These are my choices for the Top 20 most interesting posts of 1972. Here are the first 5.
01) Jan 01, 1972 - Happy Friggin' New Year
02) Jan 10, 1972 - Shopping in Rapid City
After "borrowing" my family's car (we owned two), I became a runaway with my equally disgruntled high school friend, Matt Gold. We were aiming for New York but we ended up in Bethlehem, South Dakota, where I had been invited to come for a visit by Father Gilbert Stack who ran the place. This was a popular tourist destination called The Shrine of the Nativity that had been installed in a famous cave. To see more text & photos regarding this historic location, please go to the July 18 entry.
Anyway, we soon learned that the police were hunting for us due to an All Points Bulletin (APB) on the "stolen" car (one of our parents snitched on me), so we were temporarily trapped there until the legal problems could be resolved.
03) Jan 18, 1972 - Letter of explanation to Grandma Dot
LOCATION: Corona, California -- Jan 07, 2014
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| Mom & Dad: Charmian Marie Lyda (Born 1927) & Grady Luther Lyda, Jr. (1927 - 1974) |
01) Jan 01, 1972 - Happy Friggin' New Year
LOCATION: Newport Beach, California
This introduces the Diary which is the first & last time Grady kept a daily journal. He describes events of New Year's Eve 1971 and New Year's Day 1972, mentioning girl troubles, cop problems, and an overall dissatisfaction with life. Normal adolescent angst.
In the following entry for January 02, Grady explains the circumstances of his unnecessary arrest on the morning of New Year's Day. This is a typical 17-year-old moaning about the world's frustrating unfairness. Same as it ever was.
In the following entry for January 02, Grady explains the circumstances of his unnecessary arrest on the morning of New Year's Day. This is a typical 17-year-old moaning about the world's frustrating unfairness. Same as it ever was.
02) Jan 10, 1972 - Shopping in Rapid City
LOCATION: Bethlehem & Rapid City, South Dakota
Anyway, we soon learned that the police were hunting for us due to an All Points Bulletin (APB) on the "stolen" car (one of our parents snitched on me), so we were temporarily trapped there until the legal problems could be resolved.
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| That's me at age 17 shoveling snow in South Dakota |
03) Jan 18, 1972 - Letter of explanation to Grandma Dot
LOCATION: Bethlehem, South Dakota
Here is the letter I wrote to my grandmother telling her why I had escaped from Newport Beach. Later I heard that she cried when she read this. She was well-known to the staff at The Shrine of the Nativity and was a long-time friend of Father Gilbert (born as Garrett Michael Stack in 1913): They both grew up in Kansas City, Missouri.
LOCATION: Newport Beach, California
Grady, an aspiring science-fiction writer, speculates about the future and ponders the mysteries of TIME. "Where will I be on December 31, 1972... [Answer: San Francisco & Soda Springs, California], will everyone I know still be alive? [NO. There will be a death in the family on September 13] ...Where will I be on January 1, 2000?" [At an apartment in Corona, California, with my wife, Celia, and daughter, Elora]
March72Grady makes a series of completely inaccurate predictions, then sets up an impromptu Temporal Experiment designed to visit the near future with April72Grady: "What unimagined events will have transpired between now (Apr. 2), and when I wrote this (March 6)? We shall see." What could we learn from a trip thru time that takes us just one month ahead? Surprisingly, quite a bit... Find out in the entry for April 02 (Easter Sunday) - Tinkering with Time.
This bold experiment in virtual time travel extends even further as we discover in the entry for Sep 22, where we see this note: "Once again I ventured into the future from March 6, 1972, 8:12 P.M. What would I find? Would I be happy or sad?" That page provides the answers.
March72Grady makes a series of completely inaccurate predictions, then sets up an impromptu Temporal Experiment designed to visit the near future with April72Grady: "What unimagined events will have transpired between now (Apr. 2), and when I wrote this (March 6)? We shall see." What could we learn from a trip thru time that takes us just one month ahead? Surprisingly, quite a bit... Find out in the entry for April 02 (Easter Sunday) - Tinkering with Time.
This bold experiment in virtual time travel extends even further as we discover in the entry for Sep 22, where we see this note: "Once again I ventured into the future from March 6, 1972, 8:12 P.M. What would I find? Would I be happy or sad?" That page provides the answers.
You might say this is all just tricks with words on paper. There's no authentic scientific experiment here, it's just semantics. Let's consider the facts: At 7:51pm on Monday, March 6, 1972, a 17-year-old projects his thoughts forward in time to find out where he's going to be at the end of the year, and even at the end of the century. Now he knows. Mission accomplished. Then he invokes his nearby future-self to learn what will happen in less than a month -- and on April 2 he reports back to himself.
Today we have gone beyond any boundaries he'd imagined... 42 years later, he/I is/am connecting with memories of that teenager and filling in the gaps between him/me at 17 and him/me at 59. PLUS, amazingly, in the constantly shifting Present Moment, the entire world has instant access to the results of this exercise. It is a globally shared temporal-spanning experience among all parties concerned, including him, me, you, us, them, and even all the unborn folks who are reading this 42 years from now in the year 2056. We have literally gone Back to the Future, the Past & All Points in between.
Yes, of course it's all in your head: Where else would you perceive the effects of TIME? Okay, let's travel back to the past again...
LOCATION: Newport Beach, California
This is when I risked life-and-limb to explore the great wilderness that existed beyond my humble mobile home park. It took awhile. I got home late and learned that mom had already called the Newport Beach Harbor Patrol to search for my pathetic missing body. This extensive entry spills over into April 15.
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NEXT WEEK: Top 20 Entries from 1972 - Part 2 (6 to 10)
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