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
