The Night the Lights Went Out

The Night The Lights Went Out

This one is about an unexpected 
lesson in true faith....

Sitting in the seat behind my mother, I unlatched the side window of the Volkswagen van and pushed outward until the latch snapped into place. The sultry, air swirled by the window letting puffs of the humid July dusk into the van as we headed down the freeway. I looked out the window, watching the unfamiliar Detroit scenery flash by.

My 5-year-old brother, George, squirmed in the seat next to me, pulling his still-damp beach towel up off the seat and scrunching it into a makeshift pillow. He leaned against me and rubbed his tired eyes with the back of his hand.

“Ugh! George, get that off of me!” I cried, pushing the damp towel away from my shoulder where he had just nestled in for a nap.

He uttered something between a melodious grunt and a drawn-out whine. My mom looked up into the rear-view mirror and frowned at me. She didn’t have to say a word. That look said it all.

“But it’s gross!” I complained. “That nasty old towel is all wet and full of sand, and he put all over me..!”

“Honey, he’s tired. We all had a very long day and everyone’s tired. If you don’t want him to lean on you, why don’t you change places with him so he can lean against the window…”

“But I had dibs on the window. I never get to sit by the window!” I whined.

“Well, you can choose,” she said in her incredible wisdom. “Either stay where you are and let him lean on you, or change places do he can lean on the window. The choice is yours...

"But I don’t want to hear any more complaining out of either of you,” she said, sounding cross and abrupt.

I knew better than to argue with her when she sounded like that, so I grudgingly told George he could have his way, and swapped seats with him. As he snuggled into my window seat with his soggy towel, he looked back at me and stuck out his tongue and smirked. I looked up at the rear-view mirror quickly before making an ugly face back at him.

George was short enough that at eight, I could still see over his head. So I returned to my bleary-eyed surveying of the unfamiliar Detroit skyline. The long July day of the northern summer was slowly welcoming the evening in a drawn-out twilight. It was so different from the short-lived tropical sunsets we’d known on the navy base in Cuba. Not knowing any better, I decided that the long days must certainly have been the result of my longing for these rare and magical vacation days to last forever.

When my mother had announced that we’d be going back to her hometown of Detroit for a vacation that summer, I was thrilled with the prospect. I had never been to Detroit, nor met any of my thirteen cousins who lived there. And for the first time, I would have a real grandma. Even if it was only for a week.

I remembered that she had visited us in Virginia, before we moved to Cuba, and she always sent us books and wonderful German lebkuchen cookies and ribbon candy at Christmas. But now I would get to see her every day for a week!

The last six weeks had been a whirlwind of change and adventure. In mid-May we had seen Daddy off on a plane from the naval base in Guantanamo, headed for Washington DC. Mommy had explained that he had to leave early to take care of some official business and medical tests at Walter Reed Hospital as part of his retiring from the Navy after thiry years of service.

The admiral expected we would leave with him, as that was standard procedure. But he should have known better. My mom was not one to follow procedure just because it was expected of her. She told him that under no circumstances would she leave a full month before the end of the school year. No one could make her leave without giving her handicapped students the full year’s education they deserved.

Her schoolhouse for the base’s disabled and mentally handicapped children had been a sore spot with the admiral. We had been on the base for a few weeks when mom discovered, quite by accident, that the base had no provision for educating the handicapped children on the base.

That night she told my dad, the new Executive Officer of the base. Indignant, she came to the defense of the invisible children of the base who had no voice. An outrage like this was inexcusable!

The next morning, she began her campaign. At 9:01, she called Admiral Bulkely’s office, asking to speak to him. The secretary politely told her he was not available. Then she tried to visit him at his office, but to no avail. For the next two days she found he was simply unavailable.

Undeterred, she rethought her course of action. The admiral’s secretary may not be willing to let her into the admiral’s office, but my mother did know where he lived.

The next day as he came sauntering up the sidewalk to his house after work, my mother rose from his front step and greeted him with a smile and handshake. Looking uncomfortable and as though he would like to be anywhere else, he shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other, and grudgingly reached for her outstretched hand.

