Faces From The Past

Spencer Tracy - Photo by Imojean Cunningham

One Hundred Years Ago In Sweden

Observing Sweden 12 August 2013

Posted on August 12, 2013 by bldodson

I spent some time at History Week this Saturday, small town called Sätre, twenty klicks from where we live. A village fair where time goes back 100 years, people dress up, folk dances, music, horses. First stop was a folk music group. There was an instrument I’ve never seen before. A rough translation of the name would be a key harp, like a violin except with keys, no frets to finger.

Here’s another.

 

       They were good and I was eye-wet moved, for reasons not apparent. Maybe seeing them so old (my age) and having a good time together . . . sweet recall, these years gone by, un-witnessed by the many and remembered by this lucky few. So very Swedish, and it came to me I’d been around a good three quarters of the century they’re celebrating. How did I get old? I didn’t see it coming. Age sneaks up on one . . . thief in the night, daylight as well. I watched a folk dance, also very Swedish. Called the Ox dance. Not sure where it comes from . . . what the story is. But fun to watch – two old guys (my age) having a great time with gusto.

 

There were carriages and horses.

 

Also horse poop. Watch your step.

        It was a fun day, simple, nice. A simple Swedish happiness I notice more and more, an almost naive joyousness uncommon in the States. Cell phones were not in use this day, this far more simple time and place, a great relief.

It was a nice day.

 

Village People – 1913 Sweden Style.

Observing Sweden 12 August 2013

Posted on August 12, 2013 by bldodson

I spent some time at History Week this Saturday, small town called Sätre, twenty klicks from where we live. A village fair where time goes back 100 years, people dress up, folk dances, music, horses. First stop was a folk music group. There was an instrument I’ve never seen before. A rough translation of the name would be a key harp, like a violin except with keys, no frets to finger.

Here’s another.

        They were good and I was eye-wet moved, for reasons not apparent. Maybe seeing them so old (my age) and having a good time together . . . sweet recall, these years gone by, un-witnessed by the many and remembered by this lucky few. So very Swedish, and it came to me I’d been around a good three quarters of the century they’re celebrating. How did I get old? I didn’t see it coming. Age sneaks up on one . . . thief in the night, daylight as well. I watched a folk dance, also very Swedish. Called the Ox dance. Not sure where it comes from . . . what the story is. But fun to watch – two old guys (my age) having a great time with gusto.

 

There were carriages and horses.

 

Also horse poop. Watch your step.

        It was a fun day, simple, nice. A simple Swedish happiness I notice more and more, an almost naive joyousness uncommon in the States. Cell phones were not in use this day, this far more simple time and place, a great relief.

It was a nice day.

 

Village People – 1913 Sweden Style.

Remember the Fifties?

On the set of Guys & Dolls 1955

Remembering The Fifties

Remembering The Fifties

Studebakers,  Hudsons, Pontiacs

Great cars with horn rings

Bench seats that allowed you to sit close

And put your arm around a girlfriend

Sometimes more than that.

No buttons

Radios with dials

Door handles

Windows rolled down by hand

Those straight 8 gas hogs - twenty-five cents a gallon . . . Ethyl.

No idiot lights

It was assumed drivers had brains.

I saw Bill Halley & The Comets

Little Richard in St. Louis - Live

The ticket price – two bucks.

Drove an MG-A convertible with spoke wheels

From St. Louis to L. A.

Crossed Death Valley at high noon

So hot it melted solder out of the generator

I was twenty and it all felt so cool.

L.A. to San Francisco

Highway lined with orange trees

Beautiful . . . Clear sky and no pollution

People thought the government was honest

If  Truman or Eisenhower were hinky we never heard about it.

There were no terrorists

You could carry a knife on airplanes.

We had fought a war for understandable reasons

And actually won

No one thought to be politically correct

People with holes in their jeans were poor

And only sailors had tattoos.

