Writing Memoirs

Maybe it's not such a good idea.

I'm trying to write my memories in language that will be interesting to people who don't actually know me. To do this, I have to place myself in the environment of the times. Nostalgia rises to the surface. People and places of oh! so long ago. I feel better if I live in the moment, although today's moment gives me a cranky refrigerator and cat urine in the carpet.

When I was twenty I went with Larry Cavazos to Texas Tech in far north Lubbock. Thinking back on it now, I can't help but contrast today's lifestyle with those ancient years. Seventy of them.

Most automobiles were pre-war. Production couldn't keep up with the demand for new ones. We arrived in Lubbock in my 1936 Oldsmobile, surviving two flat tires and a broken rear spring on the trip.

No television. In the Panhandle, TV was five years away. Movies, yes, continual showings afternoon and evening.

Drugstore lunch counters, nickelodeons blasting at us. The
Big Band area fading away as vocalists rose to fame. Nat King Cole sang "Nature Boy." In Lubbock Hank Thompson, Hank Williams cried at us. And of course Homer and Jethro. Elvis was just a few years away.

Up-to-date dial telephones, no "Number please." Long distance? Dial "Operator." Tell her "Brownsville, Texas." Insert coins when asked.

Our undergrad classes taught by stogy old professors, ready for retirement. Amazement when Harry Truman was elected. We weren't involved, in those years.

In that long-ago milieu we made friends, other biology students. Beryl Nowlin, ever generous. Travis Everett from down in Post, Texas (named for the cereal). He went on to become an entomologist. Clyde Snow, who got an MD someplace in the Caribbean and earned his reputation in forensics. My young wife who struggled to find herself. And our brothers who followed us to Tech and hied their way onward to fame. All gone now, the Lubbock and the Texas Tech of the late Forties, the students and professors. Instead we have cell phones and computers and the internet and it is all different.

You see why writing your memoirs is not such a good idea/

Dac Crossley
June 6, 2019

"No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated." - Ellen Glascow, novelist.

Comments

[Stephen Baird]

Hey Cousin,
I loved your post about 1949 in West Texas. I was nine years old then, living in Big Spring, 100 miles south of Lubbock at the base of the Panhandle. That year was the 100th anniversary of the discovery and founding of Big Spring by Colonel James Marcy of the U.S. Army Calvary. To celebrate, most of the men grew beards. Back then, the blacks (very few in West Texas) had to sit in the back of the bus. I learned this as I rode the bus with my mother to the washeteria with our basket of clothing. The excess water was removed from the clothes by putting them through a wringer. No dryer available - we used a clothes line. I went to Saturday afternoon movies for 9 cents to see a western with the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Whip Wilson, Lash Larue, etc. With the movie came a newsreel, a cartoon and a serial ( Flash Gordon, et al).
I could go on and on but I won't.
Stephen

[Chris Antenen]

Hi Dac, It's possible that writing memoirs might be just as much fun for the writer as the reader, and I suspect being of the same age might be good for the reader. Just suppose I told someone we saved the 'silver' paper in the Beeman's wrapper as part of the war effort. There's a lot of explaining to do. I tried to do some of it on my blog, but I'm not sure it was enjoyed by anyone but Ashley Garrett.
Chris

[Alan]

Dac

Thanks for your commitment to share you "MEMOIRS" post today.

Biographies, Autobiographies and Memoirs of famous people and some who never were are one of the genres I have bought and actually read completely more than mysteries, business books, creativity books, short story books, art, architecture, design books that fill shelves and boxes throughout every room in my house.

Among the various writing projects I have started since 1966, only finishing a few in the past 30 years are

Mystery Novels (6 started)
Travel Books (5 started, 1 finished to the stage of submitting a proposal and then shelved)
Creativity Books (1 published in 4 countries, 3 languages) 8 co-authored and published
Leadership Skills (3 co-authored and published)
Architecture/Design books
Self-Help (??? started...none published)
Memoirs (multiple started, 2 with single stories included, published)
My Angels and My Demons (written, published electronically and in print, actually sold a few but mostly copies have been given away.