Martin Thumper Grows Up & The Farm

1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 979-8-31783228-5
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 204 Seiten

Reihe: Thumper Grows Up & The Farm

A novel in short stories, Thumper Grows Up follows Thumper's life beginning with him leaving home at 18 to lead a bohemian life on the mean streets of Worcester, Mass. where he immerses himself in Worcester's counterculture. The author experiments with persons and tenses, alternating among 1st, 2nd and 3rd person and past/present tense, even including a chapter written as a play. The author's journals, kept over a lifetime of experiences, allow him to finally write these stories. The Farm bridges childhood and adulthood with memories of the mostly idyllic times he spent at his uncle's farm in Wendell, MA. The interludes at the farm with his cousins are some of his most vivid memories.

Thumper Grows Up is the autofictional sequel to Stephen's 2024 novel, Thumper, a childhood memoir about a young boy growing up in the 50s in a gritty New England factory town. Life-long singer-songwriter and socio-political activist, Stephen lives with his wife and his parrot on Nantasket Beach, a windy peninsula on the Massachusetts South Shore.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Martin, Stephen

Leseproben

A TIME FOR BREAKING

It’s 12:30 Sunday afternoon, two days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Everyone was sent home from school early Friday to watch TV all weekend.

Your first on-stage performance was to have been Friday night at the Worcester Auditorium in the First Worcester All-Collegiate Hootenanny. Of course, it was called off.

Right now, you’re watching live coverage of big men in suits and cowboy hats waiting in a corridor to transfer accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to jail. You’re sitting in front of the living room TV in the same swiveling recliner that was your space capsule when you accompanied Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, and Scott Carpenter on their historic flights into the future.

Here comes Oswald now, around the corner and up the corridor toward the camera. Half the size of his escorts, his face is lumpy, bruised and bloodied, eyes black and swollen. Two cowboy cops are holding him up and walking him towards you when out of the blue, some guy in a trench coat and a fedora steps out of the crowd, his back to the camera, and shoots Oswald, Pop! in the stomach.

“Aw,” says Oswald, and eyes squeezed shut, he doubles over and the two cowboy cops lower him gently to his knees while more cops easily wrestle down the shooter.

And it’s over.

Stunned, you stare at the screen, not hearing much of what the newscaster is saying. That actually just happened! It wasn’t a Boston Blackie show. It wasn’t a replay, like Kennedy’s assassination. It was live!

You find your parents at the kitchen table watching the little black-and-white TV up on the shelf over the coat hooks next to the door.

“Did you see that?” You shrill. “That really happened!”

“Yes, honey, it did,” says your mother. “Terrible, terrible thing to have to watch.” Her shaking fingers launch a long ash from the tip of a Benson and Hedges Menthol that misses the glass ash tray and crashes silently to the tabletop.

“I don’t understand any of it,” you admit. “I mean, why would Oswald — if it was Oswald — why would he want to kill the president?”

“Oh, it was Oswald, all right,” says your father, as if he knows anything about it.

“But he said he was a ‘patsy,’ Dad. What if somebody else put him up to it? If he dies, we’ll never know why he did it, or if anyone else was involved. And this other guy just pops up out of nowhere and shoots him?”

“They’re saying Oswald is a ‘lone nut,’” he says. “And they just said the other guy’s name is Jack Ruby, the shooter. He’s a Dallas nightclub owner, ‘known to the police.’”

“But why? Why did he shoot Oswald? Was he a lone nut too? Or did somebody else put him up to it, to keep Oswald from talking, you know? Or what, people in Texas just run around shooting each other? Is somebody gonna shoot Ruby now?” You rest your forehead on the cool Formica. “None of it makes any sense.”

“Well,” says your father, “Kennedy and his brother Bobby have made a lot of enemies. Maybe it’s an example of that ‘karma’ you’re always going on about.” Your father’s an Eisenhower Republican who distrusts Kennedy’s Catholicism and wants to bomb Russia.

Thoughts about the reality of the president’s death and what it means occupy your mind. He stood for so many good things — civil rights, the Peace Corps, the space program, and....and a feeling of hope. But when you woke up yesterday, a dark and heavy sense of hopelessness had replaced that feeling.

“Historically,” your father is saying, “it’s always been this way. Kennedy isn’t the first head-of-state to be assassinated, and he won’t be the last. Look at Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Caesar! Politics is a dangerous business. We just got to catch a glimpse of that live on TV, that’s all.”

