Time Machines

I just finished reading Stephen Baxter’s Time Ships. A good read but not as good as some of his work. However the subject matter was entertaining. Baxter writes as the title suggest, about time and the movement backward and forwards there in. Baxter did sort of a re-write of Orson Wells’ The time Machine with a nice application of quantum mechanics. The book has got me thinking though ‘if I had the ability to time travel where would I go?’

Most nights as I fall asleep, I fall asleep by truing to remember a specific time and event and going to that point in my memory as best as I can. This system works well because soon I am, asleep. Most often then not I choose to go to the twin bridges just South of Boise, Idaho in the summer 1964.

So, I guess I would return to Boise, Idaho 1964. I am 14 years old in this summer of 64, the Beatles have stated their invasion of the USA along with other Brits. It’s July and the second cutting of hay is still two or three weeks off. It’s hot the day I return. I had finished what chores my father had left me to do and I was free. I told my mom headed for the bridge and I jumped on my hand me down schwinn ten speed and pump down to the twin bridges.

I would get to the bridge about one- o-clock. Mom always made us wait an hour after eating lunch before we were able to swim. By July the heat is intense warming the water sufficient to sustain long term swimming and by this time in the Summer there was always a crowd of five to ten people hanging out at the bridge. Teenagers and kids. We stood round talking and listening till it was too hot to stand then we jump over rail of the bridge into the cold, cold water. The older teenagers smoked and occasionally would show up with cans of beer and sometimes get rowdy. There were occasional fights as the teenagers established dominance but it was mostly a neighborhood crowd. The summer afternoons seemed to last forever. If you were lucky you were able to coax one of the older guys out of one of their Lucky’s and get dizzy smoking it. If you were really luck lucky Tuck (the local fantasy chick) would wander down to the bridge in her cutoffs and tank top. Tuck worked at the hospital 3-11 shift. She often spent her mornings and early afternoon lying out in her back yard nude working on her tan. I knew this because I knew Charlie who was Tuck’s younger brother and we had a tree house over the spot where she laid out. She thought she was safe from view from the road but not from the tree house—or maybe she did not care about the tree house…and that would be another day to go back to.