I'll Remember This Much

About 1962 

Willcox, Arizona

Let’s not think about where 

our old neighborhood went.

The street names have remained,

but searching will not find much of

anything removed. It just looks different.

Remember how we played basketball

in December’s chill and frost,

fingers becoming stiff and red,

and how the O’Connor’s blood hounds

chased the ball until one of them

bit a hole in it?

In spring, when all flowers blossomed,

the land seemed merciful and soft.

Then summer, with a few days too warm,

displayed new mirages in the distance,

silvery and ghostly and mysterious.

We rode our bikes out toward them

but soon realized we weren’t 

getting any closer.

I remember especially the autumn 

of my eighth grade, when boys and girls,

shimmering in fall colors and full blush,

noticed each other differently, 

gradually becoming aware 

of our awkward civilities, 

of boys’ cracking voices, that whatever began 

blossoming the previous summer 

made us fidgety and confused,

having no idea what was really happening.

In the tenth grade I realized what had

really happened, and that memory

has tickled me ever since.

From: Memories Of Things

Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 46

Becoming Old Folks (Part I)

Epilogue, Part I

ca. 1970-present

We entered the world after our protests, 

love-ins, and show-downs, ready to prove ourselves.

We lingered at the university gate, not wanting 

to leave, yet fearful of that first step forward.

Some who lacked a plan asked themselves,

What now? Most figured out something, some didn’t.

Some hoped to apply their idealism to social programs, 

others were sucked into corporate America

never to be seen again; some remained stoned

for a number of years, others plainly floundered.

Many of us did the best we could, getting married, 

raising kids and pets, entering unplanned careers,

remaining involved, at some level, in politics,

social issues, PTA, and our kids’ sports teams.

It added up quickly, it seems, as we saw the future

watching our grandchildren grow into themselves,

while loneliness and vulnerability 

are increasingly an everyday reality.

From: A Meandering Search for

Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 47

Retrospective Of A Boomer (part 4 of 4)

It sometimes seems like a dream, Right? Timothy Leary,

LSD, “Voices in the Sky,” In Search of the Lost Chord,

Haight-Ashbury, flower children (I wasn’t one but wished

I had been...I opted to be a hippie. Mind, they aren’t the same.);

lost in that murky realm between childhood and

a notion of lust and desire; wrestling hope and uncertainty;

alcohol, music, brilliant successes to dismal failures,

Vietnam disrupting the post-WWII “American Dream” 

of Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, the Cleavers,

Norman Rockwell, and The Saturday Evening Post. 

Yet...there were race riots, Kent State, police brutality,

non-violent protests, War on Poverty, voting rights;

anti-establishment, racial equality, First Amendment rights,

women’s rights, “I have a dream,” and “... give peace a chance.”

The 1960s were too big, too much for anyone to grasp.

Some of us found a corner or a niche or a room with a view

and watched events unfold from everywhere we were not;

bemused, confused, excited by the chaos, many were rebels

in search of a cause, faced with the decision of either jumping

into the rough and tumble or crawling back into the womb,

alienated and disillusioned about what to do 

or where to go, just as we watched in the final scene 

of The Graduate, Benjamin and Elaine 

riding the bus to who knows where, 

and I and thousands of others were suddenly

brothers and sisters riding along with them.

From: A Meandering Search for

Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 44

Retrospective Of A Boomer (part 3 of 4)

What a time that was when Elvis Presley and The Beatles

upset the powers that were and sent the rest of us into a frenzy.

The Beach Boys got us all worked up

about cars, surfing, and California girls.

Rock bands with horns— Chicago, The Ides of March, 

and Blood, Sweat, and Tears. They were fresh and exciting;

so was Cream, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, 

Pink Floyd, The Doors, and The Who.

(Nothing like “White Rabbit,” “A Woman Left Lonely,”

“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and “Good Vibrations.”)

Leonard Cohen’s voice became better with age.

Sadly, we didn’t get enough of it before he died in 2016.

Jimi Hendrix’s “The Star Spangled Banner” still reverberates

the pain of where we have been and where we are today.

We saw the Berlin Wall built in 1961 that failed 

in 1989. Seems that freedom had the final word.

And in the midst of everything, two men landed on the moon,

July 20, 1969. I remember our stunning, speechless awe,

right there with Walter Cronkite.

From: A Rambly Search for

Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 33

Retrospective Of A Boomer (part 2 of 4)

For nine months of 1969, I was drunk most of the time, 

self-medicating, hoping to silence a vicious demon.

