The Mystic Fire Flies

Fire flies have absolutely nothing to do with my hometown but a short conversation with a good friend of mine sparked a few memories of them. They are not native to California as I imagine they need a more humid climate.

As a child, every other year we'd drive out to Missouri to visit our relatives. It was always a fun and educational trip. We'd travel south and head east on Route 66 back when it was a big deal. There were so many interesting things to see including signs mentioning the meteor crater somewhere in Arizona. The signs for that would start out, oh hundreds of miles before the turn off to go and check it out. We never did check that out as we were on a tight schedule.

The first part of our trip was to visit with my grandparents in southwestern rural Missouri. They had a pretty old house that had just recently been fitted with electricity. They had two stoves in their kitchen, an old wood burning stove (the kind that antique collectors would drool over) and the 'new' one, the propane stove.

The washing machine was one of the old fashioned ringer ones, the dryer was a clothesline and sunshine.  The bathroom....a really stinky, creepy outhouse....boy did I *hate* that! I always feared falling through the hole (small child, smallish bottom, you get the idea).  When I was around eight, I believe my Uncle Ted was instrumental in building a real bathroom using up a portion of the covered back porch. Was I ever happy with that addition!

I was, and still am, a huge turtle/tortoise fan. Rural Missouri is ripe with Box Turtles and I would always find a few and as long as they'd eat what I'd feed them, they were allowed to come back to California with us.

So after about five days at my grandparents we would then head north to Independence to visit with my uncles, aunts and cousins. This part was always so much fun for me! We used to stay at my Uncle Ted and Aunt Mary's wonderful, cousin-filled home. This was where I saw my first fire fly. One evening, my cousins and myself were all outside playing and eating popsicles and these wonderful creatures first appeared. They were just magical and mystical to me. I had never seen them before.

I  think everyone needs fire fly magic in their life every now and then.