[Photo credit: Glass Factory Worker Rob Kidd 1911—NARA—Wikimedia Commons]

Wednesday, July 19, 1978: I’d passed the interviews, physical and, along with fellow post-high school summer jobbers Randy Johnson and Pam Fox, hurried up to the “first day” at Tonka Toys, working 2nd shift in Department 02: Sub-Assembly. Although the conditions were hardly as squalid as the Victorian glass factory worker pictured at right, that’s still an accurate reflection of what it was like to go from summer sunshine into a dark, dingy, percussively loud and bustling factory in the late 1970s.

Mom gave me a lift, getting me there by 4:20 p.m. It was the only time I ever worked in a factory and the first time I recall ever having an employee number. Outside of women bosses like Jeanne at the Lafayette Club and Sabrina at Super Sam’s, it was also the first time I worked for The Man.

My shift supervisor, Dick, bespectacled, middle-aged, clad in tie and short sleeves, led us past roaring forklifts, banging riveters and—overhead—small metal toy pieces swinging by conveyor chains to the paint and finishing department yards away. Smudgy workers wearing earplugs grimly eyed us as we were shown to a workstation.

As a new employee, I was anxious to know if I could get the first week in August off to attend camp. Dick listened to my request, his jaw set, and said, “get in touch with me later and I’ll let you know.” That night I worked with a Karen and Dave deburring rough edges off Tonka bulldozers. Mom left her car in the parking lot after she’d left me the key so I could drive home. On the way I stopped off at the Gravel Pits to stare up at the full moon.

Thursday night I worked at the deburring table again with a guy named Brant. The following night another guy, Steve Walters, joined me with two guys named Kevin and Dave. I’d hoped to ask Dick again on Monday about the time off so I could send in my camp registration.

It was an odd tonal shift to the summer: Bright, peaceful, sunny days spent painting the lakefront deck stairs and swimming—followed by clanging loud, dreary nights in the factory. It was so noisy during shift that we all didn’t talk much—unless someone had to change stations or move materials bins around. At dinner break we sat outside at picnic tables, smoking and gazing at the dusky parking lot before the bell clanged and we shuffled back inside.

On the weekend I reconnected with friends, hitting Ridgedale in Steve’s car and stopping by the Minnetonka A&W—where we were surprised to discover Kim had started as a carhop. With Monday looming, and a full week at the factory, I kept my sights on Camp Shamineau, meeting old and making new friends. It kept my spirits up.

Monday I walked the railroad tracks to Tonka. Still no word from Dick about the time off, but I’d decided to risk it; I’d sent in my registration and deposit for camp earlier that day. “I hope no one gets mad—” I wrote in the diary, “because I’m going! It’s too strong for me to ignore the feeling I get.” That night I worked with Chuck Gemar and Dave from the previous Thursday, “riveting side panels to Tonka pickup trucks.” After shift, my brother picked me up at 1 a.m. in Mom’s car, where I learned Dad had just bought a new boat—a Starcraft—and we were itching to take it out for a spin.

But reality crept back in—final summer before college be damned. Tuesday, the diary reports, “No one called (besides an Army Recruit officer—I hung up—)” before I left for shift, working with again with Dave, Kevin and a couple girls “at Table 5 … piecing together and riveting those, ya know, car-carrier truck beds. For a while I riveted … then I spent a large amount of time piecing the bottom part on, which really grated up the sides of my hands and forefingers.”

It was the night for clock-watching.

In four days, maybe I’d be back once again among the smiling, sunny, young faces of Camp Shamineau—my last year ever—and the noise, monotony and grim surroundings would be a fast-fading memory.

At dinner break I screwed my courage to the sticking point and went to see Dick in his cluttered office.

“The 31st through the 5th?” he sighed. “O.K. I suppose you can have it.”

I had poison ivy.

Tuesday, July 11, 1978, the diary reports Mom took me to the doctor for a prescription to treat welts on my hand, which later spread to my face and lips. Itching all over, I was miserable.

