martinchuzzlewit-blog1

[martinchuzzlewit-blog1]

Reading List

When I was in graduate school reading and teaching great (and some not so great) works of literature, there were some works that I had to read multiple times through the years—“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Huckleberry Finn, The Canterbury Tales, Dante’s Inferno (I never read the other two parts of The Divine Comedy), Leaves of Grass, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” etc.  During those years, I believed I would always be teaching literature courses. So I always had the sense (subconsciously) that I would be returning to these works again and again.

I left academia long ago and have not visited most of these works in many years. Sometimes I go back and pick up a Moby Dick or Homer’s Odyssey just for enjoyment or a feeling that I am somehow obliged to maintain some connection to my literary past. I am just now finishing Tess of the d’Ubervilles and enjoying it very much.

So I still carry around that subconscious sense that I will be returning to these works again some day. But, recently, it occurred to me that I may never read Huckleberry Finn or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” again. These thoughts make me kind of sad. I don’t think it’s because I will never have the pleasure of reading those works again. I was never that fond of Huckleberry Finn. But “Prufrock” has so many engaging lines that I used to pull out of my memory in various contexts—“In the rooms the women come and go/talking of Michelangelo,” “Do I dare to eat a Peach?” Those lines used to pop into my head and give me a brief sense of appreciation. But those moments of satisfying literary memories are becoming more and more rare.

I think the sadness has to do with my growing older. Everybody mourns the loss of physical abilities they had when they were young. I think I am mourning my loss of connection with works of literature that I would still like to keep rattling around in head. But my head is losing the capacity to hold those lines from great literature. All I have left of Dylan Thomas is “Do not go gentle into that good night.” At one time I had the entire poem of “Fern Hill” memorized.

But I believe there are hundreds of other works that I have lost track of. I can’t call up an example because they are completely gone. So I am making a resolution to go back and reclaim some of the works in my head. I would like to reread at least some of the Canterbury Tales. I would want to read the original Middle English but also cheat with a modern translation. I haven’t looked yet, but I’ll bet there’s an audiobook in Middle English.

This is not to say that I am going to devote all of my reading to rereading the classics. I intend to continue to explore and discover new favorites. I suppose I should make a bucket list of books that I want to read and books that I want to reread. Will I do that? Probably not.

[martinchuzzlewit-blog1]

Reading List

When I was in graduate school reading and teaching great (and some not so great) works of literature, there were some works that I had to read multiple times through the years—“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Huckleberry Finn, The Canterbury Tales, Dante’s Inferno (I never read the other two parts of The Divine Comedy), Leaves of Grass, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” etc.  During those years, I believed I would always be teaching literature courses. So I always had the sense (subconsciously) that I would be returning to these works again and again.

I left academia long ago and have not visited most of these works in many years. Sometimes I go back and pick up a Moby Dick or Homer’s Odyssey just for enjoyment or a feeling that I am somehow obliged to maintain some connection to my literary past. I am just now finishing Tess of the d’Ubervilles and enjoying it very much.

So I still carry around that subconscious sense that I will be returning to these works again some day. But, recently, it occurred to me that I may never read Huckleberry Finn or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” again. These thoughts make me kind of sad. I don’t think it’s because I will never have the pleasure of reading those works again. I was never that fond of Huckleberry Finn. But “Prufrock” has so many engaging lines that I used to pull out of my memory in various contexts—“In the rooms the women come and go/talking of Michelangelo,” “Do I dare to eat a Peach?” Those lines used to pop into my head and give me a brief sense of appreciation. But those moments of satisfying literary memories are becoming more and more rare.

I think the sadness has to do with my growing older. Everybody mourns the loss of physical abilities they had when they were young. I think I am mourning my loss of connection with works of literature that I would still like to keep rattling around in head. But my head is losing the capacity to hold those lines from great literature. All I have left of Dylan Thomas is “Do not go gentle into that good night.” At one time I had the entire poem of “Fern Hill” memorized.

