You're gonna just have to believe me, or, I know proof is really important but I usually don't have any

I just got a receipt from the UPS drop-off place because the one time I  didn't, the place I was returning something denied that I'd made the return  and I had to not only jump hoops but leap through a series of fiery rings  to get my money back. I don't need documentation at the the hardware store  down the street; they know me and they trust me and they will let me  exchange the wrong door hinge for the right door hinge without a receipt.  But-- to adapt the last half of a novelty sign -- at all other shops I must  pay cash.

That doesn't bother me, but I've found it unsettling when I have to provide  witnesses to back up a memory. I've been shocked a number of times I've  recounted an experience, something very memorable, in which other people  deny that they were there or that the event itself happened. I'm a writer,  I know, and I do like to take a dull story and um, make it better. I like  to think of my life as more important and exciting than it is, and who can  blame me? Also, I conflate things and realize that sometimes, because I'll  say "Hold on, I've got it wrong. That can't have been in the old house,  because we got the new Chevy after we moved to Beech Grove. Sorry, wrong  house but that herd of top-hatted goats really did clomp into the baby's  room." But the basic plot is right -- goats, top hats, baby's crib, mother  waving a broom over her head and chasing goats out the door and down the  street.

So then I have a discussion with someone who was there and they say there  were no top-hatted goats. And I say "I see top hats in my head but of  course I was eight. Were they derbies? Plaid deerstalkers? Well, anyway,  they were funny hats, like out of a cartoon," and the person denies the  whole thing. No goats, no laughing baby standing in her crib gurgling and  saying "Doats! Doats!" and no mom chasing the goats out of the house with a  corn-straw broom. And that is where I must set my feet firmly in a  defensive stance, look the denier in the eye, and say, "There WERE goats,  and they came into the house. You can't possibly have forgotten that."

Deb often mentions how remarkable my memory is. Because everything came  from somewhere and everything that happens was caused by something else  that happened and while I don't remember what color shirt someone was  wearing, I DO remember almost everything else. We have an old print in a  vintange frame in the living room and I remember where we parked the car  and the driveway where the guy who sold Deb the print was standing when we  pulled up. I remember a particularly terrible sandwich I had when I decided  to try Today's Special instead of getting what I usually order. The bread  should have been toasted and then a slice of very wet tomato was laid on  the bottom slice and it was at the bottom of a wax-paper lined plastic  tray. I remember my regret, and betraying myself by agreeing with people  who think I'm an old stick-in-the-mud for doing what I know works, so I  thought I'd go wild. And of course I realized all the people who knew how  to make a sandwich were all somewhere else and my lunch was made by a  fellow who had Googled "how to make a sandwich" and then thought he was a  pretty inventive guy, after all and decided he could do it as well as  anybody. What I'm saying is that I have most of the details in my mind in  chronological order, and if pressed, I could remember what day of the week  it was, and where we'd come from earlier and where we were going afterward.  I'm the one who remembers.

But distressingly, I am discovering that my own life is not as central to  the workings of the planet as I once thought it was, and that places and  things that were central to my world are either gone or so transformed that  they are nearly unrecognizable. Also, that nobody cares much what used to  be. A few years ago, I was back visiting a town where I used to live, and  in the time I was gone, a former garage had been transformed into a  restaurant. I used to work in that garage, so it was trippy to be eating  Italian food on a table sitting in the area that was once Bay 2. I know my  own personal history is so much more interesting to me than to others --  imagine that -- but after I tried a couple of times to point out the signs  that this building had been a garage -- "That potted plant is front of it,  but can you see how those small windows are in a white panel that'a garage  door? You can see the rollers in the metal track at the left." I just went  back to asking people about what was going on with them, as it wasn't a  long visit and people's lives are more important that the fact that I just  to work in this place when it was greasy and noisy.

But I remember, and sometimes that's a lonely feeling as all the evidence  vanishes behind a well-placed potted plant, and then under the concrete  slab of a condo. 

 

Note 1:  There were no goats. 

