The Road Behind Me

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Author’s note

In 2005 I decided to write a short-story for my children who, by this time, were in their late teens/early twenties, that offered some insight into a portion of my earlier life. One that they often asked me about. Because that life included my daliance into drugs and living on the edge I would avoid the specifics until as such time I deemed it prudent to give them some details without the fear of their assuming such experimentation into an alternate lifestyle can’t be all that bad because dad did it!

The story I wrote is essentially The Road Behind Me, with one difference: in their version the personage of Hannah was not included. This was both intentional and unconscious. Intentional because I thought it wise to not garnish my tale of a love I had for a woman who wasn’t their mother, and unconscious because, in all fairness, Hannah had become buried deep in the recesses of my mind many, many years earlier. This was done so I might move forward and forego the broken heart that can be so debilitating.

As delineated in the book, the chance meeting of a young woman working at a supermarket who remarkably resembled a young Hannah, inspiring me to search for her on social media, caused a chain of events that demanded I rewrite the story but with full disclosure of the impact and importance this young lady had on my life. My short story, The Road Behind Me, more than doubled in length and acquired a sub-title: The Lie of Hannah.

Even though it is not protracted in comparison to a normal novel, it was still a Herculean task to me since I had never delved beyond the threshold of a short-story: meaning anything more than 15-20 pages. I have always believed so many books would be much more enjoyable if all the fluff and fill were removed. But that’s just me. 

Book excerpt

Prologue: Framing the Lie

When I was young, I wished for you,

and just in time, my wish came true.

Then I wished that it could be

how I loved you, your love for me.

But soon I wished it wasn't so,

wishing that you wouldn't go.

                   In the summer of 1974, I ventured from the little suburban town in northern New Jersey where I was raised, to Anaheim, California, then back again a year later, hitchhiking most of the way. This story is about my life’s journey both before and during that memorable trek, why that sojourn was not by choice, but out of necessity, and the amazing adventures life presented to me along the way. It is also about the lie that put me on the road, the reason the lie existed at all, and how it caused heartache that I dealt with during each event I experienced. Mostly, it is a story of unrequited love and the lengths to which a man would go to vanquish the demons of painful memories. 

The Years Behind Me

1952

Dwight Eisenhower elected President of the United States

Jonas Salk develops Polio vaccine

“Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Hank Williams is released

Microwave ovens are made available for domestic use with the first models being the size of refrigerators and costing more than $1,200.

I am born in Passaic, New Jersey on a warm summer day.

1953

Nikita Khrushchev wins power struggle in Soviet Union after the death of Josef Stalin

An expedition led by Sir Edmund Hillary is the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest

“Doggie in the Window” by Patti Page is released

TV Guide debuts; on the cover of the first issue are Lucille Ball and her newborn son, Desi Arnaz IV

Hannah is born in Hackensack, NJ on a warm summer day.

The Early Road

                        It's been said that a man falls in love an average of three times in his life. If that is an accurate assessment, then it stands to reason that two of those three must end in heartbreak. Over the lifetime of an average man, I would guess that's not the worst statistic we have to endure, but I was one of the unlucky fellows who had the misfortune of experiencing two of my allotted three heartaches before the age of twenty, both within the same year separated by only a few months.

                        Though this is mostly a story of my odyssey from the summer of 1974 to the summer of 1975, it could not be told unless I explained what the shattered heart beating in the chest of a young man brought about, how I lived a lie that affected only me, yet I still continued to act out this falsehood with those who knew me. To this day, so many years later, some of them remember why I journeyed to America's left coast the way I want them to remember it.  

