A Time Forgotten

  The Little Bayou House sees a wide variety of visitors.  Every few days, someone will just pop in to say hello or maybe grab a cup of coffee or cold glass of lemonade.  Some of my favorite visitors are the young folks that used to frequent the place about a decade ago.  The Little Bayou House seemed to be the place to "hang out" for my kids' friends. It was not unusual to find several teenagers (or up to a dozen) here over the weekend.  That was fine by me as it helped me to keep tabs on my own kids' whereabouts.  Of course, I knew where everybody else's kids were as well but that was all good, too.  These kids never complained about what I fed them (a good many times it was just a pot of red beans and some cornbread!) or if I asked them to help with certain chores.  It does my heart good to have these young folks come back to visit now that they are grown.  My, how time does fly!

  Yesterday, one of my favorites came by to see how we were doing and spend the day.  Chris is sort of our "adopted" son and obviously feels quite at home here.  He was watching me paint a picture of a crow for our upcoming "Clue hunt on the Bayou" all the while rattling away one tale after another.  He absentmindedly picked up two glass items that were on the end table.  After inspecting them, he looked at me a bit bewildered. "I have seen these things here for as long as I have been coming and have never known what they are. Just what in the world are they?"  I started to giggle quite messing up my crow. It never occurred to me that some "kids" (now fully grown men" had never seen a glass electric wire insulator.  The ones he was holding were of the pretty aqua color and are some of my favorites. When I explained just what they were and how they were used, he was amazed.  "How in the world did they survive all of these years?"  I told him that I had no clue but perhaps it had something to do with the quality of work that used to be put into things years ago.  Something we do not see nowadays. 

  This whole conversation made me happy but, at the same time, left me a bit saddened.  Have we really gone so far into the future that no one looks back to the past?  Are all of my treasures going to be forgotten some day?  The work and ingenuity that went into making things like these insulators has not been passed from generation to generation. There is little left of stories from "back in the good ole days".  It is not really a good thing that young people have to visit the Little Bayou House learn of the past.  Do parents (and grandparents) these days not tell the stories of the past?  Or do youngsters just not listen? Perhaps folks now are so caught up in the rush of the day that family chats are just not prevalent. If that is the case, the world has progressed into a sad situation.  I always said that folks need to step into the future while looking and learning from the past.  Maybe I am far off track with that. Whatever. Still, I guess all of the weird and wonderful treasures housed within the Little Bayou House will have to serve as history lessons whenever an interest is shown.