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Life, actually…

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SOMEWHERE IN TIME IS WHERE WE ALL ARE

 

The time is a quarter of a century ago, when I am younger and enthusiastically touring the countryside spreading my joy of literature and writing and literary-type ideas.

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I’m seventy-five miles thataway, speaking to a civic group about shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—of cabbages—and kings—and why the sea is boiling hot—and whether pigs have wings.

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After attentive questions and a warm ovation, I step forth to greet anyone willing to approach me.

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There is one attractive young woman with closely cropped shiny black hair who wants to talk to me, and it turns out that she hopes I can find an out of print book for her, so I guess my time off from work isn’t wasted in terms of income.

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She also describes herself as someone who goes berserk over small things–tending to become obsessive over objects and ideas she becomes interested in, learning all about them, collecting them, hoarding them, ranting over them.

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She is irritated with another, older woman who comes up to shake my hand, because for this minute this young blackhaired woman is in possession of me and my three minutes.

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When they have both turned away, there’s a most pleasant surprise: An elderly woman, calm and elegant, comes forward and tells me she knew the turn-of-the-century actress Maude Adams when she was attending Stephens College many years ago.

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“You know, she was a tiny thing—that’s why she was able to play Peter Pan and other roles like that,” she smiles.

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I am amazed. I’ve never met anyone who knew who Maude Adams was, much less someone who knew her personally.

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“She no longer acted, but she was very active on the campus,” she muses.

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The whole subject had come up in my speech, when I was telling my audience about the reasons people collect things—it’s just plain fun, and it takes your mind off the world’s cares for a while.

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There are people throughout the country who study and view the film SOMEWHERE IN TIME, which was inspired by author Richard Matheson’s love for the actress Maude Adams. Jane Seymour played her, and Chris Reeve and Chris Plummer played characters based on people in Ms. Adams’ life.

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It’s a story of unrequited love—the kind of story you can’t get out of your mind.

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Years later, the book BID TIME RETURN and its offspring, the movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME, can still make you cry and wonder and reminisce about impossible hankerings you’ve had in your life, thoughts about love and life and the hereafter.

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So here I am, somewhere in time, speaking at a small-town country club just days after I’ve located a 1906 copy of Burr McIntosh Monthly Magazine sporting a color cover photograph of Maude Adams dressed as Peter Pan, and I’m talking with a woman who knows all about Maude Adams from first hand experience—everything there is to know about her, except for one thing: this woman has never heard of the movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME.

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It’s a fascinating world some days, especially when you aren’t planning for it to be a fascinating world

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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