Flames, passing can’t snuff out memories

The first bit of sad news came in a text from my husband as I sat, late Easter afternoon, writing in my home office: “Ted’s Garage burnt down.” 

 

The next appeared in a Facebook post a week later: “Ozark Opry catches fire.” 

The third was another text from hubby, as he sat in his recliner watching TV: “Annette Funicello died.” 

My text response to that one? “Aw-w-w.”

The Facebook post I wrote a few minutes later, linking to a YouTube video, read, “RIP, Annette Funicello. A little of me died today. “         

                                                                        

The flames that engulfed Ted’s Garage and Lee Mace’s Ozark Opry took a bit of me, too, it seemed. 

As I mused over these three—two landmarks and one lady—I dug through the rubble of the losses for some memories I could hold tight and cherish forever. 

Here’s what I found.

The common bond

The Clinton, Ill. eatery, the Osage Beach, Mo. music hall, and the Mouseketeer had something in common.

Each of them had a way of beaming us from the 21^st century back to a place and time, when we were younger, more idealistic, perhaps, and less distracted by a 24-hour news cycle and the technology that keeps it and other interruptions in front of us. When we stepped through the doors at the 50s-style diner, sank into our seats at the Opry or watched Annette on the black-and-white TVs in our parent’s wallpapered living rooms, we left distractions behind and lived in the moment. 

Ted’s transported with classics

Classic food and classic cars—that’s what you’d find when you stepped into Ted’s Garage. The retro eatery next to the community’s Chevrolet dealership was known for its décor and oldies menu reminiscent of Arnold’s on “Happy Days,” and for classic cars at the front of the restaurant and in a glassed-in showroom. 

My hubby and I didn’t visit it often—maybe a half-dozen times or less in the 11 years we lived nearby—but each time we went there was a special time. Maybe that’s why we went infrequently—to keep it special, to make each visit a step back in time—to make us feel young at heart, to help us remember those days when kitchen tables were of Formica, chairs were covered in vinyl held on with silver thumbtacks and when a burger, fries and a chocolate shake, cherry Coke or Green River were a really big treat.

When my husband and I moved from our house in Central Illinois a year ago, we knew we were also leaving favorite places. Some we’d see again, some we wouldn’t. 

Ted’s was one of those. 

Now, gutted by fire, it’s less likely we’ll return, but we can still close our eyes, look back and remember the taste of a tenderloin, the sound of Chubby Checkers on the jukebox, the shiny chrome on a ’57 Chevy. A wind-fed fire on Easter Sunday can’t burn those records on the turntables in our minds.

Mace’s mesmerized with music

When my husband and I first started vacationing at the Lake of the Ozarks more than 20 years ago with several members of our extended family, we were looking for kid-friendly activities. He remembered visiting a music show a decade or so before. He said it was comical, entertaining and fun. He thought the rest of us might like it, too.

Though I always hate to type these words, that day hubby was right. 

We didn’t just like Lee Mace’s Ozark Opry. We loved it. Everyone on the stage—from the piano player pounding out “Great Balls of Fire,” to the guitar,- sax-, harmonica-, fiddle-playing, banjo-picking talent in the band, to Goofer, the comedian—looked as if they enjoyed entertaining as much as the full house enjoyed being entertained. 

It wasn’t just that way the first time we visited. It was that way every time. 

As annual visitors for a number of years, we came to notice several things about the Ozark Opry—for instance, the way the parking lot attendants, ticket agents and popcorn servers seemed to enjoy what they were doing as much as the cast. It was as if they were all family. I learned later, some of them were, by blood. The rest were, I think, related by their passion for the magic that was Mace’s. 

I also noticed that Joyce Mace, widow of the founder and man for whom the show was named, could always be found in the same seat when the lights were dimmed and a spotlight shone on a big bass fiddle as a recording played of Lee Mace singing “Ragged Old Flag.”

And, I came to learn that if you told the ticket office attendants who you were, where you were from and that you had little kids or guests new to the Opry and asked politely, they’d do their best to get you a seat up close to the front. 

When we moved to the Lake of the Ozarks full-time last year, we lamented that the show had closed its doors a few years earlier, but were grateful the building still stood, much like a monument in a cemetery, a sentinel standing guard, paying tribute to the times so many cherished. 

I drove past the charred building the other day, leaving the window rolled up to keep out the smell of smoke and keep inside the car the memory of the late Steve Tellman singing “Forever and Ever Amen,” Helen Russell  clogging, Goofer wearing his comical collapsible cardboard hat—and the warmth we felt each time we entered there. 

Mouseketeer kept us kids

Seems like forever ago sometimes, like yesterday others,  the era of black-and-white TV, when the number of channels was only three, when up too early or awake too late, all that looked back at us was the test pattern.