Topping that, I didn’t have a summer job, fired from the janitorial gig because I was slow (too busy daydreaming), lazy and—well, to tell you the truth, I stole a letter opener. Yeah, I was a petty thief. With poison ivy. And the itching just wouldn’t stop.

The daydreams were of summer camp and the girls I’d met there before: Lynn, Lisa, Jill … and others I haven’t yet mentioned. After “Happy Campers I,” I’d befriended a blonde from Wayzata with the unusual name of Vizma Sturnicks, and a girl from Forest Lake named Deann Mork. They attended Camp Shamineau when high school friend Loren played Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” on the upright piano in the dining hall basement. Deann and I made out in the chapel the previous year at camp.

Vizma and I stayed in touch. She had an unrelenting sense of humor, which I instantly glommed on to. That Tuesday in July, Mom drove me to Wayzata where I window-shopped at Bay Center mall, then walked to Burger King where Vizma worked the front line. I always considered her a new friend rather than a potential romantic interest. “Called Vizma this eve,” the diary states. “Shamineau’s got a new melodrama stage. 55 kids going this year.” Seemed like a positive sign; things were looking up.

“The Clown with the Golden Voice,” the next day’s entry begins, “His heart may break, but the show goes on. … I wanna stand around the sundial again, Mr. Storyteller. … It’s so very much summer, but I feel trapped, or even better described as ‘waiting.’”

You see, I’d formed this myth (which later took the form of a poem) about a sundial I saw at Camp Koronis. In the story, a strange old storyteller conjured his readers to appear at a certain time and place. All the loose ends of his stories would neatly tie up. I needed Mr. Storyteller again. “It looks as if there’ll be a brightening cheery revival of a summer spirit, like a wondrous old man simply sleeping somewhere in a sweet breezy field.”

My sense of intuition was at full charge, albeit veering on the side of purple prose.

On Thursday, July 13, the diary turned pensive: “Sargasso Sea. The Horse Latitudes. Where is the Shamineau oasis and the girl with the golden brunette hair? Just a vision and/or recurring fancy just created from whims and outside symbols? I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it’s because that is something stronger now than a small, objective and sterile little doubt.”

Who was this mysterious girl with the golden brunette hair? I’d been on the phone with Vizma, Deann, Kim, Lisa, even hanging out with a sophomore friend from late in my senior year, Mary Geyen, at her parents’ place. But none of these girls fit the description of HER. I had to find out who she was. Feeling friendless and alone, I later confessed to the diary: “God, I feel that girl in my head.”

Saturday night Jim Borgheiinck picked me up in his car and we hit a party at sophomore Colleen “Cubby” Dunn’s house north of town. Cubby fit the bill as a smart, lovely brunette, and she and I often flirted in high school. At the party that night she showed me her Jackson Browne albums. But something seemed off. “Cubby was standoffish last night,” I later wrote, “but uncomfortably friendly.”

Uncomfortably friendly. Even after 30 years that statement strikes me as calculatingly vague. Maybe I bristled at her standoffishness, but was not entirely convinced of the attraction, given she’d be back in high school in the fall and I’d be off to college. I’m not sure.

On Monday, July 17, there was a break in the unemployment clouds. I’d walked the railroad tracks to Tonka Toys and scored an interview appointment for the following day, to work in the assembly department. Things were looking up—potential tiny dancers and poison ivy notwithstanding.

Maybe landing the job, and making my last summer at Camp Shamineau really count, would finally scratch that itch.

This morning I sorted and recycled bills, receipts and mail from over six years ago. It’s a tedious process, but I’ve decided to do it by hand because I never know what I’m going to discover inside “The Paper Monster.”

Not a lot of personal stuff, but one manila envelope from Dad, postmarked March 12, 2007—18 months before he died. Inside was his church’s newsletter—and a photo that nearly floored me.

