Chapter 1

Where to begin what will undoubtedly be a long, boring self-centered autobiographical cruise through what I consider the central motif of my adult life? Surely, surely you have something better to read, or do with your time. For me, it’s self-reverential, or, to be more honest, since I do not revere myself, something with which to fill this page.
Enough of pathetic disclaimers…where to begin is the issue. How about as a young boy, the one you can actually see on the site’s home page. In my youth, on our family’s once a year, one week, vacation, they would pile my older sister and I into the backseat of our 1938 LaSalle, put a Newsy style cap on my head and a corn cob in my mouth, and off we would drive…to Quebec or the Amish country of PA or maybe to beautiful Virginia (Williamsburg, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Luray Caverns). During this relaxing period, when my father did not have to work two jobs, and my mother one, to maintain the family, my father smoked one of his three briar pipes…a Dunhill Root Bulldog with the metal tenon, a Billiard from Ehrlich’s in Boston and a Mastercraft, which I no longer have and can’t recall the shape of. Maybe that’s where I got the notion I’d like to smoke a pipe…I do not have a memory of the tobacco he smoked, either by name or aroma, and aroma memories are supposed to be very deeply embedded. The rest of the year he smoked cigars. That corn cob in my mouth must have kept me happy (my sister was certainly no help in that department, punching me as often as the mood hit) and helped create an enduring story. Many years later, when my mother came to Calif. to visit Joy and I and mostly her granddaughter, we were all about to pile into our car for a trip. Seeing her granddaughter get into the back seat, my mother related how when I was a kid, a cap on the head and a pipe in the mouth was all that was required to keep me quiet.. “Well,” Joy said, pointing to my Giants cap and Prince in my mouth, “nothing has changed except that now he’s in the front seat. “