Return of Memoryfest - Day 17/31

[bironic]

I have read all of your lovely memories as well as your conversations about vision quality and blurry monitors -- thank you, again, for sharing and chatting and generally making life that much cheerier, informative and interesting. I hope no-one is put off when it takes me a while to reply.

And now I shall solicit more comments. More! More, I say!


17. Elementary School

I was staying over at my friend E's house, which was only a few miles from mine and in a similar neighborhood. Her family had a nice, country-style, two-story house, a little bigger than ours and with a bigger back yard. Her bedroom was on the second floor like mine. They hadn't turned on their air conditioners that cool summer night, and her windows were open. I remember lying on my back in the spare bed in the dark, listening to the strange sound of crickets chirping in a silence foreign to a child raised in a house with central air conditioning.


WTF

Comments

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

*is smiling*

The house I grew up in was one of those little post-war frame houses that my mother used to say was built with "green lumber" -- meaning it wasn't aged long enough and thus shrank after building, causing it to be drafty and somewhat rickety.

No central air, no central anything. The only air conditioner we had for the longest time was an enormous water-cooler type thing.

It had a huge flywheel, and a continuous supply of water (from a hose?), and the flywheel turned, forcing the water-cooled air through a filter made of straw.

Sometimes our living room smelled like hay. Wet hay. It was all we had, though. I didn't know there was anything different until I visited friends who had real air conditioners and (gasp!) wall-to-wall shag carpeting. I thought they were rich.

Heh. It sounds like I grew up in the Age of Dinosaurs. If you want, I can write about how we watched Ook drag Eeki off by her hair and the way the pterodactyls screeched at night. ;-)

[purridot.livejournal.com]

I remember that in Grade 1 we were read a story about a city mouse who visited a country mouse, and then vice versa. The moral of the story was that the city was an EVIL PLACE and the country was where all was beatific and serene.

Even at that young age I felt frustration at this moral. I could not understand how anyone could not love the buzz and opportunity of the city. Since then I have had the chance to "farm-sit" for profs and I have to admit that indeed you can hear yourself think in the peace of the countryside and it is nice to smell all the fresh air and growing plants. And yet, my heart still shivers happily when I catch sight of that green Starbucks sign.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. When I was a kid I always hated summer. I still do, even though I have an air conditioner in my room now, but that's another story. Anyway.

When I was a kid the only thing we had to cool the whole house was an air conditioning unit that we'd put in one of the living room windows the first day it was hot enough and we'd put sheets over the entrances to the living room so the cool air stayed there and was actually effective in at least one room. I remember trying to sleep at night, lying sprawled out on top of the covers wearing just underclothes, with both the windows in my second-floor room open as wide as they'd go in hopes that the night air was cooler than the air that'd been trapped in the house all day. It always took ages because of the heat, but eventually the sounds from outside -- crickets, owls, June bugs, the creek in the woods if it'd rained a lot recently, sometimes the rain itself, etc. -- would lull me to sleep.

I now have an ambient sound program (Natura Sound Therapy 2.0 (http://www.download3k.com/Home-Education/Miscellaneous/Download-Natura-Sound-Therapy.html)) on my computer and when I go to bed I turn on the "Forest Evening" and "Babbling Brook" options very softly and it takes about half the normal amount of time it takes me to get to sleep.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that story always annoyed me a little, too. Everyplace has its own sound and everybody has their own preference, dammit. I grew up in the middle of nowhere but I lovelovelove city sounds, and don't tell me I'm wrong! XD

The only thing I really prefer about rural areas and would/will miss if/when I move to a city? The stars.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

The country/city dichotomy in that story always seemed annoyingly exaggerated. Both types of places have their good points and bad points.

I guess the ideal solution would be to be rich enough to have a place in the city and one in the country (preferably in the middle of nowhere). I'd definitely go for that solution.

[pynelyf.livejournal.com]

My first entry for Memoryfest 2007: http://pynelyf.livejournal.com/33057.html

It’s long and digressive as always.

