Ok, so I waited a while to write my introduction. But until last week I didn’t even know I was going to be doing this. It took a little time to figure out who I am so I could create a reasonable introduction:
I'm a reader. Always wanted to be a writer but except for a dozen or so first chapters I have rarely succeeding in creating something that was personally satisfying...so I mostly I didn't try.
For a long time the stories about my life-experiences have entertained family, friends and relatives. They have been told and, the favorites retold, so much I never know which ones I've related and which I haven't. In reality some of my best audiences have been grandchildren - and I simply can't tell them ALL of these stories, some with themes just a bit too adult. My weekend as a junkie and the tale of how my mother became a Mexican hooker are in the near future. Oh yeah, the junkie thing...just for your comfort...it wasn't actually me - just an intimate association.
Now most people haven't minded a couple of repeats but my marriage and most of my friendships last YEARS. Of course it is neigh near impossible to remember who has heard what so some of them get repeats and some people never hear others...and may honestly have no interest except in passing of many of these tales. In examining my relationship with various people some of these narratives would never have been appropriate in any conversation I may have had with some of them. Some who have heard them before have gotten tired of re-hearing them which becomes obvious when their eyes glaze over half-way through. I really don't want an unreceptive audience, hence, my new blog.
Ok – as a means of introduction I should start out here by telling you everything here is true – as I understand it or remember it. That doesn’t mean another witness may have seen things slightly different but these are my memories and not theirs. For instance in “The Toboggan Run” someone else may have made that run after me, in fact someone else may have gone first. All I remember is my personal experience in which I definitely made my own suicidal trip downhill which over the years have been fleshed out with circumstances that were likely if not absolutely faithful to the circumstance…these are my memories and memories can be somewhat faulty – particularly after 40 or 50 years or more. These stories are matured so any embellishment is long forgotten and is certainly no longer required, and they are, in fact, factual as much as I can possibly relate. Most of them never needed embelishment as the facts were so fantastic. These are my memories as truthfully as I can possibly relate them which means the essence of the story is absolutely true even if the facts are not gospel.
Most of these are stories I have been telling for years whenever the situation called for it. If I mention you in here by name and you are unhappy with my writing I apologize in advance. Where the actions may be questionable I’ve changed names or only used a first name. If you read something about yourself you didn’t like call or e-mail and I’ll consider the change. In some cases I don’t remember the name so I’ll make one up…but the person is real. Oh yeah, I am a terrible speller and names are words that don’t take well to spell-checking so if the name in question is spelled wrong…I’M SORRY…GET OVER IT! Ahem…excuse the outburst. I also get names mixed so if the first and last name don’t match then it must be one I’m making up to protect the unwilling, unknown or incorrectly remembered. Where I can I check facts but the reality is half of the witnesses to these events have faded from my life long ago.
Now, truthfully, I have found I can't relate these narratives as told in person as without wide eyes, sweeping gestures and changing vocal clues. In these cases the words alone just don't sound the same written down. For this reason stories have been modified to accentuate things I could previously stress with a simple look or gesture. These are my memories. As mentioned previously, they are not necessarily accurate in fact but often the impressions or memories of a child, inexperienced teenager or naive young adult (and a still-learning older adult.) I don't always change the impression to fit the facts as I am often relating those faulty impressions or immature attitudes as a major part of the story-line. In other words...I'm not going to relate the impressions of a 5-year-old at his first church-revival by critiquing my own experience...I will simply relate them as they were or as they are remembered – as faulty or fantastical it may be – magic is real to children so mysterious circumstances that they have not before encountered can be easily misinterpreted to be something entirely different…did Grandma really tell me goodbye? We’ll save that question for a later entry.
