Autobiographical nonsense as I approach my fortysomethingth birthday.....

I was born in Royal Oak, Michigan in the early sixties.

The hospital was named after a fellow named William Beaumont, who was famous for his research into the human digestive system, thanks in large part to an amiable trapper up near Mackinaw City who's gunshot wound didn't kill him, but did give Dr. Beaumont a literal birds-eye view into the mans stomach and abdomen.

My father states that on the day they took me home, he accidentally drove his car across a snow fence, causing quite a lot of damage to his beloved automobile. Many years later, after my umpteenth disaster with an automobile of my own in which he had to bail me out, he claimed that on that day, when he was driving he car across the snow fence, like a block of cheese against the grater, that the car gods were not after him; they were after me.

We lived in a small house on a street called Edgeland, not far from the hospital I was born in. I went by the house in January of this year, to take some photos; it was still small. The fact is, with the exception of a shed in the backyard, there had been no change in the house at all. None. Same color. Same foliage in the front. The same plaque that held the same numbers of the address. My heart did something; I'm not really sure what, but there was definitely some heart action above and beyond the usual thump-thump happening in there.

I was baptized as a Catholic, largely because I had nothing to say about it, but my Mother had a near-miss experience on the way to the convent. She never really spoke of her upbringing, and her father to me was a smallish man with a large grey hair, bent over from arthritis, and her Mother was a ghost; and a ghost with teeth, apparently, because there are precious few pictures and virtually no stories of any merit. She lost a Brother in Korea that she never got over, and I assume that was the thing that took her out of the convent; one can never have the same relationship with God after he takes your most precious things; Job taught us that.

I was baptized in a church called The Shine of the Little Flower. The priest was apparently old school, for when he asked the name of the child, and was informed that my name was to be John Wesley, he turned a little white around the collar and suggested that a good Catholic boy should not be burdened with the name of the head Methodist. I'm sure my Father took a good deal of pleasure out of that. I think he secretly was hoping that the priest's head would catch fire during the ceremony. But he made it through, stumbling just a bit on the whole Wesley thing, and there I was.

The only things I can remember about those early years (and I have to admit that's a bit of a cheat; if I put my mind to it, I'm pretttty sure I could come up with a couple of things, but they would be mundane, like a bout with the mumps and the fact my younger brother would just randomly spill crayons which I would be forced to pick up), is the 1968 World Series (yes, I was six years old, but I still knew who Mickey Lolich and Denny McClain were, and the difference between winning and losing) and a deep, rich fog that fell one fall morning.

The fog is very clear in my mind, and yes, I'm aware of the irony. I can remember walking to school through that fog, with the neighbors from across the street, the Grubers, and I can remember that I felt that a fog that thick should have more substance, somehow. It should be like cotton candy, or soup. Instead, it was just this cloud that prevented sunshine from hitting the ground.

It was thickest fog I can remember ever being in.
Unless you count most of the 1980's, but that's a story for another time.

Side note on the Grubers, and not a pleasant one, but a kind of creepy one.

We moved from Royal Oak to Rochester Hills in the late part of '68; I feel it was late October, early November. And I don't believe I ever laid eyes on Seth Gruber again...until 1981. I was paying my respects to an old friend that I loved dearly in a small cemetery down Orion Road. Lots of markers, dating far back into the Nineteenth Century, and there was Kristi's...set back off the road, underneath a huge tree; a simple stone that didn't come near to representing all she was in her short life.....I put down the flowers I had purchased, said hello and told her what had been happening since she left, said goodbye....and walked right past Seth's stone, which was almost next to Kristi's. He had passed about two months after Kristi had.

And the circle of life just got smaller and smaller as the days progressed.

We moved to a bigger house, surrounded by fields of grass, with a large lawn and interesting neighbors, and my Father remains in that house to this day. The elementary school, and what used to be known as the junior high were both within walking distance, and the high school just a short bus ride away. A nice town, Rochester. Plenty of things to do, and plenty of trouble to get into.

But that's a story for another time........