[Magdalen] Little Michael visited by The Past.

[Marion Thompson]

I love these  wonderful moments  that bubble up out of our history!   
Savour the memory !

Marion, a pilgrim

On 9/6/2015 4:52 PM, M J [Mike] Logsdon wrote:
> I was piddling about the laundry room today when I saw a woman walking around carrying and studying a clipboard.  I didn't even bother to remember that a local school board election is upon us in November, so all I could think was Religious Freak.  But she was wearing ordinary weekend clothes, not the Mormon-JW-Holy-Roller attire.  As I pass her and walk toward my apartment, I was about to turn around and say "Yes?", when she beat me to it and asked if I was related to Kenny Logsdon the retired fireman.  I said "And who's asking?"  "Janet Barnes."  She didn't need to say more.  "Yes, Janet, I'm Little Michael.  You once gave a nine-year-old me a huge box of used stamps for my stamp collection."  The conversation blossomed from there.  She's running for elementary school board re-election (a contentious race; she survived a near-recall a couple years ago), but the joy was about how she is the daughter of the man who is the reason I live in Salinas.  In 1950, David Hamilton (her dad), Salinas painting contractor, hired my pop out of El Centro to come work for him, and work for him he did till 1969 when Dave died of lung cancer at 52 years of age.  So devoted was Pop, that he did for Dave what he did just a few years later for his own brother, that being coming home from work each day, taking a bath, getting dressed in his Sunday best (which was always in optimal condition because he never went to church), and heading down to the hospital to sit by Dave's bedside till visiting hours were over.  Though only four years old, I still remember clearly one night Pop opening my bedroom door and saying "Dave died."  Though not family, Dave Hamilton was my first taste of death.
>
> Anyway, me and Janet had a grand ol' time sort of reminiscing (I was a toddler and she was a high schooler, after all), but she got a kick out of how I remembered visiting their home as a little kid and remembering the high school girl in her bedroom listening to her 45s (some of which I still own, believe it or don't), and especially remembering how her mother would throughout the ages periodically visit our home unannounced with her cats-eye glasses and holding her purse on her lap the whole time.  (The Old Lady only checked out a few years ago at 97.)
>
> Two children of modestly well-known Salinas families meeting up outside an apartment complex laundry room.  And yes, I always vote for her.
> .
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