Fusing Imagination with Memories

“Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.”― John Betjeman

I wrote this journal entry in 2000 in my early grandfather years. Still a rookie, I was in a juxtaposition between my current world reality and a distant time when innocence went unrivaled and unchecked.

Memory Triggers

I often marvel over our grandkids’ attraction for certain toys and games. Addee pretending to steer a make-believe car in the back yard; Evan putting together his track for his Thomas trains; Nikki and Lexi pretending that they are dogs, on all fours. The ability to make-believe somehow disappears after a certain age, I guess, but when I think about it, it can come back vividly even when I am 60. I don’t always know what triggers these memories, but they are usually accompanied by an emotional feeling that never quite left me.

It can come at a time when I see a semi-truck backing up, seeing a baseball card, or watching an old cowboy movie. Lincoln logs can do it. The feel of folding a newspaper. Clutching a baseball bat or a basketball. Seeing an old pump handle. Nostalgia, all of it. But it helps bring back a feeling of childhood that somehow got overwhelmed by jobs, responsibilities, and maturity.

But it comes back when I watch Addee engrossed in making something out of paper scraps or making birthday cards for her brother. What ended a wonderful, innocent ability to be able to live for extended period time in a state that I now can only glimpse periodically?

Lover of Trucks

Because of my dad’s business as a self-employed trucker – hired to haul gravel, black dirt, or coal to various local destinations – I always thought of myself, especially between the ages of set 7 to 12, as a future truck driver. Living in Braidwood, a town of 1,200 that was directly on Route 66, also contributed to this early career ambition because of the number of trucks that ran through our small town.

I would envision myself as a long-haul driver in a Pacific International Express (PIE) truck, shiny and sleek, with a tractor that had air horns, an exhaust stack that was perpendicular to the highway, driving at night with trailer lights aglow, and shifting at least 10 times before it hit my cruising speed. Traveling west, over the mountains, on to California. 

Before going to sleep at night, I would listen for these big rigs seeming to laugh as they slowed, and then accelerating, listening that was occasionally interrupted by a train’s lonely horn that pitched higher as it came near, and lower as it sped away from Braidwood. So, it was fairly natural to couple my truck driving urge with playing with toy trucks, loading and unloading pretend cargo, taking extra wide turns around corners, and carefully backing up into truck ramps.

Baseball Cards and Cowboys

Baseball cards are another story. I loved opening a fresh pack of 1954 Topps baseball cards, feel the rectangular shape of bubblegum beneath the waxy package, and then peel back the paper, smell the sweetness of the gum, and wipe the powder off the top card. Distinct memories in a flashback.

Every once in a while, I will come across an old Western on TV that reminds me of some of the cowboy movies I had seen as an eight-year-old at the Mar or Wilton theaters in Wilmington. I used to think these movies were really good; now they look really bad. Bad acting, predictable plots, Indians and black hatted cowboys as bad guys.

But as a youngster, I saw them as springboards into my pretend games. Leaden toy soldiers became Bob Steele, Hopalong Cassidy, and Roy Rogers in the backyard or on hills made from blankets, with Lincoln log structures that served as corrals and bunkhouses. As in the movies, the bad guys still lost imaginative fights, both with guns and with fists. Comic books also fed into my child’s world – books that my sister and I read over and over. Roy Rogers being my favorite of all cowboys.

Herald-News, Pump Priming, and Baseball Bats

Newspaper delivery memories can be triggered by merely folding a paper. As a 12-year-old, folding papers was a daily ritual that preceded loading them into the canvas bag that would be stretched across the bicycle handlebars, and then tossed onto the front porch of my customers. Tightly folded papers (not enclosed by plastic or rubber bands) that glided out of my right hand aerodynamically, in an underhanded delivery, landing softly on the porch, only inches away from the front door.

How would anyone know what priming the pump means when they never pumped water from a well? Our house on Walker Street had the luxury of two pumps, made of cast-iron, one in the house at the sink and the other next to the back porch. Every time I see a decorative pump outside someone’s house, I think of how we depended on an operative pump for our drinking, cooking, and washing water. As our pumps’ gaskets got worn or dried out, it became necessary to have a gallon or so of water to pour into the top of the pump as we moved the handle up-and-down, creating the suction needed to bring freshwater up and through the spout. The fresh well-water now seems to have been cooler and sweeter than any water I have ever since tasted.

An ordinary basketball or baseball bat doesn’t evoke strong childhood memories, but an air- deprived basketball or broken bat does. As a 12-year-old, I had a basketball that was always severely under inflated because of leaks. However, that basketball served me well in the garage where my hoop was really a corner of the garage door track upon which the door slid to the side, rather than overhead. Broken baseball bats that were left behind after games on the field next to our house were considered prizes to me until at least age 14. I repaired them by drilling holes at the break and then counter-sinking wood screws. I then taped the bat around the fracture.

There are many more links between the senses and childhood memories. Sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and touch may ignite souvenirs of the soul without any premeditation, shocking us with pleasure as well as remorse…remorse that for a brief second we have retrieved an enjoyment that can last only for a flash.

Sounds of Childhood…

• a train, approaching from far away, just before going to sleep, high pitched as it approached the Main Street crossing, leveling pitch with its loudest volume, clickety-clack, then recession of noise until silence once more.
• dad snoring regularly, and suddenly silent for several seconds when I hoped he hadn’t stopped breathing.
• the Peabody coal mine tipple a mile away with newly mined coal being washed and sized as it tumbled from one conveyor to another and ultimately dumped into a waiting truck.
• my trumpet echoing from the walls of my bedroom as I hurriedly prepared for tomorrow’s lesson.
• huge prop army airplanes flying in formation far above our house in 1944.
• Dixon’s Tavern, as well as other taverns, as bar conversations are interspersed with the clack of balls on the pool table, the smack of stocky metal cylinders on the shuffleboard table, the snap of euchre cards against tables as the winners trump their opponents.
• the pull of a slot machine lever at Hank’s Dry Dock tavern in Gardner and its “tick, tick, tick” and rush of the winner’s coins.
• my Lionel train as it wound around the track.
• my new bicycle siren as it engaged the back tire.
• mom and dad arguing after the kids were in bed.
• the silence of swimming under water at the Braidwood Recreation Club.

Smells of childhood…