A TRIP TO FIRE ISLAND

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Friday, May 30, 1969 

I think I can now understand more about what feels wrong in my life. It is a fairly simple thing. Writing is not a full-time job for me. For me to be creative requires a certain mood. I can never sit down and schedule my work unless something has already started. Even then, if I’m not inspired by that small spark of something, that germinal idea of what to say, nothing comes of it. 

Yesterday, I did not go to the Manhattan office to pick up my paycheck. That money feels more like a chain that keeps me tied to New York City. Zita and I decided to try hiking on Fire Island. I asked my brother Billy if he wanted to go. That led me to ask my partner Gary if he wanted to go. Everybody jumped at the idea of doing something different, though it was really the idyllic dream of getting back to nature that we jumped at. We forgot, for a time, the realities of hiking through the sand, the constant sunshine, no respite or shade. Fire Island is simply a sandbar by the sea –– a primary dune of sand and secondary dunes covered with brush, reeds, and wild, low growth. It is on Long Island’s south shore.

It took us all day to get organized to leave, patiently waiting for everyone to get their gear and arrive. We got to the island at about four PM. It was the hottest day of the year. The temperature was in the high nineties and the sun hotly burned our backs. 

We stripped to the waist, donned our packs, and began the long sandy trek. Zita struck out in the lead followed by me, then Gary, then Billy, and his wife, Bonnie. As time passed, the line became very thin and strung out. I dawdled a bit to wait for the others to catch up, but Billy and Bonnie were way behind and Zita kept forging ahead. Gary caught up momentarily but then lagged again while I hurried to catch up with Zita. 

We stopped at the bloated carcass of a headless seal, stared for a brief moment, then passed it by. When Gary finally caught up with us, Billy and Bonnie were nowhere to be seen.

A fine mist hung over the sea and the sun busily melted it away. We speculated about where Billy was. Gary thought he was upset because we were so far ahead. I thought that was probably true, but I guessed his bedroll was too heavy and this was too much work for his taste.

Two lonely figures popped up on the horizon, then faded away again. Guessing that it was Billy and Bonnie, I finally turned back to get them only to find that he had returned to the car to drop off his bedroll, intending to hitch back to the city. “It was an ugly thing to do,” he said, because his bedroll kept falling apart and it was really work to hike in the sand. Besides, he felt that the day had started with hassles. He knew more were coming and would rather retreat back to the city. There had been too many arguments about delays and the “hurry-up-we’ll-never-get-there’s” had put an uptight bag around the sunshine. 

I felt disappointed that everyone was not in the best of spirits. A feeling of time washed over me and hung heavy in my heart. The changes in my life were splitting both Billy and I apart. Billy became a symbol of the yesterday that never returns and the desolate beach a symbol of the future that we always trudge towards. 

There truly was nothing there but sand and sea. 

Suddenly two ideas sprang into my head. Two different visions of life were becoming apparent: Billy’s idea that this trip was all a gross absurdity and hard work and his desire to return to the comfort of lying about clashed with my idea that only through constant effort and movement could I find anything worthy of being the focus of my attention. There was nothing but sand and sea, yet there surely was something to be wrought from it. Optimism has always been my goal.

When I returned, Zita came walking down the beach to meet me. We met up with Gary and went back to the dune to smoke where there was no wind. 

The heavy packs soon became stones on our backs. Raised in and accustomed to a subjective opulence, we had no real idea about what is superfluous to carry when every ounce counts. We had no mental conception of the bare minimum necessary for survival. The result was a heavy pack filled with too much food and heavy-weight versions of supplies that could and should have been lighter if we had known anything about hiking at all. However, no matter what one does or does not carry, walking in the sun and through the sand is never effortless. It was as if the earth would not hold my weight. As we crossed the spongy sand bars, I sank in up to my ankles.

The sea was forming a brand-new sand bar. A fledgling bay about a foot deep lay behind the waves, a refugee from yesterday’s tide. The village lay ahead of us. Fire Island villages have no roads to speak of, but rely on paths and concrete walkways that constantly are covered over with drifting sand. Only four-wheel drive vehicles can navigate, so the villagers use either Jeeps or boats to get around. It is an odd colony of summer homes and a few rugged naturalists who live in the windswept ravages of an Atlantic winter. Gary talked in his double-thought manner about how the villagers would react to our trudging through with packs on our backs. He speculated as to whether we would be stared at, asked to leave, or perhaps boiled in hot oil and eaten by a pre-pork generation. 

Zita and I attempted to quell his fancy with realism, but to no avail. His double-think was contagious. Soon, I found myself feeling like an intruder in a private domain. 

A Jeep pulled out onto the sand and entered the concrete path where we were now walking. Four men jumped out, as though on a signal, bent toward each of the four wheels, and then hopped back in the Jeep. They were disconnecting the four-wheel drive. They seemed to stare at us rather disturbingly as they passed. 

Of course, nothing happened in the village. There was no mad ghoul in the lighthouse. In a way, it seemed a shame, but living nightmares are never pleasant. We bought some cold drinks at the village store. I got some tobacco for my pipe and dropped the burden of the packs for a moment. 

We could not make it very far before darkness fell. Two villages come together and the area is inhabited for a two-mile strip, so we had to curve around a dune in an area that seemed more deserted than the others. After darkness fell, it was silent except for Jeeps running up and down the beach now and then. The moon was full and hung over the sea.  

I found myself wondering if my conception of the Moon had changed now that man had circled it. Only a week ago, a ship had descended to within nine miles of the surface. I remembered the intense excitement of the Christmas Eve broadcast a few months ago when the first live television pictures of the Moon’s surface were broadcast to Earth. One in four of our Earth’s inhabitants sat mentally suspended before their television sets, their breath held short, commonly involved in the moment. Yet, with all we have learned of the Moon, my conception of it remains the same as I have always had. It is the most romantic light in the night sky. The mountains were darker than the valleys. The craters I saw on television were like science-fiction movies that had no bearing on the living luxury of the night sky. 

I tried to imagine how Earth looked from the Moon. The pictures they beamed back to the planet lacked depth and comparison to the familiar sky. I tried to picture the Earth as large as a Sunday dinner dish hanging in space, colored with the now familiar blue and swaddled in unbelievably thick swirls of abstract cloud formations. 

Though it was still light, the moon still hung like a distant quarter over the rolling liquid matter of the sea. I had Zita open her mouth so I could peer at the moon like a large chunk of Gouda cheese about to be devoured. I got my camera and shot a picture of her mouth attempting to devour the cheese moon.

Zita was tired. She wanted to return to the car and leave before the sun went down, but we decided to spend at least the night on the dunes and think about it in the morning.  

In the morning, I saw things her way. We returned to the car.

FROM WHENCE COMETH THE SONG: 1963

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Wednesday – Sept. 11, 1963 

Two weeks ago I bought some new tires for my car. The old tires were worn so smooth that the cord was showing, yet and I had not had the first flat. The garage man at Firestone said that if he’d have tried to drive on those tires he would have never made it home. But somehow I had been driving just like normal and I was only a hair away from a blowout. Two days after I bought the tires, I had two flats, both at once. Nails! 

Today I looked out of the window upon a beautiful September morning––and another flat tire. I pulled on the emergency brake to keep the car from moving and the brake handle popped off.

The rest is a situation comedy. I went to the trunk to get the spare and the car began to move. I stood there pondering the next action. I decided to go ahead and fix the flat, so I silently cursing as the car crashed to the ground, the wheel thudding sickly on the hard graveled mud. I managed to get the car back up back up and put the tire on, only the spare is a whitewall and flat as well. The spare had a nail sticking in it, but it was still up and full of air. Back to the jack again, and after three tries I finally got the tire changed.

Monday – Oct. 7,1963 

This weekend my life has been under water with no contact with the outside world. I have basked in laziness, accomplishing little, singing for my own enjoyment, and watching television. I read a few books, rewrote the ending to “The Fantasy of Fowler’s Hill” and Friday I finally started the story that began with Shannon. I hope it turns out to be a spellbinder. 

Over the weekend Billy and I went to Columbus to practice with Sheri. We left Saturday afternoon, found Sheri’s dorm, practiced until suppertime, then Billy and I went over to find Fred L. He lives in a fine frat house at the top of a giant hill that falls off to the street. Fred went with us to pick up Sheri. He has a great big, gigantic, block-busting guitar that he uses as a prop when he hoots. 

It’s handmade as a prop and unique in all the world. We loaded this in the trunk, picked up a drummer and some Congo drums, then headed for the Hoot at the Sacred Mushroom. We did two sets. The first was mediocre, but the second was the greatest we’ve ever done. The showmanship was fine, the songs perfect, and the audience appreciated it thoroughly. Sheri introduced  me to a black-eyed, black haired Spanish girl named Maria Louisa Francisca Cervantes just before we went on for the second set. Being preoccupied and thinking about what I was going to use for showmanship, I barely spoke and she left. 

When I tried to find the rest of my trio Sheri gave me a scalding for not being polite, because the girl wanted to meet me. She came back, thank God, and I looked again. What I saw, I liked––saucy, hot-blooded, typically Spanish-American. I’ll bet she had a temper like forged steel. I acted a bit more civil to her then we did our set and I was left free for the night. The girls both had taken a two-o’clock leave. They are entitled to two per month. Any other weekend they must be in by one. We got them in at the appointed hour, then went back to Fred’s frat house and into the music room. About four musicians with guitars and a piano player played until 4:00 A .M., then went all went to bed. At ten, I got up. We ate and at 1:00 we went over to pick up Sheri. She wanted to practice, but I was all practiced out and wanted no part of it. 

Sheri, Bill, Maria, Fred, and a girl that we fixed Fred up with named Gloria, went out  for a ride. We went downtown where Maria had to return a key to an apartment to a fellow. Hmmmm.We picked up some beer and went out to find a place in the country. We ended up in a quarry along a railroad track with woods on both sides. We sat on the rails while Maria sketched Sheri’s face, drank the beer and walked along the tracks. It was a pleasant, but not a very eventful afternoon. 

Monday – Oct. 15, 1963 

Billy got a part in the school play (Junior class) last week, the male lead, and lost it today. The director dismissed him for some debatable reason. Billy said it was because he was sick Friday and missed play practice. I rather doubt it. He got two letter saying that he was failing both English and Algebra II. The play director is his English teacher. But if’ she knew he was failing, why would she give him the part in the first place? 

We practiced with Sheri over the weekend. Billy and Dad got into fight and Billy called Dad and I trash. He was forbidden to go to Dayton to practice, so I had to bring Sheri down here. She added trio a bass player in Columbus. 

