Tag Archives: nostalgia

Back Acres (Flash Fiction)

I look out the window as pine trees and mailboxes quickly pass by. My dad behind the wheel as I sit in the passenger’s seat. The truck’s seats smelling of firewood and gasoline. I listen to the tires hit the gravel as I read the green wooden sign, Back Acres. I focus my eyes on trees that line the driveway and the sheds made from weathered wood. My dad parks the truck, and I jump out and stretch my legs. I smell the fresh forest air and notice the tall, towering trees next to the little cabin and my grandpa’s vegetable garden—cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, and green carrot tops poking through the dirt.

On the other side of the cabin, apple trees tower over my small stature. My grandpa, grey-haired and wrinkled smile, stands holding a plastic ice cream pail, collecting the fallen apples. Green and red, some with holes from worms searching for a home, others bruised from the fall. I slip my sandals off and allow my toes to mingle with the overgrown green grass. I watch the trees as the wind moves through the branches, my grandpa walking over to me, greeting me with a warm hug and smile, “Apples are ready to pick.” I grin and search for the perfect apple. I bend down and pick up an apple. Green with red spots, no holes, and no bruises. I bring it up to my mouth and take a bite, sourness flowing from cheeks to lips puckering. I notice the apples hanging from the trees and the tiny ants that climb up toward the top. I wonder what it would be like to sit on the tops of those trees and what it looks like past the miles of trees that surround us. I feel myself exhale, and it is as if time has stopped for just a moment.

I continue to eat the apple as I rush to follow my dad and grandpa. We enter the woods, shaded from the sun, and follow the dirt path. I walk over broken sticks and wet leaves. We pass wood piles and squirrels and continue until we stop at a green bridge. I imagine that the bridge leads to a castle or continues until you reach a magical forest. I pick up stones and toss them into the flowing river and watch leaves float as they race each other downstream.

I listen to the tires hit the gravel and watch the pine trees rush past as my husband and I drive down the narrow treelined driveway. I find my dad near the garden, picking green beans and placing them in a plastic ice cream pail. I join and throw off my sandals next to a large, towering tree. I let my feet mingle with the dirt and pick the cherry tomatoes from the green vines. The tomatoes leave the vine, but instead of placing them in the pail, I quickly savor them. After the pails are full of tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and potatoes, I enjoy staring at the row of large sunflowers that line the back of the garden. I leave the garden and make my way toward the cluster of apple trees on the other side of the cabin.

An empty wooden pail sits beneath one of the apple trees. I sit next to the pail under the tree and take in the fresh summer air. Between the cluster of apple trees, I let the warmth of the sun touch my skin as I remember the past soft voices of my dad and grandpa talking about the carrots and the cucumbers. I can almost taste the sour apples that made my lips pucker and hear my grandpa’s soft voice as he tells me, “Apples are ready to pick.”

When Skies Are Gray (You Are My Sunshine)—Flash Fiction

I jump out of the car and race my siblings to see who can ring the doorbell first. We hear a “come in” that slips under the crack of the door and another “hello” that echoes from the kitchen. We walk up the stairs into the mudroom, and my eyes notice the wooden coat rack that holds my grandpa’s hats on each knob. Hats for running errands, hats for birthday parties, hats for other special occasions, and hats for everyday wear. There are family pictures hanging on the wall and a small electric organ hiding quaintly in the corner. We take off our coats and place our shoes next to the pile of shoes that fill the entryway.

We open the door that leads to the kitchen, and my grandma welcomes us with a hug and a kiss on each cheek. I can smell the scent of her lotion—baby powder and fresh laundry. The smell of bold coffee lingers under my nose from the fresh pot of coffee sitting next to the kitchen sink. My eyes peer at the angels that are displayed as magnets on the refrigerator, as wall décor, and on towels.

I pass the kitchen into the living room with green shag carpet and see my grandpa sitting in his wooden framed chair—a blue trucker hat with the writing AAMCO Transmission hides his dark wavy hair, and a toothpick pokes out of the corner of his mouth. He stands up and gives a handshake that turns into a hug with a “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Grandpa!”

