Alan Sivell's A Boomer Life
by Alan R Sivell
I’m one of 74,000,000 Baby Boomers. I am writing my life story (on my blog) and narrating it (here) because if I don’t, the only earthly notice of my middle-class, middle-American existence might be a feature story in a nursing home’s newsletter when I reach 110: “Last Surviving Woodstock Attendee: ‘It was a hot, muddy mess.’”
Episodes
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Chapter 38: Going Out on a High Note
Senior year, I made the Dean’s list. I finally became the student my parents and teachers had been telling me I should have been all along. I was loaded up on English and history classes to finish my major and minor and those classes required my two strengths: […]
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Chapter 37: Bruce and Linda
Hampden-Sydney had a great track record of booking musical acts before they burst onto the national scene. One year, the then little-known John Denver played at homecoming. Shortly after, he became the well-known John Denver. The previously well-known Chuck Berry who had large catalog of hits in...
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Chapter 36: The Ezra Show
As a kid, I dreamed of getting a magic lantern and rubbing it to awaken the genie who could grant my wishes. Not surprisingly, I never got that magic lantern. But when I was 10, I got a magic box. It didn’t come cheap. It cost $10. I […]
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Chapter 35: I Make the Team
Extracurricular activities had been my thing in high school. Hub of the action, the yearbook proclaimed. I had expected that would be the case in college, too. But, at Northeastern, it didn’t work out that way. There were no sports, clubs or organizations for me. Early on freshman […]
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Chapter 34: Road Tripping
I was going to turn over a new leaf at my new school. Study first, then socialize. But I couldn’t help myself. During my first semester at Hampden-Sydney, that old leaf stayed put. I had never heard the term “road trip” before I moved south. I had grown […]
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Chapter 33: Socializing Before Studying … Again
When school started, the fraternities started their pledge drives. All the frat houses were open every night after dinner and you could go by and meet the brothers. I had done this at Northeastern, pretending to be someone else. This time I went as myself. Harv and I […]
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Chapter 32: Southern Man
The city of Boston was so vibrant, its pulse seemed to beckon me every time I stepped outside. That was a problem. I prioritized exploring the city more than exploring my studies. I went to my classes, yes, but rather than going to the library afterwards, I went […]
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Chapter 29: A Forgettable Fall
My education for sophomore year had started earlier that summer. That’s because Northeastern only offered dorms for first year men and then they were unleashed on the city to find their own room and board. I had spent just nine short months removed from the safety and security […]
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Chapter 31: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Irving Kravsow wasn’t wrong in his assessment of my skills at that time. It was the seeming finality of his words that made the message so cutting. I was a 19-year-old with one semester of journalism classes under my belt. He was used to dealing with seasoned, adult […]
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Chapter 28: Working for the Man (And I am the Man)
At the end of April and during the first two weeks of May, 1970, my life felt like the crescendo at the end of the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life” when there is this crazy whirl of noise and music that spirals up in energy, pace […]
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Chapter 30: The Nightmare of the Dream Job
I drove down Farmington Avenue shaking with excitement and nervousness. I was heading to an interview for a paid, three-month co-op job at the Hartford Courant. The only thing that could have topped this interview would have been one with the Yankees. I’d been reading the Courant since […]
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Chapter 27: Right to Left
I was a “love it or leave it” kind of guy when I left for college. I was proud to say I was a reactionary. “Better dead than red” I had written on the binder I carried around senior year. It should have contained notes from my classes […]
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Chapter 26: Roommate Troubles
Until college, I had no idea that freedom could be associated in any way with the word school. In high school, the piercing tremolo of the electronic school “bell” controlled our lives. It rang almost two dozen times each day, the first blast signaling it was time to […]
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Chapter 25: Leaving Home
I headed off to college about as unprepared as anyone in the history of heading off to college. When I got my class schedule, I was surprised you didn’t have to stay in school all day like high school. I didn’t realize that your time was your own […]
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Chapter 23: School is Out
Senior year, I lost a fight to a guy on crutches. And it’s worse than it sounds. He wasn’t even standing during the fight. I was. It started because I was in charge of the student lounge, previously an unused, first-floor classroom on the science wing which became […]
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Chapter 22: Who Are You?
The first time I tasted beer was in my grandmother’s kitchen. We were down from Connecticut in her front-to-back row house in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn on Easter Sunday. I was 4. I had mixed emotions about going to my grandmother’s house on holidays. I loved my […]
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Chapter 21: Checking Out More Than Books
It was a seemingly innocent remark. But with it, early in our senior year, our new school president, John Abraham, set in motion one of the hottest social events of the year. John was at his locker, exchanging his books from the previous class for his books for […]
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Chapter 10a: A Note From Bethani
Last summer I wrote the first 17 chapters of my blog. A couple of those chapters dealt with Bethani, my first serious girlfriend. Since I’m plumbing the depths of my memory and I’m doing the writing, the stories are told from my perspective. But over the winter, going […]
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Chapter 20: The Crossroad
Senior year started off going my way. I was recovering socially after the breakups with Bethani and then Annie. I survived the final football camp of my life. I had made the starting team and that meant something: getting presented at the beginning-of-the-year, all-school assembly. We were...
