David Murdock Column: On the geography of memories

As regular readers will remember, memory is a frequent subject of this column. For decades, I’ve been fascinated by human memory. The one lesson I’ve learned is that memory is unreliable — it may be accurate in generalities, but not usually in specifics. That’s why I write down everything that I want to clearly recall in detail.

Two things popped into mind today that reminded me of this lesson. First, a World War II newsreel — one that I know I saw on Turner Classic Movies years ago but cannot find on the internet today. TCM used to run classic newsreels from time to time as fillers between its movies, so I became quite fond of them.

For those who don’t remember them, newsreels were short documentaries that preceded the feature films in movie theaters in the 1960s and before. They were usually only a few minutes long and had a somewhat humorous touch to the dialogue, unless dealing with serious or tragic subjects. The ones produced during World War II are absolute classics of the form.

So, the newsreel in question was about the Paramarines.  Y’all read that right — Paramarines.  During World War II, the United States Marine Corps raised several types of specialized units that were not continued after the war, like these Marine paratrooper units. As far as I know, they never made a “combat jump,” but were instead utilized as regular Marine Corps units. Their training was the subject of a newsreel, which is how I found out about them in the first place.

The reasons I remember it so clearly are twofold: first, I wrote it down when I saw it, and second, it contained the best example of “newsreel humor” I ever heard.

Now, where that note I wrote is, I have no idea. It’s probably somewhere in my filing cabinet, but I can’t remember where I filed it. It really doesn’t matter, because I remember the line so well: toward the end, the narrator solemnly intones that the purpose of the Paramarines is “to get in the enemy’s hair and give him Yankee Doodle dandruff.”

That’s just genius. I wrote it down because it’s just genius. It’s likely why I remembered it, too.

It popped into mind today because I watched “A League of Their Own,” one of my favorite movies, over the weekend. Penny Marshall, the director, used montages to condense the timeframe of the movie, and one of those montages is a newsreel in the style of those classics from the World War II era in which the movie is set. Like so much in that movie, it’s spot-on perfect.

The other thing about memory that popped into mind today is the “geography” of our memories. It struck me that “A League of Their Own” is more than 30 years old! It can’t be, I thought, as I looked up the release date — but there it was in print … July 1, 1992.

Which somewhat explains why young people don’t completely understand my stories sometimes — the geography of my memories differs from theirs, sometimes in drastic ways. For example, I remember going to the theater to see that movie; they don’t know that the movie was made, unless they’re a serious film fan.

Here’s where it really got weird — Attalla looks different now than it did then, say in 1992. Take that stoplight at Fourth Avenue and Third Street, where the CVS Pharmacy is. In 1992, in addition to the CVS, there was a Blockbuster Video there at the end of that strip mall, Jack’s Restaurant was across Third Street from the Blockbuster, and Johnson’s Giant Food was across Third Street from CVS. It was a busy corner.

The CVS is still there, but Jack’s has moved a couple of blocks south, Johnson’s has moved out to the intersection of Highways 11 and 77, and Blockbuster … well, there’s only one solitary Blockbuster left open in all of America.  And it ain’t in Attalla.

Here’s the thing, though.  I’m not sure all those stores were open there in 1992. I’m sure the Jack’s was there by then, and so was Johnson’s. I’m fairly certain CVS was there in 1992, but Blockbuster might not have come to Attalla by that time. I’m just not sure.

The point is that my geography of memory includes all of that, just like it includes newsreels I’ve seen, and “A League of Their Own.”

It’s the order of it all that sometimes eludes me. That’s when I do some old-fashioned “dead reckoning,” sort of like I would with a paper map. I know that Jack’s was on that corner around 1992 because a friend of mine from high school worked there, for example.

Some of my other dead reckonings of the geography of memory are sort of strange in their specifics, though. “Yankee Doodle dandruff,” for example. I have no idea where the note I took is, but I remember taking it clearly. I was watching a movie on TCM, and the newsreel came on afterwards. No idea what the movie was, just the line from the newsreel.

I wish I could remember all I read as clearly as I do “Yankee Doodle dandruff.”

David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions reflected are his own.       

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock explores the geography of memories