rlfj: Blog

I received a few criticisms about family relations revolved around the fact that Mom & Dad would never have allowed Carl to move out and would probably have punished him severely for his behavior as well as taken away his money, or they would have kicked him out completely. Personally, I think that would have been a little harsh, even for the more rigid family dynamics of the idealized nuclear family of the period. (One absolutely fascinating email claimed that Carl’s treatment of others is psychopathic, going back to his fight on the bus and his lawsuit - the miscreants should have been sentenced to tithing - and, oh, by the way, I’m probably a psychopath, too! Tithing? On my most creative day I couldn’t have dreamed up tithing!)

All dollars are given for the time they are written in, so in Chapter 17, we are using 1971 dollars. Is $6-7k per year a realistic figure for an apartment & living expenses at that time? I think so. In 1977 I graduated from college as the highest paid non-engineer in my frat house, at $14k per year. This was after the inflation of 1973 onward due to the quadrupling of energy costs. So $6-7k per annum apartment rent & expenses should be realistic.

Not a whole lot to blog about with Chapter 19. Hamilton makes a triumphal return, in all his amazingness. We’ve got some good times and some bad times. To those who commented about the danger of messing around with a girl with Italian ancestry, well, no guts, no glory! You might get killed, but what a way to go!

I am amazed at the fascination everyone has for the Hamilton character! I think I got more emails about him than anyone else in the story, maybe even more than Carl himself. Trust me, he will play an important part in the story for many years to come, but there will be vast stretches of the story where he won’t be mentioned.

As for what would somebody do about such an individual, remember that fifty years ago the options were quite limited. Most medical plans did not cover psychiatric treatment. Unless you were foaming at the mouth, you generally didn’t get treatment. The drugs available were quite limited compared to today. Furthermore, the social stigma was immense. My mother once claimed my brother had never seen a shrink, even though my father had told me he had. You lied to everyone about it, even immediate family.

By the way, as for the questions about Daisy, she goes on to live a long and happy doggy life with Suzie, her new master (mistress?)

I’m always interested in what people have to say about some of the back story going on. Several people wrote to say that both the Bay of Pigs & Viet Nam got started under Eisenhower, not Kennedy. This is very true. Kennedy still made the major mistakes involved. In the case of Cuba, the original plan called for both Navy & Air Force support of the Cuban assault force. Kennedy cancelled this support, despite testimony that the assault would fail without said support and then ordered the assault anyway.

Viet Nam was much bigger and had a cast of characters going back to the Truman administration. We mucked it up big time over there. Kennedy’s mistake was to increase troop levels and support levels, but even worse, to change the focus from training to operations. Most of Kennedy’s contemporaries considered him a babe in the woods. If he hadn’t been assassinated and had won re-election in ‘64 (a probability) I wonder how Viet Nam would have turned out. Differently? The same?

As for Chapter 15, I had a few emails about some other great cars for dating from this time frame. Like the Galaxie 500, the Chevy Impala was full size, as was the Olds Delta 88, with that great Rocket 88 engine. Brings back some great memories!

Book 2 takes Carl through another eleven chapters. Carl is now at Towson High.

Quite a few people wrote about how Carl should be able to use his great wisdom and understanding to make his relationships with his family, specifically his brother and mother, better. That’s an interesting idea, but maybe not so realistic. A lot of Chapter 13 is about those relationships, and how they continue to deteriorate.

Not all problems can be fixed. We see that all the time, both in small personal problems and big national and international problems. What makes anybody think they can fix a family that is broken? Some things in life are simply fucked up, and all the psychobabble in the world won’t change them.

These are the last two chapters in Book 1. More fun and games with Shelley and more chemistry with the Science Fair. The next book will follow Carl to high school.