The old house was going to be destroyed. Industrial development. She barely got there in time before it became a victim of the wrecking ball.
They stopped work for her so she could retrieve what she wanted. She had to be quick. She ran from room to room, snatching and grabbing.
She ran into the nursery and there were her books. Her childhood lived in those books. One of the workers helped and she packed them up. Nancy Drew. Huckleberry Finn. More.
She loaded them in her car as the memories battered her brain. Thinking of her family, she cried.
“It looks like a crypt,” he said to himself as he got off the bus. It was the correct address for the hotel his buddy had directed him to when he arrived in town. He had traveled across the country, the whole of America, to play with a band here.
He had no money, but his buddy said that wouldn’t be a problem at this establishment. He pushed open the heavy door. It was dirty and dark inside. It smelled. There was a hotel counter on his right with a bell and a dim light. He rang the bell.
A Goth-looking girl materialized behind the counter. She remarked they had been expecting him. She directed him to what she called a room, but it was just a space, with a dirty cot and a wash basin. The girl invited him to happy hour.
He sat down on the cot and thought about leaving, but he had no money. He wandered down the hall to the place the Goth-girl directed him to for happy hour.
He walked in to order a drink but stopped dead in his tracks. The people were all in Goth attire and makeup and they were dancing an odd dance. He had a bad feeling. He’d find somewhere else.
Grabbing his stuff, he went up to the hotel counter to check out. No one was there, but there was a small sign. It said, “You can check out any time you like but you can’t ever leave.”
Theme: Aging: Slices of Life Past and Present; Aging Issues and Financial Concerns
Aging and Aerosmith
Welcome to The Write Scribe, my blog, where I will write about issues related to aging, along with slices of life past and present, during the 2024 A to Z Challenge! I look forward to reading your blog posts and enjoying your theme during this Challenge. You can find my A to Z 2024 Challenge posts under the Challenges category at the top of the front page. I invite you to read the posts as you wish and I look forward to your comments.
Since my theme starts with an “A,” I thought starting off with some general comments about aging, and more.
There is only one alternative to aging and we know what that is. Since I’m not done in this world yet, I’ve had to accept this fundamental truth and move on with this aging business. I’ll have to tell you that I’m doing it kicking and screaming and not very graciously.
Younger people ask if, as you get older, you feel any different? I guess my answer is that it depends. If you can stay well, you might answer this question in one way, but if not, your answer might be different. Anyone at any age can become ill. However, it gets more likely as you move into your 60s and 70s. Speaking for myself, I don’t feel much different than I did at 35 except, perhaps, a little (or a lot) wiser. If only the young could have the wisdom of the old! I’ve wished that for my younger self many times.
As you age, you feel like you become invisible in the American society. Other cultures take better care of their elderly. In America, it’s all about youth and the concerns of the young. The elderly, at least in the modern era, are pushed aside as irrelevant and just a bother by many. Some of that changed during the pandemic. Employers discovered that they could depend on older workers and since the pandemic, that opinion has remained, at least to some extent.
Most people who are aging want to stay in their own homes and continue to pursue their own interests without becoming a burden to their children. To me, it’s a shame that parents have to feel like a burden although if aging parents can stay in their own homes, that is often best.
There are a lot of people who are aging who feel lonely. By the time you reach your mid-60s and early 70s, you have lost much of your family and at least some of your friends. You may be widowed. You may not be interested in socializing as much as in the past because your interests have changed. Add that to the likelihood that your friends interests have also changed and there is loneliness.
Some of my interests have changed, but basically my core interests have remained the same. For example, I still love the same music and don’t really enjoy the music of recent generations. Aerosmith, a famous rock and roll band that began in the 1970s, is still going strong, and is still one of my favorite bands, now as well as when I was younger. Steven Tyler, the lead singer, is a talented musician who has lived a long and colorful life. If you’ve never heard Aerosmith and Steven Tyler, listen to his song “Dream On” and see what you think. It’s pretty indicative of the baby boomer generation and how we grew up. Conservative parents, more liberal friends, and lots and lots of what seemed then like innocent fun. For the most part, it was!
She liked bars. She didn’t drink or smoke. She didn’t go home with strange men. She was simply a people watcher and some of the best opportunities were in bars, but these were the boring 2020s. Everything was so politically correct, so sanitized that nothing was fun anymore.
Back in the 70’s, when rock and roll and women’s rights were shiny and new, everything was fun. There was no such thing as political correctness. Men and women were busy experiencing live music in bars and relating to each other in a way that had never been possible. They were high on life. The downside was that they were high on other substances too. They didn’t know much yet about the downsides of those substances, including liquor. Those were the Glory Days.
She looked around this bar stuck in a corner of the airport. Bright lights, men only except for her. She couldn’t hear the music over the intercom because it was too soft. The men were quietly talking to each other, but certainly not to her. They even looked like they were practicing political correctness. She preferred to laugh. She didn’t think she’d have much fun people watching in this place.
