This was going to be the most important engagement of my life. Sure I was purposely unfashionably late on the day I was to show up to be inducted into the armed forces. Had I been one day later I could have saved Muhamad Ali.
You see I was scheduled to be on time at my U.S. Armed Forces induction in Houston, Texas on April 27, 1967. Ali induction ceremony took place on the 28th.
Had I not fled to Canada like a lot of draft dodgers in that era. For those of you who can’t relate it has nothing to do with sports. (A draft dodger or draft resister is someone who evades a national military conscription, also known as a draft. As a general rule, the term “draft dodger” is used in a pejorative way, to describe someone who shirks on his or her duty, which is why many people who choose to evade the draft prefer to be called draft evaders or draft resisters). I would have drawn all the attention upon me instead of Clay for refusing to step forward 52 times when my name was called. My last name is Baczewski. I would have been standing right before they called Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. that was his name before he got punch drunk and changed it to Ali. Back in them not so good days it was a U. S. Citizen “sin” to change your name, especially to an Islamic one or German one at that.
Today there was no problem with Bruce Jenner changing his name to Caitlyn Marie Jenner the now American television personality transgender and retired Olympic gold medal–winning decathlete.
Ali and I caught a lot of flax for changing our names. Me changing mine from Chadwick Baczewski to Johann Sebastian Bach. My Jewish brethren were appalled by the change of my name to the German composer and musician of the Baroque period.
Sure Adolph Hitler gladly embraced the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka in occupied Poland. Don’t ever ask me or Ali or Mike to watch Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler's List.
I’m 78 years old now so if I don’t write as a writer I’ll never remember. Back to Ali. Oh yeah he refuse to go fight saying “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” Looking back, those 3 years he was banned from boxing probably saved him from not dying in the ring. The mouth from the south was surely quieted from two many blows to the cranium.
The last time I was late for an important date was the time I was supposed to get married. Well, it wasn’t me fashionably late it was Fiancée Racale Welch. I wouldn’t admit, confess, acknowledge, disclose, declare, state, or divulge that not only was she unseasonably , fashionably, unequivocally late. She never showed up. Ran off with a chimney sweep from Liverpool, Ohio.
Often times when I found no answers looking through the bottom of a whiskey glass, would things had been different hadn’t she caught me in bed with her older sister Ann Margret and younger Stepmom Sophia Lorne. In truth I’m just glad that they didn’t have cell phones with cameras or social media. I would have looked quite funny handcuffed to the posters of the bed as all three of them used that old fashion super glue on parts of my body that wasn’t made of a broken porcelain lamp.
Them was the good old days when being late was fashionable and sleeping with someone’s OPP ( other people property) was as normal as standing in welfare lines waiting on some disgruntle welfare worker to throw a 5 pound box of government cheese at all the hungry poverty stricken rats of any ghetto.
On December 22, 1981, former President Ronald Reagan signed and authorized into law that five hundred and sixty million pounds (250,000 metric tons) of cheese that the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) had been stockpiled should be released, saying that it would be distributed free to the needy by nonprofit organizations."
It’s strange how you can remember events good or bad in the past and can’t remember what you ate yesterday when you get older. What? Yes, I know who is the Secretary of State its Timothy Pickering (1795-1800).
My quack Doctor Ben Casey records in his private medical journal that I suffer from something called Alzheimer's disease a progressive disorder that causes brain cells to waste away (degenerate) and die. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia a continuous decline in thinking, behavioral and social skills that disrupts a person's ability to function independently. The early signs of the disease may be forgetting recent events or conversations. As the disease progresses, a person with Alzheimer's disease will develop severe memory impairment and lose the ability to carryout simple plans.
I say if I’m so forgetful how come I know what is Dissociative Disorders? He stated in his highly sophisticated manner that most of us have experienced mild dissociation, which is like daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working on a project. However, your dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Case closed I say!
When I started off telling you that I would more than likely be late at the most important date of my 78 years of walking around earth and other interstellar planetary life forms that embark upon a ridge stern encompass.
Sorry sometime my mind actually leaves me or takes me to a different stratosphere.
Anyway, all I wanted to say in the beginning that I will most definitely be fashionably late when attending my own funeral. All due to daylight savings time.
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Blane, I love your story but this is the first-person. Anytime the narrator is "I," it is the first-person point of view. BTW I ALSO HATE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME IT IS THE WORST AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL Keep up the great writing, Blane. :)
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