In my 20's for a short-time I had a set of friends who called me Uncle Remus after my story-telling ability which I exercised late at night at the end of a Waukegan pier where they would give me a situation and a character and await the tale. Later an office with walls and no door and no ceiling, located in the middle of the manufacturing-floor earned me the nickname "Oz"... but I was never sure if it was because of the wisdom dispatched over the wall or because they were saying "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
Why am I writing these? Mostly because Vanessa, my eldest lovely grand-daughter used to ask for stories and name some of them specifically but, of course, her age would not allow some of the items that were the most fun to be related…and by the time she was old enough she wasn’t as curious about my life as she is fully engaged in her own. Nowadays some of the younger grandkids seem interested in my stories but, again, some of them will have to wait until...well maybe never...unless they someday read this...so I figure maybe I should save some of them here for them, or you, to discover on your own. I have no one else to pass the stories to so…whomever gets ‘em gets ‘em.
Hmmm…what else? I can be opinionated. Ooo, gasp, surprise, amazement! I am not foolish enough to think everyone will agree or even understand my logic but I never said I was right…just opinionated…and my opinion is no better than anyone else’s. You know what they say about opinions and a**holes…everybody’s got one and they all stink. Consequently, some of these may turn out to be rants about something of which I have an opinion or maybe an idea for a TV show or movie.
How to start…in the beginning…
Labor Day – first Monday in September – normally a holiday for all but my mom, my dad and the hospital staff. It was 10-minutes from the nurse’s lunch break when mom began the screaming. She was 18, scared stiff and not exactly sure what to expect…I was her first. Oh sure, she got good at this later – I’ve got 4-brothers – but for now – not so sure.
I was there…but I don’t remember this but I’m pretty sure she started screaming, at least I’ve been told she did not find her first child be a pleasant experience. I’ve spoken about this moment with the nurse that delivered me, Kay Evans. Kay later became the school nurse at the local school and gave me the feeling she was watching out for me even though she never gave me an overt reason to feel this. Mom had had 3 previous false labors and the doctor was not in a big hurry which was why he arrived around 3-minutes after I did. Dr. Walters had been mom’s doctor for the past few years and was scheduled to perform the delivery as, in those days, a GP did practically everything but major surgery. Even then they often assisted as it was their personal patients…of course this is back when doctors cared for you cradle-to-grave. Soon thereafter mom would change doctors, moving the entire family to Doctor Gere after whom my brother is named with a differently-spelled middle name. Dr. Gere was a gruff-voiced but kindly doctor who was our family doctor for most of my young life. The Dr. spoke with a gruff tone because his voice box, or vocal chords, had undergone surgery in which he was the surgeon operating with a local and a mirror and a single nurse assisting. DAMN!
My name: Just a few years ago I called my dad and asked him if I had been named for a specific person. He said no, mom just liked the name. I then asked why my name was Larry & not Lawrence. His answer: he had asked mom the same thing saying I would someday need an adult name. Mom was, evidently, adamant and wanted my name exactly as stated. This is actually why all of my other brothers have names that can change between childhood and adulthood. For most of my life I wanted to believe I had been named after Larry Talbot – Lon Chaney Junior’s Wolf Man. Hey, I was only around 12 when I came to this, admittedly weird, conclusion. I was a big fan of Universal Monster Movies and even today have around 15 various versions of Frankenstein in my collection.
I then related to dad the statement I had been making for years when someone asked why I wasn’t named Lawrence: My typical reply: My parents were so poor when I was born they couldn’t afford a real name so they had to settle for a nickname. Dad said, with a good laugh, it was an accurate assessment of the situation.
As a kid I was raised in a small Midwestern village in Illinois called Winthrop Harbor (originally settled as Spring Bluff) and was located midway between Chicago and Milwaukee, +\-10 mi. In my youngest boyhood I could have been mistaken for Opie Taylor (ref: Mayberry RFD). We had a very rural, innocent and traditional experience. Our backyard had an extended yard that took up part of the vacant lot behind us. After crossing the road boarding this lot was fields and woods that as far as I knew, as a kid, went all the way to Iowa. It was hot and humid in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.
“Wintertime is a razor blade,
that the devil made.
It’s the price we pay for the summertime.”
