Old friend, what are you looking for?
After those many years abroad you come with images you tended under foreign skies. Far away from your own land. ....George Seferis.
This started as a comment on a facebook page for Gadsden, Alabama where I was born and raised. The subject was jobs and as with many small American cities that once boomed how, do we bring it back? We being they since I don't live there anymore. But, at 58 years old anything can bring on a bout of nostalgia:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire..."When You Are Old." William Butler Yeats:
Wasn't supposed to happen so damn fast. :-0 Still, I guess late fifties doesn't really qualify as old age..yet. Right? Oh shut up!
Anyway, I think one reason we see the past as better is that we were better. Physically speaking that is. We remember those 19 year old bodies that could work all day and party all night and get up and do it again. The world was new and the future was endless. So, yeah that part always seems better. 2015 in around 35 or 40 years will be spoken of in those hushed, awed voices of people that are 17, 18, 19 and 20 years old today. The music will be classic and the culture will be so much worse than back in the day when "we" were in school in 2015. :-)
Hey, I just noticed once I looked down when my coffee got cold. My mostly eaten poptart looks like the state of Alabama. Wild...Oh yeah, sorry I get distracted easily these days. The best part is I'm Not going to take a phone pic and post it on facebook. So, don't worry. Now, where was I?
Twenty-one and strong as I can be
I know what freedom means to me
And I can't give the reason why
I should ever want to die...Eagles
I hope to do a drive up to Etowah County before to much time passes. I always feel "home" when I get closer to the hills after getting through Birmingham and heading north. I guess I don't really see with eyes from now. In my mind I'm going to Walnut Park and Chester Street. Then my grandparents in Altoona. But first, I see the Rebel Drive In where there is a "Dusk till Dawn" Horror Movie marathon starring Christopher Lee and a host of Romance novel cover girls breathing heavy and running from the Vampire/Werewolf,Frankenstein, and "Oh my goodness don't fall he's coming!." After the movie and the obligatory "she's on my side of the car" fight with my sister we will head home.
I'll go up to Chester Street and play basketball with Barry and Rickey while brother Mike calls us little sissies. He will do it from a safe distance because Barry has an arm when there's a rock handy and a big brother taunting him. ;-)
There's a world where I can go
And tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room...The Beach Boys.
I know. Stereotypical right? Still, it was true. I would go to my room and dive into a comic book or my electric football or Strat-O-Matic baseball game. My G.I. Joe or the box of cowboys and Indians under my bed. This in all reality didn't last long and my mother and stepdad fought a lot. But, in my mind this was an endless refuge. I feel guilty that my son missed out on some of the neighborhood experience. On the other hand we have made sure he missed the parents fighting experience so I think he's good. :-)
Bam, Pow, Zap! Batman!
There was a little "drug store" in Altoona, Alabama. Prince's Drugstore. If you could go back you would see a soda fountain and little round tables and chairs. A wire with comic books hung up over the counter. Mrs Prince or Mr. Prince would let me go around the counter to the back. "Now, don't make a mess." and pick out a comic or two from the stacks that weren't hung up yet. So, when I go through Altoona I see that drug store and I see where my grandparents and my uncle and aunt lived. I see the mountain where my Grandaddy dug coal. Even though now it's been laid low by strip mining and blast from long ago.
Oh well, it's been a good day in hell
And tomorrow I'll be glory bound....Eagles:
As a teenager I would play that song and just want to "get out." Now, I look back and I was never really trapped. There were endless possibilities. I try to remember that now as I get older. There are still endless possibilities.
But, sometime I still think there's something "back there" that I need to go find.
“The only way back is the way forward.”...Dean Koontz, Brother Odd.
Never been a huge poetry guy. But, this one has always touched me. I first heard it a long time ago in an episode of "The New Twilight Zone." The episode was titled "Her Pilgrim Soul." I haven't found it since but if you come across it (the episode) I recommend it. I was first starting to really consider the concept of reincarnation at that time. Don't worry, I don't preach and I don't try to convert or convince anybody of anything. Mostly because I don't know much in a "for sure" way. :-)
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
William Butler Yeats
Peace!
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