Freedom From Want: Ringing the Changes

“Schmaltzy? Sentimental? Historically inaccurate? I suppose so, but there is always a small germ, an ideal spark that can be cherished, no matter how fugitive and fleeting, that could hopefully lead us to better things. Are family gatherings really more frazzling and emotionally charged than depicted? True, but there can be redeeming moments and happy memories to be grasped if we only keep our hearts and eyes open to possibilities. In other words, if we don't have the ideals to strive for and the hope to keep us going, we are only left with a bleak dry bone-pile to endlessly rake over. For some of us, Thanksgiving imagery, even though "debunked" and scorned, consigned to be the stuff of comedy routines, still serves as a kind of signpost or even blueprint, pointing to a more innocent time, less introspective and more straightforward. It's a celebration of the Fall of it all, the browns and yellows and reds, the feasting and games before winter locks everything down and the gathering of the greater family to count heads and to be grateful that we made it through so much. So, while it may not be coldly factual, it is true, and an expression of a truth in our life that we should continually strive toward, an expression of gratitude. If this is sentimental, what is sentiment but emotion; and people and cultures that cannot share in emotions are on the road to sociopathy. I still cherish an ideal vision of Thanksgiving, and for that, I am grateful, and that I am not dead yet.” – Power of Babel, Nov. 2010 [Slightly Tweaked]

Action Figures to Be Noted

 

Stuff Down the Memory Hole

 

From almost beyond memory to the early Eighties, items that hold some sort of significance (or should I say, important insignificance) in my vault. Some I have, some I don't have, and some we never had. What's mostly important are the feelings attached to them; just seeing their pictures renews dim echoes of old points of view, old longings, old experiences. From bowling alley gumball machines to Saturday morning cereal prizes, from 'eating' imaginary cheese wedges (blow-mold blocks) to buying an egg-timer shaped like a grandfather clock in anticipation of owning a real one, each has some little story connected to them, from reading a Pink Panther coloring book under the kitchen table while Mom and Aunt Melva visit to walking down to Shadow's café to buy 'fruit powder' and grape bubblegum. What about the Tin Man garbage can cover that set my imagination agog at the Hemisfair Arena playground?  The turtle lost in the sandlot by Aunt Kathy's apartments, the taste of Ship-Shake, the jokes about the 'Rock-well Welch pillow', the Dr. Who-like adventures traveling in the infinitely expanding Fisher-Price staircase? Anything even slightly complicated was soon broken and lost, often surviving as only some useful fragment for years. Out of such scraps and oddments we nourished our imaginations until they started to fly on their own, if nourished more often by books and movies (and yes, action figures- you can't give up toys cold turkey, and why should you? Stop looking like that at me!). Out of such random stuff (for good or ill) was built the shaky foundations of my future life, and so I go along remembering, testing a brace here and an old joist there and wondering at the oddity, the ramshackle nature of it all.