Another Day

Back into collecting memories for another Boot Camp led by Max Regan. (Hollowdeck Press) I am still working on a possible memoir.
When I was five years old I fell in love with clicking clattering typewriters. My grandfather had a Royal sitting up on his desk and I would slip in and make some of the wonderful noise. 

When Jim and I got married we went to GoodWill in Baltimore and bought an Underwood classic for $25. Underwood and I kept company on lonely nights when Jim was working or studying. 

When we moved to Brooklyn I wrote three articles on that machine which I was paid real money for and they were published. 

But my top of the list favorite was a Robin's Egg Blue Olivetti portable. When Jim was paid Air Force money he gave me that typewriter for 1964 Christmas. I loved tapping on those keys. 

When I saw your children checking it out and making some music. 
I remembered how I tip-toed into Papa Sams office to play.

I still have my Olivetti. Its a treasure.  

Train Whistle Moaning is Music.

Probably 20+ years ago Jim and I were in Charlotte visiting some family and checking on places where I had lived and remembered. We were also having a
Mass for our 40th Wedding Anniversary. It was sweet.

We were staying in an old two-story house on Pecan Avenue located only four blocks from a much smaller house were my family lived in 1941. Being in this neighborhood was like being wrapped in a warm quilt. It brought back my memories as a five year old child. I know it is unlikely I will ever re-visit that neighborhood so I am happy to have a stack of vivid images of the house and 9th Street where I learned to ride my bicycle.

There was a tall water tower across from the house on Pecan Avenue
where we were staying. It was an important image - but what I remembered most was a train
crossing five or six blocks away. The trains passed along during day and night. The whistle woke me one night after midnight. It reminded me that the whistle moaning was the music for the Elizabeth Section. I loved it.

Today I will stop anywhere to see a train pass and hear the whistle. Powerful memories.

Yeah, I am back to collecting memories and writing essays that might fit my attempt at a
memoir.

The Night of Chasing the Moon

Chasing the Moon - three wonderful evenings of watching films telling a story of the US Space Program on Public Television 

My daughter Karen and I were sitting in front of the television watching the video films leading up the launch of Apollo 11 - going to the Moon. We were touching base with memories about that evening they launched.  One commentator said, “I never realized you can smell fear.” 

The launch was breath taking...soaring straight up, up, up out of our sight to the moon.  Karen tells me that she does remember sitting on the floor in our rec room watching in 1969. Karen., Jimmy and Robin were with me and Jim – it was something everyone wanted to see - and we didn't want our children to miss it. 

That evening Jim talked about his memories of being stationed at Brooks AFB, San Antonio, TX where the main topic was "getting to the moon". Jim was sent to Cape Canaveral during several smaller launches. 
Everyone, men particularly, were excited, fascinated and proud of what the USA was doing. What it meant for the US. Here in 1969 what President Kennedy had predicted in 1962 – we would reach the moon. 

The program ignited vivid memories for me - especially the morning they lobbed Alan Shephard up into space and retrieved him safely. Shephard became known as the first American into space.
And the storm of memories I was experiencing opened me to the fact that history you live through - even from a distance
is a part of your story. Ahhhhhh!