Rage and wonder in 1968: The year war came through the TV and I felt pieces of childhood ending

I was 9 years old. My father was at war.

I watched Vietnam every night on TV, wind blowing through the tall grass of a distant land, numbers of the fallen flashing on the screen, all in black and white, a war in two colors, scary and real in my living room, ticking away in the hour before "Sea Hunt," my favorite show, even though I knew then, as a boy, that pretend things didn't last in a world coming undone.

1968. The number is like family. It was the year I felt pieces of childhood ending. Much of what was going on was hard to understand. But there were moments of sublime and terrible clarity: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dead, Bobby Kennedy dead, cities ablaze, streets filled with peace signs, placards and rage; the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" rising from the stereo and in the movie