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I Miss Fire Flies

I was raised in the Midwest and lived there until I joined the service at age seventeen.  I remember laying on my back in a wheatfield welding on the underside of a combine. While there, I promised myself I would travel as much as possible and settle in the place I liked best. I’ve kept that promise, but sometimes I think about the things I enjoyed as a child. I miss fire flies.

We called them lightening bugs and would chase them in our yard on hot summer evenings. Mom would provide us with a glass jar, and we would fill it as full as we could and pretend it was a magic lantern that would show us the way to fairyland. We would squish one on our fingers to become diamond rings that glowed in the dark. The next morning the magic was gone, and we would release the beetle like insects to go on their way. But at nightfall lighting bugs would stir our imagination again and carry us off into a fantasy world. I miss fire flies.

But I don’t miss tornados. Several of our neighbors had designated storm cellars. Others had basements and would go there when storms approached. We had neither, but our house was made of concrete blocks that would withstand the worst storms. Even then, we practiced taking shelter away from windows, and all of us had a designated protected area. After a storm destroyed a school in our area, television made it possible to broadcast warnings of storm tracks. I don’t know that we were actually any safer, but we at least knew when to be afraid and when the storm was headed somewhere else.

I miss seining crawdads with my siblings and cousins. There was a creek running Through our farm; and once or twice a year, we would gather and sein a galvanized washtub full of crawdads, let them soak in salt water to cleanse them. Then the womenfolk would steam them in a big pot on the stove and dump them on newspapers on the picnic table. Fun!! We would go through a lot of Old Bay seasoning and renew family bonds. I don’t miss the crawdads as I miss the family gathering. The crawdads were a good excuse for a clan get together.

In my Air Force days, I was stationed all over the country. I don’t know how to explain it; but when I was first stationed in Spokane, it felt like home. I soon came to love the smell of pine in the mountains, the river view from the front porch of our cabin, how the cycle of life on the Palouse mirrors the cycle of the wheat... This is home. I miss family crawdad feasts and fire flies, but North East Washington is home, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 20 years.