Just Thinking As We Approach Year's End (déjà vu)

This is a re-post from my currently inactive memoir blog Wrote By Rote.  This post first appeared on December 31, 2011.   





Winds of Change Without Awareness--A New Year's Eve Once Upon a Time

                                                             Image via Wikipedia

I try to remember but I can't. It's the exact year that I don't remember, or most of the details of that evening. I do know it was New Year's Eve.

I was married to my second wife, Susan, at the time. We were in Tennessee at my parents' house. This is where we typically spent New Year's Eve. It was the more happening place between going to Richmond, Virginia, where her parents lived, and being with my family, who were the more fun party people.

My father was still alive at the time, our kids were still babies, and my wife and I were still in our thirties. The house was aglow with lights and music and chatter and laughter as the festivities pressed on toward the turning over of one year to the next. Everyone was having a grand time.

At one point Susan and I decided to go out into the dark quiet of the night to take a break from the activity in the house. It was unseasonably warm that end of December night. Strangely and unseasonably warm--more like a summer night, but with the crisp dryness of autumn.

In silence, we strolled into the expansive back yard to a point that was about fifty yards from the house and sat down side by side in the desiccated winter grass. Wordless, we smoked a joint under a cloudless starry sky and basked in the comforting balminess of the evening breeze. Gazing upon the big house with lights in every window silhouetted against the black night sky, I slipped into a meditation.

Here from where we sat in the back yard, the lights, the house, the people seemed so far away, and it was only Susan and I with our life together beautiful and filled with so much promise. A feeling of serenity and security enveloped me as I clutched Susan's hand. I felt that now was forever and this moment would have no end.

Then a whoosh of warm wind swept over us and I felt exhilarated. With a deep breath I leaned forward to breathe in the moment. It was only Susan and I. Our world was perfect. A mental image of a distant future filled my mind--a place peaceful and beautiful where my wife and I would grow older together and watch our grandchildren grow and we would fade into the twilight years happy with the satisfaction of dreams fulfilled.

That was then, one moment on a New Year's Eve many years ago. Not too many years after that night it ended. Things changed and became different. I'm not even sure what happened or why it happened, but only that it did happen. Susan left and what we had was over. Any dreams she had once had about us were simply shrugged off as she moved on, leaving me to shoulder the burdens of memory and the confusion of questioning why things had come to the point they had reached.

It was one New Year's Eve when things were weirdly warm and sublimely wonderful. It was only an illusion--my personal illusion I guess. The winds bring change that we don't even realize, things we don't understand even after they've blown past us. Life sweeps us forward to where the next adventure awaits. There is time for memories, but no real time for memories. The memories are only illusion.

A new year is a new year and an old year is an old year and all of the years just blend together. Our minds capture certain memories isolated without reference other than the years that came before and the years that followed, whichever those years might have been. And even then we sometimes don't know which years or why.

Capture this moment in time. Savor it and breathe it in deeply. This is the last time you will ever be here.

            Have you ever been swept by a magical wind?   When your expectations aren't fulfilled do you accept your circumstances with a shrug or clenched fists?   How much has your life changed in the past seven years?

History ( #AtoZChallenge )

        To what extent do our possessions reveal our pasts?   Does what we own tell the story of who we are or were?   Or does our life accumulation only deepen the mystery?

History and What Our Possessions Tell About It

        At times I feel like an archaeologist or historian digging down into the strata of the past as I'm rummaging through my accumulation of possessions.   As I continue digging I come to the realization that time does not necessarily correspond in any logical chronology in the way things have settled.

         My previous forays into sorting and organizing have caused a commingling of the older with the newer.  Like things have been placed together in some instances, while at other times, for the sake of expediency perhaps, things might have been boxed together because of size, shape, or some other non-historical criteria. 

        There is usually no great mystery to me concerning my possessions, but to someone else coming upon my trove of material things, perplexed head-scratching might a common reaction.  There is a lot of history confined within the walls of my home, but unraveling the past through my possessions might take a lot more research than anyone might care to put into it.  My history is probably not important unless it somehow affects the one examining my history. And even then would anyone care to invest that time?

