When you and I were young, Maggie

I have forgotten a lot of my youth

     My cousin Sally was in town for a few days.  She and her husband Warren, and dog Pal, drove down from Alaska to visit me and her brother and some others along the way.
     During the time together, we talked about a lot of things, things I had forgotten, or she had.
     She reminded me that I had a stack of comic books that I kept in my closet and NO ONE could read them.  We had fights over sharing my comics.  This would have been 1958, 1959 .... I bought comics every time one came out.  I wonder now how much they would have been worth today.
     But she forgot that when I went to her house, which was only two blocks away, I would bring my toy soldiers.  She would play with my soldiers while I would play with the dolls in her doll house.
     One aunt, but we could not remember which one, would constantly ask us if we needed to take Milk of Magnesia or some other gunk.  Sally said she used to follow us around with the bottle.  I don't remember that at all.
    Nor do I remember the bag of money we dug up.  Sally insists we were digging in the dirt in a corner area of her block when we dug up a bag of coins.  She said we took them to her house and then split them.  I don't remember, but that could explain all the comic books.
     We did remember riding bikes down to the Coca Cola plant and buying 5 cent bottles of Coke out of the vending machine inside the building.  These were the little glass bottles, and they were always cold and crisp.
     We talked about  not going to the Beatles at Comiskey Park even though she had tickets.   Funny thing.  She got the tickets from a roommate at the U of I.  There were two, and she asked me but I did not want to go.  She did not want to go alone, so she never used the tickets.  Years later, she told me, she was selling some stuff on e-Bay and checked out how much Beatles records were going for.  She spotted two ticket stubs for sale.....at some price like $50 each.  So she put her complete tickets on the site, and sold them for $800!  She made a nice profit, I think, in part, thanks to me.
    She remembered I would eat their dog's Milk Bones.  I remember eating them, and liking them.  Probably not the most nutritious snack.  Maybe that's why I growl so much.
    I had a crush on her next door neighbor, and when we were about 14 we were in Sally's front room.  Her mom had a collection of birds, ceramic birds.  Very delicate, very expensive, very breakable.  While Sally was eating dinner in the back with her mom and dad, Pam and I were having a pillow fight.  I don't remember which one of us threw the pillow, but I can still hear the sound that cardinal made when it hit the floor.  Pam and I were banished from the house....and we had to replace the cardinal.
    She doesn't remember the one time we double dated.  I was still in high school.  Her boyfriend was able to legally buy beer, and he gave me one while I was with my date in the back seat.  It was his dad's car, if I remember correctly, and I dropped the beer, spilling it all over the seat, floor, my date and me. it kind of messed up a fun night.
     We were close.  As the high school years passed, our relationship changed.  She went to the U of I, became a journalist, moved to Alaska while I stayed in Illinois, became a journalist, moved to Rochelle, and became a teacher.
      We hadn't seen each other in years.  Jackie and I visited her in 96, I had visited her in 88, and she was here a couple of times, but not for the last nine or ten years.
     It was a great visit.  I look forward to seeing her again next summer.  Maybe I can convince Jackie to go there.  I hear it's a great drive.