The Night the lights went out in Georgia

Wow boy did the blackness ever get to me last night. May have to up the dosage of a few things.

Just a little self pity party people. Nothing to see here. Move along now.

With the Dawn of a new day hope springs eternal in this old breast. They say when one door closes another opens. I'm looking for that next door. Hope it's not the one to the outhouse.

Now that's something I haven't used in years. When I was a kid it wasn't uncommon at all for people to have an out house. Wooden shanty built over a hole in the ground. Boy, oh boy, is that ever a smell that you remember for a long time.

My parents house had indoor plumbing, but my grandparents eventhough they had running water and a bath room complete with the porcilan throne, kept an outhouse outside. Down past the cloths line where granny hung the washing to dry. She always put those leg formers in my grandpas work pants. She had her own steam ironing press in the sewing room where she would press all their clothes. Grandpa could not go out looking sloopy. Even if it was to go to the dairy barn to milk their herd of 100 holstein, guernsey, and jersey cows.

Just down below us lived a family whose water was drawn from a hand dug well with a bucket let down on a windless. Boy was that water good on a hot summer day.

Their outhouse was about 150 ft below the house just above a gulley which ran down thur the pasture and eventually to a creek. I remember Milton and I playing in that gully pretending to be Jessie James and his gang.

One day we saw his older sister go into the outhouse. I might mention that the sided of that particular outhouse were made of tin. Boy,was it ever hot in july on a cloudless day.
Being the bad and bold Jessie James Gang we snuck closer, closer, gathering fist sized rocks and clumps of red Georgia clay in our hands for ammo.

FIRE!!!! BOOM !! BOOM !! Hell and Brimstone rained down on the tin walls of that outhouse. Open flew the door and that old gal ran out of there scattering Sears and Roebuck Catalog pages and scrambling to pull her drawers up, curses raining down on mine and Miltons heads as we scampered off laughing histerically.

Needless to say we had to stay out until after dark, to escape the beating both of us so rightly deserved.