“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens” (Carl Jung).
Once a boy and his cousin set out on their blue Yamaha 50cc and white Honda 50cc motorbikes to explore an abandoned homestead in their township. No one had lived there since the man died of “old age” and his widow followed a few years later. Her body had was found several days after she died, in the summer heat, in the closed-up house, with seventeen hungry cats that had to be shot before they could go feral. After raising summer dust for two miles of gravel road, the boys turned onto the bumpy driveway with tire tracks divided by short but hardy weeds, planted the kickstands of their motorbikes on the edge of the half-dead grove of trees surrounding the old buildings with their greyed siding clinging to a few flecks of dried and dirty white paint.
They carefully forged their way across the overgrown yard, where a few tiger lilies still bloomed among the weeds which had taken over the forsaken garden and entered the house through the opening where the fallen-in door had once stood guard. Window glass and shingles had been the first to give up their posts. The boys walked carefully across the rotted wood floor like conquering soldiers deftly avoiding the soft spots like they were landmines. Shards of left-behind ceramic dishware and drinking glasses mingled with dead leaves and crumbled ceiling plaster. A petrified cookie remained in the closed cupboard. A box of old black and white family photos was left behind in the attic. After smoking a cigarette the older boy had stolen from his father’s pack of Pall Malls when it wasn’t rolled up in the short sleeve of his white tee shirt, the boys explored every sad, silent room of the small, stale shack and shivered at the thought of ghosts that probably still lingered here after a lonely life of hard work and long days with no TV or indoor plumbing. A grotty calendar from 1959 with a picture of an English country garden still hung from a rusted nail on the sagging and faded kitchen wallpaper. It was forever April now. Legend had it that stillborn babies were buried in what used to be the cattle yard beside the barn with the broken back. It was behind this slowly collapsing weathered barn that the boys ambled next to check for junked cars.
There they were, some with aspen saplings growing through their roofs, the envy of every boy on two wheels: four wheels. Four automobiles, made in Michigan of Minnesota iron steeled in Ohio, were abandoned here because they were driven too long to trade in and eventually too rusted to restore. Their lineage began with a greenish 1930s Plymouth sedan and ended with a 1956 faded yellow and black two-toned Chevy Bel Air. Between a 1944 black Buick Super and the ’56 Bel Air sat the sad remains of a 1955 salmon-pink and black Bel Air, tires flattened like all the others, but the windshield broken out and the body wrecked and ruined from a fatal crash the year it was purchased. The family’s youngest grandson, who had borrowed the new car to impress his girlfriend, ran head-on into a milk truck while returning from a date at the drive-in movies forty miles away. Both kids were killed. They were sixteen.
The twelve-year-old cousins decided to sit in the ’56 model since the doors still opened and the upholstery was the least mouse-ravaged. Leaving the doors open to ventilate the stifling interior, they took turns pretending to drive while they daydreamed of the time they would be old enough to drive and have girlfriends of their own. Elvis, the boy who was four months older than his cousin, already had plenty of girls crushing on him since he looked a lot like his namesake. He was keen on Elvis movies and songs. The younger cousin, Dale, preferred Johnny Rivers and Bobby Vee though he too liked Elvis movies which he saw only on television. They both dug Bobby Fuller’s rebellious rock-and-roll.
Dale surprised himself by speaking his dream out loud: “Wouldn’t it be great to be a rock star? Just one hit, to be famous and loved by everyone. Wouldn’t that be cool?” Elvis nodded although he was already admired by everyone he knew for his athleticism and for his “almost Indian” dark skin. His fame and fortune seemed like destiny. Dale was awkward, freckled, and sunburned easil--and severely--at times, but at least he could dream.
The glove compartment yielded paper matches with the faded slogan “Happy Motoring” from Esso’s Oil Drop Man. The boys lit up a second Pall Mall as they sat in the shaded Chevy, their jeans sticky with sweat. (They were not allowed to wear short pants. Nothing religious, just boy code.) Since he was behind the black, cracked, vinyl-covered steering wheel, Elvis had rights to tuning the radio. He turned the left radio knob until it clicked on and twisted the right knob pretending to find an AM station that played rock and roll, though those were few and far between in their neck of the woods. They were even more rare without a battery beneath the half-open hood. To add further futility to the situation, the tuning knob was stuck, so Elvis turned off the radio in a superfluous gesture.
