Velociworld

ALMOST LIKE MANNA FROM HEAVEN

When my father bought the farm in 1963, he originally built a small cottage there, for weekend getaways. I'm not sure what that corrugated siding was made of, but it resembled nothing so much as compressed cardboard, or perhaps pure asbestos. I do know it was built by amateurs over, oh, three debauched weekends, and was a primo mouse and rat villa. The tiling was probably 3 cents a pop, with black tar oozing between them, and the paneling was sawmill reject quality. Perfect place for us kids. Macabre, leaks in the seams for haints to slip in and terrorize us by night, huge whistling pines outside to set a chilling tone.

There was also a tiny trailer next door, the property of my father's drinking buddy and mechanic, a fucking fearsomely desolate 1930's pull-behind, the shocking pink siding long faded to a disconsolate shade of hopelessness. That was a rodent haven, too, and it had the added bonus of being populated by one of those owl clocks, whose eyes clacked back and forth upon the second.

Have I set the general timbre, then? Good.

And so the good Senator built the real house in 1966, and we moved there, and he was careful to incorporate the original hovel into the design, lest we be forgetful of the bugaboos and axe fiends that haunted the original. Fortunately, my room was in one of the newer parts of the house. I tell you, though, my brother and sister who had rooms in the old part still ain't right.

I digress, though. The point, the point, is that they tore down the DeSoto Hotel in Savannah that year, as Hilton intended to replace it with a new hotel, and so my father scored some magnificent beams from the old DeSoto, twenty feet long, and incorporated them into our great room, itself a cavernous 20 x 30 echo chamber.

I have to admit those beams were stunning, and yet, as we sat as a fambly for three days in our new abode, watching Lost In Space or Star Trek, they seemed as the Sword of Damocles. And this foreboding was borne out on night three, when the night sky, well, the ceiling, began to rain earwigs.

Did I mention this was black and white TV? Oh, yes. Probably the only black and white sold in North America that year. The Senator: Color? What you need color for, boy? See that man? He's white. See that man? He's black. What the hell you need color for, boy?

Again, I digress. Nasty creatures, earwigs. Like little scorpions, all attitude and venom. First one, then two, then a fugging deluge, from those beams. My sisters were hysterical, my brothers and I bemused until we realized we could squish them.

As I recall the Senator was placid throughout this hellish rain, keeping to his routine, which consisted of bribing someone to mix him a Canadian and Coke, and wash they damn finger before they stirred it, using spoons for swizzles being considered extravagant, and uppity.

Hysterical sisters are vexing to the soul, to be sure, but that precipitation of earwigs was a marvelous thing, Biblical in proportions. Now my siblings will probably read this and decry that it was flying cockroaches, not earwigs, but recall they are recovering addicts, the lot, and every memory is a flying cockroach to them. Pay them no heed.

I believe those beams rained earwigs for three days. Then all was right with the world, except for the fact that there were now seven people piled upstairs on the parents' bed to watch television every night, that great room having become a rather unpopular site.

All of this by way of seeing a lone earwig today, crawling along, and letting my mind get the better of me, yet again.