        We each have a history that is meaningful to ourselves and not to many others.   Unless we are famous or with some significance to the greater history of humans and the world in which we all live, we and our possessions might be meaningless.  Looking at a city, a neighborhood, we see many microcosms of personal histories.  No one person can study all of those histories, especially when it takes the detective work of piecing together clues by studying the possessions of each individual.

        No one will care about my history like I do.  And no one will understand.  If I get around to it, I will try to categorize and label as much as I can.  That is, if I get around to doing that.  Then, even if it is all neatly sorted and tagged with identifying descriptions, who will care? 

        Do you try to identify things you own so that others will know what it had meant to you?  If you've ever had to sort through an estate, did you ponder the personal historical significance of items?   Have you ever found something in left behind possessions,  in a second-hand store, or elsewhere that had an interesting background that you were able to discover?




     

Garage Sales ( #AtoZChallenge )

  I've been to yard sales that were in yards I guess you'd say, but I can't recall ever having gone to a sale inside a garage.  Does a carport count?...

       
Garage Sales

         There have been a few liquidation sales in my life.  Things piled up so much and due to circumstances I had to get them out of my possession somehow.   As a young man I left some stuff at my parents' house.  But at times things have gotten to the point where things had to go. 

        Rarely have I made much money with a sale at home.  Once I tried going to a flea market and didn't do much better there.  Maybe I should come to the conclusion that I've got a lot of stuff that people don't want or perhaps that I'm just not reaching the right market for what I have.

        The latter is probably true.  I haven't done too badly on Craigslist, but Craigslist is as far as I want to go for now.  There are still a number of things that probably could go on Craigslist.  I'll be working on that.

       In the meantime, there is a community yard sale coming up in a couple of months.  I might do that or maybe not.  But I better not keep avoiding getting rid of stuff.   The garage is poised like a sleeping beast to begin growing anew.  I can't let that happen.

        Sell, sell, sell!  That's my first focus.  But I think a lot of stuff will be given away or tossed.

         Except for the stuff that I will keep for the time being. 


What do you have that you can't bear to get rid of?    What is the dumbest thing that you hang onto?  Have you ever been successful with garage sales?

       
         

Writer's Lament (#IWSG) (#BOTB results)

The best thing about being sick is staying in bed and sleeping all day.  And that best thing is not really a good thing.   I'd rather just sleep at night like I normally do...

         I'm going to keep this as brief as I can since I've been very sick over the past few days and still not up to staying in front of the computer for very long.  Picked up this nasty bug somewhere--maybe from the pneumonia shot I got last Wednesday or maybe from just being at the doctor's office.  Whatever the case might be, I feel lousy right now and I'm ready to crawl back into bed.  Tomorrow will be another--and hopefully a healthier day.

       The results from my Battle of the Bands post are on down the page, but first my post for The Insecure Writer's Support Group...

Join us on the first Wednesday of each month in Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group--a forum of writers who gather to talk about writing and the writer's life. For a complete list of participants visit Alex's Blog. 

The co-hosts for the February 7 posting of the IWSG are Stephen Tremp, Pat Garcia, Angela Wooldridge, Victoria Marie Lees, and Madeline Mora-Summonte!


February 7 question - What do you love about the genre you write in most often?

        Well, sad to say, aside from blogging I haven't been writing anything for quite a while.  Nada!  Zilch!   I've been thinking a lot about writing, but I think about a lot of things and thinking doesn't amount to doing.  Oh, I've been doing lots of other things so all of that might add up to life experience which in turn makes for good fodder for future writing.  But I've been in a sort of a slump--a burn out phase so to speak.  And I've been doing other things that take away from writing time.

       However, when I am writing non-blog stuff then I tend to like to write memoir.   What I love about memoir is that it is real and something that I can readily connect with.  It's something that I enjoy sharing.  It's like when my mother used to tell me stories about her younger days or I used to tell my own kids stories about when I was a lad.  To me, history is important.  I didn't always understand that when I was a high school student plodding through what I thought was useless information.  Now I'd rather learn about history to see how events and people in the past brought us to where we are now and to recognize the mistakes that are being repeated repeatedly.  

       I hope my own personal history doesn't include a me who didn't record enough of my own life and got too busy to write.  But then on the larger scale it probably doesn't matter that much.  Still it should matter to me now.  That's why I need to write.  Again.  More than blog posts.   