Taken on Mom and Dad’s first anniversary, Dec. 21, 1958, they’re all smiles and celebrating Christmas with best friends (and soon to be my godparents), the Morelands. A Post-It note from Dad reads: “Hi Mike, Picture from yesteryear and Church news letter Love Dad.”

What’s crazy about this is how it’s apropos of nothing. With a March 2007 postmark, there’s no anniversary, birth date or other reason for Dad to have sent the photo when he did. And for me to rediscover it a week after I’d written a blog post about that very period 1955­–1959, prior to my birth—I mean, wacky, huh?

So, Scooby, Dooby Doo, where are you?

Now go get yourself a Scooby Snack. All-new post up before Saturday morning!

“I was perfectly content before I was born,” film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “and I think of death as the same state.”

Therefore, this is a tale told by a zygote.

Perhaps a discontented zygote, even, since the precise circumstances surrounding its creation will probably remain a mystery.

After Dad returned from Korea in 1955, he dated Mom and they married on Dec. 21, 1957. Since I was born in late Nov. 1959, I could’ve been conceived in their first home on East 64th Street or the backseat of Dad’s car. Hard to say. Nonetheless, those 4 or 5 years prior to my birth piqued my curiosity after I’d discovered the following photos from the time.

The questions these pictures raise speak to something I’ve had on my mind for some time now: how our inner lives are shaped by our interactions with the outer world, and vice versa. What brings two people together at all? What part does the zeitgeist play in their meeting and how it affects their inner lives?

The folks were Depression Era babies. If you grew up during the Great Depression, you learned to save everything because you might really need it someday. You acquired things to get you further down the road to success: establishing your career, starting a family or living in a particular community. For Pop it all took off after 1965, when he was hired as project manager for the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. Mom used her nursing degree to work the night shift at Montgomery County General Hospital.

Their original community was small-town Indiana, centered largely around Mom’s parents, but after we’d moved to Minnesota, it became the lakeshore neighborhood on Casco Point. The folks’ outer world, then, dictated domesticity and stability. Once they’d found each other, they were inseparable. As Pop once told me, their favorite date night was over pizza, beer and cigarettes at some joint, likely in Indianapolis. That, he said, was a magic time for them. And once this zygote got the green light about nine months prior to the end of 1959—voila!—you had a brand-spankin’-new Family Project on your hands.

But what about their inner lives? What were they thinking and feeling? How did they navigate the emotions that grow out of living together, sharing duties and managing expectations? Perhaps our inner lives are hard-wired early on. Everyone, I believe, carries a personal mythology from early childhood. For Mom, that likely included how she felt as a girl with her cousin Lois at the beach. Dad’s boyish temerity was surely part and parcel of his inner selfscape, along with the certainty that hard work won the day in any endeavor. I’d wager the social norms of the time made it easier, since you just took your cues from the way the world operated: men went to work during the day, paid the bills; women stayed at home and raised the children.

And this zygote? Born into the 1960s—Martin Luther King, Jr., the Kennedys and The Beatles ending with Altamont, Nixon and the counterculture—my world was fundamentally different from the generation before. Steeped in advertising, television and space travel, my world never seemed more filled with possibilities. We were encouraged to do more, learn more, and in turn raise our families. My brother easily fell into that groove; I did not. I struggled with relationships and, for the longest time, my career. My inner life—much, I suspect, like Mom’s—was always rich. When I was younger I felt the pain of loneliness, but now blissfully crave solitude. How I’d be able to negotiate all that with a potential life partner is anyone’s guess. But I’m running out of time. In 20 years I’ll be exactly the age at which Mom passed away.

So, when I discovered the photo at right, I was startled. It’s such a gift to me—a window into Mom’s inner life. In her early 20s, she collapses at her parents’ kitchen table, exhausted, cigarette in hand and still wearing her nurse’s uniform. The little girl at the beach is now a young woman. She’s met a man with whom she’ll spend the rest of her life. For Dad’s part, the man must now say goodbye to his tricycle, slingshot and boyhood dog. He’ll need to make some money if this Family Project is to get off the ground.

