It’s Official, I’m Old

by imageguy

Today was Saturday at the Indian Market in Santa Fe.  This is an annual event that brings in hundreds of Native Artists to display and sell their incredible art. The entire plaza downtown as well as streets extending off the plaza for blocks were lined with tents and booths filled with jewelry and silver and turquoise, paintings and prints, clothing, weaving, photography, pottery, sculpture, and on and on.

I left early to get there in time to find parking that wasn’t a mile away. I settled for a quarter mile. People were streaming in from all directions on foot. At nine o’clock the place was already swarming with people. It was so amazing to be in a crowd this large with thousands of people passing in random streams and groups, people stopping and chatting, that no one seemed angry, fearful, rude.  The news every day and the social media is filled with so much hate and discord, and angry rhetoric. Videos of robbery and fighting and shootings. People being assaulted on the subway. And here were thousands of people passing and talking and chatting in very tight places sometimes, and people were courteous, and friendly, and laughing. So much of what America is in most cases, and yet we are shown such a different picture in what we see in the media. I walked for two hours, saw about half, then my hips started saying, remember the walk back.

The kids here are already back in school. Here’s a sign of my age. We got three months off. When I was a kid, we usually got out around June 2nd or 3rd. And you didn’t go back until after Labor Day. I would think the teachers appreciated that as much as we did. It was a time when kids with means went off to camp. Those whose parents worked two or three jobs usually got sent to Chattanooga to spend a week here and a week there with relatives. The Boys to the Great Aunt and Uncle and the Girls off to Granny and Grandaddy. Then trade at the end of the week. I always hated that drive to Chattanooga. It was a lot of two-lane highway then and my mother was high anxiety. She was usually a nervous wreck by the time we arrived.

Someone on Facebook recently posted the question, “what was your favorite thing about childhood?”  I had to think hard. It was a long time ago. I eventually wrote, “The freedom of riding my bike”. And I realized that I don’t look back on my childhood as a very happy time in my life. I do remember receiving my bike. I was probably nine. Christmas. Big surprise and unexpected. It was a red and white Columbia with chrome fenders. No gears. Coaster brake. This was before 10-speeds. If you had an expensive bicycle it was likely a Raleigh (English with a 3-speed hub). I’m sure my Columbia was straight out of Sears. But it was freedom. It was the ability to be gone all weekend and cover a lot of ground around town. For years I had gone back and forth to downtown Decatur on foot. To friends houses on foot. Now I had wings. Sometimes we attached playing cards to the frame with clothes pins so the spokes would make a motor like sound. And my neighborhood was ideal for bike riding with little traffic and some good hills. I was mobile. I was free. I was ecstatic. That bike took me everywhere and was my lifeline. I also still have vivid memories of the first major crash as I sped around the curve on our dirt street. The pebble that caused the front wheel to go out from under me as I leaned into the curve peddling hard. The gravel and dirt that was embedded in my bloody palms and knee where I hit the hard dirt street. Lessons learned.

Kids today ride electric scooters and skate boards. My first skate board was a 2×4 piece of lumber with an old, disassembled roller skate nailed to the bottom. Metal wheels. Try ridding that one, kid! Ten year-olds today have $500 cell phones. I remember the thrill of my first transistor radio. It was AM only and I believe had all of 10 transistors. Prior to that I had a crystal radio. No battery required, single ear phone. You attached an alligator clip to a metal object to use as an antenna. I used my iron bunk bed at night. Then you twisted a small shaft up and down to tune it. Also AM signals, but they travel so far, particularly at night. From my bed in Georgia I could listen to WAPE in Jacksonville (the Big Ape) or stations in Chicago. Today kids can see their friends while they talk on the phone and listen to any piece of music ever recorded at the touch of an app. Wireless earbuds.

I grew up in the south. With segregation and fear of atomic war. Fallout shelters were the rage. It was a time of gas wars, when competing oil companies battled for your dollar. I remember gas at 25 cents a gallon. A carton of Winston cigarettes was $2.50. Hersey bars were 5 cents. My stepfather drank moonshine whiskey, clear alcohol in gallon Mason jars that he purchased from a chicken farmer in Stone Mountain, GA. We drove past the mountain in those days on a two lane road. There was no park, no lake and carillon and train ride, cable car. It was a big rock with an unfinished carving and a quarry in the back where convicts cut granite curb stones.

I grew up in the days of propeller driven passenger airplanes and two lane highways before the interstate system.  My family spent a vacation camping on the road cut for the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Smokey Mountains. The road wasn’t a road yet. Bulldozers were cutting it through the forest and my stepfather proceeded to drive this path into the woods until the car became stuck on a large boulder that got jammed under the rear-end of our car. It took my stepfather hours to dig that boulder out. My mother swore that a bear came into our camp while there and stole one of our blankets.

I spent much of my meager allowance as a child (which grew from 25¢ a week to $1.25, then I had to start earning my own money at around 9 or 10) at the Army Surplus Store. Cool bags and pouches, patches and insignias, and machetes and bayonets. Just what a young boy needs to play war in the woods. My friend, Scott and I used to play around an abandoned commercial greenhouse that had all the windows broken out.  The heating plant used to be a coal fired boiler, but all that stood was the huge brick chimney. We used to climb inside that chimney. The floor of the green house was littered with broken glass and sharp coal cinders. And we used to swing over this on old flexible electrical conduit. It’s a wonder I am still alive.

As a photographer, I tend to be keenly aware of change. One week a tree is on the corner that you pass occasionally, then suddenly one day, it’s gone. And you don’t recognize right away but something feels wrong. Then your memory reminds you there was a tree there, and now it’s gone. You notice it because now the sun is in your eyes as you approach. You’ve lost your shade. I watched the places I have lived change. Sometimes pleasantly, and sometimes, sadly, in a way that feels like loss. Life is a circle of gains and losses. Hopefully maintaining some sort of balance, a fairness, a give and take. Joy and grief, ease and struggle, thrift and abundance. Hopefully some sort of balance.

Hind sight is 20/20, it just takes bifocals to see it. And a good flash light.

Peace.

Imageguy