Are any of my memories accurate? Does that matter.? The smells, sights, and feels may well be those myths that are truer than truth.
The feels:
I remember after wearing shoes during the long school terms, I, and all the neighborhood kids, went barefoot all summer. The first day, my feet felt so tender. Hot sidewalks and gravel road were a particular challenge. Minor foot injuries all summer were just what happened. By the end of summer, they were all toughened up, reluctant to get back into school shoes.
Playing with the hose on the grass to cool off. Squirting each other.
Baking in the sun. No one knew it might be bad for you. I was just sent outside in shorts and tiny homemade halters to play all day.
The sights and sounds:
Long, long says. Dark, dark nights out in the country. e lay on the grass in the back yard on a quilt looking up at so many stars . I thought I could hear them twinkling. Now, I’m pretty sure it was crickets and locusts.
The tastes:
I especially remember fresh peaches and strawberries. And home-churned ice cream. A cold soda pop.
Other places they’re called fireflies and glow worms. When I was a little girl in Oklahoma, we called them lightnin’ bugs. On hot summer nights, we liked to fight our way through the mosquitoes and june bugs that swarmed around our porch lights and stuff as many lightnin’ bugs as we could into a Coke bottle and then try to use it as a flashlight.
The Willamette Valley is not very buggy in comparison. I don’t even put the screens up on my windows. I do not miss chiggers, tarantulas, snakes, or swarms of mosquitoes. I would like to see some lightnin’bugs though.
“See the USA in your Chevrolet. America is asking you to call,” Dinah Shore sang.
The Interstate Highway System led to family road trips, destroyed railroad travel, and big-rig shipping became a thing.
Still, in Oregon, we see long trains carrying forest products, up to the Port of Portland to be transferred to shipping containers
My first big road trip was from Oklahoma to Yellowstone with my parents, an aunt and uncle, and me and a cousin in one car.
To this day, I love a road trip. Especially If I am driving.
“It was on this day in 1956 that President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act, which established the Interstate Highway System.
As a general during World War II, Eisenhower was impressed by Germany’s autobahn system, and he decided that the United States needed something comparable. After the war, the economy was booming, and Eisenhower decided the time was right to push through the Interstate Highway System. It was the largest public works project in American history. It took longer than expected to build — 35 years instead of 12 — and it cost more than $100 billion, about three times the initial budget. But the first coast-to-coast interstate highway, I-80, was completed in 1986, running from New York City to San Francisco.”
These days, the only road trip left on my to-do list is to kayak with Elizabeth. On some lazy river with just a few thrills along the way. She can pick the river. No highway system needed.
These are my forefathers, Their common bond was hard work and honesty. Very hard-working. Willing to do whatever for was available to take care of us. Came home every day and spent every evening there with their families. Changed out of their work clothes on Sundays when they all got dressed up to go to church. Tall, handsome men. Did lots of reading. Could fix anything.
How lucky am I at nearly 80 years of age to have known you all and to remember you so well? I can still tell stories about each one of you.
They all made me feel safe. To any young woman who is thinking of sharing her life with a man, may I recommend that quality? Along with being honest, hard-working, and coming home to be with you every evening. If he happens to be tall and handsome, so much the better.
I’m pretty sure it’s one of the deadly sins in Judeo-Christian teaching.
It is sometimes called vainglory. Its antonym is humility.
It’s adjective is proud.
Now mostly we hear about Proud Boys. They are clearly proud of themselves, a gang of self-named folks who carry semi-automatic weapons. In my town, I have seen them storm up to the governor’s house in my neighborhood intimidating people.
I feel sure their mothers did the best job they could bringing them up to be kind and well-behaved. Bet those mamas aren’t proud.
I think sometimes my mother said, “I hope you’re proud of yourself!” and I don’t think she meant it in a nice way.
I sometimes say I am proud of one of my children. Since I occasionally helped them along their way, I can possibly justify saying that. “So proud of you for getting your driver’s license”, since I took them to an empty parking lot on Sunday afternoons to practice backing up and parallel parking.
But saying to a young friend, ” I’m proud of you for getting that new job,” makes no sense at all. I have no right to take pride in that.
As for me, I can’t remember the last time I felt proud of myself. That’s not a sin I regularly commit.
And I’ve aged-out of lust. But on the subject of sex (gender), I never felt proud about being heterosexual. My “gender-orientation” was not something I had anything to do with. It just was.
I deeply regret the pain people of other gender orientations suffer. They didn’t choose theirs either.
Last night, I watched a horrifying documentary on PBS titled “The Lavender Scare.” It tells the little-known story of an unrelenting campaign by the federal government to identify and fire employees suspected of being homosexual during the ’50’s. It included a clip of President Eisenhower speaking to it. Homosexual employees in federal jobs were thought to be dangerous because they could be bribed by the Communists into spying. One young woman in a desk job was described as “wearing severely tailored suits, having short hair, and using little lipstick.”
I knew nothing of this. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was well into my twenties before I heard the word homosexual.. I did hear the then derogatory word queer but I had no clue what queers did. To be honest, as a girl, I really didn’t know exactly what anyone did. It was the ’50’s.
Now, it’s Pride Month. So many groups want to be included that the initials for them has grown exponentially. It is presently LGBTQA+, I think. If I have excluded anyone, please forgive me. It’s unintentional. That pretty much includes everyone but me.
Maybe I should ask to be included since I support their cause, if not their pride. And I like their colorful flag.
Maybe I could start a group of my own. Its initials could be PCOWW. Presently Celibate Old White Woman. I bet you didn’t want to know that much about my sexual activities or lack thereof. That’s the way I feel about everyone’s sexual activities. It’s possibly the most private and personal thing we do in our whole lives.
On a related matter, I think one of the hardest challenges that a child and his/her family might face is to discover that the child was born in an inappropriate body. That cannot be kept private. The medical guidelines for dealing with that now include things which in some states parents are criminalized for.
Who knew until recently that in England the Sexual Offences Act 1967 marked the decriminalizing of “sodomy.” It was the first gay law reform there since 1533, when anal sex was made a crime during Henry VIII’s reign; all other sexual acts between men were outlawed in the Victorian era.
When you studied the “Ballad of Reading Gaol” in school, did you know Oscar Wilde wrote it when he went into exile in Normandy after being released from prison for “gross indecency.” I would have had no idea what that might have meant in any case and I’m sure my teacher would not have explained it.
I can think of so many things that are grossly indecent and none of them has anything to do with what people do in their private lives.
But I digress.
Back to pride and being proud of things, particularly things you had no control over and cannot rightfully take any credit for.
This is Pride Month. I think we now have a month for almost every oppressed group. I doubt that any of them win any supporters and possibly offend more folks than they win over.
I believe March is National Women’s History Month, which seems like a nice idea since historically women were neglected in history books.
I believe last month was South Pacific Americans Month.
I am a European American and do not feel offended that there is no month for that.
I’m not proud of being a woman or of European ancestry since neither really has anything to do with anything I ever did.
I believe people who were born in Texas are very proud of that, but really it’s only an accident of where their mothers happened to be when they gave birth.
My sins are many: sloth, envy, gluttony come to mind. Pride? Not so much.
