When the couch proved cold

I was 12 years old.  It was 1966, and Dad and I had the habit of sitting on the couch in the living room in the morning, reading the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He and I would sit starting at about 7 a.m.  He’d leave for work at about 7:30. Before 7, he’d share breakfast with Mom. Then read the paper, then  head to the job. I'd eventually head to school.

So the morning Globe was my morning ritual. Sure, the more prestigious, afternoon Post-Dispatch would arrive each day, though that was handled differently.  I might grab the comics after school, though the rest of the newspaper was untouched, unless Mom took a look.  Dad would collect it after work.

But the Globe -- reading it as the sun came up was how I acquired the newspaper habit.

I mention this for three reasons: 

One, as I find myself reading news feeds on my iPhone more and newspapers less, I feel both encouraged and guilty. More words, more sources … but my profession strains at the change.

Second, those moments on the couch with Dad were profound for me.  He’d sit on the far left of the couch, I in the middle.  He’d start with the sports section, then the front page, then the local section.  I’d read whatever he got through first, or whatever he hadn’t yet touched, in no particular order. 

That couch was my window on the world.

Third, we would read ancillary publications as well – magazines and such. And there is one in particular that haunts me to this day.  It was in Life Magazine or perhaps the Saturday Evening Post.  That’s foggy now.  But a magazine had published excerpts from the then-celebrated novel of Truman Capote, “In Cold Blood.”  I suspect the magazine sat on the coffee table in front of the couch, and I got hooked while waiting for Dad to give up a section of the paper.

If you don’t know the story, it’s gruesome and, ironically, somewhat local to me, now that we live in Kansas City:  Two drifters shoot to death a rural Kansas family, the Clutters. The 50th anniversary of the event is Sunday. Capote chose to explore each individual involved in the murders and the following investigation, and in turn produced one of America’s greatest literary works and perhaps the best example of the non-fiction novel, which ushered in so-called “new journalism.”

Of course, back then, I saw it only as a horrid tale of innocents being blown to bits by thugs in black leather jackets.  That Dad let me read the excerpts is interesting, though I can’t remember, ever, Dad or Mom telling me to not read something.

At the time, my bedroom was a small second-floor space to the left at the top of the stairs.  At each end were doors to an attic, on the same level, circling around my bedroom at the front side of the house like a tight belt.  The attic, as attics are, was dark, closed off, full of cobwebs and mystery.

The attic was creepy, sure. And after reading the Cold Blood excerpts, creepier still.  But I knew the threat wasn’t from someone behind those attic doors.  No, the threat was two guys in black leather, invading from without, then walking up the stairs of the house, armed, ready to blow my brains out. Exactly what happened to the Clutter family.

For months if not a couple of years, I had a ritual to prevent my own Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, at right, from climbing those stairs.  In hindsight, it was plenty odd.  But it did the trick. I’m alive, aren’t I?

You see, after the lights were out and I said my nightly prayers – which included requested blessings for all of my family, dog Judy and the guinea pig – I did this hand thing where I would stick my hand out like I was stopping traffic. I would bend the hand in different directions as I mentally tracked the path through my door, down the stairs, then right at the bottom of the stairs to the front door, then backtracking to the left at the bottom of the stairs to the back door.

The hand was my way of keeping evil from entering the house, climbing the stairs, doing the bloody deed.  My own “brick wall.”

Only after doing the weird hand motions would sleep come.

Clearly, Capote’s prose had chilled me to the bone.  If you read the book today, you’re struck by the succinctness of the author’s words, the ample-yet-tempered description, the obvious conviction on his part that the facts should tell the story, not the writer's thick prose. Check it out.

That a pre-teen could soak that up, enthralled yet terrified, to the point that I still vividly remember the details 42 years later, reveals the muscle, the fortitude of the written word, deftly done.

Dad was a voracious reader … of newspapers, magazines, and so many books. I’m sure he never knew of the profound effect Capote's excerpts had on me while I quietly sat to his right on the couch.

But I expect he’d approve.

That couch was my window on the world.  And the world isn’t always a nice place.