What I Remember

I've read that photographs define memory, that is, they limit it so that the photograph becomes the memory. I don't know if I believe that, but today I want to write some memories I have no photographs for.

The miles of oil wells we would see as we drove south from Santa Monica down through Long Beach. We went down the coast--and I don't know how often--to Oceanside where my dad owned a five-acre farm.

The miles of orange groves on such drives. Orange County named so for a reason.

The big black 1939 Studebaker we rode in the time we had a small wreck. My dad ran the Studebaker into the back of a stopped car--at a red light, I think. My sister Lucile bumped her lip pretty hard and for weeks, or so it seemed to me, walked around with a wet washcloth held to her lip. We came back from Oceanside in a different car, maybe the gray 1940 Nash.

The ocean up and down that California coast. I could watch it forever. My dad and mom loved the ocean, too.

Hyperion's tower sticking into the sky from atop a cliff overlooking Playa del Rey--the Beach of the King. Hyperion was a sewage treatment plant. I'm pretty sure the treated sewage went straight into the water we swam in. Duh, Carol. That's why the plant was right there above the ocean. I didn't like the idea of that.

The tower might have been mistaken for a light house because it could be seen for many miles. Named for its size, I'm guessing, because I can't think the look or function of the place resembled its namesake from Greek mythology.

The round concrete fire pits on the beach at Playa del Rey; beach parties at night with fire in a pit for warmth and for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows; the ocean warmer than the night air; the stitched gash on my brother Sterling's forehead--he hit his head on a fire pit during a nighttime beach football game. I wasn't there.

This when I was maybe nine or ten. He came home from the hospital and slept a long time. My mother told me to be especially quiet upstairs, not to disturb him. I was tip-toeing down the stairs when he woke, and he walked down behind me like a mindless zombie. To scare me. It worked. I was frightened by the whole thing anyway, wondering if hitting his head hard might have given him amnesia--I'd heard about that on radio dramas and mysteries--or if time in a hospital or stitches or whatever might change him.

My excitement whenever I got to go to the beach, day or night. The hope, as a teenager, that I had chosen the "right" beach. Some were better than others, though I wasn't sure why. Maybe the waves, maybe the people who went there.

Of course, the beach was always more fun with a boy, especially if it was Wayne. No photo for that. I still feel it.

So there. A few words from my memory. I've also read that writing your memories limits them. They become no more than the words you've cast them into.

That I don't believe.