The other day I was finally getting around to putting away my thermals
and heavy winter clothes and getting out the shorts and T-****rts.
(Yay!) We have very little storage in my tiny old house and so we use
a lot of those stackable storage bins with the hinged locking flaps.
Even though the plastic is translucent I can never seem to tell what's
inside.
Well I blundered innocently smack into a bin full of stuff I stuck
away out of sight and mind after we sold Dad's house two years ago (he
died in September 2005). And there I was down in the garage with
things I hadn't meant to deal with yet. I started looking at stuff.
An annual re****t from the company he worked for from 1953 to 1970 --
with the punch-card graphic on the cover and a photo of guys in short
ties standing around a tape-archive device the size of a kitchenaid
refrigerator: the Computer Age! I started reading correspondence
between Dad and his boss when he was a salesman (district manager) in
the early-mid 60's. Back then things that we do in an hour by email
took weeks by snail mail -- and "cc" really meant "carbon copy". Some
were typed but most were hand written. Dad's handwriting.
Handwriting is *so* personal. Seeing the script, touching paper he
handled 40+ years ago, I felt a connection. This is some kind of
clue.
In a hanging file folder labeled "sales meetings" there was nothing
about any sales meetings; but there were many odds and ends, such as a
scrap of paper on which he had, apparently, hurriedly written out
words to a song while listening to the radio (& while driving?!). On
an order form he scrawled:
"Ct flw o wall
dnt both me tall
Pl soltr 2 dwn
w/a dck/51"
Answers.com says, " 'Flowers on the Wall' is a song made famous by
country music group The Statler Brothers. Written by the group's
original tenor, Lew DeWitt, the song peaked in popularity in January
1966, spending four weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard magazine Hot
Country Singles chart."
1966. Music. Silly songs. Something we had in common.
And also here, a memo about a drop ****pment to one of the smaller
grocery stores for an insignificant quantity of product. Why save
this? Ah, the date: "06-06-66" I distinctly remember that date. I
remember thinking that the grownups didn't seem to notice, while I (at
the age of 8!) thought it should be like some kind of international
holiday with fireworks and cake. Hmmm. Well it turns out the
date-number peculiarity must not have been lost on Dad either.
Little stuff. Clues. Connections, across time, across memories, and
now across ... the abyss between the worlds? ... eternity? So
strange: up till his cancer, I didn't think we had much in common.
Now even after his death I keep finding out how much we shared, clues
to how *alike* we are. Noticing things. Weirdness. Silly songs.
Peace,
--
Daniel ( deltaechomike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)
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