Memories Are Long

When I was a child, my fam­i­ly would trav­el” around the coun­try in the sta­tion wag­on a few sum­mers in a row, two weeks at a time. I know Mom fret­ted some that I was too young and the trips would be wast­ed on me, but I have a con­sid­er­able num­ber of spe­cif­ic mem­o­ries about those trips.

I am not all that clear about which year we went where, or even where all we got to on a giv­en trip. I know there was a trip east/​northeast, and a trip west, and a trip south. Each trip cov­ered a whole lot of ground.

I remem­ber vis­it­ing a south­ern town on the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er some­time between 1958 and 1963 I would guess. I believe it was Vicks­burg. We took a tour of a beau­ti­ful, fine south­ern man­sion. I remem­ber the tour guide point­ing out the nev­er repaired holes in the exte­ri­or walls put there by North­ern gun­boats on the riv­er. I remem­ber that I, being a very young child, felt fear because there seemed to be so much anger/​hatred/​resentment/​some­thing in her voice that indi­cat­ed she was still hold­ing a grudge against that North­ern aggression.

That was just under 100 years after the Civ­il War. From my per­spec­tive at the time, the Civ­il War was for­ev­er ago!!! That the woman would still har­bor antag­o­nism against North­ern­ers was aston­ish­ing to me. Today I under­stand that 100 years is just not that long. If you are speak­ing to a per­son over the age of 50, he or she was raised by some­one who is almost cer­tain­ly over the age of 70, and that per­son was raised by some­one over the age of 90, well, you see where this is going. And those num­bers are conservative.

You could eas­i­ly be speak­ing to some­one who spent many hours talk­ing to a grand­par­ent about times that are 100 years pri­or to your conversation.

Mem­o­ries are long. Want proof?

Respon­dents were asked, “When you think about the Civ­il War, if you had to choose, would you say that you sym­pa­thize more with the north­ern states that were part of the Union or the south­ern states that were part of the Con­fed­er­a­cy?” Sup­port for the Union was over­whelm­ing in the Mid­west (68%), North­east (79%), and West (84%), but in the South, only 48% said they were more inclined to sym­pa­thize with the Union.

Why Man Creates — Memory of a Movie

I attend­ed high school from fall of 1969 through the spring of 1973. In that four years, I was shown the movie Why Man Cre­ates two or three times (I’m real­ly lean­ing towards the three). It is a strange flick and most of it I only vague­ly remember.

I do, how­ev­er, vivid­ly remem­ber one long sequence. I do no so much remem­ber what all was in the sequence, but I remem­ber what it looked like. The con­ceit was that we are look­ing at one long con­tin­u­ous sheet of paper scrolling across the frame top to bot­tom. As the paper scrolls, a pen­cil point enters the frame and draws (very quick­ly) illus­trat­ing the his­to­ry of mankind.

I can still remem­ber the dark ages going by as the pen­cil draws tall tow­ers with arched shut­tered win­dows. Then one shut­ter opens up and a man leans out and says “Egads!! I’ve invent­ed the zero!”. Anoth­er shut­ter near­by opens and a man leans out and says “What?”. The first man responds with “Noth­ing. Nothing.”

I am a big lover of puns and I thought that was great. I’ve always remem­bered it. Or did I?

As you can see, the movie does not quite con­form to my memory.

The nerve.

I see that I took my favorite “dia­logue” from the movie and insert­ed it into the mem­o­rable sequence (the pen­cil sketch­ing). Then I for­got all about Allah and sub­sti­tut­ed “Egads!”. Those two things com­bined gave cred­it for the dis­cov­ery of zero to the wrong cul­ture. This mem­o­ry per­sist­ed even though I knew bet­ter regard­ing where the cred­it lay.

This makes me won­der about the verac­i­ty of my clear mem­o­ry of writ­ing the song Amer­i­can Pie. I’m sure McLean stole it from me.…