Thursday October 28, 2021 'Way Back

 'Way Back, A Long Time Ago

   It was Saturday, October 23rd, when I received a small brown envelope from friends in Iowa, one of whom I’ve known since 1963. In the envelope was a fine example of his wife’s cursive hand-writing; an execution of penmanship a person doesn’t see anymore unless it’s computer generated.

   There were also seven old yellowed photographs, all dated August 1984. Four images were of me, one was of my white German Shepard named Jake, and three were of an eight or nine-year old blonde-haired boy, named Ryan, who had been fishing with us. I looked at those in disbelief, totally confounded about the event, and the fact that these photographs were sent to me by these friends. What? How can this be?

... bare-chested, pre-beer belly me.

   Three of my photos were bare-chested, pre-beer belly me at the Lake of the Woods (shirtless: a outdoor phenomenon totally unknown these past years except during a clothes change or in appreciative receipt of a beautiful morning along Mikinaak Creek out the back door of our house.)

   Two others had me on The Lohre Bridge (what we now call the Beito-McDonnell River Bridge) over the South Fork of Roseau River. My white German Shepard, Jake, looks up at me from along the river below. I had him put down in 1985 because of the disabling effects of Hip dysplasia and injuries resulting from being struck by a car and dragged a distance under it, seven years earlier. 

Jake

   Then there were three photos of Ryan. One was of him with me on the bridge proudly hoisting a small northern pike on his fishing line; another was him with me, presumably along the LOW shoreline, and another was him with his stepdad sitting on a couch in my mobile home. For the life of me I cannot remember why Ryan would’ve been there with us. I just drew a complete blank, so I called my friend, Kerry, whose wife, Ellen, had sent me the photos.

   Pressed for information about Ryan, I queried Kerry further.
“Inviting Ryan along was your idea,” he replied.

   “It was?” I answered with some real incredulity in my voice; my cerebral memory ‘file cabinets’ were rocketing open through the immeasurable vastness of my life-long recordings I’ve imbibed these past seventy-one or so years of my pre and post-born existence. 

   “I don’t remember this at all.”

   “You thought our son, Patrick, should have a friend to go fishing with that weekend,” he said. “You don’t remember that? [ARGH] I go through this all the time! [No one remembers these things! It’s as though I’ve lived my life alone!”

   I ignored his frustration momentarily, trying as I might to re-run my weakened memory 37-years ago back to 1984 and in particular, that weekend in August. I distinctly remembered taking Patrick fishing on the Hwy. 89 bridge over the river, maybe on the Lohre Bridge, and helping him catch northerns from a deep hole in the riverbend immediately west of the bridge. But I don’t remember Ryan being with us at all; I had to depend on Kerry’s memory.

   “How the boys get along?” I asked him tentatively, not wanting to hear something bad had developed and that Patrick still suffered from the experience, for there weren't any pictures of Patrick in this collection. Didn't he go that day?

   “Wonderfully,” he said simply. “They got along fine. So you’re telling me, you don’t remember us going over to his house either?”

   “WHAT?” I may have choked and gasped, my brain trying to piece together the image he was trying to paint for me. 

   “We all went over to his house to eat ...”

   I was out in left field awaiting the fly ball of memory to fall into my glove, my brain parts racing around through the dusty file drawer folders of our youth, when SMACK! I caught it with a offhand casualness unnatural to me, athletically-speaking.

   Although I still didn’t have all the particulars of the memory, when Kerry said we had gone to the boy’s house to eat, I suddenly envisioned its location in rich detail and said, “You know that big old farmhouse, the barn, and all its outbuildings aren’t there any more. The only things left are the big oak trees that stood around it. A sad thing really.”

   Loss of memory affects people differently; some retain memory into their nineties, others like myself, I guess, start losing it in their seventies. It doesn’t frighten me as I think it a natural process of aging, but it does create situations that can lead to wildly interesting conversations and a revival of memories one has forgotten, that only need a little inspiration to get back, if only temporarily.
 

