Eighty years ago when I was a boy visiting my grandmother I would lie under her maple trees on a late summer day and listen to the jarflies sing to each other in a rasping monotone. The maple trees had been planted in a row along the street for serveral city blocks and was heavily infested with the insects. They would take up the call and it resonated back and forth, singing me to sleep. Today they are called cycadia but in those days the children called them jarflies. I don't know why but perhaps it was because we used to catch them in mason jars for cheap entertainment. We also caught junebugs and tied a light thread to a hind leg and let them fly around in circles, slowly bringing them back just when they thought of escape. It seemed like fun at the time and was part of the children's games we invented in those early years.
I was reminded of junebugs and jarflies while watching the GOP national convention. When John McCain took the podium his voice took me back to the old days when the jarflies sang in the maple trees. The entire tone of the convention reminded me of the junebugs caught on a string as they soared to heights toward the rafters only to be brought back to reality when the strings were pulled.
I long for the good old days when the junebugs flew and the jarflies sang.
i wish you'd pull those republican jarflies back down to earth . . . maybe even rip their legs off for their hubrus.
ReplyDeletewell, the other thing not mentioned about junebugs is how you used to tie one on a long string and let a goose eat it then watch it fall out in the goose's excrement, only to be eaten by the next goose who came along until you had a long line of geese on the string. I can see the analogy of that in relation to your point, too. Well-written, dad!
ReplyDeleteGood post,Pops. Noise and futility... I reckon it is the Republican platform these days.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah - I can't believe Mard misspelled 'hubris.' ;->