Kith & Kin

My younger brother,* Eric, has always had a fascination with audio and video technology. I remember, when he was an RTV major in college, I played piano for a brief radio program he had put together for a class project. It had to contain certain elements, one of which was a musical number. He knew a college guy who played the accordion, and the guy agreed to play for the program. Eric made sure we all knew that this was to be done like live radio, so timings had to be perfect. And we would do it only once while his teacher, in the booth with him, looked on severely—just to screw the stress up one more little notch. (Come to think of it, most teachers looked severe back in the 1980s.) Then Eric gave us directions, and his speech went something like this: One of the first things to ensure a good performance is strict attention to the director. I’ll keep my directions simple…. If I make a slashing motion across my throat, it means “cut the scene short.” If I make a revolving motion wi...

Baby Keith. Mom ’ s idea of putting the baby ’ s age right in the photo was a stroke of genius. My mother often told me the story of the day she and Dad brought Keith home from the hospital. They laid him on the couch, and I, two-and-a-half years old, looked at him and said, “Where’s his mommy?” At some point thereafter I comprehended the fact that my mommy and daddy were also Keith’s mommy and daddy, and that meant we were brothers. When we were still quite young, Keith and I had our own TV program. It was broadcast every evening immediately after supper. The two of us would go into the living room, stand in front of a large mirror, and put on a comedy show. Its high-brow humor consisted mostly of two little boys dancing around and acting silly, the larger one repeatedly hitting the smaller one on the head and pushing him off camera because he had made a comment that was, in the estimation of the larger one, stupid—while the smaller one gamely played along, always smiling, willingly...

Some memories stay fresh in our minds because they are so special or so amazing or so shattering that we play them over and over throughout our lives. Some memories, though, are hidden in the haze of our history and then surprise us by appearing when a random event triggers them. For instance, a couple of days ago I saw a bicycle and one of those hidden memories jumped out suddenly. I stopped walking for a second and carefully turned it over in my mind. Yes, I remember now—it really happened that way. I had completely forgotten. . . . The Bike I had picked out the coolest bike I’d ever seen from the all the bikes available in the bike store in little old downtown Fredericksburg. This was the era of Footsies , hula-hoops , Jarts , bell bottoms—and banana bikes. AI generated by Copilot Banana bikes had a distinctively elongated seat. They were usually bright in color, with high handlebars decorated with tassels that flapped in the wind. At some point I put plastic clickers...

“Carl G. Lytle cutting Holmes County Swiss Cheese in his general store in Fredericksburg, Ohio.” From the Cleveland Plain Dealer , August 5, 1963. You can disagree with me if you want to, but I believe if everyone everywhere could be raised in small towns, the world would be a better place. Having been raised in a small town myself, I am both an expert on this topic and completely unbiased. When I was a child, Mom told me our hometown, Fredericksburg, Ohio, had “about six hundred” residents. Well, she had it right: census data from 1970 shows there were 601 residents. That was the all-time high for the town (which dates back to 1850), though: the population has been steadily declining ever since. In 2020 the population was only 409. The Freedom to Roam When you lived in a small town in those days, you could walk or bike anywhere you needed to go without a parent. School, the general store, the post office, the bank, or down to the “crick,” it didn’t matter. Someone would be keepi...