Closet HIstorian

I majored in history in college--back in the Dark Ages, the 1950's--but decided, in my senior year (1960-61),that I didn't want to go to graduate school in history: why? Because my primary history professor gave a long, detailed lecture, clearly loving all the details, of how investigators determined where and how the Russian Royals, the Romanovs, were executed--eggshells were key. They had been lured out for a picnic,to be shot, shooting range style, in the basement. I decided, then and there, that I didn't want to go to grad school in History, ergo, I went into the Army, since the draft was rapacious at the time, and I couldn't get a job with my draft status in limbo. My only hope had been to fail the physical, but flat feet no longer disqualified me from the army, and after a faint throbbing of hope, during my physical, my "heart murmur" turned out only to be nerves, and I passed and had to go on to the Army Security Agency, the institution for which I'd been recruited, "if you can cut the mustard," my recruiter Sargent had said. Long story short, I went to Turkey, instead of waiting around for Vietnam, and ended my army career before LBJ ambushed us all, by escalating the war in that country, after campaigning against a "war in Asia." I've only taught history, when it was a combo course for a Community College, covering US history and the American political system. But I confess, in long retrospect (I last taught 19 years ago), I enjoyed the historical stories, and the details did matter. It's the story that matters, which is why history is more compelling than dry constitutional facts, but you can hang a lot of facts on a good story. I must also confess that, as a teacher, I only occasionally told stories, especially when I was teaching college-level Economics. I think I did make it interesting for my students in a maximum security prison--my favorite teaching venue. Nevertheless, the inherent shape of history permits many stories. I'm trying to figure out how to tell one, now, a little bit of personal and local history, including much suspense and angst. If I can figure out how to shape the story, I can tell it; if not, not. It has to be a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, no matter what hangs in between. A lot might, or will, if I can tell it, truthfully. It could make a good novel, which is, after all, a way of narrating history, without citing dates and names without meaning. Even a contemporary novel, perhaps, especially a contemporary novel, is an historical artifact: take Dickens, for example, writing about his contemporary London. There is no better record of Nero's Rome than the novel of Petronius Arbiter, although no dates or political events are directly recorded. That is how I'm an aspiring, closet Historian. I want to tell my history, if I can. You might learn from it; you might not. I just want to tell it, maybe just to be heard.