January 23-30, 1978 (Soundtrack of My Life)

       It's often said that life is strange, but compared to what?

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory (1931), Museum of Modern Art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

       Time can be a very precise measurement of the present, but it is often inaccurate when looking at the past.   Memories can meld together or get placed out of chronological order.  The memory can be an unreliable narrator regarding past events as it conveniently discards the unpleasant while exaggerating the importance of relatively insignificant events.   In the following post I question my memory in regards to a song that is among my favorites.

         In this post I offer another in my Soundtrack of My Life series. Robin at Your Daily Dose has been doing the Soundtrack of my Life posts on her blog for a while now. I had done a few of my own "life soundtracks" on my Tossing It Out blog as well as the song series (starting at this post) I did for my 2014 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge on Wrote By Rote. Be sure to visit and follow Your Daily Dose for more Life Soundtrack info. For my current back to the past post, I'm using the song "January 23-30, 1978" by Steve Forbert as my inspiration. If you like you can listen as you read the story that follows...





"January 23-30, 1978"

          What seems to be a somewhat odd title for a song actually is a time period described by the narrator of a song story by Steve Forbert.   While this date range can fit easily into my own life, there is no special significance to my knowledge that would be applicable in my personal history.  During that January week in 1978 I was getting ready to set out on tour with The World of Fantasy Players with my wife and our six month old baby.  I would have celebrated my birthday sometime that week since it comes on January 30th, but I can't recall any special thing that happened in connection with that event.

         But it's not anything about the song title that impacts me--it's the content of the lyrics, the events Forbert describes.   This song seems so akin to my own life experience that the story told within those lyrics touches the heart of my memory and reminds me of things that I too have lived through.  With a few changes this could be my song--a snippet of my own life history.  I am stirred within each time I hear this song as it has become part of my own life soundtrack.

         After I'd essentially moved away from my hometown in Tennessee to run away with a magic show in 1975, my visits home became fewer as time went on and my show biz life meant more time on the road away from home.  As each year passed I became less close to my old circle of friends thus less aware of what their lives were like.  Old friends were getting married, starting families, and embarking upon careers or other endeavors.  When I would go back to stay with my parents for short visits I would try to hang out with friends and catch up with their lives.  The fact was though that we were growing apart, they in their small town world and me traipsing about the country.

          Now some nearly 40 years later my memory is faulty about when I first heard the Forbert song.  Somehow I came to associate first noticing this song in early 1980 when I was separated from my wife and staying with my parents in Tennessee.  I had taken a job driving for the limousine shuttle service at the Knoxville Airport.  My shift started early so I would drive to work at about 4 AM.

            In my hazy memory I seem to recall driving through Alcoa, the town where the airport is located, early one icy cold morning and listening to my cassette copy of Steve Forbert's Jackrabbit Slim album.  When "January 23-30, 1978" came on the lyrics really hit me as describing how my visits home had started to feel.   I got a sense that soon I would be gone to another town and living a life far away from my home that held so many fond memories for me.

          However, thinking back I'm not sure I had that cassette copy until a few years after the date that stood in my memory.  Perhaps my listening to this song driving through Alcoa early one morning reminded me of driving to my airport limousine job and all of the other events of my life.   Maybe it was another visit.   It's kind of crazy how mixed up my memory is about this minor incident in my life.  From the standpoint of the scope of my entire life, hearing this song at some specific but some unknown time shouldn't have meant that much and yet that drive and that song at that moment vividly stands out in my memory.

        I'm reminded of that famous Salvador Dali painting "Persistence of Memory"--you know the one with the melting watches on the surreal landscape.  That depiction of time flowing and melding into the wholeness of everything is symbolic of the fluidity of all that I've been and where I've ended up in my life, a life where the past is not perfectly cataloged.  Not my life at least.  My mind seems to pick out certain things to remember even if they are not in the correct order.

        It doesn't really matter that much I suppose.   I understand what memory is telling me.   And yet I could be misinterpreting things as a matter of convenience.  

         What I do know is this:  There was a time when I was younger, when responsibility was a debate that I held within myself and consequences primarily affected only me.  We were all young, my friends and I, and then we moved on to other things and other people and other lives.  In other words we grew up--or pretended to.  

           Rarely do we capture the magic of the past in our tangible everyday lives.  Oh, sometimes we might get together with old friends for a few fleeting hours and everything seems as it once was.   Most of the past is only accessible by memory.  The memory might be spurred by a song such as this song from my own life soundtrack.  A song that might mean little to someone else, but something vast, strange, and maybe even unknowable to my mind.    A mystery that is really no mystery at all when I think about it, but a mystery nonetheless.

           Do you have a song that is attached to a memory so strongly that it haunts you when you hear it?    Did you drift away from most of your old friends from youth?    Do you have a disconnect with certain memories where you are no longer certain of when exactly they occurred?

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Messages from the Past

       Recently a fellow who was my best friend back in junior high school sent me a newspaper clipping of a story about my family that  I had sent him when I was in high school.  He had lived in Indiana at the time and I had moved to East Tennessee.   We kept in touch for a few years corresponding on into our college years.  Then after a while we lost touch.

        I'd been aware that he had moved to Arkansas and had gotten married, but I knew little else about what he was doing until we reconnected about ten years ago.  After that point of reconnection we once again began calling and emailing each other.

         He told me that he was looking through some of his old scrapbooks and photo albums and happened upon the newspaper clipping.    Since that story appeared in the paper nearly 50 years ago he thought that I might not have a copy.   He made a copy for himself and then sent me the original.  Actually I still do have an original copy in my own scrapbook, but it was interesting to receive the copy I had sent to him.   The copy he sent contained messages from the past.