He listened to her reluctantly. She said it was unconscionable that any child on a United States military base be denied an education because of a handicap. He had a ready answer. There just was no one on base qualified to teach them, and it would be unfair to foist them upon a regular classroom.

He didn’t know it, but he had played right into her hand.

“Well, sir, I have a solution to your problem! It just so happens that I am qualified to teach them.” She had just finished her training in education before moving to the base.

“Well, that is just fine, Mrs. Carson, but there are more issues than that,” he stammered. “We do not have any available classroom space at the school. There just is no place on the base set up for this kind of thing…”

“If I can find a place, will you allow me to teach them?”

“Mrs. Carson, I can smell pot roast and my wife has a drink awaiting me. This is really not the best time or place for this discussion,” he grumbled.

“No. That would have been your office, but you were ‘unavailable’ -- all week. Just give me your word, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

He rolled his eyes, extending his hand to shake once again, this time to seal the deal. I am sure he had no idea how stubborn my mother could be.

On the way home, she passed a small building just off the side of the road not far from the Officers’ Club, and a smile spread across her face. That night over dinner, she asked my dad what that little building was used for, and found it was a tiny, two-room, vacant house. It would be just perfect for her little school. She would call it the “Doll House.”

When the admiral told her there was no budget to furnish a classroom, my mother said she wouldn’t let that get in the way. She would make the furniture herself! And the next couple of weeks she worked on plans for tables, chairs and bookshelves and learned the basics of carpentry. Within a month’s time the “Doll House” was up and running. The school bus would make a second run after dropping kids at the elementary school, to pick up the handicapped children and drop them at their new classroom.

Every day when the other, 'normal' school kids took the bus home for lunch, the Carson kids went to The Doll House and ate lunch made by the students there. Not only did my mother plan on teaching them the three R’s, she taught them basic life skills, among them, menu planning and cooking.

And in April of ’67, as Daddy prepared to head back to Washington D.C. for a battery of medical tests before his retirement, I am sure Admiral Bulkley must have heaved a sigh of relief (although he and my mom had formed not just a working relationship, but a true friendship.) But my mom decided no one could make her leave base one single day before the end of the school year.

Again, she locked horns with the admiral. It was unheard of for a wife and kids to stay behind when their military man left the base! Besides, our house had to be made ready for his replacement. We would have to vacate it. There was just no way around it.

Once again, my mother coaxed a promise out of the admiral. If she could find accommodations big enough for the seven of us, he would allow us to stay until the end of the year. Confident he would soon be rid of her, he agreed to her request.

Again, he had underestimated my mom. That night she prayed about it, and two days later she found that a family from the other end of the base was getting ready to leave for an extended vacation in Spain.

They would be gone the exact length of time we would need lodging. She introduced herself and told her story, and this wonderful couple agreed to give her the keys to her house for the six week period.

So after all the hustle and bustle of packing up to leave Guantanamo, we packed our suitcases into a car and moved to our temporary housing in Kittery Beach until school ended for the summer.

Once school let out for summer, we said tearful good-byes to the friends we’d made over the last two years and boarded the antiquated military plane headed for Washington, D.C.

We moved into an apartment in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia for the summer, and visited with old friends and family. Days flew by, blending into each other and melting into the overbearing summer heat.

While Daddy stayed on in D.C., the rest of us headed off to Detroit in our VW van for a Lee family reunion. Once there, we were divided among our aunts, uncles and grandmother, taking turns staying with each.

Uncle Bob’s eight children welcomed Tom, Patty and me eagerly. We learned what a laundry chute looked like, and took turns trying to climb up it, each trying to outdo the others. That is, until someone threatened to drop seven-year-old cousin Joey down, head first, from the third floor. Aunt Mary Lou got wind of it, and laundry chute games came to an abrupt halt. But we still had a blast running up and down the three floors of the huge house playing childish games.

Some days we visited Grandmother’s house or walked over to her sister, Aunt Ada’s house. Aunt Ada and Uncle Al never had any children, so they always welcomed youngsters over, serving lemonade and cookies. I loved sitting at a table in their screened-in back porch nibbling on cookies and watching the birds and squirrels taking turns at the bird feeder.

