I Wonder...

This coleus thrived all season. I want a whole flower bed full of them!

My brain is full of years of friendships, experiences, knowledge and curiosities, and I hope I have a lot more time to cram new stuff in there. Old bits of stored info don't vanish to make more room in my head because forgotten memories often pop up willy-nilly. There must be an abstract connection that escapes my conscious at the moment they appear.

Here is a bumfuzzling list of recent random recollections along with some of the new questions they spark.

*Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” Did you sing it? I think that was a campfire chorus at school camp or church camp or maybe Girl Scouts. Will today’s kids grow up with a deficit of cherished memories as they spend more and more time with devices?

*What happened to our Dogwood Trail? Due to our timber industry and roadway improvements, the configuration of our patches of woods is forever changing. Might I still see the remnants of the trail if I knew where to wander? Didn’t we have signs and brochures? Where did they get off to?

*Why did slant-six engines go away? From my limited mechanical perspective, that seemed the perfect engine.

*I was not sure I could spell succotash, much less figure out if I had eaten it, but when the ingredients were shared, I chimed in and began to salivate as the memory of that summertime salad surfaced. Momo’s was the best because she picked the ingredients from her backyard garden, not from grocery shelves. I don’t think I have ever made one; that’s criminal.

*Wonder what kind of bush that was in the back of the yard of the house where we lived when little sister was born? It provided the switches Mom used. That’s all I remember about it. I can’t visualize it with any green leaves or colorful blooms in the spring. (I made a point to check once upon a time. The bush was long gone).

*I owned a coveted pair of hiphugger bellbottoms purchased with bottle caps. They were a patchwork of red and white geometrics with “It’s the real thing” plastered here and there and across the seat of the britches, too. Mom disapproved so she probably had something to do with their disappearance. She never said and I never asked. I wore them only a couple of times, and then only to pump gas.

*Speaking of pumping gas, didn’t I catch a glimpse of news that there would be a return of that service at gas stations? Bring it on.

*Where is our family fudge recipe? I want fudge like we made it. No one seems to do it whatever ‘that way’ was. Nothing compares. And how did Mom and Momo make their fried pie crust? I haven’t been able to replicate that, either. That is probably one of those recipes that was on record only in their heads along with their secret ways of making white gravy and cornbread.

*THIS year maybe I will get closer to creating that ideal coleus flower bed that haunts me.

*Why are there so few labyrinths in American parks?

*Where is Margo? She was a gal pal my first two years at college in Walnut Ridge.

These are just a few of the random memories that popped up lately. Don’t tell me if you don’t have them, too. *