It was a dark and stormy night …

Reprint from Life Unplugged Column, Tucson Green Times. September

by Susan L. Feathers

Remembrances of an Air Force Brat, circa 1950

At Selfridge Air Force Base on the western shore of Lake St. Claire, a row of stately houses lines a circular field: Officer’s Row where all the full bird Colonel’s perch. I walk across the white expanse from where my friends and I have built igloos as only one can do in the depth of a Michigan winter.
My boots crunch up the steep, snow-encrusted steps to the heavy door with opalescent panes. Already I can see a roaring fire through the sheer window-drapes.

Ruddy cheeks, bright eyes delight to see my father with his pipe and paper relaxing before the fire in the round of this great room. Overhead, a chandelier of sparkling crystals throws rainbows on the floor. A snoozing gold collie and gray cat curled in its paws are the heaving lumps before the fire.

“The Abominable Snowman!” he exclaims with a smile. I giggle and fall into my father’s lap, crushing his paper. He smells of sweet tobacco and coffee.

A few minutes later I slither down onto the soft wool rug, plunge into a green sea and loll with dog and cat, stretching toward the warmth. I lie there on my tummy letting my eyes skip along the shapes on a big, maple hutch: a delicate Japanese vase, rose-colored glass from a Smoky Mountain craft shop … a porcelain bust of Mozart … landmarks of our lives, the relics of a family.

My child’s belly relaxes into the round womb of the room.

Mom’s distant voice calls from the kitchen, “Girls, girls, fudge is ready!” My big sis appears to tell us The Plan, as she always does: hot fudge, cold milk, and a round of Monopoly … then huddle around the radio for an adventure with the Green Hornet.

The animals stir around me then go back to serene sleep. We gather at the card table set near the warmth of the fire. My little sister is standing at the window pointing with her plump, baby hand at the delicate snow flakes twirling into view out of the cold night.

There is a rhythm to our gathering, an unspoken understanding.

We pass Go and pay the Tax Collector and bemoan Boardwalk and Park Place littered with red hotels erected by none other than my big sis. The dice roll, the dainty pewter slipper in my mother’s jeweled hand hops gaily past the developments and lands on the Community Chest. She looks at us with a sly grin. I end up in jail and have to roll three times to get out.

The room by now is warm through and through, the dog is on its back airing the hairy underside and the cat is missing. Dad scrapes the bowl of his pipe, refills and lights it with a flourish which betrays he is about to do something auspicious. He walks to the radio, gives the dial a solid turn, pipe clenched between his teeth. He leans down, ear tuned to the wheezing and cracking then high-pitched whine as he hones in on the signal. Resonating chords on an organ’s base scale captures our attention. We pull our chairs closer to the radio. The baritone voice of the narrator comes in as the music fades, “It was a dark and stormy night…”

My father served in the U.S. Air Force for twenty years. Our family crisscrossed America on Route 66 eight times. It was hard, that way of life. But we had something I am searching for now … that room, and the unspoken understanding that what we shared was good and ought to last our whole lifetime.