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The Night Guy Series
Part
8 - Interlude Concerning Voracious Reading, And Song Lyrics
 Nate had always been a voracious
reader and although it could be that his previously mentioned
fanatical dedication to the Boston Red Sox and consequential nightly
confiscation of transistor played its own small role in shaping his
reading habits, his parents would have him believe that his
predilection for the written word resulted directly from measures
taken during his upbringing -- specifically their staunch refusal to
allow a television and what they called its associated mind
pollution into their home.
Nate's mother, in answering complaints at the time and questions in
the years since has claimed that their not owning a television was
her personal decision and a sacrifice adhered to out of concern for
the family's mental livelihood. A mandate instituted specifically to
instill in them all an appreciation for things literary and musical.
Nate's father, on the other hand, has said that the idea of owning
what his wife referred to as "the lobotomy box" occurred
to him only once in his life, during a trough of depression which
set in between degree candidacies and just after he had broken one
leg and the other ankle in a rock climbing accident. He claims he
even sank low enough one morning to go careening down main street in
his wheelchair with delusions of purchasing a set only to find that
the appliance and electronics store, being down a flight of stairs,
was inaccessible to wheelchairs. Nate can recall the day himself
only because it was on the way home that his father happened to roll
past a hobby shop, which was accessible to wheelchairs, where he got
interested in building model trains. As a result of this
happenstance, Nate received an elaborate N gauge set up for his
birthday the following week that he wasn't allowed to play with.
Nate's father spent the next month of evenings scooting around the
guest room like a crab, working on the layout and waiting for his
injuries to heal.
Credit and blame aside, Nate has no proof that his early passion for
the written word necessarily resulted from anything other than a
childhood need to constantly entertain himself and since reading
material was always readily available and television was not, well
there it was. Nate hasn't come across enough people who were
subjects in similar TV deprivation experiments to draw any specific
conclusions and can only note that what is true is that before he
got out on his own and his years became less formative and tended
more towards erosion, Nate spent some serious time reading.
Novels were always his main affection but he would peruse any
writing he could lay his hands on. Pamphlets, cereal boxes,
newspapers, magazines, fanzines, comic books, and short stories.
Billboards, brochures, road maps, handbooks, cookbooks, librettos,
biographies, autobiographies, how-to manuals, and Harlequins. Poems.
He read everything by everyone from Robert Ludlum and Louis L'Amour
to Judy Blume, Mark Twain, James Michener, Joseph Conrad, and Laura
Ingalls Wilder's daughter Rose. Poems by the Roberts -- Service,
Frost, Lowell, and Burns. Anything about Robin Hood, snakes, J.F.K
and dinosaurs. Encyclopedia Brown, Sherlock Holmes and Harriet the
Spy. Drs Suess, Spock, and Gonzo. Quantity took precedence over
quality and he kept no record, had no real favorites that survived
past their particular phase, and seemed to forget most of what he
read as soon as he set it down to pick up something else.
Another result of the imposed television boycott was that Nate
listened to a good deal of music. He would spin one of his parents
records, (which for some reason were mostly songs of the old west
and sea shanties) whenever the house seemed too quiet and his
transistor radio was a constant daily companion whether the Red Sox
were playing or not. If Nate discovered a catchy chorus or thought a
beat was pretty cool, he might save allowance or paper route money
and go out and buy a record himself. He'd sing along, often with no
comprehension of the ideas he was vocalizing harmony with, to
anything he had heard enough to learn the words.
"And he's bad bad Leroy Brown said no no no I don't drink
that no more I'm tired of waking up on the floor everybody was kung
fu fighting from the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters
sunshine on my shoulders got my chips cashed in that's the way uhuh
uhuh I like it uhuh give me the stuff, that sweet funky stuff."
Nate listened to what is now called disco, country, folk, blues,
bluegrass, gospel, and pop for different stages and for various
lengths of time although it wasn't because he'd made any conscious
choice of camp. It was just what was on. It disturbs Nate now to
recall the influence John Travolta and the soundtracks to his movies
seemed to have in his immediate world. For Nate comes from a
generation inundated with lyrics like; "You can tell by the way
I use my walk I'm a woman's man no time for talk." Which
suggests that they will probably not be remembered for a command of
Frost, Whitman, or the Shakespearean sonnets.
For Nate, with nothing personal intended towards Travolta, he would
have preferred a background in a number of other Johns, perhaps
Steinbeck, Swift, or Quincy Adams, over him any day. In fact, now
that he considers the segment of his memory unwittingly committed to
banal song lyrics that, under more creative circumstances, might
have been applied, at least in part to, almost anything else, it
seems a significant sacrifice of gray matter. As it stands,
ingrained in his long term, are the words to almost any old song
that he now hears and it occurs to him often that if the periodic
table, geometric theorems, names of former presidents, or even state
birds, flowers and capitals, had been put to a snappy rhythm by the
Bee Gees or some other band given free access to the air waves, he
would have them all at his permanent disposal. Nate doesn't know
who's fault this all is and he's not necessarily bitter. It's just
something that happens and it happened to him.
The reading and music shaped and nursed him along and, as high
school was winding down and he was trying with limited success to
look further than his body, other bodies, and the clothes that
covered them, he noticed in addition to the traditional rumblings of
physical change that the books he chose had begun to reflect a
budding wanderlust. Urges within him, cultivated during the recent
years of reading much and doing little, started bubbling to the
surface bringing with them questions of how he could extricate
himself from the plight of devoted follower, distant enthusiast, and
nameless fan and throw in with those actually leading the
tumultuous, adventuresome, and unbelievable lives he was reading
about.
During his younger years, when it seemed like all the family was
ever really doing was planning to move so they could be doing
something else, all Nate had wanted was to stay in one place and
sink the roots that his mother constantly talked about. When it
finally happened, his parents separated, and he was stuck throughout
high school in Tucson, Arizona, Nate realized roots weren't all they
were cracked up to be. But the Reagan youth he had fallen in with
there swept him along into college with sights set on the pursuit of
monetary success and although he tried to buy in for awhile, it
became quickly clear that his heart lacked whatever is necessary to
compete in some never ending monopoly game. But with too much
invested in the in crowd, minimal self confidence, and little sense
of individuality to speak of, he simply plodded along with the herd,
listening with mounting concern as he heard himself say things like;
"Special rates for the Wall Street Journal? Of course I'm in on
that O'Grady. You heard the Econ Prof. A fellow needs all the tools
he can get if he's gonna climb to the top and get ahead." or
"Johnson, hey buddy this is Johannsen calling to say AOK All
systems go. You can definitely count me in on that pyramid scheme,
we need to build capital for our first enterprise somehow!" and
"What's that Schweibel? An internship at I.B.M.? Be sure to
pick me up an application for that ASAP. I think it'd be just jazzin."
But the reading helped carry him through and although his actions at
the time may not have revealed it, he continued to allow his mind to
dream and scheme of ways to fight the tide and cast himself in with
the documented travelers, the picaroons, the swashbucklers, the
pirates, the rebels, and the fools. As he labored and languished
through classes such as Money and Banking, Accounting, Finite
Mathematics and Intro to Marketing, wondering why he found it so
hard to concentrate, Nate dreamed of the ocean, ski bumming, and
roustabouting. Of stomping grapes in France and llama riding over
the Andes. Of sailing to Australia as a deckhand, running with the
bulls in Pamplona, or, in short, of experiencing any and everything
that wasn't Tucson, Arizona. But Nate was caught up in things so
mundane and deadening that he just didn't possess the energy or
experience to escape them. Somehow, several precious years went by.
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