WIDE MEADOWS: A CONTINUING SERIES; LIGHTS FOR THANKSGIVING: PREPARING FOR A BETTER COMMUNITY

Editor's note: This is an installment of Jean Bell Mosley's book "Wide Meadows" that was first published in 1960.

Dad was always full of plans and projects. Once he took a look at the old kerosene lamps and said, in the broad expansive manner he employed when launching his many and varied campaigns for the betterment of his family, "These old lamps have to go." His white hair swept back neatly from his forehead and his stance was like Washington crossing the Delaware as he stood there in the old kitchen surveying the lamps. He smiled tolerantly and reminiscently as if they were already on display in a natural setting at some future museum.

"Why, Wilson, whatever on earth do you mean?" Mama asked, stopping her sewing machine only long enough to turn a corner seam. She was making new dresses for Lou and me for the Thanksgiving program at school. "I mean --" Dad began, and stopped helplessly, waiting for the sewing machine to quiet down again. "I mean we're going to have gas lights," he said, strutting about the museum, peering into the ancient steaming pots to see what was cooking way back then, and waiting patiently for the rest of us, whom he often called "The Practicals," to span the centuries with him.

Gaining better sight

"It's a carbide system," he explained, when The Practicals continued to lag behind and evinced no measurable amount of interest. After all, we know we were many miles from a gas line. "You put the carbide and water tank in an outside shed. The water drops onto the carbide forming a gas which is channeled into the house and is turned on and off at the fixture. Just strike a match" -- he shrugged his shoulders at the utter simplicity of it -- "and what have you? A clear, bright, blue-white flame. No lamp chimneys to clean. No wicks to trim. No constant filling with costly kerosene. No growing up of the children with poor eyesight. Yessiree," he warmed to his plan, twirling his watch fob vigorously, "I mean to bring some light into our lives."

"Well, don't light a match now," Grandma, the Archpractical, said, "o thing'll blow up in here for sure with all you're giving out with."

Dad ignored Grandma's remark and walked over to study the Thanksgiving post Lou and I were working on.

"It's a cornucopia," I explained to Dad in much the same manner as he was trying to explain his gas lighting system, half-fearful that in the advanced century in which he seemed to be living they had done away with Thanksgiving. "It is symbolic of peace and plenty and purple autumn haze -- and burning leaves and frost on the pumpkin."

"All that?" Dad asked, an appreciative look in his pale blue eyes. He took the poster up and looked a bit more closely. "Sure enough," he exclaimed, "and I can further see the squirrels and chipmunks busy storing their food, corn shocks, a harvest moon, and the mallards flying south. And listen," he said, excitedly, holding the poster up to his ear, "hear that cricket?"

It was actually a cricket we'd been hearing all fall somewhere about the kitchen fireplace, but it was good to play this game with Dad. And it was comforting to know that there still must be a Thanksgiving up ahead.

"Let's try these on now," Mama said, holding up the partially finished dresses. "When is all this light supposed to come into our lives, Wilson?" she asked absently, measuring a hem.

Taking step forward

Dad studied the ceiling and the view from several kitchen windows before replying. He did a little figuring on the back of an envelope, walked over to the calendar and flipped a few pages, and when the sewing machine quieted down again, said, "Next week." This was in his clipped, climactic, closing-in voice he used when it was necessary to rouse The Practicals out of their lethargy, inertia, opposition, rebellion, or despair, which he said we often suffered epidemically.

Mama spun around, removing pins from her mouth hurriedly. Such haste in Dad's plans she was not used to meeting.

"Next week?" she demanded. "Now, Wilson, a thing like that takes time and money."

"Money, yes. Time -- no. The whole system can be installed in a day. We'll set the tank in the smokehouse. We'll all lend a hand at digging the ditch and we'll start with just one fixture right here in the kitchen. Right about here." He climbed up on the table, turning over the sugar bowl, and marked a little circle on the ceiling with his pencil. "We'll have it ready for Thanksgiving and we'll ask all the neighbors in. They'll be green-eyed with envy."

"I thought the purpose of the thing was for better eyesight, not to turn the neighbors green-eyed with envy," Mama said, rather sharply, and Grandma, from the dark confines of the pantry, offered a remote and muffled approval of Mama's crisp reply.

"Well, someone in the community has to make a step forward," Dad knocked the spoon holder over getting down. "We been going on and on with the same old beliefs and customs and lighting systems generation in, generation out." He had reached the table-pounding stage, only used when The Practicals seemed impenetrable, and I watched Mama's little pile of pins do an Indian war dance.

"All right. All right!" Mama said, hastily cupping her hand over the pins. "But will the neighbors want to come on Thanksgiving? That's a family day when folks like to be around their own table."

"They'll come," Dad said, nodding his head affirmatively, "When I hint there's going to be a demonstration of something for the betterment of the community."

"Well, let's see now," Mama started planning. "Well have roast turkey with chestnut dressing, cauliflower au gratin, fluted patty shells with creamed peas "

" and gravy, bread and potatoes," Grandma joined in, flatly practical.

Beginning work

Dad disappeared and returned shortly with his brace and bit and the benign smile of one way out in front. He climbed up on the kitchen table again and began boring a hole right in the center of the ceiling while The Practicals looked on with puckered brows. Lou and I watched the curly wood borings come drifting down like soft, blond snowflakes.

"Well, it sure does need airin' out in here," Grandma said, breaking the uncomfortable silence that followed the hole-boring. "We could have opened the door, though," she added ruefully, looking up at the fresh new hole leading into the attic.

"H-umph," Dad remarked.

Some of the borings fell into the spilled sugar and Mama picked them out daintily.

"You don't suppose mice can come down through there, do you, Myrtle," Grandma asked Mom, like she never expected to have the hole stopped up with anything ever again. Mama said perhaps not, but the attic mud daubers were sure to come.

"H-umph," Dad reiterated. It wasn't that he had a limited vocabulary. It was just that if he'd said anything more, Grandma and Mama would start discussing, interestedly, what they might do with the bathtub Dad had fashioned once and couldn't get in through the doorway when he had it finished; or the long, gasoline-driven, conveyor belt that was supposed to deliver heavy things from the barn to the house. It would have worked, except that the belt swayed in the middle under the weight of a bucket of milk or a basket of eggs, the only heavy things we had to transport from the barn to the house.

The carbide lighting system was a used one for sale at Wallingford's Mercantile. It could be had for one fat steer and a wagonload of corn which Dad had calculated were expendable.