Battle of the Bands

      My most recent Battle of the Bands (found here) featured three different band "theme songs."  I had a difficult time coming up with three actual bands so I did have to resort to using two themes from cartoon shows where the characters played in bands.

       This battle did not turn out in any way as I expected.  In fact I was somewhat shocked!   As some of you might have guessed my pick was for the theme of the one real band The Good Rats.  After all I did say they were "one of my favorite rock bands of all time."  And the Rats made a decent showing with voters.  I figured The Archies would win this Battle and the Pussycats wouldn't capture a single vote.  Boy, was I wrong!

Final Vote Tally

Archies                                    2

Josie and the Pussycats        8

The Good Rats                        7

Next Battle on Thursday February 15th

      I will surely be better by then.  Might or might not post anything before that time.  Or I might go back to doing some actual writing.

      Have you evaded sickness this year?   What is your biggest distraction from doing things you want (or need) to do?   Do you enjoy reading memoir?  

The Cigar of Vengeance (#BOTB Results)

        It always seems a bit weird to try to hurt someone else by hurting ourselves.   But sometimes what hurts us seems to hurt so good.

Have a Cigar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Cigar of Vengeance

        In my previous post I told the story about how my mother got revenge on my father by smoking a cigar.  The irony to the story is that my father wouldn't have known that she was smoking the cigar at the time and likely never knew it happened.  My mother was angry at my father and did something that she knew he wouldn't have liked even though he had no idea that she was doing it.  Unless she told him later, it's likely that my father never knew that my mother had smoked that cigar.

         Years later I asked my mother about the incident.  She told me that my father had gone to Las Vegas with a friend of his who she didn't like because she thought he was a bad influence.  Besides, my mother didn't like the idea of being left at home with two young children when he was out having a fun trip.  They were both fairly young at the time having been only married about five years.  Bottom line though is that she was jealous.

          When my parents were still dating my mother was a cigarette smoker.  My father abhorred that practice and made it clear that he would not marry my mother as long as she was a cigarette smoker.  She quit and they got married.  When the Las Vegas incident came about, my mother found a cigar that had been given to my father in celebration of a baby's birth.   To her, smoking that cigar would have pissed my father off though it was not an act that she wanted to blatantly flaunt in front of him.  So I guess she smoked it in some sort of clandestine retribution for his leaving.

           In some ways this does seem a bit odd, but many years later it was something to which I could somewhat relate.  Perhaps taking after my father, I entered adulthood with an abhorrence of tobacco smoke.  Many of my friends smoked and though I tolerated it, I hated it and often let my feelings be known.  Then I met my first wife who was--at least in my view--a rather heavy smoker.  I begrudgingly accepted her habit because, well, because I loved her.  But her smoking was often a source of contention between us.

          Eventually there were so many differences between us that we parted ways--an idea that was more hers than mine.  Strangely, and perhaps not so coincidentally, one of her best friends had split with her husband shortly before our split.  They also had the problem of her being a smoker and her husband being an anti-smoker like myself.  After my wife and I split, I moved in with this guy and to my shock I discovered that he had taken up the habit of smoking.  Soon I too was smoking right along with him, acquiring a two pack a day habit in the process.  I guess our vengeance on our exes was taking up the vice that we disliked most about them.

          Sometimes smoking that big old fat smelly cigar of vengeance is just what it takes to prove a point.   What that point is I don't really know.   I'm not sure about my old roommate, but I took my cigarette habit into my next marriage to another woman who smoked and we both remained heavy smokers for a couple years into our marriage until she became pregnant and we both quit. Both of us quit cold turkey and that was it.  At least until another bout of vengeance reared it's ugly butt.  But that's another story for another day.  So have a cigar, cigarette, or whatever it is you're smoking.


Battle of the Bands Results

       My vote in this Battle between two versions of "Have a Cigar" by Pink Floyd goes to the disco psychedelic take by Little Virgin Experience.  Even though I'm a big fan of acoustic versions of big rock songs, the drive of the pulsating rhythm of Little Virgin captured my heart and I'm almost always a sucker for psychedelic music.   Acoustic jams take me back to the days when my friends would gather with their instruments and play a song into oblivion.  Fun, but no cigar after about fifteen minutes of riffing on the same song.

