Excelsior, you fathead!

I’m a bit disappointed in myself. I counted up all of the books I read during 2005 and found that they totaled only eight. Eight! A few books were left off, such as a guide to digital SLR cameras, social welfare programs in the South since the 1930s, and an eleven hundred page behemoth of a biography of FDR, all of which I’m still working on. With the demands of work and family I know that I don’t have that much free time for reading but at one point not too long ago I was reading on average at least twelve to fifteen books a year. However, that was before the Dark Times, before College, when I was compelled to read because I had to not because I wanted to. Nothing draws the fun out of reading as being perpetually pummeled by articles on special interest groups or the writings of Thomas Hobbes, in whom my interest in his writing was nasty, brutish, and short. But in 2005 I shook off the post-traumatic stress of compulsory reading and began to pick up the pieces.

In early November I picked up a copy of “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash,” by Jean Shepherd. Being a fan of the movie “A Christmas Story,” it had long been my goal to read the book upon which the movie had been, albeit loosely, based. I had read the comments about the book on Amazon in advance trying to get a feel whether the book was worth reading or not as I had never read any of Shepherd’s material before. Perhaps the best way to describe Shepherd is that he was a satirist. During the 1950s, 60s, and 70s he had his own late night radio show on WOR radio in New York City. He started off as a DJ in Cincinnati in the late 1940s, but found he preferred to spin tales rather than play music, much to the chagrin of his bosses. He did some work on television and wrote articles and stories that appeared in Playboy, Mad Magazine, Village Voice, and Field & Stream, but mostly he is known amongst his fans, his “Night People” he once called them, for his late night radio program. Shepherd passed away in October 1999, but his fans maintain a web site dedicated to his life and works.

Perusing the book’s entry on Amazon, almost all of the customer comments were positive, though a few were negative and were obviously posted by people who thought the book was a novelization of “A Christmas Story,” which it is not. Rather, the book takes place roughly twenty years after the events in the movie. Ralphy has moved to New York City and has returned to the fictional Hohman, Indiana for a visit. Once there he stops by a bar owned by his friend Flick (the kid who sticks his tongue to a pole). From there the book becomes a running series of stories as Ralphy and Flick reminisce about the past. The first sixty pages or so comprise most of the stories that would eventually become the movie, but the remaining stories are worth reading in their own right. Such as the tale of a drunken neighbor who builds his own firework, over-stuffed with gunpowder, and proceeds to blow up the front of his own home. Or the tale of Ralphy, in search of fodder for a fourth grade book report, finding an adult romance novel in his parents’ bedroom and does a write-up about that—much to the shocked surprise of his teacher.

There are some differences between the book and the movie, as can be expected. The world of Hohman, Indiana that Shepherd writes about in the book is much different than what appears in the movie. The film shows a bright, somewhat cheery and sentimental version of the town. But the city Shepherd describes in the book is a dark, dirty mill town caught in the throes of the Depression. The unemployed face foreclosure and disappear from town afterwards, leaving neighborhood kids behind wondering what happened to their friends as they bounce rocks off of street signs and the sides of buildings with their slingshots. Those who haven’t lost their job live in fear that they will. It is not a hopeful setting and certainly not one that would set a festive tone for a holiday movie.

Admittedly I enjoyed my first foray into the world of Jean Shepherd’s writing. And with my employer about to replenish my bank account, it’s time to get going on beating last year’s total of eight books—that is if I can get through that FDR biography.

Class Reunion

A commercial for Old Spice that ran in 2004, I think, stated that smell was the sense most connected to memory. Subsequent online researching I conducted backs up their argument, so who am I to argue with such an empirical source as Madison Avenue? I guess I would have to agree with the whole smell/memory concept; there have been many times I’ve taken a stroll down memory lane because of some scent wafting through the air. The scent of chlorophyll from decomposing leaves takes me back many, many years to Long Island and raking up huge piles of leaves dropped from the maple trees in our sizable (by suburban Long Island standards) yard. Cut grass takes me back to my younger days and playing rec league soccer. On those rare occasions when it gets cold enough where I now live, the occasional scent of ozone and static electricity reminds me of our family house on Long Island and its oil-fired furnace, which would suck every last drop of water vapor out of the air and then proceed to drain water from your body. While many of these melancholy trips have been pleasurable, there has been one area that I’ve long been reluctant to revisit: high school.

Like it is for many people, high school for me was a hellish four year experience. Taunts and alienation from peers, struggling academically, I left school with a diploma, a crushed sense of self-confidence, the feeling that I was of not much account academically and intellectually, and that somehow I was a “victim.” Looking back, however, with the advantages of time and distance I can see just how wrong I was. With a minimum of effort I managed to make passing grades, so I wasn’t so much stupid as I was bored and unmotivated. One of my professors during my time in college paid me what I consider the ultimate compliment when he told me that I was one of those people who could make a B in a class without doing a thing. And as for being a “victim,” that’s complete nonsense. Truth be told, I was an obnoxious little shit at the time, so any taunting or alienation was well-deserved. If I had a time machine, even I would go back and smack myself upside the head. Still, for the longest time those four years in high school was an unpleasant experience that was not worth the effort to revisit.

It was Saturday, August 17, 2002, when a message arrived in one of my email accounts that I’ve set up to catch spam when I sign up for online services. The message began:

“Hello,

You've been invited to the Evans High School Class of 1983 Reunion!”

