Category Archives: Personal

Ancestry, Behavior, Biographical, Family, History, Monroe County, Personal

History, Uncovered

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Years ago, I doggedly started down the path of biographical discovery. Some of my family hated the idea. Although I suspected I knew why, years of intermittent discovery and revelation allowed me to piece together facts. Not innuendo or conjecture, nor the vague yet prideful assertions of some of my family.

It is true that behind reluctance, there is always truth. As an adult, I understand it. Who wants their dirty laundry floating around? On the other hand, open discussion of it with one’s children can be a learning experience – not to mention that acknowledging mistakes can be liberating.

I probably should have taken more care with this post. Finding another piece of the puzzle yesterday fascinated me, as the dots connected effortlessly.

Using both DNA and slipshod yet determined obstinacy, I peeled back layers. Not to malign or accuse people, especially if they were already gone. They could have just told me, or answered my questions, giving me a complex and informed view of the people who came before me. They largely chose misdirection and sometimes passive-aggressive hostility.

“Your family has a lot of damn secrets, X,” is something I’ve often heard. But what family doesn’t? A word of advice to those who choose secrecy? Be careful. There’s an idiot out there determined to find out. Curiosity has driven many people to morph from interested to detective.

One of my earliest memories is of standing in the back seat of a black or dark sedan. We were driving on a sun-filled day, heading to the water. My dad was driving. In the passenger seat was someone who should not have been. Years ago, my mom insisted that I couldn’t have remembered it. Then, she insisted it never happened. “Which is it? It didn’t happen or I couldn’t have remembered it.” Stunned recognition on her part that logically, she wasn’t making sense.

Over the years, I figured out we were driving to Clarendon to go to the water. As for the woman in the passenger seat, I’ll call her Susan. I grew up calling her Aunt Susan, even though she wasn’t my aunt. Aunt Susan was married to my mom’s half-sister’s sons.

son

In March of 1970, my dad was involved in a drunk-driving accident that killed Aunt Susan’s husband. Dad escaped accountability through what can only be described as “good old boy” connections.

He’d already been to prison in Indiana in the 60s. He swore he’d never leave Monroe County again. He moved to Indiana out of necessity after being a little wild for Monroe County. (Which is saying a lot.) He had cousins there, none of whom I grew up to know. That story was another one that required doggedness on my part to get to the bottom of. Just a few months ago, I finally got a little bit of my dad’s prison records. A couple of years before that, I went through thousands of pages of online news articles until I found news articles related to his crimes. The only reason I did it was because another member of my dad’s family indirectly acknowledged to me that they existed. That’s all it took to set me in motion. If she wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find them.

After Aunt Susan became a widow because of my dad, they started seeing each other. It was during that period that I had the memory of driving down a sunny road with them both. It would have taken place between late March of 1970 and before October of the following year.

I don’t know how it came up, but I had questions. Aunt Marylou knew everything. Whether she would repeat it or not was the question. After I started doing ancestry, I had a list of nine thousand questions. She answered many of them, including ones about Grandpa and Mom’s potential half-sister, who came about because of one of my Grandpa’s indiscretions.

One of my questions was about my memory of the summer day in the car with dad and Aunt Susan. “Oh, that was after your mom filed for divorce from your dad.” I was shocked. They obviously had not been divorced, at least not yet. She then went on to hit the high points of a little bit of the less-savory family lore that I was chasing.

Mom was livid. “None of that is true. None of it. It didn’t happen.”

I added the search for proof to my list years ago.

Later, a lot of it made sense. Mom invariably couldn’t resist ranting about past grievances. I do remember Mom drunkenly ranting about Aunt Susan. For reasons I didn’t understand, she didn’t want me to go to my Grandpa’s funeral. Some of that had to do with Aunt Susan. I’ll never know why now.

My brother Mike remembered much more of it than I did. He even recalled the night that Aunt Susan’s husband died as a result of the DWI incident with dad. His memory gave me the time frame we lived in the house right off of AR-39, something which had eluded me for years. That’s the same house we lived in when I almost killed myself pulling the trigger on one of dad’s hunting rifles. He’d left it on the bed unattended. (I’ve written about that incident before.) As a convicted felon, he wasn’t supposed to own guns, which is, of course, why he had dozens of them. Those laws were ignored back then, and especially in rural Arkansas.