- Joe Walsh
As a teen I was a lot like Richie Cunningham. It was the same 60’s era of Happy Days, the popular TV show from the 80’s. I was a bit dorky, a bit shy – well, really shy, with a mischievous best friend and in a garage band. Unlike Richie I surfed Lake Michigan, participated in Scouts and swam like a fish. As a kid when everyone else wanted to be a cop or a fireman I wanted to be a diver for Scripps Institute of Oceanography. When I was transferred to San Diego with the Navy I visited Scripps the first week just to see the Scripps Pier – to me a sacred monument to science. Reading all of the diving stories I could get my hands on I discovered Arthur C. Clarke and, after running out of his diving stories began reading his sci-fi. Wow! Completely new worlds! From there Andre Norton (aka: Andrew North, Mary Norton) and Issac Azimov, Kurt Vonnigut and on and on and on. Eventually I found science fact even more thrilling and adventurous than fiction and continue today to divide my time between hard science, history, Sci-Fi and easy-read pop-mysteries like Sue Grafton or Janet Evonovitch. My favorite book is White Lotus by John Hersey – now out of print. This is a compelling book about slavery and revolution.
In 1967 immediately following my high school graduation we moved the family to Iowa City, Iowa. I was not crazy about this move and soon after Christmas I moved back to Illinois to room temporarily with Kerry, a very good surf-buddy whose parents were generous enough to take me in for a while. In February 1968 Kerry and I joined the Navy in the buddy system. It took about 48 hours to separate us – so much for the buddy-system. During my enlistment I got to see the Asian world and to experience Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Taiwan besides Hawaii, Guam and Midway Island. I'm sure there were ports I've forgotten. Kerry’s experiences were about the same as both of us were Pacific Fleet Radarmen – me at 32nd Street Depot in San Diego and he at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
After the Navy I wandered for a while seeking myself while playing rock n’ roll and jazz, becoming a manufacturing and process improvement professional and, eventually, meeting my wife and marrying into a ready-made family. This family I’ve written very little about and yet, today, is the most important thing in my life. The adventure of a rich family life may not be exciting in a minute-by-minute or blow-by-blow story but the adventure of a sustained relationship, the importance of family, kids, grandkids makes all my other adventures pale in comparison.
Don’t let the length of the narrative or the thrill of the experience indicate the importance of the experience.
Here we go…
I'm a reader. Always wanted to be a writer but except for a dozen or so first chapters I have rarely succeeding in creating something that was personally satisfying...so I mostly I didn't try.
For a long time the stories about my life-experiences have entertained family, friends and relatives. They have been told and, the favorites retold, so much I never know which ones I've related and which I haven't. In reality some of my best audiences have been grandchildren - and I simply can't tell them ALL of these stories, some with themes just a bit too adult. My weekend as a junkie and the tale of how my mother became a Mexican hooker are in the near future. Oh yeah, the junkie thing...just for your comfort...it wasn't actually me - just an intimate association.
Now most people haven't minded a couple of repeats but my marriage and most of my friendships last YEARS. Of course it is neigh near impossible to remember who has heard what so some of them get repeats and some people never hear others...and may honestly have no interest except in passing of many of these tales. In examining my relationship with various people some of these narratives would never have been appropriate in any conversation I may have had with some of them. Some who have heard them before have gotten tired of re-hearing them which becomes obvious when their eyes glaze over half-way through. I really don't want an unreceptive audience, hence, my new blog.
Ok – as a means of introduction I should start out here by telling you everything here is true – as I understand it or remember it. That doesn’t mean another witness may have seen things slightly different but these are my memories and not theirs. For instance in “The Toboggan Run” someone else may have made that run after me, in fact someone else may have gone first. All I remember is my personal experience in which I definitely made my own suicidal trip downhill which over the years have been fleshed out with circumstances that were likely if not absolutely faithful to the circumstance…these are my memories and memories can be somewhat faulty – particularly after 40 or 50 years or more. These stories are matured so any embellishment is long forgotten and is certainly no longer required, and they are, in fact, factual as much as I can possibly relate. Most of them never needed embelishment as the facts were so fantastic. These are my memories as truthfully as I can possibly relate them which means the essence of the story is absolutely true even if the facts are not gospel.
