The storm blitzed through Sunday afternoon, with its powerful winds and the sort of scary low clouds you usually don’t see around here. And then I heard two loud bangs as transformers went out, and the whole neighborhood lost power, and I was transported back to 1967.

Hours went by. Windows were opened and sounds of activity could be heard from houses that normally were hermetically sealed. Neighbors emerged, sat on their front porches (usually dragging furniture from around back, since no one sits on their front porches any more) and talked to each other. Children played in the street. If it wasn’t for the pervasive mosquitoes — which were DDT’d into submission when I was a kid — I could have sworn I was at 207 Dawson Street, sitting on the wall and waiting to be released from ‘jail’ in a game of Kick The Can.

Then a utility truck went rolling by, and one of my elderly neighbors literally shook his fist at it while yelling, and the driver stopped and explained that the power would be back soon. And it was, and everyone went back to their air conditioning and their flat screens and their blogs. And I was reminded that ‘neighbor’ once had a different meaning than ‘the person next door.’