Saturday Nights

No central air, so we’d sit

in the one air-conditioned

room and watch Lawrence Welk

on summer Saturday nights:

aunt, uncle, grandmother, me.

We’d watch in silence until

the uncle would bark

Ignorant! at the screen and

throw his shoe. It was usually

the Lennon Sisters who sparked

the outrage; no harm was done: 

the shoe never hit the screen,

and the Lennon Sisters never knew.

This is another in the series of poems about growing up in the South, suggested by Nancy Rosback. Like all the poems in the series, it is true.