Thinking Back

Thomas Anger, don’t know if that’s his real name or just his blogger’s moniker, wrote an article over at Liberty Corner which he called, Living in the Past. If you have a chance drop by and visit the 1940’s courtesy of the memories he recorded.

I wrote about my Quality time with JJ ( linked via title bar) this past week and couldn’t help thinking about visits to my grandparent’s apartment in New York when I was JJ’s age. I walked JJ up the stairs and got him into bed for the night, said a prayer with him and left him to his thoughts as I turned out the light.

Instead of seeing my own house as I returned to the Den, I was transported in time to my grandparent’s apartment in the mid to late 1950’s. I could see the pale blue gray colored painted walls in their guest room where I was to sleep on the sofa; a black boarder Afghan for a blanket. There was a quite courtyard below with a gazebo but very little grass as I recall. I would look out into the shadows cast by the apartment buildings and listen from the open window as the noises from the city trickled into the room. There was an elevated train station several blocks away, Bliss Street. I could hear the noise from the garbage shoot that banged and thumped objects near the wall where it transported them down to the trash collection room below.

I wondered what kind of thoughts and memories JJ would have of his time alone in the room, a room that at one time had been his mother’s bedroom. There’s an air conditioning air intake port in the hallway that rattles a bit when the unit clicks on; would that make a noise worthy of thoughts? We’re on one of the invisible paths that airplanes follow as they approach the airport; sometimes they come in rather low, would that be similar to my memories of the elevated trains? Life is an adventure worth taking note of, whether you're 4 years old or just a tad older; say 55 and looking forward to 56.