Sunday, June 17, 2012

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.

6 comments:

S. Etole said...

Laughing quietly ...

diana said...

Would love to have seen that shoe-tossing! My grandparents had a nursery school. The living room was empty of furniture except for a large (for the time) television set, so that cots could be set up in there for nap times M-F. When I'd stay with them, they'd bring in comfy chairs and LW was what we watched. Every. Single. Saturday. I even knew one of the guy singers - in a quartet. He eventually married one of the dancers. What a window into a slice of history.

H. Gillham said...

Bwa.

My aunts loved Welk, and when I stayed with them in the summers, we watched it every -- was in Saturday night????

The bubbles, a one and a two uh...

:-)

Anonymous said...

smiling and laughing to myself...
that's good

SimplyDarlene said...

SIr Glynn,

You do Funny good!

I was raised on LW but we never did any shoe-tossing. Mamma woulda whooped out buttocks.

Blessings.

Deidra said...

I think we were watching together, Glynn. Miles apart, but together all the same.