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The Magic

By Carl Brooks

Born 1941, M, from Harvest, AL., United States

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The Magic
(Excerpts from Echoes from a Padded Room)
By
Carl Brooks

You know, when you get older, things that you remember when you were a child are often the best memories that you have. I know I tend to visit those places more often as my years build up. In writing the chronicles of my childhood, I became acutely aware of the differences between what could be described as the average way of life during that time period, and those of today. The time period in question is a mere 40 to 50 years; not much in the great scheme of things. In decades past, changes took place at a relatively slower pace, allowing people to adapt and prepare themselves for the shock of that change… and make no mistake about it, change is certainly a shock of varying intensities.
I’ve read many volumes of stories, recollections and chronicles which took place before and during the Civil War era; day to day, mundane occurrences describing in detail the actions of a person such as rising from a night’s sleep, the process of food preparation, morning ablutions, preparing for and doing necessary chores, etc… hour by hour, minute by minute descriptions of life at that instant… their lives. It not only provided insight into those people and their way of life, but the timing involved, along with the series of events which either caused success, and or failure toward their specific goals. One gets a better view of who they were, based on an idea of what they did… and why. With gradual changes, their motivations are mostly obvious to us because our own actions aren’t that much different than theirs were. We understand why they did what they did, but with today's rapid changes, those changes in motivation aren’t always that obvious.
I wish I could have been wise enough to write down some of the daily things I saw and did as a child; archaic things that kids simply don’t do anymore, or that we just don’t see anymore. A child’s routine in the 1940’s was so totally different than that of a child today, that it isn’t any wonder they grow up such different people than what we eventually became. That is, accepting the premise that a person is mostly the sum of his experiences. Of course, the experiences of my two sons are much different than my own, and that is what makes us all different from one another.

