wrote this a few months back but recently shared this with My dear friend Jan. She inspired me to perhaps publish this on the random chance that others might too enjoy it.....
It is always bittersweet for me to travel back to the past as I am sure it is for many others but to bring that past alive into the present day can have interesting and conflicting effects. This is a slice of my life that I hope you can see the human experience in.



===================================================================I
1966
a dirty laundrymat on the outskirts of a small Indiana town
July, Summer in its prime :


The laundry mat was a pretty bleak place lit with bare flouresant bulbs that gave it that nervous blue green flickering illumination.It shone like a beacon on the nearly lifeless stretch of state road that it resided nearby. There was nearly 40 yards of dusty gravel standing between the road and the building.

Time has pilfered a large portion of clarity and detail but I don't believe that the place even had a sign. It may have but it would have been redundant as you could smell the hot lint and slightly acidic soap powder smell mingling with turned earth and young corn for a mile on either side.

Inside the windows sills were covered with the tiny hard carcasses of dead insects,Huge flys that would spin and buzz on thier backs in the dance of death along with mosquitos ,shriveled grandaddy long legs and finally the most terrifiying ,The june bugs. The june bugs always made such a terrible sound as they repeatedly slammed into the oversized picture window. Such angry and faintly mechanical sounds as they violently flew at the filthy flyspecked glass kamakazi style.

It was here that my mother dutifully drove two kids and countless bushels of dirty laundry to. I think if she could have, my mother would have joined the suicidal insects and flew head first into that plate glass. I tried to remain as quiet in the back seat as I possibly could until I could run free in the gravel, barefoot and liberated.

It was at this laundrymat that I had seen the gumball machines that promise every child a shoddy treasure for a dime. I had been declined the dime on the last trip but on my best behaviour I anticipated with anxiety begging again because I just had to have the Batman 3-D flicker ring that I had seen previously.That ring was my Holy Grail. I had not stopped thinking about it since the last heavy hearted trip when I was forced to go home without it.

It was late afternoon as we pulled up with the laundry laden beater car and I was attentive to moms miserable chores and as helpful as a six year old with a motive can be, I carried in the detergent and helped as much as I possibly could. I was generously rewarded with the much needed dime and it barely had time to fall into my eager palm before I had slid the coin into the slot of the red machine that dispensed the most amazing of all priceless trinkets. I felt a bit anxious as I prepared to turn the knob praying that the machine wouldn't malfunction. The humiliation I had to bear from my Mother in the first place for wanting such "Junk" was bad enough but to have been swindled by a machine at that point would have been too much. I slowly turned the knob and the dime dropped with a tiny clinking sound .......IT WORKED.......

I was ecstatic, As promised I got my 3-D ring and I took the plastic capsule from the machine and held it up to the light, slowly turning it as if I posessed the Hope Diamond.Its image flickered back and forth revealing first Batman and then Robin. It was a treasure that flooded me with joy. I opened the capsule and placed the ring on my finger, Somehow I knew that this placed me in the ranks of the cool. I shed my shoes and ran outside into the late summer afternoon assured that indeed the world was magic.

Located several more yards behind the laundry mat was a shoddy mobile home not unlike the shoddy one that I lived in. In the front yard was a wooden sand box and the debris that is telltale of rural children (Mind you though I didn't have a sandbox in front of my trailer). If equal shoddiness is considered keeping up with the Jonses then we were right on par.


On previous trips I had met the little girl who lived there, Rosemary. She had beautiful long brown hair and a glistening smile not to mention alot of crayons and a "Milton the Monster" coloring book that she was always willing to share. We would meet whenever I was at the laundry. We would lay on our stomaches on a large warm slab of concrete that was left from a long gone structure that was set at the side of the laundry and within shouting distance of her home . It had one side edged by the gravel and the other three grass that in a rural way was well kept which is to say that it was mown ocassionally and full of dandilions.

I never went to her door and knocked (Fear I believe as I had pieced together from her indirect comments that her father was less than kind). I would instead stand outside the shabby bleached lime building that smelled of soap and hoped to catch a glimpse of her as she would let her screen door slam and scramble down the wooden steps to her yard to play. I would always call out no louder than necessary to get her attention to ask her if she could play. I always looked forward to our meetings and at home as the laundry piled high I knew it was only a matter of time before I could hang out with Rosemary.

She would always tell me I could call her Rosie but I always chose to call her by her proper name, Rosemary. This was not out of a function of politeness but rather I felt that anyone as beautiful as she was was much more like a Rosemary than a Rosie. I was smitten.


I couldn't wait to share the excitement of my new ring with my little playmate. I think she was duly impressed or at least feined such (Like girls could do). We laughed as the cicadia began to whirr in the late afternoon sun as they anticipated the oncoming night. She always wanted to make daisey chains (Although, In reality they were dandilions that were picked and stripped of thier flower then looped into themselves,their hollow stem thereby forming a chain when linked together). I myself prefered to color in the "Milton the Monster" coloring book that we had vowed to color cover to cover before summers end but thier was always time.That vast unlimited expanse called time that stretches on forever in a child summer.

As afternoon segued seamlessly into dusk the first few lightning bugs would ocassionally blink and we would gather up the sweet waxy smelling crayolas and return them to the cigar box so as to chase the luminescing insects. The shadowy backlit sillouette of her mother would come to the door to call out "Rosemary,Your father will be home any minute" and with that she would disappear into the trailer as the deepest of purples gave way to indigo puncuated by the yellow signals of the lightning bugs that grew in frequency. I stood alone on the concrete feeling the heat radiating upward and with my left hand felt my right index finger for the ring. It was gone........

