From the Archives

I came across some old poems and writings the other day. On Nostalgia Tuesdays , I'll post a few of the least embarrassing ones. (And yes, you'd be amazed at the poor quality of what I'm not posting!). As you'll be pleased to note, I've been remarkably pretentious for around three decades now.

2-27-90
"It's nine o'clock on a Saturday,
The regular crowd shuffles in,,
'There's an old man sittin' next to me
Makin’ love to his tonic and gin"

I turned off Billy Joel in mid-verse as I pulled my truck into the school's back lot, and for a few minutes I just sat there in silence, examining the playground. Here I was, sitting in the back of Nell Burks Elementary school after "graduating" over ten years before. As I climbed out of the suburban, I noticed the bicycle tracks in the winter grass, and smiled faintly recalling how my own bike's tracks used to criss-cross the grass as well. In 1980 my family moved from McKinney, Texas to a different town so that my father could start his new job. This visit was my first time to return to the school-yard of my youth.

As I walked across the playground it became obvious that many things had changed. There was now a chain-linked fence that wound its way around the perimeter of the schoolyard. New equipment replaced the (OSHA mocking) aging jungle-gyms and slides that I remembered so fondly. Despite these changes, though, the playground still felt the same.

In the center of the area, I noticed a familiar spot of dark earth whose grasslessness attested to its popularity as the center of recreational activity during recess. Walking on, I kicked an empty crayon box forgotten and flattened by careless students. The box and I shared the lonely Saturday schoolyard of my youth and I lamented the passage of time and the ending of schooldays.

I went over to the slide that I had played upon as a youngster. It didn't look as tall, or as foreboding as I remembered. Looking quickly around and vereifying my solitude, I reached out for the two hand rails. Climbing the ladder, I noticed two worn spots on each step and tried to imagine the thousands of little feet that had scampered up in excited expectation of the trip down. As I reached the top, I could survey the entire schoolyard.

For a second. . .for a second, the yard was again filled with children and I could see the
playground monitor motioning for me to slide down, so that others could go.

Then I slid down, closing my eyes as the wind rushed around me, thrilling in the exhilaration of the moment until the short ride with the impact of my feet on the dirt at the bottom of the slide. At first I blinked in the brightness of sunlight. I sat still for a moment, savoring the thoughts of
another time and another place. A place too far away for me ever to return to.

As I got in the truck to leave, I thought of Heraclitus who said: “The same man cannot walk through the river twice, for the next time he does, both the man and the river will have changed."

Heraclitus was wrong. I turned on the tape recorder as I slowly drove out of the playground.

"He said 'Son can you play me a memory,
I'm not really sure how it goes,
But it’s sad and its sweet I knew it complete,
When I wore a younger man’s clothes.'"