Insomnia 'n mem'ries.....

I wonder what it’ud be like to sleep thru the night…I have a pretty good memory for most things (I’m not talking about losing the right word seems like ever’ other time) but mem’ries…I remember the darnedest things, a huge silver moon in 1948, paddlewheelers on the Ohio (tho’ I’m hardpressed to recall the names of the things)…I remember June bugs and Doughboy firecrackers and the wooly coats we called ‘Mackinaws” in the winters…I remember leather mittens being warmer than gloves…and the smell of wet honeysuckle on summer days…I remember Betty Euton and Margie Kieth and Marilyn Harvey, all in Euton’s front yard practicing cheer routines (Betty Euton was amazing, double-jointed they said she was…only see that stuff in yoga classes today…

I remember the first time I ever saw froglegs frying…coudn’t eat ‘em after watching them moving jerkily in the pan…I remember driving Dad’s 193 7 Olds thru the streets of Beattyville (I couldn’t see over the steering wheel, even sitting on a pillow)…

I remember the brown flood waters and helping neighbors carry household stuff out on planks over the rising water….

I remember lots and lots of stuff but for some reason I can’t remember what it’s like to sleep through an entire night without waking up…I keep a bottle of water on my nightstand ‘cause I wake up ’n need a drink….that’s probably part of the reason I wake up to go pee in the middle of the night…and sometimes I just lay there, eyes open wide, staring into the dark…well, almost dark…I remember dark, when I was a boy, so dark some times that you really couldn’t see your hand in front of your face…’course, during the war, we had blackouts and white-helmeted men, wearing white belts, ‘ud patrol the streets to tell people to turn off their lights because we didn’t want to have those Germans bombing us, now did we?  “Course, living int he middle of the country, it was damned unlikely that we were gonna get bombed by anyone but we still had to do our part for the war, you know…after the war, when I was 12 years old, I think, I did a stint as a ‘spotter’…I would cross the river, go to the Hurth Hotel (4 stories, one of the tallest bldg’s in Portsmouth) ride the elevator to the top and sit up there scanning the skies watching out for suspicious aircraft….it was 1949 ’n the war was long over but we were all patriotic as all get out back then ’n I felt like I was actually doing something of worth…(kids are believers)

I remember lots of stuff, good and bad and indifferent but I can’t recall what it felt like to sleep like a log all night long…well, life, they say, is short and we’ll all sleep some day…

So, for all those fellow insomniacs out there who might be reading this at 3 o’clock in the morning…enjoy the quiet and have a good day tomorrow…..Justin Other Smith