I only subscribe to one magazine, and even that is a gift subscription to Runner's World from my thoughtful children. I don't generally come home from the grocery store or the gas station with a magazine under my arm either. But I sure get a kick out of cracking open ( sometimes literally ) an old issue of a magazine when I find them.
I don't mean a two year old Vanity Fair, I'm talking a 30 year old Newsweek or TIME issue. Maybe an even older LIFE magazine. It almost seems there is more to take in when a magazine is decades old, because there is the backdrop of all the time that's come along since to hold it against. And the question is, which is more intriguing, the ads or the news and society stories of the day? Which hot new products from three or four decades ago are long forgotten and which lucky few have survived to become standbys today? And what news was rocking the world then that we may or may not even have memory of now? Or even better yet, what seemingly minor entertainer, politician, or news item of forty years ago grew to become a very big deal? Little did they know!
And when all those areas are duly compared to our current enlightened age, there's always the laughable hair and clothing styles to review, or should I say ridicule? We wore that? Oh yeah, we wore it out!
The last time I had the opportunity to flip through a crinkly, fading full-color time capsule, I think it was an old TV Guide I'd kept from the last M*A*S*H episode. I dusted off the cover on my jeans, and as I looked through it, was struck by the idea that looking back at an old publication is a lot like looking back over a life. The big deals that turned out in retrospect to be pretty trivial. The new aquaintence in 1979 that today is a close friend. Or the best friend in that same year that I can't even find today on Facebook.
How about that silk shirt with the big collar and the bold graphics that in 1975, when paired carefully with some platform shoes, made me cool as Cornelius. (sorry youngsters, a Soul Train reference...Google it )
But there's one issue from September 1981 that I really should just rip the cover off and frame it for as often as I reflect on it. That seemingly insignificant moment on the cold, muddy marching band practice field when the pics and tubas passed each other in the drill. I bent down to yank on the tongue of my Chucks and looking up, there she was looking down. Just a seemingly minor moment on a page buried in that months edition.
Thirty years later we made the cover story, celebrating twenty five years of marriage, joined in the picture by our three great kids who renew dad's Runners World every year.
No comments:
Post a Comment