Bridge Views: Grounded in 1980

Just one day into my summer vacation in June of 1980, my parents grounded me for the entire summer. The entire summer. To block out the harsh terms of their sentence as they delivered it, I focused on the voices coming from the television set. Channel 11’s Action News Team, Bill Jorgensen and Pat Harper, were nonchalantly bantering clearly unaware of the breaking news that was occurring in my living room on Fifth Street in Fort Lee.  

In retrospect, leading your friends past your house while one of them (Wally, are you reading this?) is swinging a six-pack of Michelob Light in each hand and E.L.O.’s Greatest Hits is blasting from a boom box was probably a really boneheaded thing to do. 

Life for a teenager was radically different in 1980. The legal drinking age was 18, and I was just a few months shy of it. 36 months shy, but blame it on the times. Nancy Reagan had yet to spark her “Just Say No” campaign. The world of 1980 was a post-Woodstock, post-Vietnam, pre-Orwellian 1984, pre-Betty Ford Clinic, pre-DNA testing, “Just Say Yes” to everything Bacchanalian world. 

1980 was also the year that Holy Trinity briefly experimented with a Friday night teen mass to keep us from roaming the streets and getting into trouble. We all went because Father Donald (albeit unknowingly) filled the chalice with wine and encouraged all of us to drink from it as we stood in a circle around him on the altar. There we were, chaperone-less, as the golden chalice of wine was passed hand-to-eager-hand and liberally refilled by the altar boys because Father Donald could never quite remember where the circle began or ended. It became a kind Holy Happy Hour for teens. 

My parents granted one stipulation to my sentence that would ultimately change the course of my life. I was eligible for work-release and, when not working, I had full privileges at the . 

The next morning, I wasted no time. I scoured Main Street and by noon I had secured three jobs. Since work and the library were the gateway to my entrance into the outside world I was determined to work as close to 24 hours as I could. I would spend down time between jobs at the library. Funny, I never once considered disobeying my parent’s rules. The fact that there was no DYFUS back then gave fear a face. My face. Every physical threat had a perceptible follow-through attached to it like a pin on a live grenade. 

The Fort Lee Library became my home away from home that summer. Often I would troll the ordered rows of shelved books as the muted voices of Madonna boys pitching coins against the wall in the library’s alley floated in through the half-open windows. More than occasionally I would pause to inhale the musty mélange of glue, leather and the indelible scent of the passage of time. One day, as I was getting high on book dust and running my fingers over the spine of cellophane-covered books, the compositioned floral undertones of Chanel No. 5 abruptly assaulted my moment. Walking towards me was the blond-coutured Reference Librarian pointedly inquiring what I was looking for. 

“My old life,” I replied, then added, “I’m going to spend my summer at the library writing stories. I’m going to be a great writer someday when I leave this town.”

She let her designer bifocals descend down the bridge of her nose before replying, “If you want to be a great writer you must first be a great reader. Follow me. Take notes.” 

She handed me her pad of yellow-lined paper and a perfectly pointed number two pencil and guided me on a literary tour up and down almost every aisle in the library. 

“If you want to learn point-of-view, read Henry James; if you want to learn irony, read Jane Austen; if you want to learn what Hell smells like, read John Milton; if you want to understand the importance of using punctuation, read Virginia Woolf—she wouldn’t know a period if it got up and introduced itself to her; if you want to live among the wealthy in old Manhattan, read Edith Wharton; if you want to learn how timeless the problems we mortals encounter are read Shakespeare; if you want adventure, read The Odyssey; if you want to write history, read history. The New York Times Book Review will make you a master of all subjects; The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly magazines will teach you the craft of writing; and mastering the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle will give you a near perfect SAT score."

“What if I want to learn about sex?” I queried in an effort to crack her composure.

“Start with Moby Dick,” she offered without effect.

“Call me Ishmael,” I replied.  

And so began the real education of me in the middle of the stacks of the Fort Lee Public Library in the summer of 1980.