There have been many TV episodes that have reminded me of my childhood and my teenage years.
Occasionally, the sensation is like the one Gig Young had in a classic original Twilight Zone episode in which he was transported back to a summer when he was a child.
Young's character, Rod Serling told the audience, was "[s]uccessful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives — trying to go home again." And I guess I've been guilty of that at times in my own life — at least in my mind and in my choices of what to watch.
I can't say I have actually returned to my hometown in recent years in some kind of misguided attempt to recapture the past — and perhaps that would be an indicator of a sort of obsession that goes beyond whatever obsession I may actually have.
I do think of my childhood home often, of days that I know are long gone, of people I have known, but I can't say that I have tried to go beyond remembering.
That's as far as it's gone.
See, I concluded long ago that Wolfe was right. You can't go home again.
Most of the time, that sensation is more wistful, more nostalgic. It evokes memories of my own childhood, of summer or school days, of people I loved ... and people I hated. Sometimes it really is surprising the stray memories that bubble their way to the surface.
I admit that I enjoy watching the programs that bring back memories of those days. Certainly, there are things I would do differently if I could go back in time — and, OK, there are times when, like anyone else, I feel nostalgic for people and places from my past.
Well, I guess Serling was right, too. Maybe you can't go home, but that doesn't mean you don't wish you could, from time to time.
I'm really not sure why I'm on that particular flight of fancy today. "Cranes Unplugged," the episode of Frasier that first aired 10 years ago today, wasn't a time travel story like "Walking Distance," that Twilight Zone episode, was. It wasn't a time travel episode at all, really.
But every time I see it, I remember moments from when I was Frederick's age, and it puts things in context for me.
For example, in this episode, Frasier decides to take Martin and Frederick on a camping trip where, he hopes, they will bond. It reminds me of times during my childhood when I'm sure my parents sought such bonding experiences with my brother and me. In large part, I believe that was why they invested in a popup camper that we took on weekend and summer trips when I was probably 10 or 11.
At the time, I was told several reasons why my parents had purchased that popup camper — and I even came up with a couple on my own in later years — but I always suspected that my parents saw the camper as an investment in long–term bonding.
We went on some memorable trips in that camper, and I remember it with great fondness, but I must admit that I have never missed sleeping — or trying to sleep — on those flimsy things that passed for mattresses in that camper.
My parents spoke of it as being a step up from sleeping on the ground in a tent but not as expensive as staying in motels when we went on family trips — but I always felt that, if not for the absence of a small rock pressing against my side, I might as well be trying to sleep on the ground — and the canvas wings of the camper always had the damp, musty smell of a tent that was hurriedly put away wet.
So, I wondered, which part of the camping experience were we not getting? I concluded it must be the sitting around an open fire for meals part. In the camper, we could sit at foldout tables on flimsy seat cushions that seemed to be made of the same material as the mattresses.
I guess that was a general step forward for civilization.
I always liked the Frasier episodes in which Frederick played a role — in part, perhaps, because they remind me that, while "generation gap" was a popular phrase when I was a child, it wasn't really new in those days.
The concept may have been new, but such gaps have always existed. Even in early 2001, Frasier and Frederick learned, while the rest of us watched, just how different generations are and always will be.
I understand better now how people of my parents' generation must have felt when I was Frederick's age, learning new things, and the adults' ideas didn't always mirror my own.
In "Cranes Unplugged," Frasier wanted a bonding experience with his son, who was preoccupied with the distractions of his time — TV, video games, computers — and decided a camping trip would be just the thing. He drafted a less–than–eager–to–participate Martin and announced, "We leave at daybreak!"
But when they got into the wilderness — where they had a primitive cabin in which to sleep and not even the most modest of plumbing service — Frasier was dismayed by Frederick's behavior.
As children do, Frederick made some friends at the campground and played with them for awhile. But when he returned to the cabin, he didn't exactly have the back–to–nature reaction that Frasier expected.
What did they do, Frasier wondered.
"We played frisbee," Frederick reported. "It sucked with all those trees in the way."
Frasier only wanted Frederick's first camping trip to be something memorable, and he was stunned to learn that it wasn't Frederick's first camping trip after all. Frederick had never told him that he had been camping before — and, as Frasier found out, Frederick, like many children, didn't tell his father many things.
But then something happened that was special, that served as a genuine bonding experience for the long–distance father and son. And Frasier promised his son that it would be their secret.
I remember similar bonding moments that I shared with my father. Our relationship was a little different. I didn't come from a broken home. I saw my father every day, not just at holidays or during breaks from school.
Even so, there were spaces between us, the unavoidable gap between the generations, I guess. There weren't great distances between us — except maybe in our perceptions of things.
Such gaps exist, I suppose, between most fathers and sons. Thankfully, we outgrow them.
