Memoir Experiment Part Six—Hotrod T-Shirt

By Patrick
24 Jun 14 at 02:26 PM
In: Micellanea

As I think about this project and sink solipsistically back into it, I grow Proustian in my self-absorption. I am developing a fetishistic attachment to memory—real memory, not the ersatz memories, television-episode like, that we generate from seeing still and film images of our pasts. These are not memory but a replacement for it.

It’s hard for me to recall something as simple as the clothing I wore. There are many pictures from every age. I remember these images—sailor suit, matching brown tweed cap, coat, and short pants, or the red and blue plaid Toughskins daringly paired with an orange Chicago Bears T-shirt. I remember all these costumes from photographs, not from reality. That last outfit was worn on my seventh birthday. I was sick. I received my first bicycle. But I don’t really remember getting sick or first seeing that candy-apple red metallic cruiser with its black banana seat. I heard those stories when I was shown that photograph of myself, looking wan and disconnected, aloof from my surroundings and encircled by an aura of illness. I don’t remember how I felt, and I don’t remember those articles of clothing, just that photograph.

There are the items of clothing that still exist at my parents house, like the maroon wool jacket with gold leather sleeves, bearing the badge of the Washington Redskins. It is quite small. It resides in the closet near a larger jacket of purple nylon with the Minnesota Vikings logo. Why so much athletic apparel? The adults in my family must have wanted to present me with the trappings of manliness, the camaraderie of “watching the game,” the longing for flesh foods, the desire to be fruitful and multiply. Oh, what a miserable failure I’ve been!

I did at least have a modest interest in cars. There is but a single article of clothing from my childhood that I remember more or less clearly. It no longer exists and was not, I believe, ever captured on film. It was a white T-shirt, not reversible, but with an image on front and back. It could be worn with either image facing the front Each image was a Ratfink-like cartoon of a hotrod. I think one was a purple ’55 Chevy. The other is less clear … a green car … a Ford from the ’30s? I must have favored that ’55, or perhaps the color purple, for that is the one that faced forward most of the time. I refuse to try to find those images on Google, though I suspect they are out there. I don’t want to replace my memory with something more precise and so very much less precious.