memory, like gravity, pulls on the surface of reality
Blacktop surrounds my elementary school. It’s fresh-painted for hopscotch and dodgeball and smells serious, like the librarian.
The west fence prevents anyone wandering onto Fir Street. Not that you’d see much traffic beside buses. The Cascade Mountains are evident in the distance, giving the illusion that this ought to be north.
The real north is an open slope to the lower field. Below are basketball nets and a practice field for the high school football team. It’s a slick slope to slide down in what little snow winter affords.
The south side is a border of azaleas and lilacs mixed with red and white annuals whose names I never remember. The border rises to the high school, past the annex, behind the gym, where the big kids go to smoke.
The east side of the playground has a gravel path down to the bus barn. All along is a row of ragweed—a dog collar for kids. Half a block further is my house. I am not home and haven’t been for forty years.
I’m on the playground, NE corner, where there is an incinerator not in use at the moment. Here they burn paper, long before the era of blue boxes. I hover where smoke would rise from the ashes of past mimeographs.
We are outside for recess under a sky the kind you see on the opening credits of the Simpsons. An announcement comes over the P.A. I didn’t know there could be outside announcements.
I am floating over a cold brick furnace, where I see myself out for recess, playing tag with kids from my class. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving and this was such a beautiful blue, fall Friday.
One fateful day in November 1963 foist a timescope upon a generation of Boomer kids. Where were you when you heard? What were you doing? Even, how was the weather? Over the years we periodically peer into that scope into our own dioramas, into that fall Friday.
