The cameramen in the studio cracked up and so did most everybody listening and all was smooth again.
Electricity
HAMM SPARKS WAS not the only one headed for New York that year. When she was four years old Norma Warren’s cousin Dena Nordstrom had left town with her mother, Marion Nordstrom, and the Warrens had not seen her since. Dena was working in television in New York and was now a very successful TV journalist and Norma decided that it was time that she and Macky went up to New York and paid her a visit. After Dena’s grandmother Gerta died, Norma felt she needed to make sure that some family kept in touch with Dena. The morning they were to leave, Aunt Elner was in her kitchen frying some bacon when the phone rang. She picked up the phone, wondering who was calling this early.
“Hello.”
“Aunt Elner, it’s me, Norma.”
Elner was surprised to hear her voice. “Are you there already? That was fast—”
“No, we’re still at the airport—”
“Oh.”
“Aunt Elner . . . do me a favor and go look out your bedroom window and see if you see any smoke.”
“Wait a minute.” Elner clanked the phone down on the telephone table. She came back in a moment. “No. No smoke.”
“Are you sure? Did you look toward our house?”
“Yes.”
“And there was no smoke?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Did you smell any smoke? Go take another look, will you?”
“Hold on.”
After a silence, “Nope, the sky is as clear as a bell.”
“You haven’t heard any fire engines, have you?”
“Why?”
“Because I think I may have walked out and left the coffeepot on. I could just kill Macky. He rushed me, so now I can’t remember whether I turned it off or not. I don’t know why he thinks we have to get to the airport two and a half hours before the flight—we left in such a hurry, God knows if I remembered to do anything, much less turn off the coffeepot. I am a nervous wreck.”
“I’m sure you did, honey. If I know you, you probably washed it before you left.”
“All right, Macky! Aunt Elner, do me a favor. Call Verbena at work. She has a key to the back door. Ask her if she will come over there and see if I unplugged it and if I didn’t, to unplug it.”
“All right.”
“I tried to call her at home but she had already left and I have to get on this plane in one minute; that’s all I need is to have my house burn to the ground. . . . ALL RIGHT, MACKY. . . . He’s yelling for me, so I have to go.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. You run on and don’t worry about a thing. Just put your mind at ease. I’ve left my coffeepot on all day and night and I’m not burned up yet.”
“Thanks, Aunt Elner. . . . All right, Macky. I’ve gotta run, I’ll call you when I get there. ’Bye.”
Aunt Elner put the phone down and went back in the kitchen. After she had finished her breakfast, she went into the living room and sat down at her telephone table and used the magnifying glass she kept by the phone book and looked in the Yellow Pages for the number to Blue Ribbon Cleaners. Then she dialed.
“Verbena, it’s Elner. Norma just called from the airport about her coffeepot. . . . Yes, again. I tell you if it’s not the coffeepot, it’s the iron. Anyway, she said for me to call you, so I’m calling you. I’ve never seen a person so nervous about electricity in my life. Whenever there’s a thunderstorm, she runs through the house like a chicken with her head cut off and unplugs everything, puts on her rubber shoes, and sits in the dark. Can you imagine? I guess she thinks lightning won’t hit her if she’s in rubber shoes. Somebody told her about that boy over in Poplar Bluff that got hit by lightning. You remember, Claire Hightower’s nephew. He was that little sissy boy who was the tap dancer. Anyway, he was running home to his momma one day after his lesson and forgot to change his shoes and got hit by lightning, bang, right in the taps. Knocked him twenty feet in the air. It was in all the papers, but you know, Claire says he had curly hair after that. It used to be straight as a stick until he got hit. She says he never was the same afterward. He never did marry, so we just don’t know what kind of damage it caused. Anyhow, when you get home tonight, go over there so I can tell her that her house hasn’t burned down to the ground. We can say we checked. Well, you take care now.”
At 5:28 Aunt Elner’s phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Elner, it wasn’t on, it was washed out and in the dishwasher.”
“What I figured.”
“But it’s a good thing I went over, because she had left the back door wide open and two of those old dogs that Macky feeds were flopped up on the sofa in the living room.”
“Ohhh, well . . . I’m not gonna tell her that. She’ll have a running fit.”
“Oh, don’t I know it.”
“Was it that old chow?”
“Yes, and the other one . . . that . . . whatever it is . . .”
“It’s a good thing you got them out.”
“I just hope they didn’t bring any fleas in, don’t you? If they did, I’m not saying where they came from, are you?”
“No. I am prepared to lie like a rug.”
After they got back from New York, Norma sat at the kitchen table and wrote out a list to give to Verbena and the fire department, instructing them what to do in case of fire. When Macky came home for lunch, she handed it to him.
“Would you take this down to the store and run off about twenty copies? Make sure they’re dark enough to read.”
“Sure. What is it?”
“It’s a list for us to give to Verbena to hand to the firemen so they will know what to look for.”
“What list?”
“In case we are out of town and there is a fire. I want to make sure they get everything that’s important out first, before it’s too late.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Norma, the house is not going to burn down.”
“Maybe not . . . but better safe than sorry. And you don’t know, what if lightning strikes it or something. I just think it’s better to be on the safe side and I need to go over this list with you, in case for some reason I’m not here and you are.”
Norma sat down at the table with Macky. “Okay. Now, the very first thing, number one: go and get everything out of the bottom right dresser drawer. I’ve got all the birth certificates, our photographs, our marriage license, wedding pictures, our yearbooks, things like that, all our paper goods that can’t be replaced.”
“Norma, I’m sure we could get a copy of our yearbook.”
“Maybe so, but how are you going to remember all the little cute things that everybody wrote? You won’t remember that . . . you can’t replace that. . . . And pictures of your family and mine, Linda’s baby pictures, you can’t replace those. Don’t forget what happened to Poor Tot when her mother set the house on fire. They lost everything, photos, birth certificates—she didn’t even have one picture of her family or anything. I don’t want that to happen to us. . . . That’s one thing I learned, you have to prioritize, be prepared for the worst.”
“Why don’t I just strap a fire extinguisher on your back so you can be ready at all times?”
“Oh, don’t be silly.”
“O.K., but Norma—on the off chance there is a fire—do you think the firemen are going to take time to read some list?”