It seems so long ago

A world away

On Leaving America

19 February    Year of the water snake, I think.

Twelve days to go. I am totally freaking out. Time is passing by faster than greyhounds, and there is still so much to do. We must be out of the house on the fourth. Before that will be living in empty place for two days—with the cats and a mattress that will be picked up on the final day. Or we could go somewhere. A neighbor has offered us use of his guest bedroom and we might make use of that . . . or not. The neighbor has this cat that can go in and out of his house through a small cat door. Boots is a very bad cat and last week got in a fight with Morris who is an indoor cat. Morris had found a way to sneak out of the house and Boots tore him up pretty bad. Boots kills birds, including lots of humming birds. He is not beloved in the neighborhood. Six-hundred dollar vet bill to repair poor Morris. Even if we kept our cats locked in the bedroom . . . what it one got out, or in. They would need a sand box. Could we even get into a hotel with 2 cats? I should put that on our list: Hotel that takes cats.

Two days in Motel 6 . . . With cats. The cats know something‘s going on. Thank God they can’t imagine what is coming up. A neighbor will take us to the airport with so much luggage we need Sherpa’s. Lou and I will both be carrying one cat in a cage with a sling that goes over ones shoulder . . . this and two suitcases each. Then thirty hours of flight. I don’t care if it kills me. I just want it to be over. I am too damn old to be doing this. I’ve begun to feel old for the first time. There was a time when I became old, probably mid- fifties. I remember overhearing someone saying to another, “He’s that old guy, over there.” I suddenly saw them as they saw me, an older generation by a couple decades. I was suddenly aware that others thought of me as old. But I did not feel old.

I’m feeling old these last few days. I’m feeling tired, and Lou is too. We’ve been packing again. The things you really want to have available as long as possible. We’re packing our suitcases. What are the most important things? What will go in the limited space of carry on? What are the family jewels? Bucky is sitting on the table just behind me, looking at this monitor. It’s lucky he can’t read. “Not knowing is the strength of man and beast.” Who said that? Bucky wants a snack, of course. I give him one and satisfied, he saunters off. Sometimes I think it’s more he wants to make me do something than he wants the snack.

The Time of Our Lives - 1

As Time flies by—The years. 

My father died when he was my age, should have  lived another decade. Heart attack. Maybe good he left a bit early. Maybe there was nothing left for him to do. He had physically run out of things to do, things that he was capable of doing. I remember us in the back yard, him with a slingshot, trying to pull the rubber back. “Can’t even do this,” he told me . . . weakened by time, and hard work—blue collar. I remember my last visit, in their garden. I was pulling weeds. My dad, of course, had to help. I couldn’t stop him . . . would have been an insult. He knelt down facing me, pulled a few weeds, the stopped for a moment as if frozen. “Wait,” he says. With dog-like devotion I stay put, no questions. I say nothing as he gets some pills from a container in his pocket . . . takes one.  We kneel in silence, still for thirty heart beats. Then he moves again.

            “That nitro,” he says. “Good stuff.”

            Not a good sign. I’m not sure that one day he decided not to take the pill, let the heart attack do its thing to him, in the garage, by his workbench and tools of use for the time that was left. Also had emphysema—welder, thirty years.

            I think there was never a time that you or I or any of us did not exist. In past and future. I am not the first to say this, but if you believe, perhaps it’s time to think about what’s really going on. I think about it . . . sometimes, and made some modest efforts these last more than forty years. Means nothing of course, but when we shed the body. What is left? A lot of theories on that subject. Many answers. There might be a place some Buddhists speak of—Timeless Awareness. A primordial space where sound does not  exist, nor sight, or time and distance. Words as well—no more. All that gets left with the skin. And what are we now? With all these senses gone, somehow there is awareness of our selves . . . beyond thought. Beyond words, which make it very hard to describe. To describe it would be to disprove its existence.

            We spend our lifetimes thinking, about things.  To not-think, that’s the trick. We are bombarded by thoughts. They never stop . . . inspired by things, experience. There’s so much going on. Our work and wives and children, houses and TV—the obvious. There are few days I don’t spent at least a couple hours watching TV shows that slightly irritate me. Incredible ads . . . condoms and dildos and Viagra . . . erectisizers—drugs that make one hard as steel. Be a real man, we are told. Be all that you can be. A lot of magic lose-fat ads, machines and programs . . . guaranteed.  More advertisement time than movie minutes. Crime shows and cartoons. Why am I here?

            I'm rambling. Nothing more to do this rainy afternoon.