In the late evenings, we ran throughout the neighborhood playing Kick-the-Can or Hide-And-Go-Seek, joined by the neighborhood kids. Magic-filled evenings seemed to go on forever that summer. We swam and played and picnicked all day and joined in neighborhood games all evening. And when we tired of Hide-And-Go-Seek, we invented games of our own.

Skipping and dancing our way down the long sidewalk, we would taunt cars as they came toward us, singing at the top of our lungs, “Who’s afraid of the big bad car… The big, bad car…” Seeing how far we could dance and skip and still leave time to dash back to tag the huge oak tree before the car passed it.

We taunted one another, each trying to out-dare the other and go a foot or two farther from the tree each time. At the last moment, we would turn and run as fast as we could, trying to beat the oncoming car back to the huge oak tree.

Laughing and falling to the ground, gasping for breath, we would roll on the grass, giggling as though we would die of laughter. Whoever didn’t beat the car had to sit out of the game and cheer until a winner had been declared. Then we would all start over again, pushing and elbowing to get the farthest, and grabbing at the shirt hems of those who elbowed past us in the mad dash back to the big oak tree.

The week came to a close way too quickly, culminating in a big family reunion picnic planned for that last Sunday. Daddy was scheduled to fly up that weekend and join us. The picnic would be the icing on the cake of our week-long vacation.

Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary Lou and their eight kids would be there, as well as Uncle Bill and Aunt Marianne and their five children, and Mom and us six kids. How can it not be a party with nineteen kids?

We sailed and swam and played all that day at the Detroit Yacht Club, taking breaks for watermelon-eating contests, sandwiches, and then ice cream sandwiches. The only shadow on the day was the fact that Daddy had been detained in Washington. He would not be able to join us until Monday.

In spite of suntan lotion the adults had slathered all over us, we were all extremely exhausted and moderately sunburned as we climbed into our burgundy and white Volkswagen at the end of the day.

Fifteen-year-old Chris and thirteen-year-old Jenny had gone home with Uncle Bill and his family, and our mother loaded us four younger kids into the van to head back to spend the night at Grandmother’s.

Now that George had wrangled my seat from me, I sat grumbling quietly to myself. George had caught a second wind, having won the fight for the window seat, and was gloating in his victory. He started up a non-stop reporting of what he saw. There’s a factory… There is another Volkswagen…like ours…only it’s blue instead… There's a police car...

I tried to tune him out, stubbornly looking out the right window two feet away to my right. But it mostly offered vine-covered walls. Twilight melted slowly into darkness as we drove on, the hum of the wheels lulling me toward sleep after the long, hot, perfect day.

“Look!” George’s excitement broke through the hypnotic rhythm of the wheels. “Look! That house is on fire!”

Quickly, we all turned to look off to the left and saw flames leaping into the sky.

“Mommy, how do houses catch on fire?” George asked.

“Well….” she replied slowly, trying to come up with a simple answer that would satisfy his five-year-old curiosity without frightening him. “Sometimes people smoke in bed and fall asleep. Then the cigarette might fall down and catch something on fire…” she said.

The image of that horrified me, as my mother was an avid smoker, but I hid my panic.

“Look!” Tom chimed in from the front seat. “There’s another one!” he cried out, pointing a little farther ahead.

“Do you think they smoked in their bed too?” George asked.

“Ummm…. Maybe so…” Mom said slowly, sounding a little nervous.

She bit her lower lip and reached for the knob on the radio, turning it from station to station.

“Look! Another one!” George yelled excitedly. “And another one!”

I looked instead at the rear-view mirror, trying to see the expression on my mother’s face. In gathering darkness, I could make out her reflection only when an oncoming car flashed by.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. It’s okay. We are getting off on the next off-ramp, and then we’ll be home at Grandmother’s house.”

As she ended her sentence, the city lights went out, plunging the freeway and all around us into darkness. This served to intensify the glow of the burning buildings, which now were many, and a cry escaped my lips.

“It’s okay,” Mom said. “Everybody just sit still. We’re getting off the freeway now, and we’re almost there.”

We pulled up the hill of the off-ramp into more darkness. Suddenly, Mom said, “I want all of you to get down on the floor…. Now!”

