WHIPPOORWILLS

Our family would sit out in the yard early in the spring and listen for the first whippoorwills call.

 Dad said it was safe to plant corn without fear of frost, after the whippoorwills start singing.

Mother said she loved listening for that first sound of their singing in the spring , but for some reason the whippoorwills call made her feel lonesome.

She related the loneliness  to a song she had heard by Hank Williams titled, "I'm So Lonesome I could Cry."

Where the first verse starts off with; Hear that lonesome whippoorwill

He sounds too blue to fly

The midnight train is whining low

I'm so lonesome I could cry.

Most Southerners born before air-conditioning, just shut off the world and fell asleep, when it was bedtime.

 But the  plaintive cries of the Whippoorwills made it a bit challenging, because they would often cry  until late at night.

Whippoorwills nested on the ground and slept during the day, so they were in no hurry to go to bed it seems until it got daylight.

Nighttime was their favorite time to use their superior vision to find and devour insects  repeating their name between bites .

Often I listen for them now, standing on the back deck of our home, trying to block the noise pollution of sirens and traffic and planes.

On those nights when I am blessed and able to separate what is made by man and what is made by God, I hear them once again.

Coleman Schell