Category: Nostalgia

OCTOBER 5TH, 1957

11/7/2011

OCTOBER 5th, 1957
by tom lyford

In PJ’s we pad over the dewy grass in the
October-cool dusk and mount the old
’48 Plymouth, lying like a cold black boulder
under the studded nightvelvet sky
(me on the roof— lying on my back)

And we are early so it’s like the drive-in movie
almost dark enough for the horns to start honking…
only we’re not out here for a comedy or cowboy
flick but something dark, something sci-fi, something
Flash Gordonish--

because nothing save the Aurora Borealis,
the random meteor, or the occasional
prop-driven airliner’s blinking beacon
ever moves up there in my nightsky…
and so we fidget

waiting on that corner of heaven we’ve been
warned to watch, whispering in hushed reverence…
consulting the big radium-dial pocket watch…
when suddenly: there it is! there!
right there! see it!?

The first untwinkling ‘star’ ever
to swim right through the big dipper,
crawling its geometrically-precise straight line
and clocking a faster transit of the firmament
than a four-engine TWA…

stunned with awe, we quietly mouth the holy word
“Sputnik!”and perhaps feel the mild jolt as our life
and our world, mine and America’s, banks left
to dive down into still one more
alternate & parallel universe

where education will be
radically different now
and anything--
literally anything--
will be possible

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TALES OF TRICKERY (Early Morning, November 1st, 1959)

10/30/2011

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Tales of Trickery, (Early Morning, November 1st, 1959)
(the morning after Halloween)

Behold this carnage— the battle must have raged fierce,
the air thick with exploding water-balloonery and raw
launched-egg artillery (the storefronts and telephone poles
still bearing the tell-tale powder burns of dried splatters)
and pumpkins cannonballing out of the midnight sky to
pummel the pavement pulp-slick and slimey, littering
the streets with the shards of skulls eviscerated and oozing
their brains, that pithy orange, seedy syrup gore
congealing now, coagulating,
crusting…

Look here: a vacant triangular eye socket, cock-eyed and
flickerless now, gaping blind up from from the asphalt…

And over here in the ditch: its leering, gap-toothed jawbone
now a shriveled rind, but…

Looming in the morning mist in the middle of Merrick Square,
like some Trojan horse left by the recently departed forces of
occupation, sits the trophy: the annual, uprooted outhouse
(a two-holer deluxe this time) ripped from its roots, liberated
from the tyranny of its native soil (the captured flag) flaunted
as a dire warning for those who, next year, might still dare
to withhold the precious spoils
demanded in the soap-scrawled
war-cry painted across every
store front window:

Trick or treat!

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CURMUDGEON BLUES by Tom Lyford

8/18/2011

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The first of the fifties, boy, we had it rough
you’d never’ve made it—hell, you’d lack the stuff!
You believe you’re sufficiently physically fit…
that emotionally, spiritually, you’ve got the grit
to have survived all the rigors the fifties afforded?
A Darwin Award is what you’d be awarded!

Imagine a world where there aren’t any malls!
(I know it—a horrid idea that appalls!)
No place to hang out on a weekend all day
(and be free from the rain wind or snow, by the way).
Uptown or down, all the shops were spread out
so to “shop till you drop” meant a mile walkabout.

The specialized stores sold just tools… or just shoes…
Imagine yousinging those No-Walmart Blues?
There were no Golden Arches, not one fast-food joint,
so a quest for fast burgers? You’d think, What’s the point?
No Kentucky fried drive-throughs, no styrofoam plate.
In your restaurant booth you’d learn to patiently wait.

ONE TV per household—and it’s black and white
just one channel broadcast, and only at night
no color, no cable, just 10-inch-wide screens
meek violence, no r-rated nudity scenes
and no household then owned a single remote
your family’d crowd ‘round as if in a lifeboat

packed in like sardines round that TV you’d sit
like cave people ‘witched by the night-fire pit…
Most radios back then were dishwasher-size,
polished oak chassis—a sight for sore eyes!
And most of the smaller were crafted in wood
and weighed twenty pounds or more, solid and good.

It wasn’t some boom box to shoulder downtown.
Plugged-in. In the parlor. Sundown to sundown.
Inside, huge vacuum tubes, oven-red-hot
explains the grand size of the models we got.
Took 55 seconds to warm up! And so
you had to learn patience: the sound came up slow.

