samba and soda
this is day #2 of my little "vacation" from temping. tomorrow is my last day, and then i have something for thursday, friday, and tuesday through friday of next week. i've had a relaxing time of it here, but i won't mind getting busy with a job again. plus, i need the money!!! i got part of my retirement payout yesterday. i went and bought new running shoes, which i desperately needed, as my old ones had been worn almost all the way through their soles under the balls of my feet. i wanna go to the salon. maybe i can go tomorrow during the day. tomorrow night, my friend from queens and i are meeting up for some fun. yesterday was spent with my dad going all over the place running errands, exploring neighborhoods, viewing the scenery around town. :)
right now, i am listening to "the antonio carlos jobim songbook" and "red hot + rio". yeah, you could say i'm in a brazilian mood. i bought a used cassette deck off of ebay for a friggin' steal of a deal, and i am hoping it comes tomorrow. the cassette deck in my stereo no longer works, and i've been suffering since it stopped functioning. i think i have more music on cassette than on cd. i was late coming into the cd game. my old stereo with dual cassette and record player died at the end of my freshman year of college, and so when i went to buy a new stereo, there were none with record players built in. so...i was forced into the world of cds. i didn't really have any sort of cd collection until i lived in canada and cds were so friggin' cheap there that i could buy all the ones i'd been wanting to get. but even now, i think i have a lot fewer cds than many folks of the younger generations have. no, i do not have an ipod. i can't afford one and i don't need one; i have a portable tape player and a portable cd player already. i just need some headphones. my old ones broke. :( i'm not all into getting new gadgets when my old ones work just fine. next to my bed, i have my cd player, my record player, and a dual cassette deck on the way. i wish i had my dad's old stereo. that thing is older than i am, by about eight years. it still works fine, though it needs new fuses. hello? why can they not make stereos of that caliber now? my dad has a sansui solid state. beautiful piece of audio equipment. AMAZING, deep, rich sound quality, huge wall antenna, hookups for THREE pairs of speakers (you can have two pairs going at once). and the two speakers that came with the sansui, made of solid wood, are like pieces of beautiful furniture. the sansui solid state is in my mother's garage. my dad doesn't want it shipped here because he is afraid it will get broken on the way. i don't blame him. it's a precious baby to me, too.
i've been thinking a lot about old things, partly because i had a dream the other night that is actually a recurring one. the dream takes place somewhere a bit to the west of the edge of my hometown. surrounding my town are miles of farmland stretching out on the flat valley floor. in this recurring dream, there is a little shack of a place hidden among the olive and oak trees off of a county road. this place usually has a woman working there, but the other night a man was there. it's a dilapidated place with white paint flaking off all over and dirty windows partially obscuring old soda signs. more soda signs adorn the inside walls here and there. there is a counter behind which stands the woman (or the man, who is related to the woman). there's a record player and lots of records back there. there are bottles of sodas like boylan, moxie, faygo, rc cola, etc. in the icebox behind the counter. black-and-white checkered floor. red formica-topped tables and red pleather cushioned stools with chrome legs. classic and welcoming. it's a place i search for often in my dreams. i usually find it open, but a few times i've gone there and found it boarded up and abandoned. i don't know what this little soda shack symbolizes. i think it symbolizes all that from the past that i hold dear. i am only 29 years old, but i remember things of old from when i was little: the drive-in a & w root beer place near the edge of the highway in my town, with the waitress rolling up to the window and attaching that tray to it. the two drive-in movie theatres, one north and one west of my town. having one department store in my town and one in the neighboring town (no malls!). the old iga supermarket with the penny candy and tiny aisles (much different from supermarkets of today). the old movie theatre with the big neon sign outside and only two screens inside (which at that time were a big deal). there was an old drugstore across the street from the movie theatre, and i remember that my mother would take my sister and i there to buy ferrara pan candy and smuggle it into the theatre in my mother's bulging purse. the rollerskating rink with the disco ball and colored lights. i'm only 29 years old and i feel nostalgia