Walkin', Talkin' Nostalgia Scrapbook

A few days ago, Leela discovered wasps nesting in a ventilator drain pipe next to the water spigot outside our building. We called a guy who advertises in the paper that he will collect wasps and yellow jackets for free. He sells them to a company that makes vaccine from their venom. Today he came over. He said they were paper wasps. He vacuumed out a couple of insects and then pulled out their little nest, which was just visible inside the pipe. He said he could hatch out the pupae. He squirted some clove oil in the pipe, and I covered it with a sock.

Conversing with this fellow, I learned he'd lived in Austin for 11 years -- 1974-1984. "The good years," I told him, and he agreed. We talked about various places around the city, and I realized Austin was frozen in time for him in the mid 1980s. He hadn't been back since, and in his mind nothing much had changed. For him the airport was still at Mueller, there were no toll roads or gigantic condo towers, things like that.

Well I guess it's too late for me to freeze Austin's good years. My experiential tea bag has steeped too long; I didn't pull out until after the end of bad-old 2007, with the impossible traffic, SoCo mania, and endless heat. I'm happy to be rid of that. But actually I must have all those other eras stored away as still lifes too. Otherwise how could I have so favorably compared Corvallis to Austin in the 1960s? I'm just a walking, talking nostalgia scrapbook!