This morning I turned on the television and heard the perky weather girl predict ten inches of snow for today. Rather than creep along the slushy highway in my car, I opted to make my commute via slow, safe public transportation. And so, I walked to the light rail station, took the light rail north to the city bus hub, and boarded a bus that wound through the suburban neighborhoods and finally dropped me off about a quarter mile from my office. The bus trip took about twice as much time as traveling by car, but produced much less wear on the nerves.
The bus is a perfect environment for idle thought. I found the following chorus running through my mind:
Swamp Fox! Swamp Fox!
Tail on his hat,
Nobody knows where The Swamp Fox's at.
Swamp Fox! Swamp Fox!
Hiding in the glen,
He runs away to fight again.
This is the chorus to the Swamp Fox theme song, from the Disney television show depicting the adventures of Revolutionary War hero, Francis Marion. According to Wikipedia, the show ran sporadically from October 1959 to January 1961 and amounted to a mere eight episodes. I watched several of the early episodes when I was but an urchin back in Iowa. Why would I recall the theme song from such an obscure television show after the passage of fifty years?
I used to think that memories would flicker to life one last time before they were extinguished. I saw the mind operating like a hotel clerk; the old memories were like visitors checking out. Some random memory from long ago would rouse itself, pay its respects to the conscious mind, and then take its leave.
I abandoned this notion after observing that I could repeatably trigger an old memory by repeating the appropriate stimulus. For instance, if I lean over the kitchen sink late in the afternoon when the sun is at just the right angle, I will recall viewing Fritz Lang's silent movie The Spiders ten years ago. (The movie was two episodes of a serial about a gang of criminals called the Spiders who schemed to dominate the world.) On many occasions I have leaned over my sink and found myself saying the word "Spiders" under my breath. This tells me something about the mind or, at least, my own peculiar mind.
Something about the bus ride or the passengers or the snow-packed suburban streets triggered a long-dormant memory about the Swamp Fox show. The snow storm will be continuing overnight and into tomorrow, and I plan to repeat my bus ride. What other childhood memories will be shaken loose?