My brother Mike also confirmed that my memories about living briefly in Wheatley were true. Of the scant memories I had of it, I remember having a picture of Jiminy Cricket on the bedroom wall, and of being deathly sick on Christmas when I was extremely young. That memory places us in Wheatley in December 1969. I would have been 2 and 3/4 years old. I FEEL like I have a bag of memories locked away. I can feel them floating around in my head.

Somewhere in the above time frame, we lived in another house in Brinkley. Mom went to bingo with her friend. Upon our return, the house had caught fire, allegedly due to an oven. I have strange, detached memories of that place too.

Mom lived in multiple houses that caught fire. My brother and I once calculated that we could remember living in at least a couple of dozen places by the time we graduated.

Off and on, I’ve been meticulously searching records online, often one dense page at a time, even in unindexed records.

It wasn’t until Saturday morning that I found the proof. Just one more click, and there it was. Proof that Mom had found out about another one of dad’s affairs, this time with one of the last people she could have expected. She filed for divorce in May and then dismissed it in October of the following year. I note with irony that the “number of children affected” is left blank.

Whether I should or not, I have to connect the dots. I now know the specific time frame that I lived with my grandma and grandpa. When I fell out of bed made of two chairs and stopped breathing. When some of my earliest and best memories were made. It took me years to learn that it was normal for people who felt traumatized to lose swaths of their memory. People sometimes mistake my dogged intensity for research as good memory. That’s totally inaccurate. Even with the memories I’m sure of, I tread cautiously.

I remember shortly after mom and dad got back together. Even though it’s largely irrelevant, we lived somewhere along Main near Spruce Street. I remember coming inside to see dad on the couch with his gallon jug of water. I remember him being grouchy from a hard day’s work. Of being scared to death of him. I did not understand that partial memory until this morning. I had been forced back into the house after being with Grandma and Grandpa, during which Mom reluctantly described it as a separation. She never admitted to me or anyone in front of me that she had filed for divorce. I’ve lost all memory of the massive, violent fights they had before and after.

The other big wow of all this is that my secret sister was born in May of 1972. Subtracting nine months from that means that the document I discovered also indicates that dad had another affair shortly before mom dropped the divorce. So when I had to go home to a place on Main Street in Brinkley, dad was having another child, whether he knew it or not.

As for dad, Aunt Susan wasn’t the last affair he had with someone he shouldn’t have. When we got burned out of City View in Springdale, we went to live with the widow of one dad’s cousins. He had an affair with her, too.

Shortly after my secret sister’s birth, we packed up and moved to Northwest Arkansas. I didn’t find out about ‘why’ we moved until the day I met my secret sister, almost five decades later.

We moved back to Brinkley for about a year while I attended 3rd grade. I don’t know why dad felt like his secret was safe regarding his daughter we didn’t know about. Dad operated a gas station across from the Lutheran church in Rich, off Highway 49. He tried making a go of it again in 1993, up until his death. He remarried mom exactly 29 years after he married her the first time. I constantly think about the year we lived in Brinkley, and about the fact that I had another sister just out of reach. Or about how differently our lives would have been had mom proceeded with the divorce.

The more I learn, the more I know how many secrets the Terry side of the family kept. It seems impossible that mom didn’t know more of them, but as my sister agreed, when mom was angry, she couldn’t resist screaming about whatever she could. None of us remember her ever mentioning our secret sister.

As for this original divorce filing, mom never admitted it.

Secrets.

X

Exercise, History, Lemon Moment, Personal, Springdale

Old Becomes New

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I drove to Springdale and parked my car. I wanted to say something new. Instead, the phone started immediately. A young man walked on 71, talking way too loudly into his phone. I didn’t have to eavesdrop. Whoever he was, the last place he needed to be was out in public. And whoever was on the other end of the phone probably needs to be careful of being around him. 