At the university,* I studied walkers, runners, 

rock climbing, landscapes (with houses and without);

sidewalks, clouds, bones, music, rocks, sonic booms, 

searing desert sunlight, and once a day I recited Desiderata.

I loved being the random university student. 

I had good friends and was active in several clubs.

But the sixties and early seventies were full of rampage,

riots, kidnapings, fire bombings, and Vietnam.

It was as if the times were conspiring to destroy

what little was left of everyone’s innocence.

I ran naked at Gate’s Pass and at Mt. Lemmon.

On a dare, I streaked on the university campus.

My girlfriend was French and wonderfully assertive,

but stalked me for a month for breaking up with her.

Classical music remained my source of solace,

and rock and roll kept me in the groove of things.

The Navy saved me from the train wreck that was home, 

but after that, I feared the volatile nature of my anger.

For two chaotic years, I lived in a kind of feral panic,

thinking that would make up for my abused childhood.

But no, it doesn’t work that way, not at all.

*Tucson, Arizona

From: A Rambly Search for 

Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 9

I Saw It On Television (The American Dream #2)

 At seventeen, though a hopeful young man,

I had no clue about living the American Dream.

I thought the American Dream was illusory. 

It existed in Disneyland, in the imaginations

of editors and magazine cover art,

in images of gender roles and success,

in the slogans of politicians,

the tough independence of the Marlboro Man;

Better living through Chemistry;

Progress is our most important product,

and twisted into other perverse advertising mantras.

There was something there I wanted

but I couldn’t explain what it was,

perhaps the desire for a secure future,

but the end of it all, of our collective innocence,

was when television showed the riots 

and bloodied heads; showed the Zapruder film

of President Kennedy’s assassination over and over; 

showed trampled dreams, 

bludgeoned civil rights, and the fiery-eyed 

youth in protest marches ready 

to dispense their own brand of assertiveness.

Mary Ann Vecchio became the symbol

of helplessness and anguish at Kent State,

and it put the Viet Nam War and body counts

into our living rooms and on our laps.

An entire way of life, however imagined,

was slaughtered before our very eyes,

exposing the hatred and violence 

of an America stirred from the bottom up,

exploding through the top.

From: Searching For Donna Reed,

Norman Rockwell, & The American Dream

Unpub. MS #2 of 5

From Where It Came (The American Dream #1)

I vaguely remember people

during the late 1950s to the early 1960s

talking about the American Dream,

usually on television,

sometimes teachers and neighbors,

or read in the Saturday Evening Post.

Norman Rockwell’s paintings reflected 

something of what people really did and believed,

from summer time, to holidays, to the Four Freedoms.

I wanted to be like those people in his paintings,

strong, happy, and contented—and also live 

the life of the Hardy Boys or Walter Mitty— 

until President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963

and Rockwell’s heartbreaking 1964 painting 

of six-year-old Ruby Bridges being escorted 

to school by federal marshals.

It was the terrible things 

people did to one another 

now made very public,

very present, that awakened so many.

It was nothing new for many Americans.

For them it was the same old bigotry, 

the same racism, the same meanness 

and violence they had lived with for generations.

And still people kept coming.

But being the fifteen-year-old kid that I was— 

white, middle class, naïve— 

I ignored the dissonance of nearly everything, 

yet I was vaguely ashamed, feeling like I lacked 

the courage of that six-year-old child.

From: Searching For Donna Reed,

Norman Rockwell, & The American Dream

Unpub. MS #1 of 5

Retrospective Of A Boomer (Part One)

I had a notion to write about growing up

50s-60s style, post-war baby boomer, 

starting with the assassination of John F. Kennedy

and the repetitive broadcast of the Zapruder film;

Vietnam trauma, disruptions swept under 

the ticky-tacky sameness of mediocrity,

and I wondered how many thought about what the cost

to heart and soul would be to enter the fray,

exhibited by throwing rocks, screaming, marching for

racial equality, taking over university offices, 

flipping off corporate America, anti-war protests,

playing/living the music, seeking a new sentimentality,

sexual liberation, relevance in an upside-down

ripped up social fabric, pulled in opposite directions

by selfish forces, by blurry images of supposed goals,

by stepping stones to a new life that went nowhere

until later and it was too late to change course

having become members of a status quo, as if we

(the generic we) climbed that ladder of success

only to find it leaned against the wrong wall, 

compiled all things lived into a palpable fantasy that, 

in the end, today, has left us alienated of connections, 

lost in the pursuit of...Wait. What were we pursuing? 

