7 The Past
Kate was making breakfast when she asked, “How’s your memory, Mac.”
“Where’s this going?”
“It’s just a question.” She still had her back to me. “People your age have problems remembering. Sometimes serious problems.”
“Passable. My memory is going just like my vision and hearing, but it’s good enough.”
“Are there things you can’t remember?”
“How would I know?”
“There are events, names, places that you know you should remember. Do you have trouble recalling them?”
“I’ve always had trouble remembering names. That isn’t old age.”
“Do you remember people you met in St. Louis?”
“I remember Jimmy.”
“Jimmy who?”
“Your cousin, the lawyer. Jimmy Graham.”
“Who else?”
“Sam from the diner.”
“Anybody else?”
“The kid running the RV camp. What was it? Camp Discovery?”
“Discovery Park. What’s his name?”
“Can’t come up with it right now. I can describe him. Army vet, Special Forces. Bad arm and a medical discharge from a combat wound. Winning smile. Dark complexion. Muscular like he’s done a lot of weight training.”
“Eddie?”
“Yeah. Eddie. Same last name as the Raider’s coach, but I can’t think of his name either.”
She turned to look at me. “Flores?” Then she chuckled. “Oh yeah. Tom Flores. I’ve never made that connection.”
“That was a long time ago. How would you know that?”
“1983. I was one. But Superbowl history was an important subject when I was in high school.”
Kate brought our breakfast. Two omelets with toast, blueberry jelly, and a dill pickle. “What’s the most important event you remember?”
“I was drafted in September 1968 and sent over to Vietnam just before Christmas.”
She nodded. “I meant in terms of world history type events like the Kennedy assassination.”
“I remember both Kennedy assassinations. I also remember the assassination of Martin Luther King. But only as things I’ve read about. 9/11 is different. I was in Manhattan when those planes crashed into the World Trade Center.”
Kate stopped eating and stared at me with a sad expression on her face.
“I also remember the day US forces pulled out of Saigon. I wasn’t there, and I don’t remember the date, but I remember terrified Vietnamese trying desperately to escape the inevitable.”
“Do you have any good memories?”
“Shortly after I returned to college, this girl I had dated a couple of times came up and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back, and she said, ‘Where have you been?””
“That’s pretty amazing. I’m going to go out on a limb here. Her name was Anne.”
“Anne Campbell. She was still in school because she had been two years behind me when I was drafted.”
“Do you remember when you decided to get married?”
“Can’t pinpoint the date. I’m sure we were both ready before I asked her.”
“Do you remember asking her?”
I had to laugh. “I was invited to Cherry Hill for an interview in April, and I got an offer in May. I went over to her house and showed her the letter then I asked her to marry me.” I couldn’t help grinning. “She said, ‘Yes.’ We undressed each other and had sex for the first time.”
“That would be hard to forget.”
Memories rolled through my mind as I finished my eggs. Kate just watched me. One event stuck and demanded discussion. “I don’t remember the date, but I guess it was in ’93 or ’94. The Department of Justice sent a team to interview Reagan about some of the shenanigans that took place while he was in office.”
“That was 1990. It was a deposition on behalf of Poindexter.”
“As I recall, he talked a lot about his movie career but he couldn’t remember what happened while he was in office.”
“I guess. The videotape was used in the Poindexter trial.”
“When I saw the tape on TV, I decided that the man was suffering from dementia. A couple of years later, he did issue a public announcement confirming that he had Alzheimer’s.”
“What’s your point?”
“My memory is like that. I don’t think I’m that bad. But I’m clearly having problems.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“It sucks, but what am I going to do?”
“Work to hang onto your memory as long as you can.”
“I’ve found that it’s best to ignore problems you can’t fix.”
##
The plan for the day included Arrow Rock State Historic Site and Fort Osage. I decided to visit Clark’s Hill, about 20 miles on the other side of Jefferson City before heading north. The hill does not and never did belong to Captain William Clark. He took a side excursion while the Corps was camped at the confluence of the Osage and Missouri rivers. In his diary, he described the view from the hill behind their campsite as “delightful.”
