Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
          --Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

I remember, now, that it was actually "Diahann Carroll." And when I thought of posting on her, I remembered there was an h in her name, and then it just didn't seem right -- that there was any reasonable place to put that h. But there are a ton of entries on Diahann Carroll, and so I'm glad to say that she's not forgotten at all: I'd been thinking of Frost's poem "Provide provide," which seemed just to grim to apply to anyone that famous (although I guess it was pretty true to Veronica Lake's experience).

posted by william 9:01 PM
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I remember that Diahanne Carroll lived in our building. This was when she was starring on The Diahanne Carroll Show, which was in some ways a forerunner of Seinfeld. On the show she used her real name but was involved in fictional activities. She lived in New York on the show too, but not at 175, rather in a more modern, post-war building. And I was never sure whether to think that building counted as a representation of our building (after all, it was the building where Diahanne Carroll lived), or whether on the show she lived in a different building. In some ways I'm still not sure, since the building on the show wasn't real (presumably) to begin with. So there wasn't another building that was different from ours, only a fictional one. But was it a fictionalization of ours or not? (One problem was I think it was downtown from 90th street.)

posted by william 9:02 PM
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I remember, from a Speedy Gonzales cartoon: "Senor, I forget to tell you. Slowpoke Gonzales: he always carry a gun." I laughed and laughed.

posted by william 7:58 PM
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I remember my downtown grandmother telling me that ventriloquists "talked with their stomachs." This was one of those facts that seemed amazing, and then when I was older I realized it was wrong, and then when I was much older I found out it was true.

We had a cousin in South America, a smoker, I believe, who had to have his larynx removed and had to learn to talk with his stomach. I thought this was pretty cool. but hard, since essentially it involved learning a circus-type skill as an adult that most people could never perform. I don't think I ever met him, but I was impressed with him none the less. I believe she told me about him as a warning against smoking, but at the time smoking was so much out of the question for me that I didn't see him as a warning at all. He seemed a fool to smoke, and there was an odd dissonance between his being a fool and his learning this tremendous and difficult skill.

posted by william 5:46 AM
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I remember being surprised that park and playground were not synonymous. I think my uptown grandparents took me to what they called a park, and I was looking forward to it -- and then there was no playground there! I confused the two because whenever the adults took me "to the park" we went to the playground (in Riverside Park at 90th street). A little later I think I thought that what defined a park was a place with a playground in it, so that playgrounds and parks formed coextensional sets. (A playground by itself was enough to constitute a park.) I still have something of this archaic view of parks, since I still can't quite get either a National Park or an industrial park to seem legitimately so-called.

posted by william 11:35 AM
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I remember that it was the Herings I think who called the gigantic field that constituted most of their property in Stormville the "big field." It must have been farmland: there was one large tree, maybe an apple or an oak, at its edge, but not part of the woods that limited it. The Herings used to ride there, and it seemed to be filled with lots of hay. It went uphill parallel to the dirt path to out cottage above the Hering's, which we rented from them. It seems to me that this was my first experience of something that people were calling a field. In New York that wasn't a word we used much, except maybe when talking about sports, but even then we didn't -- no "ball fields," no mention of Wrigley field, nothing like that. So the big field was my first sense of a new and major feature of topography in the world: that the world is full of fields. And I think there's a trace of that memory and that surprise every time I read about a field, and I tend to read about them when atrocities have occured (farms are not much part of my reading life). The world is full of fields, they're everywhere to be discovered, come upon, noticed. The sun beats down on them, and they're bugs and nettles and long grass, but also flowers and places to run, snakes (like the garden snake Lou Hering cut in half with the lawn mower) but also tons of other interesting things. Fields should remind you of the surprise of being alive. How can you take someone's life there? (I'm partly thinking of John Bricuth's (John Irwin's) pro-death-penalty poem which ends with his evoking the murderer taking someone's life as he "screamed for mercy at the edge of a field.")

posted by william 7:55 AM
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I remember mosquito netting in the hotels in Italy that we used to go to. I think especially in Milan, and maybe in Bellagio the first year or two we went there. I remember that they hung over the beds in very fine mesh, but we didn't use them. (My two year old sister might have been covered though.) They were a relic from some other era, and interesting and elegant, like the hotels themselves. I regretted not needing them. They hung down from the posters of the poster-bed frame, or could be pulled down. I loved how sheer they were.

posted by william 4:22 PM
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I remember (mildly disgusting memory) that just when I was learning the equations for parabolas I had a series of zits on my right cheek that looked (in the mirror, I only now realize) like y = square root of x. This somehow reconciled me to those zits.

