"Strange to Be Seventy..."

 Seventy years old.

 

It surprises me, to be honest. Mom didn’t make it to seventy. Neither did Susan, nor my cousins Frank and Karen, nor so many other friends and family members. 

 

I wasn’t given much chance of making it to seventy after my heart attack. They gave me a 30% chance of surviving the surgery, and not a much better chance of surviving until the surgery. 

 

But here I am.

 

Life has given me far more goodness than I ever imagined it could. I wake up without aches and pains. I walk five miles or more every day, and enjoy it even more now than I did when I began this habit more than twenty-three years ago. I eat the foods I enjoy, and enjoy the foods I eat. I listen to music every day, and still get the same thrill from it that I did when I first began buying records more than sixty years ago. I have never, not even one day, had to work a job I didn’t enjoy. I have dear and loving friends who value our friendship as much as I do, so they adjust their schedules to make sure we get to share a couple of meals together every week.

 

And I share my life with a beautiful, talented, amazing woman who has the courage to do things I could never bring myself to do, and I get to wake up next to her every day and lay my head on the pillow next to her every night. We share walks, we share meals, we share laughter, we share tears, we share stories of our lives before we met one another, and every week I learn new things about her that make me love her even more. Before I met her, I didn’t think I could ever find love again. She proved me wrong.

 

My immediate family may be gone now—Mom and Dad died too many years ago, while Alzheimer’s has taken my dear sister Kimberly from me memory by memory over the past several years—but I have threefamilies now. There is my family by blood—Aunt Jean and Uncle Red, my niece Jessica and my cousin Cathy, as well as my aunts Donna and Martha, both of whom are closer to cousins than aunts since only a small handful of years separate us. There is my family by choice—Charles, Darrell, James, Eddie, Ralph, Buck, Izzy, and Shelley, all of whom make each week of my life better. And now there is my family by marriage—Karen’s family, who have accepted and welcomed this quirky, introverted newcomer into their lives. 

 

I’ve lost so many that I’ve loved in the past seventy years. Five cats have been lifelong companions to me, and I was there when each of them left this world; I’d like to think I learned  from each of them how to love more and care more for the cat who followed. 

 

But the deaths of Mom, of Dad, and of Susan—a part of me died with each one of them. But I learned from that. I learned the value of loving while you have the opportunity, and making sure that the people you love know how much they mean to you. A single moment could be all that stands between love and loss. 

 

Death makes some people afraid to love again, or it fills them with regret that they loved at all, since every love has to end with sorrow for the person left behind. But I remember there are no great moments that I remember from any time in my life that don’t involve someone I loved, someone who loved me… That’s what love is. It’s every wonderful moment of your life, shaped into a multi-faceted gem of a memory—the treasure no one can take away from you. Death isn’t a reason to be afraid of love—it’s the reason you should love. It’s the best thing life can give you.

 

My obsession with numbers and statistics is no secret, so it may surprise a lot of people that I don’t place significance on the “landmark” birthdays. Twenty-one, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, sixty-five, and now seventy—they’re not turning points in my life. I’m only a day older than I was yesterday. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel old. I hope I don’t. I’m still filled with ambitions and plans and dreams, and many of them are the same ambitions and plans I had when I was a kid, a teenager, or a young adult. I still feel a rush of enthusiasm with new technology; I still feel a flood of emotions from new music; I still get lost in new books; I still rediscover my sense of wonder in new comics; I still want to tell more stories; I still hope to draw more; I still lose myself in playing my guitar, even though I’m little better now than I was when I took it up more than a half-century ago.

 

And there are new things, too. Dancing, which I never imagined I’d be able to do, absolutely enthralls me. I value the moments I get to share with my neighbors, many of whom have become so important to me. I want to make more trips with Karen, even though I have spent most of my life sticking close to home. I hear Karen playing the piano and I want to do that, even though I’ve never done so. I pluck at a mandolin, because I love its sound. I play drums now, even though I have no skill at it yet. 

 

Life is a process of scrutinizing the things that fill your days and deciding which ones to keep, which ones to discard, and which ones to add. I’m lucky. I keep finding things in all three catagories. 

 

So I’m seventy now, as of about two and a half hours ago. And I’m okay with that. 

"Too Wonderful for Anybody to Realize..."

 Life can be stranger, more unpredictable, and more wonderful than we can ever imagine.

