Saturday, August 26, 2006

A Saturday evening's musings

My sister has this cat that feels like a sack of silky cartilage when you pick her up - her meow is the cry of a baby doll turned up side down, or a real baby in the tightest corset.
Labor Day is coming again and with it our shore is returned to us- even though I'm a clamdigger in bennie clothing, rolling about with Maine license plates, I was, like it or not, born and raised three miles from this seashore. I know what these towns looked like 25 years ago and almost every year since. The wood floored over priced restaurant in Manasquan wasn't long ago a dust covered dark laundromat where I played Frogger in the early 80's while our clothes rolled in warm places and my parents waited for a new dryer (and I waited for a new box to play in).
The molded plastic swing set at Orchard Park once had jagged screws and rusty chains like those that tore off my cuticles in childhood. There was a merry go round there, too, on concrete- I remember falling off the edge and landing on my head when I was six during my mom's softball practice. Mom never knew about that one!
And the houses you live in? The developments you call home? One was a patch of woods where kids rode dirt bikes and smoked cigarettes- other things too I'm sure- lit fires, made out (made babies?), drank beer and left the cans. Another was a working apple orchard with a friendly horse. That's why you have a road named Old Orchard Lane.
Have you ever seen Grosse Pointe Blank? (great movie!) Do you remember when John Cusack goes to visit his childhood home and finds ... a convenience store in its place? Sometimes living back here feels a little like that and I laugh. Well, sometimes I cry first. But when I make the reference, I laugh.

No comments: