There was a magic combination that will never occur again. Being twelve in the early 1950's. I was awakening to puberty, and instead of easing into it, I plunged head first. I simply fell in "love" with every cute girl I saw. I was also in love with a type of mysticism that centered around the obscure, the lonely, the haunting, the silent whispers from the trees...the scratching of a branch on my window, the drumming of the rain. We made a pilgrimedge to Oklahome every Summer. The old Mother Road...US 66.
I loved the open road, mainly because I did not have to deal for very long with the current situation..it just passed by in a blur and new wonders were fast approaching. I wonder what it would be like to be some one else. Living in distant lands, different cultures, different values. I wonder if they felt and do feel what I felt and feel in similiar situations. I rather think so.
We stopped at a Mom and Pop Motel in 1949. It would never fly today,but it was the best in many ways. It was REAL LIFE. Not a super satiated attempt to make every thing high tech and impersonal. I loved going into our new rooms on our trips. The first thing was to bounce up and down on the bed.....then examine the old water cooler with it waft of cool, musty air. The crunching of gravel under the tires of late arrivers, the slam of the trunk lid. The circular drive around a grassy area with chairs and a few tables. Magazines for our reading pleasure. The flashes of "heat lightning" over the horizon. On that night, I went out to explore the area, and sat down in an old lawn chair. I picked up a 1949 Life Magazine and I saw a girl...a picture of a girl ,,looking at me through her deep blue eyes......There was a strange word under her picture...EPILIPSY. I fell in love with a living being held captive by ink and page. Such a a strange and haunting land....Mesas, dinasaur bones, the tourist attraction of the Meteor Crater near Holbrook. Cloudbursts, black clouds and lightning...rainbows....day over...carpet of stars. and the girl looking at me. I think this sort of thing happened in every state of the Union as well as Russia, China, and the U.K. Perhaps, some of us just don't want to talk about it.....Whatever.......
