Thomas Wolfe was right, you know. We return to places with memories and find our memories at war with what is now. I’ve always related to literature that explores the conflict between ideals and reality but it has been forward-looking before. I mean I’ve come to accept the fact that I’m a hopeless romantic (though acceptance of the fact belies the hopelessness of the condition). My brother says he has been accused of speaking parenthetically. (But that is an aside). Anyway, I understand now that life has not produced all the ideals I had as a nineteen year old, leaving Salem. But recently, when I was in town for what was probably the longest time since then (“then” being 1963), I confronted a profound truth (or what is posturing for some consideration as profound): now my memories of the past are clashing so much with the reality of the bustling city that I wonder if they too are misty ideals that cannot stand up to close scrutiny.
There has been a subtle shift, in the last couple years, in my gaze. Perhaps it is what all people go through in the middle of their life but since this is the only life I’ve been able to remember, I don’t know. So when I reached the age of forty, I was anxious to scrap the past and redirect myself for the future that hadn’t happened yet (as far as I knew) with a vengeance. It didn’t take as long the second time before I realized it wasn’t going to happen. Again! I hope I learned it completely this time because bumping your head against reality, when you’re in a full sprint to avoid it, gets more painful as you get older. No matter where you go, there you are.
So the subtle redirection of focus from future to past may indicate some degree of acceptance -- some education from past painful experience. Well, guess what! The idyllic past may not have happened either, from what I have observed.
My brothers and I were born, and I lived my first eight years (my brothers’first twelve and sixteen, respectively, as you range from youngest to oldest), in the Pizza Hut on West Main Street. I became a left-handed dead pull hitter in our front yard because if the ball went all the way across the street, it was a sure home run. The middle brother (about whom I speak from time to time, parenthetically) started conceding them after his second trip to the doctor with a concussion from his aggressive pursuit of baseballs across the busy (then, two-lane - - now, five or six lane) street. It was better than the Polo Grounds for lefties. These days it would take a major swat to clear the highway and, if it did, the ball would go right through a plate glass window (after two major league [artificial surface]bounces on the asphalt parking lot) of a Long John Silver Kentucky Fried Burger King Super Grocery Store Strip Mall Shopping Center. Back then, (this “then” being the early Fifties)Tennessee Walking Horses abode there. (Do horses reside, or do they merely abide?)
All of my children, who seemed fairly convinced of my veracity before the return trip, have started looking strangely at me. “So where, exactly, do you think the airplane salvage yard was, Dad?” Well, back then it was a “junkyard,” but I guess about where the auto parts store is, now. “Angus steers and Tennessee Walking Horses, you say?” Yes, that would be about where McDonald’s is, right? Hope they aren’t using any leftover parts at either of these places.
Take away my future if you must. I am no longer the quivering mass of potential who shot (or slinked) out of the Roanoke Valley some thirty-three years ago. But please don’t take away my past. Without that, I am not distinct from everyone else I run into. Please write to me and tell me that some of my memories are real: there were mock orange trees growing along Main Street that I passed on the (five miles if it’s a foot) walk from my home at the (now) Pizza Hut, next to the Skyline Cleaners Dairy Delight, to Academy Street Elementary (or was it, “Grammar?”) School, (now it’s a luxury condo) with the twisting covered slide fire escape that was so cool. And there was water in “Dry Branch” and a troll that lived under the bridge who stole my lunch every Friday when they served hotdogs in the school cafeteria. And the “patrol boy” named Basil on the corner of Academy and Main in the winter of 1950-51, whom I decided to slug because he called my brother (who must have been speaking parenthetically at the time) a “liar,” was really an amazing (for that time) six-feet, ten-inch, two hundred, ninety pound, twelve-year-old fifth grader. Someone else must remember this behemoth with the fragrant name, who later preferred to be called the more generic, “Herb.” But never, never pronounce the “H” unless you are in England.
There was “The Alley,” that ran down from Main Street one house (Skyline Cleaners) east of us, perpendicular so that their back yards were an extension of our back yard; and if we had still been there ten years later when Sally Jo turned fifteen, all those fences would not have stopped me from getting back there to (“accidentally”) be walking (or vaulting) through her back yard. I probably would have become a world class hurdler with those fences being the only thing between me and Sally Jo. But by then we had moved on to the house on the hill, west of town, that was moved when the Interstate came through and replaced with a Holiday Inn parking lot. Thus we moved from the Pizza Hut to the Holiday Inn. And Sally Jo never knew what she missed (and she still won’t, even if she reads this, because “Sally Jo” was not her real name).
Someone please write to me and confirm that my paper route was not (as it would be, now) wall to-wall fast food joints all the way around Wildwood Road and, by the way, it was appropriately named at the time, wasn’t it? I remember learning to drive on that road, on Sunday mornings, after delivering all the papers and it was quiet and beautiful. It still is, in spots, but you have to go through gasoline-fast-food-convenience store Hell to get there. Wasn’t there a “Shale Bank” around there where locals went for advanced anatomy and physiology courses back then? Of course, I didn’t; but it was legendary what everybody else was doing up there.
One thing which seduced me to keep looking forward (some day I would be famous) was the fact that both of my childhood homes were moved when they fell victim to progress and were not destroyed. Therefore, simple commemorative markers or plaques on the Pizza Hut and the Holiday Inn sites can advise the public of the significance of those respective spots and give directions to the new location of the homes that were once there, and which now, (I envision) would be the repositories of my childhood memorabilia: the unexpurgated King James (with underlines, notations, and generous use of clear cellophane tape to bind together the “India Paper”) New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs which was my most memorable sixth birthday present; the game ball from the 1956 Salem Little League All Star Game which I was awarded for snagging a wicked line drive down the first base line with my most memorable twelfth birthday present (a Rawlings first baseman’s mitt); and a traffic citation issued by my brother to a policeman (who ever since that day has devoted his career to the elimination of parenthetical speech) which was the last hurrah (or gasp) of the feud we had with the Salem (then) Town Police force. The first shot or salvo had been a letter to the Roanoke newspaper suggesting that “Salem’s Finest” could possibly be finer if it didn’t have so many “Hooligans” on the force. This letter was instrumental in providing for me and for my (parenthetical) brother a police escort throughout the remainder of our life in the valley, which we appreciated a great deal. (This legendary confrontation was later trivialized by a stupid Television series called “Dukes of Hazzard.” Those old boys on the tube never had the grit to issue a traffic citation and make a citizen’s arrest of Roscoe. We did).
But all that is (as they say) in the past and has long been forgotten by everyone except me (and my brother). The now clashes so much with that past that it makes me wonder about my power of recall. When they do the film version of my memoirs, I fear that it will have to be moved to Australia. As for the Museum, something small and tasteful would be good - - no Taj Mahal will be necessary. Something like the Walton’s Museum would be just fine. All that is needed is something strong enough to preserve, and gentle enough to protect (or perhaps, revive) today’s dreams of yesterday.
Dennis S. Clower
226 East Main Street
Elkton, Md. 21921
(410) 398-7400
