and laughing as they catch lightening bugs at dusk, and the neighborhood dog howling when the train’s coming because the whistle hurts his ears .
 
As the misty morning begins, the rooster crows lustily to wake the farm, sometimes causing a drowsing hen to fuss at him.. It isn’t long, though ,till the hens cackling lets everyone know there will be fresh eggs for breakfast! The cows start mooing for the farmer to come and milk them and give them some sweet feed and the pigs oink for their bucket of slop mixed with ‘shorts’.
 
An early morning sound I remember from my Granny’s farm is the splashing of milk as it hit the bucket. Ma sat on a battered 3 legged stool and gently stripped milk from her  Jersey cow, while ‘Daisy’ contentedly munched on the nubbins and sweet feed in the little wooden box nailed to the barn wall. Her tail was tied to the nearby fence so she couldn’t accidentally switch Ma  every time a fly tickled her hide..Too little to help, I would watch the frothy milk fill the bucket, and daydream about how good it was going to taste poured over a big bowl of the oatmeal now bubbling on the back of the old wood cook stove. By the time the milk had been strained into the separator, a breakfast fit for the Squire would be waiting on the oil cloth covered table……Are you ready to move to the country yet ?