“But…”

“NOW!” she said, the sound of her voice sending chills up my spine. “Stay down on the floor no matter what happens,” she said. “Stay down and cover your eyes. Don’t move until I tell you,” she said, quickly rolling up her window.

“Dear Father in heaven,” I heard her praying under her breath as the van slowed to a halt.

I wanted to look, but she had said not to. “Father, I place these children in Your care. Please put your arms around us and keep us safe.”

A growing rumble drowned out her voice as the van came to a stop. Now I could hear individual voices. Loud, angry voices shouting horrible things through the darkness. I crouched behind the driver seat, covering my face, but could not resist.

Fearfully, I spread my fingers and peered between them, stretching my neck up to see better. At first, I could not see anything but darkness. But in a second or two, I began to see movement outside the van. A sea of movement. The van sat in the middle of the intersection, idling impatiently.

Voices in the darkness grew louder, and faces loomed closer to the windows. Dark, angry faces, shouting and chanting and peering inside. The van shuddered as someone rammed into the passenger side like a linebacker. Cheers soared in the darkness and angry strangers began to bang on the windows. Then another bump shook the van, like the strike of a hungry shark. Cheers assaulted us, followed by laughter. Evil, frightening laughter.

And the van began to rock unevenly, roughly. Dark, angry faces jeered in the darkness, some framing teeth that seemed to shine in the darkness. By the light of the moon, I saw anger-crazed eyes bulging in rage-filled faces. Several people in the crowds swung baseball bats. I heard a distant “pop!” and then another.

“Stay down!” mom whispered tensely as someone rapped impatiently on her window. The van continued to be jostled in the sea of darkness. I buried my face in my crossed arms and began to cry.

“Dear Father, I lay my trust in You,” she said as she began to cautiously roll down her window at the insistent rapping on her window.

Through the half-opened window, a deep voice said, “Lady, what are you doing here?”

“We are just on our way home. My mother’s house is just a few blocks from here…”

“Lady, get back on the freeway an’ keep driving. I seen your license plate. You ain’t from around here. Our beef ain’t with you,” he said. “But trouble is brewing and you best leave. NOW! Put this car in reverse, and get the hell out o' here, and don’t look back!” he warned.

He shouted something into the surging crowd of angry faces, and at first nothing happened. Stepping away from the window, he shouted again into the roaring crowd, and waved his arms at the mass of hatred. “Our fight ain’t with this lady and her kids. Let her go, man!”

The crowd reluctantly slipped back from the car, many people still shouting hateful things at us.

“Thank you,” Mom said, leaning out the window toward the dark figure who had spoken.

“Lady, get back on that freeway. I can’t make them listen forever. These folks is wantin’ blood!”

Mommy slipped the van into reverse as the same man made his way to the back of the van to clear a path for her. And craning her neck, she slowly backed into the darkness back down the off-ramp we had just left, toward the freeway. The surge of angry voices faded some as we backed further into the darkness. I crawled up onto the seat and asked what was wrong.

“I don’t know, honey, but we will be okay. We’ll just get off at the next off-ramp and double back to Grandmother’s. Don’t you worry.” The rumbling of the angry crowd and sound of breaking glass, punctuated by the odd pop, pop, pop of gunfire remained in my ears long after we had outdistanced them.

I wanted to stay on the freeway and just keep driving as the kindly stranger had told us to do. Secretly, I prayed for that. But at the next off ramp, we again exited the freeway, and rose to the city streets above. Dozens of people filled the intersection. The crowd here was not nearly as dense, and appeared not nearly so angry, merely 
milling about in excitement.

This time, my mother didn’t stop at the red light. She slowed, but continued on, driving slowly into the crowd, honking softly. People yelled and shook fists at us. But in spite of the angry voices and the thudding fists on the sides of the van, she drove on slowly.

We soon reached the far side of the intersection where the crowd thinned and we picked up speed. Down the street, another building, and another flared into the night, sending flames high into the sky. People ran down the sidewalks drawn toward the crowd and the flames as moths to a porch light. Frenzied and eager, though not sure what electric surge drew them. And that unfamiliar popping sound peppered the night.