A flood of ideas overwhelmed me as I stood at the top and surveyed the surrounding countryside. I told Kate the spot was a whole history book waiting to be written down. “I’ll bite,” she said. “Give me a quick summary.”
“Clark’s camp was at the bottom of this hill where the two rivers ran together. Two hundred years later, the confluence has moved miles downstream. The face of the earth is constantly changing.”
I pointed out two nearby burial mounds. “According to my book, these mounds have been here for more than two thousand years. There’s a lot of history behind how they got here and why they are still here.”
Opening my arms to the woodland panorama, I said. “Look out there. All that belonged to the aboriginal Americans when Europeans arrived. Those people were primitive, but they had a viable society. We have replaced their way of life with our complex, overly busy post-industrial society.” The thought infuriated me. “I’ve read that hunter-gatherers only had to work about twenty hours a week. Modern Americans need two incomes and forty hours a week to make it.”
I turned to Kate. She was bored. “Are we really making progress?” I asked.
She looked around. “I see weeds, Mac. Acres and acres of weeds. There are snakes out there. Bugs. Ticks. The ticks would eat us alive if we walked around in those weeds.”
“Yeah. You’re right. No point in wasting time here.”
“I didn’t mean to blow you off. We can stay if you want.”
“It wouldn’t do any good.”
“It’s just not my thing, Mac.”
“You’re right. We need to keep moving.”
##
We drove along state roads that wound through the countryside along the river except for a short stretch on I70. Neither of us said a word.
The Arrow Rock Historic Site is a tidy brick building that houses artifacts from centuries of life in the American Midwest. It was another opportunity to linger and learn. But we didn’t. We settled for lunch at the historic tavern across the street.
Kate insisted on driving to Fort Osage, so I could get some rest. I picked up her tablet and looked it over. I had seen them around but never held one. My laptop wasn’t much bigger than her tablet, but it had a real keyboard. I observed in an offhand manner, “You were reading on the way to Arrow Rock.”
“Yes. It helps me pass the time.”
“You bored already?”
“No. I’m enjoying the scenery.”
“Pretty hard to read and watch the road.”
“I wouldn’t attempt to read while driving. But I’ve always been able to read and do other things at the same time.”
“What are you reading?”
“Stormy Seas. It’s about a woman privateer in the eighteenth century.”
“I bet a woman wrote it.”
“What’s wrong with that? Women have written some of the best books of all time.”
“Do you think I’d like it?”
“I don’t know. It’s pretty good.” She looked over at me and grinned. “You can read it if you’d like.”
A minute or so later, Kate said, “I’ll pair the tablet with your audio system tonight, and we can listen to a book together. You pick the book.”
“How about Call of the Wild?”
“That’s a good one. I read it years ago.”
“So, you wouldn’t want to listen to it now.”
“I would love to listen to it. But you might want to find a contemporary novel with a similar story. Why don’t you do a little research before deciding?”
“Hmph”
“Either way, I’ll set it up tonight.”
##
Fort Osage was a disappointment. The main attraction was a twentieth-century reconstruction of an early nineteenth-century fort. Actors in costumes portrayed military life as it was two hundred years ago. But without the life and death challenges to spice it up. The tale of the Osage nation didn’t help my attitude.
The Indians had been farming along the Osage River and hunting in the nearby woodlands for over a thousand years when Lewis and Clark showed up in 1804. Twenty years later, they ceded their Missouri land to the US government to satisfy the demands of Euro-American settlers. Twenty years after that, they were pushed off their reservation in Kansas and forced to settle in Oklahoma. When oil became a big deal, the mineral rights made them wealthy. But they were forced to pay a price for the windfall.
We went into the museum for a short visit. Artifacts of military life didn’t interest either of us. Kate cooked dinner, and we planned our next stop while we ate. She got us a reservation at an RV park a few miles outside Nebraska City and suggested I rest while she took the freeway. I was too sleepy to argue.