Six Week Florida BICYCLE TRIP to Return to Astoria, NY and write Hammer Cycle.

3/12/2023 - Letters Section (Print Edition) March 12, 2023, The New York Times Book Review

Backward Calendar of all things.

 

    

I'd spent seven 

months in Astoria on a plan to motel and camp Central Florida. To think by myself and read. I ended up with a a Children of the Arbat by Anatoly Rybakov. 

Children of the Arbat (Russian: Дети Арбата) is a novel by Anatoly Rybakov that recounts the era in the Soviet Union of the build-up to the Congress of the Victors, the early years of the second Five Year Plan and the (supposed) circumstances of the murder of Sergey Kirov prior to the beginning of the Great Purge.

    From a Eustis used bookstore. Then walked into the town library and discovered the McDonald's Picture Exhibition looming on the back wall. What stands out now is the date 1888, that the Elder McDonald spent the selling the town's idea in New York. My mother had told me my father wanted there among other things because he'd heard a man's presentation in New York. My father was 11 in 1888 and brother Uncle Kenneth, JK, 15. Did they both go to New York for a visit then? Or made up for their historical oriented son's, me mind? 

    Later from their Oak Park, Chicago, Illinois home by way of Cornell University, my uncle made his way to New York by 1898 and my father couple years later after a mechanic in a bike shop and mostly walk and ride fro  Chicago to New York. Whew. And I almost made living playing in the Manhattan streets. What a legacy. Topped by my mother Janet's sternly asked promise that I never just sit on any laurel. ... 

What I came from Eustis to New York to make sure to do.

And a McDonald and I and Co-Most Valuable Swimmer appeared in a play   TAKE THIS CUP in 1974. Written by Anna Lee Heard Johnson 🙏💝🙏 While in high school at the First Methodist Church of Sanford, Florida.