My arrival in Brunswick was just a series of conscious sensations forming in a toddler mind. I remember standing against our console television while the injured and dead were hastily loaded onto helicopters somewhere in Vietnam.

There was the earthy, pungent smell of the pine-floor backyard where a wooden swing hanging from a branch would soon provide me with my first scar — one still visible on my forehead.

There was the night I lay in my mother’s arms in the Cook’s Corner parking lot as the sky above turned a deeper and deeper shade of ultramarine and finally to black as stars ignited from nothing. She had been talking to her friend Joanne for what seemed outside of time as my own limbs gave way to sleep.

That’s how it begins. That’s how the invisible tendrils sprout from us, rooting us to the soil, the sounds, the sensations of a place and of time — all times, still playing a loop in our minds.

Time moves forward.

This time it’s the smell of aircraft exhaust, the shrill whine of a P-3 Orion on a darkened ramp and a numbing wind racing across my face. I was surrounded by people I didn’t know — women, kids of all ages — all together, all waiting, tense and expressionless, for the uniformed men deplaning from a long deployment.

These were the memories, the moments that laid the foundation for growing up in Brunswick. Time will move forward once more and I’ll be with Billy Campbell on Columbia Avenue, wildly turning the crank on his Evel Knievel motorcycle toy before launching it off toward Krampf Circle.

It was a time when tee ball practice would be followed by a hot dog basket at Fat Boy. In our self-contained world, even my team was made up of Navy brats and coached by sailors. Later, my twin sibling friends from across the street, Kevin and Jenny would join me in filling a Humpty Dumpty tin with acorns to later pummel each other with on the playground with cap guns tucked into our drawers as imaginary backup.

But time moves forward.

The humidity has left the air now and the crispness of fall surrounds the town. Mrs. Kelly led my third grade class into the grounds surrounding Coffin School, across a slippery carpet of rust-colored pine needles and vivid hues of red, purple, gold and yellow from the fallen leaves we will soon make a project with.

Downtown, fresh paint adorns all the business windows in preparation of Halloween. Kids run past LaVerdier’s and Newberry’s wearing bits of costumes they had already purchased as a chilled breeze whips down Maine Street, tossing up leaves and making people hunker into their jackets like turtles.

Time moves forward — another deployment interspersed with the occasional letter, the ship in a bottle, the Spanish leather wallet that nearly 35 years later, I can still smell if I close my eyes.

Mom went through the ritual when dad left again. I never really noticed it before. He would pack and be gone before me and my sisters got up for school. Mom would spend the rest of the day stripping bedding, doing laundry and washing every trace of him from the house — less to dwell on over the next six months, I guessed.

Now, even though my train set and Tyco race cars take up fully one third of my room there’s something new. Names of girls in class, like exotic lands far away, become whispered bits of conversation — “Nicole … Kari … that girl in science who always wears that pink stripped shirt with the popped collar — yeah, that one.”

Dave Wilson showed up to wood shop with a pierced ear! We didn’t want to give him any kind of credit for being edgy but man, we wish we had the guts.

My friend Andy and I walked home along Baribeau Drive before I left him to cut through the woods to Navy housing to go home. Old memeres would occasionally be walking along, chattering in French, only to become suspiciously quiet as they approached before picking back up again after passing.

French was still on every breeze along downtown. It played like music from the Grand City lunch counter, after Mass in Friendly’s and from groups of nuns on Pleasant or Maine Street.

They’re gone now, and time moves on.

My first kiss in the closet of a home on Shobe Avenue playing truth or dare with a girl named Vivian. Eighth grade graduation now, eating hot dogs in the cafeteria while the whole class stands on the tables belting out “Oh Sherry” by Steve Perry at the top of their lungs. I spent another deployment sanding six coats of paint off of an old ‘53 Chevy that would become my first car in another four years.

It was a time my friends and I expanded our freedom, riding bikes to Warming’s or GJ’s Market for whatever candy we could afford and playing the video games there. It’s when I briefly hung out with a kid named Bobby in our group. Bobby was a quiet kid who smiled a lot and always had a stash of $10s and $20s on him — of course, none of us asked where they came from.

Maybe it was our attention he so desperately craved, maybe he wanted to be the big guy who lavished cash upon all his friends with trips to the LaVerdier’s arcade on him, followed by Big Gulps at our new 7-Eleven. What did we know — we weren’t psychologists. Hell, we could barely handle the onset of puberty.

We lost touch and it wouldn’t be many years later, too few, we lost Bobby altogether. But here in Brunswick, time moves on.

I stared out on a dewy, black night — smells of spring flirting with summer hung heavy the air. I lay back in the curve of the front fender of the ‘53 Chevy and stared into the sky, remembering seeing the deep ultramarine before it surrendered to the blackness. This time, only the wink of one lone star, then two, then the night sky slowly emerged.

Frozen to the car, all I could do is feel time play back in my head but for the life of me, I had no control over it. I was that little kid again on the dark, cold ramp at the base, expressionless and frozen.

Weeks later the airplane ramp waited for me. I stood with nothing but an envelope under my arm containing my orders to Navy Recruit Training Command Orlando, Florida. Through the many sights, smells and sounds that distracted me since, I would always return to the rusty pine needles, the brisk fall wind down Maine Street and smell of Fat Boy after tee ball practice. This is my home.

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Douglas McIntire is a staff writer at The Times Record and can be reached at [email protected].