What are the motifs in Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories by Jean Shepherd?

The past is a recurring idea. The narrator shares a number of stories from his childhood that are poignant, funny, painful, and impossible to forget. What this does is remind one that the past is what creates the individual of today. Every event that is part of the narrator's experience has had a role in creating the man he has become, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Of all the stories, The Return of the Smiling Wimpy Doll illustrates this point most effectively. In this story, the narrator receives a box from his mother filled with boyhood treasures, all long forgotten until he sees them again. At the time of the story, the narrator is an adult, living in Manhattan, New York, a long way from Hohman, Indiana both in distance and in expectation.