But I believe there are hundreds of other works that I have lost track of. I can’t call up an example because they are completely gone. So I am making a resolution to go back and reclaim some of the works in my head. I would like to reread at least some of the Canterbury Tales. I would want to read the original Middle English but also cheat with a modern translation. I haven’t looked yet, but I’ll bet there’s an audiobook in Middle English.

This is not to say that I am going to devote all of my reading to rereading the classics. I intend to continue to explore and discover new favorites. I suppose I should make a bucket list of books that I want to read and books that I want to reread. Will I do that? Probably not.

[martinchuzzlewit-blog1]

My short little span of attention

As I grow older, like everybody else, I find that more and more skills and abilities that I used to own are slipping away from me now. They flee from me that one time did me seek. Not so long ago, I was able to walk a mile in under 15 minutes. After several health setbacks, I have trouble completing a mile in under 20. (Let’s see how you do after losing two kidneys—one of them my own and one a gift from a stranger—and a gall bladder all in one summer.)

But just as lamentable—if not more so—is my dwindling mental capacity. I was never a fast reader. However, I might have been able to call myself a prolific reader when I was in graduate school. At that time, I might have read two large books like David Copperfield and Middlemarch in one week just to keep up with my Victorian literature class.

During those years, I accumulated many books. I didn’t read them as quickly as I bought them. There was a strong notion in my head that I would get around to reading them all in my golden years. I pictured myself spending long afternoons in a study whose walls were lined with books and a floor covered with stacks of books. After I finished Gravity’s Rainbow, I would go back and read Moby Dick for the fourth time. If you owned a book, it meant that you intended to read that book sometime before you died.

It was only a few years ago that I realized I had spent a small fortune to build a personal library full of books I would never read. I would have done better to save that money for my child’ college tuition. I have donated many of those books to our local library.

Even though I realize I will never read all the books I own, I still hang on to a few titles that I have promised myself I will read “one day.” The aforementioned Gravity’s Rainbow is one of those. I took a stab at reading it a couple of months ago but found that I was unable to stay focused long enough to make any significant progress through the book before I became distracted or fell asleep.

There was a period of about 15 years in the 1990s and 2000s when I listened to audiobooks from Audible. At that time, I had a 2-hour commute, so listening to a long novel while driving was not so daunting. If I was engaged in a book, I actually looked forward to the 2 hours on the road to learn what came next in the story.  

In the early days of my Audible membership, to be able to listen to my books in the car, I had to burn the files onto blank CDs. It took 32 CDs to hold Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. It took several hours to burn that many CDs. Now I can stream that book at any time on my Kindle tablet or my smartphone. I doubt that I will listen to that book again, but it’s nice to know it’s there in my digital library if I want it—along with the Bible and the complete works of William Shakespeare, all accessible on my phone or tablet.

I know many say they won’t read books online because they miss the sensual experience of holding the solid book in your hands, the smell of a brand new book hot off the presses, or the dusty smell of an old book that has soaked up the aroma of a room that has housed hundreds of books for many years. I totally understand that.

But buying a book online also has its pleasures. It is nice to find an old forgotten favorite that you may have lost and that is now out of print, but you can acquire the content if not the physical book. It is nice be able to acquire a book immediately after you’ve heard a rave review on a blog or from a friend.

But here’s the dilemma: as before when I was buying actual physical books, I have built a digital library of books I will never read. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t read at all, but I usually do best with shorter popular fiction. I’m pretty good staying tuned in to authors like Stephen King, Larry McMurtry, or Neil Gaiman. But I don’t have the mental stamina to follow a saga that follows a family through three generations. But I still hope that one day I will be able to plow my way through Pynchon, Faulkner, and Barth.

