It’s funny how sometimes the least little thing can trigger a distant memory.   Maybe it’s brought on by some piece of insignificant trivia from years ago,  or a casual reference to a time and place you’ve lived through, or a taste, or even a smell.    Whatever the trigger,  suddenly  it’s story time and from wherever it is they’ve been lurking, the memories and stories come pouring in like a flood.

Stories.   I love to tell ’em, and I love to hear ’em.   So here are a few random memories of mine.

I remember when I was probably about 8 or 9 years old, going down to the railroad depot in my hometown, watching the passenger trains roll through, usually with an old black porter there to assist people on and off the train.  Sometimes when a train was just rolling through without stopping I’d stand there (maybe a little too close to the tracks) and watch the brakeman leaning way out from the caboose to grab a message or schedule update or something that the depot manager had left for them in a special cradle that was right there by the tracks.  Nearby, on the freight platform there were often these carts with big metal wheels that would be loaded with crates and crates of downy soft  baby chicks, ready for delivery to a chicken farm somewhere.  I loved to poke a finger into one of the air holes in the side of the box and let the little yellow chicks come and peck my finger.  I can still hear them cheeping excitedly if I just close my eyes and listen.  I can still smell the damp straw in the boxes too.

Or…..

I remember walking home from first grade one day for lunch with a girl in my class named Melanie.  She was an exotic looking olive-skinned, almond-eyed girl.  I didn’t know her very well, but her house was a couple of blocks from mine in a nice neighborhood.  I don’t know why I was walking home for lunch that day, because I usually ate a hot lunch at school, or took one in my rectangular Hector Heathcoate lunchbox with matching thermos.  On this day however, Melanie and I walked home together, just poking along laughing and playing and being in no particular hurry.  After we got to her neighborhood, she headed toward her house and I went on to mine.  Mom was really upset that I’d taken so long to get home.  She told me I didn’t have time to sit down and eat and walk back and get to school on time, so she made me a quick peanut butter sandwich to eat in the car and took me right back to school.  And even though the school was only about five blocks from my house, I was indeed late getting back.  I remember the sick feeling I had when I saw that the playground was already empty from the after lunch recess. So when mom pulled up outside the schoolhouse (Eugene Field Elementary…. Green and White our colors flying, emblems of the true!   Eugene Field hear us singing our praise to you …), it had a sort of spookiness about it.   I had to go in through the big front doors of the building, into empty halls, and walk down to Mrs. Bailey’s classroom, and enter late with everyone looking at me while I walked across the room to my seat. And then I saw that Melanie still wasn’t back.  In fact, she never came back at all that day, and I never found out why.

I remember another time when Melanie had invited me to her birthday party.  I went to her house in clothes that mom had picked out and made me wear, even though I’d protested getting “dressed up”.  I had a tiny wrapped box with (I think) a delicate little inexpensive necklace in it that my mom had picked up for me to give as a gift.  I rang and rang and rang the doorbell, but there was no answer.  I walked around the house to the back yard and knocked on the back door.  No answer.  So I walked back towards my house.  But I realized I couldn’t go in without a big ordeal about “Why aren’t you at the party?”.  So I sat on the corner of Clark and Green Boulevard watching the cars and trucks, until I thought the party should have been over, then went on home.   I hid that box with Melanie’s necklace in it, still wrapped.  I kept it, unopened for years.  Whenever I’d see it, it always reminded me of the mysterious birthday party that never happened, and it’s maybe part of the reason why I’ve always felt there was something a little creepy about unwanted social gatherings.  I never found out what happened to the party.  And after Melanie moved away sometime within the next few years, I never saw her again.

Or….

