Ghosts

30 years ago on my cross-country bike ride I was resting for a few days in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana (just the phrase "Fort Wayne, Indiana" is making my friend Marty smile right now. Something about the name tickles him and it tickles me to think of him smiling.) In my journal I speak of spending time with both my mom and my dad who had divorced in 1977. Dad had already remarried Barb Parks, a woman who had been a salesclerk at my dad's drugstore for years, and mom would remarry that year, twice in fact, soon in Fort Wayne surrounded by friends, and later in Alabama near my future stepdad's sons. This second ceremony I would attend at the beginning of September, flying to Alabama from San Francisco where I would have just ended my bike trip.

My future stepdad was Joseph Francis O'Hara, a big, expansive Irish New Yorker working for Slater Steel in Fort Wayne and very in love with my mother. He was more than a decade older than she, but his life force had a youthful zing to it. At this time in 1979 I was still warming to him, and though we'd never see eye-to-eye about several things - politics, for example - Joe was almost impossible not to like. He always seemed genuinely interested in what you were doing (at least, he made it seem that way. He was a salesman, after all) and, most of the time, he had a cheery disposition, a ready smile, and an infectious laugh. He embraced all that was Irish, the light and the dark side. He was forever playful, game for anything. He embraced life full throttle. And he had great stories to tell which included: teaching Jimmy Breslin how to swim (Joe had been a life guard when he was young, a past he shared with one of his heroes - Ronald Reagan); palling around with JD Salinger in college (he reconnected with Salinger in his later years and through that connection, my mom was able to persuade ole JD to inscribe a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" for me!); and narrowly escaping the Coconut Grove fire in Boston during World War II. The Coconut Grove fire story was my favorite.

The club had been recommended by his Beacon Hill girlfriend’s folks - it had just opened and was THE place to be. But Joe had been unable to talk himself in the door because he didn’t have any money to bribe the doorman ("I only had $5 for the whole night, Danny."). Also the place was packed to overflowing with the crowd from a big football game that had been in Boston that Thanksgiving weekend. The doorman had been a friendly fellow, though, and had recommended they go to a hotel a couple blocks down the street that had a carousel bar that they’d probably enjoy. They had gone there. An hour or so later a doctor had come rushing into the hotel yelling for anyone who knew CPR to come with him and Joe volunteered, his life guard training standing him in good stead. I can hear him now describing what he saw when he got back to the club: "No one was burnt up, Danny. They’d all just smothered to death. The crepe paper decorations along the ceiling had all caught fire and whoosh! all the oxygen in the place was sucked up. They had those turnstile doors that were just crammed with people trying to get out, piled on top of one another. That fire changed those doors, they put in emergency exits after that. Inside it was so eerie, Danny. Like I said, there was no fire damage, no one was burnt up. You'd walk by the bar, and people were still sitting at their stools just slumped over as if they'd gone to sleep. I'll never forget it."

The best part of the story was that somehow Joe had communicated with his folks down in Long Island that he was going to the club that night and in all the confusion and emotion of the moment in Boston he had not gotten back in touch with his folks to tell them he was alright. So while Joe spent a few more days in New England, his family had started making funeral preparations in New York. (This “long distance phone call” twist to the story always seems out of place to me, especially back in World War II, but it was Thanksgiving AND it happened. And his girlfriend's folks were rich, I guess.) When Joe finally got back into Grand Central Station he decided to pop in to his uncle's barbershop to say "hi" - his uncle had a place right there inside the station. When Joe walked into the barbershop, his uncle gave out a shout and dropped his clippers. He thought he'd seen a ghost. After squeezing Joe hard he told him that he had to get on the phone to his folks right now and set them straight. I’m sure there was celebration aplenty that night for the son having come back from the dead.

Ghosts are a part of the fabric of a 30 year old journal. People rise up from the dead and begin wandering around again, alive and spry in their 1979 skins. There’s magic in this, a little bit of presto chango. Joe’s gone now, and as far as I know he hasn't shown up at any barbershops lately to set the record straight. Barb, my stepmom, is gone too, as are my grandparents, Nanna and Papaw, who I note having visited at their retirement home during my stay. And as I sit here and think and remember, there’s a long line of family and friends that are going to show up soon in my journal pages who are no longer “here” – Uncle Flave, Uncle Prentis, Aunt Nona and Uncle Jim, Shelby and Margaret, my Irish Setter Bernie (who had been given to a family in Beaver Dam, Kentucky, near my cousins living there and who had died a week before I arrived due to a vets’ prescribing him the wrong medicine). John Wayne Tombstone’s up in my pages; he will die this summer losing his battle with the Big “C.” And many others I will share a day with, a conversation, a lunch, a bed; I’m sure a goodly chunk of them are gone now too. As well as that 24 year old me. He can crop up every now and then, pass through, pay a visit, perhaps persuade me that I’m him again, until the morning when my 54 year old body may tell me otherwise. All of them gone. But in another sense I’ll have to side with Joseph Campbell and say that none of these people, none of these times are gone. All of them - Joe, Nanna and Papaw, Barb, that 24 year old me, every age I’ve ever been - all live inside of me in an everlasting place, real and potent and sustaining. It gives me very little sadness reading the pages of my journal. Instead it fills me with wonder about the passing of time, gratitude for all the people, places, and things I’ve experienced (and for those riches yet to come), and a sweet uplift.

And also now I get to tell their stories and the stories of having experienced them. That’s not too shabby.