When I took the first picture of the Springdale administration building, for the first time in years I remembered going to vacation Bible School in the building. Somewhere around 47 years ago. That’s a sobering thought. 

Passing what used to be Mathias plaza, I recalled the earliest memory I had of it. When I went with my friend Mike to the opening celebration decades ago, when a boot shop could make a fortune in a small town dedicated to rodeo and simple living. I don’t remember a lot of specifics other than scamming too much free candy. 

Walking past the old AQ spot, seeing a monstrous car wash in its place. Decades of nostalgia washed away by modernity. Despite what many claim, AQ was never about the food. It was one of the few agreed upon destination restaurants, one I only got to visit when family made their rear visits to this isolated corner of Arkansas, before the interstate snaked its way through to us. Like its competitors Hush Puppy,art Maedtri’s, and others, it remains only in old shoeboxes of pictures. And though it seems you can bring back the name, you can’t bring back the amber-hued nostalgia of it. 

Seeing the Harps plaza caught me off guard. It’s another place totally transformed. I stood and looked at the bright modern lights shining against the dark of the early morning. 

Chills ran up my spine as I entered the North entrance of Buff cemetery. It is one of the dark places of Springdale. Everything is shadows. Most people wouldn’t want to walk such a huge cemetery in the middle of the night. I visited some of the names that matter: Jimmy, Ardith, Donnie, Julia, Bill. The bright red light in the background confused me. Of course I made my way around to see its origin. It’s part of someone’s memorial for their loved one. A decoration that no one other than me would see, wondering in the middle of the dark. Neither of the pictures I’ll include accurately capture how dark it is, nor how prominently the small little light projects across the curve of the hill holding all the graves.

Bluff cemetery is stunning in the hours of the vampire. Tall, old trees, filled with chirping insects, none of which are bothered by light. It’s been years since I’ve been here in the dark. I don’t know how I let myself forget how peaceful it is. A literal 360 of the night sky, one unaware of everything around it. I didn’t get spooked even once, not that I expected to. I’m not worried about the supernatural; pretty much everything we have to fear walks on two legs. And the most dangerous creature of all is a man convinced of his good intentions. 

Maybe I’m not supposed to be walking around at that hour. The front entrance is closed. But if anybody would fault me for wanting to enjoy the place and visit markers of the people I once knew, I would ask them to visit the place in the dark, experience the cool breeze, and be surrounded by the insects and the huge sky above.  These places call upon us to reflect in the daylight. In the dark, you don’t have to wonder where you will end up. All the joy and drama that was so important yesterday vanishes. 

I did not realize I walked two miles in big criss-crossing loops in the cemetery until I exited.

I didn’t consciously turn the direction that I hadn’t planned. I hit the intersection of Sanders and Lowell before I even realized I went east. I wonder how many people even remember a corner store once stood across from the intersection of Mill and Lowell street? That’s another memory I had forgotten until now. 

The moon shadows beautifully illuminated the old houses through there. The kind of houses that once defined Springdale. Sure, there were rich people, and we all knew where they prefered to live. The rest of us lived in houses like these. With porches, wood siding that probably never got painted often enough, accompanied by the sound of the trains that always passed through. Most people had a vehicle for hauling. The kind where you could put down the tailgate and have both kids and dogs jump into without a second thought. 

It’s safer now. I think back to the times I huddled in the back of a pickup with my brother and sister. More than once we drove all the way to Brinkley, across the mountains and down the interstate long before it connected us to the rest of the world. I could tell you a dozen stories about some of those trips. Statistically speaking, in a multiverse of possible outcomes, I probably didn’t survive in any of the parallel universes. That last thought is the kind of foolishness my Grandma would have scowled at. 

Then I came upon Randall Wobble, One of the most misspelled roads possible. The Fitzgerald cemetery sits awkwardly on the corner. Most people do not know the history of it, nor of some of the interesting people buried there. It’s been passed millions of time, just a blip on the periphery of people’s attention. Nor do they know how historically significant the nearby area is, cut by one of the oldest roads in the United States. Old Wire and Butterfield Stagecoach contain massive amounts of history that shouldn’t be forgotten. We may now have the interstate, but Springdale has the original artery of the nation, at least in this direction. 

