January 17, 2023

Sundays I Can Still Remember

Elliott Street Brattleboro VT Sundays — This building once held a wonderful natural food restaurant in Brattleboro.

Looking back to Some of the Sundays When I Posted to this Blog

I like to look back at certain topics that I wrote about on this blog many years ago. In 2013, I wrote this post about a particularly memorable Sunday. It was a Sunday in March, and now an ice cream shop sits where the Common Ground Restaurant was located on Elliott Street in Brattleboro back then.

Sunday in Montreal 2012

In 2012, which was a bad year with the loss of Joe Obeng and Kent St John, I ruminated about another Sunday. Some Sundays I am traveling like this post when I was headed up to Montreal for the popular Tour de Nuit nighttime road ride. That was really fun, careening around the dark streets of the city with so many other riders, and the crowd egging us on.

Family TV Time, as a Kid and Adult from 2009

In 2009, I wrote about my memories of my family in Blawenburg, all watching Sunday night television together, shows like the FBI, Gentle Ben, and The Waltons. Cozy by the fire, family TV was a really important part of my youth.

Here is what I wrote. When I was a young lad, one of my fondest memories was watching television with my whole family on Sunday nights. We had an old family friend, a bachelor named Fairfield Day, who used to visit us sometimes and join us on those cozy Sundays when we watched “Gentle Ben” and other shows while gathered together by the fire.

Then, I brought us back to 2009.

I drove down to our friends Cathy and Tom’s house in Westchester and tonight I joined their family to watch a TV show called “Modern Family.” It’s a clever and sarcastic send-up of a truly modern family –with a gay son, a dad with a bodacious young wife, a crazy jealous former wife, and a younger generation brimming with hormones. We watched the show and laughed together, and it reminded me of those times as a youngster when I did the same. Except for this time, I was Fairfield Day, the visiting bachelor joining the family around the tube.

A Sultry Summer Sunday in August 2010

Yesterday, a long Sunday, was August 1st. I bet I wasn’t the only person who told himself ‘wow, summer’s half over!’ and lamented about how time goes so fast, especially during these precious weeks of summer. The days are long, but how come they feel like they slip away so fast?

In this post, I shared about Circulo Italiano, a Club I used to belong to with Cindy Bigras.

“After lots of red wine, it was time to play bocce. The park in Easthampton has a sparsely used set of courts and we rallied the members with bocce balls and they came over with two more bottles of wine for the players and spectators. The game is deceptively simple, affording no value at all for a hard toss as in bowling, no, it’s about wiggling in as close to the pilota as you can.”

Riding bikes in Mexico City's Reforma street, closed to cars most of Sundays. — Riding bikes in Mexico City’s Reforma street, closed to cars most of Sundays.

Mexico City: Riding Bikes on No Car Sunday

This was a great memory, riding bikes on a road that’s usually choked with traffic, the Reforma in Mexico City.

I had the bike, and then I rode. Alongside me down the big boulevard were parents with children on tiny bikes, 20-somethings pulling dogs on leashes, and a pair of men on a tandem bike. People had smiles on their faces as they waited for the volunteers to let them pass; one concession is that they do let the cars go through just not drive on the big street.

Experiencing the freedom of riding where cars dominate six other days of the week. You could tell my joy was shared by thousands of others, right up until 2 pm when they’d let the taxis, cars and trucks back on the Reforma.