The Logic of Mary Poppins
From the February 16, 1994 edition of The New Castle Record
A neighbor who takes care of strangers the same way Mary Poppins does told me the reason we had that heavy ice storm this weekend was to keep the trees surrounding us from growing into infinity.
When she was a child, she wondered why trees didn’t just keep growing up and up into the sky. She has now resolved it’s because Mother Nature throws the arbored ones a curve in the form of inches of ice weighing sown branches to the point of destruction. She said is sounded like the Civil War was still going on outside our homes Friday, as waste crystal-laden libs and whole trees toppled power lines all over the place.
The beautiful trees enveloping my new Daleville pad now lie broken at my feet as I step outside. Mangled wooden skeletons greet me when I return home, crawling over their carcasses to my doorstep.
Mary Poppins rescued me when I was stranded in my place with no electricity, phone or heat Friday. She whisked me away to the store in a car covered with slush and branches so we could get survival food—all she bought was milk and candy.
I called my Floridan mother from the nearest working phone, found inside a Pizza Hut., She took great pleasure I telling me the air conditioning was on inside her office, and the temperature outdoors was in the mid-eighties. I went home to join my shivering parakeet.
Nightfall came, candles were lit, and a glow-stick was hung in the hallway. After a few hours of isolation in a chilly room, I wimped out and headed for the house of a friend who still had power.
I ended up spending the majority of the weekend soaking up the comforts of a warm bed, hot Southern cooking and cable television. But after waking up to the sound of a neighbor banging on the door at 9 a.m. after a ling Saturday night, dragging us out of bed to move our cars for the snow plow, I felt the urge to get back to my own place, even if it meant taking a shower so cold my skin puckered.
My power returned sometime before Valentine’s Day. I guess I won’t have to worry about dressing by candlelight or storing my food outside in the slush again for a while. You won’t catch me reminiscing.
-Prepared by Shelly Koon
Photo credit:
From The New Castle Record archives