       The voters had a different opinion as they bestowed an early lead on Atlantis Becoming keeping them in an ever rapidly growing lead to which Little Virgin could never catch up with.  The outcome was very decisive giving the acoustic jam boys a victory in this Battle.

Final Vote Tally

Atlantis Becoming              20 votes

Little Virgin Experience      8 votes


Next Battle of the Bands on Thursday June 1st

       I'll likely have one or two posts prior to the June 1st Battle, but that Thursday Battle is a cinch to happen.  This upcoming Battle will begin my summer posting schedule and the song I'll be choosing will be a older popular standard that is about a beginning.   And though the song might be old, I'll be using versions by more contemporary artists that all of you should know.  These performances might even surprise some of you.  Stay tuned!

        Have you ever tried to get revenge on someone by doing something that was harmful to yourself?   Have you ever been a smoker?    What was it that caused you to first start a bad habit?        






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How Good Were "the Good Old Days"?

         Oh for the good old days when life was simpler and more fun and the world was a better place than it is now.  Looking back it seems kind of nice to be a kid and let my parents worry about the bills and all of the logistics of keeping things going.  All I had to do was just play and enjoy my life.  Life was so much easier back then.  Or so I've heard people say.  But in reality was the past really all that good compared to now?

           I guess a lot of young people roll their eyes when older folk reminisce about how much better things were in the past.  When I was a kid I enjoyed hearing the stories of the youths of my parents and grandparents, but those older times didn't sound all that much better.  What would have been so great about walking three miles to school in the snow?  I doubt that my parents actually had to do that, but it's one of those cliched stories many of us might have heard at one time or another.

           When I was a kid our family wasn't necessarily wealthy, but I didn't ever go hungry and we always had a decent place to live.  Christmases were abundant times and summers were easygoing and gay.  And back then "gay" meant carefree and happy.  There were things to worry about when I was in elementary school, but nothing especially major as far as things in my immediate world.

           The years of junior high and high school brought with it a few concerns, but not much that couldn't be kept in check without too much effort.   I may have been tottering on the cusp of adulthood and yet I could still be stupid and get away with it without too much rigmarole.  Essentially I was a good kid and most everyone else I knew back then was okay too.  A few were outstanding, while some of us had our shining moments that stood out among the typical mundanity of everyday life.  Glory days for some and boring days for others and for the many of us they were just the days to get through in order to get where we were going in life wherever that was.
        
           Were "the good old days" really all that great?   I remember worrying about getting drafted to fight in Viet Nam.  A lot of guys my age went and thanks to a draft number near 300 getting drafted was unlikely in my case.   I stayed home and muddled my way through some college. Fighting a war was not something I wanted to do and thank goodness I didn't have to go, but still it was something I worried about to some degree.

           Then before I knew it the whole being a kid, a teenager, and a confused youth was over and I was an adult.  Somehow being grown up didn't seem all that different in a lot of ways.   Now I had that privilege of being able to look back upon my own good old days.  The older I got, the older those days got until the past became dreamlike in many ways and often a unreliable source of history because it was the past of which I was a part of in some manner of speaking.  Since leaving those good old days I often have to relate to them through things I read or see on television.   I'll watch an old movie that takes place when I was younger and often think to myself, "I don't remember it quite like that."

          The past seems like an interesting place to visit, but I'm not sure that I'd want to live there.  It's not that my memories are bad.  Far from that, my memories are good for the most part.  But those memories are skewed because they are my memories.   If I could go back in time to see what the past was like, there are many points of history I'd want to see.  However the places, people, and times of my past are of special interest to me.  Were they really like I thought they were or was there a lot that I missed that would be important pieces of my personal puzzle that would be of great significance to know?  In many ways I think the actuality of it all would be that my life was even better than I remember.   It's been a good life.  Maybe the days of the world weren't always the best, but my old days were just fine.

          Do you remember the past as "good old days"?     What was particularly good or bad about your own past in comparison to the state of the world and culture at that same time?     Is there another time in which you'd prefer to live over the present?

           This post relates to the theme of my upcoming Battle of the Bands on Friday July 1st.  I'll be presenting two different songs--one which is named in this post--by two different artists who worked together at times and had somewhat parallel careers.  One reached megastardom while the other was known to a number of music fans only having a modest success until his passing in 2015.  Give a guess if you like, but be here on Friday for the answer.