They’ve only just begun.

It begins with a small, black-haired boy called “Lil’ Eric” who’s standing outside his parents’ house on beautiful summer’s day. He’s filled with wonder about the cottonwoods blowing their seeds, “Fluffs,” as he calls them, creating a sort of “snowstorm in June.”

In just four double-spaced pages, not much seems to happen: He’s summoned by his sister Candy to come inside to get his soda pop. There he learns their mother has been crying. He’s sent back outside where he’s taunted by a couple of girls and two bigger boys. He somehow cuts his foot, which starts to bleed, but no one, even Candy, is sympathetic or helpful. And that’s pretty much it.

So what’s the story behind this endless story?

I wrote “The Promise” just before graduating high school in 1978. The extant copy is dated June 6, which, according to the diary, was a Tuesday and the last full day of high school. While not indicated in the diary, likely I used the school paper’s typewriter to bang it out before school ended, inscribing the date on the last page. I had an old manual typewriter on my desk at home, but it was so cumbersome to write with that I only used it for poetry. For longer fiction, such as my short story, electric typewriters were the way to go. Now that I was out of school, I was probably back to writing long-form pieces by hand—something I learned to really dislike.

That same day my maternal grandparents arrived in their camper for the annual summer visit, coinciding with my graduation celebrations. I sensed the moment’s gravity: “Everyone was writing in yearbooks and getting in a strange (new) communal mood. Later, Harv gave me a ride home. We had a beer in the [high school] parking lot and cruised.”

Mention of “The Promise” appeared in the diary a month later, in early July 1978. On Monday the 3rd: “So I took my story ‘The Promise’ over and went a-knocking at Kim’s door, but absolutely no one was home. I wonder if they went somewhere for the Fourth? I hope not because I left my story in the metal siding of their screen door…”

Two days later I called Kim around 10 p.m. and we chatted. The diary picks it up again: “She liked my story ‘The Promise’ and I explained to her how it had to do with the way I felt about high school and the social condition and how I was [illegible] hurt.” I asked her to an upcoming Eagles concert and she said she was already going with some friends.

I felt crushed, just like “Lil’ Eric” in my story.

Adding insult to injury, I was fired from my janitorial job on July 6, taking a bus home in the pouring rain.

The next day, a Friday, I rode with Dad to the University, where I walked around campus while he worked. Later we ate lunch at the Campus Club, where I met his boss Dean Weaver, too. After checking out the student employment board, I hopped a bus to Golden Valley to pick up my final paycheck and kicked around Ridgedale mall before catching another bus home.

So, here’s the full story of “The Promise”: After learning to write short stories in the early 1970s, I’d moved away from murder mysteries and science fiction toward what amounts to the sparest vignette—a slice of life with little window dressing. I was beginning to love the unknowable edges of a story—the shadows and hidden spaces. Why is Candy being so secretive and unsupportive of Eric? Why is their mother crying? How did Eric cut his foot? And why does he endure the taunting of the neighborhood kids?

All we know is the wind has stilled and the fluffs have stopped falling. Amid laughter and shouts, Lil’ Eric returns to the house, “slamming the door in a burst of unsettled tears.”

Brother = Earth

me = Fire

Mom = Air

… and Dad = Water.

Well, that was an easy exercise. Now here’s my rationale: Fire scorches Earth, but is extinguished by Water. Conversely, Earth could put out Fire, but it’s not as fast as Fire. Fire is fed by Air so… being who I am, and my brother being who he is, and Mom and Dad who they were, it’s a formula I can get behind.

At least it sounds reasonable enough.

***

Every late spring, we “put in” the boat dock.

To get down to the lake, you first stood at the top of a stairway on a steep embankment. It was Sunday, April 16, 1978: “I went home and spent most of the day taking the dock in with Brian and Dad—beautiful weather!!! Warm, Sunny!” Putting in/taking in—I must’ve meant putting the dock in, although sometimes our old wooden dock would be split to pieces by heaving spring ice, so I might’ve meant that it had to first come out. Later, Dad bought a dock setup with metal stakes that he’d pile-drive deep into the lakebed.