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Consolidating my posts

I am not very active on Tumblr. In fact, I opened an account a few years ago and then forgot that I even had an account. When I realized I had two accounts, I thought oh hell so now I have two accounts,

.But then I thought I would like to have my posts all together in one convenient spot. So I went to my other page and copied all my posts so that I post them here. So what follows a collection of pasts from my other page (Commuter 52)

Here goes:

But these are the only feet I have

Today, I almost put my right shoe on my left foot. I caught the mistake before I actually slipped my toes into the sneaker. But all of a sudden, I started thinking about childhood, the time when a person is most likely to put shoes on the wrong feet. I remembered a time in the winter of my first-grade year when it was snowing during our recess. We were required to put on rubber boots over our shoes or we couldn’t go out. I must have been eager to go outside to play because I carelessly put my boots on the wrong feet. I didn’t notice until I was outside. Now I think I should have just let it go for the 15 minutes I would be wearing them. They felt a little weird on my feet, but they weren’t that uncomfortable and they didn’t hinder my walking or running. But at that time it was important to me to have the boots on the right feet. Maybe I was afraid that the other kids would make fun of me.

I remember that I walked away from the activity on the playground and leaned against the school building to switch the boots around. I tried to find a place where no one would see me. Of course, I had to remove the boots and stand in the snow with just my shoes on. And so I was violating the rule about wearing boots on the playground. But I got my boots switched around without being caught.

There must be thousands of events in my childhood more significant than this, but something about the concept of having shoes on the wrong feet brought back a vivid memory of standing in the snow in the shadow of the school. I remember what it was like to get my shoes wet while trying to conceal that fact. Everything was white. The air was crisp and cold.

I did not know that my mind was going to take me on this little trip. But small things can cause the brain to dredge up obscure experiences from the past.

Radio

In the early 60s, when I was 7 or 8, every teenager had a portable radio, called a transistor After the car radio, the transistor was the first device that allowed teenagers to take their music with them to the beach or on a picnic. Later portable devices, in historical order, included the Sony Walkman (a cassette player), the Discman (played CDs), MP3 players like Zune and then the I-pod, and currently the smart phone.

I remember owning two different transistor radios. I won the first one as a prize for getting a certain number of new subscribers on my paper route. It was a cheap model, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. The only way to listen to it was through a primitive ear piece. Nothing like the ear buds we have today. The sound was tinny, and the only radio station I could get was WOWO in Fort Wayne (IN) about 30 miles away.

WOWO wasn’t the cool radio station. It did occasionally play some popular songs (rock & roll), but it also had corny features like the Farm News Report. It was the station your parents listened to in the kitchen.

My second transistor was bigger and had better reception. You could listen without an ear piece, but you could also use an ear piece if you didn’t want to disturb others.

This transistor was able to get the cool radio station from Chicago, WLS, about 150 miles away. WLS had cool disc jockeys like Art Roberts and Dick Biondi. Biondi was something like an early shock-jock, but strictly PG-rated.

WLS played only rock & roll, including novelty songs like “Alley-Oop” and “One-eyed, One-toed, Giant Purple People eater.” We listened to The Beach Boys, the Supremes, Dion, and Del Shannon. I couldn’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure that it was on WLS that I first heard the Beatles.

WLS had a radio show called The Silver Dollar Survey where they would count down the top 40 hits. It came on in the late afternoon, so I could listen after school. Every Friday, WLS printed their Top 40 songs for that week on a kind of flyer. My local record store had a stack of these on the checkout counter. I would sometimes ride my bike downtown–about a mile–just to pick up the latest Silver Dollar Survey. That way, I could follow along as they counted down the hits. I would save them and at one point had more than a year’s worth. It was fun to look at them and remember what was popular five months ago. We considered those “oldies.”

I associate those days with the small 45-rpm records that had an A-side (the song they played on the radio), and the B-side (which was rarely played). One of the things that made the Beatles special was that their B-sides were just as popular as their A-sides. “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” were on the same 45. “She’s a Woman” and “I Feel Fine” were on the same 45. “We Can Work It Out” and “Day Tripper” were on the same 45.

I’m not sure when I stopped listening to Top 40 radio. The “Album Rock” format had taken over by they time I was in college. I started buying only 33-rpm LPs. And we had stereo! But that’s another blog.

Science Fiction

I like science fiction. I’m not sure why. I know that part of it is escapism. It is also fun to see how science fiction writers see the future. What technological advances do they envision? How accurate were the science fiction writers of the past?

