So last Monday night I was standing around a small backyard
fire with my nephews. Some alcohol was
being consumed. Some was being thrown on the flames just to watch it go whoosh
in a mini-fireball. As God is my witness
I had only one shot of single malt scotch.
But I digress.
As we stood around the flames coming from that little fire
pit in the early hours of the a.m., the scent of burning pine and scrub brush sank
into our jeans and t-shirts. To me it seemed like everyone wanted to hear a
memory brought up about John, something that they didn’t know. It was a communal act of searching for information
that would explain a little bit more of the man whom he had been.
On that dark North Carolina night I was not of much use. With
an aching heart I was just focused on getting through that moment without
completely losing, not the history of my brother’s life. As the week has gone on I have gone back over
the big memories I have of my brother and while there are a number of them, one
or two stick out for me. One that comes
to mind is something I discovered when I spent maybe 10 days with him in New
York outside of Schenectady.
It was summer and my parents wanted me out of my house and
out of my hometown. My guess is that
they were at their wits end. At best the
phrase “an awkward child” captures what they had to deal with as they were approaching
their mid fifties. Whether they asked or
alternatively if John offered I was packed up and sent off to New York with my
big brother for a couple of weeks.
At that time to the best of my memory John was living in a
small apartment. It might have been a
four-plex or maybe eight units. There
was no pool, there was no swing set and I was scared shitless to just head off
down the road walking. I was on first
impression a prisoner.
Of the people in the other apartments I remember there was a
guy who was studying entomology at SUNY at Albany. He intellectual focus was Africanized bees.
This had to be 1968-ish. Well anyhow
this gent was just beside himself because the killer bees had just gotten a toe
hold in the northern states of Mexico. He had been hearing there were incursions
into Texas. Best I can figure the guy
must have been a graduate assistant in bug land. He and somebody’s wife were the only people I
really remember being around in the day.
The other reason I remember this guy was because he gave me
a book to read about how the visions of the Old Testament prophets could be
explained away by astronomy and space phenomena. I read it.
Again if you haven’t guessed there were no kids my age hanging around
during the day.
But thought of reading that book is what triggered my
memory. My brother John had an L shaped
bookcase that fit into the corner of his office area in the apartment. For a
bored kid that thing was the Holy Grail.
On the bookcase the titles ranged from the sacred to the profane. Those
shelves were lined with existential masterpieces like The Stranger and The Fall
by Camus. I remember a Sartre title but
I am not sure which one. In addition there were pop pulp titles like Rosemary’s
Baby by Ira Levin. There on the bottom
shelf sat the impenetrable volumes of Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of
Civilization. Beat classics like On the
Road and Naked Lunch were part of the diverse collection. James Joyce was represented.
The collected works were in the words of the day hip. Add to those titles I have mentioned already
a slew of volumes published by Grove Press.
For those of you too young to remember there was a time when books
having fairly explicit sexual themes were banned in this country. It took a long time to get Ulysses published
here. Grove was the company that had the stones to put these books out there so
that readers could make up their own minds as to the artistic merit of the
work. Pablo Neruda’s poetry first found
its way here via Grove. Copies of Evergreen magazine were there too. Evergreen
was very, very hip juxtapositioing Supreme Court Justice Douglas’s scholarly
ruminations with a photo shoot of a naked, really naked woman frolicking about.
But here is the deal, John loved books. He loved learning and acquiring knowledge. He hadn’t bought these just to be cool. He read this stuff and he thought about this
stuff. I remember a dinner party where
he and this woman who was part of a couple with a friend of his got into it
over some arcane point of existential philosophy. The passion, the conviction and the fire in
that argument came from what he had digested reading this stuff. Well that and
genetics. Well that genetics and on that particular occasion, tequila. Todd men
love to argue, we hate to lose and we hold a grudge. Also there might be the teeniest
predisposition toward alcohol abuse, yeah we’ll call it abuse.
In its day that bookcase was the coolest thing ever to
me. Sitting around and reading title
after title might have sucked for some kids, but this was great stuff and it rocked
my world. It was my equivalent to
Springsteen’s “Finding the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked
car.” I pulled volumes off that shelf and devoured them. From Rosemary’s baby to the Fall I just spent
those days there reading. I don’t think
that journey alone was the catalyst for my intellectual pursuits but it played
a roll. Yeah in the day my big brother had a mind that was active and
engaged. He read and he formed opinions,
some of them quite strong. He was passionate and knowledgeable.
On one of his moves he either sold or left that bookcase at
my parents place. When my Mom died the
choice was to either yard sale it, throw it out or find it a good home. Well I couldn’t let that bookcase go. It was something that was special to me. It was special because of the ideas my
brother had crammed onto it shelves. Only
problem is I don’t have a room that it fits into right now and so it languishes
in my basement with a beer bottle capper and a couple of old speakers taking up
its shelf space.
What can I say, John kept his mind engaged. He was smart and he was always asking
questions. I think that is a pretty good memory to have.
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