“Here, let me try,” said Dale, the more curious, as the two got out and switched positions. The new driver turned the radio back on when suddenly the mono speaker crackled and came to life:
“All the dreams that I thought would last…now belong to the past,” crooned Bobby Fuller with a tear and a run in his voice.
The boys sat frozen in place as the next song was introduced by the DJ’s gravelly voice: “That was The Bobby Fuller Four with ‘A New Shade of Blue.’ Now we have a flashback to 1956 by Dale Cook. ‘Loveable.’” Gospel singer Sam Cooke’s first popular single was “Lovable” in 1956. It was released under the alias “Dale Cook.” Neither boy, nor the DJ who was hired mainly to read the farm report, recognized the song from the year the younger cousin was born, though Sam Cooke would someday become Dale’s favorite singer of all time. They were not thinking about the song, however, as they jumped out of the car lickity-split, forgetting to slam the doors shut in their shock and fright. Gooseflesh covered their clammy arms even in the midday heat.
“What the f*ck?” shouted Elvis. Since Dale had never used this expression, he was speechless in a situation that called for just such a word. He knew what to do though after he shook off the shock.
He made a bee-line for the ’55 wreck and wrenched the buckled front door partly open with a burst of super-human adrenaline. It was just enough to squeeze his head, neck, and arms far enough into the death car to reach the Delco radio power/volume button which he twisted far enough to the right to easily hear the sound of the first rock and roll record to hit the top of Billboard’s pop charts. “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets remained at number one for eight weeks in the summer of 1955. Feeling like he was witnessing the birth of rock-and-roll, Dale was irked when a voice transmitted from a tower with red blinking lights somewhere on September 30, 1955 interrupted the song: “We are sorry to announce the sad news that young Hollywood actor James Dean was killed in an automobile accident in California earlier today. We have no further details at this time but stay tuned to this station as this tragic story develops.”
The boys did not stay tuned, nor did they linger a minute longer as they jumped on their bikes and hauled ass down the hard-baked and weedy road back to the safety of ordinary life.
Dale’s mother was five months pregnant with her second son when James Dean was killed. Her baby would be born an Aquarian like Dean. Perhaps James Dean’s next incarnation was an anonymous farm boy whose only brushes with fame would be having J.K. Rowling in class when he did his student teaching in England and meeting Jeff Bridges at the funeral of his favorite college professor, who was also Bridges’ mother-in-law. Since he peaked so early professionally and died young, James’ spirit may have inhabited the body of someone who would live longer and evolve spiritually, if one believed in such things? What if the fame and fortune Dale now sought was the half-remembered remnants of his past life which he ultimately rejected in favor of anonymity and the pursuit of higher truth? The quirkiness, independence, and eccentricity of the Aquarian may have remained in some measure, but only because they were his best qualities as he pursued absolution for the others. It would explain the frequent premonitions, feelings of déjà vu, instances of mental telepathy, and all manner of psychic energy he had experienced for as long as he could remember, which sometimes seemed like forever. It was not an explanation the young boy could have considered at the time. The paranormal incident itself would die of neglect after the two boys were laughed to scorn whenever they brought it up. It was as bizarre as the tale Dale’s sister and cousins told of the statue of Mary singing “Where are you?” and the statue of Jesus weeping the day they were goofing around in the church while their mothers were cleaning up after the lunch they had served in the former country school-cum-church dining hall. The priest didn’t even believe that one. In any case, it is best to forget unexplainable phenomena in a world constructed of practical experience and common sense.
