REMEMBERING

Some days I close my eyes and I’m back in my hometown of Staples. It’s the mid-nineteen fifties and I’m twelve years old. Today I got up to another warm, cloudless summer day and put on my old cutoff jeans, a ragged tee shirt that is much too big for my skinny frame, and some old scruffy tennis shoes with connecting knots in the laces where they have broken and been retied many times. I have some cornflakes and make a peanut butter sandwich on homemade bread, wrap it in wax paper and head out the door. It’s August and I know summer vacation is drawing to a close and I need to pack each remaining day with as much adventure as I can.

My bike lies in the wet grass where I left it last night and I wipe off the seat, wet with the morning dew, with the tails of my tee shirt and head for Arnie’s house. Today we’re going to go north of town to the river and find the raft we made last week out of logs and baling twine and hid in the brush. With shades of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, we’re going to float down the river today. We have a starting point but no ending point; we’ll just go until the fun runs out but in the back of mind is a dream that if we were older and braver, we’d be on our way to New Orleans. My parents and Arnie’s parents know only that were going to the river today. They have no idea what we are going to do when we get there—or when we are coming back. Our plan, when we are tired and done with our adventure, is to let the raft float away and hitchhike back to town. Then find someone to take us back out to retrieve our bikes.

 I think how carefree life was back then. Hitchhiking although illegal was done all of the time. I was yet to hear the word pedophile, or pervert. We trusted everyone. Girls were simply the opposite sex and drugs were something your mom got for you, when you were sick, at the pharmacy. We had no money or watches or phones for anyone to steal—not that we believed that could happen anyway. No jet skis or personal watercraft to play on. Part of that carefree attitude came because we weren’t really responsible for much at that age but part of it came, too, because we lived in a kinder gentler world. Kinder and gentler because it was far less complex then today’s world and we had not yet lost our innocence.

As we age we often rebel against the world we now live in and that’s normal. It was that age of our innocence  I spoke of that we remember now, but time has a way of stripping you of that. Now, you don’t want to conform to the present time because you once knew, at least in your mind, a better way. What once was a pristine world is now seemingly polluted and jaded, physically and morally. I remember, years ago, a fresh snowfall and standing on the back porch, gazing out over the beauty of an unblemished landscape. Then, I stepped out into it and went down the road and retrieved the morning paper. When I returned, and before I went inside, I looked back once more and I couldn’t help but think, while looking at my tracks, that I had ruined the whole thing.  Yes, for every action by man, necessary or not, there is a reaction, and it’s not always pretty. Shannon Alder said, “There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or close it.”