Oldies were all that the radio’d play
(‘course they were top forty new tunes of the day).
Oh, one feature (lacking) you’d surely condemn
fm was unheard of: you just got am
so lightning from any storm counties away
interrupted, with static, the radio-play.

One punch-bowl-sized speaker— no stereo then:
just static-y “hi-fi” is what we tuned in.
Not a single computer in anyone’s home.
You’d suffer No Chat Room No E-mail Syndrome!
No passwords, dot.coms, no website user names!
No .mp3 downloads, no videogames!

No printers, no scanners: you haven’t a clue,
So you must be like: What the hell they all do?
Well you’d better sit down: this might make you cringe.
On puzzles and board games and cards we might binge
Monopoply, Scrabble, and Cribbage, Go Fish
Freeze Tag and Hide-‘n-Go-Seek, if you wish

You top guns of that hi-tech video game?
We cool pinball wizards had our halls of fame.
Unpleasant details? Getting weak in the knees?
Thought life in the fifties would just be a breeze?
Well, Geez,
Louise!

Most cars big as boxcars derailed from the track
Unwieldy, cumbersome—most of them black
Like a buffalo herd when left parking in lots
Their big steering wheels could “hold course” for large yachts!
Their back seats so roomy you could dribble a ball
and transport the ball team, its mascot, and all

With something called suicide doors, with the knack
of ejecting your passengers out of the back—
a phenomenon back then primarily dealt
by the absence in cars of a single seatbelt.
The world was a hazardous threat to one’s health;
on highways and sidewalks you’d venture with stealth.

Though there were no signs warning “Tygers be here,”
dogs free-roamed in “wolf-packs” inspiring fear
(when there are no leash laws to curb your wild curs
a hound of the baskerville lifestyle occurs).
A ride on your bike was a roll of the dice:
would your leg become clamped in those jaws-like-a-vise?

You’d be hounded and hunted and hamstrung again
by some psychotic Lassie or crazed Rin Tin Tin.
My town was patrolled by these Great Danes and Pugs
and Airedales and Boxers— all of them thugs.
You’d have scars on your ankles or forearms or butts
if you lived (and survived) the harassment of mutts

And if dogs didn’t getcha, you’d be gotten at school;
the discipline policies you won’t find “cool”:
corporal punishment! physical force?
Being pinned ‘gainst a locker? A matter of course.
And before you blurt, “They’d never do that to me!”
Keep in mind: with these rules did our parents agree--

Keep in mind that the principal stood 6 foot 2
A shaven gorilla procured from the zoo.
Male teachers? Drill sergeants, wrestlers, ex-cons!
And the ladies were ex-prison camp commandants.
They’d threaten you, traumatize, torture, and scheme--
No one gave a rat’s ass then for your “self- esteem.”

But I’m wasting my breath and I’m wasting your time.
I could go on and continue this rhyme
But you’re rolling your eyes, and your sneer is so smug
And you fidget and shuffle, impatiently shrug
you see this old man stand before you and rant
(and to say something you want to hear, well I can’t).

So: long story short—I’ll sum up and be brief
Here it is, my advice, my sincerest belief:
If ever a Time Machine’s left in your yard
With the key in the blinking ignition: try hard
To ignore it ! Just say NO to travel in time!
If you must, though, go forward! It would be a crime

to go back to the fifties, to rewind the clocks
like in Back to the Future, with Michael J. Fox
when you’re so ill-prepared when that going gets tough…

never mind...
I am finished…
I’ve said quite enough.

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WHEELS by Tom Lyford

8/16/2011

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WHEELS by Tom Lyford 08/2011

Johhny and the Hurricanes’ neon pennywhistle pile driving
“Red River Rock” into the electric dark, pumping it through the
trundling thunder of a thousand fiberglass wheels grinding like
sea-polished stones beneath this regatta of seniors and sophomores
and seventh-graders in plaid skirts and Madras shirts, in shorts

and skorts and pink pedal-pushers whisking past the concession…
the prom king and queen, the Sandra Dee and James Dean wannabe,
and all the rest of us lonely wallflower don’t-wannabes, wafting up
a tailwind, our wakes musked in coconut oil Coppertone, Off, and
Right Guard… gusting little sea breezes stiff enough to feather bangs

or flutter cowlicks… all of us being swept downstream and away to
the pavilion’s far end and back again, carried on a rip tide wheeling us
round and round, the white skates, the black skates, the expensive and
the hand-me-down skates, and the hundred scuffed, over-the-counter
rentals freshly fumigated in anti-foot-fungals; all the summer-sun-

bronzed limbs coming and going, going and coming, and all of
us handsome and beautiful… tonight being everyone’s personal
teen-dream summer movie starring the little, lonely-hunter hearts
pinned to our sleeves, and each of us with the finger-crossed prayer
for that big Happy Ending when the final credits start to roll…

