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Posted by: Bob Sheridan (bobsheridan@earthlink.net) on 11/01/1997@12:18hrs:
I got to wondering about reasons we like to remember old places that are no longer there, and share them with folks who can say they remember not only that but something else, which we in turn remember, stuff that we've stored in the attic and rarely have occasion to look at, but when we do, we smile. Perhaps we've phased out the less delightful memories, but are open to the ones that brought delight, such as the crumb buns, the smell of an Italian bakery as you walked past with your mother as a kid on Richmond Avenue, the pizza at Nunzio's, the hot dogs and birch beer at Al Deppe's, lying on a blanket under the sun at Great Kills beach with a friend who dropped by; that was the life and those places are the furniture in the living room that we felt comfortable in, I guess, and we don't want to lose it. Maybe this is why some folks aren't open to discussing current problems on this site; we're too busy tracking down the old sights and smells to get back to current reality. Do we need to justify this? I don't think so. There's room in the world for many things, and one of them is telling the story of bygone days. Why? Because we lived them and they had meaning for us, just as todays kids have their favorite places, people and things, and will someday enjoy recalling them, because they value them, even if they may not have been so conscious of them then. We have all sorts of people who recall the story, who tell the story, of where we came from and what was important. First there was the oral tradition, and then it was written down. Homer and the Bible are the two earliest in our traditions. Other writers, artists, and historians try to tell the story, and they keep doing it every generation, as each generation has to be told or retold the story. As they say, you can't know where you are going if you don't know where you've been. I'm not exactly sure how these postings tell us where to go, but they do call up where we've been, at least the physical places that form the furniture of our minds. We share a bond. It may be a tenuous one, seen only on the 'Net, and when we bump into each other, or see one another and refer to some place or another on the Island, but the bond is as real as the Iliad that kept the Ancient Greeks together. Only thing missing is the singer of the song, the compiler of the verse. We have no poet laureate of the Island, as yet, as far as I'm aware, but these postings are the raw material if ever I saw raw material. Once we identify all the furniture, we'll have to think about the things that influenced us that happened around and in relation to them that have proved good, bad, or indifferent ever since. Try not to trip over the coffee table.