In those days long past, TV time was limited. If we were lucky, we watched Captain Kangaroo in the morning, Lawrence Welk and Mitch Miller on Saturday nights, The Wonderful World of Disney, Lassie and Bonanza on Sunday, and the Mickey Mouse Club of an afternoon. 

The years have wiped away the memory of most of the Mouseketeers, but if there’s one name most Baby Boomers remember above all others, it’s Annette Funicello.

What was it about Annette that made her every young boy’s sweetheart , the girl each young lady longed to be—her big brown eyes, the bounce in her step, or the way she seemed so wise and full of life? 

Even before she became a beach movie babe, she was one of a handful of girls who epitomized her day. 

We watched her grow to a teen, remembered her locked somewhere twixt the two—Mouseketeer and movie star—until the day, when growing older, she shared with us her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. 

We wished well for her, remembered her in our prayers and shed tears on learning of her passing. 

With us always

One thing’s certain, though—until we join her and Walt Disney at the Mickey Mouse Club in the sky, we’ll remember her ever. 

To those who don’t know better, it looks as if a restaurant and an empty building burned and an aging has-been television star died. These are the kinds of stories that are texted, tweeted, posted on Facebook, buried in newspapers and read by an anchor on the local news nearly every day. 

To this Baby Boomer, they’re more than that. They’re pieces of my past. 

A fire may have claimed the buildings and death the star, but just as I died a little hearing of their losses, remembering them helps me to relive moments I’ll never forget. 

Each of them—Ted’s, the Opry and Annette—leave a legacy that can never be extinguished.   

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

The power of words and music: Dan Fogelberg remembered

As I was scrolling down my Facebook page on a recent evening, I stumbled across a post on late singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg’s tribute page. 

The post included an image of a letter a young girl had written to Fogelberg, asking the meaning of a line in one of his songs. What made the image all the more exciting, all the more powerful, was Fogelberg’s handwritten reply in return. 

He answered, that yes, though the words were literal, the related metaphorical meaning was much as she had suspected. 

The song in question was my favorite Fogelberg tune, “Same Old Lang Syne.” It’s a song reportedly based on a real event in Fogelberg’s life—a chance encounter with an old girlfriend in the grocery store on Christmas Eve. 

The tune captures all the surprise, awkwardness, giddiness, memories, regret, warmth and more that such an encounter elicits. It has an uncanny ability to draw its listener into the song, to invite her to watch as a silent observer as the two experience more emotions than they must have imagined possible in such a short time. 

Perhaps the reasons it struck me so strongly, years ago when I first heard it, and as I listened to it on tapes, CDs or car radios through the decades, are twofold—I’ve seen the song from the outside looking in and inside looking out. 

I spent nearly 30 years of my life in a grocery store, from the high school days when I met my first steady boyfriend in the check-out lane until I was a middle-aged mother and grandmother, watching much younger coworkers re-live those same excitement-filled moments. 

Grocery store clerks see and hear a lot. 

We witness those hugs and “Oh my gawds” when parted lovers home for the holidays see each other—sometimes after months apart, sometimes years. We watch warmly as widowers or divorcees bump into someone from long ago, and we can see a spark, long smoldering, begin to re-ignite. And, yes, we see those who have their regrets, bumping into old flames they let slip away, those who have built a life with someones new. 

And, too, because I lived in a rather small community, it wasn’t unlikely for me to have my own “Same Old Lang Syne” moments. 

On more than one occasion, I’d look up and see, across the counter, someone I’d met years earlier in the check-out lane, the library, the old neighborhood, or in a small town nearby—and had dated a time or two or a season. 

As with Fogelberg and his “old lover in the grocery store,” it was awkward at first, giddy at times, and sometimes warm—for the lives that touch ours, no matter how fleeting, often do bring with them memories worth remembering. It doesn’t take a six-pack from the liquor store or a songwriter’s recollection to warm us with memories of days gone by, even when we’re ever so thankful of the love we know today. 

Though Peoria’s Dan Fogelberg, singer/storyteller to the world, didn’t have his encounter in the frozen food aisle of the store where I worked all those years, I saw scores of Dans and lovers meet again.

Through his words, from time to time, as the song played in my mind, those others faded and Dan came into view. Tonight, writing this, I see his face again and, as I do, the music plays anew. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

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A man of many hats

A few months ago, a new guy moved in with me. He shares my office. Sometimes I talk to him. Sometimes I don’t. 

He’s a quiet fellow, with a solemn look on his face, but he seems to have fun, too, donning appropriate hats by the season. 

