Gray history (Images via head shot & IG)
The following is a post from 2010 that many readers seemed to enjoy. Over the years, I heard various rumors about what ever happened to Vernon Gray, but the mystery may finally be solved.
A follower of mine on my Gr8erDays IG messaged me to tell me Mr. Gray died, age 94, in Mexico, on June 13, 2022. Incredibly, even though his most personal family photos fell into my hands via eBay (possibly a storage locker situation?), he was alive all this time.
I asked his friend and caregiver why he hadn't reached out sooner, while Gray was living, but he would only say Gray did not wish to be found. Unless I get more information from this person, I won't know why he opted to live away from any distant relatives, how his life turned out or even if he were openly gay. (His photos made clear he was a gay man.)
A bittersweet ending to a mystery that has long captivated me.
ORIGINAL POST (2010):
“With all my love to Mom & Dad”
My dogs own about 100 toys, but I can't remember the last time we got them a toy that entered into the pantheon of toys that truly drive them crazy like their hard plastic play keyrings. I used to think it's because they love to chew, but they could chew any number of other, similar toys, so that's not the whole picture. Then I thought it was the keys' forbidden allure — if they chew too long they're eating plastic, so we take them away after a short time.
My current dogs meeting a toy that belonged to my childhood dog, Cinnamon.
But instead, I think part of it is the fact that this kind of toy was among the very first we ever gave them.
I think it's impossible to fall in love with new objects or experiences as hard as you did with certain objects and experiences when you were young and you had so few objects and experiences with which to compare them. And I think that the things we love the most are the things that remind us of when we were kids, or that were among the first things for which our appreciation made us feel we were growing up.
A disco Valentine I've always kept. (Image via Hallmark)
That's why I think certain objects and experiences hit my nostalG-spot in ways that don't — and don't have to — make artistic sense. I can't really explain why Looker or Golden Girls or Body Double or The Eyes of Laura Mars are visual comfort food for me — in some of the cases, I could semi-objectively argue that aspects of them are just plain quality, but overall, it's not so much about the quality as it is about an indescribable quality these experiences (more than “shows” or “movies”) produced in me when I was young, and that they still trigger in me now that I'm old and too jaded to jump on every new bandwagon.
Michigan's amazement park (Image via Boblo Island)
I was watching some of those triggers while I spent the past five or so days obsessively picking over all my belongings, another activity always sure to tickle that nostalG-spot. My goal was to organize and hopefully edit; I accomplished that, if only meagerly (I dumped or marked for sale about three boxes' worth of stuff), but maybe the secret goal was simply to bask in the feelings I get looking at the things I've acquired.
It's blatant materialism, but not in the sense of a Marilyn Monroe character working a guy in exchange for something square-cut or pear-shape. It's totemic.
