This Date in 1974

August 8, 1974. It is my recollection that I was on my way back from New England to Columbus, Indiana in a 1973 gray Pinto two-door sedan. I heard on the radio of the resignation of Nixon. By the time I got home to our house on Newton Street in Columbus, Indiana, Gerry Ford was president. Hillary Clinton was shy of 27 then, Barack Obama was 13. Irwin Miller was 66. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was 52. I was 35.

I think that was about the last time I tried to run away from my duties as a husband, father, and provider to the three I was then responsible for: a wife and twins, a boy and girl then not yet three years old. Oh yes, I'd tried to run away before that.

I'd been employed as the public relations flack for a small college in Ohio up to the time that I walked out, got in the Pinto, and headed east through Pennsylvania and finally to Providence, Rhode Island. An unusually dry, cool batch of weather prevailed in those parts and I remember eating a lobster-salad roll on Narragansett Beach on a sunny afternoon with blue sky and pellucid air that is not usually found next to the Atlantic Ocean. And it was autumnally cold. I spent that night in Providence, going to a certain meeting where there was a man who looked like Paul Newman, spoke with that New England accent so different from my own, and seemed hostile because he was clearly the cock of the henhouse and perceived me as somewhat of a cock myself. I headed back to Indiana the next morning.

It was good to be back home, although like Lucy I had some 'splainin' to do. I got off easy, as I had all my life. No toilet-training at gunpoint for me as the indulged little brat I was, and here I was still making messes that others had to clean up. So what is new?

That was a sweet little neighborhood. There was a lady next door to us who was known as "T," for her last name, which was slightly "ethnic" compared to the short Anglo names of most of southern Indiana such as Long, Hall, Hill, Gray, Lee, and other such monosyllabic, prosaic appellations. First time I met T in the alley between our houses, she cautioned me that she didn't "neighbor much." OK. Then she fell in love with those twins and so much for that. The Flecks and their kids lived just across the street and the Hill kids were up the block.

Newton Street had little traffic and the next summer Natalie would teach herself to ride a bicycle on the street in front of our house. Seems like it was always summer there, mild and hazy and humid and calm. We'd have home-made ice cream and gatherings at dusk with the neighbors and every now and then we'd haul ourselves off to our relatives in Seymour or Petersburg. We also had an ice storm once and some scary thunderstorms. I was afraid of tornadoes and was grateful for the excellent basement of that house. That was the year in April that we'd had a Homeric outbreak of tornadoes and I'd seen the laying waste of the town of Xenia, Ohio. That killing field inspired awe, to say the least.

But then a beautiful autumn ensued. Cummins gave me back my sinecure and we had a nice Xmas and then 1975 brought on its cataclysms in which I went from being a drunkard to being a counselor of drunkards. (Again.) Onward and upward.

Anyhow, August 8, 1974 was a good day, all in all. The prodigal returneth once more.