Pvt Tom leaves Fort Ord

When I started putting pieces together for what I figured was my memoir in 2011, I considered I was going on the ultimate ego trip. Who would give a tinker’s damn about slices of my experiences? Who would bother to read it? In other words, who was my audience?

To have a goal I decided my memoirs—plural seems to fit better—would be written for my offspring and various descendants with the idea that a few surviving friends might also have an interest in some of my doings. My progeny can take it or leave it. This would not be a full-fledged autobiography. So much of my life has been boring. Who cares that I went to kindergarten when I was five?

Graduating from high school is not a remarkable feat. I would attempt to make recollections, reminisces if you will, of adventures and events that made my life unique—at least to me.

Pep Club 1963

Dancing at Stein Collectors International

Much of what I will produce will be based on a slippery memory, facts and figures disappearing through a multitude of déjà vu-like thoughts as I can best recall them. Nonetheless, it is worth a try.

The moments of consciousness I’ve experienced in my earthly time so far are contrived of complicated sensations, perceptions, and half-formed grasps of what I can recall. I can mix in a few myths. A lifetime is bound to create some hard-to-believe happenings.

The decision to march forward with this effort caused me to think who might be affected, hurt, embarrassed or otherwise offended if I were to relate the truth (as I see it) about so much that should remain secret. To protect the innocent and to avoid libel suits, I will back off on some clandestine happenings that might otherwise be choice reading. Or I may use a fictitious name for someone whose relationship with me is of interest but would not appreciate my report.

Collecting beer steins in the ’70s

Tom the Butcher at Epaminondas restaurant

Here are a few considerations I found I should consider even prior to hitting the first keys on the computer keyboard:
1. It will be a lot of hard work, not a task for the faint-hearted.
2. Writing one’s own story can be downright frightening and painful, reliving hard times,
reporting on some personal relationships that might be best left unreported.
3. Until I type the last words, I will second guess repeatedly why I ever started this project.
4. What and who will be covered or omitted?
5. Will there be time to take this self-assignment to completion?

The Hawaiians: World Football League, 1976

So I got started writing some time in mid-2011. I was 79. I began by creating prose episodes of memorable occurrences—special occasions, travel adventures, my own embarrassing moments, love life (sans the gory details), shared times with best friends, parenting, bumps in the road, college fraternity times, etc.) Each so-called chapter would cover events that jumped out at me as I gathered recollections. I would give each incidence or adventure a title with no particular order in mind. Later I will print them all, spread them out and try to put some order to the whole collection. One thing I am not doing is starting at the beginning. That would be Nov. 5, 1932, in St. Louis—and there won’t be much reporting on that important time and place. What could I remember?

Five years of travel creating Slow Lane Journal