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THUNDER ROAD by Tom Lyford

7/18/2011

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Thunder Road -1958

“Let me tell the story... I can tell it all
about the mountain boy who ran illegal alcohol…”

A twelve year old Walter Mitty, I got 'older'
after Thunder Road left me and the movie
theater in its black and white dust…

hung up my Neverneverland shadow in the
closet and began getting in touch with the
darker side of getaway-car noir...

resigning myself to a future of rum-running
Kentucky moonshine over moonlit mountain roads,
outrunning the revenuers and rival bootleggers…

“His daddy made the whiskey... the son, he drove the load... and
when his engine roared they called the highway THUNDER ROAD!”

well… somebody had to
drive the load... might
as well've been me...

And in the bathroom mirror, honing my best “Bob
Mitchum,” practicing the sleepy bar-room eyes, trying
to will the cleft of his jaw into my own undimpled chin

talking tough with the wooden match
dangling— the playful 'Pall Mall'
glued to a wry grimace:

“A man has a right to do anything, including making
whiskey as long as he does it on his own land”…

I logged hours as Mitchum's 'Lucas Doolin,'
languishing behind the big wheel of that black
derelict rusting out in the field behind the barn

witch grass growing up between the manifold
and floorboards, exuding its mild halitosis of
mold, mildew, iron oxide, and the sun-rot of

flat-tire rubber,... just a long-forgotten,
walk-in bank vault of car dreams
and captured time…

right hand on the wheel, left elbow propped out
the window, me elevated on a stack of sofa
pillows gone a.w.o.l. from the living room--

and in the rearview mirror, me
entertaining the question:
who would get me first...

the Law, or the Devil? And having seen
the movie twice, well... the Devil
was just a matter of time.

“And it was moonshine, moonshine, to quench the devil’s thirst
the Law they swore they’d get him but the Devil got him first!”

Me... goin’ out with that ol’ Hollywood
crash and burn down at the bottom
of the mountain gorge!

Mister COOL...
Mister Nonchalance...
Mister Lucas Doolin because…

When my engine roared they
called the highway THUNDER ROAD!

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FIRE AND ICE by Tom Lyford

7/1/2011

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FIRE AND ICE

(with apologies to Robert Frost)

No, it wasn’t as big, say as carnival trucks
pulling into the fairgrounds with tents and
tilt-a-whirls to erect, but this was at the end
of cold dead December— not August— and
therefore all the more crucial when the

Riverside Texaco pick-up would first trundle out
onto the cove (on ice at last officially sanctioned “safe
enough”) and begin off-loading six-warm-months’ worth
of discarded tires and then dousing the black pyramid
with kerosene… meaning that when the sun went down,

that ol’ bonfire black-magic would draw in those
pretty-in-pink, varsity crowd, glamour girls in their new,
white Christmas-present skates (even a few with their
mittens tucked all warm-snuggly into the sleeves of
one of those white-fur muffs you never see any more

except on the old Currier and Ives Christmas cards…
and me a shabby small-fry costumed up as some
Charles Dickens’ waif in overlarge hand-me-downs…
red-and-black flannels and wools, and those black
second-hand hockey skates… yeah, me, looping round

about the flames and the beauties like some dark little
bat, imagining in my Hollywood heart: I’m some
silver-skated Hans Brinker: Look at me! Check
me out! Skating backwards over here!
Watch this!

