Beautiful. Just ordered the book. Rose Sleigh was my AP Lit teacher in high school. I remember her telling us her son was a writer, and he felt that it is "hell to write, heaven to have written." I was impressed that someone could just "be a writer" as an adult, and I'm sure it influenced my own literary journey.
Well, then you know first-hand what a galvanizing, brilliant, and tough teacher she was. Of course my ma was quoting Oscar Wilde...I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it, but it was Oscar! And thanks so much for ordering the book. It's a complicated legacy...but I doubt that will surprise you in the least.
My mother had a big personality- I always said she walked into a room talking. She had me at age 22 and was much more interested in her friends and parties than in a baby. She pretty much ignored me throughout her life except to criticize what I was wearing or how my house looked. Only towards the end of her life when she was sick with cancer and telling me stories of her growing up in San Francisco did she seem like a real person. Even so, I cried when she died.
By the time you understand that your mom had her own life and hopes and personality apart from yours, she’s off into old age and you can’t ask her about it. I feel that way about my dad, too. So important, so…gone.
So much here that evoked my own experience, my own mother. I too spent my early childhood in a movie house- but it was a physical building, or bioscope as we called it. My mother? In some of the phrases, you could have been describing her… at the age of about ten I bitterly broke off with a friend because she said my mother’s legs were fat… I knew she was right, but I smarted with the implied shame nevertheless. My mother filled rooms too, her restless energy infusing our childhood with a frenzied watchfulness. This piece made me wonder what she would have been like at 96, but she left us long before that. Thank you for a wonderful read!
What a strange world it was back in the 1950s in rural Texas...and since we're both kids who grew up at the movies, you'll appreciate how otherworldly movie theaters seem now. On another note, a "frenzied watchfulness" is a lovely phrase!
What a strange world it still is! But then, I live in the strangest of cities, Johannesburg. Thanks for your comment, I really enjoyed reading this excerpt, so evocative of a life lived large…
Lovely piece. I'm curious about where in Texas the drive-in was but don't want to push it. I too was raised in Texas and those huge drive-in screens appearing at night in the middle of flat nowhere seem almost biblical. Of course I've written about it too (how could you not)? But it's hard to imagine a child sleeping under one every night.
Yes! Isn't that amazing? I don't think I've told anyone else this but knew you'd "get it." And like I sort of implied, at the time the area was basically rundown bars, used car dealership, garages, warehouses, and the random divey strip joint. That phrase and that place in the middle of all that!
It was in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. I went back to visit it once when I had occasion to be in Dallas giving a reading at the university. The town hadn't changed all that much. But I couldn't locate the drive-in. Finally, I stopped at a woman's house and she said that the theater had been sold about 10 years ago (which would now be 30 years ago) and was now owned by a tractor supply business. Which was true: lots of John Deeres and Massey Fergusons for sale, many of them used. But at the end of the lot, the screen still stood the same as when I was a boy.
So glad you found the screen still standing. Two hours west in Grand Prairie TX I went to the Century Drive-In with my folks as a boy, and after as a high school kid that 4-plex was a constant destination. It gave us a place to hang at night and also kept us off the street. It makes me sad every time I drive by it, but before they tore it down someone crawled up on the marquee and took the letters still there and rearranged them to say, "Lucid Dreamer." It was a pretty amazing thing, those words up there on my old drive-in. I mean, who in that blue collar area would even think to say that?
Yes, that's absolutely true, Matthew! I may not have understood the literal meaning of the words, but I immediately knew the intent was to shame. My ma was remarkable for how she turned the tables on such moments because of her wit, her style, her fierce irony.
A masterful accounting, also in the sense of recalculating, revising accounts--here the harms, there the gifts, and how to evaluate? What does the child retain, inherit, in the end? Change of metaphor: the mental re-drawing of one's parent, the erasures and shadings and sudden streaks of new light, don't begin near the end, but are at some level ongoing, long before and long after that central individual's death. Tom Sleigh's book is for me, among many things, a meditation on individuality, on what can be known.
In Kalamazoo Michigan, in the 60s, drive-in movies were the way Mom got her five kids out of her hair for the evening. We'd bundle snacks, pillows, and a blanket to share, and my seventeen year old sister, Sue, would drive us off in the station wagon. I was ten.
Sue's best friend, Sandy, would join the escapade. They'd sit in the front seat and thrill to Elizabeth Taylor seducing Richard Burton in "Cleopatra." We younger kids chortled and hooted in the back and munched our snacks, making a big, crumby mess. Sue would turn around and glare and say, "Shut up, kids, we can't hear!"
To get away from the racket, Sue and Sandy climbed up to the roof of the car. I remember coming back from buying popcorn at the concession and seeing them silhouetted in the semi-dark as they sat cross-legged up there, and being struck with how beautiful they were, so insouciant, so grown up.
