Lightning bugs

We are in Atlanta, visiting our family.  We will be going camping tomorrow. We can't wait. 

Tonight, sitting outside, for some reason we talked some about lightning bugs, also known as fireflies.  Vicky mentioned she had never seen one.

Come to think of it, while living in the Northwest, neither have I.  How odd. 

In a couple of weeks we will be in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where I grew up.  I lived at the edge of town, with fields that stretched for miles just across the road.

A powerful memory of this childhood, along with homemade ice cream, freedom to ride my bicycle all over town, cap guns, Davy Crockett, and playing badminton almost every night, is lightning bugs.

During the summer, in those fields, every night, stretching for miles, was a light show--probably thousands and thousands of lightning bugs.  Bugs so numerous that they lit up the entire area.  We would catch them, put them into jars, release them the next day.  As much a part of that era as cowboys and Indians and black and white TV.  How I miss all of it.

I want Vicky to see a lightning bug.  And I want to see them again.