It's been the better part of two years since I last posted here. So many things have changed since then, and as a result my life is better in ways I could not have imagined.

Karen and I got married; in fact, we celebrated our first anniversary on October 30th of this year. It has been everything that a marriage should be--two people in love with one another, sharing our commonalities and celebrating our differences. We haven't known each other for our entire lives, so we take joy in discovering more about each other's lives. Little things will come up in conversation that will lead to fascinating stories that fit into the puzzle of our lives. Each of us wants to know more about one another's life prior to our meeting, and the people who were important to us in those years. When Susan died in 2019, I envisioned a life of solitude; I had no idea I would find Karen, a kind, wonderful, caring woman who would help me to discover (and rediscover) so many of life's joys. 

Karen and learned that we both love dancing. She is very good, and I am very persistent. And through our interest in dance, we met our new friends Tatyana Heath and James Riley, the owners and instructors of Ballroom Dancetime. Getting to know them has been a wonderful experience as well, and I appreciate them more with each passing week.

I have gotten to know Karen's family--her four children and her six grandchildren, and her sister Nancy and Nancy's sons--and through them, I get to re-experience the love of my own family. I never had children and never thought it mattered, but I find it intriguing that several months after Karen and I became serious with one another I actually had dreams about Lulu, Donny, and Emma, the children that Karen and I might have had. Having lost my own family  a while back (both parents died, and my beloved sister still lives, but she is so devastated by Alzheimer's that I feel like I have lost all that made Kim such a wonderful person), it is touching to witness the love between Karen and her family.

We made a lot of changes to the house--adding a covered porch, replacing wallpaper with paint in colors that made the rooms warm and engaging, adding new furniture that reflected our styles and tastes, streamlining and rearranging for more eye appeal and flow, and getting rid of furnishings that had remained for years simply due to inertia. My mother used to redecorate and repaint the family house every decade or so, and now I see why--the changes help you to appreciate your home in all new ways.

Karen retired in the summer of 2022, and that has given her time to pursue interests ion music, acting, and writing. It makes me very happy to see her finding the time to be creative; I have been lucky enough to have that sort of time for many years now (although I'll have even more in 2023 (but more about that in a couple of paragraphs), and now we both have that freedom. It also means that we both are free to travel--something I haven't really done at all in the 21st Century, due to the chronic health issues that Susan suffered until her death. (Susan couldn't travel with me, and I had no interest in traveling without her.) Now Karen and I can enjoy time away from home and appreciate it even more when we return!

Our Wednesday dinner group has grown to a Wednesday-dinner-and-Friday-lunch group, and both gatherings are always festive and fascinating. Charles Rutledge, James Tuck, Darrell Grizzle, Eddie Coulter, and Ralph Groff are regulars for at least one of those meals every week, and we have a number of occasional lunchtime companions who join us as their schedules allow. Having such good friends as these is remarkable. I talk to so many people I know who lament the absence of good friends from their lives and I feel even more lucky to have so many.

After 35 and a half years of weekly deadlines, I have stepped away from Comic Shop News as of mid-December. I never dislike doing CSN, but in recent months I wasn't enjoying it the way I once did, and there were other issues that made preparing a weekly publication more challenging than it had been. So my business partner Ward Batty and I put CSN up for sale and found buyers who have a game plan to keep the publication going. It's fascinating to see something you co-created continue after your own involvement comes to an end, and I'm eager to see where they take it--but I'm also happy to have time to write what I want when I want.

Alas, there were some sorrows. We lost my beloved cat Mischa in the summer of 2021 at the age of 18, and eleven months after that her sister Anna passed just a week before her twentieth birthday. Losing a feline companion is always heartbreaking, but it's also one of those things that you realize you will have to endure from the very moment you let a cat into your heart. I found some solace in the facts that I gave the two cats the best lives they could possibly have had, they lived longer than any cats I ever owned, and they were happy and loved until the very end. For now, I will refrain from replacing them; this is the first time in 45 years I have not had a pet, and I'm not sure I could ever find two cats who could fit my personality as well as Anna and Mischa did, so I'm not going to try (at least not for now).

But as 2022 comes to an end, I am appreciate of all the joys that have come into my life since the last time I wrote for this blog. I promise that I'll be here more frequently from here on (it's up to you to decide if that's good news or a threat). Those of you who had followed my "Life in Four Colors" entries will see more about my life as that series continues, and I'll even use the blog as a place to talk about comics, now that I no longer have a weekly Comic Shop News deadline. But most of all, not much'a nothin' will be a place where I can once again discuss my life and the things that make it better--just as it was when I first launched not much'a nothin' as a fanzine back in 1968!

