FSB 900 word blog

In Fathers, Sons, & Brothers Bret Lott does a great job presenting you with his past childhood memories. Lott remembers these childhood memories so clearly because of the senses that are involved in the memories that he then uses those memories to that help paint a clearer picture for him and for the reader by talking about things like color or shape of his surroundings. Talking about his son Jake Lott says: “For Jake, all of these are occasions for comment about colors, or smells, or, even eating.” (193). This shows you that not only was Lott impacted by senses but his brothers and kids were as well. Everything you do everyday deals with hearing, tasting, or seeing something. Most of my vivid memories I could tell you exactly what the smell of the air was or the taste in my mouth. Lott uses these senses to give you a much clearer picture of what he has in his head. He does a good job at using them effectively to get the message across that he is trying to convey.

I think that sound plays a bigger role in Lott's life than we actually think it does: "That sound passing through me and swallowing me whole, me that much alone in the world” (22). Lott thinks that he almost has a "special" power and that he can hear things that others can't, and that these sounds bug him some times. He will sometimes hum a tune just to know that the sounds of the outside world are not going away completely. He even wonders, at one point, if he can hear a dog whistle. I think that the sounds that he thinks he hears symbolize something of importance to him.

Usually when something new happens in your life that is significant, you tend to remember better than other little things. “He stops his bike at a mailbox shrouded with honeysuckle in bloom, pops off a flower, expertly guides the filament from inside the petals, then puts it to his mouth, licks it. 'Honeysuckle,' he says to me, and pops off another flower. 'People eat it.'” (193) Here Lott was introduced to something new, and he describes it with taste. Even though he did not describe the exact taste it had it his mouth, taste played a part of why he remembered it. In the same scene, there is another sense that helps Lott remember that scene: “There’s all colors in there. There’s pink, and red. Violet. Purple.” He stops, says from behind me, “There’s blue roses in there, too.” (193) The vivid image of all the arrangement of colors of flowers gives Lott a clear picture of that one particular scene.

The memories of little things like the logo of a beverage they use to drink as children: “There is no way for me to write about my life without writing of RC: our childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood all centered on Royal Crown Cola, Its logo pervasive in our lives:”[…]“We wore RC T-shirts, rode bikes emblazoned with RC Cola stickers, decorated our rooms with RC posters, […]Caught RC baseballs with blue RC baseball gloves.”(35) RC seems to play a big role in his life as a child. Such a big role that he had to write out word for word that there is no way for him to write about his life without writing about RC. Lott remembers RC Cola so well because, as a child, the logo was everywhere he looked. But the biggest impact of RC was not just the logo itself but what RC meant to his father and the family. RC was this fathers job and the true role of RC cola Lott said. “We watch the sodas swirl down the gutter, watch the colors collide and move and mix, we watch the carbonation- though we do not know this word, carbonation, call it instead fizz- swim up as the soda hits the concrete, colors swirling in this Saturday morning sunlight in Buena Park, California, colors moving down the gutter toward where, we know, it will finally dribble into the storm drain at the corner six housed down, a trail of colors and fizz that starts, as always, in front of the Lott’s house. Now the bottles are empty, and we stand up, amazed each time at just what has taken place here, the miracle of all this color.” (34) This really shows how much the sight of these clashing colors makes him remember this particular moment, and all they are doing is pouring sodas together. To show how much a impact the sight of all these colors had on this memory, Lott mentions the word colors five times in just this one quote. It’s the mixing of the different colors of the sodas that make Lott remember this one particular moment. Even though they have done this several times, every time it seems to amaze them even more then the last. The colors hold such a big impact on all of them, that they have no choice but to remember an event like this. Lott may have trouble at some parts of the book getting exactly what he wants to say out in words, but he make up for it by doing a great job at getting the image he remembers out by using the physical traits of things that were involved in that memory and painting a clear picture of the event.