As hard as it may be to believe, child of the space age that I am, reveling in this 21st-century digital era, I was born and raised in a log cabin that was built in the 1880s.
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I was about seven years old on that bright, sunny, early summer afternoon, out playing in the yard under the large pecan trees on the east side of the house. Hearing the unmistakable chuff-chuff-chuff staccato of a helicopter, I rushed out to the fence to get a good look at that whirlybird.
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While there were several places we could’ve gone for a swim, “going to the creek” almost always meant going down to Red Creek at the City Bridge. I have many fond memories of the times spent there. We would sometimes go after working in the garden, sometimes after Sunday dinner, sometimes we’d have large family gatherings and cookouts there. I was even baptized there. But why was it called the ‘City’ bridge? Surely, I wasn’t the only kid to wonder why this structure, way out in the country, miles from the nearest town or larger municipality was — and still is — called the The City Bridge.
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Some hurts create lasting scars that are painful for years, even for a lifetime. These are the dark-colored memories that paint the shadows in the canvas of our lives. If I could, I would purchase only the brightly colored, most pleasant ones available, but it just doesn’t work that way. As John Prine so poetically said, “Memories, they can’t be boughten.” That’s so true. What follows is a story, born out of painful memory, that I couldn’t tell for a long time. But tell it I must. Like I’ve said before, that’s the burden of memory.
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It doesn’t take much to bring to mind a sharply-focused memory from the long-ago past. Recently, hearing Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man” in my iTunes shuffle triggered a poignant image to percolate to the surface of my thoughts. It was the image of my 13-year-old self lying in the rear-facing, third seat of our family’s Chevy station wagon, as Daddy and my brother Keith and I were traveling home late one school night from a basketball game on the coast.
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My love for family history has always been strong, but it got a big boost the day Granddaddy carried me over to the cemetery where his parents and his grandparents are buried. I was just a youngster, but I was astounded that these people, my ancestors going back several generations, had spent their entire lives on that very same land where I lived, where I had played, gone to school and to church. They had actually stood in the very same spot upon which I was then standing, burying their loved ones in the very same graves that I was then viewing! My little adolescent head almost exploded that day.
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A few nights ago I came across a website devoted to preserving the sounds and memories of AM radio, particularly those stations of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s that played top-40 rock ’n’ roll. I quickly lost an hour or two listening to some of the jingles and recordings of a few KAAY broadcasts. For that brief while, I was a teenager again, out on a date or going into town for a ballgame, listening to “The Mighty Ten Ninety”!
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My first motorcycle was a Honda 65 Scrambler—a screaming little machine. With all that its meager 65cc two-stroke engine could muster, it would top out at 65 mph—if I was going downhill, with a tailwind, and with nothing aboard more than my scrawny 140-pound young teenaged self. And I was going downhill that fateful day when a dog waylaid me and just about ended my short biking career. . .
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I was born and raised in Big Level. I went to school in Big Level. I went to church in Big Level. All of my first friends were in Big Level. My daddy was born in Big Level, as was my granddaddy, and my great-granddaddy. My history runs bone-deep and blood-rich in Big Level. I spent my first nineteen years there. I learned a lot about life and love there. . .
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Recent events in my life have changed me in ways I didn’t see coming, particularly in regard to my thoughts about time…
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