I apologize for the long silence—-the specter of Fall semester papers is still haunting me although Spring semester is already underway. I will send you a nice real actual response to the email you sent me a long time ago too (I didn’t forget…I just got buried!)

[roga.livejournal.com]

The only thing I really prefer about rural areas and would/will miss if/when I move to a city? The stars.

Oh, yes. You can hardly escape the light pollution where I live, so I'm used to seeing one or two constellations at best.

I spent this summer traveling in the US, from middle-of-nowhere to middle-of-nowhere, and my god, I have never seen so many stars in my life. It was breathtaking.

[roga.livejournal.com]

When I was three or four, I loved spending the night at my Aunt's, who had an apartment in the city. At home I usually slept with the windows closed, but when I slept at her house the windows were always open, letting in the hot, moist, smoggy summer air. My cousin and I would fall asleep to audio cassettes of Nils Holgerson and the sound of motorcycles rumbling outside the window. I still love the sounds of motorcycles at night.

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

The first time I encountered aircondition was when my family moved to the Middle East. And there it really was nice!
I used to come home from school after an hour in a school bus without AC and go change my underwear and then sit in front of the door where the machine itself was. The door was mesh and I'd lean back against it, with my hair held on the top of my head, and enjoy being cooled down.
Since Scandinavia really doesn't need this, this is still the only place I've lived that had AC.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

I live in the middle of nowhere -- cable lines don't even run past my house -- so I get to see lots of stars all the time. :D Always have, and it really never stops being breathtaking. There are a lot of things I take for granted, but that's never been one of them. Sometimes when I get home after dark I wind up spending ten or fifteen minutes standing in the middle of the road in front of my house, just looking at the sky. ♥ So so so pretty.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

my god, I have never seen so many stars in my life. It was breathtaking.

Yeah, the stars in the middle of nowhere are incredible. I have very fond memories of watching meteor showers while staying in the Poconos in the summer—even though the visibility was probably somewhat affected by light pollution from Philadelphia, it was still spectacular to a city-raised kid.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ook so should have ditched Eeki for Urk.

...Yes, that was caveman slash. These are the dangers of condensing online time to the last 45 minutes of the day. I'm probably gonna *facepalm* in the morning when I realize I actually posted this.

Anyway. That's quite an interesting mechanism. Do you flash back to your living room whenever you smell wet hay? (If you have many opportunities to smell wet hay?)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I remember that story too. There was the "country cousin" and the "city cousin," I think, or maybe I'm mixing up the memory with a cartoon. I don't remember the book putting forth such a strong statement against city life; strange. I don't see why they'd need to condemn one over the other. What's wrong with a little compromise?

See, I'm a suburban girl at heart, and while there are things about suburbs I can't stand -- strip malls and poor building planning and senseless use of SUVs and the like -- I do love them for being fairly lively like a city while still having plenty of greenery and quiet places that aren't stuffed with people. I've found that I can't live too long in a city because I miss trees, or too long in a remote area because it gets boring.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Trying to fall asleep when it's hot is just the worst. At home it wasn't usually a problem, but visiting friends or our grandparents or on vacations or when I went to college, even on warm nights it was tough. Bleh. I'd rather wrap myself in cozy, heavy blankets against the cold than strip down and sweat over a sheet in the summer.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

No, no, 'tis I who owes (owe?) the apology. I did promise to write that long email -- then thought it would be much easier and more fun to say it all in person -- then neglected to ask when you'd be around over break! Ha. Oops. We need to figure out a good weekend to meet up someplace.

I love your memory, by the way, as always. Will comment on it over there.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Yes, but Urk was quite the metrosexual -- kept wanting to invent the hoagie, way before its time.

Heh.

Do you flash back to your living room whenever you smell wet hay? (If you have many opportunities to smell wet hay?)

Yes. And no. Sometimes just a humid day and the smell of wet earth brings it back. I don't smell wet straw too often these days.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Eugh. The only time it's okay to be that hot in your clothes is when you're two seconds away from getting out of it/them.