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Since I got my second Moderna COVID vaccine on Wednesday, several people have messaged or called me to ask how I felt and what, if any, side effects I experienced. 

I got my first dose of the vaccine on January 13th. The only side effect I had was arm pain—not a surface pain like a puncture or  scratch, but a deep muscle pain that is comparable to what I feel when I've moved up a weight level in my exercises and have overdone it. My deltoid gave me twinges to say "Hey, I'm here and I'm not happy" with almost any activity, but it certainly alerted me to its discomfort when I tried to lift the arm above shoulder level. 

How bad was the pain? Not very bad at all—on the tried-and-true "one to ten" scale that medical professionals often ask patients to use in rating their pain, I'd have put it at a four overall, with a few hours on Thursday morning hitting a five, perhaps. But by Friday, it had largely gone away, and I was totally back to normal by Saturday evening.

"But the second vaccine is going to be a lot worse," a number of people told me. I heard horror stories about fever, extreme chills, nausea, intense migraine-like headaches, whole body aches, and more. I was told be several people that I should plan on taking two days off when I got my second vaccine.

It is no surprise to those who know me that I didn't listen to that advice. 

I got my second shot at about 10:30am on February 10th. I worked a full day after that, exercised (both walking and weights), and went to dinner with my best friends who always join us on Wednesdays. We finished dinner at about 7:45 and felt fine. 

It was about 9pm or so that I began feeling the soreness in my right deltoid (I'm left handed, so I get the shot in my right arm). It became a little more sore as the night progressed. We went to bed a little after one in the morning, and by that time my arm was sore enough that I was having trouble positioning it without discomfort. Again, the pain felt like a severe muscle pain, not a surface pain--although putting pressure on the injection site made the overall pain more intense. By the time I went to bed, the pain had already surpassed the worst pain level of the first vaccine—on that old one to ten scale, I'd have ranked it at a five overall with some moments of a six-level pain.

As I was getting in bed, I had a few moments of shivering, but I don't know if they were really chills or just a reaction to the pain. When I am in pain, I tend to perspire a bit. I sleep with a fan on. So I was standing in front of a fan, feeling the effects of evaporative cooling—that may not have been a chill at all. I know I did not have any body temperature fluctuations, because I checked it consistently—I never fluctuated more than two-tenths of a degree from my 97.5° body temperature norm. And the shivering went away as soon as I got in bed, never to return.

The arm pain got worse for me as the night went on. Soon, even the weight of my arm was painful. The effects of the pain were evident on my sleeping: normally, I sleep for six or seven hours, and all but about 45 minutes of that will be quality sleep, with about 35% to 40% of that being deep sleep. On Wednesday night/Thursday morning, I was in bed for nine hours and 47 minutes, but only four hours of that was quality sleep and only 15 minutes was deep sleep. Most significantly, my sleeping heart rate (which normally declines to about 75 beats per minute—and I know that sounds high for most people, but that's  real drop over my normal 95 bpm resting heart rate when I'm awake) never dropped below 96 bpm, while my resting-awake heart rate held at about 105-110.

By Thursday morning, the pain was maintaining at a seven with some moments spiking to an eight. I was so limited that I had to get dress using reach-across techniques I haven't used since I broke my hand several decades ago. Even so, I was able to go to work at get a fair amount done, although I know that I wasn't working to my normal levels.

By Thursday night, things began to improve. My pain dropped back to a level five or so, and I was able to sleep. My sleep tracker numbers returned to my norm: 8:24 sleep, 7:36 quality sleep, and an amazing 4:42 deep sleep, with an average sleeping heart rate of 74. When I awoke Friday, the pain had declined even further, to perhaps four or so. By the end of the day Friday, it was down to a 2 at worse, 

Did I have side effects from the second vaccination? Obviously. Were they worse than the side effects from the first vaccination. Undoubtedly. Would I still get the second vaccination knowing this? Absolutely! The psychological boost of knowing that I am now vaccinated and that, if all goes well, I will be largely COVID-resistant by February 27th, is immense. I will continue to be careful and take precautions when I'm in public, but I will feel that my life is closer to normal, and I will no longer be apprehensive about visiting friends or family who are not a part of my direct circle of contacts. 

