A Cavalcade of Lesser Horrors

Preface

vii Preface The sins that make these essayists cringe in retrospect usually turn out to be insensitivity that wounded another, a lack of empathy, or the callowness of youth. —Phillip Lopate, Introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay I was between projects when I started to write these essays. They were going to be exercises to keep my skills sharp while I waited for my muse to drop something important in my lap. They were supposed to be simple sketches, just doodles in the margins— personal reminders about who I am, where I come from, and what I have and have not done with my life so far. I wanted them to be snapshots of my journey from early childhood on the South Side of Chicago, to the suburbs, where I came of age with eight brothers and sisters, to leaving home to come to Minnesota for college, and from there into the army, to Vietnam, back to Minnesota , and eventually into a career in advertising. I had hoped they would be concise, carefully drawn, wellbehaved little pieces. Sadly, no. In a few simple sentences they took over the project rather rudely. They wrested the wheel from my hands. Sitting at the keyboard, watching them give birth to themselves , I was surprised at the turns these essays took, at their South viii PREFACE Side Irish wiseass attitude, at the subjects, settings, and themes they chose. They came at me from every possible direction. The vast, white, post–World War II diaspora out of Chicago into the suburbs was there. So was Libertyville, the farm town turned bedroom community where we settled. There was our Catholicism, as much cultural as spiritual. The baby boom boomed, with my parents doing their part. Siblings arrived at good Catholic fifteen-month intervals, and the house became increasingly crowded and jittery. For a while, when everyone was still at home, eleven of us shared four bedrooms and a bath and a half. Long-forgotten people, venues, and incidents returned. Backof -the-balcony church pews where the local punks, some of them my friends, carved their initials. The drugstore soda fountain where I worked. Priests. Teachers. Doctors. Bums. The wobblekneed high school football coach. Draft notices and Dear John letters. Long-buried embarrassments and character flaws (my own and others’). Minnesota—ma belle Minnesota. The false God and acid bath that is a career in advertising copywriting. And my first and only true talent—the thing I call real writing. All of it came rushing back in extremely sharp focus. Nothing was gauzy or saccharine, and the vividness and detail incubated the theme underpinning the project: each of us lives in rich, subtle , and elegant detail to which we are, for the most part, oblivious . We see things without being aware we see them. We feel things without realizing we feel them. Subliminally sensitive to one another, we know things—often painfully personal things— about the people around us without actually knowing we know. If these essays are honestly written—and I believe they are— then life really is, as the title says, a cavalcade of lesser horrors. Nothing so big as to scare you to death or so brutal as to cripple you for life. Just that steady drip, drip, drip of small stuff that jars you on some level, then disappears to return years later like the people, events, and small stuff recorded here. PREFACE ix Thank you to my wife, Mary, and our children, Samuel, Emily, Joseph, and John Henry. Thank you to my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters, and my extended family (both my wife’s and my own). Thank you to Chicago, Libertyville, and Minnesota and to all the people and lesser horrors I have encountered along the way. This page intentionally left blank A Cavalcade of Lesser Horrors This page intentionally left blank ...