In the Still of the Morning

     I've been so busy trying to produce enough art for another show, I've been keeping my mind locked up behind a very large and formidable locked door.

    But, this morning, when I swore to myself I would stay in bed until at least 5:30 a.m. every day, I was up again at 3 a.m., like a frantic mouse, scurrying to and fro looking for that last morsel to take back to the nest before I settled in for a nap. No matter what I tell myself: "You need to heal, Brenda. You need to rest, Brenda"...nothing seems to work when the brain kicks in.

    This morning, my thoughts were on the lost. Not those orange-handled scissors that you swore up and down were in the basket on your desk, and now are nowhere to be seen. Not the brand-new jar of Skippy you bought just last week that has disappeared into the Twilight Zone of your kitchen. No, neither of those things, but the loss of long-known establishments and people that defined your youth.

    Everyone has loss as a part of their lifespan. We lose people that have been close to us, we lose people that we watched on television, we lose people that spanned generations of music and art. We got comfortable knowing they were always there, and now they are not, never to return. Places are the same way. Roadside gift shops with big shark heads and billboards touting "live alligators," at least here in Florida, were always my triggers for comfort in my state, silly as that seems. Seeing them on my day journeys throughout the state, knowing that inside them was the smell of orange-scented pottery and imported Philippine shells, pirate flags and ceramic flamingos, plastic oranges, bamboo wind chimes and tacky decals for your glass sliding doors. All of them were the same for the most part, and every single one of them meant home to me. I grew up in Silver Springs, a huge tourist destination since the early 1800s, and there was one particular shop I rode my little pink Schwinn bicycle (with streamers, folks) every single Saturday afternoon (after the obligatory chores, a Tarzan movie and the following Creature-Feature on television) that was in a little corner niche on SR 40, which has now become a boring highway median. I took my weekly allowance ($2.00) and rode off into the sun to purchase a shell or two, sometimes "lavender toilet water from France," leaving enough for a slaw-dog from the nearby Dairy Queen. Don't tell Mom...she hated it when I ate before my dinner (but how I dearly loved slaw-dogs, and ONLY from Dairy Queen). The Shell Shop was torn down many, many years ago. As were the Cloister Courts, built from coquina rock, that was the favorite motel for many travelers, and Yancy's Blueberry Farm.

    Just recently, I read a post on Facebook that Tom's, also a well-known Florida gift shop, has drifted off into the sunset. It had been going downhill for years, but these last two years of minimal tourism and disinterest in the old Florida pit-stops finally made the final slice, and it has closed as well. This shop was on the road to St. Augustine, a route I still travel as often as I can, now that I'm closer. Nothing gives me a thrill as much as seeing a lighthouse as I come around the bend on A1A to Anastasia Island. I would often pop into Tom's. Just to remember.

    In the mid-70s, I was a dancing fool to David Bowie (cancer), wearing padded-shoulder jackets and high heels with my jeans. I had all of his albums, and think I still do, buried in a bin somewhere in the shed. In the late 70s, I took a job at ABC liquors as a bartender, wearing a little red "elf" dress, mixing drinks to the tunes of Donna Summers (lung cancer) and Glenn Frey (pneumonia) and shot a mean game of pool to the tunes of Stevie Ray Vaughn (helicopter crash). I adored Jim Croce (plane crash), especially "Time in a Bottle," and am dreading the day when Jimmy Buffett is no longer pumping out his tunes of tropical living. They all left their music behind to bring us back to earlier days, and when the tunes I remember pop up on my car radio (yes, I listen to 70s and 80s music), I get a little misty.

    Yes, I know, ch-ch-ch-changes are inevitable. Nothing stops change. But I am getting to the age where I reminisce about the long-gone. Riding my little bike miles to downtown Ocala, which still had brick streets, huge, ancient buildings and a Woolworth store complete with a lunch counter, and board sidewalks in some parts of town, just so I could buy a little gift for my Mom or go to a movie at the Marion Theatre (I could get in with RC bottle-caps, which I picked up from the Jiffy Store parking lot). Music will always take me back, and I still watch the old movies and television series from time to time because I just plain like them. The past is a funny place. Not good to live there, but nice to visit.