Of Monkeys and Gas Stations

My family moved to Olivet, Michigan around 1960. I was just about to go into 6th grade and it was an awkward age to change schools. Dad had a good job at Olivet College so who could argue? Anyway, it did turn out to be a nice small town to grow up in even if it did seem a bit alien to me at first after growing up in a suburb of Detroit.

When we were first there I started having this very strange dream, not only once, but again and again. I would ride my bike down the hill and into town. At the bottom of the hill there was a gas station, one of those quaint old ones that bring up visions of the 50s. But instead of the station, in it's place was a strange old creepy castle. The castle would always piqued my curiosity and I would go in only to find it full of scary monkeys. I don't remember being particularly frightened, but it was strange. Maybe I had been watching "The Wizard of Oz," who knows.

Anyway, some years later, in the early 70s, I was touring Canterbury, England with my friend, Lee Bickford, from Australia. Lee found an old Norman Keep on an tourist map so we went to see it. I was shocked beyond belief when I saw it for there in front of me was the old castle from my dream! I had studied something about archetypes in college so I kind of assumed it was related to that. At that time it was not open to tourists as it was used as a storage building but now it is. It dates back to 1066.

I simply tucked that memory away as a curiosity until the other day. That is until I was recently reading a Facebook page about Olivet and the people who grew up there. I had been finding it quite lively and sometimes funny. Well, a couple of days ago someone posted a question to see if anyone remembered the monkeys at the gas station. Good grief, that was my dream! Well, it turns out one of the gas stations in town did have a bunch of monkeys although it was not the one in my dreams and it happened 5 - 10 years later, in the late 60s, maybe early 70s. But you know, it is curious. How many gas stations have monkeys in them? Now this dream may seem strange, seeing the future and the past but what the heck does it mean? Maybe one day I will find out.