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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Time Out of Mind


Poking around in the attic and back cupboards of the Internet today, your Head Trucker came across this little film about San Marcos, Texas, circa 1946.  It's about midway between Austin and San Antonio, home of Texas State University, and formerly of a popular tourist attraction called Aquarena Springs which offered glass-bottom boat rides there on the cool, clear San Marcos River.  There was also an air base at the edge of town in the forties and fifties, so between the three things the town managed not only to survive but also to prosper during the years of depression and war.

There's nothing spectacular or unusual about the film - but it just struck me as being a particularly nice example of a little Texas town, what one can be at its best.  And of course the patina of the years gives it a certain charm, with people waving or talking into the camera (unfortunately it's a silent film, so we don't get to hear their voices) - like merry ghosts from the Beyond, or the people Harry Potter sees in the Mirror of Erised. Or like the inhabitants of the ideal Jimmy Stewart kind of town in It's a Wonderful Life, who neither know nor suspect your existence, but whom you can call back to life in all their fullness at any moment, as often as you please, with faces as familiar as those of your own loved ones.

I suppose we all need a place like that sometimes, even just to think about. Somewhere you fit in, a place you belong, where all's right with the world. Or right enough.  And where everybody knows your name - in a good way.

Nothing extraordinary here, just the utter ordinariness of a now far-off, quite unreachable place, which touched my heart.  Thought some of you might like to see it, too. I can't embed it, so just click on the link above.

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