Memories are made of this

Vacation huskers are hyping “Make memories now’’ These television types got me thinking about memories. Memory is most peculiar. I believe the most meaningful memories come from everyday life and not from a vacation. Oh, I have grand memories of sitting in the surf and sunsets on South Padre Island.

I found it is the small, the quite ordinary stuff that provide the most meaningful recall. It seems these consequential memories collect from times residue of just living life.

First times. I have recently heard a number of entertainment people asking guests about first concerts. In my family, it isn’t concerts, it is professional baseball fields. Whether Athletic Park, home of the Muskogee Reds, or Oiler Park, home of the Tulsa Oilers, there is something.

Our stories begin with the excitement of the crowd on the concourse, walking through rather dark tunnel-like entrances toward the light, then unexpectedly emerging into a light bright as day. Then, the luxurious green grass with the immaculate infield shave and the freshly chalked baselines. I’m convinced most boys and some “Doris Kerns Goodwin” type girls who accompanied their fathers to baseball games and kept their own scorebook share this memory Oklahoma State and Arkansas played this past Saturday. The first college game I saw was Oklahoma A&M and Arkansas. I was a high school freshman. The Panther Booster Club arranged the trip. Stillwater in the afternoon and back to watch Tulsa play Hawaii that night. I recall sitting on the grass beside the school bus outside Lewis Field and eating bologna and cheese sandwiches with a carton of milk Back to that first concert thing. I don’t remember the first concert per se. But after a softball game in the spring of 1956,1 accompanied a teammate to the Tulsa Fairgrounds Pavilion where his girlfriend had gone to a concert. The concert was almost over, and we went in the unprotected south door. He went to find his girlfriend and I stood in the back and listened to some church singer I’d never heard of. Elvis Presley. I remember.

Tender memories. I remember the first apartment Billie and I had, a small one bedroom, on the edge of downtown Tulsa. I remember coming home from work to the first meal she prepared for us.

I remember our one-bedroom unit in college housing, our double bed in the middle of the room with a crib on each side. Wood floors painted battleship grey.

Numbers. I find I no longer can remember phone numbers. Yes, I blame my iPhone. Yet I still remember Hays and Buchanan was 66. Mother and Dad’s number was 2213. Mallory Funeral Home was 2133. We were always getting calls for them, so I remember that number too.

These are individual memories. We have a collective memory too. I think it is more complex, yet it also personal. Collective memory brings that feeling most of us get when National Anthem is sung or our flag raised. I don’t know that we all feel the same thing but we all feel something. I have negative feelings about the Nazi flag. Where do you stand on the Confederate battle flag?

Memory is the diary that we carry about with us. — Oscar Wilde

Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.