Fannie Flagg - Standing in the Rainbow

But by this time next week the Oatmans would be headed to Fayetteville, North Carolina, for another revival and dinner on the ground, and Elmwood Springs would be farther and farther away.

The Friday after Betty Raye left, Bobby's Cub Scout troop was supposed to have gone on a field trip to the Indian mounds outside of town to look for arrowheads. The trip was canceled because of rain. But Bobby did not mind. He loved to go sit on the porch on warm rainy days and listen to the sounds of the cars swishing up and down the wet streets. Everything was green and lush and wet. He daydreamed all afternoon until about four o'clock, when the sun came back out as bright as ever.

But the rain had left the air fresh and cleared away some of the mugginess of August. This was Monroe's turn to spend the night with him, and after dinner, as usual, they all started to wander out onto the porch. Mother Smith walked over to the edge and looked up at the sky and announced, "I'm going out and look at the stars. Anybody want to come with me?"

Bobby and Monroe said they would go and all three headed out to the backyard. Mother Smith sat in a wooden chair and Bobby and Monroe lay on the lawn beside her to enjoy the show. "It's so clear tonight," Mother Smith said. "Have you ever seen so many pretty stars? Look, there's the Big Dipper and Venus. I'll bet we see a shooting star before the night's over."

Bobby loved to be with Mother Smith like this, watching for shooting stars and asking her questions.

"Grandma, what was the world like when you were little? Was everything real different?"

"Well, it was a different time."

"Did people look different than we do?"

"No, people looked pretty much the same but we didn't have a lot of things you do today. Don't forget, that was way back in the eighteen hundreds."

"During the Civil War?" asked Monroe, wide-eyed.

"Not that far back. But I can remember my father talking about it and when I was little we had this sword hung over the mantelpiece."

"A sword?" said Bobby. "A real one?"

"Oh yes. He was a Confederate soldier during the war."

"Did he kill people with it?"

"Oh, I doubt it. I think it was mostly for show."

"Do you still have it?"

"No, that was years ago. I think my brother took it or maybe it got lost."

Bobby said, "But he was a real soldier though, wasn't he?"

"Absolutely, and so was your Great-grandfather Smith on your daddy's daddy's side, but he fought for the Union. Both from the same town. But that's how it was back then."

Bobby was amazed. He could not imagine that his grandmother had been alive so long ago.

"Were there stars back then?"

She laughed. "Yes, honey, when I was your age I saw the same stars and moon that are up there now. Nature doesn't change, just people. New ones are born every year but the stars and the moon stay the same. We just didn't have cars or movies or radios or electricity yet."

"What was that like?"

"Very quiet."

Monroe made a face. "That must have been terrible."

"Yeah," Bobby agreed. "You must have been bored."

"Not really. We had other things. We had books and we played games and sang and went to parties. You know, you don't miss what you don't know."

"What did you want to be when you grew up, Grandma?"

Mother Smith smiled. "Believe it or not, at one time I thought I'd like to be a famous scientist like Madame Curie, maybe find a cure for some terrible disease."

"Why didn't you?"

"My father could only afford to send one child to college, so Brother was the one to go and there went my dreams of being the next Madame Curie."

Bobby said, "Tell us about where you went on your honeymoon and that hotel."

"Bobby, you've heard that story a hundred times."

"I don't care, Monroe hasn't heard it. Tell it again."

"I haven't heard it," said Monroe.

"Well… after your grandfather and I were married we got on the train and rode it all the way to North Carolina for our honeymoon. He wouldn't tell me where we were going. He wanted it to be a surprise and all he would tell me was that it was a famous hotel overlooking the most beautiful lake in the world. I'll never forget that first night we were there. After dinner we walked out on this wide veranda overlooking the lake and they had all these pretty different-colored little paper Chinese lanterns strung all from one end to the other. Then, around eight o'clock, as soon as it got really dark, everybody in the hotel came out on the porch and said, "Look out on the lake."

On cue Bobby asked, "Then what happened?"

"Well, all of a sudden this huge sign made up of a thousand golden light bulbs lit up that said HOTEL LUMINAIRE right out in the middle of the lake."

"Whoa!" said Monroe.

"Then we all went down and got into canoes and rowed all the way out to the sign. I don't know which was a prettier sight, looking back at the hotel and seeing all those little green and red and yellow Chinese lanterns glowing in the dark or paddling right through the words HOTEL LUMINAIRE reflected in the water. It was a magical night, I can tell you that."

"Now tell him about going to Coney Island."

"I will. So… from there we went to New York City but it was so hot that every day we would ride the trolley way out to the ocean to Coney Island and walk around and see all the sights."

Bobby punched Monroe. "Just wait till you hear the next part."

"And we went to this big amusement park called Dreamland, so big that they had an entire little town in there, called Midget City. You could go in and nobody lived there except hundreds of tiny midgets."

"Whoa!" said Monroe.

"They had their own little houses and stores and their own little midget mayor and tiny midget policeman. When we went through we met the nicest little married midget couple who had two normal-sized children that lived in New Jersey."

"Oh, wow," said Monroe, impressed out of his mind. "I'd give anything to see a town full of midgets."

"It was a sight I'll never forget."

"What else do you remember in olden times that was great like that, Grandma?"

"Well, let's see. I remember at the turn of the century, January the first, 1900 that was a big event."

"What happened?"

"Oh, there were parties everywhere and at midnight of 1899 everybody in Independence went out in the street and rang bells and blew whistles and set off firecrackers and stayed up all night ringing in the next century. We thought the twentieth century was going to be the best one, but not more than fourteen years after that World War One started, so there went that dream out the window."

After a moment Mother Smith said, "Well, boys, it's getting late, so I'm going to leave you two to the stars and head on in."

"Good night, Grandma."

"Good night, Mrs. Smith."

After she had gone Monroe said, "I guess she's the oldest person I know."

"Yeah," agreed Bobby. "Just think, she's a whole century old…"

They lay there staring up at the stars. Bobby asked, "I wonder what it's going to be like when it gets to be the year 2000?"

"I don't know but I'll bet everybody will be riding around in their own spaceships, going back and forth to Mars."

"How old are we gonna be in the year 2000?"

Monroe sat up and counted on his fingers. He looked at Bobby incredulously.

"We're going to be sixty-four years old!"

Bobby sat up. He could not believe it. "Nooo!"

"We probably won't even be alive, we'll be so old."

The prospect of being as old as the men who sat around the barbershop all day was a sobering thought. After a while Bobby said, "Monroe, let's make a pact. If we're both alive in the year 2000, no matter where we are, we will call each other up and say, Hooray, we made it, O.K.?"