The screen doors and wooden floors of the last of the General Stores....
Chocola....
Popcorn popped over an open flame...
The burn of an ice cold Coca-Cola out of a thick green bottle on a hot Summer afternoon...
Little league baseball when the uniform was a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt with the team sponsors name on it...
Hand cranked ice cream makers...
Pressure cookers...
Vegetables out of Ball Mason jars...
Grandma's hand-stitched quilt...
Galoshes...
The smell of an elementary school hallway...
Hand written report cards...
My first girlfriend...
My first kiss...
Detassling corn and walking beans for spending money...
Drive-In movies...
When eating out was a special occassion...
My Dad's laugh...
Banquet Pot Pies...
Paper grocery sacks...
The family garden...
Push mowers without engines...
Lawn edging tools that were hand operated...
Black and white TV's with rabbit ears...
Delivering newspapers door to door...
Home milk and dairy delivery...
A tire swing in the back yard...
The swimming hole...
Grandma's homemade cherry pie...
Storm cellars...
Crank windows...
Reverend Ike on a late Sunday night...
Castor oil...
Summer days of walking barefoot in the grasss...
Summer nights counting shimmering stars on velvet canvasses...
The first touch of Autumn...
Jumping in a pile of leaves...
The first flakes of snow...
Red curved snow shovels...
Moonlight shimmering off of snowdrifts...
High top Converse tennis shoes...
Howard Cosell...
And as the sands of time have probably passed the halfway mark in my life's hourglass I remember thinking I would never get old. Now it seems on a regular basis I try to remember what it was like to be young. I have learned to appreciate leaving an Interstate highway and travelling on the State and county roads more often.
The small towns and communities are nostalgic reminders of a simpler time and slower pace. The City Cafe still causes me to turn into the parking lot and to order the Blue Plate special merely to listen to the conversation of the locals. To be reminded, for just a moment in time, of my childhood in similar places that I haven't been to in years.
On these journeys I have passed many a cemetary in a rural setting. Often I stop and walk the rows of stone memorials to previous lives of flesh and blood. With a startling clarity I realize that these memorials speak of those who also "remembered" and longed for what used to be. I can only hope that this generation to which I belong will leave a legacy that the young among us also view as "The Good Old Days."
"What is life but a vapor that is here and vanisheth away?" Indeed, that is all it is. But like the vapor from Grandma's home canning, I hope the fragance of my "vapor" lasts long after the flame under the pressure cooker has gone out.
your gonna make a grown man cry.
__________________ If I do something stupid blame the Lortab!
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