Photo credit:  http://jokideo.com/i-remember-the-good-old-days/

Looking Back (#FlashBack)

         
       It's Flashback Friday - a time of the month where you can republish an old post of yours that maybe didn't get enough attention, or that you're really proud of, or you think is still relevant etc. This blog-go-round is hosted by MICHAEL G D'AGOSTINO FROM A LIFE EXAMINED--THAT'S WHERE YOU'LL FIND THE REST OF THE PARTICIPANTS OR TO JOIN UP YOURSELF.


The post I've chosen for this month first appeared on Tossing It Out on Friday, April 29, 2011. To see the original comments to that post you can click on the title below to be taken to the original post. My reason for choosing this particular post, besides it being as relevant now as then, is that it is related to my next Battle of the Bands post which will appear on next Friday July 1st. ..

Your Yesterdays

"Refuse to write your life and you have no life." - Patricia Hampl

        Your past is the wellspring that supplies all interpretation of who you are and what you know.  A writer who attempts to shake his past becomes a mere amalgamation of the thoughts of others.  In the end that writer who tries to reject his past is merely a poseur who has betrayed his own true essence and is little more than a puppet master of word manipulation.

"Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will."    ~Goethe

           Good or bad, everything that has happened to us in our lifetime shapes our world view.  We are who we have been and what we have known in our lives.  In natural writing this will come across organically and without shame.  No matter how much we try to force our words our true self is hiding somewhere within.  

"Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door."--   Saul Bellow

             Sometimes I hear people saying that they don't want to talk about themselves, they just want to write.  But why do we read a particular writer?  Sure it's the story and the writer's skill, but isn't it also the style?  The style comes from the writer's unique voice and the uniqueness of the writer's voice comes from who that writer is.  That writer persona has been formed and molded from the memories and experiences of the author.  If you want to be known as a writer, then you must speak in your own unique voice.

"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days." --   Flannery O'Connor

         We sometimes hear the protest, "But my life isn't interesting--I've never done anything and nothing has ever happened in my life that's special!"  Therein lies your mission.  You've witnessed plenty in your lifetime. You've got plenty of data stored in your memory banks.  Now it's up to you to put it together into something interesting.  Like the letters of the alphabet can be formed into an infinite number of words, what you know can be put together in countless ways and told over and over.  No one has seen life from your unique perspective.

"The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time." 

--

 George Bernard Shaw

          

Still the stubborn cry may be raised, "I can't keep writing about myself--my readers will get bored."  But perhaps you're confusing the uniqueness of your personal story and the shared experience of the human story.  We still read the great authors of the past because they tell a story that still applies to us in our age.  The settings, the nuances of language, the customs may have changed but the emotions and needs are much the same now as they ever were.  If we can successfully write our own story into the story of humanity then we have accomplished one of the main goals of being a writer.

"Everything one invents is true..." 

        -- Gustave Flaubert

        In one final attempt at argument you might say, "But I want to write fiction. I don't want to write a memoir or about anything that is true."

        It's still about you. Even if what you write is the most extreme fantasy, science fiction, or any other form, you are still part of the story. The story you tell is an extension of who you are and what you know and what you believe. If it's not these things, then what is it? Fiction? There is no real fiction, only fictionalized accounts of that which is true. If this is not the case then the story is not to be believed and the author is a liar.

"In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself."

-- Alfred Kazin

         Often on Tossing It Out as well as my memoir blog Wrote By Rote I have written blog posts based on my life and my experiences.  I don't worry too much whether the readers want to hear about what I think or what I've done in the past.  My main concern is whether it has been written engagingly enough for readers to want to read it and to be entertained in the process.  There are times when I might want to attempt to teach a lesson or even persuade a side of some opinion.  Like any writer, my goal is to please my audience, but since I am the first member of my audience who reads what I have written, my primary goal is to please myself with my work.  If you are not pleased with your writing then you need to write until you are pleased.  Always be honest with yourself.

           Do you think that at its deepest level all of your writing is essentially about you?      How easy is it for you to write without injecting your personal opinions or do you think it is possible not to do so?    Would you rather read something that shared your opinions about issues or something that is very much in opposition to what you believe?

