Ruminations of a sad man

We moved into 42 Boulevard in Westerleigh, Staten Island, NY in 1964 where in the attic of this 3-story house, left behind by the former owners, was a treasure trove of American history, which I as a 12-year-old happily delved into.  Many an idle hour was spent by me in that dusty old attic going through boxes there. 

Jim Lovett was a WWI vet who had left behind his experience Over There in those boxes (maybe he was dead by then and nobody in his family thought there was anything of value in those boxes of books and clothes).  There were several WWI battle books, all with brittle pages that crumbled as I turned the pages through acid leaching, because then paper was processed with no regard to posterity. I remember one title called Cannoneers Have Hairy Ears, and several books on WWI arial combat.  

I also secured a campaign DI hat, and a German sawtooth 18 inch bayonet in a sheath that was straight out of Erich Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front.  I had that bayonet, truly a war trophy, till I gave it to my middle child, Johnny, when he was 12. because he was the most like me in growing up, fascinated by the wartime experiences of men at arms.

Don't you know that the German bayonet commanded center-stage in a hearing in my quarter million dollar divorce from my, in my opinion, covert narcissistic wife because their point was that this showed how unfit I was to be a father.  After almost twenty years of not seeing any of my children through the extrajudicial but real process of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), this post reflects on my middle child Johnny, a most somber and sober child who would have turned his parents in to the Gestapo if they were reading banned books.