Despite the most severe damage to my life’s memories by my long-lost foe, alcohol, one of the memories that has stuck firmly in an anxious sort of visual way is one particular ride in and my image of Dad’s blue Oldsmobile convertible from some year in the 60’s. I am not positive it was an Oldsmobile, but it seems likely (despite the fact that right at the moment I cannot imagine GM making an Oldsmobile convertible), and I know it was 60’s sometime because I was five-years old when I had the ride that sticks to the very front of all of my cultural and ethical sensitivity.

Perspective is odd. To this day, I do not think that a car has ever been made in such a beautiful shade of blue. It was the blue with tinges of many things: cool temperature, metals, grays, coal sparkles, shine like no shine, and it was perhaps like the most rare and beautiful color of sky, a shade that might only be witnessed once every few years. Now, I wonder if it was that beautiful, but I cannot deny the truth of my memory. When I think of denying the truth of memory, I remember as an adult going to the neighborhood I grew up in from the age of three until the age of twelve, and discovering the houses were now less than half the size that they were when I was a child.  This was the neighborhood where I learned how to be a boy, where I rode my first motocross mini motorcycle, courtesy of my uncle and rammed it  full speed into the brick wall of the family room, causing Mother to come out with the dog, Nicholas, who was barking frantically, screaming, Mother was,  that I was not allowed to ride anymore until I got a helmet, where I learned Read the rest of this entry »