RetroLounge
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Sat Feb-21-09 12:16 PM
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The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sat 2/21/2009) |
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Holidays and Sundays
They'd settle in our living room, cross their legs—three or four uncles, my old man. They'd stare at each other and pull at their ears while the women cleared the dishes.
Okay, maybe somebody would mention rain and draw a nod from across the room, or a ball game that had gone into extra innings,
but mostly there was silence, as though they'd all agreed the world was beyond comment.
I grew up thinking this was how men behaved, holding their thoughts close to their chests. A compliment, sure, at dinner— the beans, the potatoes—but that was it.
Nobody fired off a joke, nobody lobbed a war story over anybody's bow. Not the tiniest pinch of philosophy, politics, theology.
Only that slow retreat into calculated silence, which wasn't exactly boredom, but more the silence you got at church or funerals,
which was the way you faced the sacred, or death, or that inscrutable laughter from the kitchen.
David Bottoms
********************
:hi:
RL
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CaliforniaPeggy
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Sat Feb-21-09 12:36 PM
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Ah, nice!
A real look into the male psyche from that era...
I remember those days only too well...
Very evocative!
Thanks, sweetie...
:hi:
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RetroLounge
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Sat Feb-21-09 01:46 PM
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lizziegrace
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Sat Feb-21-09 12:52 PM
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RetroLounge
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Sat Feb-21-09 01:47 PM
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blueraven95
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Sat Feb-21-09 04:47 PM
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RetroLounge
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Sat Feb-21-09 05:20 PM
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Fri Apr 26th 2024, 10:36 AM
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