Down at the boathouse is where Dad was happiest. Guess I never realized how much time and love he put into making everything just so: repainting the boathouse, building a deck for lawn chairs, adding a small, shaded table and a workbench for cleaning fish. Dad made sure the embankment was re-enforced—we kids were always scrambling up and down it, wearing away the soil and surrounding plants.

Inside the boathouse, it was dank, musty, and stank of boat motor oil and gasoline. There Dad hung his fishing poles, rods, and stowed his tackle in a bulky steel box. If the weather was good, he’d hurry home early from his university office just to get in some fishing after supper and before bedtime. Or if pressed for time, he was content to fish off the dock.

But I think he was happiest in a boat because it put him closer to the water, right on its level, the air filled with spray all around him. It was often a joke with the neighborhood kids—“Hey Maupin! Saw your Dad out looking for the Loch Ness Monster!”—since he’d always be standing lookout as he sped across the bay. Dad’s favorite fishing spot was a quiet lagoon just off Phelps Bay on Enchanted Island. Sometimes we took a pontoon boat he dubbed “The Blue Goose” to Boy Scout Island and camped for the night (photo below right from early 1970s).

I didn’t fish with him very often—scarred from an early age, as I’d get too impatient and distracted while fishing, which thoroughly annoyed him. While I may have never shared Dad’s love for fishing, just because he was so fully absorbed by it, I came to respect it. I definitely saw the attraction of being on the water, being in nature.

Those were simpler days—those summers on the lake—down at the dock or out camping on islands and night swimming. With it brings a flood of memories of tall, mountainous cumulus clouds, glinting shards of sunlight off rippling waves, the rhythmic slurp of beaching waves, birds chirping from trees, fish slapping the lake surface, the drone of distant boats.

You know, if there is an afterlife, and it’s a happy one for Dad, I know it’s somewhere near water.

It just has to be.

I’d guess it’s a theme that’s pursued me most of my life, even though all would seem to be “in order.”

By 1978, I’d been a paperboy for the Sunday Minneapolis Tribune, a busboy at the swanky Lafayette Club; I’d schlepped fast food at Ridgedale mall and, that June, was a janitor for Triangle Maintenance Services in Golden Valley. I would’ve included my co-editor-in-chief duties at the school paper, but since that was part of “finishing high school” it didn’t seem to count. That’s really a shame because I learned skills I still use today: writing and editing, typing, typesetting and layout, selecting stories for print, and working with staff and printers.

It was like a full-time job, but never felt like it because I loved every minute of it.

Classmates who didn’t have in-school skills had to make do with whatever the outside world threw at them once they’d graduated. Fellow grad Mike Morrison worked at the Mound bakery, Kim answered phones for a real estate agency, Skeeze washed dishes at the Soda Fountain, our old high school hangout, and Mark McCurdy was slinging plastic-wrapped clothing at his parents’ dry cleaners until he started janitorial with Steve and me on June 26, 1978. I would’ve preferred waiting out the time before college with an assembly job at Tonka Toys, but that was hard to get.

On Tuesday, June 27, I mailed off a letter to Jill Paradis in Marshall, Minn., and waited anxiously to hear back. Things around home seem to have eased after returning from Koronis, with working and all (the above photo likely taken on Thanksgiving 1978 or ’79, with Mom in the Casco Point dining room), but knowing big changes were in play for autumn, I was determined to make the most of what would be “the last summer of my childhood.”

Jill’s first letter, postmarked June 30, arrived on pink butterfly stationery with the motto “Jive from Jill.” She was a farm girl, working for her father “picking rock” in the fields, surrounded by dogs, horses and rabbits. In the letter she requested a copy of my graduation picture and responded to my remark about acting like a fool at camp: “I thought it was kind of funny. I think you’re neat in the way you think of things. You think in your own way & it really makes a lot of sense & means alot.”

