IN THE BACK OF MY MIND

Did you ever wonder where you store your memories? If you live a long life, you accumulate a lifetime of memories. Your mind is not like a chronological storage center. Sometimes your memories get out of sequence. Some stand out more vividly than others. With me, I hear a song or see a scene from a movie and without any effort from me, a memory appears. I suppose it would be nice if you could just remember the good times, but bad memories are recalled just as easily as the good.

 

Some people have thrown off on my ability to remember the day I was born. They look at me with a sparkle in their eye and you can almost hear them say “bullshit”.

 I have always loved music and good storytellers.  Just today, I visited my good friend Dave Anderson. I caught him working. He was mowing his lawn. He said that he would be done in about 20 minutes, and I told him to take his time as I was not in a hurry, and I would wait. Well, I really think that he was ready for a break. He parked his zero turn Toro and made me a cup of coffee. A good friend is like a favorite shirt; comfortable. It takes no effort to be with good friends.

 

Some of the thoughts and memories just suddenly appear. Today, I thought about my brother Charles. Charles loved music. I remember that he had somehow acquired an old Zenith radio. The radio did not have a plug on it. Don’t ask me, I don’t know. But every Saturday night, Charles would take his pocket knife out and cut a little insulation off the two wires and stick the bare wires into an outlet. I suppose it would not take too much of an effort to put a new wire with a plug on the end, but that was just not Charles’ way. We would gather around that old Zenith and listen to the Grand Ole Opry or the Louisianna Hayride. Well, anyone that knew Charles knew that he had tight black curled hair. He could break a comb just combing his hair. Well, one night, Charles was demonstrating his electrical engineering skills, and he was a little careless. He trimmed the insulation off the plug wire a little too much and as he plugged the two wires into the electrical outlet, part of the bare wire was held by his fingers as he plugged it in.  I was sitting on the floor right by him when all of a sudden, he was knocked from a sitting position to a reclining position about five feet away. I do recall that his hair looked just a mite more curly than normal and his hand was shaking like he had palsy. I was glad that he survived as was he. In about a minute, he had his knife out and was trimming the burnt wires  and reinserting the wires into the outlet. I noticed that he was a little more careful and he paid just a mite more attention, but we listened to some good country music that night. Years later . I was on an Aircraft Carrier as a member of Attack Squadron 144. We had piped in music on the carrier and most of it was pop or rock and roll. I wrote a letter to the Grand Ole Opry and told them that we had no country music on the radio, and could they send a tape so I could ask the Ship’s DJ to play it for us country music fans. I forgot about writing the letter and I figured the Grand Ole Opry had forgotten about my letter. Well, about 3 months later, I received a good-sized package in the mail. When I opened the box, I though of Charles again. The box contained several records of recorded Grand Ole Opry shows. I still have the box and the old records from 60 years ago.

Yesterday, my brother Michael had heart surgery, a triple bypass. I beat him by a few years as I had a triple bypass in 2017. I always took my guitar when I traveled back to North Carolina and Charles would always ask me to play the song “White Silver Sand” Edgar would request “My Favorite Memory of All” and Michael would join me in singing “Thinking About Things”. My first song I learned on the guitar was “Tom Dooley”. I must have played it a million times, and my entire family would groan when I practiced Tom Dooley. They probably hate that song to this day. There was one exception; my Mama would come and ask me to play a song for her. I would ask what she wanted to hear, and she would smile and say “Tom Dooley. My sister, Thelma always liked the song “Precious Memories” and “Peace in the Valley”. My brother Gerald was stuck on the song: “Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain”. When we got out first small TV, Mama always used to like to watch the show “Queen for A Day” but Gerald picked up on the singing advertisements. He would walk around singing, “You’ll wonder where the Yellow went When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent. I don’t know which tune the family disliked more, Tom Dooley, or the Pepsodent song. I still buy Pepsodent Toothpaste with Baking Soda. When I got out of Navy Bootcamp, I was stationed just outside Phoenix, Arizona at a small Naval Air Facility at Litchfield Park with my  high school friend who joined the Navy with me, Henry McDevitt. Henry died recently and I feel  such a great loss; we were such good close friends.

So, when I was stationed in Arizona, I passed by a secondhand store and saw a white Zenith Radio in the window. I rushed in the store and bought that radio, but first I checked to see if it had a plug on the end of the power cord. My hair was curly, but I did not want to have as curly hair as my dear brother Charles.

One of the first songs I heard on my new old Zenith Radio was Merle Haggard singing “My House of Memories”

My brother Edgar had an Airedale dog named Sally. Sally was a good old girl and where you saw Edgar , you saw Sally. They were soulmates as well as best friends. Edgar would take Sally down to Frozen Creek which ran through out property. Sally would jump in the Creek and within minutes, she would hop back upon the bank with a good-sized fish.  Well, Sally got some kind of infection that ate into her eyes, she eventually went blind and instead of walking by Edgar’s side, she would trail behind him at his heels. Sally got sicker and sicker and cried most of the time. Finally, Edgar went and got Daddy’s 22 single shot Remington rifle and told me that he was taking Sally up to the Lissy place and put her out of her misery. He came back about an hour later and Sally was right on his heels. Edgar’s face was all screwed up with a grimace. He told me that he could not put Sally down and he asked me to do it for him. Remember, when I said there is no filter on memories, and the bad and sad ones reside in the back of my mind. I loved Sally also. Edgar handed me Sally’s leash and the 22 rifle and he knelt down beside Sally, took her head in his hands and I remember tears falling on Sally’s red fur. Then he turned suddenly , wiped his eyes, turned his back and walked hurriedly away.  I somehow found the courage to put Sally out of her misery and as I walked back with just her leash, I had tears falling . Such a vivid sad memory.

When Daddy went to Atlanta Prison for selling untaxed whiskey, Thelma and her husband Henson piled all us kids up in a green 1953 Chrysler and drove us to Westport. Oregon. I wrote a story some time back about our family sharecropping in Banks, Oregon and picking strawberries from dawn to dark.  I entitled the story “Strawberry Fields Forever” after an old Beatles song. I have had people ask me if I grew up poor and I tell them; Hell no. I would not trade my memories of growing up for a bucket of gold. A big bucket.  If we were poor, I did not realize it. One of the songs I used to play was a song named “Poor Folks” by Whispering Bill Anderson. One of my favorite lines is: “My papa was a farmer but all he ever raised was us” Later, I learned  a Merle Haggard song with the line: “ I raised a lot of cane back in my younger days, My Mamma used to pray my crops would fail”. More later…..

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