Almost all science fiction depends on a handful of technological concepts. Two of the most common are space travel and time travel. Both of these ideas are impossible according to our current understanding of the physical world. Space travel would require millions of years to get from one solar system to another unless we somehow found a way to propel a vessel faster than the speed of light. Many science fiction TV shows and movies include technology to make this possible. The U.S.S. Enterprise required a dilithium crystal to operate the warp drive that would send the ship into hyperspace. Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon required some similar device to make a space jump.

I don’t know if anyone has described a way to travel through time. Doc Brown has a flux capacitor in his DeLorean, but it is really a bunch of mumbo jumbo. The TV show Timeless uses a pod that can hold three people. The pod is an orb with bands around it that spin so fast (faster than the speed of light?) that it sends the pod back in time. The main thing about traveling into the past is that you have to be careful not to do anything that would change the course of history. The Timeless crew chase after a villain time traveler and undo or mitigate whatever history-changing acts he performs. Marty McFly begins to disappear when he travels back and almost interferes with the meeting of his parents.

Another mainstay in science fiction is artificial intelligence. Writers envisioned sentient machines since the early days of electronic computing. One episode of The Twilight Zone featured Wally Cox being driven mad by a jealous computer that was the size of a room. HAL had his own agenda in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator represented a network of machines that became sentient and decided to take over the world. I think scientists are actually anticipating the moment, called the singularity, when computers actually become conscious.

Later science fiction works raise more complex moral problems when dealing with manmade creations that are aware of their own existence. The mechanical boy played by Joel Osment in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is not fully accepted as a living boy. But all of his adventures make the audience feel that he is really aware of himself as a living being. He wants to be like Pinocchio, who turns into a real boy when the Blue Fairy judges him worthy.

Two recent TV series–Humans and Westworld–play with the idea of robots that are so realistic that they eventually become aware of themselves as thinking creatures. In both series, there are humans and robots who try to live together peacefully, but inevitably the robots become dissatisfied with their lot as second-class citizens and rebel against their human makers.

I recently read Isaac Asimov’s novel Foundation from 1951. I found the premise interesting. A genius in the science of psychohistory foresees the downfall of the galactic empire centuries ahead and establishes a Foundation to mitigate the effects of the downfall. The dark ages will only last 1,000 years instead of 30,000 years. I imagine that Asimov was suggesting something like the monasteries where the literature and science from classical Greece and Rome were preserved to end the Dark Ages and bring about the Renaissance. But the rest of the book describes mundane political plots where the technology was only incidental. Yes, he predicted that communication would expand the televisual technology that was just getting started when he wrote the book. But the scientists still used pocket calculators.

The most unsettling part of the book is that there are no women in prominent roles in society. The only female character is the shrewish wife of one of the planetary politicians. A psycohistorian should have foreseen that gender roles would evolve in the coming decades.

Grandparents

I knew only one of my grandparents–my mother’s mother, Caroline Shepherd Greene. The other grandparents died before I was born or when I was only 2 or 3 years old. I will write more about Caroline, but I just wanted to jot down a small thing that I remember my mother told me about her father, Walter Joseph Greene, who was a high school administrator in Newark, New Jersey, from around 1900 until the 1930s, when he died. (I don’t know the exact date of his death.)

It seems my grandfather was interested in technology and mass communication long before we had television, computers, or the Internet. They had the radio, newspapers, and movies. But my grandfather imagined that, one day, people would not get their daily news through the newspaper, but through daily news reels delivered every morning to your doorstep. He must have envisioned that everyone would have the projection equipment to make this possible. I wonder if he would be appalled by the fake news that has proliferated since the rise of social media.

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First Try

The word “essay” means to try or to make an effort. Or it is the result of an effort, such as a piece of writing. I like to think of essays as attempts that may or may not succeed. But I think the word essay, as a piece of writing, calls to mind a more polished, planned achievement. And so I do not want to call what I am doing here “writing essays.” At least not yet. And I hate the word “blog.” I refuse to blog. But I am writing here in an attempt to achieve a number of things.