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Chapter 19: I Can See Clearly Now
The coaches could clearly see I was no running back. I had no speed, no athleticism and without glasses, could only see to the end of my arm. I did have talent for gaining weight so I was moved to the offensive line. That was fine with me. […]
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Chapter 18: Suffering Football
The summer of 1968 – after my junior year – had been a good summer. Most of it was spent working at Lincoln Dairy where I got a lot of attention from all the college waitresses who had tried to reform Page, and I had a fine time […]
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Chapter 17: Dating Annie
The exhilarating week of Boys’ State was over. Going head to head with some of the best and the brightest high school students in Connecticut gave me the confidence that I could compete in their world, if I applied myself. And the glamour of dancing with Bethani at […]
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Chapter 16: School Politics … Provides a Path
The relationship crisis with Bethani was resolved and the junior prom was behind us. I was feeling good. It was spring. It was baseball season. Then 3rd quarter report cards came out. Bethani, of course, got all As. I got three Cs, a D and a B in […]
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Chapter 24: The Blonde At Woodstock
(I skipped over a few chapters, a few stories and my entire senior year to publish this chapter during the 50th anniversary week of Woodstock. Chapters 18-23 will appear at a future date.) It was another one of Bob’s schemes. In the early summer of 1969, just after […]
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Chapter 15: Cold … and Calculated
The fact that our high school had a ski club says a lot about the town we grew up in. Not that we were like the nearby prep schools such as Miss Porter’s or Avon Old Farms. They had Kennedys and their ilk for alums and an actual […]
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Chapter 14: Living Isn’t Easy
You’d think there’d be no inheritance from an 18-year-old kid who was an assistant night manager, making barely above minimum wage. However, I knew Page had left something behind. But I wasn’t sure how to break it to my parents. I had figured it out a few months […]
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Chapter 13: The News is Delivered
Most of the time Page was out of it. Mom spent all her time at the hospital but Doom had to work. Having a child hovering between life and death didn’t seem to matter to his bosses at the home office in Minnesota. A few days after I […]
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Chapter 12: Page’s Accident
When my parents got the call, they put everything down and left immediately for a hospital in rural Connecticut. Page and Bobby Higgins, a guy with whom I had played baseball and still stares out at me, frozen at age 14, from an old team photo, had gone […]
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Chapter 11: Summer Doesn’t Last Forever
I got the job at Lincoln Dairy through Page. It paid much more than the paper route so I didn’t mind starting on my 16th birthday. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to give the route up. It had been my identity for four years and […]
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Chapter 10: A First Girlfriend
When I was 15, my life passion switched from baseball to girls. To this day, I don’t know if it was a natural evolution or if it was because my favorite players, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, were limping to the end of their careers and my favorite […]
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Chapter 9: The Real Doom
My father, Doom, had a couple of lines on the back of his neck that made what looked like the letter “X.” There was an indentation where the lines crossed. When we asked about it, he always said, “That’s where I got shot during the war.” Until each […]
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Chapter 8: A Working Man
At first, Doom wasn’t going to pay me anything to mow the lawn. Then he settled on 35 cents. Thus began my life of work at the age of 9. The neighbors paid more: I earned 75 cents from the Herman’s family in the house to the north […]
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Chapter 7: Mom Does it All
After Doom got back from the Pacific, my parents were married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the majestic New York City landmark, on September 28, 1946. Doom was lucky that both my mother AND grandmother said yes. My grandmother thought he seemed like a nice enough young man but […]
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Chapter 6: Stolen Cars and a Stabbing
I had said I wasn’t going to be Page’s bagman ever again. But about a year after the Hard Roll Heist, there was one other escapade that he managed to entangle me in. The two of us were hanging out talking and playing records on the third floor […]
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Chapter 5: The Italian Influence
My mom’s parents came to America on a boat. Not the boat that stopped at Ellis Island, my grandmother was quick to point out. Those were the peasants, she said. Our people paid full fare on their boat and had their own cabins and job prospects when they […]
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Chapter 4: Page Finds Trouble
The first time I heard about the “free” hard rolls, I was in the back yard with a bunch of friends. Doom had put up a monkey swing in the big elm. He tied a thick rope to a branch high up in the tree and at the […]
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Chapter 3: Becoming Doom
Mickey Mantle should have been my dad. Then I could have been hanging around the New York Yankee clubhouse in 1961, the Yankees’ greatest season. At least, that’s what I thought when I was 10. My dad, about age 3. His mother used to enter him in “cute […]
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Chapter 2: Page
I still miss my brother. It’s been so long now – more 50 years – that initially it’s hard to remember anything but the great adventures we shared. He pushed me to do things I was too afraid to do on my own initiative. Without him, I probably […]
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My Neighbor Takes My Picture (Includes Chapter 1)
My neighbor (Stephen Folker of Giraffe Photography) was experimenting with his new camera and grabbed this shot. I’d make it the cover of my latest album … if I could sing. Or if I could play something other than a record player. But what about using it for […]
About this show
I’m one of 74,000,000 Baby Boomers. I am writing my life story (on my blog) and narrating it (here) because if I don’t, the only earthly notice of my middle-class, middle-American existence might be a feature story in a nursing home’s newsletter when I reach 110: “Last Surviving Woodstock Attendee: ‘It was a hot, muddy mess.’”
Hosted by
Alan R Sivell