Here’s a dream song, all right. I know that some people’s dreams, and people’s
psychological intricacies as well, are endlessly interesting to themselves, and
they love sharing. Especially if they’ve ever been in therapy, then look out. I
learn a lot from my dreams, and I had a powerful, life-changing dream once that
I shared too much. Telling it for the wrong reasons robbed it of much of its
power. If I ever extend a dream to someone else now, I enforce the twenty-second
rule.
This dream takes place on the
grounds of a “lunatic asylum.” I’m glad that phrase has gone out of use. When I
was a kid, living just east of Louisville, ’67-’69, on a clear day from our
treehouse, we could see Lakeland Asylum a couple miles off over vast stretches
of cornfields, officially known as Central State Hospital, formerly the Central
State Asylum for the Insane. We knew it simply as Lakeland, the mental hospital.
The buildings were razed in the 1990s and a state park was established on the
site, but it was a fully operating hospital when we lived there. The park is
okay, I guess, but the rest of the area is trashed. In those days it was a
lovely, quiet rural area, now it’s a brutalized wasteland of shopping centers,
parking lots, gas stations, Applebee’s, Wal-Mart, ad nauseum. The hospital and
its grounds were famous for being the most haunted place in Kentucky, for those
into that kind of thing. Now they’re haunted picnic shelters. The real horrible
fright comes from the Home Depot built in the pasture across from our old
house.
My brother and I and a couple of
our friends would ride our bikes down the country road to Lakeland, where we
bought sodas and candy in an old, old general store there. The smell of a
general store with bare wood floors is special and unmistakable. It’s nearly
gone now, but it was common until general stores started disappearing in the
late 60s, replace by Stop N Go, 7-Eleven, and now of course every gas station
is filled with chips, candy and sodas. The Lakeland store was staffed by the
patients of the hospital. We went there occasionally, but I remember one incident
clearly because it was a bit freaky. The clerks and cashiers were mentally
disabled, some of them severely, with ill-fitting clothes and funny haircuts,
and while their eyes weren’t actually twirling in their sockets, it seemed that
way to a 9-yr old because the people weren’t quite adhering to standard etiquette
regarding eye contact. But they were quite friendly and welcoming, happy to see
us, and while a visit there was sometimes a bit unsettling, it wasn’t usually scary.
They had a kind of urn that dispensed “Hot Dr. Pepper.” I never tried it, going
with cold orange soda instead. Years later, once microwaves became common, I tried
heating Dr. Pepper. It lost its fizz and made an explosive mess. Not good. But
they were always so eager to have us try their Hot Dr. Pepper. A Snickers bar
in Kentucky then was 11¢, a dime plus a 10% sales tax. I put one on
the counter, gave the clerk a dime and a nickel. He took the coins, opened the
heavy ornate gold cash register with the pull of a big handle, it churned and rang,
and he gave me two quarters change. “No,” I said. “Give me four pennies for the
change.” He gave me four pennies. “Here, these are your quarters.” He took the
quarters and exchanged them for three nickels, taking my hand in his, turning
my palm upright, dropping the nickels in, then closed my fingers and patting them
with a big smile. “No, the right changes is four cents. Four.” I held up four
fingers. He took the three nickels back and gave me four dimes, closing my hand
again, patting it and smiling at me. “Really, the candy bar is only eleven
cents. Here take the dimes.” “I don’t want to steal from you,” he said, the
first time I had heard him speak, his voice low but oddly muffled and raspy. The
woman in the store with him, who had been watching the whole time, came over
and said something that I couldn’t understand a word of although she seemed
furious, like she was about to spit at me. I remember her hair: Dark, not too
lengthy but curled under, with straight bangs cut too short. She was fairly
tall and it made her neck look too, too long. She had a moustachey shadow on
her upper lip. She kept talking, I didn’t understand a thing, until finally I
caught what sounded like, “Take your fucking money and buy something else.” I
had my correct change of four pennies and had dropped the four dimes on the
counter. She reached into the register pulled out a whole handful of quarters
and made me take them, and I got scared because she was still just furious. I
got an Orange Crush out of the cooler, actually a big red metal Coca-Cola tub filled
with melting ice, shyly gave the man a quarter, who took it smiling at me like
always, then I dropped the handful of quarters into my pocket and took off on
my bike. I came out over four bucks ahead on that deal. I told Dad about it
that night, and he explained that the store was not about making money, it was
occupational therapy for the patients. I gave him all the extra quarters, and he
took them back to the Lakeland general store—I assumed. He may have kept them
for all I know. The place is gone now. This is all just a memory. Memories of
dreams and memories of experiences are much alike.
No comments:
Post a Comment