Most of these are stories I have been telling for years whenever the situation called for it. If I mention you in here by name and you are unhappy with my writing I apologize in advance. Where the actions may be questionable I’ve changed names or only used a first name. If you read something about yourself you didn’t like call or e-mail and I’ll consider the change. In some cases I don’t remember the name so I’ll make one up…but the person is real. Oh yeah, I am a terrible speller and names are words that don’t take well to spell-checking so if the name in question is spelled wrong…I’M SORRY…GET OVER IT! Ahem…excuse the outburst. I also get names mixed so if the first and last name don’t match then it must be one I’m making up to protect the unwilling, unknown or incorrectly remembered. Where I can I check facts but the reality is half of the witnesses to these events have faded from my life long ago.
Now, truthfully, I have found I can't relate these narratives as told in person as without wide eyes, sweeping gestures and changing vocal clues. In these cases the words alone just don't sound the same written down. For this reason stories have been modified to accentuate things I could previously stress with a simple look or gesture. These are my memories. As mentioned previously, they are not necessarily accurate in fact but often the impressions or memories of a child, inexperienced teenager or naive young adult (and a still-learning older adult.) I don't always change the impression to fit the facts as I am often relating those faulty impressions or immature attitudes as a major part of the story-line. In other words...I'm not going to relate the impressions of a 5-year-old at his first church-revival by critiquing my own experience...I will simply relate them as they were or as they are remembered – as faulty or fantastical it may be – magic is real to children so mysterious circumstances that they have not before encountered can be easily misinterpreted to be something entirely different…did Grandma really tell me goodbye? We’ll save that question for a later entry.
In my 20's for a short-time I had a set of friends who called me Uncle Remus after my story-telling ability which I exercised late at night at the end of a Waukegan pier where they would give me a situation and a character and await the tale. Later an office with walls and no door and no ceiling, located in the middle of the manufacturing-floor earned me the nickname "Oz"... but I was never sure if it was because of the wisdom dispatched over the wall or because they were saying "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
Why am I writing these? Mostly because Vanessa, my eldest lovely grand-daughter used to ask for stories and name some of them specifically but, of course, her age would not allow some of the items that were the most fun to be related…and by the time she was old enough she wasn’t as curious about my life as she is fully engaged in her own. Nowadays some of the younger grandkids seem interested in my stories but, again, some of them will have to wait until...well maybe never...unless they someday read this...so I figure maybe I should save some of them here for them, or you, to discover on your own. I have no one else to pass the stories to so…whomever gets ‘em gets ‘em.
Hmmm…what else? I can be opinionated. Ooo, gasp, surprise, amazement! I am not foolish enough to think everyone will agree or even understand my logic but I never said I was right…just opinionated…and my opinion is no better than anyone else’s. You know what they say about opinions and a**holes…everybody’s got one and they all stink. Consequently, some of these may turn out to be rants about something of which I have an opinion or maybe an idea for a TV show or movie.
How to start…in the beginning…
Labor Day – first Monday in September – normally a holiday for all but my mom, my dad and the hospital staff. It was 10-minutes from the nurse’s lunch break when mom began the screaming. She was 18, scared stiff and not exactly sure what to expect…I was her first. Oh sure, she got good at this later – I’ve got 4-brothers – but for now – not so sure.
I was there…but I don’t remember this but I’m pretty sure she started screaming, at least I’ve been told she did not find her first child be a pleasant experience. I’ve spoken about this moment with the nurse that delivered me, Kay Evans. Kay later became the school nurse at the local school and gave me the feeling she was watching out for me even though she never gave me an overt reason to feel this. Mom had had 3 previous false labors and the doctor was not in a big hurry which was why he arrived around 3-minutes after I did. Dr. Walters had been mom’s doctor for the past few years and was scheduled to perform the delivery as, in those days, a GP did practically everything but major surgery. Even then they often assisted as it was their personal patients…of course this is back when doctors cared for you cradle-to-grave. Soon thereafter mom would change doctors, moving the entire family to Doctor Gere after whom my brother is named with a differently-spelled middle name. Dr. Gere was a gruff-voiced but kindly doctor who was our family doctor for most of my young life. The Dr. spoke with a gruff tone because his voice box, or vocal chords, had undergone surgery in which he was the surgeon operating with a local and a mirror and a single nurse assisting. DAMN!
