A Memory Question

 Memory is a strange thing. I just finished a book that I first read 30 years ago. I remember it quite differently. 

Then I would have recommended it to my JROTC students. For some reason, I did not. Now I would not have recommended it.

As far as war stories about Vietnam go, it was a very good read. It just bothers me that I remember it so differently. But then, the story is about one soldier and how he remembered events and changed them in his mind.

I wonder why I did.

Sledding in PA

 Remember a few days ago I promised to write about this?

Well, it's a Yankee Jumper. I don't know how popular they were everywhere, but growing up in SW Pennsylvania we all had them. They were cheap and easy to make. My father made one for me and then another for my brother. Our grandparents - Pop's parents - lived in the country about 30 minutes away, and every Sunday we'd go for dinner. In the winter when it had snowed, all of the cousins (about a dozen then) would meet on the top of the hill leading down the lane to their home and use our sleds or jumpers. 

Some Jumpers had a metal strip for a runner. I don't remember one, but it probably was there. It would be much harder to "ski" without it. I call it skiing because that is how you guided it and stopped it. You leaned to the right or left to guide it, all the while holding on to handles on the side of the seat. To stop it, you did what skiers did, turning the runner and leaning inward digging into the snow. 

Cheaper than a sled and faster too!

 

A Lost Summer

On this morning's news, a segment was about the reporter was calling this coming summer as "The Lost Summer". I heard that term in a movie I watched the other evening. It was called "The Big Chill", about several college friends who get together for a funeral of a mutual classmate. I may have also read it, but not sure. It doesn't matter. It was enough to get me thinking about what we are going through with COVID-19 and probably will when summer does show up. It's making me remember things of past summers, both recent and long ago.

Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, grade school summers were full of playing outside with my younger brother and our collie dog, Bambi. When we weren't playing two-person baseball, we were often going down into the backwoods making camps and generally exploring.

High school summers were filled with summer jobs and band practices for fall football games. I remember a few vacations where we would visit relatives in Maryland near Washington D.C., stopping at the Gettysburg battlefield along the way. I remember a vacation through Virginia (actually near here) to see the Endless Caverns. My first jobs were cutting grass and driving for a blind lady.

Summers during my college years was consumed with making money for college and living. I was staying at home so I saved a little. My jobs were varied: motel desk clerk, driving for that same blind lady, and finally janitor for the district Bell Telephone headquarters building one-half block from the college. I got that job during my freshman year and kept it straight through graduation, working during the school year as well.

After graduation, I went into the Army and summers disappeared. That is to say, the seasons ran together except for holidays. I took time off or vacations when my duties allowed.

I don't foresee an early end to this seclusion. There won't be any traveling to see daughters or grandchildren. No vacations with my wife. I have a couple of books by Bill Bryson that I think I will read. One, a re-read, is "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" and "One Summer: America 1927". The first is about the author growing up in the 1950s in Iowa in a town very similar to mine and doing things very much like I did. We're about nine years different in age so it was a fun read. The other is self-explanatory.

Maybe this is a good time to get serious about writing that novel.