Country conversation
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Conversation. I looked it up in my Webster's Unabridged Dictionary this morning. I thought I knew the meaning, but I wanted to be sure: "A verbal exchange of ideas or information."
When the Schubert family gets together, there is no end to conversation. Seldom do you see a group sitting quietly — we're always conversing. Sometimes the words are quietly, intimately done; but usually it's loud, laughing, hilarious conversation with people moving in and out of the circle. We come by this talent of talking quite naturally. Our Grandpa Schubert was a conversationalist — he loved talking. He loved a lively discussion, a good argument.
Grandpa was an avid reader, a news listener with his ear bent toward the old radio that stood by his chair. He knew what was going on and he loved a good lively debate. So do I! I love a risky conversation where you never know what will pop to the surface.
All you had to do in California, was stop by the coffee shop in the morning in St. Helena and you would hear conversation — you could even join in whether or not you knew the group in the corner. They viewed strangers, like pepper on eggs, as adding a little zest.
In the country, conversation often stops when you walk in — probably so they can say "Hello." Even if the conversations continued, you could pretty much gauge the content — the weather.
The weather works really well as a conversation topic. Everyone experiences it and the only debate may be the contents of your rain gauge. Yesterday, with a storm coming through, the weather had pretty much been exhausted by the time we walked into the café in Tampa. While I might hanker for a good lively conversation about cloning (once the weather report was over), the new topic was the fact that we'd all been without electricity.
We sat quietly at our table, thankful that the lights were on and the griddle was working, waiting for our food. Jessica and I ordered pancakes with pecans, potatoes with no grease, eggs well done and Tooltime Tim ordered everything on one side of the menu — he was starved. We sat silent until my sister leaned forward. "Listen to the conversation," she said.
"My lights were out for a little bit and then came on again and then went out," said one.
"Our lights flickered and then went out for a couple of hours." someone added.
"Mine went off about midnight, came back for a minute or two, went off again — heck, I just went to bed," said another. "Our lights didn't go out until about 10:30 and in about 10 minutes they came back on and then they went out until about 2 — I heard the furnace kick on — and then they went out again until this morning."
"We just got lights about 15 minutes ago," said the waiter with our food.
"How long do you think they can talk about the lights going on and off?" we wondered. After all, pretty much the same thing happened to all of us and we didn't know how to join in and add anything new to the discourse but every additional person who walked through the door had a line to add.
"Mine flickered twice and then went dead."
"My lights just came on."
This country conversation is a celebration of community life — like all of us watching the same football game and talking about it afterward. We were all there. We all saw the same thing and so we could talk about it. The lights went on, the lights went off. They flickered — no debate. We were without and now the power is back.
And that's how conversation goes on for another day in the country.
