Treasured Memories

Many, many years ago when I was really young, I was playing with my G.I. Joe’s at our house out near the Floating Bridge and the Flat Rocks (almost sounds like a Lennon lyric doesn’t it?). I vowed to myself that I would remember that moment in time forever. Why? I am not too sure.

It was a beautiful fall day, but that is not enough to sway a child to remember a particular day; in fact when you are that young, every day is beautiful. I was alone, if one can be truly alone with a platoon of plastic soldiers surrounding you. But for some reason I scrunched my eyes shut and repeated to myself, “I will remember this moment forever.” And I have.

I remember the day itself. I remember the coldness felt when the warmth from the sun disappeared as it slipped behind a cloud in the sky. I remember the knees in my pants soaking up the moisture from the soil where I knelt at the base of the rock-face. I remember my platoon sergeant asking me how we will ever get up to the top of the cliff without getting wiped out by enemy fire. Okay, so maybe I remember too much at times.

This was not a moment that was born out of trauma or tragedy or triumph. Times like those seem to be easily recalled without effort. I remember being at the Royal Winter Horse Show when JFK was shot; in my dorm at school when a master came breezing into our room with the news that RFK had been shot in Los Angeles; and being at our cottage at Grippen Lake in the summer of ‘69 watching Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon on a crappy little 13" black and white TV with a coat hanger antenna.

I am sure there are a number of people who could tell me why this memory stamp has stayed with me. Maybe it truly was just a moment that held all of my childhood memories together. Maybe it is an amalgamation of several memories that my brain has reconstructed for my own general well being. Or maybe it is compensating for the memories that have been blocked. In all honesty, there are huge gaps in my memories as a child.

I started thinking about this memory thing before Hallowe’en one year. The girls were setting up a display at our front door for shelling out. They had come up with a pirate theme and needed everything to do with pirates. We had a Jolly Roger hanging on the wall, a fog machine to lend its’ sinister effect of the swirling mists of time. Stephanie was dressed as a swashbuckler, complete with sword and a sinister “Argh-h-h,” that pirates are wont to say. The only thing needed was a treasure chest filled to the brim with treats and she knew just where to find it.

In the early summer of 1989, I had been strolling through an antique sale and came across a chest that had a domed top, with leather handles and pine ribbed inlays. If ever there was a pirate treasure chest, this was it. I loaded it in the back of the Jeep and brought it home to show my wife.

That weekend we decided there should be a treasure hunt at the cottage compound, complete with a treasure for the kids. My wife then made up an authentic looking treasure map, with clues and scary items scattered all over it, and stained it with tea to give it an antique look. My brother and I loaded up on untold treats that would fill the chest.

When the day arrived, all the kids in the compound were gathered together and began the long march around the property following the instructions on the map. As this was going on, we loaded the treasure chest onto our boat and headed across the lake to Snake Island, alternately known as Treasure Island. This weekend it was Treasure Island. We had buried it under some branches and leaves and headed back to the shore.

When we got there, there was a small army of kids dressed in as pirates, with kerchiefs covering some heads and eye patches dotting a few faces. They had their trusty swords at the ready and were gathered around their Jolly Roger standard awaiting us. As we walked up to them they used their swords to point to the island as their next destination as mandated by their map. We rounded up all the spare boats that we could and loaded everyone on board.

Once on the island, everyone was gathered together and the clues were read aloud. Everyone walked to a clearing in the center of the island where the older kids saw the pile of branches and moved them away to reveal the hidden chest. As the kids murmured excitedly and gathered closer, the lid was raised. What followed was not expected at all. The group of children fell into a stunned silence as they saw the opened chest which overflowed with candies and toys. That lasted for maybe a few seconds before they all exploded in a massive scramble for the treats.

That treasure chest in the intervening years has sat unused in a storage area until that night a few months ago. Again it was filled to the rim with treats but with an added ghostly hand reaching out of the candies beseeching the young trick-or-treaters to beware. When the evening was over and the lid closed on the treasure chest once more, Stephanie had sheathed her sword and argh’d her last argh for the night. She started to smile and told us that although she was only two the summer of the Great Treasure Hunt of Grippen Lake, it was probably the fondest and most distinct memory she has had of her childhood.

So maybe that is what forms our lasting memories. Traumas, tragedies and historical events and sometimes even scrunching your eyes together to remember a precise moment in time - all can give you those memories, but often the ones that stay with you just happen.

All The News That Flits

Living in a small town, we don’t get the spotlight of international media focused on us in anyway that is really notable. A few years back a friend of mine called me from Smyrna, Tennessee, a Kingstonian by birth. The reason he called me beside the usual banter that old friends share, was that down in the old US of A his hometown was being mentioned on CNN and other news sources and not in particularly glowing terms. The press down there were reporting that two of the terrorists arrested in Toronto during a massive sweep lived in Kingston, Ontario. “What the heck (or words to that effect) is going on?”, he asked.. “Terrorists? In Kingston? What’s next?” However, what the press failed to mention of course, was that the terrorists arrested were citizens of Kingston only by virtue that they were inmates at one of our penitentiaries. But the damage had been done. The only mention of Kingston in any form of media in all his years in the US was this piece of misinformation. It was only after I straightened him out that he settled down.

There are literally thousands of news items each day that warrant coverage and wading through them at times I am sure is overwhelming for any news organization. So I thought I would offer my assistance to the news media to prevent them from picking up on the wrong story that focuses on my hometown.

There was an ad in the local paper a while back, it made such an impact on me that I clipped it. It was in the Classifieds, right under an ad for Whiskey Willy’s who were looking for some wait staff. The ad read, “Wanted: Volunteer Mars Genesis mission vehicle administrator. Write to...” and then gave the gentleman’s name and address to write to. Now, either there was this incredibly secret Mars mission going on right under our own noses or the gentleman who placed the ad believed he had an incredibly secret Mars mission about to launch. To give him some administrative credit, he also felt that he could find such a vehicle administrator for the Mars mission by placing a 4 line ad in a local small town newspaper. I am sure NASA could get its’ budgetary problems under control by using a similar method.

The other news item involved a teen whose life of crime will forever be punctuated by the fact that he robbed a sex shop. Call me crazy but from every thing I have ever read about crime, one of the primary motivating factors of theft is to steal money. Not this lad. It was reported that instead of absconding with the moola he opted to steal a sex toy. Okay... that’s a bit offbeat but what separates this story from the more mundane new items was that after he was caught by the police shortly after the theft, the item could not be returned to the shop because it had been used. I will just let that thought rest with you for a moment.

Somehow, in his flight to freedom when most criminals high-tail it out of the neighborhood, this criminal had the notion that he should stop fleeing and use his sex toy. Now, I am a pretty open-minded kind of guy and try as I might to rationalize this story, it is beyond my comprehension.

First of all I think, at least for a male, you need to be in a certain ummm, physiological condition to utilize these devices and I would think being at least partially naked might be helpful. How in the world does a fleeing thief, while eluding the police, manage to get in the mood? For most normal people, to do so usually involves at least a nice dinner and a bottle of wine. Maybe instead of a life a petty crime, this guy should write a book. Just think of the options for book titles. Sex on the Run could be one of them or maybe, Now, That’s a Stickup. Those are just two that come to mind. I am sure my friend from Smyrna would prefer to see this kind of story featured on CNN. At least he could say to his American friends that up there in Canada, we don’t blow up buildings, we blow up dolls.