RIVER CITY JOURNAL: THOSE CHILDHOOD SUMMERS OF HIGH DRAMA

Your Aunt Norene's smile is a memory now. And so are those two summers when some Really Big Stuff happened that remains vivid in the storehouse of years past.

The can of store-bought peaches your past-80 uncle brought to the family's Thanksgiving get-together a year ago was a touching contribution to a meal worthy of the family name. His wife, some of you will remember, had Alzheimer's and couldn't contribute any of her world-class pies, just her smiles. You thought last year the sliced peaches might likely be found at future Thanksgiving dinners, just as a reminder of that special day.

Happily, it can be reported that last week's dinner was a huge success. Yes, a bowl of store-bought peaches was prominent, although they weren't brought by your uncle. Instead his daughter-in-law made scrumptious blackberry and blueberry pies -- the berries came from their own farm -- made from recipes and secrets handed down from one generation to another.

Sadly, the attendees at this year's dinner changed a bit. A couple of cousins didn't make it, and your aunt, the one with Alzheimer's, also was absent. She was too frail to make the trip this year. This week she died.

When the call came, there was a sadness that accompanies any such news. Slowly the memories, the good ones, began to take hold. There were, for example, those special two summers about 40 years ago when you stayed with her on your uncle's farm while your mother went to summer school so she could be a teacher.

This was a good deal for an 8-year-old farm boy who could stay at home and do farm chores while your mother boarded in the college town, or spend the summer with your cousins. Seeing that you didn't have brothers or sisters, this seemed like a good trade-off.

Not only that, your uncle's family had everything a farm boy in the early 1950s could dream of: an indoor toilet, a television set and a telephone. In that order. None of which existed at your home.

Those two summers, you recall, were filled with high drama. Naturally, when you are 8 or 9 years old, high drama is fairly easy to come by.

For example, you remember getting up in the wee hours of the morning to watch, with your aunt, the flickering TV images from London during the first-ever transatlantic live broadcast of the coronation of Elizabeth II. You didn't know for years that you had witnessed history. There wasn't another TV event like it until an American astronaut stepped on the moon for the first time. You were up in the wee hours for that too.

Then there was the time the family down the road from your uncle's was overcome by carbon monoxide fumes and nearly died. They were discovered unconscious in the nick of time, and several neighbor families crowded into the house to tend to them as they recovered. Death is and always will be a mystery, but witnessing near-death up close is a jaw-dropper when your are 8 or 9.

And there was the time (remember, these are a child's memories from 40 years ago) that word reached your uncle's farmhouse that a man was headed down the road with his children and intended to kill them. He was going to walk them to death or something, and on that hot summer day it seemed entirely plausible. Sure enough, the man and his children soon arrived. Even though the authorities, who were on their way, had warned against talking or interfering with the man for fear he could be dangerous, your aunt couldn't stand to think of thirsty children in such dire circumstances. She invited them into the yard for a drink of cool water. And then they left. The conclusion of this story is known to those who were adults at the time. Those who were children prefer to make up their own endings.

Finally, it was during one of those summers that you got hit by a pickup truck while running across the bridge over the creek next to your uncle's house. Surely you understand, dear reader, the elevated status a survivor of a car-pedestrian crash possesses, particularly among other children who treat you with respect and concern. For about a day. Then it's back to normal. You remember milking the situation for all it was worth, even getting to choose which TV show to watch. In spite of repeated attempts, you couldn't draw any blood from the scratch on your hand, the only evidence of mayhem.

It is memories, these and those of everyone who knew your Aunt Norene, that make the lives of those you love endure. These are stories you plan to tell at least to another generation of the family. Perhaps they, in turn, will tell some of these tales for years to come. They may even tell them with livelier characters and better endings.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.