I have always had a bit of an apocalyptic streak in me. I think it probably began when I was seven years old, about to turn eight in 1957. That was the year that I developed rheumatic fever. I was confined to my home, mostly in my bed, for more than six weeks. As such, I could not be with my friends, or go to school.
I was tired and weak much of the time. My family was quite distressed, and that was expressed in some misty eyes they did not want me to see, and sotto voce conversation they did not want me to hear. Basically, as a seriously ill 7-year-old in a typically emotional Italian-American family, I thought I was going to die. If that did not sow the seeds of Apocalypse in my psyche, then I can’t think of what else could have.
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