Later in the summer there'd be "hillbilly movies," which we loved - I remember one called "Cotton Pickin' Chicken Pickers." It had great bluegrass fiddle winding throughout the hilarious plot. I'd watch it again if I could. But I know better than to expect the freshness and fun of those long-ago summer nights at the Kalamazoo drive-in movies.
My folks booked films from a distributor in Dallas, mainly my mother's job while my father kept the projector in good order, mended the screen, fixed the speakers, and the hundred other jobs of maintenance. She said that part of the rental might include a personal appearance by one of the stars of the movie. I think it was Gordon MacRae who appeared at intermission one night during a run of Oklahoma! or maybe Carousel. I remember watching both movies, though the plot was over my head and besides, I fell asleep almost as soon as the credits had rolled. (A few years later, my ma ended up playing Curly in a local production, crossdressing for the part, and wearing red cowboy boots: in the memoir I write about that). Anyway, MacRae appeared on top of the projector booth and sang some of the songs from Oklahoma! Everybody would flash their lights or honk their horns in applause! And then my mother would raffle off some kind of gadget, a Veg-o-matic, as I recall her telling me once. I do go to the drive-in in Wellfleet, MA and it really does have something of the same flavor, though most people choose to listen through their radios rather than the speaker. And thanks so much for writing me, Miriam. I really appreciate it. Tom
Thanks so much for taking the trouble to write to me. My ma hovers near me whenever I'm writing (which is almost every day...or at least I'm trying to) and she's a tough cookie: I love how she would repeat (still repeats) to me when she read something of mine that seemed grandiose or over the top, "Tom, remember Hemingway: "Get out your shock-proof CRAP DETECTOR!" She was dear to me, no one dearer...again, thanks for taking the time to write me.
Thanks to all of you who took the time to read the piece. And deep thanks to Sari for creating such a terrific magazine!
Tom Sleigh
Beautiful. Just ordered the book. Rose Sleigh was my AP Lit teacher in high school. I remember her telling us her son was a writer, and he felt that it is "hell to write, heaven to have written." I was impressed that someone could just "be a writer" as an adult, and I'm sure it influenced my own literary journey.
Oh, wow! Small world.
Dear Jan,
Well, then you know first-hand what a galvanizing, brilliant, and tough teacher she was. Of course my ma was quoting Oscar Wilde...I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it, but it was Oscar! And thanks so much for ordering the book. It's a complicated legacy...but I doubt that will surprise you in the least.
My mother had a big personality- I always said she walked into a room talking. She had me at age 22 and was much more interested in her friends and parties than in a baby. She pretty much ignored me throughout her life except to criticize what I was wearing or how my house looked. Only towards the end of her life when she was sick with cancer and telling me stories of her growing up in San Francisco did she seem like a real person. Even so, I cried when she died.
Thanks for writing, Sandi. And I hear you about your mother...
By the time you understand that your mom had her own life and hopes and personality apart from yours, she’s off into old age and you can’t ask her about it. I feel that way about my dad, too. So important, so…gone.
That's an eloquent ellipsis, Peter...sorrowful for sure...
So much here that evoked my own experience, my own mother. I too spent my early childhood in a movie house- but it was a physical building, or bioscope as we called it. My mother? In some of the phrases, you could have been describing her… at the age of about ten I bitterly broke off with a friend because she said my mother’s legs were fat… I knew she was right, but I smarted with the implied shame nevertheless. My mother filled rooms too, her restless energy infusing our childhood with a frenzied watchfulness. This piece made me wonder what she would have been like at 96, but she left us long before that. Thank you for a wonderful read!
What a strange world it was back in the 1950s in rural Texas...and since we're both kids who grew up at the movies, you'll appreciate how otherworldly movie theaters seem now. On another note, a "frenzied watchfulness" is a lovely phrase!
What a strange world it still is! But then, I live in the strangest of cities, Johannesburg. Thanks for your comment, I really enjoyed reading this excerpt, so evocative of a life lived large…
Wow. Loved reading this as I sit by our pond and drink my coffee this morning. Gorgeous.
Sounds like a great place to read! I sit out on my balcony here in Brooklyn and read most mornings, too.
Every day!
Lovely piece. I'm curious about where in Texas the drive-in was but don't want to push it. I too was raised in Texas and those huge drive-in screens appearing at night in the middle of flat nowhere seem almost biblical. Of course I've written about it too (how could you not)? But it's hard to imagine a child sleeping under one every night.
Lucid Dreamer! What an apt description of a drive-in movie screen! Thanks for telling me this, Steve!
Yes! Isn't that amazing? I don't think I've told anyone else this but knew you'd "get it." And like I sort of implied, at the time the area was basically rundown bars, used car dealership, garages, warehouses, and the random divey strip joint. That phrase and that place in the middle of all that!
