I was 19. She was 18. She must have been at Herkimer Community College and I was at Binghamton University. I credit my mom for typing this up. She captured history in a way that I didn't and I am thankful.
I am actually intrigued by this because it truly does capture weekends from my childhood, with details that are too true to make up. We often spent Saturdays and/or Sundays in Hamilton or Sherburne visiting our grandparents. It's been 30 years since I've read the poem, but as I did yesterday I couldn't help but experience all those memories and a time that once was. Words do this. I'm fortunate I live a life to capture them, as time never sits still. I was an undergraduate studying with poet Ruth Stone. I'm not sure what the assignment was, but I believe I was trying to make sense of the academic world with the childhood I experienced.
I read "Sherburne" now with nostalgia, memory, and joy. That little town was central to the way I knew the world as a child, with its Lewis's, library, Roger's Mature Center, and pageant of band. To us, it was our Disney-get-away and opportunity to explore the world in new ways. It doesn't matter if the poem was good or not - what matters is I named a time in my life poetically as a 19 year-old: our lives...that we all can remember...from a time that once was.
Many of our childhood clothes were sewn together by Grandma Vera. She was a matriarch of all matriarchs (and now I'm wondering what my Uncle Milford and Aunt Bobbie remember...my cousins Patrick, Mark, and Mike). Ah, Sherburne. The epicenter to us all.
How quickly it changes. How easy now to see This is us.
Sherburne
We are the Sherburne girls, We wear our hair in curls
La la la al la. We all forget the rest.
That was dad's sung, interrupting the
your-touching-me-game
my sisters and I played in the back seat,
him, dangling a Lucky from his lips...
Mom, singing too, as she dappled Avon's blue eye shadow
pleading for us to "Just stop it, already,
inhaling her True Blue, too.
Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go
we'd ding, knowing that grandma lived next to Chi Chi,
in front of the old TACO building,
and across from Ozzi's drive-in diner,
not over any river or through any woods,
but in small town U.S.A
where you can get cheese plastic bracelets
for a quarter at the Victory IGA gumboil machine.
Kumquat tree, Kumquat tree, won't you sit under the Kumquat tree.
Mom and Dad would sing romantically to each other's past
knowing the song was a speck of lust from a road trip long ago
that created three living proofs in the back seat who had to pee
wondering, "Are we there yet?"
Singing fe, fi, fiddle I, oooooooh, Strumming on the ol' Banjo."
we'd finish off as we pulled into Gram's Sunday-steamed windows
(humidified from her hard kitchen labor, and overly-fanatic cleaning spurts).
welcomed us before we could yell, "We're here," chiming as kids
running to be the first to activate Gramp's super-duper'
nail-in-the-house-don't-tell anyone-about-it garage door opener.
"Well, hello," Gram would harmonize
as she bent down to give Dusty, our dog,
the greeting he deserved, too,
as we entered the house on 80 N. Main together,
singing how we've been.
"Grace Runyan," we'd pray in unified chorus,
before devouring Gram's lumpy potatoes with
only-like-a-grandmother-can-do gravy
and chicken as tender as the smell of her house.
"What's for dessert?" we'd yodel,
with cherry pie for me, minced meat for mom,
Milwaukee's Best for Dad, and a lazy chair for Gramp
who rested his eyes in a snore as some of us did dishes.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
Grandma would sing to us, rocking on her porch,
counting red cars driving by, watching us kids
trying to get truckers to honk their horns just once
and doing us with a wave to Hubert who was
heading somewhere for something
like he always used to do.
How much is that doggie in the window, woof woof!
we'd sing as Gram's best friend, Pat, came over for coffee
wearing her "damn" green coat with a fuzzy fur hood,
while Dad and Gramp harassed her in a traditioan way,
and Rose would walk down wanting to hug us
because we'd grown so much, while we hid
because she smelled like urine
and had a beard like the little rodent-dog that followed her.
Goodbye, farewell, it's time for us to go-oh
we would sadly sing as Dad yelled, "Come on kids, pack it up,"
and we'd have to hurry up our mother
who always had the most to say
when it was Tim for us to go.
We'd sing our "I love you's" as we kissed them on the cheeks
getting into the car the would drive us away from their home-again waves
and we'd be on our way.
Dad would like a Lucky.
Mom a True Blue,
but now the radio would go on
and we'd listen to someone else sing for awhile.