Summer nights at the Golden Twist, an ice cream and sandwich shop, will forever keep with me. The hum of the ice cream machines, the flashing blue and red of the open sign, the sizzles and pops of the deep fryer: all these things will come to form an album of distant and pleasant memories. Looking back, the customers served me more than I served them.
We live our lives retrospect, always dreaming of some earlier time when the world was new and hope was high. All of us have moments which seem to weather the passage of time itself; for me it will be the elderly customers, their faces aglow with the vivacity of a youth they once lived. I never once knew a customer personally, save those from school, yet I always found in those moments of interaction a fleeting unity between they and I. I felt as if I could see their album. Their eyes would shine as I presented them their chilli dog or banana split, and, for an instant, a genuine, human compassion would betray their otherwise feigned civility. In those moments the entirety of their earthly experiences would present themselves to me, and I could rifle through the sepia photos of one who had lived five my lifetimes. But it was fleeting; in the next instant the album would slam shut, and the present would shout, "More orders are waiting!"
Or perhaps it was Harry Wilder: septuagenarian, cancer survivor, father of two lawyers, and proud owner of the Golden Twist. Both he and his shop were known by name throughout the city. He had lived a long and colorful life, had befriended the mayor, had established himself as a respectable businessman, but every day he was at the Golden Twist working alongside everyone else. I remember Donna, the adult manager, talking of his battle with cancer and how he would drive several hours each day just to come to work. Why several hours? Because his chemotherapy treatments were in Indianapolis. No words suffice.
Above the bathroom threshold hangs a framed picture of a racecar; it is blue and gold and has the business's logo on it. That picture is older than I am. And yet it is but one of thousands which fill the pages of Harry's album. It shall fill my album also, as shall the countless summer nights I've spent at the Golden Twist. My teen years will be a series of juxtaposed pictures of banana splits, of youthful elderly customers, and of a flashing neon sign; so too shall they fill others' memories, for even today, on clammy summer nights, when the sky is clear and the air sweet, you can still hear the buzz and see the flash of the Golden Twist.
The future is so frightening, and our place in it so undefined: that's why we look to the past, with its unchanging state. Looking into the eyes of Harry Wilder and all the elderly customers allowed me to feel my own humanity. Each time I did so, I felt the true vastness of time, sensed the true breadth of human continuity. In those transient moments, I thought, "Perhaps I can open the album of humanity itself and in quiet and reverent fashion, insert my own photo."
