Summertime blues . . .

I love the beginning of summer. . . until I remember that I no longer get out of school at the end of May. So, oddly enough, the beginning of summer is a melancholy time for me. Now that I think of it, most of the year is melancholy. Don't cry for me, Art and Tina. I kind of like melancholy. Maybe it's not melancholy, but just memories.

Deb, whose ramblings may be reached by picking her journal link below, recently wrote about crying when she heard a song on the radio. I did that today. I was listening to WCRL, your Oneonta golden oldies station , and heard Dion's "Abraham, Martin and John,." by today's standards, and maybe even by the standards of the early seventies, a pretty cheesily produced record . I had the window down singing along as I was riding home from Birmingham . I made it fine through Abraham, John and Martin (that's the order of the verses. the chorus says Abraham, Martin and John). Then all of a sudden there was Bobby, walking over the hill, with Abraham, Martin and John. My voice broke, and tears filled my eyes. What was going on?

It is strange to me that we never really revisited, as a nation, what happened to us in 1968. I'm not talking about the debate as to whether it was a time that saved us as a nation, or almost destroyed us as a nation. I'm not talking about big, sweeping political or ideological shifts or shafts.

I'm talking about two young, charismatic, hopeful, smart, driven, committed, handsome men who were brutally murdered virtually right in front of our eyes within a few months of each other, and less than five years after the assassination of JFK. I'm talking about people like me, one of the Wonder Years generation, watching the news, seeing their children, and hoping and praying that these young men could be saved. I remember that MLK was pronounced dead very shortly after news of the shooting broke. But Bobby was different. We saw the pictures of the shooting. Weren't his eyes still open as he lay on the floor? He remained alive overnight. At least that's the way I remember it. With every passing hour I remember thinking, I think he's out of the woods. He's gonna make it. But he didn't.

When you're living through a five year period as a child and adolescent, it seems like an eternity. But looking back on it now, what a ridiculously painful and traumatic time we lived through in such a short time. What mindless, real, cruel, hateful violence played out right in front of our eyes. These guys looked like our fathers, and their children looked like us. It is no wonder that we as a country wanted to get all that behind us. But maybe there were a few of us who most would think were too young to really understand who should have had a little more time spent in dealing with what we had seen.

Or maybe I was just weird. OK, I was. But I bet there were others that feel like I do.

But there are good memories that come up this time of year. I walked out of the house early one morning last week. The sun was shining. There was a light cool breeze blowing, but the heat of the sun felt more like summer than spring. For a moment I felt like I should be walking to the car to load up and head to the beach. But I headed to court instead. I felt like crying.

Or, the other day I was in a mall and passed by a shoe store. The smell of leather was strong, and all of a sudden I was taken back to my carport when I was nine or ten. There was a new baseball glove in my lap, purchased with s & H green stamps, and I was working some saddle soap into it. What a smell. There's nothing like it. That made me tear up a little too.

I better stop now. I don't think my keyboard is supposed to get wet.