I also feel like I've done my part to help deter the spread of this devastating illness. And if they tell me this time next year I need a booster, I'll be the first in line to take it, even if they warn me that it might have similar side effects to the second shot. And now I'm hoping that they can expand the eligible base for this vaccine as soon as possible so that more of my friends can experience the sense of relief that comes with completing the two-vaccine regimen.

Biblio Philos

 Today I spent an hour or so carrying boxes of books back and forth between the main house and the overflow house. Last spring I purchased four bookshelves to go in the dining room. At the time, I filled them with mystery hardcovers (mostly Susan's, but some mine) that had been overstocked and upstairs shelves. Then, in the summer, I began moving a couple of shelves' worth of books between the houses, replacing the mysteries with my horror, science fiction, comics, fantasy, and literary volumes that spoke to me. These are the books I'm more likely to read and re-read, to refer back to, and the revisit, so why not make that a convenient process.

So many friends. Book after book reminded me of an encounter, a conversation, a friendship, or a close kinship with the author. These aren't just words on paper. They're unchanging connections to people I have known, preserved in paper and fabric and leather. Some of the people are still with us today, some aren't—but on my bookshelves, they're always here.

Piers Anthony—sometimes erudite, sometimes conspiratorial, a man who smiled with his eyes.

Michael Bishop—a gentle, thoughtful soul whose intellect counterbalances his literary passion.

Isaac Asimov—Gregarious, confident, amiable, unpredictable, and always fascinating.

Jack Kirby—Engaging, kind, amiable, continually creative, and always looking ahead eagerly at his next project.

Philip K. Dick—Mercurial, intense, sometimes troubled, and never predictable.

Stan Lee—Self-effacing yet confident, brash, loquacious, but always eager to please and appreciative of the admiration of his fans.

Thomas Burnett Swann—Scholarly, refined, genteel, with a love for the written word more intense than I've ever seen in another writer.

Stephen King... Clive Barker... Philip Jose Farmer... Ray Bradbury... Robert A. Heinlein... E. Hoffman Price... L. Sprague de Camp... Greg Benford... Hal Clement... Kelly Freas... Michael Whelan... Jim Steranko... Neal Adams... Murphy Anderson... George Alec Effinger... Frank Miller...  Each meeting with each of them lives on in the books on my shelves. I have no idea if I'll meet some of them in person again; others are no longer with us, so I will only know them through these books and the memories they bring back as I look at the books.

Why do I keep books? Friends live in those pages, that's why.

19,030

366 days.

I shared 17,569 days of marriage with Susan. I loved her for 18,664 days before her death.

But sometimes the past 366 days seemed longer than the 17,569 or the 18,664.

I was never alone until Susan's death on July 22, 2019. I moved from my parents' house to my and Susan's house on June 15th, 1971. We spent occasional days apart when she or I attended conventions alone (usually because one of us had to stay with the cats we always spoiled), but the total number of days we spent away from one another during our 48 year marriage was less than a dozen.

"You weren't meant to be alone," Susan said to me once when she was contemplating a doctor's prediction that she had less than a year to live due to a chronic, debilitating illness (she proved him wrong by living for seven years beyond that—and even then, it was not that illness that took her from me).

I was certain she was wrong. I tried to prove her wrong. I failed, because she knew me better than I knew myself.

My therapist asked me, "Could you live the rest of your life without love?" I told her no. Thankfully, I never had to—I had the love of friends who saw me through my bleakest moments,  who shared my pain and sorrow.

Those friends led me to rediscover something I had said many years ago and have repeated often since then: every day, no matter how heartbreaking or painful, contains a nugget of joy in it. On the day that Susan died, Brett and Allison and Charles took me to El Rodeo for lunch because I hadn't eaten in over thirty hours. They reminisced with me of happier times when Susan was healthy, and those memories made me smile. Even on that day, friends helped me discover a nugget of joy.

I have experienced and endured all those somber firsts without her—the first birthday, first Halloween, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, the first New Year's, the first Valentine's Day, the first anniversary,

With the help of others, I have learned that I can be alone. I have learned that I can like myself. And I have learned that I can love and can be loved. And I have learned that life can surprise me. I learned all of that in the past year.

366 days. But that's not the most important number.

19,030 days—that's how long I have loved Susan, as of today. And that number increases by one every time another midnight arrives. That's the most important number.

