A lets go do it day. Didn't matter what "doing it" was, it meant being together with my family. Didn't matter whether it was sunshine or raining or raging a blizzard outside. It was Saturday. When I was younger, back in the grey felt poodle skirt days, it meant hurrying to get chores done, washing my hair and putting it up on those giant rollers, with a silk scarf tied around it and then spending the afternoon reading, holed up in my bedroom with posters of Rita Hayworth, Betty Davis and Clark Gable on my walls. I'd read my secretly borrowed "True Romance" while deciding what I was gong to wear that night - "Saturday Night". Sock hops, drive in movies, hamburgers and a coke at the "drive-in", cruising main street and being with my friends. Saturday nights were good nights. No gang fights, no drive by shootings, no booze or drugs passed amongst the friends. What was it? It was the "Innocence of the 50's". We laughed at Red Skelton, drooled over Fabian and totally respected our parents, our teachers and the pastor of our church. Television was still an infant and the subject of gossip was how scary "The Creaking Door" on the Radio was last night.
"Saturday Morning"
"View From the Porch"
Living in Brasil, I have a sense of those "50's" days. There is still a kind of innocence that lingers here. It's there even though much of the government is corrupt. It's there amidst the real life everyday view of poverty. It's there in school age children who are on the streets instead of school. It's there in the hundrends of vendors who set up and take down their booths every single day of the year on the beach promenade. It's there when I can call the farmacia and have a single bottle of aspirin delivered. It's there in the smile of the vendors trekking the beach every day. I look around me and see the dust of 3rd world Brasil dissolving and a brisk entrepreneurial spirit rising - a deep spiritual desire to have something better. Dance-ing in the rain.
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