Streetlights

In the small south Florida town I grew up in there was a mile long two-lane road that ran North to South in front of our house. At dusk the streetlights would come to life. They were tall black pillars with perfectly round globes on top. The light they emitted was the opposite of harsh. It was warm, golden. I liked to stand in front of our house and look north as the lights came on, one after the other, as far as I could see. To me they were magical, beautiful and elegant. 

I’ve lived in a half dozen other towns and cities since then but never saw streetlights as lovely. Rather they were mostly ugly steel poles with harsh blinding lights that made everything look shabby. I never saw the lights I coveted as a child, until I moved to Southold.

In Southold if you drive across the Oak Lawn bridge over Jockey Creek in the evening, behold the gorgeous lampposts holding golden globes of light. I’m guessing they’ve been there since the 1950s. Recently one globe was unlit, and I worried it wouldn’t be attended to. Two weeks later I smiled broadly as I traveled over the bridge and saw all the globes glowing. It comforted me somehow to know that it wasn’t only me that cared about these gorgeous lights that lit the night having survived seventy  years or so of  weather and modernization.

Come see the golden lights, think of me in my older age, and know what it means that some simple beautiful things still exist in the world.