The thing that cracked me up so much is that a long, long time ago my first girl friend after I was out of school was from Tennessee.
[disclamer: some parts of the following narrative may or may not contain usage of the author's prerogative of embellishment to complete a memory to his satisfaction]
As soon as I read the first few lines, I had a flashback to a 40 year old indelible memory of my trip with the forever lovely Sarah to her hometown of Jellico, just to see the place she grew up in and maybe meet some of her family (uh oh, alarm went off, flag rose, guard up, other thing down).
As we neared the area, it began to look more and more like Lil' Abner's Dogpatch: tarpaper shacks accompanied by outhouses defying the law of gravity all over the hills, getting more and more densely packed until we arrived at an intersection with a gas station, a store and a RR Crossing - Beautiful Downtown Jellico, circa 1960.
After I joined the Air Force the next year, she came to visit me at my first duty station (Andrews AFB at Wash. DC) during the Cuban Missile Crisis, accompanied by my mother, the Chaperoness Maximus. Sadly, the press of time, distance, and raging hormones interfered too much in our relationship and we lost track of each other. We each married others and never heard from each other again. <this is SO sad>
I'd love to hear from you again, Sarah L. from Jellico, TN. If you are still out there somewhere, PM me. To prove it's really you and not some dumb broad digging for gold in an empty coal mine, tell me something about us that only we know.
Chas·maybeoldmemoriesarebestrememberednotrelived |
