When I was a kid I had one or two favorite uncles; a stationary engineer who had a copy of “Steam” by Babcock and Wilcox in his library, and every issue of National geographic. The other a recreational drunk who had an immense library and who introduced me to actual; literature; Kipling, Saki, Guy de Maupassant.<\/p>\n
he also handed me some Lovecraft- he considered it “juvenile, but amusing”. I ate it all up. <\/p>\n
One early summer’s night I sat on my bed reading “The Horla” and struggling with it. I was a preteen at the time and the concepts and language were daunting, but I struggled through it, and when done, i contemplated it a moment, not entirely sure if it was a storya bout a vampire who drank milk, or a man going insane. Vampires I understood, but the realization that someone’s own mind might abandon him, that his reason be taken away from him, was a horrid and frightening dawn, on my juvenile mind. I thought, how would you even know? And would it be better to know or NOT to know? It sent a chill through me. <\/p>\n
At the time, our house had old storms and screens, and my bedroom, having two windows, got one storm and one screen, since there were not enough to go around. <\/p>\n
The screen was by my bed, but the storm was across the room. the storms were old fashioned Three Hole storms. They looked like this.<\/a> (i’m amazed and pleased someone is still making these, it’s the Wooden Window and Door company<\/a> of Nova Scotia) Anyway, the three hole storm had those three holes because a lot of houses of that era had gravity coal heat, and you sometimes needed to get a little fresh air into the house even when the storms were in. So there was a little slat on a screw that covered those three holes, and you could pull up a sash, open the slat, and get some fresh air into the house on a warmer than usual winter day. <\/p>\n I had opened the slat to get some additional air circulation in the house, and as I sat on the bed, contemplating the idea that a man’s reason could leave him, a june bug the size of a golfball crawled into one of those storm window holes, and flew right into my hair. <\/p>\n I made a noise that most humans don’t make, flailed my arms around like a madman, screamed like a banshee, pissed myself, and brought the whole household into my room before mom smacked the bug (still on my head!) with a copy of Woman’s Day, yelled at me to get my ass to bed. So I did, squished junebug in my hair and PJ’s soaked in urine. <\/p>\n I am often surprised that I survived childhood. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was a kid I had one or two favorite uncles; a stationary engineer who had a copy of “Steam” by Babcock and Wilcox in his library, and every issue of National geographic. The other a recreational drunk who had an immense library and who introduced me to actual; literature; Kipling, Saki, Guy de […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![this.<\/a> (i’m amazed and pleased someone is still making these, it’s the](\"http:\/\/www.woodenwindow.ca\/images\/storms.jpg\"){kind=link}