The spring winds were really blowing that mid-May evening of 1975. The power flickered off and on a couple of times, and we all knew we would soon be sitting in darkness.
Though it was still light outside, my sister and I watched as my mother and father went through the ritual…
They filled pots with water and got out the storm lamps and Coleman camp lamps in preparation for the iminent power outage.
Meanwhile my six-year-old brother continued playing with his plastic dinosaurs out in the sandbox.
Unfazed by the oncoming storm, he was caught up in play—creating a world where cavemen and plastic army men were fighting off an attack by multicolored prehistoric creatures.
I stepped out onto the back porch and shouted to him through the howling wind, but he was so caught up in what he was doing he did not hear me.
I went to the edge of the sandbox and plopped myself down.
My brother turned and gave me a growl before plunging a dinosaur through a sand berm and wiping out some cave people defenders.
“Mom says it’s going to storm so it’s time to go inside,” I said.
He frowned, then I helped him fill a plastic bucket with the toys.
“I got sand in my elbow,” he said as we put the bucket down on the porch.
I helped him shimmy out of his windbreaker and brushed off as much sand I could from his clothes.
Inside the house it was dark, and except for the dull roar of the Coleman lamp it was silent.
We skated down the darkened hallway in our stocking feet as the ferocious spring wind gusted outside.
Then we gathered in the living room to wait out the darkness of an Adirondack power outage.
My mother had already found a couple of good story books to read by the light of an oil lamp.
We settled close together to listen to the story as my father made Jiffy Pop over our gas stove.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com