Nostalgiaville

Let’s take a trip to Nostalgiaville
Everybody loves to visit Nostalgiaville

Rod loved to visit it
Ray practically lived there

All aboard for Nostalgiaville!

We’ll take a Seaboard-Atlantic train
Ride in the dining car
Have lunch on heavy china plates on gleaming white cloth placemats (I want Canadian bacon!)

Which station shall we pull into?

Some folks like the little wooden station on the outskirts of town

But me, I like the big one with the polished marble floors and a magazine stand with all my favorite comic books and pulps and Ace doubles in it

There’s an Automat next door and we’ll have a piece of warm cherry pie topped with vanilla ice cream and a piping hot cup of coffee before going off to visit…

The World’s Fair!  (take your pick: 1933, 1939-40, 1962, 1964-65, 1967, 1970, whenever you want)

Amusement Parks!  (it’s always opening day at Disneyland -- the Palisades are still going strong -- Freedomland USA is booming)

Sports!  (all the greatest teams with all the greatest players always in competition and your team always wins!)

Food!  (pulled pork barbecue, lime jello and cottage cheese salad, Dagwood sandwiches a mile high)

Your favorite media!  (listen to Motown while reading the latest issue of Famous Monsters then go to see the new James Bond movie with Sean Connery before coming home to watch the late night horror host while reading the early edition of the Sunday funnies with 350 of your all time favorite comic strips)

Afterwards, you visit your old home, your old neighborhood

You relish the sights and sounds and feelings of the good old days

Then you pass a pool hall and you hear low voices laughing and talking about “them”

…and how the laughers make “them” jump off the sidewalk when they stride past
…and how they make “them” do all the lousy shitty jobs the laughers won’t touch, and for a fraction of what they should be paid
…and how the laughers can say anything they want to “them” and make “them” just stand there and take it
…and how the laughers make “them” cry when they are children
…and how they make “them” submit when they’re young and luscious
…and how they lynch “them” and slit the throats of “them” and cut off the balls of “them” and denigrate “them” because
…because “them” are not “us”
…and Nostalgiaville loses its glamor
…the sky turns darker
…the wind blows colder
…the paper in your hand ages yellow and brittle and breaks apart, blowing in the breeze
…and you realize

Nostalgiaville is a nice place to visit,
but you sure as hell don’t want to live there

art by Franklin Booth
text © Buzz Dixon