Night Time Talk
It was about 9:30pm, Friday night, hot, summer. We were all sitting at the dining room table. The kids were drawing and reading and the parents and granny were listening to the baseball game on the radio, orioles, top of 8th inning. Andy Etchebarren had just batted. (Not sure that I'm spelling that right, nor does it really matter but I always liked that name). Ice tea glasses were leaving puddles of water on the oil cloth. Dad who always was making a list of things for us to do was talking about digging potatoes and pulling tomatoes in the morning before we would go to the carnival. Granny said, "Clyde, that's night time talk. No way you are going to get those kids to get all that done before you go to the parade." Dad sort of rolled his shoulder and looked up from his list with just one side of his face and smiled. "Those kids will want to go to that parade, we'll get a lot done in the morning." Sure enough in the morning we were running between the potato patch and the tomato patch. New potatoes in the bushel baskets, tomatoes being laid on the wagon. The air was hot and damp (later known as high humidity) but we had a parade to go to. Later sitting on the curb waiting for the police car to drive up to signal the start of the parade, we all sat quiet and limp. I thought to myself. I'd better learn to listen for the phrase Night Time Talk.