Einstein and Kerouac at My Family Reunions by Gail Gray

These competitions in my family. When will they stop? When will my family start acting like other families? You know the ones where the competing comes down to who has a baby first, or who has the biggest McMansion, or the best paying geek job in the most far off big city, or the smartest kid or the newest Range Rover…you know the normal stuff.

No, mine, is this contest between my uncle Peter and my dad trickled down to me and my two cousins. You see my uncle (who at some time was in prison but my folks would never tell me why) went on about how in New Jersey he and Einstein met in this tea room. This is back in the day when they didn’t have Starbucks or even privately owned coffee houses, but they had tea rooms. We had one here too but we didn’t get to go until we were teenagers and that wasn’t for the tea but for what the tall gypsy lady said when she came by after we finished our cup of tea and sandwiches with the crusts cut off. The gypsy lady swayed over, coin bracelets clanking at her wrists and she’d sit down and with a solemn look on her angular dark face, she’d read our tea leaves.

Well, anyway, my uncle Peter used to talk about how at the tea room he would be the only customer who would sit at a table with Einstein because they all thought he was nuts with that whacked out hair and the crazy way he talked. But the place was really small. And if you wanted your lunch or to have your tea leaves read then you had to share a table sometimes. Well my uncle liked the way Enstien talked and in fact I remember my uncle even talking about the stuff they talked about… wormholes and such things. And at first I thought he meant real wormholes like in the garden (which I had never seen) and then later after Dune came out, I figured it was the wormholes the spice worms made on Arakis. Especially since Einstein talked about the planets and space and stuff too, but it wasn’t until later, actually after my uncle died when I realized he was talking about wormholes… you know space/time-rip type of wormholes like in the movie, Donnie Darko, and that’s how my uncle said he got out of prison… through a wormhole.

And then my dad used to talk about how he bought drinks for Jack Kerouac. This was at the Old Worthen Inn in our home town, Lowell, Mass., on Worthen Street (one of the cobblestone streets still left near downtown, not far from where my mother would later work at City Hall.)  And my dad bought rounds for Kerouac just like he bought rounds for everyone in some bar somewhere every Friday night. He was a good time generous drunk…and his friends knew to count on him.

But all their lives, my dad and uncle tell their stories at every family get together and my uncle would always win. My family believed him along with all that crap about escaping from prison through a wormhole that Einstein told him about. They didn’t believe my dad who sat and drank beer with Kerouac – this was before On the Road. Maybe even my dad inspired Kerouac to go on the road or maybe even write some of the stuff he did on the road….who knows? Sometimes you sit and listen to the guy whose footing your bar tab all night, right?

But it would all come down to me and my cousins and they would always win. I don’t know if it’s ‘cause I was an only child and easy to outnumber or because they liked the wilder most likely untrue story; or because my dad’s story wasn’t as exciting because after all, it happened in Lowell, our home town and the place we all lived. Lowell didn’t have the magical charm of the 100 mile rule; or maybe Einstein had more clout than Kerouac; or maybe it was more exiting because my dad just drank beer and their dad escaped from prison.     

So, when I found the trunk full of letters after my dad died things got a little weird…a little tense.  First of all I found this letter, see….it was from my uncle to my dad. It was dated 1957 and he talked about how he was now out of prison because of this wormhole idea put forth by a friend of his, some weird guy who didn’t do much but sit and scribble strange letters and numbers on a pad but he taught my uncle how to find the wormholes. And my uncle claimed he did although I have to wonder how he could go on living in New Jersey and then later return to Lowell if he was an escaped convict to raise his kids and all.  But attached to this letter with an old rusty paper clip was a small piece of paper, maybe the size of an index card and on it my uncle claims is the theorem written out by Einstein himself and my uncle wanted my dad to have it in case the cops ever caught up with him as an escaped felon or my dad ever himself got arrested and needed to get out of jail. Although how my dad would know how to recognize or summon a wormhole, whatever the hell you do with them if he ever went to jail, is beyond me. Or do you just chant it like a mantra and it automatically appears? Maybe that’s how Einstein got out of Germany in the 2nd World War, who knows?

Anyway the theorem was not in the same handwriting as my uncle’s letter.

A few weeks later, after flipping through a lot of old photographs and some old letters from my aunts in England to my mom in Lowell, I found a stained piece of notebook paper and on it was this poem….this weird poem. No date, mind you. But two initials down at the bottom….J.K…..and the poem talked about the night this J.K. dude and some other guy (maybe my dad) had broken into the Hi Hat Roller Rink (which was right up the street form us in Lowell) and skated around all night for free although minus the live organ music and how they’d stolen a couple of pairs of skates and after that would make night time runs to roller skate on the roof of the Blue Moon night club kind of catty corner across Princeton Blvd. from the Hi Hat.  

Also in the trunk were these photos. None of J.K. or Jack Kerouac (as I interpreted the initials) and my dad, but a bunch of my dad on roller skates on a roof somewhere and he’s hefting some lithesome showgirl up in a fancy Olympic pairs kind of move…you know the kind where you think the guy’s gonna drop the girl. And I just got to wonder…was J.K. the guy taking the photos? Because you know, J.K. was a football guy…maybe he thought roller skating was for sissies. But my dad was no sissy. He was a slender guy, sure, but he had the heft to lift a showgirl. I would argue that my dad was just as strong as Kerouac as any football player, had been in the Coast Guard, while Kerouac had only been in the Merchant Marines and my dad was known to be a roller skating champion of some sorts (maybe that’s how he knew how to break into the Hi Hat Roller Rink). Maybe Kerouac knew he didn’t have the style or maybe he was too drunk so he ended up taking the pictures.

And so now I’ve got a dilemma. When I meet my cousins at the next family gathering, it may be Ronnie’s, the younger one; at his 50th birthday…do I show him my dad’s photo and the J.K. poem? Or do I show him the letter from his dad with the additional theorem? Or do I show him all of them? No matter what I do, even if I went to the lengths of handwriting analysis….what’s all this gonna do to the competition?