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Hearing The Rolling Stones
Time Is On My Side
As calendars go, there are only 31 day's in this month, but for me this is July 50th.
Maybe it's a coincidence that I would rather have a 1958 Chevrolet than a 1957 Chevy, even though it seems the rest of the car guy world covet's the earlier model.
I'm not a Chevy guy, I never have been and never will be, but I do think the '58 is one of the best looking vehicles ever built by the French.
As a matter of fact as the 1950's go, 1958 might be the best model year of all car makers for my own personal taste.
The 1958 Ford Thunderbird still get's me horny every time I see one and the '58 Fairlane with a retractable roof is as breath taking as any great American iron.
Even the Chrysler products were at their styling zenith that year, as were all of the other General Motors products.
1958 Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs and Caddies are still high on the list of any car guy who appreciates our automotive past.
These cars from this model year always' seem to swallowup all of the trophy's and plaques at car shows in this vicinity if not also everywhere else they show up.
The music 50 years ago was also rather special.
Doo Wap was nearing the end of it's run as mainstream pop and the amazing 1960's were within ear-shot.
The economy in this country will never again be as comfortable as it was fifty years ago and I will never again be in a comfort zone like I enjoyed in 1958.
I was six years old.
Ahead of my time I'm sure, but still just a raggedy kid set to leave the ghetto's of the Lincoln Park Projects to move to, and make my mark on the brick street's of German Village.
50 years ago this month my Dad finally married my mother and he took his "new" family from the litter strewn alley-way's of one of Columbus' poorest neighborhoods to settle near the shaded forest that grew within Shiller Park.
Shiller became our new backyard.
Shared of course with hundreds of other baby boomers growing up on the Southside during that era.
The half dozen July's before 1958 are vague memories at best for me so I don't count them.
That makes me 50 years old this year.
Therefore I will have to start watching the Columbus South High School Alumni web site for class of 1976 reunions and fire off an e-mail to them to take my name off the list of the class of '70.
That wasn't me in that yearbook.
I'm 50 now.
Which means of course that I fathered Rick Minerd Jr., now a Franklin County Sheriff's Sergeant when I was 13 years old.
Like I said, I was ahead of my time.
Fifty years ago this month I think I knew that I would remain a lifelong Southsider, I think I knew this because I've always' thought of myself as a visionary.
My ego has remained in tact if not every other facet of my being and personality.
And why the Hell not?
I've had some pretty good decades, probably more good ones than not-so-good ones and aside from a short detour away from this area I have managed to stay put and watch the changes that have unfolded around me.
Like the change of the seasons every few month's each one returns the following year like my 50 July's.
Aside from the people around me this is still the Southern edge of downtown Columbus, the streets are still paved with bricks and two of the three schools I attended are still standing.
Some of the names on some of the buildings have changed but most of them have survived.
Including the house I grew up in. Still occupied by people who share my parents DNA.
There is still a Ford in the garage there and a few parked in front of the house, and a pretty good dog still barks at the neighbors and passerby's just as one has for the past half century.
I still sit on the porch that in 1958 I wasn't allowed off of after dusk.
Nescafe Coffee (the family brew) is still poured into heavy ceramic cups and on some Sunday morning's as Kris Kristofferson penned, I can find myself still looking for my cleanest dirty shirt in the same room I looked for it in 1958.
This July marks not only my late parents 50th anniversary and fifty years that the family has stayed "home", but it also represents something of a personal victory for me.
I really did vow to stay put and resist what has been a mass exodus from the area by nearly everyone I knew when I first got here.
Through the years the people who came into my life as friends and who have since became just people I know have challenged my resilience and staying put power by criticizing what they thought of as just an area to launch from.
Not one worth hanging onto.
And for a few month's earlier in this year I started agreeing with that ideology and packed everything up and moved "out west" to the more serene confines of the country.
But somehow I managed to hang on to my roots and surrender to the realization that within walking distance of the Shiller Park shade trees is where I belonged, and where I should observe my 50th birthday since being brought to the neighborhood in a Black and White 1956 Ford Customline pulling a Blue and White Gilbert trailer full of broken furniture.
A few sticks of those early furnishings still remain within these walls, as do a few original parts from that old Ford still living in the garage.
Time worn heirlooms from the late 1950's.
Every time I encounter an old friend or neighbor that has moved on I enjoy the look of surprise in their eyebrows as I explain the reasons I have stayed.
Only one other person still lives on my block who was a witness to any misbehavior I may have demonstrated in 1958.
And even though I didn't care for many of the old Germans and Italians that populated this area fifty years ago I think I miss them.
The old Italian broad who lived next door who stole my Mother's potted plants from the back porch the night we moved here, her mean husband who threatened to throw me into his well the next time my ball went into his yard, the old German pedophile across the street who offered me cookies if I would rub baby powder on his naked ass when I was nine years old and all of the other people who were as old as I am now who cringed with despair when a new family with three kids moved onto the block.
They're all dead and although I longed to see them that way when I was a kid I do think I miss them.
I do know that I miss 1958 and that whole era and the good people who were also here.
I still am, and in my way of thinking I see that as a personal win.
In a few day's what's left of the family that settled here with me fifty years ago will return to observe this milestone, and in the spirit of what is known as "pot-luck" they will do so with their favorite food dishes made from recipes learned from our Mother.
The house will again fill with the familiar aromas of chicken and dumplings, potato pancakes and cigarette smoke.
For a day it will be like pushing the rewind button to return to something better.
A chance for me and my brother to find something to disagree on, perhaps slug each other like we did when we were young.
An opportunity for me to aggravate my sisters in anyway that might give our parents a reason to prove the theory of some that those we care about never really leave us.
How cool would that be? To hear my Dad yell at my brother and me and tell us to take it outside, or to hear my Mother bribe me to leave my sisters alone?
I'll park my collection of 1958 die cast cars on a coffee table and dust off my Ricky Nelson records to make them feel at home.
I'll take my brother up to the bedroom we shared as kid's and remind him that it's now my room, and that tommorow when he wakes up in his he will do so with an old woman (his wife) in some "strange" place, and that I, the family snot as he used to call me will be the only one in the family who will wake up in the friendlier confines of home.
Five decades ago I would have been beaten up for talking to him like that.
These fifty years later... although he won't verbalize it, I know that he will agree with me.
"Eye Candy"
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