A dangerous time

by DRM


The sky lit up sul­furous and unnat­ural. The dull thumps and whistling screeches rang in the air, a few beats off.

We sat down by the water wait­ing for the town fire­works to start. The coun­try club up the hill was wind­ing their dis­play down.

A fam­ily could have sat here 240 years ago and wit­nessed the same dis­play. They wouldn’t have mar­veled inno­cently. They would have dreaded what it meant. When the fight­ing stopped, the sol­diers would be hun­gry, thirsty, filled with adren­a­line and relief. They would spread out across the town­ship for­ag­ing for their basic needs.

A war for free­dom entrapped the peo­ple, tapped out their resources, endan­gered their fam­i­lies. That was a com­plex and dan­ger­ous time.