This memory could really go along with yesterday’s post, and is probably a familiar one to most of you, those moments when the power goes out.

I have a vivid memory of riding home from the little store. The little store was just that, little. It was a very small gas station with a tiny grocery store attached to a home. I suppose at one time there were many more “little stores” in the United States. Corner grocery stores. Actually, we live down the street from my in-laws, and on their block there was once a little store, too. Their dog would ask to go by himself to get a treat there. They would open their front door and he would go to the store by himself, collect a small Tootsie Roll from the proprietor, gobble it up, and go back home.

Okay, back to the ride home. It’s funny that I would make much of the ride. It only amounted to a few blocks. A few blocks in a small town, I might add. The wind reminded me of the wind Dorothy experiences on her way back into her house, before she gets the bump on her head, falls back into her bed and flies off to Oz. As I tacked my faux Sting Ray bike into the wind, already bits of debris, such as asphalt roofing, were slapping across the road. Shortly after I got home, the power went out. The next day, something like half the barns in our county were down, at least all the barns that were were due to go down, if you know what I mean. The point of my story, though, was not the little store, or even the storm. It was more the quiet after the power went out. Candles, food heated on the Franklin Stove, board games, no TV, talking. A good memory created when a minor inconvenience became a night of reliving a simpler time.