Shared Memories, Part II

(Thanks for the photos, Billy!)

Shared Memories

Friday night, I attended a gathering at Luke's Family Restaurant in Arlington for the first two graduating class of Carlisle County High School. 

Since this was a yearly mini-reunion, all of our classmates were not there.  But I got to visit with two of whom I had not seen in years: Barbara, who traveled all the way from Florida for the event, and Richard, who is in bad health but still has that same twinkle in his eye.

After delicious catfish dinners, there was much reminiscing.

"Remember Judy sitting out there on the sidewalk, crying her eyes out, when we were in first grade?" said Joyce Gail.

Judy laughed.  "I was such a baby!"

"Not as big a baby as Jimmy Lee," I said, "The poor boy cried so much that he walked around with bloodshot eyes and a bloated face for weeks!"

Later, our group gathered in the parking lot for pictures. (I must've had my camera on the wrong setting; the picture came out too light. Darn it!)

"Alright," called Billy, "Who's going to the play-party tonight?"

"Listen up!" I said, "Billy will be at The Hut tonight in his big ole black car to take us to the play-party!"

Pitty Pat and I loved going to those play-parties, although Mother had forbidden us to go.  "They drink and do no telling what over there!" she said.  Nevertheless, we piled into Billy's car and sped off to Wickliffe every chance we got.

"Remember Ray Smith?" Billy said.

"How could anyone forget Ray Smith?" someone said.

"He always sang Elvis's Hard Headed Woman, I said, "At every play-party!"

Several people began singing:  "Well, a hard headed woman, a soft hearted man, been the cause of trouble ever since the world began...!" 

Believe it or not, Ray shot to fame a couple of years later with Rockin' Little Angel.

"Remember that hayride Sophomore year," someone said, "When SJ smooched so much that her lips bled?"

There was almost total silence, and then everyone burst out laughing.  (Fortunately, SJ was not there!)      

Before the evening was over, Billy, Jackie and Buddy, and Chuck told me they read my blog.  (Thanks, y'all!) 

"Trouble is," Billy said, "You've quit posting!"

I'll do better, Billy.  Promise!

Ah, the days of play-parties, hayrides and rock & roll!  There are no friends like old friends; no memories like shared memories.  And I appreciate them more and more as the years go by.

For Daddy

Life

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed.

Give me the tightrope.

~Edith Wharton~

At Home in the World

As most people know, J. D. Salinger was the author of the twentieth-century American classic, The Catcher in the Rye.  Many people also know that after the book was published, he moved to a farm in New Hampshire, never wrote another book, and lived in seclusion for the rest of his life. 

"What a genius he was," I said to my husband, when Salinger died earlier this year at ninety-one, "And what a lonely life he led."

Genius, maybe.  But after reading Joyce Maynard's memoir, I've learned his life was not what it seemed.  And far from lonely.

In At Home in the World, Maynard reveals the details of an affair she had with Salinger when he was fifty-three and she was eighteen.  (She looked about twelve, though, with her huge, sad eyes and wafer-thin body.)  A freshman at Yale, she came to Salinger's attention in 1972, when the New York Times Sunday Magazine published her photograph on its cover in connection with her essay An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life.  Salinger wrote her a fan letter, and thus began a months-long courtship by mail and telephone, which culminated with Maynard's visiting him at his farm in New Hampshire. 

She eventually dropped out of Yale and moved in with him. Still a virgin and very tense, their relationship was never fully consummated.  In one scene she writes:  He takes hold of my head, then, with surprising firmness, and guides me under the covers. Under the sheets with their smell of laundry detergent, I close my eyes. Tears are streaming down my cheeks. Still, I don't stop. So long as I keep doing this, I know he will love me.

Salinger indoctrinated her with his homeopathic theories about food (they ate peas and brown rice most of the time, and lamb burgers, which he froze and cooked for a few minutes at 150 degrees).  He also taught her how to induce vomiting in order to avoid absorbing "toxins."  (I'm sure that helped her anoxeria!)

He controlled every aspect of her life, going so far as trying to talk her out of cooperating in the promotion of a book that Doubleday had contracted her to write.

At Home in the World is a memoir by a writer who has the courage to show herself, warts and all.  (And I very much admire that.  As a writer of sorts myself, I know how difficult that is to do.)  She also writes about her strange family, her terrible marriage, her children, and her career adventures.

Even before she decided to write the book, Maynard says, she knew she'd be taken to task for "presuming to talk about this icon, Salinger." She feels there's a double standard afoot, that "the same kind of truth-telling that has resulted in my being labeled, by some, 'a shrill, hysterical fishwife' or 'a vengeful harpy,' if manifested by a male storyteller might be termed 'brave, gritty, raw honesty.'"  (Right on, Joyce!)

Salinger often accused Maynard of writing too much callow, crowd-pleasing journalism.  "Some day, Joyce, you'll stop looking over your shoulder to make sure you're keeping everyone happy," he said, "And you'll simply write what's real and true."  (Little did he know she would one day write his real and true story!)

After nine months, J. D. Salinger discarded Maynard like a worn-out rag doll, causing her to go into a deep depression and a long-lasting obsession that she confronts at last in the book.  And although she left thinking she would always hold a special place in his heart, she learned years later that she was just one of many very young girls he lured into his New Hampshire hideaway hole.

The Hypocrite

The light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The woman behind him was furious.  She had missed her chance to get through the intersection!  She dropped her cell phone and began honking and screaming in frustration.

As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up.

He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

''I'm very sorry for this mistake," he said, "You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the What Would Jesus Do? bumper sticker, the Choose Life license-plate holder, the Follow Me to Sunday School bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk, so I assumed you had stolen the car.''

Have a blessed Memorial Day.

The dead soldier's silence sings our national anthem.

~Rev. Aaron Kilbourn~