Even people her age had bought into the whole new sanitized world notion, except when it came to politics. That was where you found the passion, but none of the fun. The entire world was at stake.
Time to go. She would put on her headphones and drift away.
Elena, a victim of recent unimaginable loss, came from her home in the mountains to visit her aunt. The hope was that she would start to heal. On the second day of her visit, she saw a copse of trees nearby. She started up the wide path to explore. The landscape seemed so flat and boring to her.
The trees were very sparse compared to the forest where she lived. She found something compelling about them. She started walking up the wide path thinking that it was curious her mother and father had never brought her here to visit. They didn’t like to be gone from their home for very long. It turned out that was a wise decision. She had just lost them both, at the same time, to a terrible car crash. Tears started streaming down her face at the thought and she could hardly see where she was going.
Elena reached the tree line and immediately felt more at home. There wasn’t far to walk and remain under the trees. Ahead, she could see a grassland. She was crying so hard that she stumbled. As she picked herself up, she noticed something odd. Near her, there was perfect circle made up of mushrooms. Inside the circle, the grass was dying and looked as if it had been trampled. Even in her grief, it dawned on her what this was. It was a fairy circle.
Elena turned to go back to her aunt’s house, and she heard something. She felt a sort of noise and vibration that seemed to come from underground. Then, she heard, very faintly, singing and she realized the vibrations were in time with the singing.
The fairies were singing and dancing under their circle. The only word she could decipher was, “Hope.”
She felt like she was strangling, suffocating in the drab, gray house. She imagined how it must feel in a mausoleum. It was emotional death to be trapped in this house. Someone from the outside would eventually find her, wouldn’t they?
He had made it palatable from the outside with the beautiful mural and bright floral colors at the entrance. Couldn’t they see the rudimentary wire gate?
She was locked in a small, sound-proof room, but she had almost pried open the lock. The lock clicked and she was free. When she reached the wire gate, he stood there laughing.
They thought they had concocted the perfect plan. The smaller of the two men, Dave, was a hot air balloon enthusiast and entered the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA almost every year. His partner in crime, Bill, was just along for the ride and had helped Dave transport the stolen gold bars as far as the balloon festival.
The balloon fiesta was in the fall of the year in warm, dry New Mexico. As Dave and Bill approached the venue, the skies were blue and there was a slight breeze. Dave’s balloon was already secured there, deflated, but ready to be aired up. Dave had made plans to steal the gold bars and then transport them to his secret place in Mexico using his balloon.
Dave had stolen the gold from his supervisor’s home vault while she was on vacation. He had lucked into finding the combination for the vault by hacking her laptop.
They aired up the balloon and gradually loaded the gold bars into the wicker basket. Then, they were off. Dave thought the balloon was a bit sluggish as it tried to get off the ground, but he blamed the calm wind. The balloon gradually rose, but slowly and not to the height that Dave expected. As the wind further calmed, Dave became alarmed since the balloon started losing altitude. Dave suddenly realized the problem was the weight of the gold.
Below the balloon, they could see the Rio Grande River. The balloon was falling rapidly no matter how much hot air Dave pumped into it. It slowed and plunked down right in the middle of a shallow in the river. When Dave and Bill looked up, there was the Border Patrol on horseback on the bank, just waiting for them.
Claire saw the old vehicle being lifted from the bottom of the lake. Her mother had drowned in that car and it was her fault. Her mom was teaching her to drive. She lost control of the car and they landed in the roadside lake.
The accident was months ago and she could see the damage to the car. Rust and a crooked door where her mom fought so hard to get out. Claire smiled, then looked around to see if anyone saw her. She had finally paid her mother back for all those injustices she’d suffered in her childhood.
She finally told him that she had breast cancer and that it was advanced. The next morning, he left for work and on the way, he had a massive stroke. Then surgery. He would be in the hospital for a long time.
Months went by and she passed away without seeing him due to COVID19. A few days later, he was released from the hospital. He walked into his empty home and there was the flower arrangement on the table. She had left a note. He wondered what he would do without her and then he sat down and cried,
She often came this way. She stopped and sat on the fence, looking at the single, timeless standing stone. It always caused her carefully controlled mind to wander. Back and forward. Backwards, she wondered where they came from. What they meant? Were other stones buried by the sands of time somewhere deep around this one, perhaps in a circle? Maybe this was a lone stone. Perhaps meant to cure sick children? How will we ever know, she wondered, what the prehistoric people who raised these stones really were doing.
Then there was that other theory. The one that some thought explained the pyramids as well as the standing stones. The theory that said that we weren’t alone in the universe. Perhaps other beings had helped those prehistoric people build these complex stone structures. Most discounted that theory of course, but she found herself thinking of it. It seemed so impossible that the prehistoric citizens could have done it themselves.
A timeless mystery of the universe. She started walking again, her imagination making her smile.
The Write Scribe 