I went to Dayton to drop off’ the matte of’ the group f’or paper publication, The big hoot is Saturday at Wayne High School, while I was on Dayton I decided to look up Shannon. Last week her story, which has been playing in my mind for some time, finally took shape and became “Yellow is the Color of’ Love” It is very good, I think, but also very weird. I thought it only fitting that she should read it. I went out to her old house and asked the neighbors where they had moved. A blonde woman across the street on Timberline gave me the forwarding address. Shannon was there with her mother. I talked with her and took her to the grocery store. Here’s what happened. She had an argument with her father and took another overdose of sleeping pills. The ambulance could not find their house for forty minutes, and by this time her lungs had collapsed and she was nearly dead. They rushed her to the hospital where she lay on the brink of’ death for several days. It was also a psychiatric ward. When she recovered, she still had after-effects like a kidney ailment and heart spasms. They said that the only way they would release her was that she must get married. That sounded quite phony to me, but she said that was so. It was sort of a straight-jacket marriage instead of a shotgun wedding, as usual. So, she married Tom, the guy from Oregon. He’s working at NCR and they’re moving from place to place. I sent the story in the mail today with a cover-letter telling her about the character and how she inspired it. Anyhow, I’m happy that I know her situation, but very unhappy to see it. She’s a good kid and
really deserves much more than that, but doesn’t know how to harvest love and happiness. 


Wednesday – Oct 23,1963 

Friday was Mother’s birthday. I got her a pair of fleece lined slippers and they went down to the Stein’s Saturday afternoon for dinner.We had another concert Saturday night––one that brought $200. We had practiced all day. We spent the night over in Dayton and practiced Sunday. Billy and I are working out intricate guitar accompaniments and our harmony is getting very good. We have improved vastly and the hope that we will go big time does not seem so vast and reaching now. 

Today Shannon mailed back my story. The morning is generally a happy time for me. I wait in bed until I’m sure the mailman has come, then rush out immediately to reap the harvesting from the galvanized box. Today I found my story with the postmark from Dayton. There was no return address, and no name. I knew it was from Shannon. 

I rather hated to open it. I was afraid that she would not like the story and I would find some cutting, harsh comments inside. Instead, the letter read like this: 

“Ken, I’m really quite surprised at your amazing story. So many things are reconstructed with such total perceptiveness. I don’t know whether this was meant be a tribute or a disarmament, so I say––with great caution––well, done. If, by this, you feel you have found me out, as I feel you have––again––well done. I’m older now, Ken, and much wiser than I sometimes appear. I’ve lost the part of me that would do such things as in yesteryear. I am sad, but on the same hand quite relieved of the burden.”

I read the letter over several times. What was she talking about? Finally, it struck me. I had written a bit of fiction into the story. I said that if a yellow balloon walked the aisle of matrimony it walked it by itself. I hinted that the character in the story had not been married but had the baby illegitimately. Unknowingly, I hit upon the truth. That is her burden. Her sadness is her marriage and the suicide attempts. 

The knowledge came gradually and I was lost in thought. How much more of a story is there behind the part that I know? I should imagine that the story is not yet complete. She had lied about her first marriage. Who can blame her. But one lie leads to another, and to make her stories believable she twisted one lie around the another to protect what reputation she had left. And probably to protect the baby. 

“I too wish you well, my friend,” she wrote. “Your life will be good as the daughter of Thane predicted.”

She doesn’t love her husband and her baby needs a father. I will probably never see her again, but I will remember her forever. 

Oct 1963 – Sunday 

Billy and I went to Columbus Friday (he was off school). Sheri was just getting ready to go home. I thought we’d probably be spending the night there, but instead we headed for Dayton after running out to the TV station and setting up an audition. Sheri seemed to be in a better mood this week, or perhaps it was me. Maybe I’ve finally come to the realization that she’s indispensable to the outfit and I’m trying to get along a little better. We went to the Lemon Tree and did a terrible set. It was absolutely a stinker. We had not practiced for a week and it showed up in the performance.

Joe D., Mike, Sheri, Bill and I went down to Charlie’s where the Osborne Brothers play often play, but they had a rock and roll band that night and five drunk girls running around with provocatively sexual glances and actions. “C’mon in, we’re gonna have a party,” the one blonde had said just before we entered. She showed us in and made certain that we had a seat, then danced around, twisting her pelvis, shimmering to the pulsating wham of the rotten music. A couple of girls got up on the stage and sang with the lead singer. They fingered his guitar and shook their hips at him. I nearly f’ell off the chair with laughter. 

Saturday we practiced all day, worked out several new songs and listened to ourselves on the tape recorder. For the first time we are beginning to sound well on tape. Everything is coming out so much better. Actually, the three of us had a ball just being together over the weekend. We talked of our future and the sound are putting out, joked, and laughed continually. We are going to New York by next summer, we hope. That’s not a definite hope, but if everything goes right, maybe we can make it. I am putting my future at stake. Saturday night before coming home went to the Art Institute and walked around the shaded lawns looking out over the city. We descended the spiral steps to the river and walked along the banks, talking and feeling very good. We drove around the city here and there circling and looking for the finer views, content with just watching the lights and the people, drinking the atmosphere of happiness that can quickly be lost in the turmoil of living. We are living fast, but we are enjoying it. Before everything grinds to a shattering halt or we enjoy the :j!!D fruits of the promise that now shows, I have a. feeling that things will move much faster. The main message is that we must not forget that we must
enjoy life and take the time out to have a little fun. 

I thought that Shannon was out of my life. Perhaps she is, but that haunting damn girl isn’t out of my memories. I dreamed of her last night, just as I used to dream of Russene and ached with the feeling that she was gone, like I dreamed of Shirley that one night in Cleveland and awoke wanting her so badly. I remember the dreams because the wanting is so hard afterwards, and it seems as though I never dream of a girl with such intensity until it is too late for us. 

In the dream, Shannon was still married and lived in Greenville. I remember that she lived behind a row of buildings without faces that stretched endlessly, like an ancient, musty arcade. I entered down a road at first from the back and came to a place that I’d never seen and never thought existed around Greenville. It was dusty and there was a little lake with some not-too-shady-trees, and a row of little white cottages where Shannon and her husband lived. 

She was sitting on a white bench in her swimming suit next to the lake. I got out of the car and walked over to her. She was sad and lonely and confided her loneliness to me. It was a long dream. I remember waking and thinking that it was practically a story complete in itself, but the details have now escaped me. Somehow we loved one another, not physically, just spiritually. I remember her driving away in her little red Volvo and I returned from the front.

 I entered the wrong door in the faceless building. The lettering on the front said, “The Explorer’s Club”. Inside, the arcade was colored with a strange orange light and there were little rooms full hunting debris and trophies. The smell of cigars and liquor were warm in my nostrils. In one of the unseen rooms in the forbidden interior, men laughed and the sounds of their laughing were strange, like the laugh of a lost old man who once a day finds a little happiness at a card game in the local pool hall. The entire place has the atmosphere of a pool hall. 

I remember passing one little room where the door was open. A toilet with rough-hewn wooden urinals were standing in a row like tree trunks. Then, I went back outside and entered the next door where Shannon’s little corner of paradise laid before me in a blurry vision. I don’t know what happened to her husband. She and I lived together in a strange way. It was very fine though. I thought it best that she not be strained in her happiness. I did my best to make, her life pleasant, restore her happiness, and dispel those sorrows carried in her life. It was a dream, but somehow I awoke wanting the dream to be truth. I was almost ready to run to Dayton, find her and whisk her away. Funny, she really might be happy by now, but I doubt it. 

Life with her would be life on a bed of nails. It would sap of my strength and that would be hard to take, but subconsciously I wanted to help her like I’ve haver wanted to help another. 

Then I woke up.

Speaking of dreams… twice now I’ve dreamed about the trio. No, three times, and all were sex dreams. Sheri, to me, is not femme fatale that some of the other girls are. In fact, she is almost
sexless to me. I admit she has her charms, but somehow, I don ‘t see her as a sexual stimulus. Yet that is the way it popped up in my dreams. Once I dreamed that she was running around naked
at a party. Another time I dreamed of Billy, she and I driving along the streets, bare from the waist down. A few nights ago the dream took on story form, but now again the details and continuity are forgotten. It’s surprising how many of my dreams are truly short stories and absolutely complete (though usually with several flaws). I dreamed that Sheri, Billy and I were living together. I don’t know whether we were spending the night at her house or we had an apartment of our own, but it was decided that to save on expanses and to bring compatibility to the trio, Sheri would double as mistress for both Billy and I. The first night together was a night of wonder. Evidently I had already lost my virginity, because after the night was over and day had broken over the city, a little box lay on a footstool for Billy. It was a reward for losing his virginity, much like pennies under the pillow from the good fairy for losing your first tooth.

Sheri’s father came in and picked up the box. I had not looked at it and ‘I remained hidden behind the couch because the box was blue and white and looked similar to a prophylactic box that is  on the market. (I worked at a drug store and even remember the brand name, as I sold them often enough.) Her father opened the box and a slew of gumballs rolled out on the floor. It was queer. 

I laughed and remember thinking, “What sort of an oaf is that stupid fairy, leaving gum balls for losing your maidenhead. 

The dream ended. Now it seems almost funny when I remember it. It really wasn’t sexy at all, more like a delicately made movie. 

Monday – Nov. 4, 1963 

Last Tuesday I drove to Columbus to dig up some jobs. I found one advertised in the student paper at CSU and Sheri and I looked into it. I found that Hootenanny, the ABC Saturday night show, probably isn’t coming to Ohio State after all. Also, I looked in the phone directory f’or entertainment management agencies and found one that looked promising. I went over to the agent, who had the unlikely name of Howdy Gorman. He said he’d set up an audition at a TV station f’or us. The audition was tonight. We got the job f’or Saturday at the Fort Hayes Hotel, Presidential Suite, entertaining some drunken foot doctors and made another sixty bucks. This evening Dad drove Billy to Columbus, picked up Sheri, and then went to Howdy Gorman’s office. We followed him over to the TV station (Columbus Channel 10). 

Gorman had brought two groups for the audition. The show is called “Gather Round,” leans rather heavily toward folk. It is being aired once a month. Starting, in December they expect to air it weekly on Friday night.We went through a f’ew songs. They had told us that it was an informal audition without a mike, etc. They then wanted me to introduce a song, so I introduced Darlin’ Corey. They thought we were very good. There was another entertainment manager f’rom a nightclub called “The Gloria” there to hear the audition. Gorman said he was killing several birds with one shot by auditioning us f’or several jobs at once. Anyhow, our audition was successful and they thought that we did a an excellent job.


Then came the other group. They brought along their manager and a public address system and they let them use it. The result was that they seemed more professional than we had seemed, because they introduced their numbers and didn’t adhere to the informal setup.


Live and learn. I don ‘t know the result of’ the audition yet. We had some fine comments, but it seemed as though the talk .liraS about the other group rather than ours. Even Gorman gathered around the other group’s manager. The TV man said that he wants to pit us on the air and he will be getting ahold of Gorman. I don’t know anything about the nightclub. What’ll come of it,  I don’t know. I’ve got to talk with Gorman again Saturday and see what’s cooking.  Anyhow, this Gorman says he has recording contacts and can do us up right. He’s a very short little man, probably f’ive-f’oot one or two with sandy hair and mustache. Things will either stand still or move fast now that we are pushing ourselves. 