posted by william 9:49 AM
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I remember a couple of Michael Hobin's routines in seventh grade. In one he half-squatted like in the vaudeville routine where hands and knees criss-cross and opening and closing his legs very rapidly (also like in the routine), he said "Dicky-itchy." We laughed and laughed. And he was fond of his own nonce-term, used where later one might use "absitively-posolutely." He said "exacatacally." This is the first time I've ever tried spelling it out.

posted by william 3:26 PM
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I remember Pan-X (ASA 100) and Tri-X (ASA 400) black and white film. I think they still exist, but aren't the preferred versions any more. I remember (I think) that Pan-X came in purple-ornamented boxes, and Tri-X in green. The green was thrilling, and Tri-X had the same prestige for me that deconstruction would have later. It seemed inscrutably self-possessed and fast. I liked the idea of fast film too, of using that word in a way slightly different from the way it applied to cars or runners. I also remember color film, as having I think an ASA either of 80 or of 125: something you had to fiddle with on the light meter.

posted by william 10:37 AM
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I remember "I'll get on it right away" (Dick Tracy into his wrist-phone).

posted by william 7:56 PM
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I remember my uptown grandmother identifying a cement mixer for me when we were driving one day. I was six or so. I don't know whether she pointed the truck out to me or whether I was the one who saw it and asked her about why it was revolving. But it was very interesting: the conical body of the truck, big and dense and graceful all at the same time. I always associate ugly, big, elegant, interesting, effective machinery with my grandmother: you could trust her and you could trust these machines in the same way. There was nothing remotely seductive about them; but they were solidly competent and made the world just the comfortable place you wanted the world to be.

posted by william 2:13 PM
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I remember taking up Peter Rogers' (I think) practice of dropping the pull tabs from soda cans into the full can itself (as a way of not littering, or of getting rid of the top). It was interesting that generally the tab didn't fall out again into your mouth as you were drinking, though at the end, when you were getting the last few drops you could feel it and bounce it around on the tip of your tongue. (You still get that slightly sharp sensation around your tongue when you dart it into the near empty can). One day my father saw me do this and was appalled: the dirtyness of the top, the possibility of choking!

He also objected, some other time, to my intentionally swallowing cherry-pits. I'd done it once by accident, and was told (and saw) that it was all right, so I did it intentionally then, till he stopped me. I think I was just as glad.

posted by william 7:08 AM
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I remember my parchment-like replica of the Declaration of Independence. (I think also that it was there that I first saw and was confused by the long f-like initial and medial S.) It was neat to have one, but at some point and for some reason I got a second (I might by then have lost the first) and this easy access to two copies of this rare document somehow cheapened it.

posted by william 6:45 AM
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I remember, thinking of Laugh-In, Walnettos. I just now discover they were a candy from the twenties that are stilla available. They sounded vaguely obscene. The dirty old man (Arte Johnson, it turns out) offers them to the dowdy woman (Ruth Buzzi, ITO), who is primly attempting to avoid him on a park bench.

I remembered this because I was remembering when our class went to see a taping of the dress rehearsal of the David Morse show. Ruth Buzzi was the guest star, and she sings a song a couple of lines of which I remember: "I [know how to do a lot of stuff] / I even know...where you can get Walnettos! But I don't come on too sexy, I don't come on too strong -- Where did Stella Swoboda go wrong?" I remember also that there was a baby who had to be hushed, and since he actually stopped crying on cue, our teacher said that they would almost certainly put that scene in the final version, since it was perfect. So I was glad to see that something I was seeing would actually be on TV.

I was impressed that they could memorize all their lines for the show that quickly.

For some reason I only got to see a couple of minutes of the show, though, and I was bitterly disappointed. Was I being punished? Was there a political crisis? Was the reception too bad? I still remember how larger than life the taping was, and also the explanation our teacher gave us, before we went in, about how TV flattened perspectives so that the sit-com stage room would be exaggeratedly long. It was a very interesting day.

posted by william 1:47 PM
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I remember "You bet your sweet bippy." Also "Blow in my ear and I'll follow you anywhere."

posted by william 8:23 AM
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I remember that ants are so strong that if they were bigger they could carry train carriages on their backs. I remember this being illustrated, in our second or third grade textbook, with an ant carrying a heavy carriage, and I remember somehow thinking that this made the little engine that could a less impressive little engine.

posted by william 9:23 PM
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I remember crushed ice. It was a great thing you only got with soda at the movies. Then later you could get it in soda machines -- do they still have these? The cup would come down, then a heap of crushed ice would drop into it, and then it would fill with soda. Orange soda was the best with crushed ice. Later, in suburban houses, you could get it from fridges. And once it became common, I think people lost interest in it, and now I don't know whether crushed ice is a thing people have any more. I remember when I started realizing it was a cheat: that with crushed ice the soda/ice ratio was even higher than with ice-cubs. But I did like it as a kid.

posted by william 12:17 AM
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