But how much have we completely forgotten? And if there is no loss of energy in the universe, only transformation, where do the memories go? If we are indeed spirits in the material world, why does it matter if we embalm and entomb our bodies? But then again, if the material matters because Spirit chose to create and inhabit all of creation, isn’t the better choice to free the body’s atoms and energy to rejoin the cosmos? If the mind is obliterated, does that mean consciousness goes with it? If we are writing this or reading it, we cannot know. Unless there is reincarnation. What lessons do we have to learn before we return to love?
One problem with waiting until I am in my seventh decade to write my story is the cruel irony of words failing at this age. Thus, this last was written first. I have looked inside to make peace with myself so at the place where language falls away, I can come to terms with what I’ve lost with more than nostalgia to motivate me to go on living until my time is up. So I summon the sacred feminine that can teach her way of compassion, mercy, and unconditional love. The second problem is that creative juices can dry up when dopamine diminishes and serotonin stops flooding the brain and spilling into the veins. I thirst for that old sense of wonder when everything was new. The drugs the legendary writers used to produce their masterpieces are not an option to one who stubbornly foreswore chemical addiction over forty years ago. Thus, I scribble furiously now while brain fog, low-grade depression, and dimming affect allow some light in through the veil that is dropping over the memories that supply me with joyful joob-elation, devastating sorrow, and all the feelings in-between. They want expressing. In my vulnerability I call out, “Come passion!” Forgive me if I repeat myself, but how many stories have I listened to in my life that were told over and over and over again in my presence because the storyteller was never really present to me? This story is my present to myself. I own it and I acknowledge my part in it. I made it out alive! I never gave up on my goal of living the life I was gifted, much as I considered ending it on many occasions.
I persisted even through excruciating mental and physical pain because I was grateful to Creator for choosing me. What were the odds that my miraculous life would exist anyway? One in one, I guess. It was destined that I be born and live. Christ and I do not exist without each other. Christ is in me. Is me.
Created from the inside out, all living things expand and unfold as they ripen. Good, good, good, good, good.
Now the past being both prologue and epilogue to the time between always and never, it would follow that there is no plot to follow in a life’s story, since the story itself is an illusion. Always has always existed and never never has. Linear life is a lie. It never happened if it cannot be preserved. In other words, life in the material world is not life at all. Our reality is immutable. “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness,” as Thich Nhat Hahn said. Our separation from Loving Spirit was but a dream, but oh what a hell of a dream it has been! Mine manifested as a wrestling match with the dualities of flesh and spirit, faith and works, law and grace, male and female, weakness and strength. Richard Rohr claims, “Dualistic thinking usually takes one side, dismisses the other, and stops there.” I never stopped grappling with the horns of the dilemma, which made life uncomfortable most of the time, but I know no one could have lived my life better than I; therefore, I can surrender the fight and submit to the pre-destined resolution: the glorious reward I ran from, which is no longer being me but being totally free of directing my course and getting lost in the wonder of oneness. The imperial I should crumble pretty quickly in the face of my true self, which is also yours.
So, good morning. I hope you had sweet dreams of the ideals you loved as a child
and woke up with a burning desire to return to that innocence.
I did.
Despite all the false evidence that the world is a fearful place,
I am mindful of its promise today.
Imagination and dreams are but the vestiges of the truth about ourselves
which we have learned to hide from a false world of fierce phantasmagoria
that seems to take the truth out of us.
Time to get up,
stand up,
rise up,
to meet ourselves as we really are.
As we forgive those mistakes which were but great teachers
and reclaim the glory of our origin stories
in a garden
where Ego is a toothless snake.
Where we lovingly but firmly say at last,
“No, I am not a body.
I am free.
I am as I was created to be.
I no longer need the delusions
you offer to protect yourself.
The secret is out.
I know war cannot bring peace.
Defending myself does not bring safety.
Bedecking my body with jewels
sparks no light in my soul.
Your notion of power is no match
for my superpower.
Denying my power is not humility but arrogance
since it is a denial of Spirit’s gift.
Love conquers all after all
because Love is All and All is One.
Now begone.
