Cool Beans

I've gotten unstuck in Time.  Just like Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut's old friend.  It happened easy enough. A dear friend mentioned a book by Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried"; it's a semi-fictional account of his time in Vietnam.  I like O'Brien, a good writer.  So I check out the library listings and he has a book from a few years ago, "July July" that I hadn't read.  So I picked it up.

In a nutshell, in the book, it is class reunion time, Class of '69, in Northern Minnesota.  The reunion is taking place in 2000. And suddenly I got a little unraveled.

I have my HS class reunion coming up, HS class of 70, Western Wisconsin  I am not going.  I have a college-boy reunion coming up the following weekend at a lake near Keshna and the weekend after that, a niece's wedding over by the Mississippi River.  I can't do three weekend road trips in a row, but reading the book, thinking of  missing my HS reunion..... brought back a bunch of memories.  Some I had not thought of in a long time.

I remember kissing Nancy on my 17th birthday.  It was the sweetest thing that ever happened to me. I can still taste the wonder of her in my heart.  The summer of  1970.  The movies we went to-the books we talked about- the smooth smell of Coppertone on her sleek brown legs-the way her smile looked in moonlight-the beach at the lake where we would swim and while away days.  The little banter.  I remember feeling, " This is what I want. The life I want."   I have no idea where she is now. I loved her more than anything.  It was all too soon , and that made everything else all too late.

I took my draft physical a couple of years later.  Milwaukee was never as cold as it was that day. I was never as alone as then..  The war was still a good shoot-'em-up deal, my lottery number was 33, and I knew I would  never come back went to Nam.  I would have been that kind of soldier.  I remember thinking.... would I be going back to college to take final exams?  Marrying my girlfriend who was two months 'late'?  Going into the Army?  I took the exams, she had her period, finally, and I flunked the draft physical.  But that was a cold cold night at the bus station trying to get home and I realized that, in a sense, I would never really have a home to go back to.  I didn't think about it much as the years went by, but the whole experience changed me greatly.  Ob-la-dee Ob-la-dah.

There were other girlfriends... several in the next few years.  Suzanne, Suzi, Sue, Kate, Kat.... Maureen.  I would like to talk with Maureen sometime.  She didn't fit into a typical mold. For one thing, no name with a K or S. 

 I remember turning  into a radical, stop-the-war student.  Protests and rallies. Tequila and Mescaline. I was a cab driver at nights.  And I met Kathy. Loved names with a K.  She had a thing then for long haired hippie peace-niks who drove taxis.  We would see each other periodically over the next 30 years. It became an on-again-off-again thing.  I last ran into her at a wine-tasting a couple of years past.  It was most certainly an off  year. We said hello. We said good-bye. I know precisely where she is today.  That's life.

I got married, had children, had a divorce .  The marriage was OK, the kids are great, the divorce worked well.  But nothing has ever eclipsed the summer of 1970.  I don't dwell on it.  I would like to talk with Nancy again..... mostly to just hear that she is good.  That her life has been good.  It won't happen.  I don't dwell on it.  One book leads to another.  All things are linked, one book  leads to another whether we like it or not.

The other day I was slicing onions and peppers to throw into a crock pot with beans and ham hocks.  Stupid clumsy me.  The knife slipped, did a 360 in the air, bounced off the counter, dropped to the floor and impaled itself in my big toe.  Freaky.  It wasn't serious.  It bled a little.  But I looked down at the damn thing sticking straight up out of my toe and I had to laugh.  Hey,,,,,,,, it looked really funny, whether I liked it or not.

Life is like that, sometimes,and sometimes the recipes are uncertain.  I don't dwell on it.  One thing leads to another. Books, beaches,  The letter K, the letter S......... the beans were delicious.