PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Tuesday, November 23rd, is a very significant day for me, because of what it represents in that most poetic time of my life, July 9th through December 31st, 1976---which I call by the shorthand term, the Summer of 1976.

  Having spent that delightful summer with my First Beloved, with the independence from my mundane identity given by my c.b. handle (in pre-net days, the equivalent of a screen or user name), and having been invited to come out from under the shadow of Lloyd and Betty, I was forcibly compelled to take up residence at a small, liberal arts college, an hour away from my home on the interstate.  I was not permitted to take my c.b., nor could have used it there anyhow because freshmen were not permitted to have cars on campus.  

   Finals week of the autumn term began on Saturday, November 20th, and ran until Wednesday, November 24th, at which time, by 5pm, all dormitory residents were have to departed.  Of my three classes, only one required a final, and that was conducted on Saturday the 20th.  However, due to their schedules, my parents were not able to transport me until the evening of Tuesday, the 23rd.  Therefore, from noon on the 20th until their arrival on the 23rd, I had plenty of free time.  Although our unusually warm autumn had began to cool significantly in November, the student population's tendency toward casual shoelessness---in the cafeteria, the library, some classrooms and, of course, the dormitories---continued, and thus that particular style of beauty continued to fascinate my very eager gaze.  Also, I had obtained a cheap paperback co[y of Boris Pasternak's novel, Doctor Zhivago, which I determined to read through in all that free time---a little more than three full days, uninterrupted.  I had seen the film which the novel had inspired, in either 1970 or 1971, with my mother in a theater.  I did not realize until decades later than the film provided my first glimpse of the Orthodox Faith, as the story proper begins with a three-barred cross, a funeral service, and an Orthodox monastery.  The Orthodox Faith is also an implicit part of the novel's background, so I was already being prepared by this first reading of Pasternak's great literary achievement.  (Ironic, too, that our floor supervisor, that year, now serves as an Orthodox Priest.)  

   I had resented the ten weeks of enforced separation from my First Beloved, and from the c.b. community to which we both belonged, channel 22.  I had wondered if my handle, Starwatcher (at that time) had been forgotten.  I had dreaded, also, the possibility that ten weeks apart (with no emails or social platforms to use, and long distance phone calls prohibitively expensive) might have severed the relationship.  I have always believed that my parents had hoped quite ardently that this separation would have been effective, but I let them know, as soon as my stuff had been packed in the car trunk, that I was anxious to see my pet cocker spaniel, Monica (1972-1986), and then my Beloved.  They became extremely irate that, upon arriving and spending some quality time with Monica (who, although housebroken, peed on the carpet when she saw me, then hurled herself into my arms; she was such a loyal dog), I recovered my c.b. radio from its exile in an upper drawer in my room, slid it into the mount in my Pinto, and headed out to discover what the flavor of the next six weeks would be.  To my great relief, I was immediately greeted by several friends on channel 22, who had already been informed that I was due to return.  They did tell me that a newcomer to the channel had attempted to appropriate my handle, but, each time that he did, they dead-keyed him, effectively silencing him, until he found his own handle and began to use it.  Then, learning that my Beloved (who was now a Senior in High School) had a part time job in a fast food, I went there.  I cannot describe the joy of that first moment when our eyes met; and, except for having to wear a uniform and shoes, my Beloved's beauty had not changed.  I offered to provide transport, but we found an opportunity to detour and "catch up" privately.

    A week later, on Tuesday the 30th, in the evening, I made the private committment to myself to sign my handle to the poems I was then writing, none of which ever got accepted for publication.  My parents were ashamed of my interest in poetry---which, they often said openly, was an activity only for "homosekshuls and commies," so I determined that they would never see their surname signatory to any poem I published; and I have kept that committment.  I am not ashamed of the family that adopted me, and have written of it in titles and texts of a few poems; but I will not sign that surname to the poems. 

   Ironically, I have seen, on my handy-dandy television guide, that TCM will be broadcasting Doctor Zhivago on November 30th, so that it still falls within the month, if not the exact days, when I was reading the novel in 1976.  November 30th will also call for some decisions I need to make and stick with; the time for flip-flopping (except those beauties who might pass before my window when the weather warms up again) is over; and, as Pop Stevens wrote, "the time has come for final belief." 

   The next few weeks, in 1976, were very busy.  My parent insisted that I resume my seasonal job as a rodman/flagman/rear chainman on the County Engineer's primary survey crew; my parents lived in utter terror that the "neighbors" might, otherwise, conclude that I lacked ambition (which I did), because my parents loved to speak of others of my peers on our street who appeared to "lack ambition."  The weather went into deep chill, and I spent the weekdays colder than I had ever been in my life before that time.  We also spent most the weeks of my break surveying Martindale Road---a rural road in the North part of our county which had few, if any, windbreaks, but was all flat fields.  The wind becomes quite powerful and brutal in that kind of terrain.

    My evenings were often spent with my Beloved; and one evening, while getting ready for a night out, I accidentally dropped my c.b.  I was then young enough to move quickly, so I attempted to cushion its crash to the floor with my foot.  The radio bounced off my ankle (which then bore a significant bruise for over a week), but did not seem to sustain damage.  I asked my Beloved, who was savvy about electronics, to examine it, and we found the happy result the fall had exacerbated its built in flaw (from the day we acquired it) of broadcasting above the legal wattage limit (the proper governors were not functional in that unit).  It now broadcast even more illegally, which, when we added our power mic to it, gave us a significant range of transmission, and we were able to be heard in (but not always receive from) some unusually distant venues.

    One of the climactic events of my Christma vacation was receiving---from my parents of all people---a copy of Frampton's album, Comes Alive, from which I was able to hear the full (and not the truncated AM version) of "Baby, I Love Your Way."  That song, which I have listened to thousands of times since, represents, for and to me, the entire Summer of 1976, every moment of that time from July 9th, 1976 through January 1st, 1977.

   On New Year's Eve, we spent our last night together totally alone together---parent and guardians from both families being conveniently absent at parties that neither interested nor welcomed us.  A couple of weeks before, my Beloved had casually changed clothes in front of me, so our relationship seemed far more intimate than I, naive and awkward, would have expected it to be.  The last song to play, on our favored AM radio station, in the last moments of 1976 was Orleans' beautiful and poignant "Dance With Me."  For me, Frampton's song is the Summer of 1976 experienced, and Orleans' song is that same Summer remembered. 

   I shall close by saying that my personal metaphor of Heaven is that period, November 23 through December 31, 1976---the restoration of the best time of my life, after ten weeks of enforced separation from it.  My existence now is too similar to the difficult time I had at college during that first term.  My eventual escape from it, in the Lord's timing and summons, will be even more glorious than it had been in November, 1976.   

Starward