I remember...

I REMEMBER…

…climbing the tree in the front yard and hanging upside down on a branch; I liked looking at the world in an upside-down way; perhaps that’s why I became a liberal

…playing tackle football with no padding in a vacant lot with several boys including my next door neighbor whose first name was Layman; I remember how he ran straight toward me at blistering speed, and how I fearlessly tackled him; and how a few years later he went to Vietnam and never came back

…sitting in the seminary cafeteria and hearing that Attorney General John Mitchell had resigned

…walking up a wooded path with Pat at a State Park and being surprised by a snake and how we both screamed and ran like crazy

…sitting in fourth grade class at Charles D. Jacob School when the teacher left the room and someone began passing around a note with the word ‘fuck’ on it; I had never heard or seen that word; so I asked Eddie what it meant and he gave me my first sex education lesson by telling me that ‘fuck’ means a man and a woman put their peters together

…being a few feet away from President Kennedy at Freedom Hall when I played trumpet in the DuPont Manual Band

…marching in the band in the Derby Parade, trying not to step in the horse dung left in the street by the horses ahead of us.