Memories

[Guest]

.

[Jill]

         Yes, I do see the irony in that, I swear, I can’t now, for the life of me, remember what I was specifically thinking about, but I do remember that the other day, I thought it might be fun for us to have a thread, here, called MEMORIES.***  Memories are like those veritable gifts that keep on giving when they’re memories of happy times.  Each time you take one out again, it brings with it, sometimes, the full feeling of those happy moments of our lives and gives us, once again, the pleasures, the people, the sights, smells, sounds and feelings we had at the time.

       
       I’d forgotten all about that great inspiration (I seem to be doing more forgetting, these days, than I am remembering) until, I just now, went looking for an image of a pet rock to post in the Poetry thread, and came upon a website that had all of the following (and more) http://www.drfad.com/fad_facts/timeline.htm
   
       
       The pictures may evoke memories more general, more “universal” than the sweet, individual memories I’d originally thought about our posting, but for the boomers among us, I’ve little doubt that the following will bring on some smiles.

*** There may be some redundancy between what might be posted here and what could be posted in the Other Pleasures thread, http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,1183.0.html but I thought… and hoped that we all have might enough happy memories and “other pleasures” such that we could fill up both threads into perpetuity.  I’ll try to give an example or two of the kind of “individualized” or personal memories I was thinking about, sometime in the next day or two or three.
How to Play Jacks http://www.ehow.com/how_2964_play-jacks.html

[Jill]

            I remember a childhood from a different time, my childhood,  which, it seems, now, was in an era completely different, certainly completely removed from this one.   And since I’m almost 117 years old, maybe it was…. 

That childhood:

When we used to be outside, when we played outside, almost incessantly, (that is, except for when we were in our houses, glued to the TV, watching cartoons and The Mickey Mouse Club and Howdy Doody), when we were riding our bikes all around for the pure joy that the freedom of it gave us, hula-hooping in our front yards for what seemed like hours on end,

roller-skating on the sidewalks with those great old kinds of skates that you had to put a key into in order to put them on and take them off, actually playing and enjoying playing different games of hopscotch on those sidewalks … and sidewalks,  sidewalks that were everywhere, oh yeah, and socking the tetherball and playing MotherMayI and RedLightGreenLight, and walking down to the neighborhood theater for the Saturday matinee of a double feature of horror movies, during which, I invariably covered my eyes for most of them, but only for the really scary parts, of course, and and and....

making up plays, with, of course, some kids playing “doctor” (as long as there are kids, won’t there always be some kids playing “doctor”?),

the boys, especially, playing touch football in the middle of the quiet street, the boys chasing the screaming girls in the middle of those same quiet streets, the biggest threat there seemed to be for any of us, that the boys, might, sometime catch us and make pretend, half-attempts to “pants” us,

flying kites and playing softball in the neighborhood park when parents didn’t have to drive kids miles and miles and miles so that their children could have somebody to play with and on and on.

      No, we didn’t walk miles and miles and miles in 12 foot snow drifts to school and back every day, and no, it wasn’t some perfect idyll of a childhood for all, or for any of us, by any means, but at least, looking back at it, and comparing it with what I see right now,  it sure seems like life was a lot simpler then…. whether, in fact, it was or not.


       
       And…. a more personal memory. 

I was probably in my twenties.  I was with my family in some small, absolutely picturesque and charming town in Italy, one hot summer’s day.   My mom and I were off treasure-hunting, shopping, shoppingshoppingshopping, shopping especially in those little out-of-the-way nooks and corners and holes in the wall where the most lovely folk art or handmade lace or truly beautiful antique could be found,  and, at that time, for a song.  And my mom, with the most exquisite of taste and the most indefatigable of energy, she always could find the very very most Special and beautiful things.
     
We’d somehow wandered just a bit away from the heart of the little town into an area that was at least part (very very modest) residential.  All of a sudden, I noticed the sound of OPERA filling the air.  I looked all around, and saw, with somehow, just the greatest feeling of pleasure in getting to see, through the screened front door of one of those humble little homes,  this beer-, I suppose vino-bellied, sleeveless-t-shirted lookedlike middle-aged Italian laborer type, sitting in a rocking chair, rocking, just absolutely blasting the opera music he so obviously loved so loud that it could probably be heard in the next town, rocking, savoring his music, passing the time on a sleepy summer weekend day in the simplest and seemingly most sensible of ways.   

My memory  has his eyes closed as he was rocking, listening, savoring.   Of course, I probably couldn’t have seen that closely, but it didn’t matter.  It was just this beautiful beautiful picture for me, and  I just loved it.
     
      Before that afternoon, I, undoubtedly, was one of the hordes of really intelligent people out there who make bright statements like, “I HATE opera,” all the time.   And the minimal but window-shattering exposure that I’d had to it, before, probably did make me hate it, or certainly, not like it very much.
     
       But after that day, probably because it became all wrapped up in my mind together with my mom, with that really happy day we spent together, with the beautiful setting and the simplicity of joys that there are to be found in life, well, I still can’t say that OPERA is my absolute favorite kind of music, (actually, not by a longshot)  but now, there really are a few pieces I do get pleasure out of hearing, sometimes even, a lot of pleasure,

       and when I do listen to them, having been taught by a (native-) master, you can be absolutely sure that I BLAST it.

[fredr1c]

I remember the twinned sound of the engines driving the two wing-mounted propellers on the DC-3 airliners that used to take off out of D.C.'s National Airport when I was five years old. 

There's nothing quite like the sound of a DC-3 on the ascent, those two engines droning comfortably, not quite ever on the same exact frequency, the beats around that sound accelerating and slowing down and sometimes stopping as the props briefly matched their speeds exactly, and then went slowly off pitch again.  Climbing in this almost lazy arc on the way who knows where.  I'd sit transfixed on the stoop of the four-unit apartment building where we  lived, my chin in my hands, my eyes lifted towards the sound, rarely seeing the droning bird through the boughs of the towering oaks that were in front of our place on Hamilton Street, but following the sound with my eyes anyway.

The drone would fade slowly into the distance, I'd snap out of my reverie, and throw another acorn at the squirrels.

And then another twin-engined airliner would pass over us on the way out of town and it would start all over again. 

Within a few months my parents and I were gone, moved from that place and far from any airport, out of reach of that magical sound.

Fifteen years later I'd be knocked on my ass by the sound of a ROKAF C-47 -- a DC-3 in military dress -- rolling up on the throttles to full military power before rushing off down the runway at Osan Airbase, Korea.

In no time at all I was back in short pants, sitting on that sunny stoop in front of our apartment building with the sun shining down on my upturned face -- my whole life in front of me, once again.

[Dottie b]

That's lovely, Fred!

You write really well!


Dottie B

[fredr1c]

That's lovely, Fred!

You write really well!


Dottie B

Thanks for the compliment, Dottie.

Thanks to Jill for being Jill and doing what she does.

Fred