A few turns and we began down familiar streets, relieved to see empty roads and finally Grandmother’s driveway. She met us at the door, quickly whisking us inside and locking the door before gathering us all into a giant, trembling hug.

“Oh, Cathie! I have been so worried. I have been praying for you,” she said, leading us into the darkened kitchen, lit only by a single candle.

Grandmother and Mommy sent us to the back bedroom with a flashlight and told us to get ready for bed. I stood in the hallway trying to hear what they said as they talked urgently in the kitchen, but I could not make out any words. All I could hear was the strain of their hushed voices.

I stepped closer, hoping to catch a few words. The floorboards creaked and their voices stopped. The silence of the hallway was punctuated with distant sirens and the popping of more gunfire.

My mother’s growing shadow preceded her into the hallway. “Liz, is that you? I thought I told you to get ready for bed,” she said. But as she stepped closer, I burst into sobs that could no longer be suppressed.

She gathered me into her arms held me close, trying to reassure me. But I could feel her tremble, and that made me shudder and sob even louder.

“Okay,” my mother said brusquely, pushing me away from her. “Now time for bed. No more crying! I’ll come sing to you as soon as you are ready for bed.”

That was always my favorite part of the day. Snuggling into my pillow, my eyes closed, and drifting off to sleep on the sweet sounds of my mother’s voice singing softly in the darkness.

Grandmother joined us in the hallway, carrying a hurricane lantern.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, looking around my mother’s shoulder. “Why don’t we make some beds and a tent here in the hallway tonight? And we can just forget the bath tonight. Let’s go tell the others.” And she took my hand affectionately and led me down the hall to get the others.

Some time later, with us all tucked into blankets in the hallway, away from all the windows, I slipped my thumb into my mouth and rubbed the satiny hem of the blanket.

“What’s happening?” Patty asked, voicing what I could not.

Finally my mother said, “Okay, I think you are big enough to know what’s going on.” She began to explain to us that there were a lot of angry people out there. They were not angry with us, but they were very angry. And the buildings on fire had not been caused by smoking in bed, but by angry people.

“Are they going to burn our house down?” George asked, expressing all our fears.

“No honey. They won’t. God is going to watch over us all night just like he did in the crowd near the freeway. Remember how I prayed to God when they came and pushed our van? Well, He protected us then, and He will protect us all night. Now, let’s say our prayers and get to sleep. We had a long, long day, and everyone must be tired.”

After prayers, I begged my mother not to leave. “Can’t you sing to us?” I asked.

She started with my favorite, Now the Day is Over. When she finished that, George asked for There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. As she began “There was an old lady who swallowed a goat,” I began to drift off.

Trying hard to stay awake, I opened one eye and looked toward my mother in the darkness. I could vaguely see her profile silhouetted by the eerie light of distant burning buildings reflecting down the hallway.

The distant sounds of gunshot mixed with the beginning of the next verse, but I drifted into fitful sleep anyway.

I don’t remember the next several hours, or was it days? But eventually my father arrived, despite the closed airport. I didn’t ask how. I just knew he was like Superman, and could do anything. And he must’ve heard me quietly willing him to come as I drifted off to sleep that night the riots began. And he would never leave us alone in such scary times.

There was much debating, mostly when they thought we couldn’t hear. Daddy wanted Grandmother to leave with us, but she said that was out of the question. Then he said we would stay with her until things settled back down. But she knew he had to get back to D.C.

“I’ll be fine. It’s best if you go,” she said. And in the end, we all piled into the van along with our suitcases and headed over to Uncle Bill’s to pick up Jenny and Chris. I felt comforted seeing my beautiful, smiling cousin Amy who was just a little older than me, and had become my fast friend in the short time we were there. 

But eventually, we all posed in front of the van, at the insistence of dear, sweet Uncle Bill the photographer. We all found a spot and looked at the camera.

Uncle Bill told everybody to smile, but you can tell by the looks on my face (behind the back seat) and George's face (sitting on my brother, Chris' lap), not everybody was in a jolly mood.  A couple of us were feeling the anxiety of the night before still...