Summer 1969 June I crashed my Matchbox Ferraris on home-made gravel roads Saturday nights the thunder of stock car engines traveled miles across cornfields the Doppler effect making their revolutions rise and fall like the din of a faraway battle the thunder lasted a thousand summers but maybe it was five or six. July My parents' guests laughed and drank on the patio under the shadows of an 80-year old oak tree spared by the contractor leaving it encircled like a druid meeting place for the first time humans cast their shadows on the moon I ran from our black and white TV to the patio with urgent dispatches The Eagle has landed Stepping off the LEM now … not one Christopher Columbus among the guests to come watch TV with me. August Morning was the hum of a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower marching up and down the yard spinning silver steel against green grass but in the afternoon sprawled on the lawn it was the transient drone of an unseen p...