Memoirs, Week 2

(Disclaimer: Though it wasn't, this SHOULD have been posted on Nov. 18, as I MEANT to do it just after my second memoir class. I won't even tell you how much later than that I am, but I will admit to playing omnipotent and changing the date so it appears on 11-18-05. My three regular readers will, then, miss seeing it, but it'll be saved for posterity. :))


Class Writing: Object Lesson.

(After some guided note taking, we got 5 minutes to explain/ decribe/ illuminate a significant object from our pasts.)


Junk. Jettisoned junk. It looks like nothing more than flea-market fodder, the short wooden chair that perches at an angle in the corner of my carport. But it makes me smile -- if not laugh out loud -- with the memory of a near-perfect family outing every time I stop to wipe dust off it.

The chair came to me from the Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas. Decades ago, the Baker was a destination for the infirmed but well-to-do, a place to soak up the famous healing spring water of the city.

I never saw the Baker -- or the chair -- in their heyday. In fact, both were in serious disrepair by the time my grandparents, parents and I pulled up in Dot's Honda Accord one bright August morning in the early '90s. A low chain sagged across one of the wide, broken concrete drives and overgrowth shaded the hulking hole of the main pool. It seemed a good spot for birds or at least squirrels, but no fauna of any sort seemed to interrupt the entropy-in-progress. All was quiet, still and solemn and mausoleum-like, until the pilfering began.