That wonderful age, sarcastically said, when our brain starts turning on, and broken strands of long term memories scar the landscape and leave that tinted window feel when somehow they come back in your sleep to remind you of what you can't be sure you recall.
But the details are there and too many to discount. I started remembering things when I was three. Some pleasant, some not. But rarely with a certain kind of mystery surrounding them. But this isn't about how soon we began to remember, but the odd, that we remember and can't be sure of except that there was something to it.
The Twilight Zone, edge of your mind, memories.
I have two that haunt me tonight. Similar. I would have been about six, in fact for reasons of where I lived and events around me I can say six or barely seven with certainty. Small town, Iowa.
There was this old man, bent over bearded, he always wore gray and if someone said he sounds like an old Civil War Vet I'd have to say that in a way he looked like he could have been. But more accurately he just wore the kind of poor mans clothing that were common then, working clothes, and they happened to be grey.
He walked by the house almost every day, by himself. And I had the run of the neighborhood, at six, heck I had the run of the town and in fact often walked the railroad tracks with older kids to the creek to go fishing. So I'd been around the neighborhood enough to know the house he lived in.
And once, I was in that house. He was glad to have someone to visit with it, and he got out a cookie jar filled with windmill shaped cookies, and offered me a glass of water as well. His home was full of dust. The cookies weren't too bad. Around all, was the feel of poor. But he enjoyed the visit which couldn't have lasted long, and asked me to come back which I never did.
And then, and remember this is a small town, right across the street from the old man's house, which was torn down after he died in favor of a small brick home with a cement basketball court in the backyard, was the house where I visited an old lady.
I was at the dining room table, lace covered. A box of dominos in front of me and I opened it and started setting them up in a row to watch them fall. The old lady had a straight back and pinned up silver hair. A house with nice things and tidy. She was drinking from the smallest cup I thought I'd ever seen. It looked fragile. She's sitting at the table watching me and she had sad eyes. I remember thinking she couldn't talk very good and I could hardly understand her. Now it translates as she had a thick accent. And the sadness communicates that she got out the dominos to play, only to find out I didn't have a clue how to...and that she couldn't explain.
But where the Twilight Zone part comes in. I don't remember how or why I was ever even in those homes? The bits of recall are so clear, but incomplete. Did I just wander up to their doors? I don't know. Creepy. And why the visit from them on the same night in my sleep nearly fifty years later?
So, anyone else have annoying bits of memories like that now and then?
But the details are there and too many to discount. I started remembering things when I was three. Some pleasant, some not. But rarely with a certain kind of mystery surrounding them. But this isn't about how soon we began to remember, but the odd, that we remember and can't be sure of except that there was something to it.
The Twilight Zone, edge of your mind, memories.
I have two that haunt me tonight. Similar. I would have been about six, in fact for reasons of where I lived and events around me I can say six or barely seven with certainty. Small town, Iowa.
There was this old man, bent over bearded, he always wore gray and if someone said he sounds like an old Civil War Vet I'd have to say that in a way he looked like he could have been. But more accurately he just wore the kind of poor mans clothing that were common then, working clothes, and they happened to be grey.
He walked by the house almost every day, by himself. And I had the run of the neighborhood, at six, heck I had the run of the town and in fact often walked the railroad tracks with older kids to the creek to go fishing. So I'd been around the neighborhood enough to know the house he lived in.
And once, I was in that house. He was glad to have someone to visit with it, and he got out a cookie jar filled with windmill shaped cookies, and offered me a glass of water as well. His home was full of dust. The cookies weren't too bad. Around all, was the feel of poor. But he enjoyed the visit which couldn't have lasted long, and asked me to come back which I never did.
And then, and remember this is a small town, right across the street from the old man's house, which was torn down after he died in favor of a small brick home with a cement basketball court in the backyard, was the house where I visited an old lady.
I was at the dining room table, lace covered. A box of dominos in front of me and I opened it and started setting them up in a row to watch them fall. The old lady had a straight back and pinned up silver hair. A house with nice things and tidy. She was drinking from the smallest cup I thought I'd ever seen. It looked fragile. She's sitting at the table watching me and she had sad eyes. I remember thinking she couldn't talk very good and I could hardly understand her. Now it translates as she had a thick accent. And the sadness communicates that she got out the dominos to play, only to find out I didn't have a clue how to...and that she couldn't explain.
But where the Twilight Zone part comes in. I don't remember how or why I was ever even in those homes? The bits of recall are so clear, but incomplete. Did I just wander up to their doors? I don't know. Creepy. And why the visit from them on the same night in my sleep nearly fifty years later?
So, anyone else have annoying bits of memories like that now and then?