One, I need to practice writing. I used to think of myself as a talented writer. I got positive feedback from my teachers in high school and college, and I was good enough at writing poetry to get admitted to a graduate creative writing program. I didn’t think that I would be the next Robert Frost, but I thought I could publish some books of poetry and make a living teaching creative writing at some small college like the one I attended. That didn’t happen. I was able to transition into a position where I could use what writing skills I had to develop patient education materials for a government contracting firm. At that point, I felt I was doing something useful and I felt I was pretty good at it. I received positive feedback from my clients, and so all was well.

But late in my career, I found I was having more trouble writing materials that were easy to read. I began to question whether I was ever really meant to be a writer at all. Younger members of our team, who had medical backgrounds, seemed to have a better grasp on how to create works that satisfied the client. I had to quit work when a series of health issues sent me to the hospital six or seven times in one year. During that time, I rarely used the keyboard of my computer to write anything more than a few informal emails and Facebook posts.

When you don’t write regularly, you get rusty. Writing becomes as difficult as doing chin-ups after years with no physical exercise. And that is where I am now.

I have a couple of other things that I am attempting to do in this series of essays. I had trouble sleeping last night, and it occurred to me that maybe I should try to put down some of my memories so that members of my family could have some sense of my life. I don’t want to write an autobiography, but I thought I could record some random memories of events in my life so that descendants might know at least a little bit about this obscure fellow on their family tree. I envision posting some of these pieces on my profile in Ancestry.com.

One example: I remember where I was when I learned that President Kennedy had been killed. I know that this is a cliché. Everyone who was alive then remembers where they were on that day. But much of my audience was not alive then. And everyone has different memory. When I write about where I was on the day Kennedy was assassinated, I won’t pretend to be adding any insight into the events of that day. But maybe I can preserve some bit of what it was like to be a 10-year-old boy in a small Midwestern town when those events occurred.

That is what I hope I might accomplish. Maybe it won’t happen in these first few awkward attempts. But maybe, after exercising my writing muscles, I will have at least a few pieces of life or thought or memory worth sharing.

[martinchuzzlewit-blog1]

Date of birth?

I have had many encounters with hospitals, pharmacies, and health care providers in the last 25 years. I was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease (CKD) in 1990 when I was 37. The diagnosis was the result of a blood test taken during a routine check-up. I was so ignorant of medical matters at that point that I wondered how they could find kidney disease through a blood test. Didn’t they need to take an x-ray or biopsy of the kidney?

I soon learned about what the kidneys do--clean the blood, among other things--so I understood how a blood test could indicate the health of the kidneys. 

Up to that point, the only encounters I had had with health care providers were to treat minor injuries suffered while participating in sports. The only time I ever saw the inside of a hospital was to visit a friend or family member.

The diagnosis of CKD meant that I had to see a nephrologist regularly. Since my CKD was not advanced, I only had to see the doctor every 6 months. Other than that, the condition had minimal effect on my life. Kidney disease has no symptoms until a person has lost almost all kidney function. 

In the 1990s, when I was in my 40s, I had to start taking pills for high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I was admitted to a hospital for the first time in my life in 1996, not for anything having to do with kidney disease, but for pneumonia. I was admitted on a Friday afternoon and released two days later. That isolated occasion made a small impression on me. At least I now knew what it was like to spend the night in a hospital.

My kidney function declined very slowly over the next several years, and my only encounters with health care providers were those regular visits to the nephrologist. Then, in 2005, when I was 52, I reached the point where I would need to start dialysis to compensate for my failed kidneys. I had a choice between hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. Most people know about hemodialysis, a treatment that involves sending the patient’s blood through tubes to a machine that filters the blood and sends the blood back to the patient. 