Until the excruciating pain of frostbitten toes
cinched tourniquet-tight in socks soaked in
melting ice water over the passing hours left me
in utter defeat… to limp lamely homeward from
the arena... largely undiscovered… as always…

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MAMA SAID, MAMA SAID by Tom Lyford

5/17/2011

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MAMA SAID, MAMA SAID

Mama said, Whatever you do, just stay away
from the river… so I became Tom Sawyer
and made the Piscataquis my Mississippi
where we'd fish from small boulders and
fall in every day, trying to float that old

door as a raft poled by broomsticks, just like
Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen in the movie
Davy Crockett and the River Pirates— and
we'd haunt the old off-limits Indian cave
where some kid fell off a ledge and died

the year before, us believing we'd find
arrowheads and maybe his ghost, but
finding only graffiti… and after watching
Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner rappel
down those sheer rock faces in The Mountain,

we scurried over to Nat's dad's garage for a coil
of rope, climbed up on the river's highest ledge,
and tied one end ’round a tree trunk… me going
first ’cause the squeaky wheel gets the grease…
only smoking rope-burns blistered my palms

and the fall to that rock-bottomed river bed
practically fractured my kneecaps… but I had
to keep all that secret because Mama said,
Whatever you do, just stay away
from the river…

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CINEMA PARADISO by Tom Lyford

5/16/2011

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CINEMA PARADISO

It begins with vulnerable me, Pinocchio-tall,
hand-led… all eyes and ears and nose-a-tingle,
my virgin sneakers scuffing the stampede-
worn, musty, magic-kingdom carpet down

the velvet-roped gallery of lurid posters…
siren posters singing in silence, singing me
dizzily forward beyond my years, singing me
back fridaysaturdaysunday, singing me

sugarplums of dynamited railroad trestles,
riders hellbent-for-leather, bare-knuckled
brawls fought over damsels in the dust
above the ripped-bodice cleavage and

always, always… the naked thigh
titillating… tantalizing me down
the tilted funhouse floor into the
electric-yellow popcorn dark…

my Rip Van Winkle real life
leashed to a parking meter and
left languishing in the black and
white sunshine outside…

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PLEASANT STREET ELEMENTARY by Tom Lyford

5/14/2011

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PLEASANT STREET ELEMENTARY

Pleasant Street Elementary wasn’t always so… pleasant--
manned by mannish “misses”… barren, clucking, leathery
mummies uniformed in wallpaper dresses up the sleeves
of which they tamped their precious and glistening
nose-blown hankies--

patrolling in their black, dominatrix, strait-laced, commandant
high-tops… wielding those Teddy Roosevelt big sticks…
hungrily ferreting out punishable felonies with their rooster eyes
swollen bulbous and wild behind the coke-bottle lenses
beneath their 1943 steel-penny grey schoolmarm buns--

and every year the administration cheerfully shuffled your
Old Maid deck… while you waited with the bated breath of
the doomed Russian-rouletteer as they’d croon, Go ahead…
pick a card… any card… and then deal you Cinderella’s wicked
stepmother… Huck’s Miss Watson… or Pip’s Miss Havisham…

Can you say ‘fear and loathing’?

Can you say ‘P.T.S.D.’?

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THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD by Tom Lyford

5/10/2011

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THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

It’s housed in the museum of the skull
where the reruns loop endlessly like
old Twilight Zone episodes
shuffled into the pages of
To Kill a Mockingbird--

the Andy and Opie Main Street
Webber Hardware, Merrick Square Market,
Center Theatre and Lanpher’s Rexall Drug
the church, county jail, and parsonage
the school playground with its slide and swings

and the dark dead house on School Street
shunned and haunted by its urban legends--
the neighborhood with its cast of usual suspects
the characters who strolled on through
your forever-unlocked doors: the milkman

and iceman in the kitchen, the postman
and paperboy in the hallway, the bedside
doctor who felt your forehead, the sleazy
insurance agent in the white Panama hat
who’d just pop in without knocking to help

himself to his premium envelope hanging right
there on the kitchen wall-hook with the house keys...
and down the street, our own resident ‘Boo Radley,’
and the wizened old crone who berated you
from her witch’s porch wicker rocker because

you were guilty of being young and
she knew your name and more about
your father than you ever would…
that old gossip who tapped into everything
you ever whispered over your five-party line…

the neighborhood…
just a footnote now…

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<<Previous

OCTOBER 5TH, 1957

TALES OF TRICKERY (Early Morning, November 1st, 1959)

CURMUDGEON BLUES by Tom Lyford

WHEELS by Tom Lyford

THUNDER ROAD by Tom Lyford

FIRE AND ICE by Tom Lyford

MAMA SAID, MAMA SAID by Tom Lyford

CINEMA PARADISO by Tom Lyford

PLEASANT STREET ELEMENTARY by Tom Lyford

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD by Tom Lyford

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