artwork: ralph murre
Another
Time, Maybe
by
Ralph Murre
Wasn’t
there a time when it all seemed o.k.?
Mantel
clocks faithfully wound, maternity wards
thriving,
Montgomery Wards thriving,
a
Ford in the garage? An occasional world war
or
mob lynching, the atomic removal
of
a couple of cities far away,
a
case of Schlitz in the cellar?
Wasn’t
there this background music,
a
bearded man conducting a thousand strings
and
Dinah Shore
in
a Hollywood Bowl of Cherries?
Wasn’t
it just swell? And didn’t you get
that
orange box of Wheaties with Eddie Matthews
when
your dad got the job at the gas station
after
striking for a couple of years at Kohler?
Didn’t
you shine your little shoes and put on
your
little suit and snap your bow-tie
on
the white collar and look up
the
skirt of the angel costume on the stepladder?
And
how hard was it to swipe a pack of Luckies?
Wasn’t
there a time when feeling-up the Schmidt
girl
in her pointy little bra was pretty good?
And
wasn’t it great to go to art school
and
draw nude models and swipe packs
of
Gauloises at the Knickerbocker? And
wasn’t
it great when your brother
let
you come along to a park and build
a
fort with his buddies and then
that
old guy drove up and was real nice
and
wanted to see your . . .
touch
your . . . Oh, that’s right,
you
can’t remember that, can you?
And
wasn’t it fun the time you and Billy
put
sand in the fuel tank of that bulldozer
and
busted the windows out of that cabin?
And
wasn’t it cool when you didn’t get drafted
and
got to mess around with chicks
who
burnt their pointy little bras?
And
wasn’t it nice when Ike, in his gray suit,
and
Mamie, in her navy blue dress
with
the little white dots looked up from golf
and
told us everything would be o.k.?
Wasn’t
that nice?
And
weren’t her gloves just so white?
~
first published in the Peninsula Pulse