Nov. 11, 1963 – Sunday

Dick T. is home on furlough. Friday night we went to Dayton so that he could hear the Osborne Brothers. Clark Crites, the Lemon Tree’s new manager, had called on Thursday and wanted us to see him. He had a job lined up and wants to, act as a sort of’ agent f’or jobs that come through the Lemon Tree, getting the usual ten per cent. 

We went to Dayton to tell Sheri’s folks, then went over to the Lemon Tree to see Clark. He was tied up with another man in the office and couldn’t see us right then. We sat through a set of the Canadian folksinger, Cedric Smith, then scooted down to the Bitter End––which is the new name for Charlie’s Bar––to hear the Osborne Brothers. After their set was over it was back to the Lemon Tree to see Clark. I found that Clark had just gone down to the Bitter End to see us. After that came a comedy of errors. We went back down to see Clark and found that he had just gone back to the Lemon Tree to meet us. We went Back to the Lemon Tree and found that he had just left to meet us at the Bitter End.

There we sat at the Lemon Tree waiting for him to come. There he sat at the Bitter End waiting for us to come back. Half an hour later, the phone rang: “Are they still there?” he asked. When told yes he said, “Keep them there, I’ll be right up.” 

Finally we get together and talked over business matters, then went back down to hear the Osborne Brothers finish up another set. Both Sonny and Benny Birchfield were in great moods tonight and we talked with them for a long time. 

Saturday, Billy and I took Dick to Columbus with us. It was the first time he got to hear the trio perform. It was nothing special, really, just an afternoon practice session in a cemetery, then Sheri’s dorm room, and an evening practice. Sheri got me a date for tonight and one for Dick too. Gayle O. was Dick’s date, the same girl who dated Fred the other week. 

Sheri’s been feeding me a lot of information about a roommate of hers that wants but a tall, good looking, rich man. She sounded rather like a snob from the conversation about her. Once, when I called Sheri, she answered the phone. From her voice I could tell she was overly sophisticated and perhaps a bit oily. Well, suddenly, it seems, she turned an about face. She had heard us practice, though I’ve never met her, and she read my story “The Fantasy of Fowler’s Hill” last week. Sheri was shocked when she started questioning her about me and even more shocked when she asked her to set up a date with me. In fact, she was flabbergasted. The girl’s name is Joan. I was sure she was in for a boring evening and I was certain she was not my type. Finally, in the afternoon, we met. She’s a very pretty girl and looks much like I pictured her as looking––tall, well-groomed and collegiate. In the evening we drove around town and stopped at a bar which was crowded to capacity. We had tried several other places offering entertainment, but we ended up back up near the campus. The bars are filled with students on Saturday night.We bought a pizza next door and then got some beer to go from the bar and headed out in the country to eat. 

I found a nice little spot of a not-to-traveled road where we had a beer, ate. and talked. Joan and I got along surprisingly well. Conversation seemed strained at times and things did not flow naturally, but all in all it was a fairly well-matched date. I didn’t go out of my way to impress her, I just joked along and acted the hick that I really am––dropping the “g”on “goin'” and speaking in the normal Darke County dialect that sometimes makes me feel out of place in collegiate crowds. It’s not that my speech is a real dialect or that I do not express myself well. I really, I do. But the folks around Greenville do have a distinct midwestern twang in their speech. 

We were sitting at a deserted barnyard eating our pizza and almost ready to leave when a cop pulled up. He asked to see my driver’s license and asked what I was doing there, then told us that we were on private property and had to move on. 

Back in Columbus heading to the dorm we found a little park that looked rather inviting in the night. Everyone hopped out of the car and walked over to a lagoon that spouted water from a fountain in the center. When we got back in the car another cop saw us coming out of the park and the same damned procedure started all over again. It was against the law to be in the park that time of night. I was not happy about the interference. Why, then, have the fountain running? I thought, but I said nothing. I have learned that being overly civil near people who are armed is more often the best choice.

We all slept in a moth-eaten hotel on High Street––not the girls, just the fellows––and Sunday afternoon we met again and went off for another drive. We went to the art museum and walked through the halls into the velvet draped rooms viewing both trash and some masterpieces like Renoir and Monet. We took a drive through the city and went to the park that we had seen in last night’s moonlight––only this time it was lawful. I took them for a beautiful country drive by the Columbus Zoo, tried to get into the closed Olentangy Caverns, then drove for miles along a scenic little road that followed the stark autumn banks of the Olentangy. We passed an old stone mill that looked like it belonged in a page from European history, made of stone, now deserted with a little damn up creek and finally the observatory.


The time was spent talking and joking and taking in the autumn beauty. Dick had the time of his life and said that he would remember that afternoon for years to come. I don’t believe I will forget it either. Joan became very congenial and looked very pretty. 

Everything has been at a standstill for quite some time in my romantic existence. I believe I could be ready to fall in love myself. We parted company at 7:00. Joan made me promise to write her and send me some other stories and I promised that I would. Dick will probably never see Gayle again, but he will remember her. All in all it was a very pleasant, well-remembered weekend. I didn’t fall in love, but I feel as though I somehow made happiness possible somewhere––and it’s a good feeling. 

Friday – Nov. 15, 1963 

Mom and Dad’s twenty-second anniversary was today. In celebration, they did something that they would not usually think of doing––they went to the Bitter End to hear the Osborne Brothers. The boys were very friendly this evening and talked quite a bit. Sheri was there and while Billy, Mel, Dick, Sheri and I went down to the Tree, Mom and Dad sat and talked with Sonny and Benny Birchfield. It was a pleasant evening. Sonny said that if we wold give him a tape he would take it with him and try to get us some jobs so we decided to get a very good tape made on professional equipment. 

Sunday – Nov. 17, 1963

Yesterday it was practice. Dick went down to Dayton with us. We spent the night at Stein’s then came back to Greenville to make a tape at WDRK . 

We wrestled in the lawn and practiced in the park, then at 3:15 went out to WDRK to make the tape. The tape turned out very, very well. We have never heard ourselves on professional equipment, except perhaps on TV that one time. Then TV show qualitywas bad and the songs were not our best at that time, but we’ve improved so much since then. We were very pleased with the sound and patted one another’s backs for an hour. Sheri gave me a letter from Joan that she wrote to me just after receiving mine. Sheri said that Joan would be up next weekend. I also got called back from layoff at Corning for one week.

Thursday – Nov. 21, 1963 

I’ve been dumping cullet and hating every moment at Corning all this week. The job was only temporary. It gripes my soul to think that they can take or leave me at their discretion and I have to abide by their goddamn whims. I wrote a little letter to Joan this week expressing my views about this factory system of ours. Sometimes I think that it is a detriment to progress, rather then an aid as it is usually considered. How many men––like me––are pushed and pulled by forces greater than they can fight, placed in degrading jobs, their potential wasted, their lives and happiness decaying around them. How many men have committed mental suicide while working the grind day in and day out, having no escape without the risk of losing everything––their family, their income, and the little joy they manage to reap out of their barren existence? 

Automation is taking over at Corning. Automation is taking over everywhere. They will be laying practically everyone off within the next few years. The bastards are getting by with it. They keep a man in chains economically, then turn him loose and knock him on the ground without breath, without fight, without hope. 

November 22,1963 

Some days you wish had never been,

That time be whisked away like dust

And a day that drips with grief be taken back, 

The hourglass started once again anew.    

This gloomy, drizzling day was such a day. 

The rain’s no longer rain, but falling tears. 

My heart is aching and my soul is sick.

I’ve cried out, cursed, and sorrow shudders in me.

There is no room for eloquence inside, only grief.

Today, a hand I’ve never shaken,

A face I’ve never touched,

A friend I’ve never met

Was cut down on the streets of Dallas, Texas.

A bullet through the brain that ruled the nation

And stilled the heart that loved

An undeserving world. 

Words do not tell the story well.

I shuddered when just three short years ago

The nomination turned from Stevenson to him.

And then with magic and determination

He fought his way through prejudice

To win and saddle greatness.

I longed for his success

And when it came,

His triumph was mine.

He caught a nation’s fancy 

With his mellow voice and new ideas.

He brought youth and life and color   

When things were rather stale and needed spice

Now his youthful smile will never age

His thick, brown hair will never thin.

A hundred years ago another man was shot

And another man named Johnson took his place.

There must have been an emptiness then as now

As fires dimmed and died in human hearts.

Words fail me.

I could not feel more desolate and grieved.

I could not feel more shocked or numbed with sorrow.

You and I, he never knew by name,

But yet he cleared a way through tangled webs

That we might see the clouds with silver lining 

And watch tomorrow’s light shine even brighter.

Friday – Nov 22, 1963

This is how I feel and how I will always remember feeling this tragic, horrible weekend. It is completely unbelievable. I will wake up tomorrow and find that it has been a bad dream. I was working when I heard the news, sitting in the cafeteria on my two o’clock break. A couple of fellows were talking about a ten thousand dollar reward. One said to the other, “I’d even turn you in if you had a ten thousand dollars reward on your head.” The other said, “I’d wait till it was twenty-thousand.” 

There was more talk about a reward. “Who the hell’s got a tag on his head?” I asked. “What’s this reward talk about?” 

“Somebody shot President Kennedy this afternoon,” someone said. 

They told me more about it, more or less jokingly. Some took it seriously. Some wouldn’t believe it. News trickled in. Actually, he was dead when I had first heard that he had been shot. I went back to work. After thinking about it, I finally decided that I must go home. I could not work any longer.

I asked the foreman to take the rest of the day off, but he refused to give me leave. Hurt and angry, I decided to quit the job and vowed never to work in another factory as long as I lived.

The car radio warmed tip just as I was leaving the parking lot. The first words I heard were “The late President Kennedy, who died in Parkland Hospital.” 

I drove on home, numbed, glassy-eyed, full of hate for a man who could do such a despicable, twisted thing.

Joan and Sheri were coming up from Columbus. Billy and I went on to Dayton, even though I knew I would be very poor company this evening. Together we got away from the tragedy the best we could. I called to make certain the concert was cancelled for tomorrow night. I could not entertain and do a good job. I have no feeling for it now. It is as though my father had died, for Kennedy was so personal a president to me. His youth and good looks made me like him from the start, then his speeches full of glowing phrases and ideas took possession of me. I became a staunch supporter, even though I really didn’t want him to win the nomination three years ago. He became a symbol to the American youth, that age was not a barrier and the world was ready for a young man’s ideas. He and his family captivated the news media and publicity poured into print and photographs. 

Life came to the country with Jack and Jackie––their touch football, the clannishness, their youth, their vigor, the rocking chair and stories that the press delighted in printing. 

