’Round Town

Memories

Wed, 06/19/2019 - 10:15am

Occasionally, when I am not looking, something will slip into my field of view unexpectedly, and with it will come a batch of recollections. Memories. And there will be a moment of remembering about a time or place or an event not thought about.

A sliver of light, a reflection, a shape, sometimes even just a color, and then a cascade of neatly tucked away images that awaken from long ago, or perhaps not so long ago, recently overlooked.

The little glimpse out this old window, through the screen, inside the fabric to a blooming rhododendron really stopped me. For the life of me I did not know what it was that had caught my eye and jingled far off corners of my cluttered brain. Seems as I age, the filing system that keeps information organized and accessible needs an update, or, in more current terms, a reboot. Finding old stuff requires a lot more effort, and I’m never quite sure where to begin my search.

At any rate, this out of the corner of my eye glimpse over the toilet in an old cottage, flipped a switch which lit up some old circuits and took me back to a time in my childhood. The rush of recollection was so vivid that I had to sit down (the toilet seat was covered) for an accounting of memories that made me smile and perhaps, just perhaps, tear up a little.

As a kid, I visited my grandmother for two weeks every summer when the James E. Strates shows came to play the Clearfield County Fair. The show came to town by rail and unloaded on a main street in the center of town, in the middle of the night. The coal trains ran that line too, right up the middle of Third Street, often several times a day. Visiting Grandma was like Christmas in July.

Grandma had a pantry where she stocked all the ingredients for her wonderful foods. And, it was where she kept the back-up inventory for Tootsie Rolls, NECCO wafers, Jelly beans, root beer barrels and the best oatmeal cookies on Earth. At the back of that little room was a window, with a white lace, see-through curtain and a red flowering plant.