5537. HOME MOVIES

HOME MOVIES

Particular situations make me laugh; strange things with

little connection. The home movies of Uncle Joe, being

projected onto a wall, an off-white wall of an ivory tint.

I watched in fascination  -  and this was forty years ago  -  

movies from sixty years back and more. People I'd forgotten,

or only heard about. They are all dead now, everyone and 

everything. The hand on that projector  -  dead and gone. All

that joyous face I can remember seeing : Andy and Joe, in glee

racing a boat along the flat waters of Lake Hopatcong. Something

else, somewhere else  -  the distant Delaware, and then the ocean.

These two guys always loved water. Peacetime water, wartime 

water. They both were Navy men in that war that wouldn't end.

My father, Andy here, on a battleship tender in the South Pacific

seas, used to supply the larger ships with foodstuffs, cigarettes,

hats and jackets, gas and oil. Battleship tender meant just what it

said. Supply ships, the rest. He also, oddly enough for a man who

became an upholsterer, sewed up dead bodies into canvas bags

for burials at sea. big curved sewing needles, a swift and accurate

hand. The things you learn on the sea. My uncle, the Joe here, was a

Navy artist. Pictures of what? i don't know. But these two fellows,

with their home movies, I could tell loved a 1950's life that lived.

swarming, happy, with joy. I saw the faces. I saw the faces of their

wives  -  my mother, my aunt, before either of them was that. Just girls.

It's funny how things come around. Funny how things come around.