Three Fond Memories, by Louis

I have three categories [of fond memories]:

(a)          My mother at Christmas time, and her fabulous garden (herb garden included). Sour ending: she died.

(b)                        Politics: George McGovern’s campaign. Sour ending: Richard Nixon got elected.

(c)          My love affair with John Wheeler. Sour ending: he dumped me after 6 weeks and 15 years later, turned into a mentally impaired middle aged man.

(a)          On Christmas morning, my mother would put on a red satin robe, which she put on only on Christmas Morning. She would walk regally down from the second floor of our house to the first floor. For her, Christmas was the day she celebrated her five young sons, of which I was number 4. Our oldest brother Arthur would distribute the Christmas presents, some of them were donated by a local church. We were poor, but well fed. Our Christmas dinner table sparkled with elaborate china and fine crystal ware, handed down to us from our well-to-do great great grandparents, Hiram and Hester Brown of the early nineteenth century. Mother Elinor Brown really made me feel special.

Elinor Brown also kept an elaborate garden. She loved working in it for hours on end. When we moved into that house in 1950, the previous owners, the Horns, had purchased about 3 tons of topsoil. As a result, everything my mother planted grew luxuriantly and flourished. Most of the lawn was shaded by two very tall maple trees. And part of the garden was her herb garden which provided mint sprigs and sweet basil, etc. My mother grew holly hocks, all kinds of roses: tea roses, rambler roses, yellow roses, button roses, wild roses. Her irises were yellow and yellow and purple, and dark blue and light blue. She grew lady slippers and Jack-in-the-Pulpits. When I was around 30 years old, a friend told me that the reason that flowers are so beautiful is that they are sex organs. Well yes Mother Nature is somewhat lewd in many different ways.

The sour ending was that my mother died aetatem 76 years, and she was born in 1913, which would mean that she died in 1989. Elinor Brown was well-read and was an inspiration for many children not just her own five sons.

(b)                        Politics: I was in my 20’s when the War in Vietnam was going on. Everything about that war made me feel guilty. The establishment’s stated reasons for us being there were not very convincing. All the appalling pictures. I felt very guilty. So, when George McGovern came along and demanded we stop the whole disastrous war, I was relieved. My guilt was assuaged. I volunteered in his campaign. Although Richard Nixon beat him, I was not too dismayed. As reprehensible as Richard Nixon was, he could have been a lot worse.

In a report about President Obama visiting Laos, I recently heard that we dropped 2 million tons of bombs on Laos. For what reason?  I’ll never know. I also remember the reports of large numbers of veterans returning from that war as drug addicts. It was a bummer every which way.

(c)          About two years ago, I told you about my short-lived love affair with John Wheeler. I wasn’t too worried about invading his privacy given how common his name is. My love affair with him went on for about six weeks, during which time we would walk down the street and, you remember the song, “people stop and stare”, well people would literally stop and stare at John Wheeler, his beauty was so spectacular. I never told him what I really thought of him. I would say, “I think you are handsome or good-looking”. Whereas, in reality, I thought he was a rare beauty. His elbows were perfect, his farmer toes were beautiful. His proportions were perfect. Well he was a model for a sports magazine. He would curl his eye-lashes.  Every night he would put a dab of Vaseline on his eyelids. The long eyelashes made his beautiful almond-shape eyes even dreamier. His back muscles were rippled beautifully. His posture was perfect. He kept an enormous rifle in his closet. God knows if that was legal or not.

The sour ending: For some reason, after six week, he said he got a computer technician job in Connecticut and would be moving there with his girlfriend. He never wrote to me, never gave me his address in Connecticut. In other words, sadly, I got dumped.

About 20 years later, while I was a caseworker in Queens County in New York, I was assigned a client, a John Wheeler. I said to myself it couldn’t be my ex-boyfriend. I went to his apartment in Jackson Heights and saw it was the same John Wheeler, all his good looks gone. He looked like a slightly dumpy middle-aged man. The sad part was his memory was so defective that he could not remember what you said at the beginning of your sentence by the time you finished your sentence. His brain got pickled by too much vodka, to be honest. He was clinically mentally impaired. What was the point of me asking him about his computer technician career in Connecticut? He would not know what I was talking about.

© 5 Oct 2016 

About the Author 

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA's. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.