Long-distance relationships are hard to maintain in adulthood, much less at 18. Jill and I were willing to give it a try, even after she’d mentioned in a second letter she had a guy she saw regularly. She wasn’t too enthused about him and urged that we stay in touch.

That was the last letter I ever received from her.

Meanwhile at the janitor gig, a storm was brewing the night of Friday, June 30—literally. I was up on the sixth floor of Shelard Plaza when, in the middle of a big thunderstorm, the power went out. “Some guy, a few floors up, got stuck in the elevator and was yelling his head off all the while. The kid I was working with, Steve, and I dragged the trash bags and my vacuum cleaner downstairs; everyone … communed in the main lobby … talking in the dark and smoking cigarettes. We were finally told that we could punch out at 9:00.”

It’s funny, because the night before I’d had an odd and “lengthy conversation” with a businessman working late in his office. His name was “Mr. Mike Miles,” the diary reports, “He called me a very ‘unique’ person, interesting, we talked about working, life, social levels, generations, and impressed each other with [a] bit of truth. I was very glad to meet him.”

I’d nearly forgotten that incident. Likely I was emptying his trashcans and he struck up the conversation. And while I don’t recall the details, it was rare to find an adult who didn’t “just look past” a teenager like me. Similar to the graduation party conversation with Greg Hartmann’s father, I was already looking forward to interacting with the adult world.

I just needed to figure out what my eventual “job” would be.

Sometimes in my life I’ve felt an intuitive tug in a particular direction. This was one of those times.

“It may seem awkward,” the June 24, 1978, diary entry begins, “but I’m writing in this journal now in the backseat of Mom’s car, out somewhere on a dark road, making my own little ‘camp’ … the sky outside is strange—misty, stars above, and lightning.”

I tried to make the trip about Kim, but she wouldn’t be there. It couldn’t really be the place, as my last visit to Camp Koronis was hardly a pleasant memory. And Skeeze had backed out, so fate seemed to be saying I had to go it alone, and I had to go there.

And what about The Family Project? Ostensibly, I’d be checking up on my brother, so the parents probably thought having both kids away for a weekend wasn’t a half-bad idea. It may have bought them a romantic weekend. Being I’d just graduated, Dad may have also softened his stance post-drug bust given the fact I’d be heading to school in the fall. And at least I had a summer job.

So, summer of ’78, I was the Koronis mystery man—the Outsider—the unregistered camper. Instead of setting up the tent, I decided to sleep in the car. While the other kids ate not far from the Tabernacle Hall (pictured above), I dined at an A&W in Paynesville. After supper I joined the other campers for skits and chapel service. It was then I met Jill Paradis (pictured at right), a lovely brunette from Marshall, Minn.

We bonded immediately.

So, we sat together during an evening sing-along, after which we walked back to the main hall where she was staying. There we kissed goodnight. It all happened so fast I couldn’t believe it. Later I drove back to the lakeside road where I’d parked the night before and tried to sleep in the backseat—with lightning flashing, thunder booming and rain pounding the car roof outside, and thoughts of Jill knocking about my head.

On Sunday, June 25, I awoke and drove into Paynesville, eating at a café called Little Tuck’s. Pulling into camp again around 8 a.m., I joined the other campers for breakfast and morning chapel. “Jill looked very beautiful,” I later wrote. While it rained occasionally, the sun came out and, before everyone packed up to leave for home, we hung out on the sidewalk, listening to Jay Ely’s Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles’ Hotel California cassettes.

I didn’t want to leave Jill so soon after we’d just met, but we agreed to stay in touch. Her family arrived in a Winnebago around 2:30, so she spent time with them. As other kids were leaving, our small group “marched up to Ely’s grandparents’ cabin and sat outside and ate cookie bars and drank Kool-Aid.” Just a few scant moments with Jill on the dorm porch (where I took the above photo), a quick kiss, and I helped her bring her bags out to her parents’ camper. “We said goodbye too many times,” the diary states. “We will write and maybe see each other again.”