                        My life, as best I can determine, began at a later date than what my family would tell you. They would assert that I was born in June of 1952 in a hospital in Passaic, New Jersey, but I will tell you that just happened to be the time my mother gave birth to me. I was the youngest of six, four girls and two boys, all of them half-siblings. My sisters and brother were all out of the house by the time I was five, having married, joined the army or, in two of my sister’s cases, having moved back to their natural mother’s home. I did remain close to three of them: Joan (a loving, wonderful woman who passed away far too early), Peggy (who was the oldest of the girls) and my brother Bruce who was my mother’s son by a previous relationship before my father. My heritage is unclear: Dutch, German, Irish, and Native-American. I was a potpourri of them all. Basically, I am a mutt with no clear lineage, but you are what you are and what you become. As it is with most middle-class mixed lineage children of my generation, I could tell you my grandparents' names, but the names of their parents remain a mystery to me. I couldn't even recount my mother's father's name, and the only reason I know her mother's is because, at Mom’s suggestion, my youngest daughter was christened for her. Some cultures can give you the names of all of their ancestors, going back quite a bit in time. I couldn't even identify all of my cousins from my father's side unless they were wearing name tags.

                         My mother's father was one of several men her mother married, or kept company with, to ensure her children survived during the lean years of the Great Depression. To this day, I have no idea how large a family my mother actually came from because there were aunts and uncles showing up periodically throughout my life. People whom I'd never met before, several decidedly older than Mom, told me they were my mother's brother or sister. Both of my grandparents from my mother's side were gone well before I came onto the scene, but I do recall a picture of my grandmother that Mom kept on my dresser when I was very young. I was terrified of this portrait of my maternal grandmother, so stern and serious with eyes that seemed to follow me wherever I was in the room. I would lay the picture down at night, which would upset Mom. She would tell me that her mother was such a loving woman and would have worshipped me, but those were hollow words to a five-year-old who was frightened of an image he didn't understand.

                        Dad's family was more stable but equally as large. I know of six girls and three boys but have been told there might have been a few that didn't survive childbirth. Both his parents lived until I was into my late twenties, but I never came to know them that well; that seemed to be reserved for my girl cousins. My father's grandfather from his mother's side was a Civil War veteran, a fact confirmed by several documents someone in the family holds. He also opened the very first dry cleaners the city of Passaic, New Jersey ever saw. Dad’s memory of his grandfather was vague; he recalled only that he was wheelchair- bound near the end of his days and was very difficult to understand when he spoke.

                        Dad often told me stories of how they struggled to survive during the Depression years, so many of them living all together in a small apartment on a dead-end street in Passaic. Some married just to escape the confines of what must have seemed like a God-appointed condemnation, or, from what I've been told, a tyrannical, heavy-drinking father. What bearing did all this have on me? Nothing, except to give you an idea of the gene pool that eventually produced me.

                        The ‘me’ that I've come to recognize didn't surface until many years after my birth. I had survived a confusing, often lonely, often bewildering childhood. It was difficult to establish any enduring friendships because we moved from one apartment to the next until we settled in a single-family home my parents bought from my aunt. Since all of my siblings had long since moved on, getting to know them was piece-meal, gradient over time. I established bonds particularly with Joan, Peggy and Bruce, over a period of years with geography playing a factor because we were so transient. My younger years also found me entertaining not one, not two, but five child psychologists with my original sci-fi short stories and active imagination. My parents, desperately seeking an answer to their dysfunctional marriage, had put the blame on my "peculiar" tastes to explain why they didn't work together. In the long run, they did work, maybe not as happy as they could have been, but nonetheless they had nearly sixty years together before Mom passed quietly in her bed at home after ten-years of being debilitated by a stroke, all the while my father tending to her every need. Was it enough to earn his place in the good side of the afterlife? Maybe, but he certainly had his share of atonement due.  

                        We weren't a particularly religious family; in fact, while Mom attended church on special occasions, I have no memory of Dad ever stepping foot inside any place Holy unless it was a wedding or similar event. I was baptized in the Episcopalian Church of St John's in Passaic, New Jersey, and only through the courtesy of my uncles who would pick me up and drop me back home was Sunday service a regular in my life. I ran the gamut of candle-bearer to master of ceremonies during that tenure, but it wasn't enough to solidify my belief in an All-Mighty Entity. From the early age of eleven or twelve, when my church-going days ended, I had doubts concerning the hereafter. There were phases - Buddhism, Krishna Conscientiousness, Eastern mysticism - but not one held my ardor for any measurable length of time. Thinking back, I wonder if maybe faith would have eased my journey going forward, but overall faith just didn't do it for me. If God existed, I thought, He was a cruel Being lacking compassion. In the big picture, I didn't allow my stinted forays into any religious doctrine to occupy my thoughts and deeds. I moseyed on through life doing all the things that boys do in suburban New Jersey, but when I turned sixteen there was an awakening within me that bellowed for recognition. The world was suddenly larger than I imagined and it was time to stake my claim.

