- In the freshman dining hall, a maraschino cherry tops most desserts. We save the cherry for last and ritually eat it simultaneously. One night, we see four industrial sized cans of maraschino cherries stacked in the hallway. We take one back to the dorm. After the third night, none of us will ever eat a maraschino cherry again.
- Fall 1969. My girlfriend and I are riding with her photography teacher through the Vermont countryside. He pulls over to take pictures of the late-afternoon leaf collages and says, “Do me a favor and take off your clothes and walk up that path holding hands. I’ll only shoot from the back, no one will know it’s you.” She says yes, I say no, and we don’t. I wish I had said yes so now I could see our springtime asses descending into autumn.
- Summer 1965. We eat even more quietly than usual. Halfway through, I sneak a piece of chicken under the table for Duke. He doesn’t take it. He’s old and feeble, maybe the nose is going on him, so I look down. He’s not there. My father turns away, and my mother says, “The less said the better.”
- Spring 1965. During my road test, the examiner asks me to cross a six-lane highway. I get to the traffic island when I realize there’s an onslaught of cars coming from the right. I squeeze the brake pedal and hope everyone stays in their lanes. The examiner looks up from his clipboard and calmly asks: “Do you see where you are?” “Yes.” “Do you understand how you got here?” “Yes.” He makes a notation and clicks his pen shut.
- Someone tells me that in 1961 he was walking through Harvard Yard when he overheard a drunken argument. “Stop it, Bobby!” “Aw come on, Joanie, come back here!” I repeat the story many times, to the great pleasure of my listeners, who choose, as I do, based on no evidence, to believe the voices belonged to Dylan and Baez.
- Bobby Kennedy, campaigning for the Senate, is standing up in the back of his convertible as it drives slowly alongside the cheering crowd. He waves and smiles as people reach to shake his hand. He leans over, as if levitating, clutching briefly hand after hand. I run around to the other side, and see an aide on the car floor, holding Bobby by his calves.
- 1961. At the Woolworths lunch counter, my mother sits on my left and a classmate on my right. I am eating French fries, which I saved for last. My friend is done with his meal. He reaches over for one of the fries, then another and another. I am in distress. My mother says, “Let me see those fries,” and moves the plate closer to her. She takes the tiniest piece and says, “They’re good.” I resume eating, the plate out of my friend’s reach.
- 1950s. Each year, the Village of Lynbrook sets up a crèche on the grass a few blocks from my house. Each year my friend and I rearrange the animals. We have no idea what any of it means.
- The 1954 Ford Fairlane is two-tone, blue and white, and looks like no car I’ve ever seen. Shiny new, and somehow it’s ours. We drive aimlessly but with purpose around the neighborhood, staying a few seconds longer at stop signs so my father can bask in the smiles and points. It is his first new car, and it will be his last new car.
- I play a tape of Doc and Merle Watson, the blind guitarist-folksinger and his son. Merle died a few weeks ago in a tractor accident. I play “Solid Gone” over and over, with Doc spicing Merle’s solo with “Pick it pretty now….Show me one more time….Just pick a little more.”
- In the Paris fragrance store, Erin sniffs and tests. I pick up what looks like an after-shave, but the shopkeeper says it is not for men, then adds, “I did sell it to a man once, but he was not a man like you are a man.”
- In college, leaning forward in the back seat of a car, talking to a guy I barely know in the front. He says, “You have nice eyes.” I ignore him, go on with the conversation. A decade later, a woman at a meeting responds to my doubt about being able to accomplish what she would like me to do: “You’ve got the talent and the blue eyes to do anything you want.” I ignore her and go on with the conversation. This morning, while shaving, I catch my eyes and linger there. Nice eyes!
- 1980s. From the street nine flights down, always on Sunday but not every Sunday, a hand-rung bell and the call “Knife sharpening….Bring down your knives….knife sharpening.” I had no knives that merited professional sharpening. To this day I regret not buying one, just for him.