   Chairman Joe prolongs his memories throughout his life because he’s kept a lifelong diary which he religiously maintains. If he had been on hand in August of 1984 for the fishing adventure Ryan and Patrick experienced, its details would’ve been recorded in his classic left-handed, super-script, hieroglyphic writing.
 

   I kept a journal titled "Cold Coffee and Warm Beer," during those early years; several hundred pages of essay-like stories all handwritten whose pages were purged every so often afterward when the mood or need arose; names and dates redacted as though what I wrote would ever become valuable after I died. This fishing trip may be in there. I haven’t revisited that collection for over a decade as it’s buried in a place that would take a goodly amount of time and beverage to retrieve.

   Visiting with my long-time friend Arthur, from northern California, a day or so later the subject of these old photographs and the fact I had forgotten much of the event came up when I thought of Kerry and Ellen’s early matrimonial beginnings, drawing a blank on that as well...

   “Did we attend Kerry and Ellen’s wedding? I have no memory of it — except envisioning Ellen in a wedding dress and veil (or maybe it’s just a fantasy of mine, I’m not sure…) I talked to Kerry and he filled me in on the photographs. He did say that you two have talked about memories of things he had forgotten and you had remembered, and visa versa. Talk to me, Arthur. Tell all.”

   Art wrote back: “I remember bits and pieces. I don't remember how we got there. I do remember being in her folk's house, I believe. It was the first time I had ever tasted morel mushrooms. Delicious! It was the season for them I believe, so it must have been in the spring, April maybe.

   My response: “I won’t think less of you for it. I forwarded our email transaction to Kerry to get the low-down on it, so we’ll see what he has to say. If neither of us can remember it, the thing is he can make the whole thing up and we won’t know the difference. I read that the brain makes up stories that fit a person’s expectations. 

   So as I read your email, I got a picture in my head about some things too, like being in a farmhouse near Diagonal, IA, with a floral pattern on its walls and some younger guys that were Ellen's brothers, and I can see... maybe her dad? A big guy, wasn’t he? Seems he had dark hair and a reddish, ruddy complexion like farmers had before they all got air conditioned tractor and combine cabs.

   Art: “I remember paying the preacher for his service. I can't seem to remember beyond that. Don't know what I wore or if we stayed over! Sorry, not a whole lot of info to share!”

   Me: “Did we both pitch in on it or was it only you that got grabbed for it? I always wondered why the brides and grooms took off right after their weddings, ‘back in the old days.’ Now I know it was to escape having to pay for the thing!

   “I can imagine Kerry saying to the preacher, when the guy cornered him after the reception, “Uh, you see that husky guy in a tux over there, the guy with the goatee? He said he’d pay for the wedding … Yeah, that guy with dark brown wavy hair, broad shoulders and big biceps … wearing square-toed motorcycle boots with a leather strap at the ankles … Yep, him. He said he’d pay for everything… Thanks again ... Wonderful service! Gotta go! BYE!”

   “Now that may or may not have happened. We’ll have to see what Kerry says to be sure.”

   Art quickly responded back: “I didn’t pay for the wedding, I paid the preacher for his services. And not out of my pocket! I was given the money to pay him.”

   I emailed back, “Are you sure Kerry didn’t shaft you and you’ve chosen to downplay it all these years? The brain protects us too— did I mention that? We could’ve taken the money and had a good time! Or did we??”

   I emailed Kerry: “YOU’VE GOT ALL THE ANSWERS BUDDY!"

 

"You drove your MGB."

    Kerry wrote back: “You drove your MGB. You and Art looked good in the tuxes. We stayed in Creston, Iowa, at a motel. We almost got kicked out because you and Art put the pillows under a blanket to look like a person sleeping. Art was the groomsman and you were the best man (kind of pushing it now, I think ) Ellen has a picture of you getting out of bed at the motel. I have lived my life alone!!”

Alas, we’re old men now. “Bookends.”

“Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, A time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; They're all that's left you.”

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Paul Simon
Bookends Themes lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group