When I think back about leaving the church where I used to be active and fanatically associated, I find that many of the clashes that came between me and the other members was my supporting of Kennedy and their assurance that he was going to be the devil’s instrument and would tool the way to the world’s end. Then I realized how little their minds were and my mind expanded. I fully comprehended the fanaticism that I really thought was mere zealousness. It was logical to an extent, but things crumbled at the base and I realized that it was not for me. I learned a bit about reasoning and I’m not sorry for my experience, but somehow, even though Kennedy himself, was enshrouded in the darkness of the Roman Catholic Church, I think he made me think and perhaps because of him I have turned away from them. People used to call me Kennedy at work because my hair is so much like his. I looked and read of him. There was an identification there that I suppose will never be felt with any other president. This free-style poem that I wrote is the only way I can think of even beginning to express my emotions.

Joan and I talked in the evening. We kissed and she gave me a letter she had written about how she thought that we were so much alike. I read it thoroughly and agreed, but knew through her actions that she feared me and there was something more unsaid.

Saturday – November 23, 1963

I awoke this morning and it was still true. Yesterday was reality after all. It was not a bad dream. President Kennedy is as dead as Caesar or Alexander the Great. All I can see is his cheerful grin and the way his hair blew as he stood before the television cameras speaking in some windy place.

I went to Dayton this afternoon. Billy and I got in late and Dad refused to let Billy go out of the house. I went alone. Mo was there with Joan and Sheri. We played our tapes and I made a tape with Mo, backing him with my guitar while he played the banjo.

We went down to the bus station to get Billy around 6:00. I had told him to catch the bus.

He was not there and Sheri was disappointed. She gave me a letter to read that she has written last night about her being in love with Billy. Sheri has a scheming mind. She’s been introducing me to girls and trying to get my attention hooked by someone else. 

Joan fell in love with me without any pushing on Sheri’s part. Now Sheri thinks she’s ready for bolder steps with my younger brother, 

Frankly, I don’t give a damn about it. I’m afraid that the trio just won’t make it because of other things. Billy is doing so poorly in school and he’s so young that Dad won’t let him have any of the freedoms, that I’m accustomed to having. Rightly so. There would be travel, travel and more travel if we should ever make it big, and I don’t think it would work out at all with Billy. 

I’m sure that Sheri would fly away too if it weren’t for him. Besides, he is necessary to the existence of the trio. He makes it sound rounded and full, we harmonize extremely well, and his guitar playing goes hand in hand with mine since we grew musical in the same atmosphere. I’m so uncertain of the future right now. There’s little reason to be optimistic despite out great sound.

We did do a set later at the Lemon Tree coffee house. Dad brought Billy down to the Lemon Tree later in the evening. It was the best set we ever did there, and everyone was very impressed with the strides we’d taken since they last heard us.

Sunday – November 24, 1963

Lee Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, was shot to death over nationwide television today as they were transferring him to the county jail. The secrets of the assassination probably went to the grave with him. The murderer is being held in custody. Had anyone foretold correctly the events of this weekend one week, even three days ago, he would have been laughed off the face of the earth. It’s still feels impossible and feels as though it couldn’t really be happening.

Today the President’s body lies in state and mourners pass by. I had wanted to go to Washington so badly, but my money from the last week of work hasn’t come in yet. Yesterday Kennedy lay in state at the East room of White House. After a moving, beautiful transfer by caisson to the Capitol (shown very poignantly on TV) he was placed in the rotunda for the nation. TV has suspended all commercial announcements and entertainment programs and have been giving minute by minute, hour by hour coverage since the news that the shot was fired on Saturday.

Once again I was in Dayton. Joan told me something today that made me understand her so much better. She and I can talk and be frank with one another. When she seemed to shy away from my kisses I told her that she was going to have to delve into her subconscious to find out about her ‘kissing complex’. Her letter that was delivered a few day’s before has mentioned a date that she had had a week before she met me. She was with a boy who wanted to touch her before she had been able to know or like him. After our first kisses she said that she was trying to make up her mind whether or not her image of me had been broken down. She (in the letter) had referred to that part in my short story “The Fantasy of Fowler’s Hill” where I wrote: “I thought about the movie I had seen the night before, a tale of simpler days… when romance bloomed slowly and a simple kiss was almost a proposal. Sometimes I would long to go back in those days.”

I knew something was bothering her. She wanted to let herself go and enjoy herself, but could not for some reason. She is a very shy, quiet sort of person, very unusual for a very attractive girl. And then the answer came. She told me that when she was young her uncle had taken advantage of her, and that this had gone on for years. Finally, possibly in her early teens, she realized what was happening, and now the heartbreak and the remembrance of him is with her whenever she is around men. 

I can really feel for her plight, I can really understand her feelings when we kiss. After she told me as much as she wished to tell at the time she relaxed and we kissed again while she responded more warmly. She is a lonely person. If it be in my power to ease that loneliness… so be it.

Monday – Nov. 25, 1963

 Now he belongs to the earth.

Business is stopped. The nation mourns and watched the funeral. I watched fully attentive at Sheri’s house until the actual funeral ceremonies were being performed in the cathedral. The Catholic ritual with it’s mumbo jumbo of Latin and changing of vestments was too much for my anti-ritualistic soul to bear. 

I took the girls and Mo back to Columbus where we stopped while I went in to see our agent, Howdy Gorman. I gave him one of the tapes we made and he’s going to talk with some record companies during the week. Maybe something will come of it, maybe nothing. 

We took a country drive and then I took the girls back to the campus. The folks want to go to Nashville to visit my great Aunt over the Thanksgiving holidays. Joan has invited me to supper Saturday night at her home in Cincinnati. I probably will go with the folks, although I would like to see Joan’s family. I think that they must be pretty well-to-do, as her father is a construction engineer and travels extensively in Latin and South America. Her mother teaches Home Economics in a Cincinnati High School.

RECENT ONTOLOGICAL MUSINGS

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality.It includes the questions of how entities are grouped into basic categories and which of these entities exist on the most fundamental level. Ontology is sometimes referred to as the science of being and belongs to the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics.

What does the mind look like? What are its physical characteristics? We see the medical imaging of the brain at work, but we never see the mind itself. Senses like smells, tastes, and touch have no visible physical characteristics. We see them only by their effects, as we see the wind. It should come as no surprise that awareness is invisible.

What about the information that awareness presents to the mind? Information is also invisible. This information becomes physical to us only after being perceived and registered by the mind. Our awareness perceives a constant flow of information, too much to process at once. We select parts of this information, then fill in the rest with recollection and imagination. At that point, information becomes tangible, recorded chemically and electrically bonded. The mind can evaluate it and react. The invisible awareness that perceives this invisible physical presence is the first step toward interaction and reaction. 

We all have but two things at all times, our awareness and the now. Awareness takes place in the Now. Awareness builds our mental images of our world and our place in the universe or a universe. Our awareness is constantly experiencing our journey through the now. Lucky for us, most of this information is subconscious and does not require conscious attention. To be self aware, one has to be aware of another, something not contained in the self. Can self awareness exist all the way down to compounds to atoms and elementary quantum? Or is awareness held within that elementary quantum?

I have had a hard time coming to terms with infinity. The idea that space is infinite means that infinitely huge sections of space could never be seen. The same hold true of the universe. All things in space and time have beginnings and ends. They are finite. Yet, because the finite exists, then there must be that which is not finite––the infinite. 

The same is true of nothing. Nothing does not exist. It is the opposite of existence in its non-existence. Yet, nothing exists. It also does not exist. It is in a superposition where it is both. The reason infinity can go on forever is that there is nothing there at all. Without time and space there are no things… nothing. 

I think it is imperative to come to terms with infinity. We need to understand that which is beyond time and space. It is the obvious source of existence and the physical universe. 

If the infinite does not exist in time and space, does it exist at all? Is there a geometric plane above time and space where awareness can experience no time and no space and still be aware?

One possibility is a universal point––the invisible center of every circle in the universe. That point is infinite because it is all there is. No matter how large or small this point is thought to be, it is still all there is and it is the center of everything everywhere. 

If we accept that as a possibility, we can only speculate about the original point, since the physical world emerges from this super-positioned point that is every place and at the center of everything. This point, remember, is infinite––which means that it includes the finite and all that all exists along with the information contained within this finite record. 


We cannot get away from a first cause that came from nothing. An eternal universe cannot be a reasonable assumption in a temporal world of beginnings and endings. Even if energy is fundamental, the question remains: “From what did it spring?”  Is energy eternal? Did it come from nothing?  Or did it come from an invisible and unrealized potential in the non-dimensional?

See https://kennethharperfinton.me/2021/03/04/potentiality/

LOVE IS FOREVER

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

-lyrics by Kenneth Harper Finton

Love is forever

That’s why it hurts

I try to forget her. [him] [it]

But it doesn’t work.

Love is forever

buried inside

Much like a seed

That’s waiting to thrive.

burned in the mind

burned in the mind

love is forever

burned in the mind

An Image of time, gal [boy].

An Image of time.

Memories are always

Sleeping inside.

Awaiting conditions 

for love to survive

Love is forever

Waiting inside.

WHO KILLED TECUMSEH?

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by Kenneth Harper Finton

“Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.” – Richard M. Johnson Campaign Slogan 

 Richard M. Johnson rode to political fame on the claim that he was the slayer of the great Indian leader. Historians are uncertain, and the deed will be forever muddied in the waters of time. In his 1929 autobiography, Single Handed, James A Drain, Sr. gives a detailed account by Col. Whitley’s granddaughter in which Whitley and Tecumseh killed each other simultaneously.

Who killed Tecumseh is a matter of debate. Many accounts claim that the badly-wounded Colonel Richard Johnson shot Tecumseh just before he lost consciousness although, until much later in his political career, Johnson only claimed to have shot an Indian.

Some evidence points to Colonel Whitley as the man who killed Tecumseh. Whitley’s body was found very close to Tecumseh. Still another report came from the badly-wounded Colonel James Davidson who claimed that a man in his company, Private David King, shot Tecumseh with Whitley’s rifle.

“Initial published accounts identified Richard Mentor Johnson as having killed Tecumseh. In 1816, another account claimed a different soldier had fired the fatal shot. [Sugden 1985, p. 138.] The matter became controversial in the 1830s when Johnson was a candidate for Vice President of the United States to Martin Van Buren. Johnson’s supporters promoted him as Tecumseh’s killer, employing slogans such as “Rumpsey dumpsey, rumpsey dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.” Johnson’s opponents collected testimony contradicting this claim; numerous other possibilities were named. Sugden (1985) presented the evidence and argued that Johnson’s claim was the strongest, though not conclusive. Johnson became Vice President in 1837, his fame largely based on his claim to have killed Tecumseh.” -Tecumseh. (2023, July 22). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh

Some primary accounts suggest that Col. William Whitley was likely the person who killed Tecumseh. James A Drain, Sr. published an autobiography, Single Handed (1927), in which he recounts Whitley’s granddaughter telling their family tradition that Whitley and Tecumseh killed each other simultaneously.