During our lifetime, these experiences change, evolve, grow, deepen, and are discarded or strengthened due to new and ongoing experiences of our everyday lives. Our minds are strange creatures. We sometimes remember things we aren’t even consciously aware that we know, or have done. For me, it is generally the small things that have imprinted on my memory; watching Mrs. Thompson, my baby sitter, making lye soap in her back yard, (the smell of it cooking) building a fire, filling the large black cauldron with well water, adding hog fat, ashes and cakes of lye, while stirring the boiling mixture until it thickened. Then pouring it into wooden molds, made by her husband, letting it set, then breaking out each newly made bar of soap with a knife. Or using the same kettle, or cauldron, to boil water and wash clothes, taking the hot, wet clothes out with the broken end of a broom handle. In those days, when buying new clothes, you bought the lightest color possible, then, by dyeing them later on, you could have virtually new clothes of a different color… always use RIT dyes. When all of your senses are stimulated, the memories seem to be stronger and more vivid… at least mine are.
My daily chores as a small boy included gathering eggs from the hen house. I liked rummaging around in the nests for the warm eggs. Certain chickens objected, and some didn’t seem to mind. We had Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, Bantams, (or Bantys), and a few mixed breeds. A couple of hours before dinner time, Mother would hand me a long, stiff wire with a hook fashioned at one end, with which I dutifully made my way to the chicken yard and caught a plump hen by the leg. Mother then proceeded to grab its head in one hand and wring its neck. The chicken flopped and bled profusely for about a minute, then, we moved in. First, she dipped it into boiling water to open the pores of its skin and loosen the feathers. I was assigned the job of plucking. The stink was very strong. Then, Mother held the plucked and gutted carcass over an open flame to singe the small developing feathers and cleanse the skin. Then, it was time to cut it up into manageable parts, bread, and fry it. No one had the money to just go to the store and buy one. In our little town of Bowie, it touted the largest chicken operation in the world: Johnson’s Chicken Ranch. One day it was destroyed by a tornado. Feathers went in every direction.
Occasionally, Dad would bring in a squirrel he had shot. Mother dutifully cleaned and cooked the varmint, though it was obvious she had no stomach for it. We lived in town and were only one generation away from having even less than we did, but many of my schoolmates used kerosene lamps for household lighting. On my occasional visits, their houses smelled funny because of it. At one time, Mrs. Thompson used kerosene lamps and had an authentic ice box, the kind you kept blocks of ice in. She made her own syrup from sugar and water and wasted nothing.
A special treat on a hot day would be to beg a nickel from Mother, Dad, or do some chore for it, go to the ancient filling station on the corner of our dirt streets and buy a Grapette soda pop. It only had about six ounces of pop, but if managed properly, would last a couple of hours. Especially by punching a hole in the metal lid with an ice-pick and slowly sucking out the wonderful elixir from within. When we were really flush, we’d open the bottle and add a package of peanuts, then every time we sucked out a peanut, a little bit of Grapette came with it. We wasted nothing. The inside of the bottle cap had a round piece of cork in it. We’d remove the cork, put the metal cap on the outside front of our T-shirts, and secure it with the cork on the inside of the shirt. Then, if there was no deposit offered for returning the empty bottle, we would take our B-B guns and shoot through the inside of the bottle, causing a really neat, round, glass circle to break loose from the bottom. These things may sound primitive now, but then it was the way we lived our lives. We invented our own entertainment. I thought that everyone did the same things.
In the evening, our only entertainment, besides sitting on the front porch watching the storm clouds build, was the radio; which was wonderful. After turning out all the lights in the house, all you could see was the tiny red light and the back-lit dial of our floor model radio, indicating the device was indeed switched on. Our imaginations ran amuck. Inner Sanctum, The Shadow, Gunsmoke, Red Skelton, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade, Fibber McGee and Molly, Our Miss Brooks, Corliss Archer, Archie Andrews, Lights Out, The Phantom, Jack Armstrong - The All American Boy, The adventures of Tarzan, Amos ‘N Andy, Sergeant Preston of the Mounties, along with his wonder dog, King, Flash Gordon, The Fat Man with J. Scott Smart, Big Town with Loralai Kilborne and Steve Wilson, G-Men, Bill Stern, and on and on.
Some nights were very special. In summer, everyone would congregate in the back yard or on the porch, sit and talk and watch the stars. The kids caught lightening bugs (fire flies) in a jar and played tag, got chiggers from rolling around in the grass and learned how to kiss with the neighborhood girls/boys.
Eventually, everyone joined in the conversations with the adults, reflecting on the day’s events, taking time to put things into perspective and learning about each other. Often, neighbors joined in on the happening which expanded the scope of the magic. And that’s what it was…magic. When it happened, everyone knew it immediately. There was a calmness and depth… a friendliness and good feeling shared by everyone there, which is difficult to describe. An almost anonymity was created by talking to shadows or silhouettes in the darkness, which occurred nowhere else. When the spell had spread itself liberally over a period of an hour or so, no one wanted to be the one to break it and go inside. Even we kids felt it. Those were some of the most richly rewarding times of my life. The mood was entirely positive, regardless of what else might be happening in our lives. I felt more love then and there than at any other time within our household. When it was finally time to break the spell and go to bed, sleep was sweet indeed. Rest was without anxiety or tension. Everything seemed in its place. We had all touched base with each other and our emotions, caught up on events, explained our previously misunderstood actions or behaviors that day, and made plans for tomorrow. There was time for all that back then. We knew each other better….We wanted to know each other better. Respect came easily with understanding. My God! Why would we ever choose to give all that up… for anything?
Now, several generations later, everything is different. The newer generations have a different base altogether. We can’t see the same things in the same way because of their shift toward facing a new and very different world. The gap ever-widens as we struggle to understand each other. My generation perpetually wonders why the new one doesn’t want the same things that we had. The new generation questions why we ever wanted them in the first place. I guess that’s why old people are supposed to die. Maybe conciliation between these two factions, by nature, is futile and folly. After all, my truths are mine alone…and no one else’s. My “base” is centered in the past; theirs is still being constructed.
I remember a scene in the old movie, “Soylent Green,” with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson. Apparently Robinson’s character was fed up with what humans and humanity had done and become, so he decided to check-out. Because the earth was so crowded with people, you could elect to go to a special center, have them show your favorite video of nature (or whatever) while you slowly fade into death. With our health care system in shambles, I foresee something similar on our horizon. Old people will eventually just want to get out of the way of the social freight train of younger people with different experiences
I believe that we all have an innate love of life and almost all aspects of it; even some of the bad parts. Everything is an experience and most are worth having. However, change at my age is difficult. Some of the behaviors I witness on a daily basis are those that would never have been tolerated in past times. I suppose the behavior I find ever increasingly difficult to deal with is rudeness, aggressiveness and apathy… especially rudeness. In some places a show of open disrespect to another person, or that person’s ideas is actually a sign of pride. My regret stems from knowing that the world I have known and love so dearly is gradually dissolving, being chipped away as a buffalo would watch himself being eaten by a pride of hungry lions. It isn’t easy to experience ones values being devoured right before your eyes. Those values are part of me… who I am. Perhaps a simple and basic tenet of being human is that with each successive generation we must also change and grow with our times. But I cannot compete with computers, cell phones, television and the technology that has spawned this change. I long for a return to the softer, slower way of life; one that successive generations will never know, and therefore will not miss.

