The River of Time

                                         Calendars chart the River of Time 

The River of Time keeps on flowing along. It is probably a song lyric someplace. I have just forgotten where. I had pause to think of the notion yesterday. I was looking at some old calendars from 1972. It has been and is my custom to keep a daily log of events since that time. Sometimes the notations were cryptic references, to the weather or actions that we had taken. I filed the rota of family information as it occurred. Births, death, weddings and funerals speckle the journey.

At some bit of doggerel, I smile. I remember some character and what shenanigans we had been up to at the time. I am mostly amazed at the array of things that we used to cram into a day. It seemed like we were always on the move, visiting friends or family in another city or state.

Even at home, the list reminded me that we were on the go from dawn till much after dusk. The weather seems to dominate everything here in Western New York. Rain storms, blizzards and cold weather bedeck the notations over the months. Yet, we always seemed to be doing something or other in spite of the inclement weather.

Our days and nights were full as we settled into our new, post-college life. We were driving dilapidated old cars at the time. I read numerous notations about fixing headlights, radiators and flat tires that pepper the record. It all seemed normal then. You did what you had to do to get by. We didn’t have much money then.

In one humorous notation while we were still students in Geneseo, it says that we cashed 150 pennies, in three locations, to get gas money for an old Chevie clunker. We were too embarrassed to cash them all in one place. People would have thought we were broke or something. Gas was then 33 cents a gallon. Five gallons of gas enabled us to drive to suburban Rochester, where we settled into the comfortable generosity of Mary’s parents’ home in suburban Chili. Still, we never minded at the time. We managed like everyone else around us. The social register never really enrolled too many people from my neighborhood.

Working in a busy welfare department in a large urban county was definitely a life-changing experience. However difficult things might have been for people in the old neighborhood, it was no comparison to the daily struggle of people who were really in need. I don’t think I had ever really met people before who were actually hungry or had no place to stay. Most of our clients were women and children who struggled daily for an existence in an environment that was at best hostile and sometimes even deadly.

The old people were the most tragic to care for. The bureaucratic jungle was a paper maze to them. It wasn’t uncommon then for one of them to have nothing to eat in the house and no place to turn for help. These unfortunates weighed heaviest on my young soul. I knew that I was headed home that night to a warm place with food available and they were not. Still, you go on, happy now and then at winning some battle or other for a client and making their life a little better. 

With all of these available triggers, my memories are an endless roll of this and that adventure. The collective antics should provide me with story fodder for the next several months or even years. You never know what interesting memory will surface.

                                                                -30-

                                                         ( 605 words)

                                                    Joseph Xavier Martin