I walked the length of the now desolate Cargill property. I worked there for years, from the kill side to HR. I met housands of people there, including my wife who died. It was a place that needed almost everybody if they needed a job. You rolled the dice if you applied. It was the place that made Spanish a song in my heart. It’s hard to believe that when I applied there, the plant was only about 25 years old. 35 years elapsed since then, until its closure. It is a harsh reminder that nothing is permanent and that plans are what we create in an attempt to control the future. 

If you want to know what Springdale might have become absent the interstate and forward-looking people, take a walk in the dark along Jefferson and keep going until you hit modern Huntsville Avenue. I’m not maligning the area. Without infrastructure and jobs, places like Springdale would have stagnated. Prosperity brings scissors, though. Old places have to get replaced, often taking some of the things the original residents cherish. Frankly, one stretch of the streak reminds me of a James Cameron movie. It’s hard to explain unless you were there with me. Trucks loading and unloading, lights, machinery buzzing and clanging. 

The Berry Street and Emma intersection was wonderfully redone. It’s been a couple of weeks since I took a long early morning walk through downtown Springdale. The progress on the building on the old Layman’s property Is is amazing. 

I put the “detour ahead” picture in because It’s a warning to remember that none of these beautification projects will work long term if there aren’t enough jobs or an economy that supports working-class families. This isn’t a political statement. It’s an economic reality that a lot of places have forgotten. The consequences squeeze regular people out of the place they never wanted to leave.

Emma is as beautiful as the last time. I look at all the new steel and glass places with appreciation. But my eyes seek out the familiar. Spring Street visually hollered at me as I passed, as did the neon horse guarding the old bank building.

I hope no one minds that I reiterate an old observation of mine: Springdale definitely has beauty, a nice mix of demographics, and plenty of things to do. But the logo that the Chamber of Commerce picked still makes me feel like that the Borg have invaded, leaving this logo behind as a warning. 

As I neared at the end of my walk, a vehicle stopped at one of the four-way stops along Emma. You know the ones I’m talking about. You would have thought Springdale installed tire spikes, given the amount of complaining when the signs were first installed. The man inside shouted, “Hey, X!” I shouted back, “Hey, how are you doing?”  It was dark, so all I saw was the silhouette of his face as he leaned slightly out the window. I have no idea who it was! 

But it’s the perfect metaphor threading through the mass of words I’ve shared. Springdale is still a place where we can be neighborly, even in the dark on a deserted Saturday morning. 

I hated for the walk to end. My legs were protesting and wobbling. A reminder that we’re supposed to do all things in moderation, whatever the hell that is.

X

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Humor, Lemon Moment, Personal

Time To Prank

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“TIME TO PRANK REMEMBER YOUR MISSION!” 

The weirdest noise filled my apartment. Even my cat lifted his head from atop his high perch on the sun-filled cat castle. I looked everywhere for the source – except for the very last place, where I found it. One set of my wireless headphones was beeping strangely. Assuming I was being pranked somehow or receiving an alien transmission, I let it beep. 

Picking up my phone, I realized I had an odd notification icon at the top of my screen. It was one of the native Samsung apps, blaring that I had an important reminder. Opening, I saw that it was from a year ago. 

“TIME TO PRANK! REMEMBER YOUR MISSION!” 

I don’t remember the day, but obviously the September afternoon must have sparked a reminder that I needed to get back to basic craziness. 

I sat at my computer and began my mission.

Let the games begin!

X

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Fayetteville, Lemon Moment, Personal

September Chill

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Let’s just say I cut through a place I wasn’t supposed to be. The light rain and cool breeze felt amazing as I crept through the early morning. I had to keep reminding myself that it’s still summer. Goosebumps popped up along my arms several times. Mostly it was from the breeze and the light rain. A couple of times it was from the swirling shadows and silhouettes. I had to also remind myself that as far as I knew, I was alone in the dark, and unaccompanied in my exploration. It felt like a late October night night. 

