Memories of Memory at Memory's

The title of my latest post, Memories of Memory at Memory's, is lifted from an ongoing joke that one of my great buds John Mecklenborg and I had during our days at The University of Tennessee. This is him. He dresses like this everyday.

It arose from when we noticed a new restaurant called Memory's had opened on the outskirts of an area of Knoxville called the "Old City". It was supposed to look like a 50's Diner type thing, but like the many previous failed business ventures that started in that building, Memory's met its fate. The restaurant is not important, but its name led the two of us into one of our numerous and sometimes month-long discussions about things that never actually took place. It was a dialogue without a base and certainly no direction, but it made us laugh.

The actual name, "Memories of Memory at Memories", was the result of multi-layered jokes. It started with just an innocent jab at why the restaurant would choose "Memory's" as a name. Then we layered it with the assumption that the owners had something in mind like "People will talk about their memories at Memory's." So, we laughed about our potential memories at Memory's. In its final formulation stage, John told me that one of our mutual friends, Evan Gower, had a little sister named Memory Gower. Awful name, but it served so well for our joke. The obvious next step was joking that we would possibly have memories of Memory at Memories, even though we never knew or had ever met Memory Gower and had no intention of going to the restaurant. We enjoyed that joke for several years, not because it was really that funny, but because it was absurd.

And that intro brings me to why I'm writing this post and similar ones in the future. It has started to occur to me that I am getting older by the day and that so many of my formative memories could get pushed into the backwaters of my psyche. These memories are usually refreshing dashes of youthfulness and innocence. They have provided me with some wisdom, pride, humility and embarrassment, but most of all they put a smile on my face and perhaps some of you might be included.

I'll include links to some of the events or locations that I discuss here, but besides that, it will be a free form exploration into the perhaps shallow depths of my memory.