“After the battle, American soldiers stripped and scalped Tecumseh’s body. The next day, when Tecumseh’s body had been positively identified, others peeled off some skin as souvenirs. The location of his remains are unknown. The earliest account stated that his body had been taken by Canadians and buried at Sandwich. Later stories said he was buried at the battlefield, or that his body was secretly removed and buried elsewhere.[162] According to another tradition, an Ojibwe named Oshahwahnoo, who had fought at Moraviantown, exhumed Tecumseh’s body in the 1860s and buried him on St. Anne Island on the St. Clair River. In 1931, these bones were examined. Tecumseh had broken a thighbone in a riding accident as a youth and thereafter walked with a limp, but neither thigh of this skeleton had been broken. Nevertheless, in 1941 the remains were buried on nearby Walpole Island in a ceremony honoring Tecumseh. St-Denis (2005), in a book-length investigation of the topic, concluded that Tecumseh was likely buried on the battlefield and his remains have been lost.” -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh#Citations

Tecumseh was widely admired in his lifetime, even by the Americans who had fought against him. Canadians consider him a folk hero and credit him with helping to save Canada from an American invasion in 1822. His primary American foe was William Henry Harrison. He described Tecumseh as “one of those uncommon geniuses, which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things.”

William Whitley is one of my 4th Great Grandfathers. Everyone has 16 of those. Descendants of William Whitley have been trying to prove that he killed the great chieftain for decades. It may have been inevitable that white men from Europe and the East would spread like a disease. Tecumseh was one who built a federation to prevent the loss of his homeland. I wrote about him in https://kennethharperfinton.me/2016/12/20/william-whitley-and-me/

I have always secretly hoped that grandfather Whitley was not the killer of Tecumseh. I was in no mood to take pride in that. Whitley was primarily an Indian fighter from slave-holding Virginia, so I think we can safely assume that he was what we would call a “redneck” today. Whitley avoided the Revolutionary War by moving to Kentucky. He was the first to build a brick home and estate in Kentucky and an early pioneer in Kentucky whiskey and horse racing. However, he was adamantly anti-British enough to build and run the first clay circular race track in the United States. He ran them counter-clockwise instead of the British clockwise race, a custom that persists to this day. 

New possibilities about Tecumseh’s death were recorded in THE HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY, by FrazIer Wilson.

 Tecumseh lived in Greenville, Ohio of several years between 1806 and 1808. There is a place near Water Street on Greenville Creek called Tecumseh Point. This is where Tecumseh and his brother lived for several years. They would have traded at Azor Scribner’s trading post on the present corner of Elm and Main. It was the only place to trade. 

“At the outbreak of the War of 1812, Scribner enlisted in Captain Joseph Ewing’s company, Lanier’s Independent Bat­talion of Ohio militia. His service began Aug. 9th, 1812 and expired Feb. 8th, 1814. He participated in the important bat­tle of the Thames in the fall of 1813, in which Tecumseh was killed and the British General Proctor, signally defeated by the Americans under Gen. Wm. H. Harrison. To General John­ston, of Kentucky was given the credit of shooting the great Shawnee chief. However, it has been handed down in Azor Scribner’s family that he himself [Azor] shot Tecumseh from  ambush and refused to reveal the fact to anybody during his lifetime,  except  to his wife. whom  he straitly  charged  with secrecy.” – THE HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY, 1914, Wilson, Frazer.

To me, this would make sense, Scribner would have known Tecumseh from trading with him. He was at the Battle of the Thames. If he killed the chieftain, he would not want to admit it lest he lose his lucrative business. If he killed him from ambush, he would have known it was Tecumseh when he lined his sight on him.

” He knew  Tecumseh  personally,  having  traded  with him  many  times at Greenville, no doubt, and  feared the con­ sequences  should  it  be  revealed  to  his  old  dusky  customers that  he  had  done  the  awful  deed. His  wife, who  survived him  several  years,  revealed  the  secret  after  his  death  to her second  daughter,  Elizabeth,  who  in  turn revealed it  to  her daughter,  Mrs.  Marcella Avery,  now  living  at  an  advanced age with  her  son Ira  and  daughter  Prudence on  North Main street (Minatown)  near the site of  Scribner’s first trading post. Scribner seems to have made money in his traffic with the Indians, but after he opened his tavern competition arose and he  had  to be  satisfied  with  his  share of  the trade.  He  died in 1822 in the prime of life, leaving a wife and several daugh­ters.” – THE HISTORY OF DARKE COUNTY, Wilson (1914)

 

 

Tecumseh negotiating with William Henry Harrison.
Relief of Johnson shooting Tecumseh, National Gallery

The Brilliance of Ascension

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by Kenneth Harper Finton

Summer's day in old Darke County,
nineteen hundred fifty three,
a freckled lad searched for adventure,
explorations wild and free.

To the neighbor's barn he rambled,
all alone through fields of green,
sneaked into the giant structure
for to see what could be seen.

Dimly lit, immense, inviting,
smelling sweet from last year's hay,
rustic ladders beckoned softly,
wooden rungs well grooved with age

Up to the most distant window,
high above the gambrel beams,
up he climbed through webs of darkness,
higher than his highest dreams.

Fear can cause the knees to tremble,
hanging on for life and limb.
Straight the ladder rose to heaven,
higher than he'd ever been.

With one mighty surge of muscle,
fighting fears and gravity,
to the uppermost recesses,
through the window's dust he peaked.

Far away the courthouse steeple
towered o'er the village green,
higher than the hills beside them,
spires of churches could be seen.

What a wondrous revelation,
like unto some angel's dream,
close unto the foot of heaven,
dust motes swarmed in sunny beams.

Climbing down so smooth and easy,
limbs obeying, dragons slain,
eyes adjusting to the dimness,
feet upon Ohio clay.

Small adventures to be certain,
simple viewpoints, vantage changed,
yet the brilliance of ascension
shined upon that summer’s day.

 

THE FOUNDATION FOR THE FURTHERING OF GLOBAL IGNORANCE

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THE FOUNDATION FOR THE FURTHERING OF GLOBAL IGNORANCE

FROM WHENCE COMETH THE SONG – 1963, the fateful month of November

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Monday – Nov. 4, 1963 

Last Tuesday I drove to Columbus to dig up some jobs. I found one advertised in the student paper at CSU and Sheri and I looked into it. I found that Hootenanny, the ABC Saturday night show, probably isn’t coming to Ohio State after all. Also, I looked in the phone directory f’or entertainment management agencies and found one that looked promising. I went over to the agent, who had the unlikely name of Howdy Gorman. He said he’d set up an audition at a TV station f’or us. The audition was tonight. We got the job f’or Saturday at the Fort Hayes Hotel, Presidential Suite, entertaining some drunken foot doctors and made another sixty bucks. This evening Dad drove Billy to Columbus, picked up Sheri, and then went to Howdy Gorman’s office. We followed him over to the TV station (Columbus Channel 10). 

Gorman had brought two groups for the audition. The show is called “Gather Round,” leans rather heavily toward folk. It is being aired once a month. Starting, in December they expect to air it weekly on Friday night.We went through a f’ew songs. They had told us that it was an informal audition without a mike, etc. They then wanted me to introduce a song, so I introduced Darlin’ Corey. They thought we were very good. There was another entertainment manager f’rom a nightclub called “The Gloria” there to hear the audition. Gorman said he was killing several birds with one shot by auditioning us f’or several jobs at once. Anyhow, our audition was successful and they thought that we did an excellent job.


Then came the other group. They brought along their manager and a public address system and they let them use it. The result was that they seemed more professional than we had seemed, because they introduced their numbers and didn’t adhere to the informal setup.


Live and learn. I don ‘t know the result of’ the audition yet. We had some fine comments, but it seemed as though the talk .liraS about the other group rather than ours. Even Gorman gathered around the other group’s manager. The TV man said that he wants to put us on the air and he will be getting ahold of Gorman. I don’t know anything about the nightclub. What’ll come of it,  I don’t know. I’ve got to talk with Gorman again Saturday and see what’s cooking.  Anyhow, this Gorman says he has recording contacts and can do us up right. He’s a very short little man, probably five one or two, with sandy hair and mustache. Things will either stand still or move fast now that we are pushing ourselves. 

Nov. 11, 1963 – Sunday

Dick T. is home on furlough. Friday night we went to Dayton so that he could hear the Osborne Brothers. Clark Crites, the Lemon Tree’s new manager, had called on Thursday and wanted us to see him. He had a job lined up and wants to, act as a sort of’ agent f’or jobs that come through the Lemon Tree, getting the usual ten per cent. 

We went to Dayton to tell Sheri’s folks, then went over to the Lemon Tree to see Clark. He was tied up with another man in the office and couldn’t see us right then. We sat through a set of the Canadian folksinger, Cedric Smith, then scooted down to the Bitter End––which is the new name for Charlie’s Bar––to hear the Osborne Brothers. After their set was over it was back to the Lemon Tree to see Clark. I found that Clark had just gone down to the Bitter End to see us. After that came a comedy of errors. We went back down to see Clark and found that he had just gone back to the Lemon Tree to meet us. We went Back to the Lemon Tree and found that he had just left to meet us at the Bitter End.

There we sat at the Lemon Tree waiting for him to come. There he sat at the Bitter End waiting for us to come back. Half an hour later, the phone rang: “Are they still there?” he asked. When told yes he said, “Keep them there, I’ll be right up.” 

Finally we get together and talked over business matters, then went back down to hear the Osborne Brothers finish up another set. Both Sonny and Benny Birchfield were in great moods tonight and we talked with them for a long time. 

Saturday, Billy and I took Dick to Columbus with us. It was the first time he got to hear the trio perform. It was nothing special, really, just an afternoon practice session in a cemetery, then Sheri’s dorm room, and an evening practice. Sheri got me a date for tonight and one for Dick too. Gayle was Dick’s date, the same girl who dated Fred the other week. 

Sheri’s been feeding me a lot of information about a roommate of hers that wants but a tall, good-looking, rich man. She sounded rather like a snob from the conversation about her. Once, when I called Sheri, she answered the phone. From her voice I could tell she was overly sophisticated and perhaps a bit oily. Well, suddenly, it seems, she turned an about face. She had heard us practice, though I’ve never met her, and she read my story “The Fantasy of Fowler’s Hill” last week. Sheri was shocked when she started questioning her about me and even more shocked when she asked her to set up a date with me. In fact, she was flabbergasted. The girl’s name is Joan. I was sure she was in for a boring evening and I was certain she was not my type. Finally, in the afternoon, we met. She’s a very pretty girl and looks much like I pictured her as looking––tall, well-groomed and collegiate. In the evening we drove around town and stopped at a bar which was crowded to capacity. We had tried several other places offering entertainment, but we ended up back up near the campus. The bars are filled with students on Saturday night.We bought a pizza next door and then got some beer to go from the bar and headed out in the country to eat. 

