RETURN TO DIDDY WAH DIDDY

I suppose that not many people will view Nomadland and get an envee to buy an old van and take to the road, but I felt vagabond stirrings within me after I saw this award-winning movie.

In 1946, just after WWII, my father decided to quit his job as a civil engineer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and travel to "nomadland" to become a gypsy, as he called it. And when he presented this idea to my mother, she, who had been a Golden Eaglet Girl Scout and primitive camped in Alabama as a young girl, agreed that gypsying would be the life to lead. My father sold all our furniture, bought a utility trailer, filled it with camping equipment, and didn't bother to ask if any of his four children liked the idea. We were expected to wander in the western United States indefinitely. I once described my father's decision as a time when I heard all the doors of schools and libraries clanging shut against me.

My father took us to see Marlene Dietrich and Ray Milland star as gypsies in "Golden Earrings," and romantic that he was, he decided that gypsying was the way for all of us to live. My mother became excited about this proposed adventure. So, one warm day in May, after school had let out, we packed a utility trailer with camping equipment and an old trunk from my mother's college days crammed with all the clothes we were allowed to take. We filled a giant jug with water and placed it at my one-year-old brother Harold's feet in the front seat of a '41 Ford coupe, and off we went.

We survived three months on the road and 'though the open road looks appealing to me today, I remember uncomfortable days traveling ever westward, sleeping on stone tables in state parks, bathing in the Brazos River, and eating a barbecued jackrabbit my father had shot one night (illegally). Because I complained that I might never see a school again, he named me "a luxury-loving gal" and continued the odyssey. It ended in busy Los Angeles where he decided to turn around in traffic whizzing by and declared, "We're going home."

The Diddy Wah Diddy experience reminded me that I'm not an intrepid camper, but I like to think I could be. You can Google small trailers on the net and turn up photos of tiny campers for sale that feature everything except bathrooms and visualize crossing the Mohave Desert on a warm day in June. You might quickly return to earth. However, I admit that during these enforced times of isolation due to the Covid virus, travel trailers look enticing.

But… would you go out there in the vast expanse of desert or pass through it to avoid Covid, or seek company and amenities in nomad land at nightfall? Or would you fly on through it like the Flying Dutchman? I reckon you'd have to "keep a 'going," as my Grandfather Paul used to say. (He was one to talk since when he finally located my mother on the Diddy Wah Diddy trip, he encouraged her to come home rather than continue with the odyssey).

 

And so I sit at my desk watching fat robins fly in and quickly fly back out, and return to looking at small travel trailers, then add a second Diddy Wah Diddy trip to my bucket list. Maybe when I'm 90??!!

 

 

CORNER OF BIRCH STREET

Back in 2008, Border Press published a verse retrospective of the 1940’s by me entitled Grandma’s Good War, a collection of poems reminiscent of a time when people felt that WWII was a “good war” because it would end all wars. I enjoyed writing the rhyming verse that I called “doggerel” —rhyming verse that I haven’t felt the need to write again, since free verse is my preferred way of expressing poetry.

Recently, I expanded the idea of a Forties retrospective in a collection of poems that is a mini-memoir of a close-knit southern neighborhood during the 1940’s. It’s entitled Corner of Birch Street and was intended to inspire feelings of nostalgia for young love, games of marbles, paper dolls, five-cent Hershey bars, and Mom and Pop groceries in readers who grew up during this period of American history. Inevitably, the poems also show social changes brought into focus by laws forbidding segregated movie houses, bullying among children, and child molestation.

Poets often mine their dreams for subjects, and many of the poems emerged from dream consciousness. They showcase memories of growing up on a city street where “gangs” of the offspring of blue collar workers instigated outdoor games that had nothing to do with drug wars and street murders.

An excerpt from “Birch Street:”

We were an elemental diversity

Stuck on a plain of asphalt,

Street urchins bonding during WWII,

Security and chauvinism operating

In the shadow of the Big Bomb,

Incaution riding the waves

Of a cold war headed our way.

The artwork on the cover of Corner of Birch Street was designed by my grandson, Martin Romero, and depicts the infamous Ford coupe that carried my family off to Diddy Wah Diddy (California) with … “one last look in the rearview mirror/at a street I will not walk again.”

Available on amazon.com or by ordering from Border Press, P.O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375, borderpress@gmail.com.