For a brief period I was hearing "five by five" cropping up in Sci-Fi movies. Aliens may have been the first of the bunch, when the female Marine pilot makes her entry dive to the colony on the terra-forming planet. I wonder how far that line got and if it has an actual history of meaningful military use?
My current bout of nostalgia stems from reading Jeff Ford's The Shadow Year, which caused me to re-read Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, which caused me to re-visit the town of my youth and long for the missing sweetness of the place. The town of my youth has seemingly been ravaged by a tornado, but it apparently was just time that took down the trees, buildings, that scoured the streets, bleached the alleys, erased all traces of five-year-old's land marks, and left empty stretches of blocks "five by five," where once people thronged, and life happened.
Just above is a picture of a ship entering Trail Creek with the Hoosier Slide in the background (for larger image check out my scrapbook). The Hoosier Slide was gone long before I was born, all hauled away to make glass jars in places like Muncie, IN. You can see a small crowd of people at the top. Weddings were regularly performed there. It was a "Wonder of the World" once. Now I wonder where in the world those glass jars have gotten to? If there is any point to having the picture above, it's simply that it is easier to find a picture of the Hoosier Slide than of the street I lived on, or the landmarks I remember from the early fifties. 1955 is gone, vanished. Why should I be surprised?
I have been remembering when I was five years old actually, which is 1953. When I was five was the first time (and I suppose the last time I ever gave it serious consideration) I wanted to commit murder. I was not successful, but I had made an elaborate plan. It would have worked, but fortunately for me, the opportunity never occured, and I came to realize the wrongness of the whole idea. There is a former childhood bully-- I wonder if any of his pieces now reside (an appendix, a kidney) in a glass jar made from the Hoosier Slide?-- who has no idea how lucky he was to escape my vengeance. Not having even read Poe yet, I conceived of an engine of destruction I called "The Smush."
More on that later, perhaps?
My current bout of nostalgia stems from reading Jeff Ford's The Shadow Year, which caused me to re-read Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, which caused me to re-visit the town of my youth and long for the missing sweetness of the place. The town of my youth has seemingly been ravaged by a tornado, but it apparently was just time that took down the trees, buildings, that scoured the streets, bleached the alleys, erased all traces of five-year-old's land marks, and left empty stretches of blocks "five by five," where once people thronged, and life happened.
Just above is a picture of a ship entering Trail Creek with the Hoosier Slide in the background (for larger image check out my scrapbook). The Hoosier Slide was gone long before I was born, all hauled away to make glass jars in places like Muncie, IN. You can see a small crowd of people at the top. Weddings were regularly performed there. It was a "Wonder of the World" once. Now I wonder where in the world those glass jars have gotten to? If there is any point to having the picture above, it's simply that it is easier to find a picture of the Hoosier Slide than of the street I lived on, or the landmarks I remember from the early fifties. 1955 is gone, vanished. Why should I be surprised?
I have been remembering when I was five years old actually, which is 1953. When I was five was the first time (and I suppose the last time I ever gave it serious consideration) I wanted to commit murder. I was not successful, but I had made an elaborate plan. It would have worked, but fortunately for me, the opportunity never occured, and I came to realize the wrongness of the whole idea. There is a former childhood bully-- I wonder if any of his pieces now reside (an appendix, a kidney) in a glass jar made from the Hoosier Slide?-- who has no idea how lucky he was to escape my vengeance. Not having even read Poe yet, I conceived of an engine of destruction I called "The Smush."
More on that later, perhaps?