I found a nice little spot of a not-to-traveled road where we had a beer, ate and talked. Joan and I got along surprisingly well. Conversation seemed strained at times and things did not flow naturally, but all in all it was a fairly well-matched date. I didn’t go out of my way to impress her. I just joked along and acted like the hick that I really am––dropping the “g”on “goin'” and speaking in the normal Darke County dialect that sometimes makes me feel out of place in collegiate crowds. It’s not that my speech is a real dialect or that I do not express myself well. I really, I do. But the folks around Greenville do have a distinct midwestern twang in their speech. 

We were sitting at a deserted barnyard eating our pizza and almost ready to leave when a cop pulled up. He asked to see my driver’s license and asked what I was doing there, then told us that we were on private property and had to move on. 

Back in Columbus, heading to the dorm, we found a little park that looked rather inviting in the night. Everyone hopped out of the car and walked over to a lagoon that spouted water from a fountain in the center. When we got back in the car another cop saw us coming out of the park and the same damned procedure started all over again. It was against the law to be in the park that time of night. I was not happy about the interference. Why, then, have the fountain running? I thought, but I said nothing. I have learned that being overly civil near people who are armed is more often the best choice.

We all slept in a moth-eaten hotel on High Street––not the girls, just the fellows––and Sunday afternoon we met again and went off for another drive. We went to the art museum and walked through the halls into the velvet draped rooms viewing both the mediocre canvases and some masterpieces like Renoir and Monet. We took a drive through the city and went to the park that we had seen in last night’s moonlight––only this time it was lawful. I took them for a beautiful country drive by the Columbus Zoo, tried to get into the closed Olentangy Caverns, then drove for miles along a scenic little road that followed the stark autumn banks of the Olentangy. We passed an old stone mill that looked like it belonged in a page from European history, made of stone, now deserted with a little damn up creek and finally the observatory.
The time was spent talking and joking and taking in the autumn beauty. Dick had the time of his life and said that he would remember that afternoon for years to come. I don’t believe I will forget it either. Joan became very congenial and looked very pretty. 

Everything has been at a standstill for quite some time in my romantic existence. I believe I could be ready for romance myself. We parted company at 7:00. Joan made me promise to write her and send me some other stories. I promised that I would. Dick will probably never see Gayle again, but he will remember her. All in all it was a very pleasant, well-remembered weekend. I didn’t fall in love, but I feel as though I somehow made happiness possible somewhere––and it’s a good feeling. 

Friday – Nov. 15, 1963 

Mom and Dad’s twenty-second anniversary was today. In celebration, they did something that they would not usually think of doing––they went to the Bitter End to hear the Osborne Brothers. The boys were very friendly this evening and talked quite a bit. While Sheri, Billy, Mel, Dick, and I went down to the Tree, Mom and Dad sat and talked with Sonny and Benny Birchfield. It was a pleasant evening. Sonny said that if we wold give him a tape he would take it with him and try to get us some jobs so we decided to get a very good tape made on professional equipment. 

Sunday – Nov. 17, 1963

Yesterday it was practice. Dick went down to Dayton with us. We spent the night at Stein’s then came back to Greenville to make a tape at WDRK . 

We wrestled in the lawn and practiced in the park, then at 3:15 went out to WDRK to make the tape. The tape turned out very, very well. We have never heard ourselves on professional equipment, except perhaps on TV that one time. Then TV show qualitywas bad and the songs were not our best at that time, but we’ve improved so much since then. We were very pleased with the sound and patted one another’s backs for an hour. Sheri gave me a letter from Joan that she wrote to me just after receiving mine. Sheri said that Joan would be up next weekend. I also got called back from layoff at Corning for one week.

Thursday – Nov. 21, 1963 

I’ve been dumping cullet and hating every moment at Corning all this week. The job was only temporary. It gripes my soul to think that they can take or leave me at their discretion and I have to abide by their goddamn whims. I wrote a little letter to Joan this week expressing my views about this factory system of ours. Sometimes I think that it is a detriment to progress, rather than the aid it is usually considered to be. How many men––like me––are pushed and pulled by forces greater than they can fight, placed in degrading jobs, their potential wasted, their lives and happiness decaying around them. How many men have committed mental suicide while working the grind day in and day out, having no escape without the risk of losing everything––their family, their income, and the little joy they manage to reap out of their barren existence? 

Automation is taking over at Corning. Automation is taking over everywhere. They will be laying practically everyone off within the next few years. The bastards are getting by with it. They keep a man in chains economically, then turn him loose and knock him on the ground without fight, and without hope. 

Friday – November 22,1963

November 22,1963 

Some days you wish had never been,

That time be whisked away like dust

And a day that drips with grief be taken back, 

The hourglass started once again anew.    

This gloomy, drizzling day was such a day. 

The rain’s no longer rain, but falling tears. 

My heart is aching and my soul is sick.

I’ve cried out, cursed, and sorrow shudders in me.

There is no room for eloquence inside, only grief.

Today, a hand I’ve never shaken,

A face I’ve never touched,

A friend I’ve never met

Was cut down on the streets of Dallas, Texas.

A bullet through the brain that ruled the nation

And stilled the heart that loved

An undeserving world. 

Words do not tell the story well.

I shuddered when just three short years ago

The nomination turned from Stevenson to him.

And then with magic and determination

He fought his way through prejudice

To win and saddle greatness.

I longed for his success

And when it came,

His triumph was mine.

He caught a nation’s fancy 

With his mellow voice and new ideas.

He brought youth and life and color   

When things were rather stale and needed spice

Now his youthful smile will never age

His thick, brown hair will never thin.

A hundred years ago another man was shot

And another man named Johnson took his place.

There must have been an emptiness then as now

As fires dimmed and died in human hearts.

Words fail me.

I could not feel more desolate and grieved.

I could not feel more shocked or numbed with sorrow.

You and I, he never knew by name,

But yet he cleared a way through tangled webs

That we might see the clouds with silver lining 

And watch tomorrow’s light shine even brighter.

Friday – Nov 22, 1963

This is how I feel and how I will always remember feeling this tragic, horrible weekend. It is completely unbelievable. I will wake up tomorrow and find that it has been a bad dream. I was working when I heard the news, sitting in the cafeteria on my two o’clock break. A couple of fellows were talking about a ten thousand dollar reward. One said to the other, “I’d even turn you in if you had a ten thousand dollars reward on your head.” The other said, “I’d wait till it was twenty-thousand.” 

There was more talk about a reward. “Who the hell’s got a tag on his head?” I asked. “What’s this reward talk about?” 

“Somebody shot President Kennedy this afternoon,” someone said. 

They told me more about it, more or less jokingly. Some took it seriously. Some wouldn’t believe it. News trickled in. Actually, he was dead when I had first heard that he had been shot. I went back to work. After thinking about it, I finally decided that I must go home. I could not work any longer.

I asked the foreman to take the rest of the day off, but he refused to give me leave. Hurt and angry, I decided to quit the job and vowed never to work in another factory as long as I lived.

The car radio warmed tip just as I was leaving the parking lot. The first words I heard were “The late President Kennedy, who died in Parkland Hospital.” 

I drove on home, numbed, glassy-eyed, full of hate for a man who could do such a despicable, twisted thing.

Joan and Sheri were coming up from Columbus. Billy and I went on to Dayton, even though I knew I would be very poor company this evening. Together we got away from the tragedy the best we could. I called to make certain the concert was cancelled for tomorrow night. I could not entertain and do a good job. I have no feeling for it now. It is as though my father had died, for Kennedy was so personal a president to me. His youth and good looks made me like him from the start, then his speeches full of glowing phrases and ideas took possession of me. I became a staunch supporter, even though I really didn’t want him to win the nomination three years ago. He became a symbol to the American youth, that age was not a barrier and the world was ready for a young man’s ideas. He and his family captivated the news media and publicity poured into print and photographs. 

Life came to the country with Jack and Jackie––their touch football, the clannishness, their youth, their vigor, the rocking chair and stories that the press delighted in printing. 

When I think back about leaving the church where I used to be active and somewhat associated, I find that many of the clashes that came between me and the other members was my supporting of Kennedy and their opposite assurance that Kennedy was the devil’s instrument who would lead the way to the world’s end. It was this incongruity of faith with reality that made me stand and consider. I realized how little their minds were. My mind had expanded. I fully comprehended the fanaticism on the religious right, but I thought it was mere zealousness. It was logical to me for a time, but facts created a crumbling at the base of faith and I realized that it was not for me. I learned a bit about reasoning and I’m not sorry for my experience, but somehow, even though Kennedy himself, was enshrouded in the darkness of the Roman Catholic Church, he made me think. Perhaps because of him I have turned away from the religious. People used to call me Kennedy at work because my hair is so much like his. There was an identification for me that I suppose will never be felt with any other president. This free-style poem that I wrote is the only way I can think of even beginning to express my emotions.

Joan and I talked in the evening. We kissed and she gave me a letter she had written about how she thought that we were so much alike. I read it thoroughly and agreed, but knew through her actions that she feared me and there was something more unsaid.

Saturday – November 23, 1963

I awoke this morning and it was still true. Yesterday was reality after all. It was not a bad dream. President Kennedy is as dead as Caesar or Alexander the Great. All I can see is his cheerful grin and the way his hair blew as he stood before the television cameras speaking in some windy place.

I went to Dayton this afternoon. Billy and I got in late and Dad refused to let Billy go out of the house. I went alone. Mo was there with Joan and Sheri. We played our tapes and I made a tape with Mo, backing him with my guitar while he played the banjo.

We went down to the bus station to get Billy around 6:00. I had told him to catch the bus, but he was not there and Sheri was disappointed. She gave me a letter to read that she has written last night about her being in love with Billy. Sheri has a scheming mind. She’s been introducing me to girls and trying to get my attention hooked by someone else. Joan has possibly fallen in love with me without any pushing on Sheri’s part. Now Sheri thinks she’s ready for bolder steps with my younger brother. 

I don’t give a damn about it. I’m afraid that the trio just won’t make it because of other things. Billy is doing so poorly in school and he’s so young.  Dad won’t let him have any of the freedoms, that I’m accustomed to having, and rightly so. There would be travel, travel, and more travel if we should ever make it big, and I don’t think it would work out at all with Billy. 

I’m sure that Sheri would fly away too if it weren’t for him. Besides, he is necessary to the existence of the trio. He makes it sound rounded and full, we harmonize extremely well as brothers, and his guitar playing goes hand in hand with mine since we grew musical in the same time and atmosphere. I’m so uncertain of the future right now. There’s little reason to be optimistic despite our great sound.