A post-adolescent understanding of love and peace?

We paid plenty of (too young) lip service to that. 

We did the Sixties and it wasn’t all that good 

(except the music), certainly not good enough to re-enact.

I dream that one day I will awaken into an understanding 

that won’t leave me wrestling with the era, but at least 

I might find in its chaotic landscape my lost innocence.

From: A Rambly Search for Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 2

A Question Of A Murder

for Marla

Have you ever felt that the Sixties had been Murdered?

And what would have been your explanation?

I met a woman named Gail who was born in 1958.

Her frame of reference was Queen and U2.

Gee, I wondered, did you miss the Sixties 

AND the Seventies? Where did the time go?

To be fair I did not ask her those questions. She is 

a psychologist who specializes in PTSD therapies.

I wanted to shout out, “Wait, I’ve been there.

I can lay my body down. I know the way out.”

But I couldn’t because Cheryl interjected

to wax nostalgic about “Sgt. Pepper,” 

Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin.

Ah, yes, the music, the protests, the excitement.

Dear muse, you remember when a few things 

could start such fires, and now so rarely?

And how we reveled in everything, but today 

is unnerving. Our fires have diminished.

Verve, cohesion, and joy are harder to come by.

Oh my, what happened that unraveled us so?

It was Charles Manson. He murdered the Sixties.

From: A Rambly Search for Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 45

Destinations

Willcox, Arizona

ca. 1960

When I drive by an auto salvage yard, 

I sometimes wonder how many destinations 

were achieved and where everyone went;

how many were set aside and forgotten;

how many irritated parents pulled over to quash 

a rebellion or let a desperate child get out to seek relief;

how many awkward, groping moments and 

first time whatevers occurred in the front and back seats;

and how many drove up and down the road, 

out of loneliness or anger, turning around 

two, three, or more times before returning home.

Some stories are about the fear of driving 

to places too far away, or of driving 

just far enough to get away.

Most stories, though, are about families 

who were going somewhere nearby together.

We piled into the car or the back of a pickup

in a bluster of excitement, eager to be 

out of the house with no other goals

than to stop at the Dairy Queen,

then drive to Railroad Park, 

face the wind, squinty-eyed,

sitting on the picnic tables chattering, 

ice cream dripping off our chins 

onto our shirts and pants 

and dresses.

Moments of joy.

A perfect place.

So good a time.

From: Memories And The Things Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 11

Secret Attraction

Catalina High School

Tucson, Arizona

To Marla 

I used to think 

it was a futile fantasy,

but now it’s a kind of solace

that I sometimes take myself back 

to our 1965 high school, 

where I’m following you after German class,

as if hiking to Seven Falls for a picnic,

dreaming I could actually dance

and knew how to french kiss, 

playing The Beach Boys, “I Get Around”

through my head, appropriate as I recall,

and wanting so much to talk with you.

And if we had had lives 

free of the nightmares and terrors 

I’m sure we shared in that darkened place,

I would have realized that somewhere 

in the noisy Universe 

someone would have been playing 

a tenor sax— 

low, sultry, willowy— 

to the sway of your lovely hips, 

and I would have asked you out.

Of course, that was high school, 

a terrifying time, occasionally fun.

Did it really happen?

Such a never was time, it seems,

mostly out of reach now

just as it was then.

But I’m betting that that musician 

is still around, still playing, 

wondering how far and where 

we have traveled. 

From: Getting There

Unpub. MS p. 13

Peggy Sue And The Blue Chevy Pickup

 From Willcox, 1960, as best as I can remember.

The music is a surprise without a ribbon.

A box full of sounds, orchestras,

rock bands, and a chorus of sacred lovers.

Such music will take us somewhere wonderful.

Leave trouble behind. 

Get that cold bolt from the blue,

get ball lightning, be the lightning rod— 

unshakable, undeterred, unflinching— 

stay off the highways that go nowhere fast.

Time to get magical, get heated, be fiery!

Get out of the rut...jump, leap, hop-scotch,

pogo stick, bicycle, tricycle, and fire up

that blue ’54 Chevy pickup. 

But it’s a stick shift.

It’s Peggy Sue’s. She can drive anything.

We’ll all ride with her.

Turn on the radio.

Listening to the music, laughing and singing.

Holding hands and shouting, 

It’s Elvis!

Turn it up.

Turn it up.

Go. Go. Go.

From: Memories and the Things Left Behind:

A Non-linear Recollection

Unpublished MS p. 10