Earlier this year, when we wanted to cheer a friend who has cancer, my office buddy wore a tie-died baseball cap. Here’s why.

The friend and I once worked in the same office. When we did, she and several of our co-workers wore plastic tiaras once a week, carrying over a tradition begun on someone’s birthday. They called the day “Tiara Thursday.” 

Not one to get all prissy and foo-foo, I refused to wear a tiara with the rest of the clan. 

Instead, I declared, “The day I retire from here, I want a tie-died baseball cap that says, ‘This ain’t no freakin’ tiara.’” 

I have good friends. When I left that job, I got my cap. 

My office buddy borrowed it. 

Another day, I came to my desk to find that the buddy and my grandson had been up to some tomfoolery. My office mate sported a wide-brimmed straw hat.

At Christmas, upon his head was a Santa hat with the words “Merry Christmas” on its brim.

Any day now, I expect to see him with a new hat—pointy, perhaps, glittery, maybe. 

It will bear the words, “Happy birthday.” 

My office buddy makes no annoying noises, doesn’t borrow my office supplies or use my chair without asking. 

He feels at home in my office, surrounded by books, where words bounce both on and off the page all day long and often into the night. 

His copper-toned flesh isn’t flesh at all. It’s plaster. 

His name is Lincoln—Abraham.

I have a feeling he’ll wear a lot of hats through the years.

I suspect that once President’s Day is passed, upon his head I’ll find a leprechaun’s headwear, and, soon after that, an Easter bonnet.

Someday, though, I must get the guy his own stovepipe hat. After all, he needs someplace to store his important papers, doesn’t he?

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

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A balancing act

Early last year, I wrote a blog post titled, “Looking for balance—have you seen her?” In it, I talked about how I’m not a resolution setter, but said that, if I were, the one thing I hoped to find during the year was balance. 

I’m a person prone to obsessions—blogging, studying Abraham Lincoln, working out to excess—or not. Sometimes I’m really into something, to the exclusion of all the things “normal” people do—things like socializing, making day trips, shopping, or even just chilling.

Rarely, through the years, have I taken time to enjoy doing things with my hubby, friends, and family, to savor time in my home, to visit local sites of interest and attend community festivals. 

When I wrote that post in January 2012, I’m not sure I really knew what “balance” would look like, feel like. I just wondered if perhaps it might be an interesting, perhaps even a worthwhile thing to try.

As it does many years, the “year of balance” didn’t turn out quite as I’d planned. Sooner than we expected, our home sold, my husband retired, we moved out of state. 

Looking back, I barely remember the first three months of the year. The rest of it was so busy that first quarter feels like a fog, as if I were a player who lost memory of the early part of the game due to a concussion. I worked at my job, I tackled odd jobs on two homes, and I worked on my blog. 

By April, though, it was evident my life was completely out of balance for the time being. Our Illinois home had sold, and we’d begun moving our belongings to our new home in Missouri. By the end of the month, I was in the house with boxes and boxes of books, what seemed like tons of furniture and household belongings, and no husband. He’d stayed behind, renting an apartment in Illinois until his retirement date later in the year. 

It was just as well. I didn’t have time for a hubby right then anyway. I was putting things in their places, painting walls, and supervising tradesmen who were making the older home into which we moved “new” to us. 

By the time hubby moved down, the house was nearly in order—inside, at least—and, because he was retired, we were almost beginning to live like regular people. I’d work during the day and we could actually do things together on nights and weekends. 

We hung out with neighbors, joined some organizations in our community, found a church home, had guests a time or two, went to visit our kids and our extended family, and attended an apple festival, a turkey festival, and a fly-in. 

About that resolution I mentioned, but refused to make, in fear of breaking it, at the beginning of 2012—a desire to find balance in my life—I think I’m actually almost finding it. 

Our home is coming around. We’ll tackle the outside tasks and some storage-area organization next year. 

We enjoyed time with loved ones and made new friends, and sometimes just sat on the porch relaxing. The winter holidays were the most stress-free ever, yet extremely pleasant and heart-warming. I’ve begun doing some volunteering in efforts where I feel I can be of most help.

I think I can say my life had balance by the end of the year in all but one thing—my writing. 

Though I write and edit nearly every day for my “real” job, in the search for balance and in putting our new home in order, I seem to have misplaced my personal words. They must not have been packed with the work words. 

Do you suppose if I imagine them springing out of my desk drawer as a jack-in-a-box each day, that some of them might find their way onto the page? 

Perhaps—but just in case that doesn’t work, I’ve got a sticky note on my daily calendar. It says, “Did you blog today?” 

With a reminder such as that one, I’ve got no excuse, right? 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

If you liked this post, see my earlier Musings on Route 66 posts here. 

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