If I had a time machine, there would be so many people I’d like to see again. I’d start with the man who gave me life then disappeared for four years before exiting the planet. My mother probably comes in a close second. Raised in a strict rural German Catholic culture, she proved unable to open herself up to maternal feelings that might have been lingering there. Maybe the next time it would be different?
Then there’s another group. Folks who entered into my life for a brief period of time before disappeared again. I was recently commiserating with one of my salon compatriots about old friends and past companions. With our collective miles under the belt, we’ve both had many casual, close and a few profound friendships and relationships.
While some of my friends won’t admit it, I know there’s been several who have acquiesced to ‘Facebook stalking’ and/or perusing ‘Classmates.com’ in hopes of finding old school chums, friends, associates, love interests and other assorted contacts made over the years.
My belief is that you leave something of yourself with everyone you
come into contact with. Granted, you are a different person now than you were
back then but if you have ‘history’ with someone even for a brief period of
time, the connection is still there.
The categories where old acquaintances can be found vary with time and
place. It really comes down to meaningful events in your life even if for only
short periods of time. There’re all life sketches, painted a different color
for everyone, and yet poignant reminders of one’s past life.
![]() |
Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman |
One of my regrets is that almost all of those kids I hung around with in grade school have long since scattered to the winds of time. It would have been so fascinating to find out how their lives turned out after growing up in Highland Park.
The Army had a profound effect on me although I didn’t realize it at the time. My two-year enlistment was ripe with hundreds of storylines, personal antidotes, and character studies. Events happened and were forgotten only to resurface years later when nudged forward by a song, comment, or photograph. It was a colorful kaleidoscope of military images buried deep in my memory bank. There were Drill Sergeants straight out of hell, bunkmates who were anti-social, lost young men, gung-ho John Wayne types, rumblings of a far-off Asian war, and a youthful lusting for the opposite sex.
Straight out of Basic Training, I worked as a reporter at the Presidian, the post newspaper, at the Presidio of San Francisco. My boss, the Sergeant Major, took a fatherly role in pointing me in the right direction (the Army way of doing things.) There was Mara, the office sexpot. She was a sad lost young woman, raised in an abusive household, whose striking good looks proved to be her downfall. The Colonel in charge seemed to hate enlisted men and life in general. I was introduced to the theater (in San Francisco, mind you) by a young German immigrant who had been drafted only weeks after arriving in the states.
As far as my other batshit bunkmates went, I had them all. A hustler (seriously, a working pimp), several deadbeats, an actor (really good), an artist (who hated Joan Baez?) and a squirrel cage of other characters. All destined for success or failure in one form or another.
Living in Europe on two separate occasions also supplied me with lasting memories of colorful characters, sad creatures, and intimate cerebral partners for late night salons.
There was my old roommate I called ‘animal,’ who only lived with me briefly but even then, left a memorable impression. Tiny Bailey, another lost soul from Arizona, who escaped an alcoholic mother to seek solace in Denmark then ended up leaving for Israel instead. The Guy from Canada who lived with a local family and was treated like royalty and Maria, my pal at the Danish laundry.
After I returned back to the states, there was a plethora of friends, close and not so close, who passed in and out of my life. The guy from Kentucky who took me in when I moved out after a racist rant from my mother about my girlfriend at the time. Close contacts that never went very far. For some that was a good thing. For others, I wish I was still in touch.
Those memories ended bundled up as a play entitled ‘PTV’ for which I still have high hopes in the future. It’s a kaleidoscope of wonderful memories: meeting ‘the one’ for the first time, learning to love television production and direction, real estate stumbles and success and now, closer to home, writing nine original songs for the production.
Past Girlfriends are always a topic of curiosity for most men. This kind of inquiry could seem awkward but it doesn’t have to be. For me, each of those women were charming, interesting, and a delight to know in their own way. There were a few others less memorable and my time spent with them was more easily forgotten. Yet with each, there was some ‘history’ and it was good.
Where there was history, there are memories. The key here is to glance into
the past but not linger there. I think it’s human nature to want to know about
past acquaintances no matter how close or vapid they might have been. They were
all, in a way, a reflection of who I was at that time in my life. A point in
time that can’t be returned, replaced, or replicated.
There can still be some poignant memories nevertheless. A cryptic e-mail after 48 years stating simply: ‘you did become a writer.’ Occasional e-mail exchanges that never went anywhere. A phone call out of the blue at 58 years for a brief 10 minutes. Then silence again.
Another former friend with whom I crossed paths after sixty some years is
still refusing to recognize anything beyond the fact that ‘there was some
history there.’ Yeah, like for a year and a half worth but who’s counting? But
that’s the way she wants to see our past and I have to respect it.
Memories are like good conversations. They’re ripe with warmth, delight,
and carefully construed images dancing in your head. What really happened, who
knows? What did the other person feel or remember, who knows?
Like a necklace of pearls, they shine and reflect and say something
about who you are, who you were and how far you’ve come. Then it’s time to put
the pearls away, look up at life and continue down that pathway of reality. And
as Jackie Gleason famously said: “And thanks for the memories.”