Fifty Years Ago This Week in West Rome - 7/6/1970 to 7/12/1970

New Rome City Schools superintendent Jesse C. Laseter ordered county news to conduct a thorough cleaning and repainting of Rome City Schools in preparation for the upcoming school year. Laseter had already gone on record regarding his hopes to renovate and improve school facilities, but until there were enough funds to make that possible, he at least wanted to make the schools look better. This would be the first time West Rome High classrooms were fully repainted since the school's founding in 1958. The school board also approved more than $20,000 for West Rome's 1970-71 athletic budget, which included $4800 for new uniforms for several sports teams.

With construction of Floyd Junior College running a bit behind schedule, there was a chance that some classrooms wouldn't be ready for the fall opening, To ensure that no classes would be postponed, the Georgia Board of Regents contracted with First United Methodist to hold classes in a portion of the church's educational building on East Third Avenue. The plan would allow classes to meet there until the facilities were completed, at which time they would move to the Floyd Junior College campus.

If you lived in West Rome in 1970, you undoubtedly loved Kay's Kastles, the ice cream shop in Gala Shopping Center. There was good news for all Kay's Kastles fans this week in 1970: to make it easier to cool off on a hot summer day, Kay's Kastles lowered the price on their sherbet pints to 21¢ each, while pints of ice cream were 29¢ each.

Piggly Wiggly had chuck roast for 43¢ a pound, cabbage for 12¢ a pound, and Royal Cup coffee for 49¢ a pound. Kroger had sirloin steak for $1.29 a pound, Morton frozen dinners for 33¢ each, and Country Club ice cream for 44¢ a half-gallon. Big Apple had fresh whole fryers for 29¢ a pound, Lenox Park peanut butter for 49¢ a jar, and Save-On canned biscuits for 8¢ a can (that's right—8¢ for a can of ten biscuits!). A&P had swiss steak for 75¢ a pound, okra for 29¢ a pound, and a 3.5 pound box of Cheer detergent for 87¢.  Couch's had pork chops for 59¢ a pound, tomatoes for 15¢ a pound, and Van Camp's chili with beans for 35¢ a can.

The cinematic week began with A Boy Named Charlie Brown at the DeSoto Theatre, The Boys in the Band (starring Cliff Gorman) at the First Avenue, M*A*S*H (starring Elliott Gould & Donald Sutherland) at the Village, and True Grit (starring John Wayne) at the West Rome Drive-In. The cinematic week brought the X-rated Female Animal (starring Arlene Tiger... and yeah, I'm sure that's her real name) to the First Avenue and the X-rated Gutter Girls (starring a bunch of... well, gutter girls) to the West Rome Drive-In, while A Boy Named Charlie Brown and M*A*S*H hung around for another week.

This week in 1970, Three Dog Night held on to the number one slot for another week with "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)." Other top ten hits included "The Love You Save/I Found That Girl" by the Jackson 5 (#2); "(They Long to Be) Close to You" by the Carpenters (#3);  "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne (#4); "Ball of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today)" by the Temptations (#5); "Ride Captain Ride" by Blues Image (#6); "Lay Down (Candles In the Rain)" by Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers (#7); O-o-h Child/Dear Prudence" by the 5 Stairsteps (#8); "Gimme Dat Ding" by the Pipkins (#9); and "Make It With You" by Bread (#10).

Fifty Years Ago This Week in West Rome - 6/29/1970 to 7/5/1970

Jesse C. Laseter officially assumed his new role as superintendent of Rome City Schools this week in 1970. His number one priority was improving the school facilities. "We probably have the most outdated buildings in the state," Laseter said. "You can't have a quality program without adequate space for libraries and the like." Roy Goolsby joined the system as assistant school superintendent, while George Kemp signed on as director of maintenance.

Traffic on Shorter Avenue was moving slower than usual thanks to Southern Bell's efforts to expand the telephone cable network in West Rome and West Floyd County. Plans called for the work to be completed in less than a week, but Southern Bell warned West Romans that one lane of Shorter Avenue would be closed in each direction every afternoon until the work was finished.

The Big K Sunday Opening War continued. The store manager, Montie Rasure, was convicted of violating Georgia's Sunday closing laws, but Big K responded by opening once again on Sunday. When Sheriff Joe Adams paid them a visit, they chose to close at 2pm rather than face another arrest. Sheriff Adams said that his visit was prompted by a request from Floyd County District Attorney Larry Salmon, who in turn said that he made the call after Broad Street merchants called him to complain. In the meantime, Big K filed an appeal of the conviction, hoping to have the case heard by the Georgia Supreme Court.

