another snow

another snow

Originally uploaded by jayfherron

I’ve been stuck in the snow before. Strange how it seems-this scene in the photograph was on December 25 1997. The weather has no calendar.

Today the papers are filled with the stories of stranded motorist. The Washington (DC) Post had a photo of an empty city on its front page today.  One foot of snow stopped everything.

40 years ago I saw this same thing. I remember being stranded at the Greyhound bus station on New York Avenue in the center of DC. Our bus crept into the station-very late…the snow storm had become one of record in the history books of weather. Everything was shut down.

I mark things by time. I find odd connections to time frames. The exact number of 40 years strikes me-a snow storm the near equivalent of the one I remember comes as if it is some kind of private ceremony from God to me…of course,that is crazy talk from a bothered man-but like the hawk that flew into my house two years ago New Years Eve I see a Spiritual symbol in the way the weather is today.

Yes-far fetched,a “not so” kind of thing…to most. But the way my mind works it certainly is something….mostly because it triggers an emotion and a memory from that night I got stranded in the snow in Washington DC,and-nearly the exact time and date.

I remember Eddie Lachman. I think he was the last person to be kind to me before I ended up in barracks D. Barracks D was the detention barracks that I was taken to…my crime? Being caught in the snow storm is what it amounts to. I was in the Navy and unable to check in on ship because of the storm.

Eddie Lachman plowed his way through the snow covered roads in a VW Beetle driving me home to my parents house in the suburbs.We seemed to be the only car on the road. We met in the lounge that connected through a section of the bus depot. There was not much else to do but get a drink-there was not many others in the lounge,so meeting and chatting with Eddie was not so hard. He insisted on getting me to my destination-a sailor wishing to be home for a holiday

He was an older man-from Holland,a newspaper journalist who covered the White House for his paper.

I became friends with Eddie-briefly,after my discharge and release from barracks D. I visited his home in Georgetown in NorthWest DC. I ate meals cooked by his Vietnamese housekeeper remembering he had told me she once served him his own house-pet for supper. Eddie even sent me money after I fled the DC area and came to Micanopy Florida.

My emotions are sensitive to this time of year! Not like the shopping frenzy of emotions….but the kind from memories that are connected with some event in ones life that becomes imbedded forever. It is a cruelty that lasts-that I can’t ever forget. A little while ago I did my usual in the bathroom-and the usual was there…the damage which instantly strikes a memory which has already been fused by the exact thought I have each morning-now for 40 years. The rape.

Everyday there is something that reminds me.