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Back at the Tumblers
Do you know that “hopeful, floaty” feeling, when you sense something new and wonderful is about to begin? That’s exactly how I felt the morning of Friday, Sept. 15, 1978. “I awoke,” the diary entry...
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New Kid in Town
“The Day arrived and was over too fast.” Saturday, Sept. 23, 1978: The big first date with Jocey. So many blurred memories, so many assumptions. But a detailed diary entry now holds a mirror up to it....
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Guilt Clouds
Read enough old diary entries and you’re bound to learn a couple uncomfortable truths about yourself. Like, “Why do I do what I do?” “How has my life changed?” and “Why am I writing in a baby’s diary?”...
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Two Days in December
Change, transition. Trying new things, leaving the old. On Wednesday, Nov. 8, 1978, I wrote the last entry of ’78 in the new Mead composition book. The small lock and key diaries of my childhood—over...
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This Nothing Is Something
By Monday, Jan. 8, 1979, the new year had finally settled in. “I’ll probably be summing up 1978 for as long as I can,” I wrote in my Mead Composition journal, “How quickly time flies when you don’t...
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Already Gone
When you’re not entirely sure where you’re going, it’s hard to see where you really are. Friday, Feb. 2, 1979, I skipped classes (and, later, my night shift at Augsburg Fortress Publishing House) to...
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Surfside
Imagine being back at a place you haven’t been to in a long time. Maybe it’s a classroom, a childhood home, the roof of said childhood home, or even the back piano bar of a long-gone restaurant. The...
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Total Eclipse of the Heart
So, where were you when the sun went out? In North America, the last total solar eclipse of the 20th century occurred on Monday, Feb. 26, 1979. Apparently it was a big deal. The journal picks up the...
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Better Luck Next Time
A friend recently asked how organized I had to be to write this blog. While I do develop an editorial slate, I’m comfortable having posts fall out of order depending on, well, serendipity. You see,...
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The English Teacher
“…I still didn’t have the paper done, God, it was bugging the hell out of me anyway. I always screw things up really bad in that class, and MacHardy even kinda bugs me. He’s always picking things...
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Rediscovering Dumond
The year was 1989. How did it change the course of my life? I can’t quite go there without first examining what lead up to it. I last left off at 1986 and ’87—terrible, terrible years. Turns out, after...
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Keepsake (Part 1)
[First part of a two-part post.] In John Ford’s The Searchers, John Wayne’s character, Ethan, reluctantly joins a posse pursuing Comanches that have abducted his niece, Debbie, played by Natalie Wood....
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Approaching the Frontier
“The man with imagination but no knowledge is like a bird with wings but no feet.” There it was—a collection of quotes stuck in my bed frame, written in the early 1970s when I was preteen. I found them...
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The Year That Changed My Life (Part 1)
When I don’t know where my life is going, I always lean back to the past. It just makes me feel better—like I actually came from someplace. Last time we were here, at Completely in the Dark, it was the...
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