Floyd Hospital employees were given a 6% raise effective June 29th; to pay for the raise, the hospital announced plans to raise the cost of hotel rooms by $4 a day, pushing the lowest-cost hospital room to $35 a day and the best private rooms to $46 a day.

Oh, how lucky we were back in 1970: Citizens Federal was offering 6% interest on certificates of deposit with a $5000,00 minimum. Home Federal matched those rates--but they also offered 5.75% interest on a CD of only $1000!. Sure, $5000 equals about $32,000 today and $1000 equals about $6400--but 6% is also about 6 times what most CDs are paying today!

Piggly Wiggly had ground beef for 49¢ a pound, Duke's mayonnaise for 49¢ a quart, and whole watermelons for 69¢ each. Kroger had round steak for 98¢ a pound, Morton pot pies for 19¢ each, and plums for 33¢ a pound. A&P had shank portion hams for 39¢ a pound, milk for 89¢ a gallon, and nectarines for 49¢ a pound. Big Apple had turkeys for 48¢ a pound, Stokely catsup for 19¢ a bottle, and corn for 7¢ an ear.  Couch's had pork roast for 59¢ a pound, Bounty paper towels for 29¢ a roll, and bananas for a dime a pound.

The cinematic week began with The Hawaiians (starring Charlton Heston) at the DeSoto Theatre,  The Libertine (starring Catherine Spaak) at the First Avenue, 1932: The Moonshine War  (starring Patrick McGoohan) at the Village, and the "terror-rama" of Guess What Happened to Count Dracula, Curse of the Stone Hand, The Crawling Eye, and Terror of the Blood Hunters at the West Rome Drive-In. The midweek switch out brought A Boy Name Charlie Brown to the DeSoto Theatre, The Boys in the Band (starring Cliff Gorman) to the First Avenue, M*A*S*H (starring Donald Sutherland & Elliott Gould) to the Village, and True Grit (starring John Wayne, Glen Campbell, & Kim Darby) to the West Rome Drive-In.

The number one song this week in 1970 was "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)" by Three Dog Night. Other top ten songs included "The Love You Save/Found That Girl" by the Jackson 5 (#2); "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today): by the Temptations (#3); "Ride Captain Ride" by Blues Image (#4); "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne (#5); "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" by Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers (#6); "They Long to be Close to You" by the Carpenters (#7); "The Long and Winding Road" by the Beatles (#8); "The Wonder of You/Mama Liked the Roses" by Elvis Presley (#9); and "Hitchin' a Ride" by Vanity Fare (#10).

The first episode of Casey Kasem's "American Top Forty" aired on radio stations across the country this week in 1970.

Neither Friend Nor Enemy

Death is not my enemy.

Death has shown me kindness. Didn't keep me, back in April 2000. Things to be done, so death sent me back after seven minutes. Not yet, death murmured.

Death didn't take my mother right away. Nor my father. Nor my beloved Susan. Nor Anna, or Tisha, or Mischa. I give you one more good day. One more good night. One chance to say goodbye.

An evening of family photos and shared stories. A hearty meal and plans for a home recuperation. A loving smile, a gaze that saw all the way into my heart, and whispered words of love. An hour of affection that transcended weariness. A contented nap beside me. A weary head resting on my arm.

Take these moments. My time comes soon. I can wait a little longer.  I have eternity.

Sometimes it takes a while to see what death gives. Too busy raging against what death takes.

Discomfort. Fear. Confusion. Anguish. Pain. Death takes those, too.

Not entirely, though. Death leaves a bit of those feelings in us so that we can comprehend what those we love endured before they were taken.

What you feel now? They felt it, too, only so much more. I ended their discomfort. Their fear. Their confusion. Their anguish. Their pain.

That's not the action of my enemy. I can see that now.

Someday death will be my final friend. Not yet, I murmur.

Take these moments. My time comes soon. I can wait a little longer. I have eternity.

Fifty Years Ago This Week in West Rome - 6/22/1970 to 6/28/1970

Rome City Schools and Floyd County Schools announced the fall opening of the Coosa Valley Vocational High School, which would be open to tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade city and county students. The Vocational High School would be located on the Coosa Valley Tech campus. The school would begin in August with classes in electrical repair, construction, metal working, drafting, transportation, and cosmetology. Students would be enrolled at their regular city or county high schools, but would be transported to the Coosa Valley Tech campus for two hours of instruction each day. West Rome students would attend classes from 10:30 to 12:30 each day.

