LIGHT READING

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Just wishing Happy Fifth Birthday to Beverly’s Pink Saturday tradition.   Do go have a look at all the wonderful creations and finds and cuisine and flowers and all-things-pink that people are showing.

 

My show-and-tell this week is an old “light fixture,” from Mammaw’s first house (but not from when she first HAD the house.   Electricity didn’t come to them until the late thirties, bless the TVA.     Mammaw and Grandpa moved into that house on the day that they married in 1917, and not until Mother's brother was about fourteen and an electrical savant, did they have “current” in the house.

 

 I cannot imagine how my Mother and Uncle Lee ever did their homework or read at night, let alone the crochet and sewing that Mother did.   How did she SEE to thread a needle or pick up a stitch in the light of the several coal-oil lamps?   

 

You just screwed in a bulb GOD BLESS MR. EDISON, giving the hanging chain a little tug to illuminate the darkness.   I was just mentioning the other day how the recent hot weather and the spotlight-bright Sunlight Bulb over the breakfast table down here conspire to transport me some days to those HOT Summer nights of one-bulb-in-the-ceiling and the beetle-buzz against the open screens, as we shelled peas or just talked awhile or listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the wooden radio that looked like a little church, or maybe Sister Rose coming to all her air-waves friends from Del Rio, Texas, where you could order a crocheted wall-hanging or couch-cover of The Lord’s Supper for just 3.95.  

 

 

 By some sort of common consent, the lights were always out for Pam and Jerry North and Inner Sanctum---it just seemed fitting.

 

 

 

Something about an unshaded lightbulb is so reminiscent of the times of my life---the high-ceilinged yellowing bead-board in the three rooms of Mammaw’s little shotgun house, with the family pictures hung on the walls along with the Cardui calendar and a couple of  navy-blue-velvet rectangles printed with a glittery HOME SWEET HOME and THE LORD WILL PROVIDE.

 In the “middle room” the darkness took over the ceiling above the single-bulb-on-a-dangly-cord, and the loss of that six feet of upper wall made it as if the house squatted shorter every night, hunkering down to rest til dawn.

 

Of course, when Daddy tore down the old house in the late Fifties, the NEW of the whole thing called for nice brassy  glass-shaded Sears Roebuck fixtures in every room.   Two of the old lamps continued to sit on the dining room dresser “in case the lights go out.”

This relic weighs about two pounds, is painted in shiny enamel, and could use a good going-over with a toothbrush.   But I refrain, for the accumulated grime of the years is part of its charm (besides, I watch Antiques Roadshow).   Its sockets are lined with what looks like cardboard---unless it’s some form of asbestos (and the long-lost withered cord was also wrapped in layers of paperish stuff), it seems as if it would have been a terrible fire hazard.   Nevertheless, it hung there over decades, shining down on company and gatherings and quiet nights of the days before TV, lighting many a pea-shelling and quilt-piecing, the games of monopoly and checkers,  a hushed sitting-up-with-the-dead or two, and the hum of the faithful old Singer treadle going deep into the night. 

 

It retired its role in the scheme of things, being set on mantels and tables and used as a centerpiece candle-holder over the years, spending almost as much time relegated to a dark drawer.   It sits now up on Chris’ “old stuff” shelf, testament to the old ways and new conveniences which have stretched across time from grandparents unto the fifth generation now.

 

It’s “vintage,” I suppose, and considering its almost-ninety years tenure in the family, it will soon become a genu-wine antique.  May we all look this good at a Hundred.