Memories from long ago...

It's funny to me what brings back memories. It's like finding a buried treasure when your trying to plant something. Your going along trying to create something new, and low and behold you come across something that you had forgotten about. Tonight I found myself in my childhood. I was in my house with Tammy cutting up potatoes for French fries when surprise surprise the power went out. At first it was just annoying, me and Tammy just took a big sigh and said there goes the power again. It's truly the worst when you are trying to cook. The ranch does have a generator for back up, but they decided not to turn it on for a while, hoping that the power would come back, so that they wouldn't have to spend the money to run the generator. I was making the French fries for one of the boy's houses close to the soccer field. They were having hamburger and it was my contribution to bring the fries. So, in the dusk I took my already cut potatoes and cooking oil up to their house to get them started. Since we have gas stoves I wasn't hindered from getting them cooking, just hindered from being able to see very well. We had one small candle burning, so it was pretty dark. Since it was so dark most of the houses just lingered outside waiting to be able to get dinner going once the lights came back. So, as the fries fried I went outside to hang out with everyone. It reminded me so much my childhood summers. No one in any kind of hurry to get inside, dinner could always wait a little longer. As long as there was still a soft light to see what was going on then people (or at least me and my siblings) would stay out to get a little more fresh air. I remember coming home late from swimming and riding bikes and my mom making some kind of comment about how late we were sitting down to dinner. I think maybe she felt like a bad mom for getting dinner on the table late, but really I loved when we would stay out late playing and eating later into the night. It also reminded me of going outside after dark during the summers to play flash light tag. I'm sure me and Joseph weren't really out that late but I remember feeling like we played half the night away. I miss those childhood summer nights. All of those memories came rushing back at me like it happened yesterday, as I stood outside in the crisp air and watched kids running around yelling at each other in Spanish and laughing, and as the teenagers stood around talking and enjoying getting an extra 30 minutes outside just to hang out. When the lights finally did come back on everyone slowly made their way back to their houses to get dinner going. I got to enjoy some homemade hamburger off the grill and some really good fries. The American style meal only served to keep me in my childhood memories longer, I savored all the memories that quickly rushed toward me on this beautiful evening.