Armed robbers decided that the Dari-King was a major retail center, so they targeted it for robbery on Wednesday night, June 24th. The robbers took almost $300 from the Dari-King's register and from the wallets of four employees inside the restaurant, then forced one of them to drive the pair of thieves to their getaway car on Selman Road, not too far from the Dari-King.

Columbia Records country music star Stonewall Jackson came to Gibson's Discount Center in Rome on Wednesday, June 24th, signing records and offering an impromptu acoustic performance. Gibson's said that this would be the first of several signings planned for their new record department.

Piggly Wiggly had chuck roast for 89¢ a pound, cantaloupes for 33¢ each, and milk for 89¢ a gallon. Kroger had fresh whole fryers for 28¢ a pound, whole watermelons for 89¢ each, and Morton frozen cream pies for 23¢ each. Big apple had sirloin tip roast for 99¢ a pound, Coca-Cola/Tab/Sprite/Fresca for 33¢ a carton plus deposit, and bananas for a dime a pound. A&P had taken hens for 29¢ a pound, Farmbest ice milk for 39¢ a half-gallon, and yellow or white corn for a dime an ear. Couch's had pork steak for 69¢ a pound, Nabisco saltines for 43¢ a box, and fresh locally-grown tomatoes for 19¢ a pound.

The cinematic week began with Paint Your Wagon (starring Lee Marvin) at the DeSoto Theatre, Women In Love (starring Jennie Linden & Alan Bates) at the First Avenue, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (starring Charlton Heston) at the Village, and 100 Rifles (starring Rquel Welch & Jim Brown) at the West Rome Drive-In. The midweek switch out brought The Hawaiians (starring Charlton Heston) to the DeSoto, the X-rated film The Libertine (starring Catherine Spaak) at the First Avenue, 1932: The Moonshine War (starring Patrick McGoohan) at the Village, and a low-budget horror film fest of Guess What Happened to Count Dracula, Curse of the Stone Hand, The Crawling Eye, and Terror of the Blood Hunters at the West Rome Drive-In.

The Jackson 5 took the number one slot this week with "The Love You Save/I Found That Girl." Other top ten hits included "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)" by Three Dog Night (#2); "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)" by the Temptations (#3); "The Long & Winding Road" by the Beatles (#4); "Hitchin' a Ride" by Vanity Fare (#5); "Ride Captain Ride" by Blues Image (#6); "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne (#7); "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" by Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers (#8); "The Wonder of You/Mama Liked the Roses" by Elvis Presley (#9); and "Get Ready" by Rare Earth (#10).

This was a busy week for album releases in 1970. New titles available this week included Marrying Maiden by It's a Beautiful Day; Changes by the Monkees; Ecology by Rare Earth; On Stage by Elvis Presley; Runt by Todd Tundgren; and Vehicle by the Ides of March.

A Life in Four Colors Part Fifty-Nine

September 1975 to March 1977 was perhaps the most idyllic, perfect time of our marriage--and of our lives.

Susan had never really believed that she would get to go back to school. We had talked about it so many times during our engagement and our early married years, but Susan always assumed that something would come along to prevent it from actually happening. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school and was convinced that she would never actually be able to go beyond that.

But she did. And she thrived at Coosa Valley Tech.

Susan took data processing at a time when punch cards were still common. She loved the classes, she loved the technical aspect of data processing and programming, and she loved the cutting-edge aspect of her chosen field. She felt like she was moving so far beyond the poverty that had defined her childhood that nothing could ever pull her back to those impoverished roots. That was a fear of hers in the early days--that we would somehow suffer setbacks that would take us back to the lifestyle she had so struggled to escape.

Susan had worked since before she graduated from high school. That was the family norm--get a job when you turned sixteen, quit school soon after, then keep doing whatever jobs you could find for the rest of your life. She refused to quit school, which already made her an exception in her family. And in the fall of 1975, she was able to quit work and focus on school full time.

When we came home after her first day of class, she wept. I feared that something had gone wrong at school, and started to comfort her. "No--these are happy tears," she said. "It's like a dream, but I don't want it to end."