The Years Behind Me

1968

Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee

Sirhan Sirhan shoots Bobby Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Bobby Kennedy dies the next morning from his wounds

The New York Jets win AFL championship

Beatles release their White Album

1969

The New York Jets win Super Bowl III

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the moon.

Charles Manson orchestrates the senseless murders of 7 people in two nights in Los Angeles

400,000 people gather for the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York on Max Yasgur’s farm

The Festival at Altamont Raceway in California ends with the tragic death of Meredith Hunter at the hands of Hell’s Angels, essentially bringing to an end the peace-love attitude of the 1960’s

1971

Twenty-sixth Amendment to US Constitution lowers voting age to 18

 Patton wins Oscar for best picture

 Jim Morrison dies in Paris at 27 years of age

 The cost of a first-class stamp goes from .06 cents to .08 cents.

 Idi Amin seizes power in Uganda

Recognizing Love

                        It was 1968, a year after the "Summer of Love." Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had recently been murdered, the Vietnam War was the nightmare of most American males in their late teens, the Beatles were still together, and eight-track tapes were still in the future. I was a skinny sixteen-year-old, nothing much to look at, and with hair far too long according to every adult in my world. Insecurity was the order of the day for me. I was a barely skilled novice musician dreaming of rock stardom, having friends with the same aspirations and the same level of skill. We were trapped in the suburban world of a total vacuous New Jersey town nine miles west of New York City. With that city's noble skyline in our view, our summer days were spent in idle wandering from my house to their house and back again, listening to the latest vinyl records by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Who, Jefferson Airplane; far too many great bands to list. When not sitting around someone's record player, reading the album jackets while the music enveloped us, we occasionally would sidetrack to a local park until we were told to move on along by either boredom or the local law. It was around this time that Peggy left to live in California, a move I didn’t quite understand why but would become clearer to me in time to come. My initial emotion was one of envy, and I was the guy with the cool sister who went to live in California when it was considered a legendary land of hippies, Haight-Ashbury, and great music in the 1960’s.

            We also found a playground just around the corner from where I lived that proved a convenient retreat that included girls our age working for the town's Parks Department, tending to children coloring, gluing Popsicle sticks, and working with construction paper. Normally, this would have been a mind-numbing way to spend an afternoon, but did I mention that girls our age worked there? That was cause enough to dispel any chance of boredom to a sixteen-year-old boy.

                        Sixteen-year-old boys, especially when I was that age, were so much less mature than any sixteen-year-old girls I knew. We exposed ourselves to ostentatious displays of bravado and showing-off that sometimes drew smiles, or even a laugh, but we still left the playground each day in a testosterone-filled companionship that had us convincing each other that, sure, I think she likes me, maybe I will ask her out; yeah, tomorrow I'll do it. Yet each night alone in our beds, masturbation was the order of the moment as we envisioned our hoped-to-be girlfriends in all the carnal imagery we could muster.

                        It was on July 2nd of 1968 as I was sitting on one of the playground benches under a canopy that I realized I was receiving special attention from one very attractive young lady employed there. She was a real Irish stunner with long, red hair and freckled, flawless features. Despite all of that, I mostly remember her voice at that moment. It was silky and smooth, soft yet clear, with a gentle tone that made me believe maybe something was happening here. Shelly was a beauty in anyone's world, but my insecurity about myself still prompted me to have my friend Pat convince me that, yes, she was worth pursuing.

                        "What do you think?" I asked him. "Does she like me? You think she's good looking?" I rambled inanely to my confused friend who was baffled by even the consideration this beautiful young woman was anything but, and he told me in no uncertain terms that I was never going to do better. It wasn't that I didn't already know the answers, but my fear of failure and rejection was looking for a way out before I found the way in. Or was I preparing a defense if my efforts to court Shelly failed?