The Magic(Carl Brooks) The Magic
(Excerpts from Echoes from a Padded Room)
By
Carl Brooks

You know, when you get older, things that you remember when you were a child are often the best memories that you have. I know I tend to visit those places more often as my years build up. In writing the chronicles of my childhood, I became acutely aware of the differences between what could be described as the average way of life during that time period, and those of today. The time period in question is a mere 40 to 50 years; not much in the great scheme of things. In decades past, changes took place at a relatively slower pace, allowing people to adapt and prepare themselves for the shock of that change… and make no mistake about it, change is certainly a shock of varying intensities.
I’ve read many volumes of stories, recollections and chronicles which took place before and during the Civil War era; day to day, mundane occurrences describing in detail the actions of a person such as rising from a night’s sleep, the process of food preparation, morning ablutions, preparing for and doing necessary chores, etc… hour by hour, minute by minute descriptions of life at that instant… their lives. It not only provided insight into those people and their way of life, but the timing involved, along with the series of events which either caused success, and or failure toward their specific goals. One gets a better view of who they were, based on an idea of what they did… and why. With gradual changes, their motivations are mostly obvious to us because our own actions aren’t that much different than theirs were. We understand why they did what they did, but with today's rapid changes, those changes in motivation aren’t always that obvious.
I wish I could have been wise enough to write down some of the daily things I saw and did as a child; archaic things that kids simply don’t do anymore, or that we just don’t see anymore. A child’s routine in the 1940’s was so totally different than that of a child today, that it isn’t any wonder they grow up such different people than what we eventually became. That is, accepting the premise that a person is mostly the sum of his experiences. Of course, the experiences of my two sons are much different than my own, and that is what makes us all different from one another.

