What triggers mind's memories

Mind’s memories are a wonderful thing. They are so easily triggered by a song, a picture, a scent, whisking us back in time to another place and time.

Friday night, as I watched Tron Legacy, I was transported 30 years back in time to the summer I originally moved to this area.

For those of you unfamiliar with Tron Legacy, it’s the sequel to the original Tron movie starring Jeff Bridges. Out 30 years ago Tron was about a man who created a utopian world, gone wrong, inside a video game. He eventually becomes trapped inside the game, unable to return to the real world.

It became a cult classic, especially among its target market – young men who were into video games, computers and/or other technology. Namely, me.

Tron Legacy is the sequel in which the son of the original lead character goes back into the video game world to save his father. At the moment in the movie that the son stepped from the real world into the video game world my mind’s memories triggered and I went back in time to Muskegon, Michigan.

Thirty years ago I spent four weeks in Muskegon at the Brunswick headquarters learning how to be a bowling machine mechanic. My family had bought the bowling alley in Camanche a couple of months prior to that and I was going to be the mechanic.

The classes were in the evening so when I wasn’t studying I had time to kill. (By the way, you really did have to study because in those four weeks you essentially learn how to completely tear that machine apart and reassemble it. And there is a test at the end you must pass to receive your certification.)

There’s a terrific beach in Muskegon but the weather was cool while I was there so the number of days I could go there were limited.

The afternoon matinees at the theatre were pretty cheap so that was a good alternative. I went to four different movies but Tron is the only one I remember, which is why Tron Legacy suddenly triggered all those memories.

Brunswick paired us up with a roommate and we stayed at the Ramada Inn, a few blocks from the headquarters. I’d already been out of college for a couple of years by this time which made me one of the older students. Most were just a couple of years out of high school, including my roommate. A nice guy who had the unfortunate affliction of being about as bright as a box of rocks.

Our first night we made our way to a nearby drinking establishment where we had a couple of beers, and five kamikaze shots. After returning to our room the next thing I heard was a large crash in the bathroom. My new roommate, attempting to do what men do in bathrooms, had lost his balance, fallen to the floor, taking the towel rack with him. I knew at that moment that this was not going to be a good roommate fit.

Fortunately there was another student in the class who was about my age and felt the same way about sharing a room with someone on the lower end of the maturity level. He found another hotel downtown that was actually cheaper per week, for a single room, than what we were paying at the Ramada for a double. We were required to stay at the Ramada for a week, but by the end of the first week I was moving into the new hotel.

The hotel was decent and it was great to have a room to myself. The only thing I didn’t know until after I moved in was that the other student and I were the only Caucasians in the whole place. Everyone else was black.

This really wasn’t an issue. I mention it only for one reason….

Connie and I had begun seeing each other a few weeks prior to my trip. She decided to make the trip up to Muskegon to visit me at the end of my second week there. (Side note, while cleaning out her dresser drawer after she died I found the letter I wrote her from Michigan. She’d kept it all those years.)

A little background, Connie was born, raised, lived her entire life in Camanche, IA, population 4,200. Other than her family’s annual summer trip to northern Wisconsin she had seldom strayed out of the comforts of small town Iowa. Naïve would be a good word for her.

I didn’t say anything about the situation to her at the hotel because I never gave it a second thought. As we returned to the hotel the first night there was a big dance going on in the hotel and we were greeted by several of the people in attendance. The small town girl suddenly realized we were the minority in the big city.

She managed to keep her mouth from falling open, her eyes on the other hand were quite literally as big as saucers. We were back in the room for several minutes before her face went back to normal and words came out of her mouth. I think it was the only time I ever knew her to be speechless.

I don’t think I stopped laughing until sometime the next afternoon.

I can’t recommend Tron Legacy, it’s really not that good of a movie. But I want to thank it for bringing back some wonderful memories.