It was in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. I went back to visit it once when I had occasion to be in Dallas giving a reading at the university. The town hadn't changed all that much. But I couldn't locate the drive-in. Finally, I stopped at a woman's house and she said that the theater had been sold about 10 years ago (which would now be 30 years ago) and was now owned by a tractor supply business. Which was true: lots of John Deeres and Massey Fergusons for sale, many of them used. But at the end of the lot, the screen still stood the same as when I was a boy.
So glad you found the screen still standing. Two hours west in Grand Prairie TX I went to the Century Drive-In with my folks as a boy, and after as a high school kid that 4-plex was a constant destination. It gave us a place to hang at night and also kept us off the street. It makes me sad every time I drive by it, but before they tore it down someone crawled up on the marquee and took the letters still there and rearranged them to say, "Lucid Dreamer." It was a pretty amazing thing, those words up there on my old drive-in. I mean, who in that blue collar area would even think to say that?
The cluelessness of adults when speaking around children never ceases to amaze me.
https://www.antichemura.it/en/discover-arezzo/the-maddalena/
Yes, that's absolutely true, Matthew! I may not have understood the literal meaning of the words, but I immediately knew the intent was to shame. My ma was remarkable for how she turned the tables on such moments because of her wit, her style, her fierce irony.
A masterful accounting, also in the sense of recalculating, revising accounts--here the harms, there the gifts, and how to evaluate? What does the child retain, inherit, in the end? Change of metaphor: the mental re-drawing of one's parent, the erasures and shadings and sudden streaks of new light, don't begin near the end, but are at some level ongoing, long before and long after that central individual's death. Tom Sleigh's book is for me, among many things, a meditation on individuality, on what can be known.
In Kalamazoo Michigan, in the 60s, drive-in movies were the way Mom got her five kids out of her hair for the evening. We'd bundle snacks, pillows, and a blanket to share, and my seventeen year old sister, Sue, would drive us off in the station wagon. I was ten.
Sue's best friend, Sandy, would join the escapade. They'd sit in the front seat and thrill to Elizabeth Taylor seducing Richard Burton in "Cleopatra." We younger kids chortled and hooted in the back and munched our snacks, making a big, crumby mess. Sue would turn around and glare and say, "Shut up, kids, we can't hear!"
To get away from the racket, Sue and Sandy climbed up to the roof of the car. I remember coming back from buying popcorn at the concession and seeing them silhouetted in the semi-dark as they sat cross-legged up there, and being struck with how beautiful they were, so insouciant, so grown up.
Later in the summer there'd be "hillbilly movies," which we loved - I remember one called "Cotton Pickin' Chicken Pickers." It had great bluegrass fiddle winding throughout the hilarious plot. I'd watch it again if I could. But I know better than to expect the freshness and fun of those long-ago summer nights at the Kalamazoo drive-in movies.
Dear Miriam,
My folks booked films from a distributor in Dallas, mainly my mother's job while my father kept the projector in good order, mended the screen, fixed the speakers, and the hundred other jobs of maintenance. She said that part of the rental might include a personal appearance by one of the stars of the movie. I think it was Gordon MacRae who appeared at intermission one night during a run of Oklahoma! or maybe Carousel. I remember watching both movies, though the plot was over my head and besides, I fell asleep almost as soon as the credits had rolled. (A few years later, my ma ended up playing Curly in a local production, crossdressing for the part, and wearing red cowboy boots: in the memoir I write about that). Anyway, MacRae appeared on top of the projector booth and sang some of the songs from Oklahoma! Everybody would flash their lights or honk their horns in applause! And then my mother would raffle off some kind of gadget, a Veg-o-matic, as I recall her telling me once. I do go to the drive-in in Wellfleet, MA and it really does have something of the same flavor, though most people choose to listen through their radios rather than the speaker. And thanks so much for writing me, Miriam. I really appreciate it. Tom
Vivid memories, so beautifully detailed.
A lovely tribute to your mother. I'm sure sh was enormously proud.
powerful.
Thanks so much!
Lucky boy. Lucky mom. Loved ones pass. Memories remain.
I was very lucky...my mother gave me the words...and it's been my whole life.
Fathers help or hurt. But Moms are essential elements.
So very nice.
Thanks so much Liz! And a window over the sink is much to be desired!
Dear Liz,
Thanks so much for taking the time to read the excerpt. It means a lot to me and would mean a lot to my ma for sure!
Tom Sleigh
So many beautiful images in that, I want to read the memoir
Dear Deirdre,
Thanks so much for taking the trouble to write to me. My ma hovers near me whenever I'm writing (which is almost every day...or at least I'm trying to) and she's a tough cookie: I love how she would repeat (still repeats) to me when she read something of mine that seemed grandiose or over the top, "Tom, remember Hemingway: "Get out your shock-proof CRAP DETECTOR!" She was dear to me, no one dearer...again, thanks for taking the time to write me.