Can so much recollection be tied up in so small a place in such pictures and imagery as I know to be inaccurate at best? It’s like the song So Long by Fischer-Z that I so wanted to re-obtain from decades before, and I remember riding with Dave in his Celica listening to its thrumming beat, its synthesized lull. Then when I finally got my ears around it for the first time in eons, I was disappointed to realize that it had disconnected from me long ago.
But even so, I still see the images, and I have to wonder what portions of them are real and what are fabricated from a mind trying to fill in the blanks. Snippets I recall from the field, standing on dirt roads in full combat gear with LBE, ammo packs and gas mask hanging limply at the side, steel pot tipped back on the head, boots dusty from the march, M16 dangling from nonchalant fingers. Probably smoking a cigarette because that’s what we did when we got the chance. That and beer. And these pictures fade in and out with some inconsistency of background.
Lush vegetation beside some ramshackle wooden structure. Many pathways through brush with something to do with weapons or grenade training. A hornets’ nest between trees in an opening in the woods. Different forts, different flora, but the same pose. Those are the faint times, somehow impactful enough to plant a picture, but not near enough to hold onto it like a life preserver. Who would want to?
Were there really armored vehicles in that one sand pit? Or was that a dream? The older, the harder it is to differentiate.
Riding down Hancock Street, heading south, already past that sporting goods place - can’t even remember the name. Then there was a tuxedo shop on the right beyond the intersection, and the ski shop up the hill where I bought $50 skis on sale and had to borrow the money for those because that was a lot back in 1982. Further down Hancock, there’s a package store, called a packy by the locals, where they sold Genessee Cream Ale which was really nothing but stanky pisswater in a can. What cream?
But I know that somewhere heading in to Weymouth, or some other place on the south shore, that the road came down into the city with a sort of panoramic sight, and I only went there once or twice, so it’s not even recognizable in street view any more. More’s the pity. What could be a useful tool for retracing steps has left me unsettled and a bit confused for the lack of ability to match the scene on the screen to the one in my head.
Hendrie’s Ice Cream plant. I’ve searched for it in Google. It was somewhere near Mattapan, but it’s elusive now, hiding way back in the nowhere land that exists in the small place with so much recollection.
I know I painted a house in Winthrop. I know I went snorkeling in Boston Harbor.
I know I walked through Braintree to someone’s house. That fellow is a friend on Facebook now, and no one should tell him that he is middle-aged.
Go figure. I’m still walking old streets while everyone else has gotten older.
A beach south of Boston, but still in the city. To me who is accustomed to broad sweeping beaches looking out over a wild Atlantic Ocean, this had the makings of being caught and canned in a lagoonish setting with a building on the left and every square inch of sand covered with supine bronzed bodies. I know it exists, for Pete and Pat and I went there one summer. But I don’t know where exactly and street view isn’t helping.
These images refuse definition, as if by doing so they will be rendered even more harmless than they already are. I know there’s a swimming pond out off 84 somewhere, and pretty Janine wore her pretty bikini there, but I could only look nonchalantly because Chad was there, too.
Perhaps the dirt road that led out to it is now paved and homes were built all around it so as to provide easy living for those with money. Change does that to a place and nothing can save it after all, except memories.
But what will save the memories? Like jigsaw puzzles, pieces go missing even as they sit unused in a box in the closet until one day they are pulled out and an attempt is made to reassemble them.
Unfortunately, not every memory is worth saving, even though they may be pleasant. So we find ourselves in something of a construction business as we try to remold them enough to be able to describe them in stories or poetry because we know... WE KNOW... they would absolutely add the necessary seasoning to make the written piece taste real and exotic. Or at least just real.
So, A Corner of Nowhere gets written. There’s no mention of Shevlin and his doings, but I can still decode it though others may frown and walk away none the wiser. And that all took place out.... out.... out there somewhere and the maps aren’t being specific enough.
Just do something with it and re-sculpt everything, though it may only be a fantasy.
No one will know
Not even me.
Note: The words “street view” in here refer to a feature in Google maps that allow you to virtually drive any streets that they have recorded with their street view car.
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