The past is such a wonderful path to travel. And you know, the internet with its e-mail functions can bring old friends together who haven’t seen each other for 40 or 50 years. Just send an e-mail to an old friend, or even better, to a group of old friends and start the message with, ‘Remember when …’ we did this or that, here or there; or, ‘I was looking into my photo album and guess what I found, a picture of when we …’

One of the fantastic functions of e-mail is that you can post that picture right in the message and get the old brains stirring up things the others didn’t remember, but they will remember when you remind them. Pictures of all sorts from the past cross the airwaves and land on desktops everywhere you send them.

The comments will bounce back. ‘Looking at that picture, and how we dressed. It’s interesting how 50’s rock band suits and white shoes, etc., were influenced by the rural, the southern look, like Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc., and we dressed like them to be hip and cool,’ could be one of the responses. Or, ‘Check it out, and the hairdos,’ could be another. ‘Did I wear my hair like that?’ ‘What an ugly blouse I had on!’

‘I don’t have any records for the 50s and 60s. Maybe something will show up later. Do any of you have any records of those years?’ one of your friends may ask. And even if someone in your old gang did have these records, which of them would still have a 45 or 78rpm record player; that would be called hanging on to the past. That would be having a firm grip on the past and not letting go. “Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” This is so true from the award winning television show, The Wonder Years, about the past and all its fun.

Someone will always bring up the malt shop, or coffee shop, or the drive-in restaurant with the cheap hamburgers where you met your friends in the cars you drove just after getting a driver’s license. Or the drive-in theater where you went as a group to sorta look at the movie, but more likely looked at your date.

‘Remember when we …’, ‘remember the time we went skinny dippin in the lake and got caught with our pants down … literally’. Good stories and they take us back and make us get stuck in the younger years. ‘By the way, where is so-and-so now? I haven’t heard from him or about him for years. Has anyone?’ This is a question that always comes up when jaunting down memory lane: The missing person … the guy or gal who was always way-out-there and uncontrollable within the social standards assumed by the gang.

And a reunion always gets into the rapping session someplace. ‘Let’s get together someday, somewhere, and have a party.’ Yes, the internet gets old friends and stories and photos in the same world at the same time, but the physical movement of the bodies through the airwaves is not possible … yet. As said, the past is a wonderful path to travel, but the trains, planes and automobiles have issues. However it can happen if a gang of memories wants to get together again in the real world. But remember what Will Rogers said, “Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was.

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