1967. Small Town, USA.
It could have been anywhere. It should have been a sort of Camelot, a place of innocent ideals and perhaps for some it was – a picture-perfect locale of neat homes dating to the 1890s or the 1930s, storefronts in brick, roads where children played without concern, on the surface, a bastion of moderate behaviors, honorable interactions, merchants who offered credit with a nod, neighbors who never thought twice about their unlocked doors.
Though we know there is no picture-perfect time without its secrets, no bright penny without its tarnished underside, no Camelot without its compromises, we dream of recapturing the sense of safe haven.
In my small town, there were streets lined with oaks and maples, rambling three-story houses in stucco and wood, children set loose on Saturday mornings to run free – scattering across the neighborhood for hide and seek, for building forts, for sitting by the reservoir and telling stories.
We would return home for lunch when we heard voices calling or, as in the case of my mother, a cow bell was rung as she stood at the back door sounding out that giggle-inducing and inimitable sound with its surprising reach.
We scrambled back to our peanut butter sandwiches or bowls of cottage cheese and fruit, taking off again after for more wandering, more exploring, more child’s play.
The small town as I remember it is a relic, an illusion, a truth, a treasure. Within a five-minute walk from our home was something of a town square, not a square by usual standards but an intersection with its businesses seemingly untouched for decades: the corner soda fountain with its red and turquoise fixtures, which became a yarn shop by the 1970s; a tiny dance studio for the willowy as well as the chubby, willing to don pink slippers and a leotard to learn balance and movement; a pharmacy in a small triangular building; a hardware store which still stands and sells its wrenches and nails, its sandpaper and stains; two rival banks (to my adult amusement); a funeral home, an A & P, a small medical office; a jeweler with few baubles to offer but a monopoly on repairing watches.
The truest pleasure to a child? The Five-and-Ten with its musty aisles that were filled with wind-up toys, bats and balls, board games stacked neatly and waiting for birthdays, paint by number kits and sketchbooks, school supplies and brightly colored pens, Elmer’s glue and pipe cleaners. My mother’s favorite section eventually became one of mine, with its pull-out drawers of Buttericks patterns and McCalls, and shelves crammed with bolts of fabric – kettle cloth and velvet and wool, from which she would choose to make her clothes and mine, and where I would purchase remnants when I, too, learned to sew.
About a mile away was the only competition to the magic of the Five-and-Ten. The movie theater, with limited showings and one screening room of course, in which to project a movie we would anticipate for weeks and where Wednesday afternoon matinees featured a glorious escape for the sum of two quarters.
It was there that my mother could leave behind her worries and her hurt, bringing me with her on occasion in happy moments of sharing wonder and excitement on the large screen, settled into worn red seats, generally with few in attendance.
It was there that she threw me a birthday party once, which I do not recall in detail except I can see my mother’s face and how beautiful she was, and I can picture the faces of friends – Debbie with her flaming hair and freckles, Cindy with her fair curls and upturned nose, Lorilee with near violet eyes framed by long, lush lashes – a mini Liz Taylor in the making.
It was 1967, and the movie was Camelot. On the screen stood Vanessa Redgrave, exquisite more than 40 years ago and with a face I still consider magnificent, as are her powerful presence and immense talent. And if Guinevere loved two men and that did not meet with convention, surely, mesmerized in that theater as a child, I could understand why two men would pursue such beauty and grace, such tender strength.
From this vantage point, older than my mother was when we sat through the movies on Wednesday afternoons, as she insisted we stay to watch the previews of coming attractions as though her fragile hopes for the future hung on some slim promise of whatever imaginary tales lay ahead – I know my memories to be softening and growing kinder.
I know my comprehension of my mother’s life is informed by the passage of the years, by recognizing her sense of entrapment in Small Town USA even with its proximity to the Big City, her frustrations in the conventions of a lifestyle she both wanted and that constrained her, held hostage by demons I will never understand, still trying to locate her own Camelot – a place of innocent ideals, and something more, that eluded her.
This is part of a group writing exercise By Invitation Only, where the prompt was the word “Camelot.” Please visit more moments of Camelot by checking here, at Splenderosa.
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This is FABULOUS. I think this is so brilliantly done. Camelot is so relative. Isn’t it funny how once what we might of thought of as boring and mundane suddenly sounds wonderful!!!! I used to never get enough of my big city life, and now all I want is small town USA and enjoying the simple pleasures!