Since Scandinavia really doesn't need this

I think Patronus attendees might beg to differ! :) Hooray for possibly shifting climate patterns.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ambient traffic noise is excellent to fall asleep to. Never thought about motorcycles specifically. That's a sweet connection to make.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

At least pickles hadn't been invented yet to spoil the potential sandwich.

Sometimes just a humid day and the smell of wet earth brings it back.

Neat. I should do a post on sense memory with smells -- I'd be really interested to hear the sorts of associations people have.

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

Indeed :-) We did have an awfully warm - and worse, humid - summer this year. We've had a few warm ones, but not too far outside of what can happen here. This winter, though... That's another matter! Climate changes scare me and they seem to be happening at an ever-accellerating pace now.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Or a friend or relative in the country to go visit when all the people and noise and bustle and cement get to you. :)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Best stargazing I ever had was in Utah. That was the most middle-of-nowhere I've ever been, and the skies were unbelievably crisp and clear. There were so many stars, several magnitudes weaker than what we could make out on the best nights at home, and it was so quiet. We could even make out wisps of the Milky Way, which isn't all that extraordinary in itself but was pretty much impossible in the middle of Long Island. It was such a delight to see everything for "real" after being raised on astronomy books and documentaries and planetarium visits. My dad and I lay out there staring up for quite a while.

[purridot.livejournal.com]

I don't know why that anti-city vibe was so strong in my memory; maybe it was not the story itself, but the slant the story-teller took? Childhood memories are so strange! That is what is so interesting about the memoryfest!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I have yet to see a really good meteor shower. I remember waking up at some ungodly hour to go out into the backyard with my dad for the ... Perseids? The one in August. We each saw maybe a half-dozen streaks until we got too tired to stay up. One day, we'll be in the right place on a clear night and it will be dazzling.

[pynelyf.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realized this was a children's story!

This is going to drive me crazy because I can't remember exactly *which* Medieval English poet wrote it even though I just read it this semester, but there's a poem about a country mouse who has it really rough--it's cold, food is scarce, etc. so she decides to go visit her sister in the city. The sister lives in a mousehole in house, there's no drafty wind, they gorge themselves on food and wine left out by humans, and the country mouse wonders why she lives in the country in the first place. She spills her woes to her city sister who responds that life in the city is all fine and grand but--and here the city mouse breaks off her response and makes a mad dash for the mousehole. The housecat has discovered them, and the country mouse, being too engorged and somewhat tipsy and having no experience with housecats anyway freezes up and gets eaten. And the moral of the story is you should be happy where you are because you get eaten if you leave.

I think the poet was Skelton or Crowley but am not sure...

[pynelyf.livejournal.com]

Wow, I was totally off the mark. It's "OF THE MEAN AND SURE ESTATE WRITTEN TO JOHN POINS" By Thomas Wyatt!

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/mothersmaids.htm

[purridot.livejournal.com]

That fable is quite the spooky one :-O

I'm twisting my brain to think of how I might apply that moral to my life -- you can't be too careful, after all!

[roga.livejournal.com]

As they say, best in the west :-) Utah and Wyoming definitely had the most amazing skies of all the places I visited, and the thing that killed me was that I didn't know their names and stories. So I looked for a small astronomy pocketbook at every bookstore I could find, and when I finally found one I forced convinced my friends to spend our last night in the west camping outdoors, instead of at a motel. It was worth it.

[roga.livejournal.com]

The first time I encountered aircondition was when my family moved to the Middle East.

Well, you've got me curious now :-) Where did you live?

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

I know that feeling :-) I have to ask people who've lived in the area or hail from it where they are from.

My family moved to Bahrain when I was 5 and back to Denmark again when I was 7.

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

I love that memory.

It's strange, but what you've made me remember isn't an event or an image, but a smell. It's the rich smell of a hot summer day cooling in the hour or so after the sun goes down. It's mainly warm dust and cut grass, with traces of honeysuckle and the sharp bite of a suddenly cold breeze in it, and it just hit me in a wave.