My name: Just a few years ago I called my dad and asked him if I had been named for a specific person. He said no, mom just liked the name. I then asked why my name was Larry & not Lawrence. His answer: he had asked mom the same thing saying I would someday need an adult name. Mom was, evidently, adamant and wanted my name exactly as stated. This is actually why all of my other brothers have names that can change between childhood and adulthood. For most of my life I wanted to believe I had been named after Larry Talbot – Lon Chaney Junior’s Wolf Man. Hey, I was only around 12 when I came to this, admittedly weird, conclusion. I was a big fan of Universal Monster Movies and even today have around 15 various versions of Frankenstein in my collection.
I then related to dad the statement I had been making for years when someone asked why I wasn’t named Lawrence: My typical reply: My parents were so poor when I was born they couldn’t afford a real name so they had to settle for a nickname. Dad said, with a good laugh, it was an accurate assessment of the situation.
As a kid I was raised in a small Midwestern village in Illinois called Winthrop Harbor (originally settled as Spring Bluff) and was located midway between Chicago and Milwaukee, +\-10 mi. In my youngest boyhood I could have been mistaken for Opie Taylor (ref: Mayberry RFD). We had a very rural, innocent and traditional experience. Our backyard had an extended yard that took up part of the vacant lot behind us. After crossing the road boarding this lot was fields and woods that as far as I knew, as a kid, went all the way to Iowa. It was hot and humid in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.
“Wintertime is a razor blade,
that the devil made.
It’s the price we pay for the summertime.”
- Joe Walsh
As a teen I was a lot like Richie Cunningham. It was the same 60’s era of Happy Days, the popular TV show from the 80’s. I was a bit dorky, a bit shy – well, really shy, with a mischievous best friend and in a garage band. Unlike Richie I surfed Lake Michigan, participated in Scouts and swam like a fish. As a kid when everyone else wanted to be a cop or a fireman I wanted to be a diver for Scripps Institute of Oceanography. When I was transferred to San Diego with the Navy I visited Scripps the first week just to see the Scripps Pier – to me a sacred monument to science. Reading all of the diving stories I could get my hands on I discovered Arthur C. Clarke and, after running out of his diving stories began reading his sci-fi. Wow! Completely new worlds! From there Andre Norton (aka: Andrew North, Mary Norton) and Issac Azimov, Kurt Vonnigut and on and on and on. Eventually I found science fact even more thrilling and adventurous than fiction and continue today to divide my time between hard science, history, Sci-Fi and easy-read pop-mysteries like Sue Grafton or Janet Evonovitch. My favorite book is White Lotus by John Hersey – now out of print. This is a compelling book about slavery and revolution.
In 1967 immediately following my high school graduation we moved the family to Iowa City, Iowa. I was not crazy about this move and soon after Christmas I moved back to Illinois to room temporarily with Kerry, a very good surf-buddy whose parents were generous enough to take me in for a while. In February 1968 Kerry and I joined the Navy in the buddy system. It took about 48 hours to separate us – so much for the buddy-system. During my enlistment I got to see the Asian world and to experience Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Taiwan besides Hawaii, Guam and Midway Island. I'm sure there were ports I've forgotten. Kerry’s experiences were about the same as both of us were Pacific Fleet Radarmen – me at 32nd Street Depot in San Diego and he at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
After the Navy I wandered for a while seeking myself while playing rock n’ roll and jazz, becoming a manufacturing and process improvement professional and, eventually, meeting my wife and marrying into a ready-made family. This family I’ve written very little about and yet, today, is the most important thing in my life. The adventure of a rich family life may not be exciting in a minute-by-minute or blow-by-blow story but the adventure of a sustained relationship, the importance of family, kids, grandkids makes all my other adventures pale in comparison.
Don’t let the length of the narrative or the thrill of the experience indicate the importance of the experience.
Here we go…
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