don't cry, betty

by horace p sternwall

i remember the things i am supposed to remember, and the things i was taught to remember, but i remember other things too. i remember the spaniards blowing up the maine, and teddy roosevelt charging up san juan hill. i remember the boys going over there because it would not be over until it was over over there, and hanging the kaiser from an apple tree. i remember al capone and john dillinger and jesse james riding into tombstone and shooting it out with wyatt earp and billy the kid and ambrose bierce. i remember pancho villa and the alamo. i remember the pig lady. and never giving a sucker an even break. i remember lucky lindy and moses parting the red sea and jonah and the whale. i remember andy jackson and the battle of new orleans. i remember adam and eve and the serpent. i remember all these things because i was taught them in school or saw them in the funny papers. but what i really remember is other things, things i got no real call to remember but i just do. i remember walking down the road one day and these two women were talking and i heard one of them say chattanooga, but when i got closer to them they stopped talking and watched me go by. i remember being downtown one day outside the drug store and a little girl dropped her ice cream cone on the sidewalk, and a woman, probably her mother, said, don’t cry betty, but betty didn’t look like she was going to cry at all. i remember wanting to see the tattooed man at the carnival but my grandma saying you don’t want to see that nonsense and pulling me along so i never saw him. i remember getting on the bus going from mobile to biloxi and i got the last seat on the bus, and i thought, this is my lucky day. i remember a waitress in a diner in minneapolis and she was just about the fattest person i ever saw but she had a nice smile. i remember all sorts of things like that. how about you? what do you remember?