My small and audacious consciousness reaches out to encompass a universe it cannot yet contain, but when my last brain cell decays, its energy will be unleashed back into radically free deep space and may finally understand. I have mainly spent my time reprocessing the past and worrying about the future, which didn’t leave much time to think original thoughts. Thus, I take this one last chance to fish for a fresh word or phrase, to troll for an original thought or two to feed my soul. Failing that, I may come across some familiar expressions that evoke my sweetest memories. Everything will be sacred then.
Jung said, “Concepts are coined and negotiable values: images are life.” My subconscious gets to choose the images I value, the ones that gave my life meaning and what happiness was to be had. No more thinking as my body shuts down and my mind lets go one last time of the last vestiges of my daydreams, pipedreams, and the American dream. Surely our Higher Power has a bigger dream and I am ready to participate in it. I long to see through the glass clearly, but how will I stream my consciousness when my body lies unconscious? Imagination has served me well, and now I long to be free to dream with God the unimaginable. I will wake to a higher consciousness where words will fail. We will know each other at last when it is your time to join me. How long? How long until “This perishable nature will put on imperishability, and this mortal body will put on immortality” (I Corinthians 15:52-54)? How many more reincarnations before I am ripe and ready to face my maker? I do not know, but here are some final images to close out this one because I kept them close to the end after raking through the ashes for embers of memories of a few moments in a life full of grace and beauty for which the only response is undying gratitude. My mind is a mosh ball of ever more distant memories now and the ones that pop up are random and come unsummoned. I observe them one by one from somewhere outside my body as they are distilled into the essence of my youth, my life, my truth and my light. If I could not always live my truth, I can at least and at last finally write the delight I found in the cracks in the ice on which I lived. Painful memories are no longer living memories. They are not even memories, but I must still detach from the happy ones by calling them back one last time since they are the pebbles that pave the path back, back to home. The place I was born without original sin. I am not unaware that my addiction to alliteration has not been cured; nor has my penchant for bouncing between the insipid and the esoteric, or perhaps the delusion that my life mattered in the scheme of things as much as it mattered to me. The stream of consciousness meanders that way. Let’s just hope it cannot be said that I produced, and I quote William Faulkner’s “Flags in the Dust”, “a rambling [epilogue] that seemed to have had no beginning and held the prospect of any end…volitionless, as though entranced with its own existence and feeding on its own momentum.”
Breathing underwater in a stream of unconsciousness, the random remembrances flow and find their place in the archives of all that ever was before “Step 12 found a way to expose and transform that perpetual adolescence by telling us early on thatwe must serve others” (Rohr):
Driving the 150 miles back to college on Sunday nights with a six pack of 3.2 beer at my side and Casey Kassem on the radio telling me to keep my feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars as I reveled in the awareness of being young and free.
The heady blend of pineapple and coconut in a pina colada at Fort Lauderdale beach on spring break with J.O. and his brother Tim.
The joy of laughing with my mates as a West Fargo stripper used my cowboy hat to cover her breasts.
Kris Mestad and I putting my stereo speakers in the open windows of my door room in 2nd West Ballard so they faced Livingston Lord Library, blasting “Staying Alive” as students between classes tried not to walk in step with the music.
Drinking and listening to Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty at Buffalo River swimming hole with the good-looking and carefree Scandinavian youth of Ballard Hall.
PBR, pinochle and philosophizing with the Ballard boys on Tuesday nights after M*A*S*H.
Hearing Emmylou Harris’s angel voice in concert for the first time.
Witnessing storm clouds gather and the wind come up as Stevie Nicks sang “Rhiannon” at an outdoor concert in Fargo.
Dreaming of driving down Highway 69 with a hitchhiker named Robert Zimmerman.
Planting trees with Dad for the Soil Conservation Service.
Working as a flag man for a summer job during the daytime and bartending at night.
Standing alone on a barren stretch of highway in The Jack Pines when a “bushy bear” ignored my stop sign and crossed the road too close for comfort.
Receiving a Black Oak Arkansas 8-track tape from J.O. for graduation, along with a Jim Croce album from Susan and Yogi Nelson.
