Those Idyllic Days

It is impossible for me to drive along the streets of my hometown, the county seat, but a relatively small community in the scheme of things, without

… remembering.

It happened again yesterday.

The old grocery store,

(now a social services building) where my dad dropped me off for some long-forgotten reason, and upon departing his two seat Camaro, (half truck-half car) I closed the passenger door on my pinkie finger, (but found a way to draw it out before daddy drove away).

The old train track,

 long since removed, leaving a long grassy, elevated strip which runs alongside a myriad of warehouses and humble homes. I will never forget the scene. A hundred high school seniors boarding what today would be considered an ancient relic, but what then was the most modern of locomotives; which had as its goal a preliminary destination, the nation’s capitol, and a subsequent, the gem of the Empire State; New York City.

The neighborhood pool behind the civic center,

(where I later attended my one and only teen dance). Hours spent frolicking in that chlorene-tainted water; from time to time the lifeguard blowing his whistle, and cautioning an unruly swimmer. Sadly, while the old iron fence still borders the rectangular site, the pool has long since been covered in with earth.

That old dirt road which my brothers and I trod on the way to, and from the “picture show.”

The older cemetery which paralleled that particular avenue and provided a Halloween-like aura, offering only an eerie silence, and among the gravestones; the ethereal twinkling of lightning bugs.

Playing “Crack the Whip” with neighborhood children,

who as adults have gone “their merry way,” and who are now confined to a singular space in the brain; where it is impossible to grow old. Saturday afternoons spent picking wild blackberries, or climbing a lone mulberry tree to retrieve its fruit; (ending up with more of that purple concoction on ourselves, than in our baskets).

Climbing Sand Mountain.

A twenty story behemoth of a sand pile left behind by the phosphate industry. A year round family attraction, free of charge I might add, (and before the advent of Disney World and MGM) where hundreds of men, women and children whiled away a summer’s day. Gone now.

Clara’s Grocery.

Dipping my hand into that old red drink machine, the cold water washing over my forearm, and drawing out the small green bottle filled to the brim with that dark, tasty liquid; so much stronger and sweeter than its current counterpart. And setting eight or ten of the bottles in the corner of our utility room, ‘til each could be redeemed for a 2 cents bounty.

Those idyllic days which can never come again, (but which I still retain the pleasure of revisiting); if only by way of fading Polaroids, and the admittedly more nebulous, but somehow more substantial vehicle of the mind.

(Precious memories. How they linger).

 

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 12

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