Clubius Incarnate

Chapter 27 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, Mom and dad go out for the evening to play Bridge, and interesting game played with that “deck” of cards. So Margie comes over to babysit and I get a chance to ask her some questi...

Chapter 26 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, dad has a bad day after having a “fight” with mom about grapefruit juice. But at bedtime he still sings the usual three songs to my brother and I, tonight including “The Whiffenpo...

Chapter 25 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, after that bad day at the “nursery school”, mom and dad pony up the precious funds to send me to Towsley Play School, and it works out much better for me. The place is bigger, the...

Chapter 24 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, it’s my first day in this strange new place called “nursery school”, where my mom hopes I will have a good time playing with the other kids and can prepare for starting kindergart...

Chapter 23 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, I am impatient and get mad at my mom for not tying my shoe laces, and use a swear word in my frustration. Then my dad “swats” me on my bottom, and I try to process the fact that h...

Chapter 22 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, my mom decides I’m old enough to run free in the park across the street from our house, as long as she is sitting in the middle of the park and can see me off in the distance, the...

Chapter 21 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, relieved it’s not a rainy day, we celebrate my 4th birthday in Almendinger Park. Some of my mom’s behavior towards me is beginning to push my buttons. But I have a great day prete...

Chapter 20 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, that magical first day of spring that feels different after a long winter. I feel it, and it energizes me, and my family. I am drawn to the backyard and that special spruce tree a...

Chapter 19 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, I'm hanging out with other neighborhood kids at my best friend Molly’s 4th birthday party, in her parents’ split level house with all the kids round the table in the dining room a...

Chapter 18 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. In this chapter, my recollections of the party on Christmas eve with my grandma and grandpa putting on a bit of a show and my dad lending his voice (he always loved to sing). Then Christmas mornin...

Chapter 17 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. I am reintroduced to my grandparents, my “Aunt Pat”, and their very interesting house on Westwood Court in Binghamton New York.  

Chapter 16 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. My mom and dad take me and my baby brother on an overnight train to visit my grandparents in Binghamton New York, which is my first time ever riding on a train, and doubly exciting because we have...

Chapter 15 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. I discover a show on television that I really like to watch and my mom teaches me how to tell time well enough to figure out when it is on every morning.  The show includes my favorite cartoon tha...

Chapter 14 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. On a fall day, I am invited to go with Molly and her parents to the Dexter Cider Mill for wonderful cider and donuts and Molly and I do our imagination play in the car and in the middle of the str...

Chapter 13 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. My dad reads to me every night before bed, and draws from a number of adventure stories featuring adventuresome boys like Treasure Island, and more recently our just finished Tom Sawyer.  This bri...

Chapter 12 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960.  My dad manages to get a small used black and white television, and a new form of electronic media, called by some the “boob tube”, enters our household.

Chapter 11 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. My mom and dad take me to a grownup party across the street at Molly’s house one evening, and in that milieu I see my mom in action, mixing it up with a couple of the male friends of my dad’s. Als...

Chapter 10 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. That baby my mom and dad kept talking about finally came out of my mom somehow, but I balk at going to the hospital and instead play at Molly’s house awaiting this event that is way beyond my comp...

Chapter 9 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. At Molly’s suggestion we hide in the spruce tree in our backyard where we can see out but nobody can see us. It seems like the perfect secret hiding place for us away from all the crazy world of th...

Chapter 8 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. I join my dad who drives our car on the roads of Ann Arbor to the gravel pit, where he fills two trash cans with dirt for my dirt pile in our backyard.  On the way I learn about traffic lights and...

Chapter 7 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. A baseball game on the radio down in the basement between the Detroit Tigers and the New York Yankees draws my mom and dad into conversation about loyalties and what they do and do not have in comm...

Chapter 6 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960.  Molly and I return from our tricycle adventure with dad and the big storm at the stadium to her very complicated house to have cocoa with her mom and my dad. Becoming bored with the adult conversa...

Chapter 5 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. Dad takes Molly and me on an adventure on our tricycles to the Michigan Stadium, where we have to shelter from a fast moving thunderstorm.

Chapter 4 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960. Mom is relieved that it isn't going to rain so we can have my party in the park.  Molly and I have new experiences on the merry-go-round.  And finally I open my presents and figure out the mystery...

Chapter 3 of my autobiographical novel based on my life from age 3 to age 5, beginning just prior to my 3rd birthday in 1958 and continuing to just before going to elementary school in the fall of 1960.  Later that rainy day, I do another version of my pirate and goodguy story in the larger pretend geography of the basement, and dad tells me more about what he did in the war.