Category: Nostalgia

Traveling Mercies

First, the good news: The 1998 Toyota Sienna van with over 165,000 miles which I duct-taped together for the ride to Virginia survived the trip up and back.

And now the bad: The air conditioner did not.

In fact, the air conditioner went out about two hours into the trip on the way up. But thankfully, it was overcast and cool once we hit the mountains in east Tennessee, so it didn’t really matter. It even stayed relatively cool for July during our visit.

But the trip back yesterday evoked way too many memories of those hot retro rides from the 1960s–the choking exhaust fumes, the jarring sound of air brakes, the wet cling of the clothes, the rush of hot air through your hair and into your ears.… Read the rest

Almost Heaven? Not Quite

Yesterday’s post on cars sure got Fusion followers waxing nostalgic. If you haven’t weighed in with your earliest car memories, then please feel free to do so. Hal did, and just to bring the point home, so to speak, he sent us a picture of the now-famous ’66 Plymouth Valiant, customized for those long cattle drives home along congested Houston freeways:

hals-car.jpg

Today, I’m duct-taping together a 10-year-old Toyota van with 165,000 miles on it, saying a prayer, and heading to the Land of No Computers, a place where the electronics are still circa 1975 (and I’m not taking a laptop). That’s right, we’re off to grandma’s house in Virginia.… Read the rest

Grace, Raw and Uncensored

Grace can take a myriad of forms, but for a 16-year-old male who suddenly beholds the set of wheels that he has longed for all his life, this is Grace, raw and uncensored:

first-sight.jpg

When he was about 4-years-old, I recall taking Number Two Son to an outdoor store in Bowling Green, Kentucky where he spied the ride of his dreams: a colorful mountain bike that was several sizes too large. He just couldn’t conceive of why he couldn’t simply drive it off the lot, and he cried huge, Cadillac-sized tears. My heart broke a little bit watching that, but I hoped the day would come when that would be replaced with a scene like that above and those tears would be a distant memory.… Read the rest

My Three Sons

receiving-dilpoma.jpg

img_0024.JPG

Fred MacMurray never had it this good.

(H/t to running buddy Joe V. and his big, long lens for the shot of Number One receiving his diploma).

Grissom High mercifully moved 469 grads through the line with machine-like efficiency.

Chaos did start to descend on the affair, though, by the time they got to the “S’s.” As the shout-outs and air horns grew louder and more boisterous, the grads who had received their diplomas returned to their seats and began to blow up the large number of inflatable balls that they had smuggled in beneath their robes.

At first the faculty members tried to confiscate the balls, but after they saw them propagating like rabbits, they finally gave up.… Read the rest

One Helluva Friend

I searched through several boxes but I couldn’t find it.

Twenty-seven years ago, I delivered the salutatorian speech at Franklin County High School in Rocky Mount, Virginia. I thought that I still had a copy of it around somewhere and had planned to post it here, but apparently it’s at my mother’s house tucked away in a box or maybe the attic.

Or maybe it’s gone for good. Probably just as good. Who needs another speech anyway?

I recall that it was about 3-4 minutes long; even then, I liked ’em short and sweet. On the morning of graduation, we came to school and read our speeches to a teacher, presumably to screen them for appropriate content.… Read the rest

Pretty Grads All in a Robe

Yesterday was Senior Sunday at our church. That’s “senior” as in high school, not the over-the-hill, AARP type. There were 26 seniors this year, which, as we say in the South, is a whole big mess of ’em.

They marched down the center aisle of the church, clad in their graduations robes–brown, burgundy, white, red, purple, power blue. This was the start of a new tradition this year. But just barely. It was announced last week that they would wear their robes, and as one might expect, there was a great hue and cry and a week’s worth of high drama.… Read the rest

Everyone Has a Role to Play

With Number One’s high school graduation drawing nigh, we’re going through a season of Last Things: last prom, last high school term paper due, last final exam and, most bittersweet, the last soccer match.

We had played the moment in our fast-forward minds many times. We would be gathered round the Lads in Orange on Saturday, May 12th, 2007 as they hoisted the Alabama 6A High School soccer trophy high above their sweaty heads, champions of the state on an expansive pitch of freshly-trimmed grass in front of an undulating sea of hometown orange and black.

But it did not end this way.… Read the rest

Cruising

route-66.gifMichael Winerip’s touching and elegant essay, “Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard” is the most sensible piece of writing on today’s hypercompetitive college admissions game that I’ve read in a long time.

———————————————

If brains were transmissions, then mine would be a four-speed manual that I’ve red-lined and ground to bits in the quest for maximum performance. Number One Son, on the other hand, has a silky smooth six that he rarely shifts into overdrive. Instead, he cruises down the highway in fifth gear, the top down and the wind in his hair, making good time and covering a lot of ground, but not so fast and so far that he can’t take in the view and enjoy the glory days.… Read the rest

Two Degrees of Separation

It’s been said that there are no more than six degrees of separation between every person on earth. But when I heard that 32 innocents had died in Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech, it hit me how large and complex that particular web of relationships would be and how far it would extend across the country and even the world. I grew up in Southwest Virginia and was a graduate student at Virginia Tech and a resident of Blacksburg for 2 years. One of my first thoughts when I heard the news was, that in this particular case, there would likely be no more than two degrees of separation between one of the victims and me.… Read the rest

Precious Memories

Precious memories, how they linger
How they ever flood my soul
In the stillness of the midnight
Precious sacred scenes unfold

–from the gospel hymn “Precious Memories”

Among the idle thoughts that rattled around in my brain driving back and forth to Birmingham this weekend was my earliest memory.

It must have been sometime in early to mid-1963 when I was around 18-20 months old. It’s the middle of the night and I’m waking up fussing and crying in my crib. I look up and my mother is standing over me, her hair matted and her eyes half-closed, and she hands me a baby bottle filled with Coca-Cola which I eagerly grab and begin to suckle vigorously like a new-born piglet on his mother’s teat.… Read the rest

Where Have You Gone Bob Cousy?

bob-cousy.jpg

As I watched Tennessee’s Chris Lofton sprint around the court in his baggy, below-the-knee, capri-length shorts last weekend, it occurred to me that basketball players these days keep wearing their shorts longer and looser. Gone are the days when real men, like Bob Cousy, wore theirs “high and tight.”fab5cover.jpg

I can remember when it started. In the early 90s, Michigan’s Fab Five sported longer, baggier bottoms (which by today’s standard’s appear short-short), and from there, things have continued to head south. I suppose it may have had something to do with bringing a “street look” to the court, and since street fashion has continued to become longer and baggier, so have basketball shorts.… Read the rest

March Madness Memories

I have my share of March Madness Memories, both good and bad.

Among the bad–last year, when I finished dead last in my own pool and looked on in agony as the fabulous Blue Devil duo of Redick and Williams ended their otherwise stellar careers on a down note to LSU.

But anytime your favorite team plays deep into the tourney or wins it all, it’s a good year; and needless to say, as someone who bleeds Blue Devil Blue, my good years far outweigh the bad. Of course, barring divine intervention, Duke will not go far this year (I have them making the Sweet 16 after eliminating perennial tournament underachiever Pitt, then falling to UCLA), and considering my poor track record in prognostication, I turn my attention this morning to some good March Madness memories from the past.… Read the rest