memories from 1973

It's Saturday, right?

So, in accordance with my groove thing, I was waiting for "Bernie Mac" to start...

and I had thirty minutes to sit.

Then I noticed a nearby channel had something that looked interesting and tuned in.

And justthatfast, I was whisked back in time to my sophomore year of high school.

It was a Saturday morning, too, and my brothers were still in their pajamas, watching the cartoons, and I heard Daddy call me from the kitchen.

As I stood there, he began vomiting and told me he had taken rat poison.

I ran next door and Mary Norman called for an ambulance, then I ran back and told the boys to get dressed.

Mary Norman came and waited with us until the ambulance took Daddy to the hospital.

Then what to do with us?

I called Uncle Jimmy and he came and picked us up, taking us down to Waycross, to where Mama had been staying during the trial separation from Daddy.

Grandpa had lined up a trailer for her and that's where me and my brothers stayed, too.

I don't remember all the details, like sleeping arrangements for us four kids or just how long we were there.

It all seemed like a dream, right?

But one crystallized memory evidently remained.

It popped to the forefront as soon as the title card of the show popped up during the infomercial.

And I remembered watching "The Merv Griffin Show" on a sunny afternoon in the fall, that variety talk show being the highlight of an idle day of sitting in that trailer.

Do I remember the guests he had during those days spent in Waycross?

I don't have a clue.

Maybe it had been John Denver or perhaps Carole King or, then again, it could have been Liberace or a young Whitney Houston.

Those were people highlighted during the infomercial that was trying to sell a series of curated shows.

Whoever it was, though, seems unimportant to my memory.

What was important at the time was the fact that afternoon sunlight was streaming into the room where I was watching the show.

Evidently, that was the thing my brain deemed important: that I was watching Merv Griffin and the sun was shining.

And here it is, another Saturday morning.

What an odd video my memory pulled up for me.

What a relief to know that time is long, long ago, in the past...

but how sad that I have lost so many of the players.

Grandpa, Mary Norman, Grandma, Mama, Daddy, Uncle Jimmy... all gone now.

I wonder what my brothers recall from that moment in time? 

And now "Bernie Mac" is on and both episodes deal with the death of a beloved uncle.

Wow.