Alan Catlin

I Remember Take 2

I remember Kent State.

I remember all night candle light vigils.

I remember singing folk songs.

I remember singing protest songs.

I remember peace protest marches, petitions, political action committees.

I remember thinking it mattered; that we could change things.

I remember final days of classes cancelled my senior year but not final exams.

I remember the beautiful May weather not unlike a beautiful September morning in 2001.

I remember playing out our soft ball schedule.

I remember frisbees.

I remember drinking beer in the afternoon.

I remember thinking in less than two weeks this would be all over and we will have changed nothing.

I remember my wife was seven months pregnant, weighing less than 100 lbs., carrying huge, and I was afraid to leave her to go to DC for the protest March on Washington.

I remember thinking now that my draft deferment would be gone as soon as graduation would be over and then what would I do?

I remember thinking what am I going to do for money?

I remember who would hire me?

I remember how overwhelming and scary the future looked.

I remember filling out late applications for graduate school and praying I would get accepted somewhere.

I remember I’d better read Ulysses before the baby came or else I may never get to read it.

I remember seeing the movie of Ulysses and how that made the opaque opening and “plot lines” suddenly make some sense.

I remember reading Stephen Hero and how he became a tour guide for the Guinness Brewery.

I remember the tour guide at Utica Club stopping his presentation about a third of the way through and saying, “Al why don’t you pick it up here, you’ve been on the tour so many times you probably have it memorized.”

I remember that got quite a laugh.

I remember thinking how much of the tour I did have  memorized.

I remember “Summertime, summer time, sum sum summertime.”

I remember, “I remember you,  you’re the one who made my dreams come true, just a few kisses ago…. “

I remember thinking why do I remember the lyrics to hundreds of obscure ,downright stupid songs I heard on the radio?

I remember thinking that all those brain cells could have been filled with actual literature and poetry and good stuff instead.

I remember how I was going to write an essay on One Hit Wonders beginning with songs (Moster Mash, Surfer Bird, Alley Oop…) that would expand  to books  and novels like say Leaving Las Vegas, Confederacy of Dunces, Under the Volcano and then I thought about Why they were one hit wonders.

I remember thinking about the essay I began about The Summer of Reading Suicides and abandoned thinking of all that lost potential of those sad, gifted  women poets, most of whom knew each other, and were friends, and how the whole premise of the essay was too overwhelming, was too emotionally draining to continue.

I remember thinking I wanted the One Hit Wonders to be amusing and thoughtful, not mournful.

I remember that I once compiled, in poor taste, a group of Dead Wilbury’s (subset Plane Crash Wilbury’s) featuring songs by one hit wonder Big Bopper (Chantilly Lace), Richie Valens(La Bamba), Buddy Holly(Oh Boy), Patsy Cline (Crazy)and others.

I remember Ironic Death (in plane crashes)  Wilbury’s “Dock of the Bay” Otis Redding, Rickie ”Free Base not to be confused with Free Bird”  Nelson ( B side song “That’s All She Wrote”) “Rocky Mountain High” John Denver.

I remember seeing Stevie Ray Vaughn on Austin City Limits.

I remember how much I liked his work.

I remember not knowing he was already long gone, killed in a plane crash. 

I remember, just now, not being able find the notes I made for my essay, One Hit Wonders.

I remember how I felt that getting accepted to Grad School in the middle of the academic year.

I remember how I had to buy a car (a much beloved 1963 Ford Falcon from a little old lady at the Stonehenge Apartments who owned it, and literally, only drove it on weekends, and parked it somewhere where there were pine needles and, in a lake, given all the body rot it developed. The soon-to-be defunct transmission was a slightly later gift.)

I remember I had to find an apartment in Albany, on the bus line, pack up and move from Utica to Albany, register for classes in the middle of the biggest snow year in recorded history where our car would not fit in frozen ice/snow ruts of the never plowed side streets of Albany.

I remember finding out they didn’t collect garbage in Albany either.

I remember you had to pay a guy who could barely pronounce garbage, half a buck per black bag of garbage, to take it away.

I remember thinking, “What am I doing in Grad school for English that has no job potential at the end of it, when I could be an illiterate kid filling up a truck full of garbage at fifty cents per bag and probably making forty k a year of untaxed income?”

I remember it wasn’t really the right time for me, mentally, to be in  graduate school.

I remember thinking but I had to be there.

I remember thinking that the alternative was being drafted.

I remember beginning the draft  eligibility saga that would last the better part of two years to resolve. 

I remember all the draft counsellors I saw, unanimously said, you’d never get the deferment (hardship.)

I remember replying, “But my current situation is exactly the same as the requirements to get one: minimal income (well below poverty level), two children (the second son was born the Fall after we moved) (my little draft deferments) public assistance for food and medical.”

I remember we wouldn’t even have had that were it not for my mother paying our rent.

I remember how I would never have found the apartment, bought the car or gotten the job checking proof in the cellar bar beneath the Silo restaurant opposite the State University were it not for my next-door neighbor in the dorm freshman year, Dave Quadrini.

I remember how much I was against the draft.

I remember how much I was against the war I could be drafted to fight.

I remember how I was literally in the verge of a nervous breakdown near the end of the two-year draft epic.

I remember my draft physical downtown Albany with smiling picture of President Richard M. Nixon on the wall.

I remember how much I hated Richard M. Nixon and how much I hate him now though he is nothing compared with the Orange Jesus when it comes to hatefulness.

I remember how I passed the physical though I have never passed a hearings test, before or since.

I remember reading in today’s newspaper how students wanted to go to Southern schools with strong football cultures and where everyone does not hate each other.

I remember thinking, not for the first time, maybe they should re-instate the draft so that these obnoxious, entitled, coddled, safe space kids could understand, first-hand ,what it would be like to live under the dangling sword of death.

I remember also that school shootings were not a thing when we were kids.

I remember thinking, previously, that everyone should be made to perform public service or work in the service industry for one year after reaching their majority.

I remember thinking they seriously needed to see how it felt to be on the other side of the bar.

I remember thinking they needed to understand what the word Respect means.

I remember how bitter I was when I retired from my service industry job.

I remember understanding the primary reason the repulithugs got rid of the draft was so the youth of America would have no common cause to rally around.

I remember how well it worked.

I remember reading how a Brit said that intellectual history was a typical American discipline that eliminated the need to study basic factual  history.

I remember thinking that what I learned in intellectual history of (Far East, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and British histories) was the basis of my understanding for how to beat the draft board bureaucracy. 

I remember Intellectual History was my major minor and that I had a higher average in it than I did in my major in English which was 3.75.

I remember how well applying what I learned worked.

I remember how I felt when I got my draft deferment.

I remember that it was definitely not my time to be in graduate school.

I remember how I accepted the job to run the tavern I was working in and how that was either the best thing I could have done, or the worst, but it was the right thing to do at the time.

I remember thinking now was now as definitely not the time to do write One Hit Wonders.

I remember now is the time to remember what I remember before I forget where I put my memories.