But I chose peritoneal dialysis. In peritoneal dialysis, the patient fills his peritoneal cavity--the space in the lower abdomen that holds many of the body’s internal organs--with a solution that absorbs wastes from the body through the peritoneal membrane. After the fluid has been in the abdomen for a few hours, the patient empties the fluid saturated with wastes from the body into a bag and then refills the abdomen with a fresh bag of fluid.

To begin peritoneal dialysis, the patient must have a permanent catheter installed that delivers the fluid to the abdominal cavity. The placement is an outpatient procedure. I was scheduled to have my catheter placed on a Wednesday afternoon. But the preliminary blood work indicated that my potassium was high, a condition that would make the procedure dangerous. High potassium is one of many effects of kidney disease.

The procedure was postponed and I was admitted to the hospital for the second time in my life. While I was in the hospital, I was given a foul-tasting liquid that binds potassium in the bowel. By Friday afternoon, my potassium was low enough for the procedure to proceed. I went home that evening.

About a week later, I began working with my dialysis nurse to learn how to perform my own fluid exchanges. I then settled into a life of interrupting my daily activities for a 30-minute procedure every few hours. That life included receiving dialysis supplies once a month. The supplies included 30 boxes of dialysis fluid. The boxes took up a large space in our living room. Still, I was able to hold down a job. My hours were reduced from 40 hours a week to 30.

A couple of months after I started dialysis, I experienced an intense pain in my leg while I was at work. One of my colleagues was a nurse. She suspected that I might have a blood clot. She told me to lie on floor and called for an ambulance. I was carried out of the office past all of my co-workers on a stretcher. That was my first ambulance ride.

The nurse had been correct. I had a blood clot. I was admitted for my third hospital stay. I believe that was when hospitals were beginning to computerize much of the record-keeping that took place in caring for patient. My nurses were just learning how to use a scanner that read a bar code on the patient’s wrist ban.  It was one way of ensuring that the right patient was the right medication. I think that was also about the time that health care providers started asking the patient his date of birth to confirm that he was the right  patient.

Since that time, I have had more hospital stays than I can count. I was admitted for blood clots, urinary tract infections, and skin infections. Two notable stays occurred when I had my prostate removed in 2006 and then when I received a kidney transplant in 2009. Each stay included a wristband that was constantly scanned and many inquiries about my date of birth.

At first, I would give the name of the month and the four digits of the year--February 12, 1953. After a year or two of giving this cumbersome response, I decided to start giving just the numbers--2-12-53.

The other day, I was at the pharmacy drive-through to pick up a prescription, when I was asked for my date of birth for the millionth time. I usually recite it without thinking. But it occurred to me, does everybody take this question as a matter of course. I realized that many people, especially those under 60, have probably rarely been asked for their date of birth in this way. When I was 35, I could not have envisioned how these medical practices would play such a big part in my life.

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Sgt. Pepper

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. I was 14 at the time, and it was the summer between junior high and high school for me. I think I had collected all of the Beatles’ previous American releases--at least the ones on the Capitol label--so it was important to me to keep my collection complete. I used to buy my records from Hire’s Electronic Store on Main Street in North Manchester. On the day the album was released, Mrs. Hire called me to let me know that the album had arrived. I rushed downtown and picked up my copy.

I found the cover interesting, with all the pop culture figures gathered around what appeared to be the grave of the Beatles. We had some fun picking out all the figures we recognized, such as Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Dylan Thomas, and W.C. Fields.

I don’t know if I completely understood the concept of the album at that time. I had some sense that they were creating an alter-ego for the band that was an old-fashioned brass band that would have performed in the British music halls that were popular in the earlier parts of the 20th century. The title song sounds like the patter of the master of ceremonies at one of those music halls. The music halls were something like the vaudeville shows in America. It would include a variety of acts, including musicians, comedians, acrobats, and dramatic actors. Songs that came out of the music halls included “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.”

I understand that the entire album was supposed to be like a music hall performance, but I don’t think every song really fit into that format. I think that the songs that were most consistent with the theme were “With a Little Help from My Friends,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” and “Lovely Rita Meter Maid.” The other songs might have fit on any other Beatle album.

