It had been a long afternoon. Dog #2 and I were … tired. She was snoozing by the front door inside the house. I was snoozing outside in a chair with a calculus book falling into my lap.
The sun was getting low in the west, shining in my eyes, but they were drooping, and the sunshine didn’t bother me a bit as I slept.
Then I woke up. The air was somehow cool, but the sun was still bright.
The eclipse!
I jumped up and ran into the garage and began scrambling thru the toolbox. I tossed aside hammers, wrenches, rasps and screw drivers, making an awful racket. And there at the bottom they were: two pieces of welder’s glass, lovingly wrapped in the paper they came in when I bought them more then two decades ago.
I grabbed the glass and went dashing thru the house. Trudy was coming in as I was going out. I handed her a piece of glass.
“The eclipse!” I said and dashed out to the street.
The sun was now getting low. It was behind a dead Live Oak across the street, peering thru the barren branches.
There at five o’clock on the face of the sun was an arc of darkness. It was growing larger, but the sun was rapidly setting, and there wasn’t enough time to go anywhere else. So we stood there on the curb watching the sun go down and the moon begin its crossing.
We stood there with welder’s glass held to our faces to the wonder of neighbors who drove by.