Grieving the death of Jim Croce along with Tommy, my math and science class buddy.
Getting out of detention to hear Olivia Newton-John in Grand Forks.
Deftly shifting from second to third gear when no one else was able to manage it in my quirky car.
Adroitly inserting the key in my car trunk in the dark on the first try while drunk.
Listening to J.O. playing guitar and singing “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” at the end of the night.
Closing my eyes for just a second, then opening them two seconds later on a hundred late night drives home after dropping J.O. off, trying to stay awake to “Stairway to Heaven” on WLS Chicago.
Almost hitting Bullwinkle late at night on the same curve where my schoolmate Rocky would die in a car wreck years later.
Finding Rocky, who was built like a brick sh*thouse, passed out in the backseat of my car at a keg party and requiring several strong boys to get him out and back to his own car which was parked in Timf*cktu.
Attending my first rock concerts: The Hollies (with Tim and J.O.) and Three Dog Night with Styx (with Arden, Tommy, and Donny).
Laying on my bed listening to “Your Song” and staring at the blacklight Jesus Christ Superstar poster on the ceiling.
Freaking myself out when Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” came on both the radio in my bedroom and the one in the bedroom across the hall. I thought how cool it would be if the one that started playing first was passed by the other one, only to stand frozen in the hallway as it happened!
Riding with J.O. in his red and white Mustang II to the horseraces in Winnipeg and camping with the Bit and Bridle Saddle Club in the Feather Campground where I would recount for our tentmates the story of what we saw when we stopped at a roadside rest by a country church earlier in the day:
It seems the window in the front door of the white wooden Catholic church revealed the mummified body of an old nun lying in a glass case in front of the altar. Embellishing the story as we sat in the dark tent by adding that Scott, the youngest kid in the club, was too short to see through the window so we hoisted him up on our shoulders so he could peek in. I added that he screamed in horror, “She’s awake!” and we lost our grip on him in the pandemonium that ensued. (In my account, Scott, sadly, did not survive the fall down the embankment leading to the river beside the church and now he lies in the glass case the nun escaped. The story was equally funny and frightening at the time though Scott did not see the humor.)
Blasting J.O.’s mother out of the backseat of his car where she planned to ride home from Winnipeg with us until J.O. turned Frank Zappa on full volume.
Winning the free throw contest in school because I would practice on the netless rim on the woodshed every night after chores (deep breath, visualize, swoosh).
Dad, wearing his winter cap with ear flaps, shaking the snow off the chopped wood he stacks in my arms to drop in the woodbox in the utility room when I go in the warm house after evening chores, the yard light already on.
Pushing shopping carts around the parking lot of Northland Foods with my brother’s car after Tommy and I saw American Graffiti for the first time. (I would see it at least twenty-five times.)
Watching Tommy confidently swish his side shots at every basketball game.
Smuggling friends into the drive-in movies in my car trunk, getting caught, paying double.
Teenage boys driving around in a V-6 car smelling of cinnamon air freshener, cherry cigars, lemon vodka and Brut cologne.
Picking up the girls and cruising the dirt roads with Captain Fantastic playing on the rear speakers mounted on a swag of baby blue fuzzy fabric.
Risks taken and survived in college and high school:
Taking a detour on a road trip from MSU to Crookston AC during the flood of ’79 and being at a real Animal House style party where two of the guys liberated a sheep from the school barn and brought it up to the apartment where another guy said, “Fry her up.” (She was returned to her pen safely.)
Touring Europe on twenty dollars a day during Christmas break when I was student teaching in England.
Getting drunk on wine in Rome with a group I met at the pensione and missing Pope John Paul II’s first Christmas Eve Mass but rallying in time to get an aisle view at St. Peter’s on Christmas Day.
Taking the train to Munich with an amiable American serviceman who asked me to watch his duffle bag when we got to the station lobby so he could use the toilet. As he walked away he told me to leave the bag if I saw a drug-sniffing dog approach. (None did.)