Where Do Ghost Stories Come From?

It's that time of year once again, Halloween ushers in the best holiday of the Holiday season! Taken at La Mesa Oktoberfest in 2007 but still relevant every Halloween. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

        This post did not turn out like I had planned.  I was putting together a post about evil, but when I started correlating the concept not only to Halloween, but to the world in general my mind began to drift to more pleasantness.  Then I started thinking back on the Halloweens of my past.  I have some interesting memories if not totally fun ones.  Maybe the real evil can wait until another post because it's out there whether we can name it or not. No, not in this post.

        And sorry if my title led you here to read ghost stories.  I don't have any special chillers to tell you, but I just wanted to ruminate a bit on memories.  As some of you know I also have a memoir blog called Wrote By Rote which posts every Saturday (except in unique circumstances perhaps). Coming to that blog on October 31 (tomorrow on the day of this post's publication) I'll be discussing the impact that memories can have on who we are and how those memories can be channeled into writing memoir.   In other words I'll be tossing out ideas to the readers just like I do on this blog you're reading now and then hopefully we have a conversation about the topic.

        Think about how "ghosts" are often a metaphor for our memories of bygone people, things, and events.   When I think of it that way I kind of wonder how many ghost stories are actually allegories or symbolic representations of things in the author's own life.

          Oh, if you want to think on that a moment then here's some background music.   "Memories" from the musical Cats is even more beautiful than I remember.




        If you really got into that song like I did, you might want to hear it again.  How about the following version by Barbra Streisand.   I must be in some strange mellow mood tonight as I write this post.  Anyway, here's Barbra.





          Gosh this is almost like a Battle of the Bands post!  I guess you can vote on one of these if you want, but for my real official Battle of the Bands be sure to come back here this Sunday November 1st.   My song for this next round will be another one about memories, aging, and ghosts.  The song will be a far different style--and a bit scarier--than this song from Cats.  It's a song by one of my favorite rock artists.

          See you Sunday!

         What kinds of memories tend to haunt you the most?  What are the most tangible and sensate memories that you hold?    How do your memories communicate with you?

Looking to Be a Starr!

                                                                                                                                                                 

     Some of you might be wondering why the heck I still am sporting these badges on my post today.  Well, anyone who's been around my site long enough knows that I can run something to the limit once I get started on it.  If I like an idea I'll get somewhat obsessed and keep on posting about it.  After all I started that A to Z thing and that can be a bit obsessive too.

      So anyhow if you missed either of the above posts I hope you go visit the Battle of the Bands post and vote on your favorite song version (voting ends tomorrow).  Then check out my entry for the Blood, Boobs, & Carnage Blogfest.   Once you've read these posts you might see some logical progression that leads to my post today.

The Song

      My biggest takeaway from seeing the film Circus of Horrors was the catchy pop tune "Look for a Star".  The only place I ever recall hearing that song was in that movie where it was played so many times and was so memorable that the song stuck in my head for months after I heard it.

       By 1964 I had started acquiring my own record collection.  I started out with the 45's that only had a hit song on one side and a lesser known "B" side.  Soon I discovered that I often liked the "B" sides as much or more than the hits.  At about a dollar a pop, the 45's didn't seem like such a bargain compared to an album with ten or so songs for a couple bucks more.  My interests became more directed toward the long play albums--more songs and you didn't have to change the records so often.

       But in the summer of 1965 when I found 45's at a clearance sale for the amazing price of 20 for one dollar, I couldn't resist.  I was living in Crown Point, Indiana at the time.  A friend and I had taken the bus to a shopping center on the outskirts of the city of Gary and it was at the Sears Department Store where I found the irresistible record sale.

        With only a few bucks in my pocket I was still able to buy sixty 45's.   Most of the songs and artists I had never heard of, but musical adventurist that I was, the obscurity of the music made no difference to me.  I had a musical listening adventure ahead of me.  I also had a copy of the song that been haunting me, "Look for a Star" by Garry Mills.   That find alone was almost worth the three dollars that I had paid for 60 records.