The most beautiful moment happened when I took a street that I don’t normally traverse. The breeze blasted me, bringing the sound of insects and harmonious wind chimes. For some reason, I had to see the origin of the wind chimes. I was certain whoever owned them would have an oasis in the middle of and often overlooked apartment row. I was right. From the street, I could see that plants filled the stairs leading up. I could also see colored lights glowing from inside. 

As I precariously climbed in darkness. I took a literal leap of faith that I was as close to the ground as I was supposed to be. Walking back around required at least a couple of miles. I didn’t mind the extra miles, of course. I just wanted to see something different. 

When I came through the brush onto the trail, flashing lights filled the air. I held my phone up so that whoever I was approaching would know someone was coming out of the dark. 

Someone had the misfortune of being pulled over at the very end of the street where it abutts the wildness. As soon as I got past them, I saw a pair of eyes looking at me from inside the brush of Narnia. I changed the setting to video. I did not capture whatever little creature was watching me. But I did get a kaleidoscope, courtesy of the police. 

I scribbled in chalk my prediction for today’s game in a dozen places. 

I got back to the apartment a little wet and a little chilly. I wish that some days I didn’t have to sleep at all so that I could explore the imaginary world of the darkness.

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Jimmy, Lemon Moment, Nostalgia, Personal, Springdale
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Springdale Nostalgia

I had massively ornate nightmarish dreams. As a courtesy, the universe didn’t let me remember them. Instead of fighting it, I got up and within a few minutes, I was at work. Running through my duties like a madman, on a whim, I decided to drive to downtown Springdale. Even though 3 a.m. had barely made its entrance, I walked down the middle of Emma, interrupted by only one car the entire length as I walked east.

I’m glad I did. The number of temperate and beautiful early summer mornings is flying by. The walk was nostalgic because I once knew every nook and cranny of this place, down to the routines of each business, and every place where the sidewalk grew treacherous. 

This place is stunning now! Maybe not to those who pass by when they are competing with others to traverse it. But in the dark? When the only sound are the insects inhabiting the green spaces interspersed along the street. Or when the owners of Buck’s Bar can be heard shouting as they playfully gather bags of clinking beer bottles, remnants of last night’s revelry. 

When I turned onto Holcomb Street and after making two wide loops and circuits of the area, a barrage of distant sirens wailed. A wall of delicious aroma assaulted me as the wind tunnelled along the old Leon’s hair building. I was surprised to see a new building next to the old church at the corner of Grove. It’s built to look old and it’s one of my favorite styles. The polychromatic BierGarten still shines. For those of you who still live around here, I’m sure it’s become a backdrop and perhaps even banal. I wonder how many current residents don’t realize that the Lisa Academy contains all the old ghosts and stories of the original First Baptist Church. Before they modernized the spillways and drainage, an adventurous kid could brave walking along the edge and under the streets. I was one of them. 

At exactly 3:57 a.m., the wind picked up as I doubled back on Meadow. The rustle of the large tree startled me as I looked up to see the American flag flapping hard. Its leaves are drying and in under a month, they will surrender to the ground. James + James is now a memory. Part of the building is now a nice modern pool lounge. Remember when we were young in this small town? A pool table meant you damn well better be on guard. It now guarantees a multitude of delicious beer I’m just about any modern drink you might want. As I took the picture, I laughed. I know exactly what my dad would say if he were standing next to me: “Bunch of ******s.” The sushi place by the square isn’t a place I normally would like. I’ve been there once and absolutely loved it.

I hadn’t seen the new jail since it’s completion. Even that has a severe case of overachievement. I would halfway expect to see modern art hanging in the bathrooms in that place. 

Because I’m so far out of the loop, I almost fell over when I saw that Shirley’s had relocated near the railroad depot. When Springdale was nothing, I lived across the street on 48th from the house that would become Shirley’s. When the interstate hadn’t gobbled up the dirt roads and pastures that defined the beginning of West Springdale. 

I’m having a severe case of nostalgia as I walk by these places. Superimposed on all of these is an emotional and visual silhouette of what once was. From the pizza place on the downtown corner, to the old theater where I saw Swamp Thing and could easily imagine that it was lurking in the old alleys of the old Springdale. Shout out to Adrienne Barbeau, by the way. I can’t think of her without thinking of my cousin Jimmy and how enamored he was of her. She rivaled even the original Farrah Fawcett poster he had in his room for decades.