Filching a beer mug from the Hofbrau Haus by slipping it into my rucksack in the toilet and sneaking past security by leaving with a group. (Drunk again.)
Hearing church bells echoing down the valley on New Year’s Eve in the Swiss Mountains.
Watching the sunset over the Pacific at Big Sur with Ron.
Sleeping in the car and showering at the YMCA in San Francisco without being harassed.
Crashing my Comet on the freeway in California as Ron and I were enroute to see Bob Hope on Johnny Carson’s show, then missing the show and having to hitchhike for two weeks until the car could be patched together enough to get us home. (I was driving.)
Getting a ride back to our campground with a clean-cut but laid-back driver in a yellow VW Beetle who casually informed us, just before offering us drugs, that he had just gotten out of prison for armed robbery. (Needless to say, wee asked him to stop at a liquor store instead.)
Hitchhiking for those two weeks and being offered drugs everywhere we went. (We declined to the extent good altar boys inhale only incense.)
Going off the road in a blizzard near Silverton, Colorado and spending the night with a young mine guard who was happy to have the company. (Ron was driving.)
Getting by with a speeding ticket when my car stalled in a water puddle in Goodridge and all six of us scattered until the highway patrol called for a tow truck and I came out of hiding. (One minor was passed out in vomit in the backseat of my Comet so five of us had been up front. Two other guys were driving, but I had bought the beer because I was the first to turn 18, so I didn’t argue the ticket.)
Earning prizes year after year for memorizing the most prayers in Catechism because an older and smarter Sharon Verbout could not get help learning the Latin versions since girls could not serve the priest.
Riding the elevators of the Hudson Bay store up and down and purchasing souvenirs for Grandma and Grandpa Nash who gave each of us a dollar when we took our eighth-grade trip to Winnipeg.
Buying “Let It Be” and “Toast and Marmalade for Tea” 45 records for myself on the same trip.
Discovering orange kittens among the tabbies hidden in the hayloft, their eyes still closed, their fur smelling of clean, dry flax straw.
Finding Kenny’s stash of Gerber baby custard that we got hooked on when Kathy and Ricky, our younger siblings, were babies.
Tobogganing down the ditch bank around the burst-open brown cattails.
Bandit, our faithful collie, defecating an impressive pile of whole mice as we picked bales in November 1969 while Steam, Mel and Tim, Smith, and Billy Joe Royal played on the pickup radio.
Admiring the wondrous curl on the top of a whirl-a-whip soft serve cone at the drive-in restaurant.
The sweet, creamy taste of same.
Mom cooking fried chicken and mashed potatoes and baking the best bread, cinnamon rolls, and pies: coconut cream, lemon meringue, banana cream, pumpkin, apple, and peach. Mmm…pie!
Dad walking with me up the driveway to the gravel road where he surprised me with my first bike, which he found at an auction sale and hid behind the oak trees on the slope by the mailbox. It was red and white and it had a headlight!
Grandpa Nash gifting me with a pony he bought off a horse “shenie.” A spotted pony with one blind eye.
Me atop that runaway pony as it passed my brother and cousins on their bigger horses at full gallop.
The used, tall upright piano Mom got us so we could take piano lessons. I learned to play by ear.
Neighbors gathering at our farm in the dusk to help fight a fall grassfire that had gotten into our grove and threatened to burn the barn.
Excitedly running back and forth between the fire and a new episode of The Flintstones when Thursday was my favorite night of the week.
Neighbors driving their cars and pickups out to our new stock pit so the kids could swim or wade in the water before the cows were first let in to drink and muck it up.
White poodles jumping through hoopsas we watched in delight from the grandstand.
Dime store hoola hoops.
Playing on the swing set and soaking in the plastic pool Mom bought for us.
The ceramic Hereford bull I got for Easter when we stayed with Dad’s aunt and uncle in Little Fork.
Admiring Dad’s cousin Lyle’s tattoo of a naked woman which he got while in the Navy.
Trying to watch Lyle and Fefe make out in the backseat of the family car when we got home from a rare drive-in movie at the Satellite Drive-In.