We did do a set later at the Lemon Tree coffee house. Dad brought Billy down to the Lemon Tree later in the evening. It was the best set we ever did there, and everyone was very impressed with the strides we’d taken since they last heard us.

Sunday – November 24, 1963

Lee Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, was shot to death over nationwide television today as they were transferring him to the county jail. The secrets of the assassination probably went to the grave with him. The murderer is being held in custody. No one could have foretold correctly the events of this weekend one week. It still feels impossible, as though it couldn’t really be happening.

Today the President’s body lies in state and mourners pass by. I had wanted to go to Washington so badly, but my money from the last week of work hasn’t come in yet. Yesterday, Kennedy lay in state at the East room of White House. After a moving, beautiful transfer by caisson to the Capitol––shown very poignantly on TV––he was placed in the rotunda for the nation to view. TV has suspended all commercial announcements and entertainment programs and have been giving minute by minute, hour by hour coverage since the news that the shot was fired on Saturday.

Once again I was in Dayton. Joan told me something today that made me understand her so much better. She and I can talk and be frank with one another. When she seemed to shy away from my kisses I told her that she was going to have to delve into her subconscious to find out she had a ‘kissing complex’. Her letter to me was delivered a few day’s ago. She had mentioned a date that she had had a week before she met me. She was with a boy who wanted to touch her before she had been able to know or like him. After our first kisses she said that she was trying to make up her mind whether or not her image of me had been broken down. She (in the letter) had referred to that part in my short story, “The Fantasy of Fowler’s Hill”, where I wrote: “I thought about the movie I had seen the night before, a tale of simpler days… when romance bloomed slowly and a simple kiss was almost a proposal. Sometimes I would long to go back in those days.”

I knew something was bothering her. She wanted to let herself go and enjoy herself, but could not for some reason. She is a very shy, quiet sort of person, very unusual for a very attractive girl. And then the answer came. She told me that when she was young her uncle had taken advantage of her, and that this had gone on for years. Finally, possibly in her early teens, she realized what was happening, and now the heartbreak and the remembrance of him is with her whenever she is around men. 

I can really feel for her plight, I can really understand her feelings when we kiss. After she told me as much as she wished to tell at the time she relaxed and we kissed again while she responded more warmly. She is a lonely person. If it be in my power to ease that loneliness… so be it.

Monday – Nov. 25, 1963

 Now he belongs to the earth.

Business is stopped. The nation mourned and watched the funeral. I watched with full attention at Sheri’s house until the actual funeral ceremonies were being performed in the cathedral. The Catholic ritual with it’s mumbo jumbo of Latin and changing of vestments was too much for my anti-ritualistic soul to bear. 

I took the girls and Mo back to Columbus where we stopped while I went in to see our agent, Howdy Gorman. I gave him one of the tapes we made and he’s going to talk with some record companies during the week. Maybe something will come of it, maybe nothing. 

We took a country drive and then I took the girls back to the campus. The folks want to go to Nashville to visit my great Aunt over the Thanksgiving holidays. Joan has invited me to supper Saturday night at her home in Cincinnati. I probably will go with the folks, although I would like to see Joan’s family. I think that they must be pretty well-to-do, as her father is a construction engineer and travels extensively in Latin and South America. Her mother teaches Home Economics in a Cincinnati High School.

FROM WHENCE COMETH THE SONG: 1963

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Wednesday – Sept. 11, 1963 

Two weeks ago I bought some new tires for my car. The old tires were worn so smooth that the cord was showing, yet and I had not had the first flat. The garage man at Firestone said that if he’d have tried to drive on those tires he would have never made it home. But somehow I had been driving just like normal and I was only a hair away from a blowout. Two days after I bought the tires, I had two flats, both at once. Nails! 

Today I looked out of the window upon a beautiful September morning––and another flat tire. I pulled on the emergency brake to keep the car from moving and the brake handle popped off. “Damn,” I said. “Not my day, is it?”

I went to the trunk to get the spare and the car began to move. As I stood there pondering the next action, I silently cursed the fates as the car crashed to the ground, the wheel thudding sickly on the hard graveled mud. Though I managed to get the car back up and remove the tire, the only spare was a whitewall with a nail sticking in it, but it was still up and full of air. Back to the jack again, and after three tries I finally got the tire changed.

Monday – Oct. 7,1963 

This weekend my life has been under water with no contact with the outside world. I have basked in laziness, accomplishing little, singing for my own enjoyment, and watching television. I read a few books, rewrote the ending to “The Fantasy of Fowler’s Hill” and Friday I finally started the story that began with Shannon. I hope it turns out to be a spellbinder. 

Over the weekend brother Billy and I went to Columbus to practice with Sheri. We left Saturday afternoon, found Sheri’s dorm, then practiced until suppertime. After practice, Billy and I went out to find Fred. He lives in a fine frat house at the top of a giant hill that falls off steeply into a tree-lined street. Fred went with us to pick up Sheri. He has a gigantic, block-busting guitar that he uses as a prop when he plays. It’s handmade and unique in all the world. We loaded it in the trunk, picked up a drummer and some Congo drums, then headed for the Sacred Mushroom where we did two sets. The first was mediocre, but the second was the best we’ve ever done. The showmanship was fine, the songs were perfect, and the audience appreciated it. Sheri introduced me to a black-eyed, black-haired Spanish girl named Maria Louisa Francisca Cervantes just before we went on for the second set. I was preoccupied thinking about what I was going to use for material and showmanship. I barely spoke, so she left. 

When I tried to find the rest of the trio Sheri gave me a scolding for not being polite. The girl wanted to meet me and I had ignored her. She came back, thank God, and I looked again. What I saw, I liked––saucy, hot-blooded, much the Spanish-American stereotype. West Side Story has solidified the midwesterner’s view of Latin women. I was sure she had a temper like forged steel. I acted in a much more civil way to her than I had earlier. I was free for the night. The girls both had taken a two-o’clock leave. They are entitled to two per month. Any other weekend they must be in by one. 

We got them in at the appointed hour, then went back to Fred’s frat house and into the music room. About four musicians with guitars and a piano player played until 4:00 A .M., then went all went to bed. At ten, I got up. We ate and at 1:00 we went over to pick up Sheri. She wanted to practice, but I was all practiced out and wanted no part of it. 

We fixed Fred up with named Gloria, then I took Sheri, Billy, Maria, Fred, and Gloria out  for a ride. We went to downtown Columbus where Maria had to return a key to an apartment to a fellow. “Hmmmm.” I thought.

We picked up some beer and went out to find a place in the country. We ended up in a quarry along a railroad track with woods on both sides. We sat on the rails while Maria sketched Sheri’s face, drank the beer and walked along the tracks. It was a pleasant, but not a very eventful afternoon. At least. I am learning to fumble my way around Columbus.

Monday – Oct. 15, 1963 

Brother Billy got a part in the Junior Class school play last week––the male lead––and lost it today. The director dismissed him. Billy said it was because he was sick Friday and missed play practice. I rather doubt it. The play director is his English teacher. He got two letters saying that he was failing both English and Algebra II. If she knew he was failing, why would she give him the part in the first place? 

We practiced with Sheri over the weekend. Billy and Dad got into fight and Billy called Dad and I trash. He was forbidden to go to Dayton to practice, so I had to bring Sheri down here. She added a bass player in Columbus. 

I went to Dayton to drop off’ the matte of the group for paper publication. The big hoot is Saturday at Wayne High School, while I was on Dayton I decided to look up Shannon. Last week her story, which has been playing in my mind for some time, finally took shape and became “Yellow is the Color of’ Love” or “The Yellow Balloon”. I think it is good, but also very weird. I thought it only fitting that she should read it. I went out to her old house and asked the neighbors where they had moved. A blonde woman across the street on Timberline gave me the forwarding address. Shannon was there with her mother. I talked with her and took her to the grocery store. Here’s what happened. She had an argument with her father and took another overdose of sleeping pills. The ambulance could not find their house for forty minutes. By this time her lungs had collapsed and she was nearly dead. They rushed her to the hospital where she lay on the brink of death for several days. It was also a psychiatric ward. When she recovered, she still had after-effects like a kidney ailment and heart spasms. They said that the only way they would release her was that she must get married. That sounded quite phony to me, but she said that was so. It was sort of a straight-jacket marriage instead of a shotgun wedding, as usual. So, she married Tom, the guy from Oregon. He’s working at NCR and they’re moving from place to place. I sent the story in the mail today with a cover-letter telling her about the character and how she inspired it. Anyhow, I’m happy that I know her situation, but very unhappy to see it. She’s a good kid and really deserves much more than that, but doesn’t know how to harvest love and happiness. 

THE YELLOW BALLOON


Wednesday – Oct 23,1963 

Friday was Mother’s birthday. I got her a pair of fleece lined slippers and they went down to the Stein’s Saturday afternoon for dinner. We had another concert Saturday night––one that brought $200. We had practiced all day. We spent the night over in Dayton and practiced Sunday. Billy and I are working out intricate guitar accompaniments and our harmony is getting very good. We have improved vastly and the hope that we will go big time does not seem so vast and unreachable now. 

Today Shannon mailed back my story. The morning is generally a happy time for me. I wait in bed until I’m sure the mailman has come, then rush out immediately to reap the harvesting from the galvanized box. Today I found my story with the postmark from Dayton. There was no return address, and no name. I knew it was from Shannon. 

I rather hated to open it. I was afraid that she would not like the story and I would find some cutting, harsh comments inside. Instead, the letter read like this: 

“Ken, I’m really quite surprised at your amazing story. So many things are reconstructed with such total perceptiveness. I don’t know whether this was meant be a tribute or a disarmament, so I say––with great caution––well, done. If, by this, you feel you have found me out, as I feel you have––again––well done. I’m older now, Ken, and much wiser than I sometimes appear. I’ve lost the part of me that would do such things as in yesteryear. I am sad, but on the same hand quite relieved of the burden.”

I read the letter over several times. What was she talking about? Finally, it struck me. I had written a bit of fiction into the story. I said that if a yellow balloon walked the aisle of matrimony it walked it by itself. I hinted that the character in the story had not been married but had the baby illegitimately. Unknowingly, I possibly hit upon the truth. That is a part of her burden and her sadness. Her marriage is off to a bad beginning.  I cannot imagine the reason for her suicide attempts. How much more of a story lies behind the part that I know? I should imagine that the story is not yet complete. She had lied about her first marriage. Who can blame her. But one lie leads to another, and to make her stories believable she twisted one lie around the another to protect what reputation she had left. And probably to protect the baby. 

“I too wish you well, my friend,” she wrote. “Your life will be good as the daughter of Thane predicted.”

She doesn’t love her husband. Her baby needs a father. I will probably never see her again, but I know I will remember her forever. 

