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THURSDAY 16th & FRIDAY 17th
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Rod on Maui, August 2003.
Photo by John Scoggins.
©2003 by Stanyan Entertainment.
A Thought for Today
Better put your money in trust than your
trust in money.
Little Towns & Pretty Places
THE RITES OF REMEMBERING
Some little towns have no name, or if they do it is not the moniker
remembered, it’s the ambiance. A few, or depending on the memory’s
workload, many incidents, faces, truths dispelled or found to be true,
happenings, a favorite picket fence to rat-tat-tat your bat along when
coming home from school, a candy store, the roadway past the junkyard.
Pretty places come to mind more easily. A well-loved tree, a field of corn
or wheat, backyards full of animals or places to hide. A hill climbed
often – the view from that hill in summer and the sledding down it while
the first snowfall was still in progress . . . butts bumping over stones
as the sled was tested far too early.
Finally the little towns and pretty places blur in one long exaggerated
life. They are the same.
- from "Little Towns & Pretty Places", previously unpublished
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THURSDAY 16th OCTOBER
National Boss Day (USA)
Max Bygraves o
Chuck Colson o
Linda Darnell o
William O. Douglas o
Flea o
Gunter Grass o
Jeremy Jackson o
Bert Kaempfert o
Angela Lansbury o
John Loudon o
Kellie Martin o
Eugene O’Neill o
Alice Pearce o
Tim Robbins o
C.P. Snow o
Suzanne Somers o
Morgan Stevens o
Noah Webster o
Oscar Wilde
FRIDAY
17th OCTOBER
Jean Arthur o
Jimmy Breslin o
Sam Bottoms o
Spring Byington o
Montgomery Clift o
Cozy Cole o
Eminem o
Beverly Garland o
Rita Hayworth o
Marsha Hunt o
Alan Jackson o
Wyclef Jean o
Barney Kessel o
Margot Kidder o
Chris Kirkpatrick o
Evel Knievel o
Norm MacDonald o
Arthur Miller o
Pope John Paul I o
Tom Poston o
Gary Puckett o
Howard Rollins o
Irene Ryan o
George Wendt |
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Age
is only irrelevant to the young.
Do not expect loyalty from your friends;
assume it.
Grumblers ought to be made to form a circle
open only to themselves.
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LITTLE TOWNS AND PRETTY PLACES |
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Not the world’s
end or it’s beginning
little towns and pretty places are
remembered lovingly and well,
because we had the time or took
the time to get to know them
they are the Calentes, Alamo
Junctions and Somersets of little
worlds, within our world.
Sometimes a certain tree calls up
a memory of one whole town, or
the branch that broke and survived
two summers as the whittled well worn
crotch of a favored slingshot.
Jawbreakers and red licorice candy,
the monthly present when the grocery bill
was finally toted up and paid.
Somebody’s skeleton of somebody’s kite,
dangling and flapping month on month
from telephone wire graveyards, forgotten
by the child who lost it, but a memory
and memorial to those of us who might
otherwise have relegated to another
head space, a town, a field, a space
that helped to form us.
The little towns with one church spire
and half a congregation. The pretty places
garlanded better than they no doubt were
by our recollections with inspired truth
stretched past the breaking point
of grown up imaginations.
How much is true we cannot know
or speculate, but while others dwell on
past Legionnaire picnics or the day
the sheriff’s car went through the window
of the bon marche, I remember clouds
arranged in special ways or in disarray
of such design it must have been deliberate
and true.
In the little towns I’ve traveled through
or settled in for summers or the week’s end,
the pretty places always seemed to be
above whatever hill or high school campanile
that dominated near and far horizons.
The pretty places were the skies whether
filled with slender billows or clustered ones
in bouquets or bunches.
Mostly after twilight with no screened off
Porch or hammock swing that might
suggest a chance lazy loafing or in
crowds where others boast or brag
or put down hometowns
the memory starts or is concluded.
Little towns and pretty places begin
to dominate the consciousness –
when alone, in conversation, or with
company.
The loudmouth or the school bully
remembers, embellishes, talks often
of the girls he lured into the locker room
or settled down with in the tall grass.
The corporation head recalls
his peanut butter jelly lunch.
The inverted or the shy remembers
books that took four months to read.
And there are the endless stories
of certain grades - or high school plays,
Our Town, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
The Nineteen Fifty-Nine Review.
Harry, or was it Lionel always got the lead
but couldn’t make rehearsal after school
and still win on the football field.
I fall somewhere in between, or not within
a group at all, I tell anyone who’ll listen,
about skies I’ve never seen in cities
Is to me the essence of all the small
communities and places I found pretty.
-from "We Touch the Sky",
1979 |
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