Tag Archives: Memory

Aug13

The House O’ Nuts

Posted on August 13, 2022 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

(Note: this is not my family’s home movie, although my brother is in possession of the footage my father took, possibly on our second trip to Florida; I don’t remember. Anyhow, this does capture something of the feel of the vacation in question.)

Last week I posted a memory from my childhood, one I’d totally forgotten for decades. Old scenes are making their way back into my mind.

This week I remembered another one, also long-forgotten.

The first family vacation I can remember happened around 1959. We drove from our home in New Jersey to Miami Beach, Florida. I’m guessing it was during Easter vacation (what is now Spring Break). I would have been 6 or 7. My dad did all the driving. My mom rode shotgun. The back seat was my realm. I had my blanket and my dolls, and my mother was afraid I might get bored, so she actually bought me a few new things to keep me occupied. The only gift I really remember was a Captain Kangaroo cut-out book which with I constructed a replica Treasure House with artifacts like Grandfather Clock. (Old timers, do you remember Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans and Grandfather Clock?) There was also a cardboard box on the floor of the back seat with canned juice, cereal, bread, snacks, and a picnic lunch for the road.

We stopped for gas at a place called the House o’ Nuts. In addition to the gas pump, there was a gift shop that sold nuts. After the attendant filled our gas tank, he explained that they also offered a chance to win some money. My mother’s ears perked up. She wanted to play.

I don’t remember the exact mechanics of this little gambling operation–I can’t recall if there was a wheel, or cards, or mathematics puzzles to solve–but at the end of it, my parents were down $25. Now, this was the late 50s. I don’t think my dad earned $100 a week at his full-time job.

As we drove away, my father bemoaned the loss, feeling cheated. This would prevent us from doing some of the things he’d planned to do on the vacation.

A little while later, he saw a traffic cop and flagged him down. Dad related the story of how he had lost $25 at the House o’ Nuts. Mind you, my dad had a strong German accent, which might have motivated the gas attendant to lure them into gambling in the first place. Not everyone was very nice to Germans, especially this soon after WWII. Gambling was illegal in (Georgia? I can’t remember), as the policeman told my father. But for some reason he decided to help.

He followed us back to the House o’ Nuts, and went inside while we waited outside in the car. A few minutes later, the gas attendant came out with my dad’s $25 and a box of chocolate-covered nuts, and explained he wasn’t trying to cheat him, he’d just given him a chance to win some money. My dad said thank you, waved to the police officer, and skedaddled out of there, greatly relieved.

We stayed at a beachside motel in Miami Beach. I remember walking along palm tree-lined streets with the wind fluttering the palm branches and coconuts clonking to the ground. When I heard the wind in the palm trees in Arizona 30 years later, it launched me back in time to that trip (although I didn’t remember the House o’ Nuts until this week).

We saw the mermaids at Weeki Wachee, visited a shell museum, swam in the ocean and in the motel pool, and I’m sure we did all the typical touristy things that northerners do on vacation in Florida. But when we got home and friends asked how our vacation was, Dad regaled them with the story of the incident at the House o’ Nuts.

May30

Monday Morning Wisdom #364

Posted on May 30, 2022 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

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“Ceremonies are important. But our gratitude has to be more than visits to the troops, and once-a-year Memorial Day ceremonies. We honor the dead best by treating the living well.”- Jennifer M. Granholm

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.”- G.K. Chesterson

“Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory there would be no civilization, no future.”- Elie Wisel

Today we remember those who died in service to our flag. Let us never forget their sacrifices.

Dec11

Lost Memories

Posted on December 11, 2021 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

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Surprise—my memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be. I feel like all my storage capacity has been filled, and it takes longer and longer to access my data, like an old worn out computer.

When I was a young adult, I could tell you the name of every teacher I’d ever had, from kindergarten to grad school. Now I can tell you only a handful of professors’ names, and few high school teacher’s names, but I do still remember my teachers from kindergarten to grade 6. Why do I remember names from childhood, but not from college?

Not that my memory was ever all that great. All my life I’ve had frequent bouts of panic when I couldn’t find my keys, my glasses, my wallet. And for decades I’ve walked into rooms without recalling why I wanted to be there.

About twenty-five years ago I had episodes while driving when I didn’t recognize where I was or remember where I was heading. After a few weeks of this, I asked my bible study group to pray for me. I was afraid I was going to have to surrender my driver’s license. Afterward, a woman asked me if I was taking antihistamines, as a friend of hers had experienced the same symptoms. At first, I said no, but then I realized my nasal spray was an antihistamine. I stopped using it, and a few days later my disorientation disappeared.

When my husband returned home last year after surgical complications and an extended stay in a skilled nursing facility, I was overwhelmed with his medication schedule, his doctor appointments, his physical therapy requirements, and the maintenance his feeding tube required. Suddenly there was so much to remember, and my brain was not up to it.

A few years earlier I had started a notebook with all our medical information; I just had to remember to keep it updated and bring it with me to appointments (since I couldn’t remember what tests he’d had, what the results were, or all the medicines he was taking). I sat down with the medications Greg came home from the rehab facility with, and made a chart of when he took what. I still refer to my (updated) chart each week as I set up his morning 7-day pillbox and his evening 7-day pillbox, and made sure they’re refilled regularly.