A braided rag rug on chipped kitchen tile.
Sticky fly ribbons thumb-tacked to the kitchen ceiling in the late summer.
Mom stopping at the cafe after church to buy us 5th Avenue candy bars and Sugar Daddy suckers that came with bookmarks displaying wild birds.
Pixie Stix, Icees, Nik L Nips in wax bottles, fudge sickles, Fizzies to flavor and sparkle water.
The terrifying chill of watching Midnight Lace on late night TV.
The scary thrill of seeing that episode of The New Breed where the bad guys are shooting up a supermarket and the soup cans are dripping their contents down on the heads of the hidden shoppers.
Six cloudy windowpanes decorated with cob webs allowing just enough light to illuminate the peeling white paint on the barn walls that clung to the rusted iron pipes bringing rusty iron water to the motley milk cows bound by their stanchions and docility.
A green hose filling the wooden barrel that cooled the milk cans.
Spraying the old pig buyer with a squirt gun because he took my pet pigs.
Proudly presenting Dad the check after a later pig buyer had come to buy pigs that looked like they weighed forty pounds.
The fun of catching the pigs by the hind legs and hoisting them over the gate into the pig man’s hands.
Feeding the pigs left behind an extra measure of pellets each day to speed up their growth.
If I could find a hammer hanging where it was supposed to be, I would patch up pig pens in the barn or fences in the cattle yard. If I couldn’t find a hammer, twine string would do for the time being.
Pretending white clover with green stems were people floating in the barrel until they escaped through the overflow holes before they drowned.
Jets flying over the farm and breaking the sound barrier.
The cheerful drumbeat of a red-capped woodpecker outside my bedroom window.
Yellow finches with black trim shining in the sun.
The company of swallows lined up on the electric wire overhead when I was home alone.
The thrill of a whippoorwill.
The glorious weeping willow outside the living room window.
The tickle on the lips when blowing a piercing whistle on a really wide blade of grass.
The buzz in my brain from the brightly colored leaves that made fall vibrant and dear.
The exhilarating smell of exhaust from our ‘62 Impala on a cold November morning as we piled in for a trip to Thief River Falls where I would spend a quarter on “Archie’s Christmas Stocking” comic book.
Being released from school to walk to the Co-op Store where we would spend our twenty-five cent store coupons issued at the shareholders’ meeting.
Buying two twelve cent comics and one-penny Bazooka bubble gum.
Meeting Dad at the hardware store after school and admiring the toy dashboard and steering wheel that sat on the shelf for several years because no one could afford it.
Ketchup on fried egg sandwiches.
Scavenging the community garbage dump in a field northeast of town.
Dumping the sour smelling white enamel slop pail on the edge of the grove of tree north of the vegetable garden.
Team Quest defeating the lizard men in the Sargasso Sea (“Sim Sim Salabim” and “Aye Eee!”).
Walking to the mailbox on a hot day hoping for something new to read like Weekly Reader, The Farm Journal, TV Guide, or Reader’s Digest.
The thrill of getting Publisher’s Clearinghouse magazine stamps or RCA Record Club album stamps in the mail.
The happy laughter of a young girl picking dandelions in her pretty summer dress.
The hum of a distant lawn mower.
The red of strawberries in summer.
Sweet pea blossoms as fragrant and ethereal as cotton candy with the extra beauty of things ephemeral.
Popping a juicy orange wedge whole in my mouth.
“Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid…tastes great.Wish we had some…can’t wait!”
Collecting colorful and unique rocks from the ridge of gravel scraped to the side of the road by the road grader.
Snooping in the varnished cedar box from their honeymoon in Duluth on Mom and Dad’s bedroom dresser and admiring an agate and a buffalo nickel.
A bag of assorted sweet rolls fresh from the Rainbow Bakery in TRF.
Pretending my fingers were people.
Pretending pinecones were people.
Studying the overlapping boomerangs on the kitchen tabletop.
Drinking the sweet syrup of pear sauce from the fruit jar.
Grandpa Key treating us to a “Little Dick” at the drug store soda fountain.
