Last night I was sitting out in the late evening with my mother and my sister. We had just had a summer feast of catfist, corn on the cob (sesoned with Old Bay) and delicious watermelon. Mom told us about her grandfather, and how he had been a watermelon farmer. We enjoyed a little breeze while sitting under the tall Carolina pines, and hearing the stories on this hot night.
We recalled sitting on my grandparents porch in Charolotte, and running around with other kids we knew while the "old folks" talked the hours away into the dark, hot night. Then it dawned on me, we used to catch lightening bugs! Where the lightening bugs these days?
Some people call lightening bugs, fire flies, but what ever you call or called them when you were young, we used to catch them in a jar and then watch them light up in the night. We always asked our parents if we could sit the jar next to our bed, so we could watch them light up when the lights were out. Mom would insist we poke holes in the jar lid so we didn't kill the creatures, and some time long after hot little children had fallen asleep all the mothers I knew, including mine, would sneak in the bedroom and take the jars out the backdoor. The fire flies were released into freedom.
