Repository of Memories

Anyone who has undertaken a “spring cleaning” will well know the torn feeling as the old ratty chair, which no one sits on any longer because of the broken coil that pokes the unwary, goes into the pile of  “discards”. Still more – especially men, it seems, though I don’t know why this should be so – will nod in companionable silence as one of their buddies mentions the wrenching loss that trading in the old clunker causes. If it gets sent to the bone yard, that’s even worse. Hell, I even wrote an obituary for my 1991 Chevy S10.

However, when it comes right down to it, the chair, the old Chevy or – in this case – the place where I used to work really don’t warrant the emotions that leaving them behind, or watching them get disposed of, causes.

Most anyone else seeing “Old Rusty” (my S10) wouldn’t even give it a thought, as they watched it getting towed to the junk yard. And, I wouldn’t either, had I not driven it for 9 years. Anyone else seeing the empty building where I worked until yesterday won’t particularly notice that the restaurant is gone – unless they had some sort of tie to it, ordered food from it.

The old ratty chair, the old clunker, the old school, the old town, or whatever, mean nothing much by themselves. However, they don’t just consist of their parts, they become repositories of memories.

Occasionally, when I looked to the back stairs leading to the rear exit of the take-out pizzeria where I worked, I recall seeing Gord there. Gord wasn’t a friend of mine – hell, I don’t even recall once seeing him outside of work – but he was a fellow employee, and we did share some laughs. He had his good points and his bad points, as do we all, and he occasionally got on my nerves. Gord died about 15 years ago. The only thing that brings back his memory is the physical space that we shared – the restaurant. Will I remember him again now that I no longer see the environment where he at one time was a familiar fixture? Will I remember Tom, another driver? He died about 10 years ago. Outside of the pizzeria, we had nothing in common.

See, the landlords of the building where I work – worked – want to tear it down and put up something different. So, my boss got notice – one month – to vacate the premises. Yesterday, I worked my last shift. That’s 25 years of going to the same building, doing the job, and returning home, creating memories. And the building – along with its accoutrements – has become a handy repository of those memories.

Yesterday, I packed up my personal possessions – we all know how they tend to populate any place where we go – and they, too, have have become repositories in their own right. My mother bought me the calculator I used – bought it back in 1981 when I had just graduated from a First Aid/Timekeeping course and landed a job out in the woods using those skills. I had need of the calculator, and she gifted me with it. I brought it home from the restaurant with me, not because it has any intrinsic worth, but because it was a gift from my mother who died in 2002. I look at the calculator, and I recall her and her wishes for her children to succeed at whatever they tried. I recall working at the camp out in the boonies, and I will now recall totalling up orders.

Each of those recollections will bring others along with them to the gathering. Recalling the camp where I worked brings back memories of the people whom I met there, the dangers I faced in our workboat during the storm when our dock broke free, and I had to take the boat to the other side of the inlet in waves high enough that watchers from shore would lose sight of it when it slipped into the troughs.

It brings back memories of the other guy who accompanied me. He hated that boat because the foreman didn’t know how to use the trim-tabs properly. He thought that he would only be on board for the time it took me to take the boat from one side of the dock to the other. Then the dock broke free and we had nowhere to go. When I told him what we were going to do – cross the inlet to a dock on the other side a few miles away – he asked me to go close to shore and he would jump in and swim the rest of the way back to camp. It was October, and the water was forking cold! I didn’t allow that. We made it, but there was one moment – when a minor squall hit – that I thought we might not.

And all this from seeing the calculator, a repository of memories, my memories.

The pizzeria had its good points and its bad points. But, yesterday, I watched it die. We knew that last night would be the end and had tried to have only enough food left for the day. When we ran out of cheese to make pizzas, we closed the doors and stopped taking orders. Then, I began packing up my possessions to take them home, sorting through the things to go into the garbage, to go to recycling, to be packed up and kept by the owner. The other drivers, who didn’t work last night, showed up, and each received goodies that couldn’t be kept, perishables. We emptied and then turned off the pizza cooler. The fans that had worked more or less continuously for the last 29 years went silent.

That silence really brought it home for me. This was the end. Unfortunately, I’ll be back there tomorrow to help with the clean up and dismantling of various things. Thus, I really get to see the place die. Better, by far, to finish the last shift and walk away, never to return. That way, the final memory of the place is of a working concern. Now, my final memories will be of the place empty, bereft of that which made it what it was. Now, I’ll be able to recall empty shelves, silent coolers, cold ovens.

Those are not the good memories, the fun memories. The memories of working beyond what we thought we were capable of, the memories of listening to the oldies station, of watching WWE Wrestling late at night, of laughing and joking and sharing triumphs and sorrows – those are the memories that I wish to keep. Now, I’ll have other, bitter memories to go with them.

And that’s why I never wanted to return to my hometown after my family left it. I was 16 at the time. And until I did go back 20 years later, my hometown continued to live in my memory as it was in 1972. Intellectually, I knew that all had changed, that my friends of the time had grown up and started families or moved away, that my teachers had probably mostly retired. 

But in my thoughts, I could still see them as they were, going to school, playing, riding bicycles. Returning ruined a lot of that. I still have those memories, but the later reality impinges on them. Yes, I ran through those woods playing Cowboys and Indians with my friend as a child; we picked wild strawberries there. I can still recall that, but I now KNOW that the woods are gone, replaced by housing; I know this from experience, not just as data that someone passed on to me. I saw it for myself. And the last house we lived in before moving away has also gone. A Dairy Queen now flaunts its wares where my home used to sit. A repository now destroyed, just as the restaurant will soon disappear forever – even to the building it resided in.

I used to work up in the Arctic on the DEWLine. Intellectually, I know that the stations, where I worked, have been dismantled. But I didn’t see that happen, and I haven’t been back to see the result. I got laid off from a still-functioning station. Thus, for me, they still exist, employees walk the halls, and operators watch the radar screens. They still exist, waiting for me to come off of my leave and take up my position and duties once more. (I still dream of them on a regular basis.)

I have pictures, video, and other repositories of memories to aid me in keeping the DEWLine alive.

However, all is not a loss, for the experience of seeing the pizzeria die will get transformed in my mind, and something similar will come out in my writing. Hopefully, readers will nod their heads – at least figuratively – and note that the author’s words have a certain authenticity to them.

Right now, though, I’m feeling nostalgic for a place that I alternately loved and hated, a place that only yesterday lived, a repository of memories.