for all of this. i remember watching "solid gold" and "dance fever" on tv. we had a color tv in the family room. we got like, 4 channels for a while, because there were only four broadcast networks in our area (or maybe anywhere?). cable tv? remote controls? vcrs? microwave ovens? those were the really fancy things that rich families had, not us. i miss how much more simple stuff was when i was little. and, i wonder how my dad must feel, having grown up in the '50s and '60s? what i grew up with was way less simple than what he had had. seems like some things move too quickly and the world changes too quickly in ways in which it would be better off savoring slowly, and it stays stagnant in ways which need rapid change. anyway, i don't hear this kind of nostalgia from anyone else my age. do they not remember how it was like when they were little? do they not miss those things, the special things that are now gone, the simpler and more innocent things? this soda shack in my dreams is a place i wish i could visit in reality. at the shack, the woman and man were, of course, very friendly and hospitable. they had a sense of genuine neighborliness that seems rare nowadays, especially in this huge city i now reside in. maybe part of why i have these dreams so often is because i live in this huge, anonymous city obsessed with being on the cutting edge. meanwhile, the soda stand is out there in the landscape of my subconsciousness, on the edge of a small town, with miles of fields and tree groves all around, with this same man and woman who have been playing records and opening soda bottles for their customers for eons. i wish i could get on a train and find myself arriving at that soda shack. maybe there would be a route 66-esque motel for me to stay in for the night, too. :)
anyway, speaking of trains, i am figuring out when to go visit my friend in chicago with a tidbit of this retirement money i'm getting. i wanna go by train. i love train trips, and i love the idea of taking the subway to penn station, getting on a train, and arriving at the chicago depot right in the middle of the windy city. someday, i will blog about my cross-country trip from california all the way to new york city in the spring of 2003. it was an amazing experience i'll never forget. anyway, i'd like to get to know some of chicago's old gems. i'm sure many of them have been bulldozed over or neglected into total disrepair due to apathy and greed, but those that remain would be very interesting for me to see. chicago's part in "the great migration" is of particular importance to me. part of me wishes i could go back in time and see those old men sighing into their chairs as they pluck their guitars and let their rough but flowing mississippi delta lamentations fill the dark spaces of the lakeside city at the end of their long railroad journey northward. yeah, i am definitely bringing my howlin' wolf tape and my chess records compliation on this train trip to chicawwwwwgo! :)
right now, i am listening to "the antonio carlos jobim songbook" and "red hot + rio". yeah, you could say i'm in a brazilian mood. i bought a used cassette deck off of ebay for a friggin' steal of a deal, and i am hoping it comes tomorrow. the cassette deck in my stereo no longer works, and i've been suffering since it stopped functioning. i think i have more music on cassette than on cd. i was late coming into the cd game. my old stereo with dual cassette and record player died at the end of my freshman year of college, and so when i went to buy a new stereo, there were none with record players built in. so...i was forced into the world of cds. i didn't really have any sort of cd collection until i lived in canada and cds were so friggin' cheap there that i could buy all the ones i'd been wanting to get. but even now, i think i have a lot fewer cds than many folks of the younger generations have. no, i do not have an ipod. i can't afford one and i don't need one; i have a portable tape player and a portable cd player already. i just need some headphones. my old ones broke. :( i'm not all into getting new gadgets when my old ones work just fine. next to my bed, i have my cd player, my record player, and a dual cassette deck on the way. i wish i had my dad's old stereo. that thing is older than i am, by about eight years. it still works fine, though it needs new fuses. hello? why can they not make stereos of that caliber now? my dad has a sansui solid state. beautiful piece of audio equipment. AMAZING, deep, rich sound quality, huge wall antenna, hookups for THREE pairs of speakers (you can have two pairs going at once). and the two speakers that came with the sansui, made of solid wood, are like pieces of beautiful furniture. the sansui solid state is in my mother's garage. my dad doesn't want it shipped here because he is afraid it will get broken on the way. i don't blame him. it's a precious baby to me, too.