After she left, I went to the dining hall, plunked down at the piano and improvised a song. With a full heart, I closed my eyes and just let it come to me—a hopeful song, about better days ahead.

“Big, empty, green Koronis,” the entry concludes. “I left a piano and a song.”

Post-drug bust, I was briefly incarcerated. Which meant grounded at home. Or so the diary seems to say.

June 14, 1978’s spare entry: “Wednesday. Did nothing. See?” The next day’s full-page entry reports “things started fresher,” but no word about the parents’ reaction. If I was indeed grounded, I was glad because I got to read my book—Hermann Hesse’s Peter Camenzind, who, along with John Steinbeck, was fast becoming one of my favorite writers.

Dad said I needed a job. I applied for an assembly position at Tonka Toys, where my fellow grads had gotten summer gigs, but it fell through. Buddies Steve and Mike tipped me off to janitorial work at an office complex east of Wayzata. Before I knew it I had joined them: vacuuming floors and emptying office trashcans of rotten-smelly banana peels.

A Disco-Trek visit was planned with Jeff Greene, who must’ve passed muster with the ’rents since he wasn’t with me, Greg and Harvey at the bust. And Skeeze was easily cleared because he’d made a pact with his parents—he was only allowed to play music if he didn’t drink or do drugs. So Skeeze and I made plans that summer to reconnect.

Friday afternoon, June 16, I met up with Greg at the Mound Burger Chef, where he was working. “While he was on break,” the diary says, “we talked about the outcomes from our ordeal on Tuesday night.” Kim’s sister Tracy was also there, so after Greg went back to work, I wandered over and chatted with her and a friend. “Have you talked to Kim lately?” she said. The diary is rich in detail: “Tracy eyed me with a smile, her smile.” Kim was working for a Realtor in Navarre. ‘She’s bored,’ Tracy said.” Seems I needed to pay Kim a visit.

In reality, my hopes for “getting back together with Kim” ended the summer of 1977 at Camp Koronis. After all, Greene and I were meeting girls while dancing at Disco-Trek, when I wasn’t working nights. Mom’s folks came up for a visit; Grandpa Adams setting up the annual slide show on June 18. Just as we’d started, the phone rang and Brian ran to get it. “Mike,” he said. “It’s for you.” When I picked up, a voice on the other end said, “Mike? Do you know who this is?”

It was Kim, of course. “She said she heard about my escapade with the cops on Tuesday night. She seemed mad for a while (I guess it shows how much she really cares for me—really!) She said she also heard that I was an alcoholic-like drinker, but I told her to believe me—I’m forever fine.” Interesting that came up, as no one, even the Family Project, had confronted me with the question before. It was a heady conversation. We talked about our summer jobs and her boyfriend Jon. She revealed she wasn’t going to Camp Koronis that year, even while I’d planned a pilgrimage back, with Skeeze joining me.

I’d missed most of the slide show, hanging up around 10:30. The entry concludes with an interesting detail. Mom asked who had called. “‘Kim,’ I said. ‘Why?’ [she replied].”

Why indeed.

Wednesday morning, June 21, my brother and his friend left for camp. I’d packed my bag and threw a tent in Mom’s car. The Friday before leaving I called Skeeze to see if he was ready to hit the road. But his mother wouldn’t let him go, saying he’d come down with a cold.

I’d have to make the journey on my own.

My routine: Up at 7 a.m., coffee on, bathroom. But while switching on the home office lights, I happened to glance at the dining room table. “Hmm. …That’s dustier than usual,” I thought. Petals had fallen off flowers in a vase. I ran my finger through a fine grayish-white powder on the tabletop. No idea what it was or how it got there. Seems I’d left the 1978 diary there, too. Odd.

I showered while the coffee brewed. Over the roar of the water I heard—well, at least it sounded like—a throat clearing. I turned off the tap, grabbed a towel and dried off, bending an ear toward the door. Silence.

