Ghosts

Dear You,

Odd how a glass of wine poured slowly over a memory makes the past more poignant. I was thinking about the old Ben Franklin store on Main Street, and all of a sudden I saw myself as a teenager, headed past it on the way to Steadman's News Stand. It was after school, and I had my papers to fold, put into my canvas bag and distribute along my route.

How lively and interesting was that street. If I weren't running so late, I might stop for a cherry phosphate at Leonard's Drug Store, where that pretty redhead with the big blue eyes would mix it for me. Or I could pop into Seip Hardware and see if Becky was there to talk with her father. I'd pass McLain's, where I'd had my lunch of chili and rye bread earlier that day.

Wherever I went, people knew me and took an interest in my doings . . . especially when I was misbehaving. In that era, I could be sure I would be spoken sharply to -- or worse, someone would call my parents and turn me in!

All gone. Fifty years later, those businesses are as dead as their owners, and many of the storefronts are papered over, the spaces empty. Parking spaces are plentiful now.

In "Bridge of Sighs," Russo captures the long-ago presence of a small town, and reading it I cannot help thinking that those places have all given way. Driving through them now is a little like reading Wilder's "Our Town" over and over again -- sad, like the long-lost events of everyone's youth.

Object Lessons

Dear You,

On a recent evening with friends I noticed a little pile of stones surrounding a potted plant on a side table. "I pick them up wherever I go," explained my hostess. And she listed some of her favorite places, each stone provoking a smile and a memory.

In nearly every room of my house are little things -- a tiny clock here, a glass figure there, little bits gathered from a long-ago beach walk and little presents brought back from trips. If I really worked at it, I could catalog them; no doubt, however, I would forget a few -- there are so very many. What I enjoy, then, is the happy discovery (and the resultant memory) when my eye falls on one of these when I am otherwise occupied. I might open a drawer, or push aside a photo frame, or reach for a book . . . and there it is: Didn't that come from Manomet? I muse?

No doubt nearby is an old woman or man in a nursing home, looking back and trying to recapture a lost adventure, struggling through the cobwebs of fading memory. If she or he is fortunate, some object from that past is at hand to light the way.