Go Towards the Light

On Thursday I noticed the streetlights on our street were still on even though the sun was up. Orange glowing lights wasting electricity and my taxes. It reminded me of when we were kids and during the summer months Mom told us that we could stay out until the street lights came on. Unfortunately that meant that from late June until Labor Day our evening play time got shorter and shorter. All summer long we tried to extend that outdoor time by throwing rocks at the bare bulbs that served as street lights back then. large incandescent light bulbs served as a street lights in the 1950s, not the mercury vapor lights that light up most of Chicago's streets now. However, it seems that those mercury vapor lights won't be around much longer. Because later in the morning a truck with one of those lift buckets on it moved down the street, stopping at each light pole. I watched as the man up in the bucket unscrewed the mercury vapor lamp from the light pole and replaced it with a thin, flat metal thing. It looked nothing at all like a light. Really no thicker than the Monday Chicago Sun-times. It took the team of light changers no more than an hour to replace every light on the street and those in the alley with the new ones. I assume they're LED lights. What I do know for sure is that when the sun finally set later in the day, it looked like a Boeing 767 was coming in for a landing through my living room window. Very bright lights. One shining in through the north window and one shining in though the south window. I had to pull the shades just so I could watch television. So we now have new, very bright, super bright, lights on our street. When I walk the dogs, I won't have to bring a flashlight with me to find the dog turds anymore.