nostalgia

Subdivisions

Moriah Jovan
An overhead shot of a neighborhood of tract housing, with all houses spaced close together.

Justice had spent Saturday strolling around her lovely new neighborhood, marveling at the luscious lawns and tree-lined streets.

She had been walking on a concrete sidewalk in the shade of old trees. She could reach out and touch the feathery pink tufts of a mimosa tree. She could drag her fingertips across landscaping bricks. A soft breeze lifted her short curls and she could smell flowers and barbecuing and chlorine instead of cow shit. She could hear motorcycles and cars, screeching and splashing, lawn mowers and sprinklers. Read more →

Kansas City: Little help?

Moriah Jovan

I’m choking on childhood nostalgia, KCitians.

Does ANYBODY remember the mechanized dolls in the display windows at Harzfeld’s at Christmastime? And if you do, do you have a decent picture or, better yet, a line on where I can get one of those dolls or six?

There is a Harzfeld’s page and a Harzfeld’s blog, both created by historians with a book in the works, but neither has a search feature, and as far as I can tell, this [dead link] is the only mention of the dolls: Read more →

The 1960s ranch

Moriah Jovan

I have really fond memories of the house I grew up in, which does not exist anymore. I mean, well, there’s a HOUSE there, where I grew up, but it’s morphed and changed so much (not in a good way) that it might as well not exist. I think it burned somewhat at one time and was um, “remodeled,” or else it was, er, “rebuilt,” but MY house is gone.

Still, when I was a kid, I’d go to my grandma’s house and it was in what I thought was a chichi neighborhood (I don’t know, maybe it was, but now it’s a tad rundown). I would go sell my school wares around HER neighborhood cuz none of my neighbors had any money. Read more →

My angel is the centerfold

Moriah Jovan

I sorted my music by Mojo-defined genre for a change and noticed a very strange juxtaposition in the category of “’80s Pop”:

“Centerfold” by the J. Geils Band directly followed by

“Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles (don’t hate me ’cause I’m cheesy).

and I’m like, why? Why do I have these together in the same sort because they represent two vastly different phases of my life. Read more →

Jukeboxes and libraries

Moriah Jovan

I have a bunch of beautiful books. They’re mostly in hardback because I don’t see paperbacks as objets d’art the way I do my hardback books. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I read hardbacks, certainly. If I have it, I read it. But there’s just something substantial about a hardback book. Specifically, I’m thinking of my faux leatherbound books, but no matter.

As I go around the ebook blogs like Teleread and The Book is Dead, a bunch of dissociated rememberies from my childhood plague me. They’re always the same ones, played in different order, but in a loop: Read more →

My guilty pleasure

Moriah Jovan

My first full-on real-life romance novel was Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss. Naturally, it’s on my keeper shelf right next to The Wolf and the Dove. I have the ones with the original covers, though they are far from mint. The namby pamby covers on the ones with the links are meh. Unlike most of my contemporaries whose first (or close to it) romance experience was Woodiwiss, mine wasn’t with The Flame and the Flower or Ashes in the Wind, neither of which I cared for. Read more →

Speaking of politics…

Moriah Jovan

My husband and I went to see Rush last night. We had AWESOME seats.

There were two age demographics: late 30s and up and … their kids. The youngest I saw was sevenish, but if there was anybody there between the ages of mom-and-dad-forced-me-to-come and 30, I didn’t see them.

It was the most sedate audience of a hard-rockin’ concert I’ve ever been to, but then, most all of us were old and fat. No matter. By halfway through the second half I was ready to get laid.