Point of View: Say What?
The phone rang and, seeing it was my daughter, I answered it. Why, she wondered, was I not already at the Hampton Classic?
I was going, I was going, I said — not with unbridled enthusiasm though — in a little bit. And were we prepared for the storm, she asked. Of course we weren’t prepared, I answered.
Well, if it turned out that we needed anything, we should not hesitate to call. I told her we would, marveling at the ease with which round-the-clock weather channels can induce widespread panic.
I’ve lived here for practically half a century, and there’s only been one time when we’ve been without power for more than a day or two, and that was because the Long Island Power Authority’s map of our neighborhood hadn’t been updated in a generation, which, because they thought it was sparsely populated, and with mostly summer homes, landed us at the bottom of the list, until Bill Leland set them straight.
Yes, yes, I know, someday, someday. . . . It was the same with Mary’s mother. For years, she predicted the market would crash, and, after years and years, it did, and she could at long last say I told you so.
Gloom and doom will eventually get you somewhere. Sell, sell! Evacuate, evacuate!
Are we like sheep? Sheep passing in the night? Sheep pissing in the night? But then if there are no lights, there is the lawn. Lights are a boon, yes, but, as I said to Mary’s sister, Georgie, the other night, with a certain bravado, “There are two things I can’t live without — women and paper towels.”
I expected she might reply in kind, though, skipping men, she acknowledged that paper towels were indeed a necessity.
At any rate, I finally ambled over to the Classic. And, lo, to my surprise, found on arriving that they’d started the Grand Prix an hour early! The rumored storm had prompted the change. I, clueless, as ever, hadn’t gotten the emailed word.
But I had only missed the first rider, the weather was beautiful, and the class was over in record time — in well under two hours. It was with a light step then that, soon after, with my head filled with just the right number of facts, I left the showgrounds, eager to celebrate with Mary the end of summer.
Sometimes it pays not to know before you go. Jack Graves