Well done, Springdale.

Behavior, Personal, Psychology, Relationships

Perspective

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Controversial Yet Logical Counterpoint:

“You never know what someone’s going through.” That’s what people tell us in a cautionary way. To give people the benefit of the doubt. There’s a lot of truth to that. But there is also a caveat, exception, and disclaimer. Assuming that someone is going through something difficult as a way to overlook bad behavior ASSUMES that you’re not going through something as bad or worse. So if you’re a witness to somebody being mistreated followed by them repaying the mistreatment equally, you also have to look the other way and give the benefit of the doubt to the second person. This is the kind of pop psychology and circular logic that leads us down unsustainable mindsets. Our energy would be better spent convincing people to self-regulate maturely instead of doing what amounts to victim blaming. In short, if you’re going to tell us to look the other way because we don’t know what someone’s going through, you also have to look the other way if we’re going through a bad time and give the first asshole what they’ve got coming. In this day of chaotic workplaces and even worse political and social frazzlement, shouldn’t we assume that everybody is having a bad day? Ergo, we can’t blame anyone. 

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” is true. But equally true is this: “If we are all going through it, the safest course of action is to walk through the forest as if every leaf conceals a snake.” And while it might be the safest way, it leads to a life of guarded disconnectedness. 

As for the picture, I took a long exposure to see if the colors would emerge in the dark early hours this morning. It’s an open space hidden in plain sight, one which I sometimes use when I want to watch the sky unbroken in a panorama above me. 

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Art, Humor, Personal

Bathroom Rainbows

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I tried to snap a colorful photo of the rainbows flipping across my custom wood print in my bathroom. Instead, I got a goofy but boring snap that I illuminated. I’ve had people offer me upwards of 50 cents for this one of a kind piece of art.

I would snap a picture of my living room so that you could see the 500 rainbows streaming in due to all the prisms I have hanging outside. But the zebra won’t get out of the picture long enough for me to take one.

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Exercise, Fayetteville, Lemon Moment, Nostalgia, Personal

It’s Already Gone

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I was out too early, looking to see a few spectacular meteorites from the Perseid meteor shower that is peaking this week. I know a couple of amazing dark spots in the middle of all this urban sprawl. But for some reason my feet took me west until I finally reached Deane Street. The modern trail and street lights they’ve installed are gorgeous. The first stretch looks like an infinite straight strip. On the north side, there is still a huge field that stretches north, with a northern perimeter that has surprisingly few lights to interrupt it. Facing away from the beautiful street lights, it’s one of the best urban views of the northern sky that can be had. It was beautiful before they modernized Deane. It’s still beautiful now, albeit in a different way.

As I walked, I stopped for fifteen seconds every few minutes so that I could watch and scan the sky for meteors. The third time I did so, I saw something running along in the tall grass. It turned out to be a small fox. Further along, I realized it was interested in me. I took out my camera and stood still. That’s how I got this amazing photo that is everything except the fox.

Shortly thereafter, at about 2:45 a.m., the blare of distant police and fire sirens to the south caused unseen animals out in the expanse of the field to howl and yap. I stopped about 100 yards away from the modern veterinary lab on Deane, listening in appreciation. A couple of barn and equipment buildings silhouetted against the sky. And that’s when I got to see my first meteorite streaking like a casual hello. It was short-lived but brilliant. That’s about all you can ask for. A couple of miles of walking in the dark gifted me with the briefest of illuminations. 

As the economy sputters, and as I watch people seemingly dive into erroneous faith that encourages attitudes better left behind us, I stole that damn moment. Of course I would rather see a dozen meteorites. But it is the first bite of pizza that delights, or that split second when you lean in for the kiss you’ve waited for. Everything else is saturation and overindulgence.  