I so enjoyed this and think there are many who felt/feel the way your mother did….but we all know Camelot is more of a feeling and pursuing what makes us happy over a “thing” or a specific “place. I think Camelot can easily be found on a small rural farm all the same that it can be found in a magnificent estate. I think it starts within us and its up to us to allow that feeling to become a way of life and to live the way we feel. I think we can shape and define where we live more than a place can shape or define us.
I really enjoyed this.
That is the mystique of Camelot — it is always slightly out of reach, except in our memories. You writing took me back to my childhood. Whenever I read your writing I am astounded by the way it flows right through my heart. Thank you.
Man. That brought me back.
I think we all look for Camelot in our lives in one form or another. I didn’t grow up in a small town, but didn’t stray too far outside the neighborhood in South Kansas City Missouri. I remember making it a point to take my kids to see theatrical productions just so they could experience the thrill of getting lost in the land of imagination. Camelot? It exists in all our imaginations.
I grew up in Los Angeles but in a suburb that was considered out of the city. Now it is right in the city. But we had the local bowling alley, the move theater, Newberry’s Dime Store and lots of other fun things. A walk down memory lane. If your mother was a 50’s mom, this was her role. Hopefully, as you grew older, she got her chance to shine. I know my Mom certainly did.
Woo – that was extraordinary. Such powerful words, bringing with them such an insight into a world which must have been so claustrophobic to so many women of her generation, and yet on the flip side you have shown the idyllic nature which was happening concurrently.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your story….succinct and poignant as always.
Oh, the five and ten!
Guinevere!
Can we go back?!?
The only hitch is that we’d probably be in a Twilight Zone episode.
Small town USA… Small towns the world over…
I think your memory of this small town could relate to many countries… the geography may differ but the sentiments… the dreams, the hopes and the disappointments all lurk under the surface…
I am also intrigued by our ideas of idyllic.. how we grow up to reject what we once thought as ideal only to crave it again as we grow older…
Wonderful observations… xv
I believe Vicki has said this perfectly. I’ve discovered it is human nature to seek the best and most beautiful, to only wish kind thoughts, and to always think everything will be wonderful. The mystical magic of Camelot was, in so many ways, the creations of all young minds who believe in the power of goodness. Funny thing. I still do. Beautifully done, Wolfie…
Those young minds. You said it, Marsha. We really need to hang on to some elements of that idealism and wonder. And thank you again for the fun and pleasure of participating in this writing exercise with such a delightful group of international women.
It must have been an itch she could never truly scratch, sheets that were too short for the bed never allowing a truly peaceful sleep. Though we travel the world over in search of the beautiful, we must carry it within us or we find it not (I’ve always like that quote – don’t remember now where it was from – The Little Prince, maybe?) What a rich remembrance of your mother you’ve written. Seems that was a complicated relationship.
My husband was raised in Small Town, USA and had a childhood very much like what you describe above (at least until he was old enough to start helping out in his dad’s drugstore). His memories of that childhood are very happy. His mother had given up her budding career as a vocalist in New York City to marry her childhood sweetheart and, after he returned from WWII and finished pharmacist school, returned with him to the Small Town, USA where they had grown up, in order to have and raise their children in a largely traditional American family. She threw her talent, energy and enthusiasm into her parenting and her life in the community (including as church choir leader and soloist). Since my own mother died before I could begin to understand her life or how she felt about it, I have explored those topics with my husband’s mother for several decades. Almost 94 now, she has never given me any hint that she felt the entrapment, frustration or constraints to which you allude…and which I (the 70’s feminist) thought she must have felt to at least some extent. Is this denial/determination-to-be-positive on her part, or did she somehow develop the inner resources to make her life in Small Town, USA every bit as fulfilling as the life in New York City of which she had dreamed? Probably both to some extent. I admire her a great deal but sometimes wonder if I have any idea of who she really is.
Wow. That left me breathless-literally–as your most powerful writing tends to do. Honestly, I don’t know how you do it but I am grateful you do. I jumped into the front seat of that roller coaster but it was still one heck of a ride.
I am just reading the BIO posts today and it is a delight, isn’t it?
Thanks, Heather. Yes, a delight, I agree!
I wonder just how many mothers back then suffered in silence as they did not have the opportunity to make the choices we, their daughters, have had. How many mothers sat looking wistfully at a window that showed them in a different life. A life that perhaps they would have rather had. Very evocative piece, DA. Brought back lots of memories.