Re: Childhood (was Re: LuckyTown)

"ruth" <ragb710@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> hehe...I like reading about your old neighborhood and childhood
> recollections...why, heck, you are the Proust of RMAS. My question to
> you is why you spend so much time thinking about what was probably a
> fairly short period of your life. Was it the area that was unique?

Couldn't have been that unique. There were 48,000 people in our
neighborhood so how unique could it have been? There were 5,000 students at
my high school alone. All boys. Bruce could have written a song about it:
Testosterone Town.

But it was a whole lotta FUN.

Sometimes it does seem unique, though. It was a special time & place. In
my current suburban, white, middle class adult life I never meet anyone who
grew up like we did. I've meet a few folks on RMAS who grew up in New York
and the urban parts of New Jersey, but their areas do not seem to have been
as crazy or gang-y. Racial change makes people do strange things.

Whenever I meet people from Chgo invariably they grew up in the 'burbs and
moved to the city after college. We talk sports, the Chgo school of
architecture, the beautiful Lakefront and incredible Loop, cool blues bars
and hot nightlife. That's it. We can't talk about the ties that bind.
Those ties get tied in childhood. Here's a great quote:

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most
obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so
radically that he remakes it in his image." Joan Didion

I don't think it's possible to verbally describe what life in a changing
neighborhood is like. You have to get those thoughts down in writing. If
you talk about it people think you're making stuff up. Writing is a better
medium for conveying the full sense of wonder & bewilderment that drives you
to obsession.

The good news, I've recently been in email contact with some guys I grew up
with. That takes some pressure off, allowing me to recall old times with
people who get it. I always thought they'd find me on RMAS, but that ain't
how it happened. Long story short, it's been interesting reading everyone's
perceptions of our shared background. Some folks feel so lucky to have
grown up there. The revel in the fun that we had. Others have darker
recollections. All seem "affected" in some fashion. One huge
disappointment has been that only a few are still into music.

As far as why I spend so much time thinking about it, who knows? I am an
obsessive type of person. I'm get obsessed with everything that I get into,
and/or enjoy. It could be music, softball, fishing, my kid's hockey team,
even work (more when I was young not so much anymore). Whatever it is, if I
like it it will consume me. Right now I'm an obsessive investor. I work
from home most days and have time to make a dollah bill y'all, often while
losing two. But investing like charity is something best kept to ourselves,
so I never write about it.

> it that we are all members of the neo-freud generation and we all feel
> the need to think about our childhoods a lot? Is it the stage of life
> we are in now?


For me it's the need to process stuff. I know a guy who is CIO of a Fortune
500 organization. He grew up in Texas and went to high school with some
guys who went on a crime spree and were finally killed in a bloody shootout
with Texas State Troopers. He keeps a framed copy of the newspaper article
(extremely bloody picture) in the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. You
know this guy likes you when he pulls out that article, leans back in his
chair and tells you about his childhood in East Texas.

Ya just gotta "process" that kinda ***, ya know?

Bruce writes songs about it. Chaz Palmenteri shaped his first movie from
it. Some guys have day jobs, yet they come home from work, wash up and
write their first novel. Other guys sit around the internet shooting the
***. Whatever helps you deal.

> I can barely remember my childhood.I have friends from forever who are
> always reminding me of things that we did back then that I have no
> memory of.

That happened to me recently too. A guy I grew up with told me that our
team won the football championship one year and the softball championship in
a later year. I'd always been under the impression we never won anything!
That we could never get past this one team: the Pirates. When, in fact, we
got past them twice. Just shows how in your mind you can make something
bigger than it was (the Pirates were obviously not that great) to the point
of forgetting something good that happened.

He also reminded me of the time I found $56 on a Troy Street sidewalk . The
money was wrapped in a rubber band and just laying there, in that clump of
dirt where sidewalk meets hedgerow. Of course digging a little deeper
reveals a "story" behind my discovery, but I'll save that one for the book.

My obsession with a certain little town will continue until I get off my ass
and write that book. That would get it out of my system. Then I could go
on to write about "adult" subjects like war & relationships. Oy!

Not sure when all this will happen? What, with work and family and all the
other stuff we all have to do nowadays.... And of course talking to all you
good peoples. Who's got time for realizing life goals?


Shut Up & Fish!
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