“Great!” You throw up your hands. “Civilization, Democracy, Evolution, all grand illusions, shared imaginations, fairy tales, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, Washington’s cherry tree, and my chances of being president. What other lies have I been taught?” They look at each other, unable to answer, which is fine: It was a rhetorical question. “I’m going to find out. That’ll be my next project.”

He says, “I’m sorry son, but look. The ugly truth is some things — like human nature — will never change. That’s why we have laws and religions, to keep our human natures under control. Besides, you can’t fight City Hall.”

Your mother rarely takes sides during these father-son debates. She’s seen too many of them escalate into arguments culminating in name-calling, door-slamming, and all-night-long walks. You’re grateful she decides to make this exception. “Now wait a minute,” she says, getting his full attention by rapping her cane on the floor. “That’s simply not true. Just because things have always been a certain way doesn’t mean they can’t be changed. They used to make kids work in the mines, you know, and there was no such thing as a forty-hour work week, or overtime, or paid holidays. Women didn’t have the right to vote. When enough people get together, they can too fight City Hall.”

With a tilted nod, he grudgingly concedes her point, but with a dismissive sweep of his hand, he persists, “Still, human nature is human nature.”

“Right,” you exclaim, rising to your feet. “It is what it is! We’re as unable to control our instincts as when we were chimpanzees.

“That would be civilizing yourself, not evolving.”

“Stupid me, I read somewhere we were evolving, and I believed it.” You cool and calm your voice, a tactic you’ve picked up from your mother. “Thanks, Dad. I’ve unlearned a lot today, and I bet there’s a lot more to come. Please excuse me.”

You step into your room, quietly close the door, and start compulsively and savagely mauling your hands. You only do it when your mother can’t see. You began the self-destructive habit after your father told you that every time you displayed your anger in her presence you were shortening her life. You grind your guilt and anger inward. Your hands have developed painful and unsightly callouses. You can’t stay in this house much longer, but you need a place to stay, at least until graduation.

***

It’s 8 PM on Monday, July 6th, 1964. Fresh out of high school with your future before you, you plan to take the summer off before getting a job and attending Worcester State Teachers’ College in September. But at this moment, you and your father are again engaged in battle. It started as just another debate-cum-argument but is quickly escalating. You’re currently comparing Capitalism to Monopoly.

“...And long before the game is over, everybody knows who’s going to win, but they hang on to their little hotels on Park Place and Baltic Ave, hoping for some miraculous come-from-behind win.”

“Sometimes it happens.”

“I’ve never seen it happen. Anyway, in the Big Monopoly game, which is played for keeps, the deck was stacked against us at the first roll of the dice. It was stacked against your parents and grandparents, and it’ll be stacked against my children and grandchildren.”

“That’s not true. In America, anyone can achieve his goals—”

“What, if he puts his mind to it? If he works hard and never gives up? Anyone? Really? Listen Dad, nobody has worked any harder to attain his dream than you. Was this your dream, a drafty flat over an auto body shop on the corner of Fast-Food Ave. and Ghetto Row?” You wish you hadn’t said that.

He stands up and says, “I’m sorry if I haven’t lived up to your
expectations—”

“I had no expectations! It’s you who haven’t lived up to your own dream. What I’m trying to say is, it’s not your—”

He roars, “I know it’s hard to believe, but I have done everything I could possibly do to keep a roof over our heads, feed you and pay the medical bills, and if you think I’m going to stand here and—”

Your mother’s cane raps repeatedly on the linoleum. She barks, “Ellie! Stop it!” He stops, just like that. “Please, sit down.” He sits down.

“I’m sorry, Dad, that’s not what I meant. I don’t blame you for anything. There’s nothing more you could have done. You got a raw deal, and it’s the same for millions of other families. What I was getting at is, what real chance do any of us have to be president? We all work hard with our eyes on the prize until we drop, and the Great American Dream is revealed as the Great American Lie.”

“All right,” he says, no longer yelling, “I give up. You know what? You think you know everything, but you’re naïve. Sophomoric. Simplistic, and you’re walking around with your head in the clouds all the time.” His voice is getting louder again. “And I am sick and tired of hearing your pseudo-Marxist, bleeding-heart crap in my house!” He stands and yells, “You don’t even have a job, except for...