It’s my Mother’s birthday today. She’s 52, she thinks…
I have attempted to make contact with someone I knew from long, long ago. He was a good friend and when I moved to Florida we tried to stay in touch but this was back before the internet and even before I was on the BBSs. Through the years I have looked back and wished I had stayed in contact with him. Just before Christmas I found an e-mail address for him and contacted him. He remembered who I was but really didn’t have anything else to say. I’m still hoping he’ll want to correspond, but I’m not expecting much. Hell, what did I expect, I haven’t talked to him in 23 years! He’s got a life, I’m the only fool with time enough to sit around and think back on the “old days”. Honestly, I’m surprised he even remembered who I was.
Well, the reason I bring him up now is because he said some things in his blog that got me to thinking. He said he was happy to be “done” with the old neighborhood. He had a horrible tragedy take place in his family a few years ago and now that his parents were moving out of state, he never had to go back there. I haven’t been back there since we moved. My sister still goes back once in a while but I never felt the urge. I had a lot of good times there. I had a lot of people I hung out with as well as 2 or 3 really good friends. For all the good times, I was still only 13 when I left it all behind. I never “grew up” there. I grew up here in Florida. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m a damn Florida boy. My childhood memories are all from Connecticut, but all of the tough shit that comes with growing up came here in Jacksonville.
Even with that, I still have no real need to return to my childhood home. I knew it was a shithole then, I’m sure it’s still a shithole now. The residential area was ‘normal’ enough but the rest of Plainfield was nothing but vacant buildings, run down from neglect and disuse. The mill and rail yards were still in operation but even back then, there was something about the place that screamed, decay. I’m not knocking it out of spite or hatred. I loved it. The open fields, the woods, the sand dunes and the swamp, they made for awesome LARP before that was even a term! (LARP used to be called; “Playing outside” or “Using your imagination”) The empty warehouses, the railroad junkyard, it was a kid’s paradise.
But screwing around when you’re in grade school and having to go through high school in this place are two very different experiences. Considering all of this and adding in the emotional BS my friend has gone through, I’m completely sympathetic on his hatred of that place. I think my timing sucks. Just about the time he’s ready to leave that place behind for good, here I come and pop up my head and yell, “Hey, remember me?” Yeah, I’m sure he really wants to hear from anybody from that era.
People love to revisit the old days. Teresa goes back to her Delaware neighborhood every once in a while. Every corner we turn in Pennsylvania has a footnote attached. So I’ll probably make one trip back to Plainfield at some point. Just to see it and walk away. Tammy says it’s so much smaller than she remembered. I’m sure it is but I’m also sure a lot of it is in her head. Things always look bigger when you’re a kid. Cars, houses, yards… I remember every winter we’d go sledding down this steep hillside. Years later I’ve seen pictures of this same hill, it’s barely even worth calling a hill. It’s topographically insignificant. When you’re four feet tall, everything is big. Just ask Ronnie James Dio! Ok, too obscure for some of you? Let’s try again. Just ask Prince! Ok, still too dated. Mini-Me? Nah, not funny because he’s not short, he’s a midget. Ok, ok, here we go; just ask some really short guy… Anti climatic isn’t it?
Four and a half of you people out there might know where this picture was taken. The half person being my brother. He was too young to remember it but probably knows it from the family photo albums. The rest of you will think it’s the hole in which Frodo hid from the Ring-Wraiths.
I stopped here and snapped this picture on Sunday. I was on the road to Myrtle Beach and just decided that I had to look and see if this tree was still standing. I honestly expected it to have been blown over in a hurricane or something. Still there and still waiting to die. The hollowed out, decaying hole is just perfect for how I was feeling. The past is being deconstructed. Little Oompa-Loompa worker guys in dark blue jumpsuits with tool belts and ladders are tearing down the past and using the materials to build the future. They already started excavating this tree. It will always live on in my mind but everything dies. This tree, old friends, family and in the end, even memories.
I lived in the trailer on the right (or in a trailer that USED to be where this one is now…) for almost a year. We moved to Savannah when I was in the 2nd grade (7/8 years old?) and ended up moving back to Connecticut. I lived there with my Mom and Dad, brother and sister and for a short time, my grandparents. My Nana died 10 years ago but my Pop-Pop is still here. He is sick but they are expecting him to be ok. In time he will pass, my father will pass and I will pass. Then what? I have no contact with much of my family any more. I have another grandfather that I haven’t seen in years. The same for most of my aunts, uncles and cousins. I see my own brother and sister about twice a year. I’m sure that I could walk past 90% of the people I just listed and they wouldn’t notice. They’re family and I’ll bet some of them couldn’t pick me out of a line-up if you told them who they were looking for.
I am not alone in this situation. Many of the people I talk to say that they haven’t seen or heard from much of their family in years. What is this doing to us as a people? Are we a people any more or are we merely extensions of the electronic cages we have built around ourselves? Our minds nothing but hard drives willingly wiped clean for that latest upgrade. Do we know who we are? Where we come from? I’m not related to any one famous or historically notable. Is my Morgan/Franklin heritage worthy of any remembrance? YES!!! An emphatic yes! If to no one else, than to me. I have minor recollections of stories told by these people. When they pass on, most of their stories pass with them. The knowledge dies and I am less for it. I will have less to pass on to my child and she will have still less to pass to her children. And why is any of this worth it? Why try to make this contact and hear the old stories now? Look at that second picture. The past is dying in front of our eyes and we don’t even see it. The memories are fading even while we watch.
Leave a Reply