Daring Adventures

There were lots of daring adventures growing up on Pungo Creek. Like the time the REA cut off our electric. Mama came in one night to find Aunt Blanche, Addie and me sitting in the dark staring at a blank television.

“Why are you idiots sitting here in the dark?”

Aunt Blanche didn’t move her eyes from the screen.” They came out this morning and turned off the electric, Frankie Mae. Said we were three months behind.”

“Shit!” Mama went into the front room and got the kerosene lanterns from the top of the piano. She put one on top of the television and one on Aunt Blanche’s Bible table. “Well at least we ain’t sitting in the dark, but how do we get the television to work?” Mama looked at me as she spoke like she expected me to answer her.

Lucky for me I’d been trying to figure out what to do. “Well, we could run extension cords across the branch to Uncle Roswell’s house and plug them in to the back of the television set.”

Mama lit her cigarette and stood there for a minute like she was thinking about my plan. She took a long drag on her Chesterfield and blew the smoke out before she said anything. “Where are we going to get an extension cord long enough to stretch all the way to Roswell’s?”

I’d thought about that too. “There’s lots of them out in the brooder house.” We used them to run electricity out to the heaters in the winter.

“Well I’ll be damned. I like it. It just might work. Let’s give it a shot. Come on and help me, Brenda. This was your idea.”

I think the thing that appealed the most to Mama was the notion of stealing from Uncle Roswell. We piled all the cords into the skiff and rowed over to Uncle Roswell’s boat house where we plugged in. Then we rowed back, stretching the cords along his dock and through the branch. “I think we are just going to make it, Mama.”

“That’s my girl. I swear and be damned. This is something your Daddy would have dreamed up. He would have been proud of you.”