So once upon a time…no, wait.  That’s how you begin a fairy tale, and this is definitely not a fairy tale.  It is, however, from a time long ago.   And as I age, life has taught me a much deeper understanding of what was said on that day than any I could muster at that time, because I was young.  You know, like, 16—on the fault line between boyhood and being a man.  One moment I was preoccupied with how to get my first date with a girl, and the next all I could think about was how I’d get my next buck to buy a model airplane kit. 
     It was a bitterly cold winter day in December, 1969—one of those days between Christmas and the New Year, when nothing much is supposed to happen.  There’s that whole let-down thing to deal with after Christmas, because all those presents that you’d just spent months dreaming about weren’t nearly as much fun as you imagined they would be once you had them.  For you see, at that tender age, I had not yet discerned that it is a peculiarity of the human psyche that it is the wanting, not the having, that sharpens our senses and creates the yearning that is the best part of life.