Zamboni is asked, “when were the’good old days'”?

This question is  difficult for me, for you see, Zamboni is timeless agelss spirit so there are many “good old days” to choose from for me. I might say talking with Socrates in 398 B.C., or backstage with Sinatra at the Sands, teasing Sammy Davis.

I ask this question of  my human vessel, Jordan Winer. He shows me picture from his album of family photos and says, “1961.”

I ask him why this represents the “good old days” to him, in hopes it helps us define that term. It is strange because he was not even alive when picture is taken. The baby is his oldest brother. He explains:

“My parents had just moved to San Francisco. That’s a cable car going up their hill. They’d come 3,000 miles from Miami, a place of flatness, homogeniety. They land in San Francisco, a sunny city of seven hills,  of the Jefferson Airplane, Allen Ginsberg, Jazz. That car you see in the corner, real wood, a Morris Minor- that was theirs. I’d give my left arm for that car.”

His eyes get sort of misty as he looks at photo  with frayed edges. He continue.

“See the man on the end of the cable car, that tie, that thin tie? That style. It all still made sense in 1961. Men wore suits, ties. Mothers looked happy. Kennedy was alive. Even below the guy with the tie, a simple almost beautiful Pepsi ad. Just a red, white and blue cap… a caption I can’t read, but probably a hopeful sounding one.”

In answer to your question, Anonymous, the good old days are now, always now, but perhaps only when now is looked back on from great distance.

Tennessee Williams said that the past is all we have, that the present is too, too ..something… I forget how he put it- fleeting?

I apologize. I was drunk when he said this to me.

You are in the middle of the best of days. Strange, no?

I have heard  a great Pirate captain said once that what kept him going was his desire to possess the horizon.