Buddy Allen Simco: (Summer, 2011)

Tripping Down Memory Lane B. A. (Allen) Simco HEREIN are a few observations and reflections related to over seven decades of living, including random extracts from an intermittently maintained dream journal. An initial observation: There is much room for improvement. As per the dialog written by Bud Shulberg for the character Stanley Kowalski in the film entitled A Streetcar Named Desire, which won an Academy Award circa 1954, “I could have been a contender.” On the other hand I have managed to keep my nose off the sidewalk, at least most of the time. It certainly could have been worse. I cannot say that it has been a life without interesting events. Glimmerings of understanding have been punctuated by periods of regret, some confusion, much striving, and a few B. Allen Simco Page 1 of 279 Tripping Down Memory Lane accomplishments tempered with increasing humility and respect for mysteries yet to be comprehended. Although originally a private journal, these musings are now offered for whatever amusement or edification they may provide to the occasional intellectual wanderer or student of absurdities, especially those with temperaments embracing the dictum: Rideo, ergo sum (I laugh, therefore I am). I began this exercise in August of 2009, having procrastinated for quite a while. Eventually I yielded to the “still, small voice” encouraging me to commence. This is a work in progress. I suppose one should complete a project before making it available for public scrutiny. It is not my way. C’est la vie. One never knows when one may slip on a banana peel – then: Adios amigos... and hasta beyonda. In reference to the first paragraph of this paper, and reference to the dialog of the character Stanley Kowalski in A Street Car Named Desire: Shortly before his demise, Marlon Brando, who as a young man was cast in the role of Stanley Kowalski – when asked how to sum up his life – said that in the end, he would likely look back and say, “Whew! I wonder what that was all about?” I thought then and think now that his observational comment is as enlightened as any I’ve ever heard. As to my personal thoughts, I suspect that the “I” felt by each and every sentient being is essentially the same, quite apart from the “personality” engaged in the doing – the sensing, feeling, thinking, acting, reacting, and calculating. In effect, all sentient beings are agents and synaptic points for gathering and transmitting B. Allen Simco Page 2 of 279 Tripping Down Memory Lane intelligence (experience) for the creative aware energy responsible for the existence of the “end agent” to be sentient and sensitive to experience, enabling the ability to evaluate, speculate, and to co-create. The “I” felt within by each being could be likened to a holographic fractal fragment of the whole. It has been speculated that God needs Man as much as Man needs God, as part of the process of the Macro being knowledgeable of the experiences of the Micro, a sort of feedback/correction loop, with the Micro striving to realize the potential of the Macro while learning by trial and error, if not by inspired intellectual effort, and the Macro providing the wherewithal for the Micro to progress toward goals and relative states of enlightenment commensurate with experience and intent. I once commented to an acquaintance, now deceased, that even though one may not comprehend the reasons for being, beyond Descartes' dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” that it would behoove one to “trust the process and dance with what ‘brung’ ya.” My otherwise mild-mannered interlocutor, during the course of our philosophical musings over a bottle of wine and a left-handed cigarette, bristled at my comment. “That’s the problem,” he said, “I don’t trust the process!” Well, there you have it, I thought. A difference of opinion. I perceived no benefit in arguing a point which, to me at least, was obvious, particularly in view of my recognition that when it came to parsing some of the more esoteric considerations and mysteries associated with the cosmos in general, and personal intellectual awareness, specifically, my acquaintance and I rarely agreed on anything. B. Allen Simco Page 3 of 279 Tripping Down Memory Lane However, I have reached the stage of life where of I have relieved myself of the desire to convince anyone of anything. My acquaintance of four decades and I were able to get along inasmuch as neither wished to pursue a point beyond a simple declaration of yea or nay. If someone takes pleasure in forever pissing against the wind, who am I to object (as long as I am not downwind)? What will be will be. Time will tell, and all that. Meanwhile, don’t Bogart that herb, my friend. * * * ACCORDING TO at least one source of which I am aware, “In the beginning” had something to do with the movement of the breath of God across the waters, and of light penetrating darkness. For myself, it had to do with “spots” on the ceiling. My first awareness of being was sometime prior to the age of two years: I was lying in my crib examining the pattern of the perforated holes in the ceiling tiles. That is my earliest memory. The light in the room was subdued. The tones were pale to medium gray. The “spots,” or perforated ceiling tiles, were mesmerizing in that the patterns would change with oculi intendere, with a sense of movement. In later preadolescence years I would discover this same pattern driven sensation in the perforated linings of headliners of cars, and on the fabric backings of some furnishings. I could "space out" after a few moments of gazing at the changing patterns within the pinprick “spots” in fabric or tiles while relaxing my focus. This pleasant diversion has so far remained undetected by mainstream society and has yet to be legislated as unlawful activity. B. Allen Simco Page 4 of 279 Tripping Down Memory Lane My second memory was of playing dead, as a soldier being short on a battlefield. I had been seated next to an adult in a movie theater observing scenes of soldiers falling after being shot in battle. Later I was outside the theater waiting for my adult escort to appear. On a grass strip in front of the theater, I fell down ,as if I had been shot, as I had seen the soldiers do in the movie. I find it ironic that one of my earliest memories of life is associated with death. Other early memory fragments are a jumble – just snippets here and there – vignettes not assuming coherence until about the age of five. I was born in the second month of the year 1940. I now know, having been born “without benefit of clergy,” that associated stresses were considerable for my mater, who was then an attractive young woman. This was three months prior to her twentieth birthday, when she alone and trying to make her way in the world. Being an unwed mother was especially difficult in those times, and not without social stigma. In later years I learned that it was initially thought it best that I be raised by another family – one with requisite interests and means to accommodate one such as myself. This arrangement lasted for a while - details were never revealed . I suspect I may have been with the family of one of my mother's sisters, specifically: on the farm where my mother was then living when I was born. Later, having reconsidered, my mother requested my return to her custody. She did tell me that much, when I was about ten years old, but nothing else. B. Allen Simco Page 5 of 279 Tripping Down Memory Lane From the age of a few months, although technically in her care, I was intermittently boarded with a number of caretaker families until about the age of five and briefly with another family when I was fourteen. My mother, by necessity, continued to work until she married an army officer in 1941 or 1942. She was divorced from him sometime in the early 1940's, after giving birth to her second son, Jimmy, a year or two following my birth. At a young age Jimmy was sent to live with his paternal grandmother, following Mom's divorce from Lt. Paine. In 1945 my mother married a handsome young fellow named Bob Robinson, after he was discharged from the Army Air Corps at the end of the war. We then lived together as the Robinson family from late 1945 until late 1948 or early 1949, in Topeka, Kansas. Bob and his father, George, were real estate brokers and proprietors of Capital City Realty in Topeka, Kansas. The three years immediately following WWII were prosperous boom years in the Topeka area (unlike today). These were the first and only years that Mom didn’t have to work or concern herself about financial security. This was the only time I experienced a fairly normal family life, even though I was usually alone and – with one exception- had no friends; there were activities at the local YMCA, and at school, that enabled reasonable socialization. Occasionally I played with a neighbor a few blocks away, a boy of about my age named Charles Crank. He was adopted and was what in those days called deaf, B. Allen Simco Page 6 of 279 Tripping Down Memory Lane and in current times called hearing impaired (someone apparently decided that four syllables are better than one). I modulated Charles' voice, indicating with gestures or speech (he could lip-read) when to lower or raise the volume of his voice when speaking and when he shouted “bang bang” when we played Cops 'N Robbers (his father was a policeman).

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