During our lifetime, these experiences change, evolve, grow, deepen, and are discarded or strengthened due to new and ongoing experiences of our everyday lives. Our minds are strange creatures. We sometimes remember things we aren’t even consciously aware that we know, or have done. For me, it is generally the small things that have imprinted on my memory; watching Mrs. Thompson, my baby sitter, making lye soap in her back yard, (the smell of it cooking) building a fire, filling the large black cauldron with well water, adding hog fat, ashes and cakes of lye, while stirring the boiling mixture until it thickened. Then pouring it into wooden molds, made by her husband, letting it set, then breaking out each newly made bar of soap with a knife. Or using the same kettle, or cauldron, to boil water and wash clothes, taking the hot, wet clothes out with the broken end of a broom handle. In those days, when buying new clothes, you bought the lightest color possible, then, by dyeing them later on, you could have virtually new clothes of a different color… always use RIT dyes. When all of your senses are stimulated, the memories seem to be stronger and more vivid… at least mine are.
My daily chores as a small boy included gathering eggs from the hen house. I liked rummaging around in the nests for the warm eggs. Certain chickens objected, and some didn’t seem to mind. We had Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, Bantams, (or Bantys), and a few mixed breeds. A couple of hours before dinner time, Mother would hand me a long, stiff wire with a hook fashioned at one end, with which I dutifully made my way to the chicken yard and caught a plump hen by the leg. Mother then proceeded to grab its head in one hand and wring its neck. The chicken flopped and bled profusely for about a minute, then, we moved in. First, she dipped it into boiling water to open the pores of its skin and loosen the feathers. I was assigned the job of plucking. The stink was very strong. Then, Mother held the plucked and gutted carcass over an open flame to singe the small developing feathers and cleanse the skin. Then, it was time to cut it up into manageable parts, bread, and fry it. No one had the money to just go to the store and buy one. In our little town of Bowie, it touted the largest chicken operation in the world: Johnson’s Chicken Ranch. One day it was destroyed by a tornado. Feathers went in every direction.
Occasionally, Dad would bring in a squirrel he had shot. Mother dutifully cleaned and cooked the varmint, though it was obvious she had no stomach for it. We lived in town and were only one generation away from having even less than we did, but many of my schoolmates used kerosene lamps for household lighting. On my occasional visits, their houses smelled funny because of it. At one time, Mrs. Thompson used kerosene lamps and had an authentic ice box, the kind you kept blocks of ice in. She made her own syrup from sugar and water and wasted nothing.
A special treat on a hot day would be to beg a nickel from Mother, Dad, or do some chore for it, go to the ancient filling station on the corner of our dirt streets and buy a Grapette soda pop. It only had about six ounces of pop, but if managed properly, would last a couple of hours. Especially by punching a hole in the metal lid with an ice-pick and slowly sucking out the wonderful elixir from within. When we were really flush, we’d open the bottle and add a package of peanuts, then every time we sucked out a peanut, a little bit of Grapette came with it. We wasted nothing. The inside of the bottle cap had a round piece of cork in it. We’d remove the cork, put the metal cap on the outside front of our T-shirts, and secure it with the cork on the inside of the shirt. Then, if there was no deposit offered for returning the empty bottle, we would take our B-B guns and shoot through the inside of the bottle, causing a really neat, round, glass circle to break loose from the bottom. These things may sound primitive now, but then it was the way we lived our lives. We invented our own entertainment. I thought that everyone did the same things.
In the evening, our only entertainment, besides sitting on the front porch watching the storm clouds build, was the radio; which was wonderful. After turning out all the lights in the house, all you could see was the tiny red light and the back-lit dial of our floor model radio, indicating the device was indeed switched on. Our imaginations ran amuck. Inner Sanctum, The Shadow, Gunsmoke, Red Skelton, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade, Fibber McGee and Molly, Our Miss Brooks, Corliss Archer, Archie Andrews, Lights Out, The Phantom, Jack Armstrong - The All American Boy, The adventures of Tarzan, Amos ‘N Andy, Sergeant Preston of the Mounties, along with his wonder dog, King, Flash Gordon, The Fat Man with J. Scott Smart, Big Town with Loralai Kilborne and Steve Wilson, G-Men, Bill Stern, and on and on.
Some nights were very special. In summer, everyone would congregate in the back yard or on the porch, sit and talk and watch the stars. The kids caught lightening bugs (fire flies) in a jar and played tag, got chiggers from rolling around in the grass and learned how to kiss with the neighborhood girls/boys.
Eventually, everyone joined in the conversations with the adults, reflecting on the day’s events, taking time to put things into perspective and learning about each other. Often, neighbors joined in on the happening which expanded the scope of the magic. And that’s what it was…magic. When it happened, everyone knew it immediately. There was a calmness and depth… a friendliness and good feeling shared by everyone there, which is difficult to describe. An almost anonymity was created by talking to shadows or silhouettes in the darkness, which occurred nowhere else. When the spell had spread itself liberally over a period of an hour or so, no one wanted to be the one to break it and go inside. Even we kids felt it. Those were some of the most richly rewarding times of my life. The mood was entirely positive, regardless of what else might be happening in our lives. I felt more love then and there than at any other time within our household. When it was finally time to break the spell and go to bed, sleep was sweet indeed. Rest was without anxiety or tension. Everything seemed in its place. We had all touched base with each other and our emotions, caught up on events, explained our previously misunderstood actions or behaviors that day, and made plans for tomorrow. There was time for all that back then. We knew each other better….We wanted to know each other better. Respect came easily with understanding. My God! Why would we ever choose to give all that up… for anything?
Now, several generations later, everything is different. The newer generations have a different base altogether. We can’t see the same things in the same way because of their shift toward facing a new and very different world. The gap ever-widens as we struggle to understand each other. My generation perpetually wonders why the new one doesn’t want the same things that we had. The new generation questions why we ever wanted them in the first place. I guess that’s why old people are supposed to die. Maybe conciliation between these two factions, by nature, is futile and folly. After all, my truths are mine alone…and no one else’s. My “base” is centered in the past; theirs is still being constructed.
I remember a scene in the old movie, “Soylent Green,” with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson. Apparently Robinson’s character was fed up with what humans and humanity had done and become, so he decided to check-out. Because the earth was so crowded with people, you could elect to go to a special center, have them show your favorite video of nature (or whatever) while you slowly fade into death. With our health care system in shambles, I foresee something similar on our horizon. Old people will eventually just want to get out of the way of the social freight train of younger people with different experiences
I believe that we all have an innate love of life and almost all aspects of it; even some of the bad parts. Everything is an experience and most are worth having. However, change at my age is difficult. Some of the behaviors I witness on a daily basis are those that would never have been tolerated in past times. I suppose the behavior I find ever increasingly difficult to deal with is rudeness, aggressiveness and apathy… especially rudeness. In some places a show of open disrespect to another person, or that person’s ideas is actually a sign of pride. My regret stems from knowing that the world I have known and love so dearly is gradually dissolving, being chipped away as a buffalo would watch himself being eaten by a pride of hungry lions. It isn’t easy to experience ones values being devoured right before your eyes. Those values are part of me… who I am. Perhaps a simple and basic tenet of being human is that with each successive generation we must also change and grow with our times. But I cannot compete with computers, cell phones, television and the technology that has spawned this change. I long for a return to the softer, slower way of life; one that successive generations will never know, and therefore will not miss.

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COMMENTS (1)

Carl Brooks

12/15/2019

Wonderful reminiscences from a time almost forgotten!

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Congratulations !

The Magic

COMMENTS (1)

Carl Brooks