And it didn't... add least , not for a year and eight months. She completed her course work at CVT--almost. She actually didn't finish he last six weeks of her final quarter there because she was hired at Management Science America in Atlanta in March of 1977. The school had helped her find the job, and they gave her credit for that final course figuring that she was getting on-the-job training that was far more valuable than anything she could ever get in the classroom.

While Susan was in school, I was beginning my teaching career at East Rome High School. I loved the school, my fellow English teachers (Sandra Jackson, Monte Sue Howell, Willie Mae Samuel, and Lynne Mitchell, all of who had been at East Rome for years when I joined the faculty), and I loved my students. I felt that I belonged in the classroom. I had a job that inspired me, and I was good at it.

We had more money than ever before in our marriage. While Susan wasn't working, she qualified for a form of unemployment that paid her a modest sum to attend technical school. And teaching, while it didn't pay a fortune, provided us with more money than we had previously earned when both of us were working at hourly jobs. So we were able to pay our bills, put money into savings, make double payments on Susan's VW, and still have extra money for fun spending. We were even able to afford to buy a new car for me to replace my 1964 Volkwagen with 247,000 miles on it--my first new car ever, a 1976 yellow Honda Civic.

Most importantly, though, we had the gift of time together. The school day ended for me at 4pm. Susan's school day ended at 4 as well. So we would often take one car to Rome, and I would drop her off at CVT on the way to East Rome, then pick her up shortly after four (it was only a five to ten minute drive from East Rome to CVT). For the first four years of our marriage, our lives had us going in different directions, not seeing one another until 5:45 to 6pm every weekday. But now we were able to commute together, then to see each other eight hours later.

Since we were in Rome, we would often spend the afternoon at Riverbend Mall, which was directly across Turner McCall Boulevard from East Rome High School. My classroom, which was in a more recently-constructed wing of the school, had a door that opened directly to the parking lot; I could see Riverbend Mall when I opened that door. Rather than going home to prepare dinner, we'd often eat at Morrison's in the mall, then walk around and window-shop at Miller's or Belk's and dream of a future wen we could buy anything we saw in those windows. We felt like we weren't that far away from that point, either--not because we were that wealthy, but because we didn't have particularly exorbitant tastes. Years living within a budget had trained us well.

After four years of not seeing each other for eleven to twelve hours a day due to differing work schedules and commutes, we were together for two hours in the morning and seven waking hours in the afternoon and evening, five days a week. Susan had homework and I had papers to grade, but we could be together, and we could take breaks together and listen to music together and talk to each other.

Susan flourished once the stress of her job in the payroll department of the Arrow Shirt Factory was lifted from her. She was almost exuberant about being a student again, and she and our dear friend Gary Steele (who was also at CVT, although in a different technical program) would talk to one another about classes and teachers and school events almost as if they were in high school again. I can't remember any other time when she was so continually happy, so joyful, so carefree.

We found time to do more work on our fanzine, Future Retrospective. We increased the frequency of  our trips to Cumberland Mall in Marietta (a much larger mall than Riverbend) from once a month to every other week, regularly visiting our friend Larry Mason at his apartment near the Buford Highway-Clairmont Road intersection (in 1975, this was a thriving area for young professionals). We would make the rounds of used bookstores and record stores, bringing home a fresh haul every time. We made regular forays to the twin musical meccas of Peaches and Oz, two supermarket-sized record stores that were metro Atlanta icons. We even began looking at houses--not ready to buy quite yet, but ready to find the kind of house we liked so that we would know what to look for when we were ready to buy.

It couldn't last forever. In early 1977, with graduation just a few months away, Susan began looking for a job. She had hoped to find something in Rome or Cedartown, but she found her opportunity in Atlanta with the aforementioned Management Science America, whose office was directly across the street from another mall—Lenox Square in Atlanta. A commute was out of the question, so in early March of 1977, we spent a weekend checking out apartments in Marietta (a half-hour commute for Susan and a fifty minute commute for me to East Rome, where i continued to each).

In retrospect, I wish that wonderful time had never come to an end--and I sometimes wonder how different our lives might have been had she never taken a job in metro Atlanta, allowing us to remain in Rome and Cedartown instead.  But 1977 wasn't a year for what-ifs. It was a year for opportunities and new experiences and a new career--and for the first time in our six-plus years of marriage, both of us were working full-time not just in hourly jobs, but in careers. The idyllic years gave way to two exciting years that marked the next chapter of our lives.