Nevertheless, mistakes happen. I get them mixed up. So far, no fatal errors, but each one raises my stress level.

I made an appointment with the neurologist, who administered tests that show I don’t have Alzheimer’s, thank God, but I do have mild cognitive disfunction. I now take medication twice a day that’s supposed to prevent my memory from deteriorating further.

I don’t think it’s 100% effective, but I’ve stopped panicking about it.

The funny thing is, every once in a while something will pop into my head—a vivid memory of an incident from the past that I’ll realize I haven’t thought about in decades. Sometimes it will be triggered by a whiff of an aroma, or a song from my childhood.

My oldest son has the most amazing memory. He remembers things that happened when he was a baby, and he can pinpoint the year of events that are fuzzy in my recollections. He remembers actors in movies, and which movies won Oscars in which years, and all sorts of trivia.

Maybe memory skips generations. I don’t know.

Oct30

The Kindness

Posted on October 30, 2021 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

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I was on the road home with my (then) two little kids when the car started acting up, making noises and bucking. This was in the days long before cell phones. I was afraid of being stranded on the highway, with no money to pay for a tow and repairs. I knew my husband wasn’t home, but I wasn’t far from a good friend’s farmhouse, and maybe her mechanically-inclined husband was home. They lived on a country dirt road, and the turn-off was just ahead, so I took it.

Although I tried avoiding the ruts, the ride was bumpier than it should have been, the car misfiring and misbehaving. I was still a distance away from my friend’s house, but I could see her neighbor’s place. The man who lived there was working in his yard, and looked up at the clamor my car was making. The car shuddered as it clanked with malice, and I turned into the neighbor’s driveway just as the car died.

The man came over and opened my hood. His wife recognized me as her neighbor’s friend (I had met her before), and she offered me a glass of iced tea. We sat in the yard and chatted about kids and crafts as her kids and mine played together and her husband tinkered away on my engine. The knot in my chest from worry about my car loosened.

After about an hour, the man had my car engine running smoothly. I can’t remember what he said was wrong with it. He asked me if I could pay him $20 for the repair. I tittered nervously. We were just getting by. I didn’t know when I’d ever be able to pay him. He didn’t press.

I don’t remember the first names of the couple, but their last name was Vogt. If by some chance they should happen to read this little story, I would want them to know that I may have forgotten their names, but I’ve never forgotten their kindness to me that day, almost forty years ago.

Feb16

Things That I’ve Forgotten

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

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Stashed in boxes, on bookshelves, in closets, and on my desk are hundreds of notebooks dating back decades. Each has a different purpose. Some contain ideas I want to pursue further, that might become an essay, a poem, or a book someday. Some contain notes I took at conferences. Some refer to books I’ve read, summaries or brilliant passages I’ve copied out because I didn’t want to forget them. Some are journals in which I wrote down experiences on trips or my day-to-day feelings. In some notebooks I’ve recorded my insights when studying scripture.

As Greg and I have gotten older, we’ve encountered more medical challenges, and we found we couldn’t always remember what tests or bloodwork we’ve had done and what the results were. We couldn’t remember when we had certain procedures. So in May of 2019, I started taking another notebook to all our doctor appointments to write down our concerns and all pertinent information.

So much of what I write every day is for one reason—I’m trying to remember stuff.

Strangely enough, much of what I write gets forgotten anyway. I recently grabbed a journal from 1996-1998 out of a box, and I don’t remember any of the stuff I wrote. In August ’96 I wrote down some details about a trip our daughter Carly had taken the month before. She visited Bennington College for “July Program” the summer before her senior year in high school. This is about her return flight: “Departure from Albany delayed approx. 1½ hours due to new security procedures resulting from crash of TWA 800 (?). Had to stop over in Atlanta—same day as bombing at Centennial Olympic Park. Reassigned to another flight to Phx. Had to spend extra couple hours in Atlanta airport. I was sure bomber was in airport, trying to get on Carly’s flight. Carly got to fly 1^st class.” I don’t remember any of that happening, except for the bombing.

Most of the rest of that journal is notes about books I was reading at that time. For example, this excerpt from the book Waiting, by Ben Patterson: “Robert Schuller asks, ‘What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?’ The question is designed to break us out of our mental ruts and to think of the possibilities of our lives.” For me, reading this excerpt now is like seeing it for the first time.

So all those things I’ve recorded in notebooks and journals are essentially wasted if I do not go back and reread them. I don’t know if that’s true for everyone; certainly some people remember what they’ve experienced over their lifetimes. But I don’t remember what I read a year ago, much less 23 years ago.

When my Mom passed away in 2004, my brother and I went through her “art collection,” our affectionate nickname for the stack of papers piled up in the corner of the kitchen counter. We found all sorts of old stuff in there, including letters I’d written to her from college in the early 1970s. I wish I could say the letters brought back memories. Mostly, I couldn’t even remember the people I’d mentioned in them, students in my classes and my dorm, even professors I’d had.

I still believe in taking notes at conferences and in journaling, in writing down ideas and interesting things I’ve read; but now I’m going to make a point of rereading my notes and journals from time to time. I’ll let you know how that goes—if I remember.