Home baked chocolate cake with thick boiled frosting.
Mom’s cream puffs with fresh whipped cream.
My insatiable sweet tooth.
Grandma Key’s homemade tomato soup served with toast fingers on Christmas night when we stopped at her house after merry-making and too many sweets at out cousins’ crowded but festive home all day.
Those bubble lights.
Their cousin with hydrocephalus whose heavy head wavered on his neck while his hands clapped gleefully to my uncle’s fiddle playing.
Eating Cheerios and toast from dishes Mom purchased with books of S&H green stamps that came with buying groceries at the Piggly Wiggly.
The neighbor kids helping us unload farm supplies from the delivery truck to the grainery and being rewarded by the driver with caramel apples. (How we laughed when we handed one to the girl who had been in the back of the truck and she sheepishly produced an armful of the gooey wrapped treat she had kiped from the supply meant for the Coop Store!)
Seeing carefully coiffed and choreographed girl groups on American Bandstand as the first snowflake of October stuck to the kitchen window, delightful in its brief but beautiful existence.
The specter of those beautiful girl groups backed by a joyful wall of sound as they sang Christmas music.
How we fought over the Sears Christmas catalogue when it came in the mail!
The rich, papery smell of the spotless old post office before we got a rural mailbox.
The nine pines divided unevenly on either side of the rutted path across the front lawn leading to the green shingle sided garage where Dad’s green ’50 Plymouth was stored alongside our International deep freezer.
Skies festooned with gorgeous billowing clouds, falling stars, comets, satellites, eclipses, Northern Lights, and comets (Kohoutek, Hale Bop, and Hailey’s, all in our lifetime).
Orion in winter.
The blue and white Chevy that Dad bought for parts and let me steer as he pulled it home from another auction. It was the only time I ever drove it, but he told Mom it was mine so he wouldn’t get in trouble.
Bologna and butter sandwiches, cheese curls, Keebler fudge-striped cookies, and red Kool Aid in fruit jars for our summer Catechism School lunch pails.
The smell of melting Styrofoam as it was cut into the shape of reindeer heads that would be decorated with green and red glitter in school as a Christmas present for our parents to hang on the wall.
Playing with my plastic horses and dime store cows on the brown, patterned linoleum floor by the light of the Christmas tree.
Kaleidoscopic bovine and pastoral images swirling in cowhide patterns with big, soft eyes.
The moment of silence that interrupts a lively conversation as everyone pauses at the same time.
The quiet wisdom of old men and old women.
The better-than-a-new-car smell of the electric sewing machine Mom got to try out at home for a week before she had to return it.
Grapefruit, oranges, and lemons from Florida to brighten the dreaded dead of post-holiday winter.
Taking turns having Saturday night baths in the tin tub with blue bubble bath from a Stanley home party.
Singing a mash-up from Mrs. Jelle’s songbook as she played the piano in music class: “Johnny Schmoker,” “Green Grow the Lilacs,” “Stodola Pumpa,” “The Old Sow Caught the Measles and She Died in the Spring,” “Oh, Susanna” (“a buckwheat cake was in her mouth, a tear was in her eye”).
Mommy softly singing “Tra-la-la, tweedlee dee dee it gives me a thrill to wake up in the morning to the mockin’ bird’s trill as she held me in her arms.
Daddy nibbling on my ear lobes as he held me in his lap.
The self-comforting thumb sucking.
Only a small fraction of any moment is perceived with any accuracy. How, then, can a memory hold any truth? The magic of a summer evening can be but dimly recalled in the depths of winter. Thus, images can be described in words only so much as incomplete memory allows. In the end, any human voice can speak only of the perceptions, memories, and emotions of conscious life. What came before and after is ineffable. Yes, I once had a way with words but now I say, “Away with words!” I am waiting quietly in the left turn lane as cars turn left in front of me; there is one person behind the driver’s side window in each car and it is someone I used to know. At last, the left turn arrow goes green. I pull a U-turn and follow the familiar vehicles.