I remember going to my Pa-Pa’s (my grandfather) house for a visit almost every weekend,  and having SO many adventures.  He lived alone in a little house with no running water, at the end of a country road with a pond out front, with a barn on the side which held among other things, his  blacksmith shop.   He’d been a blacksmith for much (if not all) of his working life.  My cousin Karl and I liked to go out to Pa-Pa’s shop and turn the crank handle on the forge, and watch the coal dust and ash blow up in the air into billowing black and grey clouds. We’d end up dirty from our toes to the top of our heads. If the weather was suitable, sometimes we’d take a dip in the pond or down in Cedar Creek to wash the dirt off.  Or else we’d stand at the old crank pump in front of his house, draw up a pail of water and wash down with a rag in the cool well water.  I loved to get a dipper of that water, still cool from from the well, and sip to my heart’s content.   On one trip, And I still don’t know why we did this, I remember taking his blacksmith’s tools along with my cousin Karl, and throwing them into that smelly hole in the outhouse and watching them splash down in the nasty muck.  And yes, we DID get in trouble. One of the only times I can remember being in a LOT of trouble as a child.  I was such a sweet boy, you know.  (It’s ok, moderate chortling allowed here) .  My dad (bless his heart) fished the tools out of the crud, but Karl and I had to clean them in a wash tub without benefit of running water, dry them, and finally rub them down with a liberal coating of oil to prevent rust.      Yuck.  I still have some of those tools today.

I can also remember when I was just a REALLY little guy, crawling up into my Pa-Pa’s lap and resting my head on his shirt and thinking how it great it smelled.  Bacon grease, coal fire, gravy and old biscuits, and Prince Albert cigarette tobacco.  Right up until  just before his death in the early 1970’s,  Pa-Pa lived in that little house  with no running water or indoor plumbing.  My dad’s mom died when he was a toddler, so he and my aunt Evelyn were raised by Pa-Pa as a single dad.  After grandma died in the early 1920’s, Pa-Pa never remarried.   In those later years, most days he would cook breakfast for himself, and then cover over the leftovers on the kitchen table with an old greasy table cloth to keep the flies away…. just so he could uncover it all and have lunch of leftover biscuits, country ham, sausage, or bacon, and maybe even cold scrambled eggs, whenever the spirit moved him.  In addition to that cool and refreshing well water, I remember drinking a warm Pepsi Cola almost every time I went to his house.  It was warm because Pa-Pa liked them that way, and there was no use wasting space in the icebox to keep Pepsi cold for visitors.  On many of those trips, I looked forward to going out beside the house with my dad to shoot bottles or Maxwell House or Prince Albert cans off of the fence with dad’s pistol.   I loved the smell of the spent bullets, and would always gather up and keep the empty shells.  Back home, they’d become the spent casings of huge cannon shells when I’d set up my army men.

Or ….

I remember a time I went with a group of older kids to a very large private estate, and despite the “No Trespassing” signs at the front entrance, we went onto the property to explore.   It was the A.P. Green Estate in my hometown of Mexico, MO.  Along with this group of kids, I walked all the way to the back of the grounds,  to the  boathouse.  This was well over a mile from my house…. probably more like two.  No doubt the farthest into unfamiliar territory that I’d ever been away from home without mom and dad at that point. No, we probably shouldn’t have been there.  Yes, it was quite an adventure.  There were three brothers Rex, Rodney, and Reggie, who lived next door to me and they’d gone along.  All three were older, and I recall that they were often pretty mean to me. Especially when more kids their own age were around.  Back by the boathouse, Rodney and a couple of other kids grabbed me and threatened to throw me in the lake.  I struggled and got free and ran off.  But they caught me and locked me in the boathouse by wedging the door closed with a stick.   Then they all left without me and headed back home.  I couldn’t get the stick free, and with no other options, I ended up jumping into the lake, which as it turns out was only a little over waist-deep there.  Then I waded out and around.  So I was left there alone, soaking wet.  And since I hadn’t really paid attention during our hike there, I had no really good idea even of how to get home.  So I started walking.  I walked and walked and walked in the hot sun and wondered if I’d ever find my way back out. I remember that I was starting to panic a little.  Finally from across the fields I saw Rex, who was usually a little nicer to me than his brothers.  I hollered for him to find out how to get home.  Even though he didn’t stop to wait for me, he DID point the way, and said to just keep walking.  I eventually found my way back out to the road and made it home.

Or ….

I remember going with my buddy Marty Hamilton to the DX station and buying a pack of cigarettes (Marlboro Filters in a hard pack) when we were about eight or nine and riding our bikes to a spot under the “overhead bridge”.  This was the big bridge into the downtown area on Clark Street, which doubled as US 54 in the days of my youth, where the highway crossed over the railroad tracks.  This was the spot where all the railroad bums slept off their drunk while waiting for the next freight to hop. We went down there, found some rocks to sit on, smoked cigarette after cigarette as we watched the trains go back and forth.  We picked up empty whiskey bottles and threw them high against the concrete bridge abutment and laughed when they shattered and the glass would cascade down around us.   The power plant for our town was near the bridge, and at that time they still used coal. We climbed high atop the coal heap and slid down time after time, and played king of the hill till we were both black as miners.  Then we rode our bikes to a creek behind his house,  “bathing” in our clothes and all so our moms wouldn’t know we’d been down at the tracks.  After we were thoroughly soaked, Marty realized he’d left the remainder of the cigarettes and matches in his pocket, so our “investment” was ruined.  But we did the same thing again the next day.

