Mark Bishop
Singing News Article
February 2006
A few years back, before Haley was
born and when Courtney was little, Carolyn and I lived in a little
brick house over on Possum Run. I'm well aware that that's not the
way to spell "opossum" but that is the way they spell "Possum Run"
in Irvine, Kentucky, where I come from. Anyway, this is not point
of the story.
We lived in the little brick house for quite a few years. Around
sixteen or seventeen I guess. When we first got married back in
1983, we rented a couple of different places for just a few short
months. Within a year of being married though, we wanted to own
something of our own so we bought the little brick house. About
seven years later, after much prayer, we had our first child.
That's Courtney.
Needless to say, times were much simpler back then. I say
"needless to say" because most of the time, when someone talks
fondly about the past, they mention that times were simpler. The
implication is almost built in. Maybe the times weren't really any
simpler back then, as we were living them, but compared to the
complications of our current hurried lives, they seem simple in
retrospect.
Anyway...I remember one winter we had a very impressive winter
storm come through. All the tv weathermen were forecasting a major
snow storm for our area and boy, did they deliver. Before all was
said and done, we had a couple of feet of snow and ice on the
ground. The ice had covered the trees and the power lines and
nearly all of Estill county was without power. I don't remember a
time before or since when so much of the state was shutdown. Our
little brick house on Possum Run was without power for a whole
week. Keeping the fire going was a necessity, not a novelty.
I have always loved the warmth of a real wood fire. Back then, we
had an insert in the fireplace. One of those with a glass front so
you could see the fire. I actually didn't mind getting up sometime
in the night, when it was bitter cold outside, and tending to the
fire. A man can find a lot of clarity in those moments. Decisions
that give you fits in the middle of the day seem to be pretty cut
and dried when you're half asleep and poking at some glowing
embers. Everything about it does me good. The glow... the smell
and the sound of crackling wood... the warmth... all of it. There
was nothing else competing for our attention. There was no tv or
internet, no video games. Nothing but a fire that had to be tended
to. We played board games. We read books. We worked jigsaw
puzzles. We talked to each other.
Some of the neighbors had four-wheel drives and some didn't. If
someone was going to town for something, usually they would call
and see if their neighbors needed anything. As you might expect,
being a guy, I enjoyed getting out in it. Carolyn, to this day,
still doesn't get out in snow unless she has to.
I remember we had to use everything in the fridge and freezer. It
was thawing. We put some things outside to keep them cold but
after a while, the food picks up the taste of the snow outside. I
tried to cook a frozen pizza on the grill outside. Maybe there's a
way of doing that successfully but I didn't discover it on that
day.
We pulled the mattress off the bed and put it in front of the
fireplace. One less room to try and heat. All three of us together
in the silence of a cold, cold winters night. There we snuggled
and talked and laughed with the glow and the crackle of the
fireplace for cold night after cold night. You had to take an oil
lamp if you left to go to the kitchen or the bathroom. The
constant sound of the winter wind outside made you feel like you
were in a cabin and very far away from anything.
Then suddenly, after we seemed to have become adjusted to our new
way of living, the lights came back on one night. The electric
clocks and the vcr were all flashing 12:00. The electric heat
kicked on, along with the refrigerator. We turned on the tv and
there was all the sight and sound you could ever want. We were
once again connected with civilization.
The bright lights revealed that we had a mattress and covers in
the middle of the living room floor. The coffee table was set to
the side and had a half worked puzzle of some kittens on a
windowsill. There was a pile of wood right on the porch.
We opened the bedroom doors and put the mattress back on the bed
where it belonged. We put Courtney in her bed and we brushed the
puzzle pieces back into the box. We moved the furniture back to
it's original place. " Tomorrow morning, I'll take the wood back
to the woodpile."
And I did.
Carolyn still remembers that snow storm. From time to time she
will say "I wish we would get a snow like we did that one year...
remember?"
I guess I won't forget it.
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