When We Were the Kennedy's by Monica Wood

In there after Christmas sale Amazon featured this book for a minimal price for the Kindle version. After not a little debate noting the author being from Maine I made the purchase and have to agree that this is a pleasant little story.

Subtitled " A Memoir of Mexico Maine " Wood tells us the story of her childhood and how it all changed around the dividing line of 1963. History tells us that 1963 was a dividing line for almost all Americans but while America was riven by the death of their President Wood's childhood, she was nine in 1963, is torn open in the spring of that year when her father drops dead on his way to work.

We never really get to know Wood's father except in her reminisces and after the fact learned memories of her father's smiling good nature, about his happiness with his lot in life and his love of his former home of Prince Edward Island. Getting up and going to work each day lunch-pail in hand he is a model of a memory that many people my age can certainly relate too. My father too was a simple man with a large family that never complained. He was the salt of the earth, not perfect, but a man with responsibilities he welcomed and honored. This is what we feel about the author's father.

Still to be a widow in 1963 with three young daughters, one of them disabled enough that she will never get past the second grade is no easy thing and young Monica's mother is devastated. Over the course of the next year Monica's mother will struggle, slowly gaining strength and finding a special kind of solace with the kinship she feels with the President's widow just six months earlier.

Longing for father figures her Uncle, her Mother's younger brother provides one until he is stricken with a alcohol induced nervous breakdown. Stronger in that stressful time for her is the father of her best friend. Mr. Vaillencourt worked at the mill with her father and when he takes his daughters and includes Monica in the line " vanilla's for my three girls" she feels both what she has been missing and did not know she needed. The author mentions how nice this whole family was to her but realizes from today that she, as a small fatherless girl simply broke her friend's fathers heart.

Mexico, Maine is dominated by The Oxford. A paper mill that in the early sixties was producing magazine print that dominated the market. It was a time where both labor and the management felt good about what they had. It would soon end. My sister's husband grew up in a neighbor town, his father and family members worked at that same mill. It is an experience many in Maine and many across towns in this country can understand how a mill or a business that dominates a town can feel like the living breathing heart of a town.

Little did young Monica know that this was the high point in her town. As the mill over the next fifty years went through owner after owner, downsizing all the while the towns along the Androscoggin shrunk with every census. It is the story of Maine, and of all the manufacturing cities of the Northeast and Middle West.

The book is good, it is not however great. Certainly for me, growing up in the same general area it is more relatable but I think it could hit a note of recognition for a large group of people.

Wood's writing is a bit clunky at times, it is not revealed as much in a memoir like this and indeed some of her phrase turning is like listening to my own uncles and aunts from my youth. That is the joy of the book. Still I suspect that her actual fiction which is definitely more along the lines of female authors we all know would not be in my interest group.

Still even as a time and place document only this book, outside of the story, has real value. Worth the read but your own life experience might determine how much you enjoy this book.

A Walton Family Thanksgiving

In the first half of the nineties CBS returned to Waltons mountain for a Series of television movies. The Waltons, of course, had been a staple of the networks lineup in the seventies and the timing of nostalgia made the movies a good bet to garner a dependable audience.

The first movie in that series was A Walton Family Thanksgiving centering on the family as they gathered together for the holiday in 1963. As any history buff knows this year also coincided with the Kennedy assassination which allows the series, while catching us up with the family members, to show their reactions to the events of that fateful time.

One thing must be said, most child stars do not become great actors and actresses. The young people who played the children on The Waltons certainly are of that group. It would seem that a good portion of them have done no acting whatsoever, not a bad thing, they have moved on and lived there lives, it does however mean that the acting in this sort of a reunion show will be stilted.

Everyone that is remembered from the series makes an appearance. Ike and Corabeth, their daughter Amy, Verdi the black person on Walton's mountain, even Yancy Tucker. With the exception of the departed Will Geer the whole cast returns.

One has to put away the calculator to make this work. The characters of the show, primarily the children, are played younger than they would be in a direct timeline from the original show. At one point even John thinking of Grandpa says to himself Pa, you have been gone 15 years and it seems like just yesterday. Actually on a strict timeline Zeb has gone been gone about twenty years.

Watching Ben try to cry about baby Virginia (somehow she died) or Jim Bob show sadness after a rebuke from Mary Ellen, it is clear that great acting will not be on this show.

Still Ralph Waite is extremely likable and I cannot tell you how much seeing the very old Ellen Corby ( she reminds me of my Mother who died at 88 a couple of years ago) and the show just works.

When we were young it was the family we as kids made fun of while we secretly wanted to be a part of. I grew up a country kid and I could understand a bit of the life these people led and knew that it was a blessed existence if only a life that was lived on a television screen.

As the episode ends and all the family troubles that the children have been struggling with are resolved , as John Kennedy has been laid to rest, as John Boy sits out front with his lady friend and they all say goodnight like they have on every episode one thing becomes clear. For this person, me, this sometimes sarcastic, usually cynical ( though I try not to be as much) person one thing is clear. I still would like to be part of that family. That is why bad acting will make not a hoot of difference to anybody who grew up with this show.

It is a chance to revisit not only our own childhood but for many of us a childhood we dreamed about whilst in it. How many chances do you get to do that in your mid forties.

The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H White

This book has long been considered one of the seminal writings on American politics. Theodore White documented the 1960 campaigns of Nixon and Kennedy as well as their challengers for their respective parties nominations.

White, who I have been reading about in the David Halberstam book The Powers That Be, began as a journalist in with Time magazine under Henry Luce. His writing and book on China made him famous.

This book started a new chapter in his life. Later he wrote similar books about the 64, 68, and 1972 elections.

Perhaps it is because I have read several books on Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and the major players in the 1960 election. I am not sure why. This book, however, is just not that good. Maybe the more modern political writing is just better or more my style but as much as I wanted to like this, as much as I wanted to be reverant to something that has been spoken of as some of the best political writing ever, I cannot. This book is just not very good.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Stayed up way too late last night reading the last two hundred pages of this latest King doorstop. At eight hundred pages plus this book will be an investment of your time. Overall however the payoff is there.

In this book we meet Jake Epping a high school Science teacher recently divorced. Being newly single he dines often at a diner called Al's and enjoys the house special..a fatburger. As school lets out for the yer he gets a call from Al asking him to come by. When he arrives at the resteraunt he finds Al looking haggard and ill.

It comes to pass that Al has found a time portal. It takes him back to 1958 each time he goes. Having seen him the night before Epping is surprised to see him 30 pounds lighter, a whole lot grayer and looking close to death. In the time portal no matter how long your gone it is only two minutes on this side.

Al had been gone for five years trying to change history. Jake as they talk soon realizes what history he was trying to change five years from 1958 and refuses to consider fulfilling this mission.

As the book has over 750 pages left we know that Jake does. Stopping to fix a couple of local tragedies he is aware of on the way Jake them begins his movements to Dallas.

This is a very good book. A page turner. King has always been clunky when writing about love and Epping, called George Amberson in 1960 when he makes his way to the small town of Jodie, Texas develops a love interest. It is good for the story but not good for us to have to read King's references to lovemaking. Ewww.

Still a great book. Oswald, Kennedy and Epping/Amberson have a date with history or as it turns out several alternative dates. Which one will be the final outcome holds sway over all our futures.