I continued to pull on my finger in anxiety as tears welled up in my eyes and panic overcame me. Where was the magic ring? I searched as best I could before running into the laundry to bring the trauma to my mothers attention. I frantically searched as my mother indifferently folded the remaining clothes. I looked everywhere in that building, nooks and crannies that would have been impossible to have been the one place that I sought. It was just gone.......

I do remember to her credit, My mother shone her headlights across the parking lot so that I could continue my search.It was in vain and now that I reflect, I think perhaps that was really more of a ploy to not have to sit in a car with a crying child than it was really a sincere and generous offer of help, A way to buy a little peace for herself as I cried in the dark night in a fruitless endevour.

The ride home was long and I sat next to the window in the backseat with the night wind rippling my tears as my mom and sister sat in the front singing along with WLS AM top 40 tunes. I seem too remember Mel Carter singing about a "Band of Gold",The volume going up as it was one of my mothers favorites. I thought the last thing I wanted to hear was a song about a ring but to make matters worse the DJ played the Batman theme afterwards and I think maybe that was the longest ten mile drive that I have ever been on. Mountain Dew and top 40 musical merriment in the front and a mire of misery in the back of the overstuffed Oldsmobile.


Every couple of weeks when The laundry piled up and the inevitable trip to the laundry mat was looming, I would prepare myself to continue the search. The gumball machine was restocked with tiny Day-Glo polyester haired trolls after a while and the desparation to find my "precious" was only escalated. I would see Rosemary ocassionally throughout the summer but she quickly tired of my obsession to find my treasure. I had even snuck into the boiler room of the laundry to search for my ring late in the summer and as logic would dictate,beings as I had never been in the room before the ring was not there. Desparation and logic seldom go hand in hand. I did see a calander of a nude woman on the greasy walls though and somehow it only made me want to shed the confusion of the adult world and spin the hands of time backward to a happier time.

As Fall approached I would continue to look every single time I had to go .The last time I went it was too chilly to take off my shoes and run through the gravel.With my sneakers feeling like foreign objects strapped to my feet I ran behind the laundry to see if Rosemary was playing in her yard but she wasn't. The lot was empty....No debris, No cars , No sandbox and no trailer. Gone, Vanished , Empty. So empty.....and this was to be true to so much of my childhood.....

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Chicago IL
The early years of the new millenium
Fall fades into another cold winter.


Sleepless nights have become a commonplace event and the details of why are really not relevant nor interesting. When sleep does come it is usually heavy,Dreamless and short, Of course there are always exceptions. On one particular late night a few months ago I was in the throes of a dream that was really not so much a dream but a disturbingly accurate (At least to my waking senses) reliving of the night I had lost the Batman 3-D flicker ring. It was all there, The dirty laudry mat windows, Lightning bugs outside, the little girl Rosemary and most vivid of all, The anxiety and tears. This was how I woke up, tears streaming down my face. I have in the past had dreams that would cast a shadow of emotional color on the waking day but never before or since have I had a dream quite like this. I was really six again and devastated.

The answer was clear to me as to what to do to smooth over the disturbed ripples of my subconcious, I would simply replace the ring. For those whom obsessively collect or know those who do, It will come as no suprise that on those sleepless nights that followed I found myself poring over page after page of items on EBAY over the coming months. I would often find similar items to the lost ring and find them out of reach financially. I have seen similar items sell for over 100 dollars. After several months waiting and watching (And of course purchasing lots of other useless items) I finally found the one. Not too many bidders and at a price I could reason. All told the ring cost around 16.00 dollars delivered. This was something that I waited for anxiously, But anxiously in its more negative connotations. For one, I had kept this purchase a secret from my partner, Whom tries hard I think to understand my collections but really fails at understanding (Or is even able to get beyond being annoyed by it). When the package arrived I quickly squirrled it away unopened in the basement until I had time to actually spend a few minutes alone with the secret parcel.

The day passed and finally I was alone and quiet prevailed as I opened up the box. It was really well packed and my excitement mounted in a childlike way as I finally opened the last bit of packing material, A small ring box like one would get from a midpriced jeweler. When I slid the nesting boxes apart I peered inside and looking in it occured to me how small the ring was. It was so very small. I looked at my own hands and realized how much physical differerence can occur to the human body in 40 years regardless of how much lying our minds can do. Now of course I rationally knew that the ring would be small but perhaps the build up in my mind was so great, As if this cheap (But cool as hell) piece of plastic was going to somehow repair my distant past, Magically smooth away the anxieties like flickering 3-D snake oil. I believe I felt shame at a shattered delusion or maybe less dramatically, a sense of how silly it all was. Nothing was changed, No evil spell broken, No sad childhood mended and honestly it felt rather empty, Shallow, Hollow. That is until.....

A couple of nights ago my daughter Izzy wanted to look at a book of mine with me before bed. This is common here in the house, Sometimes a bedtime story and othertimes picture books that prompt late night conversations between us. On this particular night she had ferreted out a coffee table type book on Batman collectibles from one of my numerous stacks of pop culture refrence books. I was more than happy to sit and pour over the pages of syrup thick and comforting nostalgia. She was genuinely interested everytime I would say aloud,"Yeah, I remember that." She would prompt me for specifics and seemed to revel in my joy. It occured to me that after we had finished the book that she might like to see and hear the story of my 3-D ring. With all the sense of wonder a nearly 4 year old kid can have, Izzy was delighted to share the time oogling my childhood treasure. She put it on after asking me to first, very quick to point out the obvious,It didn't fit me. She held the ring up to look at it as if it were truely precious. She treated it like it was an object that deserved awe. We shared so much in those moments,Time has looped in upon itself and to my joy I discovered that indeed this ring is magic perhaps for even another generation.