Loop Drive Memories

Middle Period View: Scratchy Closet Doors

I woke up at about 4 AM this morning with odd memories of life at Loop Drive running through my head. This was of things as they were when we were little kids. Of hanging our belts on the back of the bedroom door, and the jangling sound they made if you shut the door. Of the long flat ‘keys’ kept over the doorsill to pop the bedroom and bathroom locks if they got accidentally locked with no-one inside, or if a very young kid couldn’t figure out how to use the button lock. Of the wall-mounted heaters; they were in the bedrooms, the living room, and the dining room. The bathroom had a different, ceiling-mounted model all its own. Pop would open them up and clean them out before winter. Of how they’d smell, and the little sound they made as they were starting up. Of the rumbling slide doors on the closets that grumbled hollowly when you opened them, and of the penny that got stuck in the round ‘handle’ hole in one that never came out. Did I do that?

I must have seen those heaters every day of my life for decades, but I could not tell you what brand they were. I remember the sound they made when you zithered your fingers across the vents. They eventually all broke down and most of them got hidden behind furniture. Susan made a series of photos of the empty rooms before we sold the house; I suppose I could see the heaters there if I ever got really curious. Or nostalgic. The closet doors got pretty beaten up over forty years; a couple of them sprung off their runners. A bunch of memories about a bunch of commonplace fixtures. But they all got 'mythogized' when I was a kid, then demythologized, and now, with age and memory, 'remythologized.'

"That there is what I'd call a doorway to a place of enchantment."