.
Life, actually…in my way-back memories of times past…
.
1987: THE PERSISTENCE OF A DOWN SOUTH MEMORY
.
The persistence of memory and its everchanging neverchanging indelibility is a mystery I’ll take with me to the end, I suppose.
.
It is one day in 1987. I wander the downtown streets of hometown Tuscaloosa for the first time in twenty years, looking for something comforting from my past. It is a day that I know is about to bring me surprises unpredictable.
.
I am between frenetic tasks. I have a few minutes to take a deep breath or two. I feel like a time traveler.
.
I am treading the suspense by trying to find niches with familiar faces staring out, icons that will wave back at my glossed-over remembrances of younger and simpler times.
.
I recall the old Ritz movie theater, the one on the Other Side of the street, the side with the pool hall and spittoons and roughneck hangouts—in other words, the more exciting side of the street.
.
When I was a kid, the Ritz Theater always screened second-run Republic pictures with cowboys and spacemen and serials and double features and cartoons for kids during Saturday matinees. The Ritz was also constructed rather compactly in contrast to the other theaters in town, and its balcony was narrow, its restrooms dank and smelly, and its patrons a little shabbier.
.
Something about the Ritz insinuates itself into my dreams over the years and becomes a kind of fevered presence during restless nightdreams. The theater haunts my mind and makes for some nicely scary imaginings.
.
This wandering-around day in Tuscaloosa, the Ritz comes back to me and I try to find it. Where the Ritz once stands, there is nothing left but a parking lot occupying the narrow space between two buildings. It simply isn’t there anymore.
.
Do I have the wrong street? I look around, walk a way down and up the block. No, I am right. The Ritz has evaporated.
.
I return to the lot and look for signs of the Ritz. And there they are. Shadows of stairs two stories up one exterior wall. Remnants of arches on another wall.
.
Part of the balcony can be detected in one-dimensional profile, where workers have not bothered to patch the gaps they left.
.
It is a haunt of a theater now, with gargoyles wistfully filling holes where theater stuff once was.
.
I stare for a while.
.
Finally, I step back onto the sidewalk and look again, blink my eyes. At this moment, I realize the Ritz is still there. It will be there as long as I am here. It is in my dreams. It doesn’t need to be an actual structure anymore.
.
My Tuscaloosa recollections are a mixture of childhood adventure, scary interludes, romantic notions, pretend-swordfights, loving family laughter, hugs that can never cease.
.
Like the Ritz Theater, all my memories comprise a permanent companion, one I don’t have to forget, one I can continue to puzzle over and learn from.
.
I am in a state of disturbed comfort now. I can smile more often because I’ve learned how to put on the Ritz…and use it as a reminder that I never have to be without the people I love, the things I love
.
© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.
.