An hour later, I still couldn’t bring myself to turn around. So I looped and walked along the mega car stores and the perimeter of the interstate. Absent traffic, there were amazing views of the night sky.  Once you reach Chicory Place, you’ve encountered what I call Pocket Narnia. No street lights. No buildings. Animals and critters creeping without worry. It is a snippet of a perfect night view. The sound of insects holds its own against the background rumbling of the interstate that now seems to be five miles away.  I can’t imagine that this little piece of Narnia will survive much longer, much like the original Narnia at the end of Leverett. “Everything changes, but not all of it is progress.”

When I took a minute to kneel and chalk a message on the concrete near the desolate Sam’s club, whoever was driving by slowed to a crawl. I ignored them, But also wondered what they thought they were seeing as they watched me leave a message, One that was almost Ecclesiastical.

I was lucky today. Despite walking too many miles, my accidental route didn’t drag me linearly. Had it done so, I would have had to call a friendly Uber to get back home. It amuses me that when I’m out here and forget time, it feels as much like home as sitting in my office chair. 

I’m probably the only one I know who appreciates how beautiful Garland/112 is on these early summer mornings before the sun even considers gracing us. I walked right down the middle of this road that is still somehow two lanes. The dome of the sky enveloped me. The modern buildings the U of A intermittently installed become invisible. The view from there is largely the same as it was seventy years ago. 

As I came parallel to the Y-park, I turned and stopped to listen to the ocean of insects and to briefly remember a late night there forty years ago. My second meteorite of the night interrupted my reverie. If I didn’t know better, I might swear that the universe is trying to remind me that there are no moments unworthy of distraction.

X

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History, Lemon Moment, Personal

Langoliers Moment

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I find some interesting things when I’m wondering around. This morning, I found a few eight-track tapes on the edge of the street and the sidewalk. As if someone had driven by and tossed them out every hundred feet. I amused myself by trying to imagine who drove through sometime last night and chose to toss them out the window. Did they come flying from a vintage car? Was the person who tossed to them someone who bought them when they were released?

Eight-track tapes came to the United States in 1965. By the time these were popular, Glenn Miller had already been dead twenty-one years. He was another artist I didn’t appreciate until my Uncle Buck told me to listen to his big band style with a different ear. Glenn Miller once ruled his corner of the musical world. But now he’s an increasingly forgotten relic of the past. 

I like moments like these before the sun comes up. A random find brings nebulous memories back from the dead. 

I’ve decided that the person who discarded these decided that the owner of a carefully maintained 1966 Ford Galaxie took his old car out for one more drive. Ford was the first company to put 8-track players in their vehicles in the United States. 

I’m not a car enthusiast, but when I was younger I involuntarily learned an encyclopedia of information about cars. Because of innovation, all that knowledge is just trivia now.

Like Glenn Miller, we will all be footnotes. I guess I better walk a little faster before time races past me.

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The Langoliers haven’t arrived yet. People might not get the reference. But I’m always looking at things and admiring how pretty they are when they are static and waiting for people to inhabit them.

Exercise, Lemon Moment, Personal

You Never Know

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Oops. 

I couldn’t sleep. 

Sitting on the landing while attempting to hold and contain my cat while drinking a cup of coffee, I had the strange sensation that if I did not get up right then and take a walk, that I might not do it again. 

Within two minutes, I was out and headed north. Even though I didn’t think about it, I was headed right down the throat of daylight commerce. Except at 3:00 a.m., It’s a ghostland. Everyone is in a hurry unless they are driving to avoid detection. 

When I went over the crest looking out onto the interstate interchange, the breeze hit me again. I stopped for a moment to watch the stillness and the kaleidoscope of lights. It’s not supposed to be pretty, but of course it was. 

I’m in Springdale now, knowing I probably can’t walk all the way back without the risk of my legs getting wobbly. I’m not quite ready to sit down in the red rocking chair in my living room and stay there. 

When I neared the crest opposite Lake Fayetteville where the Lewis and Clark building sits empty and watches, the breeze off the lake felt like salvation.

I’m going to keep going for a while. In the off chance this could indeed be the last time I take such a walk. The only reason we get through a lot of days is because we don’t know when we’re experiencing the last of something  -or watching some on way now do the same.

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