Posted in Creativity, tagged cataract surgery, memoir, memory, myopia, nostalgia, youth on 13 Sep 2018| 2 Comments »
Ever see something and it reminds you of something, which reminds you of something else, which . . .
. . . And you look up and realize that thirty minutes have ticked by while you’ve been wandering the warrens of memory?
Yeah. That. I had one of those yesterday. But unlike most of these aimless treks through lost pathways, on this one I was able to retrace my steps and remember how I’d gotten from Point A to Point Z. (more…)
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged creative writing, currency, family, nostalgia, one hundred dollar bill on 07 Nov 2017| Leave a Comment »
I’d heard of them long before I saw one in the wild. Rare, elusive, they were things of power and legend. Sure, I saw them in movies, but I knew those were fakes; we all did.
The C-note. The Benjamin. One hundred smackeroos.
I was nine years old when I saw my first one.
We were at Tiburon Tommie’s, the Chinese restaurant of my youth, a place where the drinks menu was long and fixed, and the food menu was short and subject to change. (more…)
Posted in Culture, Low Tech, tagged nostalgia, old phones, retro, telephone, vintage on 25 Aug 2016| 5 Comments »
I don’t know what got me thinking of this, but my fellow old farts will remember these things…
Ring me.
Get off the line!
Dial the number.
Hang up.
I wonder how puzzling these phrases are to younger folks? The phones of the mid-20th century were so different from what we have now, when having a “land line” is starting to be considered quaint. (more…)
Posted in Books, tagged 1960s, nostalgia, reading and walking, walking in the rain on 21 May 2013| Leave a Comment »
….and we’re stopping.
When I was a boy, I walked to school. From Greenfield Avenue down the Miracle Mile, onto 4th Street, stop for a moment under the vent at Bordenave’s Bakery to take in the scent of fresh sourdough, then on to H St, 5th Ave, and West End Elementary. It was just under a mile, but it seemed a long way to my 5th grade legs.
When I graduated to 7th grade I switched to Davidson Middle School, down on Woodland Avenue. It was twice as far (a mile and a half away), but I walked there, too. My parents didn’t know that I walked all that way; not until one day, halfway through the 8th grade when I came home soaked to the skin, having gotten caught in the rain. All that time, they thought I had been taking the bus. (more…)
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 