The Inspiration

        For anyone who is not familiar with my history, my family had a juggling act that we performed when my father wasn't working his regular job.  When we lived in San Diego from 1959 to 1963 our bookings were few since there wasn't much show biz activity in that area, but through constant practice we honed our act into a top notch club passing act.  After we moved to the Chicagoland area in late 1963 we signed on with one of the top Chicago agents and soon we were working regularly on weekends.

        During the summer and on a few rare occasions during other times of the year my father would take work vacations so we could work brief stints on the fair and shrine circus circuit.  I grew to love the lifestyle and the thrill of performing.   In my fanciful thinking I wished that we could live on the road working the show business life all the time.  My parents dreamed the same thing, but the practical side of my father told him to keep his good job with a guaranteed income--not as much fun, but it made far more sense.

         Still, a desire for the call of the road and the roar of the crowds was luring me to some future in the world of show business.

The Dream

          While I was still in junior high school I began to dream about the act that I would create for myself.  At first I came up with an idea of a chair that I would balance on the two rear legs and then have a ladder which I would climb up while it was balanced upon the balanced chair.  It would all be a prop with a mechanical gimmick that I had meticulously planned in my mind.  No actual balancing would be involved regarding the chair or the ladder and the greatest danger would be falling off.  Perched atop the ladder I would perform various stunts like handstands, prop balancing, and juggling.

         This all seemed like a pretty good idea, but then I decided to make it all more flashy by using a large five pointed star prop instead of the chair.  I would mount the star and balance it on one point while using the top points for attaching the ladder and other gimmicks.  As I envisioned it, I could decorate the star or even install lighting within it.  There were all sorts of possibilities that began to enter my mind.

          As I considered the tricks that I could perform and the routine that would incorporate those tricks, I also imagined the music I would use in my act.  The song choice was immediately obvious.  I would use the song "Look for a Star"--it would be perfect.    Picturing myself performing atop a ladder balanced on top of a giant balancing star as the song "Look for a Star" played, my stage name jumped out at me.  Ricky Starr!   

          Maybe the name came to me as a mash-up between Ringo Starr and Ricky Nelson, but I thought it rocked and was very appropriate to my dream image of the act that I would one day perform at fairs and circuses across the country and maybe even around the world.

          Ricky Starr.   I liked the sound of it.

The Reality

         That balancing act dream never came to anything other than passing time in my junior high classes looking out the window and fantasizing.  Even occasionally in high school I would sometimes daydream about it.  I drew up the plans for the prop that I would one day have built for me.  But it never happened.

          However it wasn't a totally impossible dream.   I did go into show business and toured for many years as a juggler, performer, and show manager.  The road, the roar of the crowds, and show biz life all became a reality for me. 

          In my dreams I was looking for Ricky Starr, but in the real world I found myself.  

          What dreams about your future did you have when you were young?   How many of your childhood and adolescent dreams have you achieved?    Does any part of travelling with a circus or carnival appeal to you?

For more memoir visit my other blog Wrote By Rote

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Vacation Adventures with Guest Hijacker Jarm Del Boccio

           It's vacation season for many of us.   I'm just returning from an 2 1/2 week road trip to Houston, Texas and Orlando, Florida and back to my home in Los Angeles.  Perhaps I'll relate some of that journey in weeks to come, but for today we have a vacation memory from my guest Jarm Del Boccio who can be found at her blog Making the Write Connections.  In this season appropriate post, Jarm retells a story that she first presented during the A to Z Challenge.

Road-Tripping Vacation Memories 1950s Style

Debonair Mom!

        Every summer, since both my Mother and I followed the school holiday schedule (she was a school social worker), we would take off  in one of the cardinal directions to visit family and friends.  I remember a red Ford station wagon in the 50's,  a blue Rambler wagon in the 60's, and later, a white Rambler Marlin with red interior that Mom let me choose from the used car lot!  Heading out west we would camp along the way.  Any other trip we would stay a night in a motel.

Me next to our red Ford
StationWagon

          One such accommodation reminded me of the Bates Motel in Psycho (which I watched as a child with my best friend one night).  I timidly checked behind the shower curtain, and was relieved to find it clean and empty.   Even so, I was a bit uneasy during our stay. We left without incident, and headed towards our destination.  

