Three Digits
My wife brought up from Florida and gave to me a digital clock that had formerly belonged to her recently deceased mother and that features bright red digits that are nearly three inches high and so can be easily made out by my weakened visual system. And I've been surprised at how,nearly every time I look, the numbers mean something more than just the time. I mean the three-digit numbers. Four digits suggest nothing at all.
I am especially struck by how often "7:27" shows up, because that is the month and the day of my birth. But it's interesting to see how any other set of three digits can signify something, running from the models of airliners to the number that my father liked to play, which if memory of what my mother once told me is correct, was either 427 or 417.
On his departure from this life so very many years ago, way back in 1938, my mother, while disposing of his clothes, was astonished to find his pockets full of numbers slips. She knew he played the numbers, but not that much. I wonder if my father was actually some kind of hidden "oolicy maker," or a "numbers runner."
"Playing the numbers" based on three digits only and somehow arrived at from finishes at race tracks that same day, used to be a major industry in the otherwise deprived communities of rainbows ("black" people to others). It was a generally harmless activity that furnished a great deal of hope to so many minority urban dwellers, and it could be indulged in even with just a few pennies -- I mean the real copper ones -- which was frequently all that a lot of people had in those days to throw in the direction of their hopes and dreams. So it was often preyed upon by police enforcing laws made by politicians who were more than eager to prove themselves and so enacted decrees at the expense of those who were helpless against them, and that went right along with the even more egregious and evil Jim Crow laws. The current drug laws are the best modern example of that continuing cruelty and thoughtlessness in law enforcement, with the Bushisan so-called "anti-tettorism" measures not far behind.
Today we have the state-run lotteries, which are as legal as "the numbers" were illegal in yesteryears, though it is exactly the same wagering. And I'm guessing that the lotteries have completely destroyed the local numbers-running activities that furnished so much employment as well in the inner cities, and for which no college degrees were needed, though it did call for great capacities for memory and for math, of which there was no shortage, no matter how mentally inferior the group was supposed to be.
--On another but not completely disconnected note, this morning when I awoke those big red numbers read somewhere in the "5:35" territory.
I got to thinking that that's what that clock always reads every morning when I emerge once more from that weird, hours-long, and dreams-hanunted state of stupor in which everyone must engage and that is called, euphemistically I think, "sleep." And I wondered why. Then I remembered that that is exactly the time of morning when my mother said I was born.
Can it be that the mind remembers that bright moment of awaking into life in general, and so repeats that theme in all these latter days?
I am especially struck by how often "7:27" shows up, because that is the month and the day of my birth. But it's interesting to see how any other set of three digits can signify something, running from the models of airliners to the number that my father liked to play, which if memory of what my mother once told me is correct, was either 427 or 417.
On his departure from this life so very many years ago, way back in 1938, my mother, while disposing of his clothes, was astonished to find his pockets full of numbers slips. She knew he played the numbers, but not that much. I wonder if my father was actually some kind of hidden "oolicy maker," or a "numbers runner."
"Playing the numbers" based on three digits only and somehow arrived at from finishes at race tracks that same day, used to be a major industry in the otherwise deprived communities of rainbows ("black" people to others). It was a generally harmless activity that furnished a great deal of hope to so many minority urban dwellers, and it could be indulged in even with just a few pennies -- I mean the real copper ones -- which was frequently all that a lot of people had in those days to throw in the direction of their hopes and dreams. So it was often preyed upon by police enforcing laws made by politicians who were more than eager to prove themselves and so enacted decrees at the expense of those who were helpless against them, and that went right along with the even more egregious and evil Jim Crow laws. The current drug laws are the best modern example of that continuing cruelty and thoughtlessness in law enforcement, with the Bushisan so-called "anti-tettorism" measures not far behind.
Today we have the state-run lotteries, which are as legal as "the numbers" were illegal in yesteryears, though it is exactly the same wagering. And I'm guessing that the lotteries have completely destroyed the local numbers-running activities that furnished so much employment as well in the inner cities, and for which no college degrees were needed, though it did call for great capacities for memory and for math, of which there was no shortage, no matter how mentally inferior the group was supposed to be.
--On another but not completely disconnected note, this morning when I awoke those big red numbers read somewhere in the "5:35" territory.
I got to thinking that that's what that clock always reads every morning when I emerge once more from that weird, hours-long, and dreams-hanunted state of stupor in which everyone must engage and that is called, euphemistically I think, "sleep." And I wondered why. Then I remembered that that is exactly the time of morning when my mother said I was born.
Can it be that the mind remembers that bright moment of awaking into life in general, and so repeats that theme in all these latter days?
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:29 AM
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