Requested by Erlene–and I wish I’d posted it sooner, before getting involved with any nooze–It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, sung by St. Peter’s Choir.
Beautiful! Moves me to tears! Brings me to one of my earliest memories: I’m a little boy sitting on my Uncle Bernie’s lap while this hymn is playing somewhere in my Grammie’s house. I must’ve been all of three years old. I’ve loved this hymn since then.
Look! This kid has a rhino horn! Popular culture has caught up to what my Grandma was doing in 1954.
Throughout my early childhood–right up to kindergarten, in fact–I wanted to be a zebra when I grew up. But for just a little while, I wanted to be a rhino.
I pestered Grandma about it, convinced that she was the wisest person in the world and would surely know how I could go about becoming a rhinoceros.
So she sat down at her sewing machine (every home I knew had one, back then) and made a rhino horn for me. It was made of white cloth and stuffed with lint, and it was soft and saggy–and I loved it! Out of the way, you pipsqueaks–here comes the rhino!
She also taught me that catalpa leaves make pretty good elephant ears.
You can’t buy grandparents, folks. You have to be blessed with them.
There’s not much left of this year’s autumn, so let’s enjoy it while we can.
Before we stack it on the memory shelf with long-past autumns that we thoroughly enjoyed.
True, our high school football team was astoundingly bad, most years; but we enjoyed the games anyway. And kids and dogs dove into piles of raked leaves.
And no leaf-blowers. They hadn’t been invented yet.
How I miss places like this!
I grew up next to a woods which is now gone, paved over by Democrats who then go on to prattle about how much they care for the environment… but I digress.
Among the notable–and somewhat mystifying–features of our little forest was a path made of cinders, which we called Soldiers Path. Deep in the woods, past Hangman’s Tree (from which you could see Portugal, if you climbed all the way up), this cinder path started out from nowhere and finished up at nowhere. Time had swallowed up all traces of whatever two destinations the path had once linked together.
I’d like to know why I thought “Hessians” were giant insects–moths too big to fly. But I have since outgrown that belief.
Once upon a time in the 1950s, on Halloween, my father used to take us to New Brunswick to see the Halloween paintings on the store windows. Downtown New Brunswick was bigger than I knew how to calculate, and there was a lot to see. In those days it was a nice small city: our family shopped there a lot. Now… Well, what gets better anymore?
I loved gawking at all those window paintings! Some of them were really quite scary–at least, if you were eight years old. The one I remember best is a painting of animated trees with leering faces–like something in the Old Forest in The Fellowship of the Ring. Trees that can move around when you’re not looking, and are up to no good: we are so lucky that there’s no such thing.
As our 1954 Mercury went up and down the streets, we gazed wide-eyed at the multitude of ghosts, goblins, monsters, witches, giant spiders… and evil trees.
I wonder which cities still do this, if any. Which towns? All you need is a shopping district and a lot of enterprising artists with warped imaginations.
Which is easier to come by?
Do you mind, out there, if I don’t do any nooze today? Really, the stories are flowing into the “I Don’t Want to Believe It!” zone.
As an alternative, I offer this boy and his pogo stick, showing off his ability to hop up and down a sidewalk and the front porch step. Kid, when I had a pogo stick, I went up and down whole flights of stairs–and if my mother could’ve seen it, she would’ve had conniptions.
I wonder if I could do that today. I could change my name to “Bustyer Kiester.” I dunno: things you did as a matter of course at 12 years old seem downright suicidal 60 years later.
But I think we should all have pogo sticks. It’d help us keep our sanity.
We had a sad event in our neighborhood yesterday. Our neighbor’s dog died.
His name was Boomer. He was a big, brown-and-white pit pull with the personality of an angel. He was 16 years old–an age almost unheard-of in such a big dog. His human mommy took tender care of him.
He spent much of his time outdoors on his mattress, watching the world go by. He was always delighted if anyone came over to see him and give him a pet or two.
In several of the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, there was a dog like that–loved by everyone. When I was a little boy it was a dog named Brownie. He was free to wander up and down our dead-end street, and welcome everywhere. You could tell him your troubles. He was Brownie, and he listened.
God knows how we love our pets. It’s hard on us that their lifespans, compared to ours, are so short. But when you give your heart, you know it will someday be broken. We have to accept that, and rely on God to heal us.
Go in peace, Boomer. You were very well loved by very many people, and we’ll miss you.
And no, I can’t read this post aloud.
Something, some spirit, called up this song from deep in my memory–a vision of a summer day, and a trip to the shore with my grandparents (it would be my introduction to surf-fishing)… with Soldier Boy, by The Shirelles, playing on the car radio. And oh, how I wanted to be back there again!
I grew up in a world of men and women. Now it’s a world dominated by freaks and villains who deny there ever was a past. Nothing good existed until they came along!
I can at least get back for two minutes or so. All aboard for the Jersey Shore, 1962.
Belay the nooze, enough’s enough! I’m going to write about something that has always made me happy, and hopefully give you some pleasure, too.
“Unknowable” and I were chatting about celebrity, hero worship, and idolatry–they’re all related, aren’t they?–and I brought up the subject of… Willie Mays. To me, the greatest athlete that I ever saw.
Among other things, Willie was famous for this one play during the 1954 World Series. I was five years old. Anyhow, they were playing at the old Polo Grounds, where center field was about the size of a Jersey township, and Vic Wertz smashed a screaming fly ball to the deepest part of center field. A real moon shot. At this point, let the video speak for itself.
Willie lit up my childhood. He was my hero. But y’know what? I never felt the urge to delve into his personal life. I have made a conscious choice to remember him solely for the things I saw him do on the ballfield; and those are things that still give me deep aesthetic pleasure 67 years later. I think it’s the same kind of pleasure art lovers get, or music lovers, from their favorite masterpieces. Willie Mays in center field was the baseball equivalent of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
Yeah! Sitting on the floor in our sitting room, playing with my grandpa’s blocks that he handed down to me, while my mother did the ironing while watching the Giants’ game on TV. That’s a memory that gives me joy!
Baseball isn’t what it was, not by a long shot; I no longer care for it. But I do care for my memories: and for a good few of those I say, “Thanks, Willie!”
We didn’t have hi-tech fancy electronic videos back in the Bronze Age, but we did have board games. And with summer waning, my friends and I knew it was time to dust off our favorite games. (I’m not counting Monopoly or chess, because we played those all year round.)
My cousins had Clue. “Col. Mustard in the Kitchen with the Candlestick!” I think the first game we learned to play was Chutes and Ladders. Look at the picture–there’s Stratego. You love it when they blow themselves up on the hidden mines, trying to capture your flag.
Candy Land. Sorry. Pachesi. Mille Bournes (oh, yeah!). Settlers of Catan (for adults). Go to the Head of the Class (did any of you ever play that?).
I’d love to hear what your favorite board games were–or are. They come in mighty handy when the weather’s not cooperating.
But I suspect that to enjoy them properly, you have to not have a cell phone.