memory

DEARIE

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

 

“Dearie” is a popular song written by David Mann; lyrics, by Bob Hilliard. The song was published in 1950. The Jo Stafford/Gordon MacRae record was recorded on January 14, 1950 and released by Capitol Records as catalog number 858. It first reached the Billboard magazine charts on March 3, 1950 and lasted 11 weeks on the chart, peaking at #12.[1]

The various versions of the song (combined, as was normal for Cash Box magazine reached #4 on the Cash Box Best-Selling Records chart.

 

Dearie, do you remember when we

Waltzed to the Sousa band

My wasn’t the music grand

Chowder parties down by the seashore

Every Fourth of July, test your memory

My Dearie

Do you recall when Henry Ford couldn’t even fix

The running board under a Chandler six

Dearie, life was cheery

In the good old days gone by

Do you remember?

Uh huh!

Well if you remember

Wonderful!

Well Dearie, you’re much older than I

What? Hey, wait a minute, Honey, I just got a long memory that’s all.

Dearie, do you remember when we

Stayed up all night to get

Pittsburgh on a crystal set

Keystone movies, Coogan and Chaplin

Made you laugh and then cry

Test your memory, my Dearie

Do you recall when Orville Wright flew at Kittyhawk

But take it from me I would rather walk

Dearie, life was cheery

In the good old days gone by

Do you remember

Uh huh!

Well if you remember

Well?

Well, Dearie, you’re much older than I

Ha Ha! I’ll kill you

Dearie, do you remember how they

Loved Harry Lauder’s act

My wasn’t the Palace packed

Jenny Lind presented by Barnum

Sang her sweet lullaby

Test your memory my Dearie,

Chicago all in flames

Sure caused a terrific row

They blamed it on Mrs. O’Leary’s cow

Dearie, life was cheery

In the good old days gone by

Do you remember? Well if you remember,

Well, Dearie, you’re much older than,

Quite a bit older than,

You’re older than I.

NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS

/ Ken Finton / 2 Comments

images

You made it through another year. You lionized another birthday and hoped for many more. You dressed your transgressions in purple robes, tolerated the tolerable, and dreamed another dream. That person that you were last year has passed on to become but a memory. The person you are to be this year is being contemplated as we speak.

I hope you made the proper number of mistakes and hope to make a similar number this coming year. Mistakes mean that we are doing something, perhaps something we have not done before. You are known for your blunders, admired for your accuracy, and vilified for your honesty, as are we all.

Though time flew by, you persevered. Though you did not do it all. you chipped away at it. Say, “Happy new year.” Welcome to the land of beginning again. Keep those thoughts positive, those acts causative, the mind cognitive.

TIME’S PASSING

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

by Kenneth Harper Finton ©2015

Science-Museum-Exhibition-2

Remember how your hair blew in the wind

that night we kissed and dreamed of sins.

I asked you why your large dark eyes

stared with wonder at the sky.

When we were young, two kids in love,

the world itself was not enough.

I dreamed that we’d forever lay

together at the end of day.

Now that time has flickered by,

I’m sure you still go watch the sky.

Oh, I remember well these things,

but now I have forgot your name.

THE WORLD CAME ROARING IN

/ Ken Finton / 3 Comments

by Kenneth Harper Finton ©2014

 

 

 

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When I was very young, I did not know the world.

The world made itself known to me quite gradually,

in small steps that I can now only imagine.

I cannot remember these steps.

They happened before memory was born.

I felt these steps.

Discomfort was a feeling that I learned quickly to correct.

My first feelings were those untenable positions

which caused me to turn away from irritation

into a position of familiarity and contentment.

I kicked and moved to find my snugness

not knowing or caring that my attempt to find relief caused pain to another.

The experience of the world of the womb was lost to me.

The world was making itself known, but I knew nothing of the world.

I knew nothing about myself for I was not a self.

I was as close to bring nothing as I have ever been.

Yet in this nothing there was feeling.

There was touch. There were senses.

I could hear the world making music

and the sounds of the body in which I was immersed.

Because I did not breath, I could not smell.

Because I had no smell, I could not taste.

Because I had no eyes I could not see.

But there was touch and there was sound and there was feeling.

The rest would come later.

The world makes itself known to us slowly.

The distress that I felt at the moment of my birth was sudden and momentous.

I left the familiar world of water and warmth,

felt the pressure of extreme movement that I had never felt before.

The world made me know of constriction and limits.

I felt movement and the pressures of my movement,

then release to an alien place that made me feel misery

I longed briefly to return to what I had forever known

and felt the strange coldness that I had never felt before.

Air replaced water.

I opened my mouth and tasted of the air.

The air forced its way into me and I smelled the horrid stench of it for the first time.

I became so agonizingly uncomfortable that I cried.

Since that first forlorn cry that expressed both my surprise and extreme distress,

the world has continued to make itself known to me.

That process has not changed much.

The instinct to recoil from aggravation and hurt

and return to a known luxury has been retained,

but the added senses produced a curiosity

to know more about that which caused me displeasure.

In giant strides of courage, I accepted some irritation

and began to realize that there was more to everything than I had learned.

Some learning produced not only pleasure,

but sensations that I welcomed with bright smiles.

I knew nothing of time and little of space.

I was immersed fully in the now.

Then I opened my eyes

and the world came roaring in.