i've been thinking a lot about old things, partly because i had a dream the other night that is actually a recurring one. the dream takes place somewhere a bit to the west of the edge of my hometown. surrounding my town are miles of farmland stretching out on the flat valley floor. in this recurring dream, there is a little shack of a place hidden among the olive and oak trees off of a county road. this place usually has a woman working there, but the other night a man was there. it's a dilapidated place with white paint flaking off all over and dirty windows partially obscuring old soda signs. more soda signs adorn the inside walls here and there. there is a counter behind which stands the woman (or the man, who is related to the woman). there's a record player and lots of records back there. there are bottles of sodas like boylan, moxie, faygo, rc cola, etc. in the icebox behind the counter. black-and-white checkered floor. red formica-topped tables and red pleather cushioned stools with chrome legs. classic and welcoming. it's a place i search for often in my dreams. i usually find it open, but a few times i've gone there and found it boarded up and abandoned. i don't know what this little soda shack symbolizes. i think it symbolizes all that from the past that i hold dear. i am only 29 years old, but i remember things of old from when i was little: the drive-in a & w root beer place near the edge of the highway in my town, with the waitress rolling up to the window and attaching that tray to it. the two drive-in movie theatres, one north and one west of my town. having one department store in my town and one in the neighboring town (no malls!). the old iga supermarket with the penny candy and tiny aisles (much different from supermarkets of today). the old movie theatre with the big neon sign outside and only two screens inside (which at that time were a big deal). there was an old drugstore across the street from the movie theatre, and i remember that my mother would take my sister and i there to buy ferrara pan candy and smuggle it into the theatre in my mother's bulging purse. the rollerskating rink with the disco ball and colored lights. i'm only 29 years old and i feel nostalgia for all of this. i remember watching "solid gold" and "dance fever" on tv. we had a color tv in the family room. we got like, 4 channels for a while, because there were only four broadcast networks in our area (or maybe anywhere?). cable tv? remote controls? vcrs? microwave ovens? those were the really fancy things that rich families had, not us. i miss how much more simple stuff was when i was little. and, i wonder how my dad must feel, having grown up in the '50s and '60s? what i grew up with was way less simple than what he had had. seems like some things move too quickly and the world changes too quickly in ways in which it would be better off savoring slowly, and it stays stagnant in ways which need rapid change. anyway, i don't hear this kind of nostalgia from anyone else my age. do they not remember how it was like when they were little? do they not miss those things, the special things that are now gone, the simpler and more innocent things? this soda shack in my dreams is a place i wish i could visit in reality. at the shack, the woman and man were, of course, very friendly and hospitable. they had a sense of genuine neighborliness that seems rare nowadays, especially in this huge city i now reside in. maybe part of why i have these dreams so often is because i live in this huge, anonymous city obsessed with being on the cutting edge. meanwhile, the soda stand is out there in the landscape of my subconsciousness, on the edge of a small town, with miles of fields and tree groves all around, with this same man and woman who have been playing records and opening soda bottles for their customers for eons. i wish i could get on a train and find myself arriving at that soda shack. maybe there would be a route 66-esque motel for me to stay in for the night, too. :)
anyway, speaking of trains, i am figuring out when to go visit my friend in chicago with a tidbit of this retirement money i'm getting. i wanna go by train. i love train trips, and i love the idea of taking the subway to penn station, getting on a train, and arriving at the chicago depot right in the middle of the windy city. someday, i will blog about my cross-country trip from california all the way to new york city in the spring of 2003. it was an amazing experience i'll never forget. anyway, i'd like to get to know some of chicago's old gems. i'm sure many of them have been bulldozed over or neglected into total disrepair due to apathy and greed, but those that remain would be very interesting for me to see. chicago's part in "the great migration" is of particular importance to me. part of me wishes i could go back in time and see those old men sighing into their chairs as they pluck their guitars and let their rough but flowing mississippi delta lamentations fill the dark spaces of the lakeside city at the end of their long railroad journey northward. yeah, i am definitely bringing my howlin' wolf tape and my chess records compliation on this train trip to chicawwwwwgo! :)
posted by Blåbär Björn at 19:44
0 Comments:
Skicka en kommentar
<< Home