 

Note 2:  I did some Googling to try and find photos of the old bus garage, or even the new bus garage, which operated out the Moon Freight building on Grimes Lane in Bloomgton, Indiana. Because I have a life, my make-do proof is this patch from a Moon Freight emmployee's uniform shirt, which I found on eBay. 

 

 

There once was a Moon fReight garage, the bus garage moved into it and then the old garage eventually became a restaurant. I agree with Tess, Lily Tomlin's character who has seen aliens : "Boy, if that ain't evidence, I don't know what is."  You can watch the clip here.

 

 

Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.

Things and Stuff: I threw away a family photo while I was cleaning

While sifting out papers in a banker's box, I came across a loose photo and the memories it brought back were not good. 

I really don't know what I was thinking of when I chose those eyeglasses frames, but the real reason I tossed the photo, after brief consideration, is that it just reminded me of a holiday visit that didn't go so well. Not that most of them did, and that holiday wasn't unbearably awful, but it's painful to remember how people were trying to seem happy, and no one was. 

Tossing a photo, even one that isn't full of happy memories, is a big thing for me because I have so few. And this was my doing, though I'll never know if I unsconsciously did it on purpose or not. In January of 1988, the house where I had a duplex apartment caught on fire while I was at work, and only a few items were salvaged. Two weeks before the fire, I'd gone to Hook's drugstore and bought three or four vinyl photo albums, and I'd carefully removed nearly every photograph I had from the one of the two manila envelopes in my metal file cabinet and I'd placed each picture into an album. I felt great satisfaction at now having a highly-flammable pile of plastic-encased memories on top of that file cabinet. Everything inside the metal office drawers was in pretty good shape, with just a little singing of edges because of the metal heating up like a griddle during the more flaming parts of the catastrophe.

Did I know that cleansing fire was coming to rid me of my past, and was I making sure that the photos went in the conflagration? It's been 33 years and I still don't know. 

Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.

 

Things and Stuff, part one of a series of ten thousand

The photo in this post is of an old mellophone mouthpiece I  brought from house to house to house to house. I don't know if you know what a mellophone is. Today people play the marching mellophone which looks like an oversized trumpet with an enormous bell. 

This mouthpiece is from the earlier version, a "marching French horn," which was shaped like the orhestra instrument, but was made of less-dentable, more weather-resistant metal. Sometime in the late 1980s, I owned one of these marching French horns, and the case (which was lined with blue plush fabric) held two mouthpieces. When I sold the horn, I kept one of the two. 

 I don't really know why. I think it was a remembrance of the horn, which I missed but never had time to play. And I think the buyer had gotten a good deal on the instrument and case and I felt that the extra mouthpiece made the purchase a little too sweet. And I was used to this mouthpiece and thought that I might get another horn and I'd use this mouthpiece instead of the one that came with the horn. 

 I enjoyed having the mouthpiece around, and I used to keep it near my desk in whichever of the four houses I occupied. Last summer, I got around to hunting up another marching French horn, and I found a doozie -- a model that comes with tube extensions so you change play the instrument in two different keys. Neat-o. It didn't come with a mouthpiece, which is often the case with old horns. They can't be stored with the mouthpiece in the receiver, or the metal will form a chemical connection between the stem of the mouthpiece and the tube you put it into and you have to go to a shop and pay someone forty bucks to extract the mouthpiece with a special puller. So the mouthpieces are stored separately, and they get lost. Or people keep them to use with whatever insrument they've moved on to. 

 I had high hopes that my mouthpiece would fit the new-to-me horn as it was abou the same age as the old horn, but nope. The horn I have now has a very narrow receiver pipe and it accepts only a regular French horn mouthpiece, and it's particular even about that. So I eBayed off this old mouthpiece to offset the cost of buying a new one. 

 The person I sold it to was ungracious about the fact that the old mouthpiece wouldn't fit his particular old horn and he left me grumpy negative feedback on the auction. Whatever, Mr Crabapple. But maybe he'll trade this for another one that works better, or sell it for a profit. He probably won't keep it on a shelf near his desk, even if it doesn't fit any instrument he has, because he just likes it. 

 

 Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.