S O U T H E R N
A U T H O R
"A Play for Power"
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Ain't no pot holes on Memory Lane!
My wife is a "right now" sort of person. That isn't to say that fond memories of family, old friends, holidays, special events and happenings aren't important to her, they are. However, she keeps them tucked away in a portion of her brain that's more secure than Al Gore's proverbial social security lock box.
Whenever we're sharing a meal, a movie on TV or driving down a country road and she gets quiet - which is rare - often I'll remark, "You aren't saying much ... what ‘cha thinking about?"
The first thing out of her mouth is always "not much." If I press, usually she'll open up and go into great and finite detail describing a jacket she saw "on sale" at the mall; how bored she is with the color of the walls in the living and dining room, the fact that the top hinge on one of the backyard gates has a screw missing, or one of a zillion other things that has crossed her ever in-the-present mind in the last four nanoseconds.
I'm just the opposite. Ask me what I'm thinking, and right off I'll tell you - usually it'll be a story about things that happened to me long ago. Like how my dad was never able to teach me how to replace a broken faucet or make even simple repairs around the house, mainly because he never replaced or fixed anything the easy way. Rather, he would go to his junk box, find some leftover parts and pieces that almost fit, then spend the rest of the day grinding and filing and gluing and trying to make them work. Or, maybe I'd tell you how my mom seemed to always fix enough dinner to feed one of my quintessentially hungry buddies.
Show me a well-built gal wearing tight, white short-shorts, and I'll recall how as an eighth grader, I used to love to go to the Venetian pool to swim and dive and watch a lithesome Diane - thus adorned - dance to "Work With Me Annie." Tell me I look nice "all dressed-up" and I might remember the night I donned a suit and tie for my first car date and took Alice to see "Tammy" at the Fox Theater - and afterwards got my first real kiss in the backseat of my friend Pat Hall's '48 Chevy coupe.
Even now, whenever I hear someone shout "Ooh aah" or "Semper Fi," I remember that Halloween night we tossed eggs out our car window onto the windshield of a bunch of Marines coming home from a reserve meeting. Also the night Richard and I tossed a lit smudge pot across the yard and smack onto our friend Rusty's front door step. Or perhaps the night we let the top down and raced all through the neighborhood in his red '52 Ford convertible while we hooped and hollered and passed around a pint of Smirnov Vodka! (Yes, I got caught, but that's another story.)
If my favorite golden-oldie station plays Danny and the Juniors singing "At the Hop," I'm reminded of Lannie and the night we spent dancing at her Catholic high school's sock hop. If it's Alvin and the Chipmunks or the Crests singing "Sixteen Candles," I might wax melancholy for hours about my first true love. If it's "Stagger Lee," I can give you chapter and verse about the New Year's Eve my rock band played at a joint called McKee's Beat in downtown Atlanta and someone stole all my 45-rpm records out of the back floorboard of my car.
If they play "Tragedy" by Johnny Tillotson, I'll tell you about graduation night with Jane and our trip afterwards to Johnny Reb's Dixieland, followed by a romantic stop at Bagley Park in Buckhead. The close harmony of the Fleetwoods singing "Mr. Blue" reminds me of my first year at Georgia Tech and a rekindled relationship with old what's-her-name.
Given the right stimulus, I can remember every girl friend and every song that was popular when we were dating ... all the crazy times we had and all the places we went. Even as an adult, while attending a client party at the Cherokee Country Club, I can remember sniffing every lady in the ballroom trying to find out who was wearing the exact same perfume that drove me crazy as a seventeen year old!
The point is this: I spend a lot of time strolling down Memory Lane and it makes my wife crazy.
Lately though, I've noticed that Memory Lane has grown more crowded ... more congested. I keep running into people I know as more and more of my old friends are showing-up on places like Reunion and Classmates.com (at least those that haven't already shown up in the obituaries.) It seems that unlike my wife, a lot of us have taken to remembering ... a lot of folks are wishing it was like it used to be.
Can it be that we prefer the drive down Memory Lane to dodging Mayor Franklin's citywide potholes?
In his book "Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium," Dick Meyer says that Americans have grown to hate the culture that has evolved in this country. "We have private conversations in public places, we are constantly attached to electronic devices and often choose them over in-person contact with the people that are right in front of us, and we are suffering from a "lack of social self-respect." He diagnoses a chronic case of low self-esteem. He says that our communities have been neutered and our traditional, inherited moral, religious, and aesthetic sensibilities have been discredited. He says that ours is a "toxic" cultural environment, rife with disingenuousness."
He offers much supporting evidence - confused values, the vulgarity of the marketing industry, the media's fascination with Paris Hilton. Americans are inundated with phoniness. He says even though most of us know when we're being bullshitted, we have become so immersed in it that our very lives are reflective of the things we hate.
Meyer's solution? A return to values and traditions that predate the '60s: a time before sensory overload; a time when we respected the government, the law, our parents, our wives, our bosses and each other. A time when we found joy in simple things ... family meals, drive-in movies, visiting with friends and handwriting notes.
Evidently a lot of Americans agree. AOL recently complied a list of twenty five other things folks wish would make a comeback: #25 Grape Nehi Soda, #24 H&G Magazine, #23 Use of vowels, #22 Lard in pastry, #21 Howard Johnson's, #20 Vent windows in cars, #19 Screaming Yellow Zonkers, #18 Train Travel, #17 New Harry Potter Books, #16 Chromed Metal, #15 Gelatin Salad, #14 Drive In Theaters, #13 Gas Attendants (they still exist in New Jersey & Oregon), #12 Milkshakes with milk, #11 45 rpm records, #10 McDonald's Fried Pie, #9 Cursive writing, #8 Full size spare tires, #7 Day games during baseball playoffs, #6 Phone booths, #5 Pleasurable air travel, #4 Hydrox cookies, #3 Easy to open packaging, #2 In store lunch counters, #1 The Far Side by Gary Larsen!
I tell my wife that by reminiscing about the past, I'm just reflecting on a simpler, more genuine time. I've told her that my recollections are harmless: that all my shenanigans and all those old girl friends don't mean a thing. Also that I wouldn't trade what I have, for what I could have had, for all the tea in China!
That said however, I'd love to feel my hormones shooting through the roof like they did when old Diane danced in front of the jukebox at Venetian. I'd love to feel what I felt with that first kiss. I'd love laugh once more like we did at Alvin and the Chipmunks. I'd love to dance all night at the hop; to raise a little hell with the guys, to have that "can't sleep, can't eat" feeling that comes from young love.
But if I can't have all that, I'd settle a revival of our moral, religious and aesthetic sensibilities; a renewed sense of community and a culture that reflects American values from the fifties and sixties. And - oh yeah - a quart of Flexall 454 for my knees and a stock market back above 14,000!