It was from a former classmate with whom I had attended school with as far back as sixth grade. The message caused me to sit back in my chair, trying to decide which emotion I should be feeling—anticipation with thoughts of attending, or trepidation with there being no way I was going. Why go, I thought. School wasn’t that fun, I didn’t know that many people, and besides, I didn’t actually graduate from there (I moved away at the end of my junior year and finished at another high school). Still, there was a desire to do something, perhaps to make amends for being a jerk during my teens and probably to reconcile with my past without having to actually face it. So I sent a reply message offering to do some graphic design work, maybe a program or even a yearbook of sorts with photos and current news for as many classmates as possible.

Before I knew it I was exchanging email messages with two former classmates, both of who remembered me (uh oh!). All of the members of the reunion planning committee liked the idea of a reunion yearbook. And I was also “encouraged” to get over any reservations I had about attending and to come to the reunion. Eventually I reversed course, boxing up all of my trepidations and stuffing them into one of life’s storage closets, and decided to go. From the multiple email messages sent out to keep people up to date on the planning, I saw that there were a few people on the list that I really wanted to see again. This might be fun after all, I told myself.

Eventually the weekend of the reunion in October 2003 arrived, and my wife and I made the trip to the Augusta area. The first event on the agenda was attending the homecoming football game at our high school. Even though I didn’t have far to travel to get to town, I still managed to time things where we were late arriving to the high school. Lacking foresight, which I am on occasion prone to, I dressed for comfort for the drive down and not in casual wear which I would’ve/should’ve/could’ve worn to the game. Thus I show up wearing shorts, hiking shoes, tee shirt, and a jacket. It wasn’t until after the fact, looking at pictures others had taken that night, that I realized how underdressed I was in comparison. No matter. It was a good start to the weekend, getting reacquainted with some classmates who I had played little league and senior league baseball with. I ran into an old friend who I not only played ball with, but his father also coached one of my baseball teams with my father round about 1977. It was very good seeing him again and to find out that his parents are both doing very well. Before we knew it, the game was over. There was just the main event, The Reunion, to get through on the next night.

My wife and I showed up fashionably late at the conference center where the reunion would be held. It is standard operating procedures at functions like this to sign in, get your nametag, and then have your picture taken for comparison with your “last known photo” in the yearbook so you can see how much weight you’ve put on or grey hairs you’ve added. And I had added much weight and a number of grey hairs since I had last seen almost everyone in attendance, but I wasn’t the only one. There were a number of familiar faces in the crowd, but there were also a handful of people I had no idea who they were until I saw their nametag or their picture afterwards.

Much of the evening was spent getting reacquainted with a number of people, a couple of whom I needed to remind who I was (but it quickly came back to them!). I remember walking into the main room where everything was set up and thinking, “My God, this room’s too dark for taking pictures!” It didn’t help that the flash on my camera was unreliable at best. There was a television set out in the foyer where the cash bar was also located; UGA was playing that night so there was quite an audience for football and alcohol that evening.

High school was an awkward time for me, and I sort of expected something similar at the reunion. But unlike high school, there was only one awkward moment and it wasn’t intentional, due more to one of my idiosyncrasies than anything else. Early during the evening when announcements were being made I was called up to the front because I was going to be working on the reunion yearbook. It was, to say the least, an uncomfortable moment for me. Even my friends who have known me for a long time are not entirely aware that I don’t like crowds of people, especially when I don’t really know those people. When I’m in a group of people I don’t know I tend to either try to get away from the situation or get really, really quiet. I’ve been mistaken as being anti-social before, but it’s not because I don’t want to talk it’s just that I’m not comfortable. It’s an odd quirk to have for someone who plays music and has had to get up in front of people to play. Malls are no fun, and I try to get my Christmas shopping done early to avoid being in a crowded store; at least now I can shop online without the hassle.

Outside of the main room a table had been set up with memorials for those classmates and teachers who were no longer with us. It was sad to see that some folks did not even make it out of their teens before they died. The girl who was our homecoming queen was brutally murdered by two wastes-of-gametes in Chicago on Halloween night 1994. The real surprise came when I happened across an obituary for a girl who lived down the street from me. Her name was Michelle and she was a genuinely nice person who took people as they came. I can’t say that we were friends per se, but she was always nice to me and I appreciated that. She died of cancer several months before the reunion. If there was one person in our whole graduating class who deserved to live to be one hundred, it was her.

My wife and I left the reunion fairly early; a friend of ours had been hospitalized for about three weeks at the Medical College of Georgia with serious head injuries from a motorcycle accident. We had seen him and his wife earlier in the day and promised to come back that evening. The next day there was an informal gathering of a few people at a local pizzeria, but I could only stay for a few minutes as my wife woke up that day with a migraine. I spent the drive home in somewhat of a daze, trying to process the whole experience and how it fit into the grand scheme of the universe—or at least my universe. I stood toe-to-toe with a past I did not want nor care to face only to find that it wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Two years later I’m still in touch with some of the people I went to school with.

We drove home along a route that I had driven many times in the past. Twenty years prior I traveled it alone to and from visits to family and friends in the Augusta area. Now I traveled it with my wife and daughter, and the juxtaposition was not lost on me. The times truly had changed.

So...

...a blog of my own. Go figure. I thought that I was just too old to blog, that this phenomenon had just passed me by. But after reading that many senior citizens actively blog, why not me? I don't have anything profound to share with the world, I simply could use some writing practice. For as long as can remember I've loved writing, but a few years of college, crunching data in SPSS and Excel, and cranking out extensive research papers dulled my desire to write anything. So here goes nothing.