          We would stop often to take a break, and ended up many times at Stuckey's (we never did figure out if the u was short or long).  There we enjoyed all things pecan; my favorite being pecan pie.   I remember a shop with all sorts of souvenirs; ash trays, toothpick holders, diaries...all stamped with the state we were traveling through.  Then there were the pecan goodies...pies, tarts, brittle, and candies.

          Our trip from Chicago to Alaska one summer was memorable, not just because of the distance, but because of the fact that my Mom, in her late 50's now, took a friend along to help with the driving.  Nothing unusual about that, except her friend Alvina, had a broken leg. Thankfully, it was her left, so, we were okay, but Mom did most of the driving.

Mom and Me with Uncle Sam
in Alaska

           Well, for awhile anyway, until the return trip. We headed down the AlCan Highway, which just happened to be under construction that summer.  I don't know if she wasn't paying attention to the road, or lost control, but Alvina drove our red Ford station
wagon over the boulders heaped up in the median strip, ripping out the entire underside of the vehicle.  Somehow, out of nowhere, a semi came into view, and ended up rescuing us.  What an adventure it was for me to sit in the upper bunk of the 18 wheeler as we drove to our lodgings for the night!  A missionary family, the Crabbs, whom my mother had contacted in our plight, took us in for the night. We ended up staying with them while our car was being repaired.

         

        In my early childhood, we had an ugly Army green Hudson that crawled up the curb and hit a light post with myself and my cousins from NY crammed inside.  It seemed that Mom was distracted with something, and didn't notice that one of us was sitting on the shift, and it had launched the car into the drive position.  No injuries, just a bit shaken that's all!

        Mom loved to be on the go...she drove on the interstate, down country roads, and through fog up in the Rocky Mountains at night.  One summer we drove through Yellowstone National Park, and as a large black bear approached the car, I screamed, "Shut the window, shut the window"!   She calmly passed it by and moved on...Mom was
invincible!

Mom, Me (on left) and NY
family

        Mom traveled to Europe in her early teens with her own mother, and then later, with me in my early teens.  It seemed like a right of passage.  I didn't want to go to Europe.  I wanted to stay at home with my friends.  But, what an experience and education I
had...I wouldn't trade it for anything!

        We visited family in Bratislava during the summer of 1968.  I remember feeling the tension in Czechoslovakia, something in the air. I was afraid for some reason that we would be stuck in the country, and my worst fears were realized.   At the border, on our way out, we were detained by the Communist guards because we did not have the correct papers.  I sat down and cried, "I told you so!", as Mom deftly but firmly negotiated with them.  She had no fear and no foes...only the desire to turn wrongs to right.

        Thankfully, her Slovak cousin, John, a communist sympathizer (only to keep his job), vouched for us, so they let us go.  A week later, sitting in Wimpy's burger restaurant  somewhere in London, Mom opened the newspaper, only to discover that the Russians had invaded Czechoslovakia.  We escaped none too soon!

       Every four years, we would take a trip to the World's Fair... first Seattle, then, New York, Montreal and finally, New Orleans, which were spread throughout my childhood summers.  Mom took reel after reel of Super 8 movies, but, unfortunately, she moved the camera so fast, that we became car sick reviewing it.  Add to that her penchant for
cutting heads off in the process and you get the picture...not much quality footage, but an awful lot to laugh about! 

Mom and I in the
90's...she lived almost to 100!

        One year we took the Santa Fe railroad from Chicago to California, where we had visited neighbors who had moved west a few years before.  I vaguely remembered our trip, but did enjoy the challenge of walking from train to train, across the gap between the cars.  Here, too, Mom filmed the rolling countryside with her movie camera, scanning the scene instead of holding the camera steady.  What resulted was enough to make one cross-eyed!

       What adventures we had!  Now I continue the tradition with my family.  This blog post is a tribute to the wonderful trips we have taken together.

What family vacations are memorable to you?  Do you have a "dream vacation" yet to plan?

       
           Be sure to visit Jarm Del Boccio at her blog Making the Write Connection.

          For those of you who enjoy reading and writing memoir, be sure to visit my blog Wrote By Rote.  On that space I share some of my own memories as well as those of my many guests.   There is also much helpful advice about writing memoir and getting published.   I welcome and strongly encourage guest posts on that site and I hope to hear from you.
     

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