nixtress's Diaryland Diary

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Glenmont

Something sparked my memories today. For the first several years of my life, we lived in a tiny little nowhere town called Glenmont. So many early memories are from that town. The lame dog that had been abandoned and refused to leave the house where it had lived, even after being electrocuted there, waiting for it's owners to come home. I used to take packages of hotdogs down, tossing them to the poor suspicious thing through the fence row there.
The twin girls I played baseball with in the field across from our trailer, the ones who always managed to kick my ass and who alternately were my best friends and worst enemies.
The old man, John Manchester, from next door who had a limitless supply of Reese's Pieces in a bowl by his front door, and always let us grab a handful as we ran by.
The Fast sisters who lived in the house up the hill behind us, one of whom I hated and the other one I kissed (yes, I was only 5).
The old high school there, with the gym floors that had been warped from numerous floods of the river that ran by us, warps so tall I could stand on top of one in my roller skates and glide down then back up another.
The sounds of our white shepherd Phoenix getting her tail shut in the door at that gym, and running home yelping liked we'd cut the damn thing off.
I remember a babysitter who couldn't cook macaroni and cheese, forgetting at one point to even drain it and just added the cheese sauce. I gave mine to the dog. That same sitter developed a crush on my older brother K and sang Air Supply songs to him through his bedroom window one summer.
Big Brother K taught me to swim one summer by taking me down to the swimming hole and tossing me in, telling me to dog paddle (like I had a clue what that was!). I learned that move quickly.
There were railroad tracks that we spent many an hour roaming when we'd skipped school, collecting the old glass transmitters from the power lines that ran alongside and the big metal railroad tie nails that were inevitably covered in rust. I missed more school my kindergarten year than I went.
There was a small store next to the bar where my mother worked, with the old scoop ice cream for just cents on the dollar and a Slushy machine. We'd mix all the different flavors (a taste sensation I dubbed The Suicide in my teens) and end up with something nearly inedible now but delicious then. And peanut butter crunch ice cream was my favorite.
I remember the flood that had my brother jumping straight out our front door and into the flow of the river. My mother had coniptions because she could see the water snakes inches from him and he just floated on down in the inner tube he used in the swimming hole.
This was the town we lived in where my brother chopped all the hair off my doll so I melted his Army men down in a pot on the stove. This was also the town where I couldn't ride a bike and so would run while holding his, pretending I was riding with the best of them.
Mud puddles were for fishing for whales and fireflies were magic little faeries that would take me away to a place where people didn't fall down drunk on our coffee table and I didn't wake up next to my mother and her bf of the hour and where I didn't know every song on the jukebox at the bar because half the time I fell asleep under the pool table or in one of the booths in the back.
What brought all of these memories back? The smell of my sons as they clenched pennies and other assorted change in their hands today, waiting impatiently for their turn with the ice cream man. Something about sweaty-palmed children, the tinny scent of money in their tight little hands, that Summery smell of sweat and kid and ice cream...
reminded me of that town.
Happy Tuesday.
N.

10:31 p.m. - 2005-07-12

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