At that time, I believed that the Beatles could do no wrong, so I convinced myself that every track on the album was a masterpiece. I later came to realize that I really didn’t like all of the songs. I know that “With a Little Help from My Friends” is one of the album’s signature pieces, but I am really not that fond of the tune. “She’s Leaving Home” is kind of interesting as a parody of an overly sentimental song from the music hall days, but it becomes annoying after you’ve heard it once or twice. I once had an argument with a roommate who didn’t see any irony in the song. He just thought that it was a touching story about a girl whose parents smothered her so she ran off with a car salesman.

I always thought that George Harrison was underappreciated, but his song, “Within You and Without You,” does not appeal to me. 

But I also found several of the songs outstanding. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is more interesting for its lyrics than its melody. “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” is eerie, surreal, and nostalgic. I like the rhythms of “Fixing a Hole” and “It’ Getting Better.” “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Lovely Rita Meter Maid” are more successful as tributes to the music hall days because they are funny as well as nostalgic. “Good Morning” has an driving, urgent beat.

Over the years, I’ve listened to albums that became my favorite for a short period of time. There was James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James and Paul Simon’s Graceland. Actually, I think I like Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints more than Graceland. For a short time, I was obsessed with Joni Mitchell’s Hejira and The Hissing of Summer Lawns. And I still like all those albums, but none of them has had the lasting effect that Sgt. Pepper has had on my psyche.

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The day Kennedy was shot

A few years ago, I was a regular user of the Ancestry.com website. It was interesting to fill in the names I knew from older generations and find who their parents and grandparents were. But, for the most part, all I learned was the names and lifespans of those ancestors. Most of the information I collected came from census records. That gave me their place of birth, where they were living at the time of the census, and how many siblings, children, and spouses they might have had.

Ancestry.com encouraged users to fill in the profiles of family members from older generations by interviewing them and learning more about their lives. I realize now that I am actually a member of the older generation in my family. So, to save my descendants the chore of interviewing me, I thought I would start a series of posts about my life. I do not intend to write an autobiography, but I want to capture some of the things I remember about daily life and the pop culture of my earlier years.

I am writing on Tumblr, but I intend to post these to my profile on Ancestry.com at some point.

I thought I would start with what I remember about the day Kennedy was shot. I was a 10-year-old in the 5th grade in 1963. I have heard other people of my age describe being told about the assassination by their classroom teachers. I don’t remember any such classroom announcement. My memory may be totally wrong here, but this is what I remember: It was a gloomy day. I was a paperboy for The Fort Wayne News Sentinel, which was distributed in the afternoon. My hometown, North Manchester, Indiana, was about 30 miles from Fort Wayne, so that was the source of most of our media--newspapers, television, radio (Wonderful WOWO). That edition of the paper was printed before the events in Dallas, so the paper I was delivering that afternoon had nothing about the assassination. I think Kennedy was on the first page, but the story was about some speech about missiles or rockets that he was scheduled to deliver in Dallas that day. I learned about the assassination when my mother, driving our family’s Ford Galaxie, found me in the middle of my route to make sure I had heard the news. I don’t remember her being emotional, but more concerned about how I might take the new.

I don’t remember much else about that day, except that one of my customers commented about the fact that the paper didn’t include the news about the assassination. 

The town was very conservative in politics, and I think most of the residents had voted for Nixon. But my mother was very vocal about supporting Kennedy, and so I too was a Kennedy supporter during the 1960 campaign. I did not hear any disparaging remarks about Kennedy during that time, although I knew most people in my town did not support his policies. One exception: a friend of mine, probably my closest friend during grade school, commented that he didn’t understand what all the mourning and elaborate funeral procession was for because he was just one man. He would be a Goldwater supporter the following year.

So I’m writing this not because the assassination had some profound influence on my childhood, or at least no more than on any other child my age. And I suspect that it is likely that no one will ever read this memory. But in case someone does happen to run across it while surfing the Internet, maybe they will learn a little bit about what it was like to be a 10-year-old boy in a small Midwestern town on the day Kennedy was shot.