After dressing and pouring some coffee, I saw him sitting at the table, leafing through the diary.

He looked up. “G’mornin’, Muffy.”

“Pop?”

He smirked a bit, just as he always did. Outside of that, he looked … well, normal. Usually he was dressed in khakis and a short-sleeve, floral-print shirt. But because it was late winter in Minnesota, he wore beige slacks and a dark blue crewneck sweater. His thinning white hair looked as it did in 2008, when I last saw him. And he still had that world-weary look—even after all these years, you know, being dead and all. I would’ve assumed the time away would’ve crisped him up a bit. No such luck.

He went back to flipping through the diary. “This is where you’re at, huh?”

I glanced over his shoulder and flinched a bit when I saw the page: Tuesday, June 13, 1978. He saw my embarrassment. “Care if I read it?”

“No, no … go ahead.”

He cleared his throat. “‘Oh, Oh, trouble, trouble, trouble…’” He paused and pursed his lips. “‘Scott, Harvey the Dink, Greg Eidem and I got caught drinking in the North Arm Boat Landing at about 9:00 this eve. Greg and I ran but when I eventually got home Dad took me up to the station where Greg was already—talked it over with the Cop—Let it’—it … it?”

“Us, Dad. Should be us,” I said, feeling sheepish.

“‘Let us off,’” he continued, “‘with no attachments or fines or records or anything…’”

I snatched the diary out of his hand and started reading where he’d left off. “‘…sadly, bitterly…turmoil and tears, guilt and fears (rhymes) I felt like jumping in the lake and taking an endless walk…’” I put the diary down and felt his eyes on me while I glanced out the window. At last I said, “D’you remember that?”

He nodded. “I thought I’d lost you, Mike.” I saw him tear up.

“Dad, it was a stupid thing for me to do. In fact, everything I was doing just after graduation lead up to it: partying with the guys, drinking, smoking pot—”

“—But why’d you do it?”

“I don’t know! Guess I was drawn to the adventure of it all.” Against my best intentions, I laughed, which seemed to annoy him. I shrugged, still chuckling. “You know, Scott was so proud of his car. We called it ‘The Party Chaser’ … That night we picked up Greg, in the back seat with his bong … I was drinking Bacardi 151 from the glove compartment mixed with a can of Coke … who knows what Harvey was drinking—probably a Michelob.”

He just stared at me, so I tried to explain. “We parked by the lake, at North Arm landing. Then a cop pulled in, shined his light into our window and told us to get out of the vehicle. Which we did. We knew we were totally busted. I felt terrible.”

“—for getting caught.”

“Yeah, well … I felt terrible for a lot of things, Dad. Anyway, when the cop asked us for identification, Greg—to my complete shock—bolted toward the road. The cop chased after him, but didn’t catch up. He walked back to me and Harvey, totally winded. At that point I took off, so he just let me go…”

If you’ve ever wondered if a ghost can sigh, I’m here to tell you that you can now put that question to rest.

“I met up with Greg behind Eric Miller’s house, you know, on the road toward Lord Fletcher’s. We hid in the back woods while the cop prowled the street, his car searchlight looking for us. We waited, then split up. I took the back trails home…

“…and, when I finally got there—boom—a squad car was sitting in our driveway. Harvey had ratted on us.”

“And,” he added, “That’s when I had to drive you to the Orono police station to get you off the hook.” He paused again and looked at me directly. “I didn’t want to kick you out of the house for good, but I seriously considered it. I thought I’d lost you again, son. I knew I couldn’t lose you.”

“I know … I know,” I said.

We sat there for a while not saying anything. Late winter light cast a dull glare on the tabletop. I looked at the strange grayish-white dust and back up at Dad. “Pop? Can I ask you a question?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“What’s with the powdery stuff?”

Lifting an elbow off the table, he brushed at his forearms. “Oh. Residual ectoplasm. Comes with the territory, I guess.”

“Ah,” I nodded. “Gotcha.”