In 1963, the Beach Boys harmonized their way into mine, and a memory that lingers.

Published in Entertain, Enlighten and Empower.

Memories

Memories are like God. They become real once we give them meaning.

What was it like to be 14? Was his memory of these incidents the same at 21 as it would be at 50? Or today, on the cusp of 75?

Or do memories change, like our perception of God, as did his family’s front lawn after his two brothers and he sold their childhood home after their mother died at 96 in 2017?

Before the new owners built the horror in the photo, the lawn was grass at a 10% gradient.

That required weekly mowing.

A task his dad assigned to his eldest son in his 14th year. His engineer dad had attached a rope to the green Lawnboy mower so he could cut the grass vertically, up and down.

The first time he tried this method, the rope broke. The priests — yes, in 1963, there were three priests at Sacred Heart parish — and nuns — yes, seven Habits in eight elementary years, taught him one version of a God who commanded him to honor his mother and father.

So he discarded the rope, mowed crosswise, and didn’t tumble into the street.

He honored his father by choosing a different path. It would have been a Bar Mitzvah moment if he had been Jewish instead of Catholic.

Later that day, his cousins Jim, Dan, and Terry arrived from Des Moines. When Jim, his teenage contemporary, walked into his bedroom, the room behind the dormer in the photo, The Beach Boys’ new 45 In My Room, was playing on his record player.

Yesterday, 61 years later, when he listened again, the polished harmony of “There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to” came attached to a memory linked to a feeling that has dogged him for six decades.

That feeling has never gone away, even though the evidence from his life would easily convict it by a jury of peers.

But being a boy, despite being flush with the lawnmower victory, he didn’t admit this secret to his room or anyone else.

The bedroom

He didn’t discuss it with Peter, his twelve-year-old brother who shared the bedroom, or with his parents.

Or with Pat, his eight-year-old brother who, for some reason, never understood, had the bedroom behind the other dormer, ALL TO HIMSELF.

The record player lay on a table between Peter and his beds. Next to it, an orange transistor radio sat on his side of the surface. He had gotten it for his 13th birthday. It opened up a private world of rock and roll introduced by disc jockey Lou Gutenberg of KSTT in Davenport, Iowa.

On a table just inside the bedroom door squatted a large window fan. During hot summer nights, the dormer window, two feet from his bed, would be open, the thin cotton drapes fluttering, the fan rumbling, and he would be alone with his thoughts and a single white earphone in his left ear. Lou introduced him to In My Room. It meant something to him because he didn’t have a room alone and didn’t speak out loud about his feelings of inferiority.

Instead, he lied to Jim about General Science.

Track II

Until he took the Graduate Record Exam at 27, he never scored well on achievement tests such as the Iowa Test for Basic Skills. One year, he’d be up and the next down, sometimes way down.

As a result, when he started high school in 1963, he was put in General Science and World History, two Track II courses, for students who likely would not be going to college.

All his friends at his private Catholic school, every single one, were only in Track I subjects. The same was true of Jim at his school in Des Moines.

At 14, he was oblivious to a lot in his little world. But he knew exactly what Track II meant. He felt the II on his forehead as he read about Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne’s A of Shame in Track I English that year.

So when Jim started to talk about his first year in high school, he saw his science notebook lying on his bed. What should he say? After the first few weeks of school, he knew Mr. Jepsen’s Science was easy. And he knew it was easy because school officials and teachers had such low expectations of students like him.

Later in life, he would understand that figuring out how to mow a 10% gradient lawn horizontally and seeing the context of his school’s tracking system would be signs of intelligence.

But all he could muster in that bedroom at 14 was an “I can’t believe how hard my Science class is” as he held his red science notebook up, far enough away so that Jim would not be tempted to snatch it away.

The mystic chords of memory

I no longer believe in the God of my childhood.

The God who commanded me to honor my Father.

However, try as I might, I can’t leave God behind. The religion section of my library includes well-worn covers.

The most worn is the late Protestant theologian Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity, which describes two worldviews, religious and non-religious.

The religious worldview believes there is a nonmaterial level of reality, a MORE.

In my 75th year, the forest is more compelling than the trees.

I attended my high school class of 1967’s 55-year reunion two years ago.

Our graduating class was around 250.

One of my classmates, Diane, approached me and said, “You know, Paul, you and I are the only ones in our class who earned a Ph.D.”

As we chatted, I thought about that 14-year-old kid desperate to hide the shame of not being smart enough from his cousin.

And how that desperation to prove oneself has never gone away.

Next month, a few extended family members are meeting for lunch. Jim will be there.

Whenever we meet, we talk about shared experiences growing up. About a year ago, he told me his father, my Uncle Al, made him pay for his high school education at the private school he attended. So, Jim worked late nights and weekends at the Post Office.

All of a sudden, I saw my cousin in a different light.

In his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of the “mystic chords of memory.”

My teenage bedroom memories are linked to a chord not so mystic.

Still, they’ve traveled a long way accompanied by a soundtrack.

Lincoln used his interpretation of American history to explain America to its people.

To give them a sense of who they are.

My memories do the same for me.

I hope yours does for you.