Or ….

I remember going on our bikes to the lumber yard and sifting through the scrap lumber finding just the right pieces of wood to take home and nail together into “boats”.  A 1 x 6 with a several small blocks of wood nailed onto it would become an aircraft carrier.  A 2 x 4 with the same small blocks was a battleship.  Ten-penny spike nails, hammered in and bent over became the guns, and a magic marker identified the craft as friend or foe, depending on the presence of a star or swastika.  Never mind that these boats often would not have floated upright.  My friends and I had incredible naval battles in the gravel driveway, under the summer sun.

Or ….

I remember going to the Cities Service gas station next door when I was probably six or seven to get a soda, and the man there gave me a comic book they had for the kids of service station customers.  The one I remember best was “Eager Beaver” and his family, going to New York City for the World’s Fair. There was a map of the US that showed their route, and the book told about all the things Eager Beaver and his family (Mom, Dad, and two kids) did once they got to the Big Apple. They went to the Automat (does THAT date me?), to the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and even to the United Nations.   They also visited the World’s Fair, which may have actually been the main reason for the trip. (This date would place the comic book as 1963 or 64).  Oddly enough, this little gem is the one of the first things I remember ever seeing that led me to know there was a big nation out there beyond my own block, and that we lived in world full of other countries with other cultures. The other cool thing about the Cities Service station was that they had a vending machine that stood out by the street and sold MILK!.  You could get a half gallon, a pint, or a pint of chocolate milk (my favorite), straight from the Sky-Go dairy to you.  “From Cow to Carton, Untouched by Outside Air!”

So these are the kinds of things that continually dance on the edges of my consciousness.  They’re just out of reach until some unforeseen trigger pulls back the curtain and allow them to pour out into the light of day.

Here’s the deal …  your personal stories, even the seemingly insignificant ones, are important.

Don’t miss this point :  Stories matter.

Told well, they can be powerful sources of connection and  inspiration.  They can lead to greater understanding of one another, and often have the power transform the way we experience the world.

Stories are a gateway to love.

Has anyone told you that YOUR own personal story is AMAZING?   Well, it is.

I know that I can say that without reservation, because it’s true of everyone.   Perhaps you don’t realize it yet.   Perhaps you’ve forgotten.

Again, don’t miss this point:   YOUR story is powerful and moving, and it matters.  It is what makes you who you are.

Keep your stories alive and share them with your kids or your grand-kids.  Share them with anyone who’ll listen.  Write them down.   Record them.  Even if you’re not a “techie”, it’s never been easier to record audio or video of you or your loved ones telling their stories.

Make it a point to listen to StoryCorps as featured on NPR,  an amazing program that not only shares amazing stories of extraordinary ordinary people, but also encourages people to believe in and honor the power of their own stories.  And their website has practical guides on how to record stories from your circle of friends and loved-ones.    As Dave sas, Listening is an Act of Love.

As for me, some of my very best memories are of things that I feel like I lived vicariously through my mom’s stories.  They’re the times I’d lay in bed before going to sleep, and she would come in and tell me about the things that she remembered from when she was a little girl.  From the way she would go outside to the chicken yard to catch a chicken, step on its neck and pull its head off.  For FRYING, not for meanness!  Then there was time she and her older sisters decided to take a shortcut across a field, and were chased by an angry sow who thought they were threatening to her baby pigs.  And there was the time her brother, my Uncle Curt was struck by lightning during a storm and the doctor came to the house and treated his burns with camphor.  So whenever she would smell the little bottle of “Campho-Phenique” that she used on my cuts and scrapes, she’d have to tell me the story of Uncle Curt and the lightning strike.  The list and the tradition goes on and on.   I can’t tell you how much I’d give to hear her tell  one of  those stories again.

Make some story time for your loved ones and for yourself.  Write when you can.

love,
John