Oct 1963 – Sunday 

Billy and I went to Columbus Friday (he was off school). Sheri was just getting ready to go back home to Dayton. I thought we’d probably be spending the night in Columbus, but instead we headed for Dayton. In the afternoon I had run out to the TV station and set up an audition. Sheri seemed to be in a better mood this week, or perhaps it was me. Maybe I’ve finally come to the realization that she’s indispensable to the outfit and I’m trying to get along a little better. We went to the Lemon Tree and did a terrible set. It was absolutely a stinker. We had not practiced for a week and it showed up in the performance.

Joe D., Mike, Sheri, Bill and I went down to Charlie’s where the Osborne Brothers play often play, but they had a rock and roll band that night and five drunk girls running around with provocatively sexual glances and actions. “C’mon in, we’re gonna have a party,” the one blonde had said just before we entered. She showed us in and made certain that we had a seat, then danced around, twisting her pelvis, shimmering to the pulsating wham of the rotten music. A couple of girls got up on the stage to sing with the lead singer. They fingered his guitar and shook their hips at him. I thought it was hilarious. 

Saturday we practiced all day, worked out several new songs and listened to ourselves on the tape recorder. For the first time we are beginning to sound well on tape. Everything is coming out so much better. Actually, the three of us had a ball just being together over the weekend. We talked of our future and the sound we are putting out, joked, and laughed continually. We are going to New York by next summer, we hope. That’s not a definite hope, but if everything goes right, maybe we can make it. I am putting my future at stake. 

Saturday night before coming home, we went to the Art Institute and walked around the shaded lawns looking out over the city. We descended the spiral steps to the river and walked along the banks, talking and feeling good. I drove them around the city looking for the finer views, content with just watching the lights and the people, drinking the atmosphere of happiness that can quickly be lost in the turmoil of living. We feel we are living fast, but we are enjoying it. I have a feeling that things will move much faster. The main message is that we must not forget that we must enjoy life and take the time out to have a little fun. 

I thought that Shannon was out of my life. Perhaps she is, but that haunting damn girl isn’t out of my memories. I dreamed of her last night, just as I used to dream of Russene and ached with the feeling that she was gone, like I dreamed of Shirley that one night in Cleveland and awoke wanting her so badly. I remember the dreams because the wanting is so hard afterwards, and it seems as though I never dream of a girl with such intensity until it is too late for us. 

In the dream, Shannon was still married and lived in Greenville. I remember that she lived behind a row of buildings without faces that stretched endlessly toward the horizon. They smelled like an ancient, musty arcade. I entered from down a back road at first. Soon I came to a place that I’d never seen before and never knew existed around Greenville. It was dusty. There was a little lake with some not-too-shady-trees and a row of little white cottages where Shannon and her husband lived. 

She was sitting on a white bench in her swimming suit next to the lake. I got out of the car and walked over to her. She was sad and confided her loneliness to me. It was a long dream. I remember waking and thinking that it was practically a story complete in itself, but the details have now escaped me. Somehow we loved one another, not physically, just spiritually. I remember her driving away in her little red Volvo and I returned from the front.

 I entered the wrong door in the faceless building. The lettering on the front said, “The Explorer’s Club”. Inside, the arcade was colored with a strange orange light and there were little rooms full hunting debris and trophies. The smell of cigars and liquor were warm in my nostrils. In one of the unseen rooms in the forbidden interior, men laughed and the sounds of that laughing were strange, like the laugh of a lost old man who once a day finds a little happiness at a card game in the local pool hall. The entire place had the atmosphere of an old-time pool hall. 

I remember passing one little room where the door was open. A toilet with rough-hewn wooden urinals were standing in a row like tree trunks. Then, I went back outside and entered the next door where Shannon’s little corner of paradise laid before me in a blurry vision. I don’t know what happened to her husband. She and I lived together there by the lake. I thought it best that she not be strained now restrained. She had to make her happiness. I did my best to make her life pleasant, restore her peace, and dispel those sorrows that she carried in her life. It was a dream, but somehow I awoke wanting the dream to be truth. I was almost ready to run to Dayton, find her and whisk her away. But it was just a dream. She really might be happy by now, but I doubt it. Life with her would be like laying on a bed of nails. It would sap my strength. That would be hard for me to take, but subconsciously I wanted to help her like I’ve haver wanted to help another. 

Then I woke up.

Speaking of dreams… twice now I’ve dreamed about the trio. No, three times, and all were sex dreams. Sheri, to me, is not femme fatale that some of the other girls are. In fact, she is almost sexless to me. I admit she has her charms, but somehow, I don’t see her as a sexual stimulus. Yet that is the way it popped up in my dreams. Once I dreamed that she was running around naked at a party. Another time I dreamed of Billy, she and I driving along the streets, bare from the waist down. A few nights ago the dream took on story form, but now again the details and continuity are forgotten. It’s surprising how many of my dreams are truly short stories and absolutely complete (though usually with several flaws). I dreamed that Sheri, Billy and I were living together. I don’t know whether we were spending the night at her house or we had an apartment of our own, but it was decided that to save on expanses and to bring compatibility to the trio, Sheri would double as mistress for both Billy and I. The first night together was a night of wonder. After the night was over and day had broken over the city, a little box lay on a footstool for Billy. It was a reward for losing his virginity, much like pennies under the pillow from the good fairy for losing your first tooth.

Sheri’s father came in and picked up the box. I had not looked at it and ‘I remained hidden behind the couch because the box was blue and white and looked similar to a prophylactic box that is  on the market. (I worked at a drug store and even remember the brand name, as I sold them often enough.) Her father opened the box and a slew of gum balls rolled out on the floor. It was queer. 

I laughed and remember thinking, “What sort of an oaf is that stupid fairy, leaving gum balls for losing your virginity?” 

The dream ended. Now it seems almost funny as I remember it. It really wasn’t sexy at all, more like a delicately made movie

SEEKING

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment 
SHORT VERSES BY KENNETH HARPER FINTON

Silent Seeds

When hurt is a blanket of ice
smothering molten flames,
and the holy fire within
turns ashen dreams,
the silent seeds remain 
where miracles are born,
awaiting but new rains
for love to bloom again.

Not Every Love

Not every thought I think  is pure.
Not every move I make is sure.
Not every song I write can flow.
Not every love I make can grow.


Napkin Verse

How many poems in how many stops
have been written on napkins in coffee shops.
While others make lists of the things they must do
I sip on my coffee and write like a fool.

Cosmic Love

Does cosmic love seek concrete
 form in human lovers?
Is this why some feel dead
without another?


Society

Do you know what society is?
It is a cloudy mirror
where one views oneself
in different forms.

Yesterday   

Yesterday was lonely and tomorrow’s never won
We wake to find the present is all that ever comes.
Yesterday’s decisions made the path we take today, but  yesterday is oh so far, two billion miles away

Wings of Wax

I soared so high on wings of wax,
but not gone high enough to crash.
It’s time for me to make new plans
so flying can be safe again.

Where Magic Grows

Where magic grows, love goes.
Where laughter spills, love will. 
Where happy dwells, all’s well.

I Need Her

I need her much as she needs me,
I need her touch,  her company.
I need her laughter in the night.
I need her love, I need her light

Daffodils

I lost my  money, spun my wheels,
I wandered lonely city fields.
Although I looked with eyes of steel,
I did not find my daffodils.

Electronic Love

Love is orbiting freely around those 
illumined souls that light one’s path


Happiness is Something Shared

Happiness is something shared.
When all alone, it’s thin as air.
Peace of mind one finds alone,
but happiness takes more to grow.

The Nip

There’s magic in this bottle.
I think I’ll take a nip
and pause between my many cares
as through this life I slip.

To Face the Past

Is there some point in turning back 
to places where we left our tracks?
To face the past’s a tender thing,
for now is now and all has changed.

So Few Good Songs

So few good songs for hundreds writ,
so few good hours in thousands lived,
so few good films in thousands shot,
so few good loves that life has brought.

Three Miles Up

My craziness is over now.
I’ve stuck my head 
above the clouds 
and seen the sun 
shine steady streams,
while down below 
it can’t be seen.

Below the brown pollution haze,
my mind looks for a better day.
Sometimes is seems so far away,
but three miles up 
is a sunny day.

Patience

We who seem forever intertwined
should not demand so much so quick from time.
Events of years seem but a single day
when looking at the bones of yesterday.

Too Many Troubles

The space was right, the time was wrong.
Too many troubles stilled the song.
The face was right, the love was too.
So what’s a man supposed to do?
The space was right, the time was wrong.
Too many troubles stilled the song.

I Am the Wind

I am the wind, 
I am the rain,
I am a storm upon the plain.
My thoughts blow wild,
emotions pour. 

I rain in sheets on sandy shores
I’m different from those I meet
as mountain stone from smooth concrete.
Though I have need for love about, 
a stranger’s smile can bring me  out.

Families

Families grow together and apart.
It’s less to do with feelings of the heart
than it’s to do with processes  of growth.
We learn in time that it’s a bit of both.


Sand Castles

It’s hard for time 
to let things stand 
like castles built 
upon the sands.

Worthwhile things
are never  gained
with easy steps
or without pain.

Remembering

Remembering’s  a sad sweet thing 
we do when changes flood our ways.
Sometimes it’s best to face the fact 
those sunny days will not be back.

Necklaces

Aha!  I feel so fine.
I speak short words
all wound 
on beads of light.


Slavery

I’ll never own a living being
as long as I have breath to breathe!
I’ll never pain myself again
by holding love when it must end.

Beaten Paths

Beaten paths for beaten men
who’ve lost the will and way to win.
Only ash for those pipe dreams
that never find the will to be.

Lovers

Nothing may
and nothing can
replace the woman
and the man
who find each other
in the night
and write their names
on heaven’s light.


The Sound of Mute Earth Singing

I dream her drenched in burgundy,
tasting on my tongue.
Her naked nipples fire me warm 
with hard desire while ancient ears 
within me resurrect
the sound of mute earth singing.


Rainbows

You can’t see a rainbow
from a different point of view.
You can’t see a rainbow
‘til it’s all lined up for you.

You know it’s up there somewhere,
but it’s also in your eye.
You can’t see a rainbow
if you won’t even try.


Dream Lover

Your nights should lie beside me,
your days should be alive,
our lives should intermingle
like the sand washed by the tide.

My will is but to find you,
my heart seeks out your name.
In all forever, lover,
it will ever be the same.

Another Day

Another day has come and gone.
Tomorrow brings another dawn.
I bed alone again tonight.
Perhaps tomorrow will be bright.


How Does Love Start?

How does love start?
Butterflies and swelling of the heart.
That’s how love starts.

How does love grow?
Step by step along a bumpy road.
That’s how love grows.

Dull Habits

I know no one who wants to be
fat or bored, or ill at ease.
Our little faults can multiply
and kill us while we’re still alive.

Dull habit patterns cause us pain,
They  kill is in slow, steady ways.
Dull habits are so hard to change.
They seem so comfortable and tame.