        When I say "messages from the past" I don't mean the story itself, but the things I had written on the back of the article.  Besides humorous comments, on the back of the article I wrote commentaries about the photo, my current interests, and questions about what he was doing.   It was almost as though I had written a short letter on the back of the article.  I now don't recall having done that, but it was common for me to do such things back then.

         Having that annotated copy of the article has provided me insight of what I thought and felt at the time.   I've found other similarly marked items such as school papers, notebook entries, cards, and so on that were almost like messages to my present self from my past self.   It's interesting to come across items like these especially since I never kept anything like a diary.  In my mother's keepsakes I found other items that were from me to her and now they were back in my hands.   It was a blessing that she had kept these items over the years.
  

My copy of the article with picture

         Have you received anything back from somebody to whom you had originally given it?   Do you have a tendency to write off the wall messages in odd places?   Where have you found a message from the past that you had written?

Parallel Roads: Friendships That Span Time

        Over the past few years I've written about my old friend Dan Holom on my blogs.    On Wrote By Rote I did an A to Z post about Friendship in 2013.  A few years earlier on Tossing It Out I related a story about a possible telepathic connection between my friend and I.  You can follow the links to read those stories.   Today I have a follow-up story regarding my long-time friend.

          Dan Holom and I became friends way back in junior high school nearly fifty years ago.  We were best friends during that time.  When high school came I moved away from Merrillville, Indiana where my family had been living during those junior high school years and relocated hundreds of miles away in East Tennessee.  I occasionally heard from Dan and saw him a couple of times over the years, but then for a few decades we lost contact.   I never forgot about him and though I had an idea where he was living, I never managed to reconnect with him until 2005.

           He came to visit me in California in 2006.  Actually he was meeting with the illustrator for a children's book he had written so he decided to pay me a brief visit as well during his short week-end stay.  Since then we have kept regular contact.

            A signed copy of his book Sleepy Sheepy and Daniel arrived in my mail sometime in 2008.  I was thrilled to see that his dream had come to fruition.  Over the years since then Dan has been working hard at promoting his self-published book.  Anyone who has been involved with self-publishing knows the hard work involved in promoting a book.   Dan has been steadily pushing his book through speaking engagements and whatever else he could do to promote sales.

            Now he has released his book on Kindle which makes distribution via Amazon far easier than trying to market to the book stores on his own.   The book is also cheaper for readers.  Sleepy Sheepy and Daniel is based on the Bible story of Daniel in the lion's den.   With whimsical illustrations by acclaimed Disney animation artist Mark Henn, children and adults will enjoy this entertaining book that is very values oriented.  

          If you don't mind spending $1.99 or if you have Kindle Unlimited where you can read the book for free, I would encourage you to help Dan with his book sales.   I think any children in your life would enjoy this book--it would make a great gift.   And once you've read the book please remember to leave a review on Amazon and wherever else you typically leave book reviews (don't forget your blog as well!). 

            Dan Holom and Mark Henn have big plans ahead.   Their book is to be turned into a series of Sleepy Sheepy adventures.   The success of this first book will make the publication of the next book an easier process.   Wouldn't you like to be a part of this fun series for children?   I hope so!

            You can find my reviews of Sleepy Sheepy and Daniel at Amazon, Goodreads, and my Sunday blog A Few Words.

           Have you had friends that you've reconnected with after many years?    Have you purchased any children's books on Kindle?   Can you help my friend Dan Holom launch his book series (sharing this post would also help)?

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Friendship

Image by Greg Annandale via Flickr

          When Dan Holom called me in September of 2005 I was more amazed than I was surprised.  The incident made me wonder about telepathic communications and feelings sensed from afar.

           Dan and I had been best of friends in junior high school in the mid 1960's. I was living in northern Indiana at the time.  In the two years or so that we spent hanging out with each other during that time we became very close.  He was a grade ahead of me so I didn't see him much at school, but since he lived just up the street from me we spent a great deal of time together otherwise.  He took up hobbies that interested me and I in turn followed his interests.

          After my family moved to Tennessee in the summer of 1966, Dan and I kept in touch for a few more years.  Eventually he went off to college in Illinois and I suppose we both became so wrapped up in our own pursuits that we essentially lost contact for the most part.  However, I did manage to keep track of where he was.

          Years later, in 1978 I believe it was, after I had gotten married and had a son whom we had named Dan, I stopped in at Dan Holom's parents house to show off my boy.  It just so happened that my friend was  there visiting his parents.  Our visit was very brief and soon we went on our way.

          Later I heard that my friend had moved to Arkansas and he also had gotten married.  I guess he must have dropped me a Christmas card now and then because for many years I kept track of where he was living.  Then after a while I lost track.

          Fast forward twenty years:  After I'd started getting more into the internet I started looking up more things about my past.  In September of 2005 I started thinking of Dan Holom and trying to find what had happened to him.  It didn't take long for me to find his address and phone number.  I kept that information beside my computer with the intent of calling Dan.  Then within a few days Dan called me at work.  He'd gotten that number from my mother whom he had called first to find me.

         What was it that caused us to be thinking of each other at the same time?  Coincidence?  Or some other strong force of thought?

         The following year Dan came to California for a week-end business trip and stayed with my wife and I.   Though I hadn't seen Dan in over twenty-five years, our bond seemed as strong as it had ever been.  We believed similar things and still had a great deal in common.  He was in the process of writing a children's book and was in Los Angeles to meet with a Disney artist who was doing the artwork.

        That week-end visit was short, a long-ago teen-age friendship and many years in between all wrapped up in a few hours of reminiscing.   The friendship was still there.  We still talk on the phone now and then.  I look forward to the next visit in person that we'll have.   Dan is a good friend.

        Have you ever reconnected with an old friend after many years?  How was your experience?    Do you believe that mind power is strong enough to connect people through vast distance?

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