“Now do you remember what I got when I was little?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” we say chuckling.

“A popcorn ball and a toy truck,” we all say together.

“And by the end of the day, my popcorn ball would be eaten, and my toy truck was broken.” He sits back down in his recliner.

“The basement is ready; I turned the heater on, so it should be warm,” he says, and we rush down to the basement.

I can feel the cold cement rush through my white socks, but my cheeks are warm from the heat that dances in the air. As soon as our feet touch the cement floor of my grandpa’s workshop, we call dibs on the 1960s exercise bike, and my cousin turns on the small boxed TV with the click of the dial. Since I didn’t call dibs first, I sit on the army green rug that blankets the cold cement floor. As we watch television and take turns pedaling on the stationary bike, I look around at all the tools that my grandpa has labeled, most I have no clue what they were called, but he did. Each tool assigned a coffee can, a bucket, or a spot hanging on the wall—label included with masking tape and black permanent marker penmanship.

My grandpa’s workshop is a magical haven for us kids, a place the adults dare not enter. Unless they are summoning us for dinner or after dinner ice cream and pie. There is an invisible magical Do Not Enter sign placed on the white wooden door, and the only sign of adult life is the faint echo of voices that float down the stairs from the kitchen.

  In the far corner of the room is a small closet. It’s heavy wooden door with metal hinges creak when we open it. It smells like moth balls and spider webs, and we are surrounded by wooden shelves lined with boxes of knick-knacks—picture frames, spools of yarn, plastic jars. The closet is small but just big enough for us to fit.

There are wooden slats on the floor; I look down and slowly place my trinkets safely in my jeans pocket—I imagine the spiders and magical Borrowers who live in the shadows beneath the wooden slats of the floor. We pretend we are hiding in the basement of a pirate ship. I can feel the waves taking us back and forth as I stare out the small window; a weeping willow stares back at me. But in the land of pirates, it is a giant ocean that roars back with waves that toss the boat to and fro.

After dinner, my grandpa arrives back at the kitchen table from the laundry room with a large brown cardboard box with permanent marker penmanship. He gently places it on the table, and we all sit and listen to him as he tells us stories from the war (WWII) and his childhood. He pulls out a yellow manila envelope that is filled with pictures, newspaper clippings, and trinkets from places that he once visited. With each object, he tells a story.

“We had no radio, no telephone, no nothing, all you had is your family, so someone could come there and start telling you stories, that was really entertaining, and they would tell you some of the spookiest stories you ever have heard. In them days they would keep you up at night, because you had nothing else, so you believe them.”

 Later that evening, after a cardboard box full of stories, we dance around the kitchen table, the lights dim, and my grandma claps to the beat. The silver harmonica that my grandpa holds in his weathered hands glimmers as it hums, and my grandpa inhales and then exhales the melodies.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray . . .”

Once the melodies stop, and my grandma turns on the light, my grandpa leaves but then quickly returns with three cigar boxes—each cover reading King Edward Invincible Deluxe—with a harmonica in each. He sits down and taps the harmonica firmly on his leg.

“Now with this mouth organ all you gotta do is tap it real firm.” We sit down and echo his movements. He picks up his harmonica and starts playing a familiar song that I remember him humming from time to time.

“I woke up one morning
I looked up on the wall
The Cooties and the Bedbugs
Were having a game of ball.
The score was six to nothing.
The Cooties were ahead,
I got so darned excited that I fell right out of bed.
I went down stairs to breakfast
The coffee was so stale
It tasted like tobacco juice right out of the county jail.”

This song made me afraid of bedbugs and wonder if cooties were real. But I’d rather not find out.

I curl up under my Muppet Babies comforter and stare up at my bedroom ceiling. Bright glow-in-the-dark stars shine back at me. I close my eyes, and stories and melodies fill my dreams as I drift off to sleep.