34 - Postscript

Four months after I asked what she thought of my self-diagnosis the professor of psychology responded.

Hello Peter. You wrote to me some months ago, and although I meant to reply promptly, I got distracted by various deadlines. I recently recalled your email and realized I had never replied at all! Sorry about that.

I think what you described in your email would be referred to in the literature as a “parasocial relationship.” There is a fascinating book on this topic. I have attached a more recent article that might be interesting to you.

I think it is so intriguing that people are able to derive comfort, companionship, and enjoyment from this type of imaginary relationship.

I was happy to get the email and a proper diagnosis. I struggled through the scholarly article and found that my pathology is comparable to folk who bond with a local weather personality. I can’t deny it. Chuck Berry makes a fine weatherman. Rain comes down, heat goes down. Man they were playing like a hurricane! Imagine him with his map pointing out an area of high pressure. She moves around like a wayward summer breeze, he might say. Or maybe he’ll look at me directly through the screen in that parasocial manner of his, tilt his head forward devilishly (just like in my sketch) and get right to the heart of it: If you get too close you know I’m gone, like a cool breeze.
(Standing in the sun ain’t my shot…)

As I type that line—if you get too close you know I’m gone— I realize that it says everything, about him, sometimes about me. You can’t quite catch him. Or Nadine. Or Maybellene. Get too close and they’re gone.

Certainly he was gone when I drove my old Fiat to Berry Park.

“Is he here?” I asked the lady.

“He’s not,” she answered. “You need to leave.”

I might have had better luck the first time I passed through Wentzville, at age eight.

My brother Paul attended a Catholic seminary in Warrenton, about 40 miles West of St. Louis. It was a cool childhood for him. He escaped our crazy home at age 14 to drive tractors, build a lake and play football. When I first learned about Berry Park, it occurred to me to look for Wentzville on a map. I learned that it was practically next door to Warrenton, and that we had all driven through on our way from Warrenton to Gillespie, Illinois to visit my great Aunt Jennie. (We also passed through St. Louis and East St. Louis that day, making it a sort of trifecta of Chuck Berry history.)

In that summer of 1964 Chuck Berry history was still young, and Berry Park was hopping. Michael Lydon described it as once being “the place for St. Louis blacks” and “almost a country club—wide lawns and cool glades; a swimming pool, barbecue pit, tennis courts and boating ponds for the afternoon, a dance hall for the evening, and a small lodge if couple want to spend the night.” Muddy Waters performed there in the summer of 1964. “Nadine” and “No Particular Place to Go” were both hits when we passed on the interstate. “You Never Can Tell” was about to make its modest climb.

A picture taken at Berry Park that summer tells something of the optimism: a boy and three men in front of a wall with musical instruments. The boy wears a big hat and leans over a snare drum looking supremely cool. He’s probably the age Stevo was. The youngest man has his foot against the wall and holds a saxophone. Another man stands coolly with a red Gibson semi hollow body guitar resting at his feet.

The fourth man—coolest of all—smiles broadly. He wears a white shirt and thin tie. He’s slim and tall and holds a big blond Gibson. He’s happy. This is his place, his family, his time.

Our family trip to Missouri in 1964 was one of the major events of childhood. None of us had been East of Carson City, Nevada. We saw Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Illinois. The only family member not in the car the day we drove through Wentzville in 1964 was my father. As usual, he stayed behind.

As I say, I never really knew him. The relationship is for all practical purposes parasocial, as ephemeral as whatever I have with Chuck Berry, but of shorter duration. He died when I was 14, but was dead in some ways long before that. Unlike Stevo, he doesn’t grow older in my imagination. He stays the same. (I don’t. I look more like him every day. Sometimes, passing a mirror at night, he startles me.)

I hope eventually to discard some of the old disappointment and loss.

I remember the image of Chuck Berry and his sister leaning over their father in the film “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll.” The old man grunts with delight as Chuck and his sister tell their stories. The love and admiration are so evident and so unambiguous. Chuck was 60 at the time. His father was quite elderly. If, someday, I can lean over the remaining fragments of my father’s memory and smile as unambiguously as Chuck over his dad, I’ll be happy.

In the meantime, in a quieter, calmer way, I have what I have. He’ll come to me in dreams. He’ll sing out from the car radio. He’ll dance in grainy film. Baby, you can’t catch me!

But I’ve gotten a little closer. Not too close, mind you.

I hope I live 100 years. I want that time with mine.

He, on the other hand, will live forever.

photo credit: Peter K.

(This is the very end of a 35 chapter tale of benign madness-- my lifelong love for a cultural icon.  If you want to see how it begins, and read your way back to this spot, click HERE!)

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