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hill billy handkerchief in Prospect Park
Wednesday, October 31 2001
The memories from my childhood are distorted and obscured by the layers of memories overlying them. Looking down upon them there at the bottom of the pond, through the shimmering 90s and my milky-opalescent adolescence, the winters seemed to have had more snow, my stomach seemed to have ached at the slightest provocation, and, perhaps worst of all, my nose seemed to be running the entire time. Perhaps my colds weren't any worse then than they are now, but that's just not how I remember them.
My head cold that started before the weekend and continued through the wedding had an acute stage lasting about a day, during which I was slightly weaker than normal. But the period of acute sinus discharge lasted only three or four days, far less than such periods seemed to have lasted when I was a kid. Right now I'm in the far-flung penumbra of the illness, and my nose only needs to be blown a couple times each day. Tonight when I was walking Sally, I had nothing to blow my nose into so I did a classic "hill billy handkerchief" in Prospect Park. I wondered how common such rituals are in Prospect Park. It isn't called the hill billy handkerchief for nothing. But then again, city slickers aren't stereotyped as the type who like to answer nature's call in the great outdoors, yet there's plenty of besmirched toilet paper and olfactory evidence of outdoor urination throughout the park.
The only evidence that tonight was Halloween was a bunch of shaving cream and a few broken eggs on the sidewalk in front of the brownstone on President Street. Somebody had also set up on a couple jack o'lanterns on the stoop, but no one was bothering to staff the door in case a trick-or-treater arrived. I didn't see a single child anywhere.
Back in the house, Edna came in from the backyard with a tiny dead bird, a little kinglet, vireo or warbler. Most of its insides had already been devoured and it was little more than a husk. She was very proud of her find.
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