Tag: nostalgia

Posted on

Summer Memories

296153_269495529727793_2072100_nWhen we were kids my sister and I would have all kinds of fun during our summers. First off, they started earlier than the public school kids because we went to a private school that was always done the first week of June instead of near its end. That sometimes made for issues when we would go to the Gallery downtown and the guards would want to kick us out for skipping school. It was hard to get across that it was cool, that we were legal so chill out.

Then there was the library. Our nearest public library was down on Baltimore Avenue, which was about 12 blocks away from our street, with the building itself directly across the avenue, so it was fun trying to get over there during heavy traffic. With our mom working every day, though, we had to make the trek on our own once we got old enough to do so. I remember the graffiti on the building more than anything else. It stood out like a beacon, and it wasn’t until much later that I realized it was planned and organized graffiti. Well, most of it anyway.

I recall trips to Dutch Wonderland when we would pile into the old Chevy Nova and rattle our way down the turnpike to a place that in retrospect wasn’t much larger than the block we lived on. But it was like magic, seeing Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, going on all those rides and getting to spend time with our dad. Those are the few memories we actually have with him before the divorce.

Then there were all the mishaps. I broke my wrist one year and my sister spent most of the time it was healing laughing at me. To top it off I got a blue cast that was incredibly difficult to sign with marker, so I didn’t even get to have it decorated like most others I saw. The time I busted my head falling down the stairs at Nana’s house ranks up there too, which also found my sister laughing at me. It seemed like that’s what she spent a lot of the summertime doing, but really it was only those two times, and the laughing was good-natured. At least I thought it was. Continue reading “Summer Memories”

Posted on

Saturday Shuffle

These kids don’t recognize Axl Rose’s voice, I shockingly found out after I introduced a musical challenge game with my students last week. And that wasn’t all. They also couldn’t tell the difference between Faith Hill and Shania Twain, they had no clue who STP was, and they knew no ’80s songs that weren’t by … Continue reading Saturday Shuffle

Posted on

Crafting Poetry

I never had one of those old typewriters, but I sure wanted one, with its cartridge and ribbon, and its ability to make mistakes that couldn’t easily be erased. Instead I learned to type on an old school version of the Apple computer where the letters were huge and shaped like computer bytes, or what … Continue reading Crafting Poetry

Posted on

Me & Siobhan

SiobhanIt was ’93 and me and Siobhan were doing nothing. We never did nothing on lazy summer days on the avenue, waiting for the rain to drive us back inside. And it rained a lot that summer. It seemed like we were always tiptoeing through the raindrops on our way to nowhere. We would skip in the puddles like we were six years old, but we knew better. It was our last summer together, although we didn’t know it at the time. The summer of us.

The new movie theater had just opened up halfway down the longest block on the avenue, and there was a Taco Bell in the plaza downstairs. It cost three bucks for a matinee and we had money from our allowance burning holes in our pockets. Plus it had air, and air was in short supply on the avenue, even in summer. Ma said it was on account of black folk being our own air conditioners,what with being dark and all. I never got what she was saying, and I sweat like a hog, but none of it ever got us air. So I learned to use a piece of paper like a fan and not complain.

Siobhan lived three houses down from us, in a building that was s’posed to be abandoned. Lord knows how long that sign was in the yard out front. But her ma said it was wrong, and one day she painted over it with white paint left over from the rehab center’s new rec room. Said it made the yard look special, but all I thought was that she should have just pulled it out of the ground. No matter. We never spent time over there anyway, on account of her ma being a drunk. I never asked about it, and Siobhan never said nothing about it, but it was as clear as day. Continue reading “Me & Siobhan”

Posted on

Agassi vs. Sampras

090114_SamprasAgassi_2000_h.h2Both men were sweating profusely, those two titans of the sport, one ranked #1 in the world, the other widely believed to be the greatest of his generation, and they were playing a game with which the rest of us were not familiar. The one was a classic baseline player, the best at returning serve, while the other possessed the best serve the game had ever seen, so their heavyweight battles were full of punches and counterpunches, body blows that came in quick and fast with a dizzying array of shotmaking ability.

It was late night during Australian summer, in early 2000, and the roof was open to the late evening sky, ushering in a slight breeze that still did nothing to cool off the players. Sampras blinked first, losing one service game in the first set that proved to be the difference as Agassi won it 6-4. The second set was a mirror image of the first, however, with Sampras getting the set’s only break to win it 6-3. Agassi had a prime chance to win the third set with a couple of chances on Sampras’ serve but they were not to be, as Sampras took the lead with a dominating tiebreak win.

In the fourth set of that epic match in the making, Sampras looked fresher but could not capitalize, as it went to another tiebreak, this time with Agassi coming out victorious. Then the time had come for a decisive fifth set that seemed destined to be just as dynamic as any set they had previously played. But the Sampras who came out for that fifth set looked tired as he sluggishly thumped around the court. It didn’t look like he had any gas left in the tank while Agassi looked fresh and fit, even 2 1/2 hours into the match. Agassi looked like the man who ran up and down hills just outside of his native Las Vegas to train. He steamrolled Sampras in that final set and raised his hands in victory. Continue reading “Agassi vs. Sampras”