A Dream Once Dreamed

By Petrie

It is 1987 and the longing Sally Salzmann feels for the love of her life, Frankie Petrovic, is as sharp now as it was in 1967. In the twenty years since Frankie died, Sally has solely raised their son, Franklin, while never forgetting the man who still holds her heart. But when she receives a mysterious package from Frankie’s sister one day, everything changes. Inside the package is a note from his sister along with never-before-seen letters and poems from Frankie. As the contents carry Sally back in time, she embarks on an odyssey from Detroit to San Francisco and Las Vegas as she tries to piece together what happened to Frankie and why everything went wrong so quickly. Accompanied by a friend and Franklin, Sally retraces Frankie’s last few months of life. But will she find a way to fulfill his last dream? In this poignant novel, a single mother takes a trip back in time to recreate her soul mate’s final days and find a way forward after twenty years of mourning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Mar 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781684740338

Book preview

11

Prologue

For people born in the 1980s, the 1960s are as distant as the 1930s are to those of us born in the 1950s. Blacklight posters, psychedelic hippie vans and the film Easy Rider are as peculiar to the children of the 80s as those black-and-white Claudette Colbert films, newsreels of the Spanish Revolution and the NRA stamp were to us in the 60s. And yet those times seem relevant to those of us who lived through them.

In 1964, people screamed their way through Beatle movies. In 1965, people listened to Bob Dylan sing Mr. Tambourine Man. In 1966, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters took their famous LSD road trip. By 1967, Timothy Leary told 20,000 people at the San Francisco Be-In to turn on, tune in, and drop out. People born in the 80s dress as hippies for Halloween.

The Sixties: The Kennedys assassinated, Malcolm X assassinated, Che Guevara assassinated, Martin Luther King assassinated, Tate / La Bianca butchered, protestors shot, cities burned.

What is one more death—more or less— in the grand scheme of history? These events do not mean much to people born in the 80s. Historical events fifty years past were no different than those of our generation. People killed at Kristallnacht looked oddly primitive and out-of-time in those newsreel films we watched in high school with one eye on the clock at the back of the classroom.

Caesar’s Palace became Las Vegas’ first true full-service resort in 1967 on a 17-acre site with over 700 rooms in a 34-story tower. Originally planned for California, Nevada offered cheap Las Vegas land, cheap money from the Teamsters Pension Fund, and what the developers saw as unlimited gambling revenue. Money, as well as people, was moving west from Michigan.

Caesar’s Palace breathed opulence. Its opening party, at a cost of over $3 million, was brilliant marketing. The city lured vacationers, including the whole family, promising a resort experience as the Las Vegas casinos took all their money.

Further East, another culture was taking shape. Dearborn, Michigan Mayor Hubbard once said, "I’m not a racist, but I hate those black bastards.¹ He ran on a platform of Keep Dearborn Clean," meaning Keep Dearborn White. In 1966, Dearborn was the most segregated city north of the Mason-Dixon Line, a city more in tune with the South of the 1950s than with Motown next door.

On the west coast, a city on a hill became a beacon. San Francisco did not need drugs to be psychedelic. The city grew out of the fog and mist at the end of a peninsula, suspended between the great ocean on one side and the world’s largest estuary on the other. Golden Gate Park appeared where once were impenetrable sand dunes. Residents referred to their home as The City and cringed whenever a tourist referred to the place as Frisco.

San Francisco was becoming the American mecca of the counterculture in 1966. The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, among others, were creating a new sound. Janis Joplin was fronting the band Big Brother and the Holding Company. LSD was being used all over the city. Beat Poets such as Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were setting up shop at City Lights Books, where Allen Ginsberg first read Howl in 1958.

Dearborn, Las Vegas and San Francisco could not have been further apart in late 1966, yet people traveled easily between them on the new interstates. The old federal highways were rapidly being replaced by more modern highways that bypassed cities and were geared toward speed. In 1966, the interstates covered most of the country, but still held the names of the old highways. Route 66 offered a particular romance due to the popular TV show of the early 1960s.

In 1966, Route 66 was starting to fade from the national psyche. The television show and the songs that portrayed it were dated with the advent of shows like Batman and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. In February 1967, popular culture was changing as fast as national transportation. And the mother road no longer served the fatherland. Eisenhower had envisioned an Interstate Highway System partly to create better commerce across the nation and partly as a route for transporting Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Systems should they need to be moved quickly, which was not just an idle thought during the 1960s and 1970s.

As early as 1967, large sections of Route 66 had been modernized and re-designated as I-40 in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. The existing roadway had been widened or left as a frontage road along the gleaming new interstate although the popular name stuck. Even if the road no longer went through the middle of towns and bypassed most cities, there was something homey about America’s Main Street, the teepee motels, and the highway signs beckoning drivers to visit curio shops. Drivers read the last chance to get water for 200 miles, and the steak houses and the burger joints battled for patrons. Who wanted a nation filled with McDonalds and Cracker Barrels every ten exits?

The interstate system made our highways more like the Autobahn: faster, not safer. Whole towns died and many individual businesses failed. Cracker Barrels, McDonalds, and Chevron USA gained corporate footholds along the 2,554-mile length of the new interstate grid.

The entire length of Route 66 was replaced by interstate highways in 1985 when the I-40 finally bypassed Williams, Arizona, though people still drive from Flagstaff to Williams to dine at Rod’s Steakhouse on Route 66. There is much nostalgia attached to this older highway, it has even been given homage in the film Cars.

Unfortunately, real life does not work like cartoons, and when the road changed, the nature of travel changed with more big rig trucks, more people moving vast distances at breakneck speeds. The highway, separated from the towns, became its own universe, a high-speed conduit from one place to another and certainly not a route to meander and a way to meet people.

People only thought of getting from one place to another quickly. Restaurants advertised fast service. Drive-thrus became the norm. Gas stations with pay at the pump replaced the family filling station. While the interstate was replacing Route 66, foreign automakers were replacing Detroit’s monopoly. Jobs were drying up in the industrial Midwest not just on the car assembly line but in all the supporting industries. Major corporations were starting to move jobs into Windsor, Canada, into non-union states and even to factories overseas. It was slow at first, but the impetus was there. In 1965, Detroit was the fifth largest metropolitan center in the United States, soon to become the brunt of jokes about unlivable urban blight.

A new restlessness was stirring. Aerospace and defense were churning jobs in California, Texas and Florida. Warm weather and beaches beckoned. People who had settled down after WWII pulled up stakes and moved away in the hope of finding something better. For many, the New Frontier was not space, it was a gamble. Las Vegas was on its way to replacing Southern California as a tourist destination. And wide-eyed tourists looking for their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow were drawn in, hoping that a desert resort might be the place where their ship would come in.

Even if it was now I-40, even if Vegas was a diversion across from Hoover Dam and on US-95, people continued to believe that you could get your kicks along Route 66.

This is where our story takes place.

PART ONE

Shabbat Shalom

The Exodus lasted a moment, a moment enduring forever.

What happens once upon a time happens all the time.

Abraham Joshua Herschel

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1

May 17, 1987

MICHIGAN IS GREENEST in May. Sally peered through the blinds. The weeping willow across the street was in full regalia, ready to shade summer teas. She looked up at the crystal clear pale blue northern sky as she stepped on the porch for the morning Free Press. A slight chill lingered in the morning. Today’s forecast: seventy degrees, partly cloudy. Maybe last night’s rain washed away winter’s cold.

Today, time did not seem such an unapproachable barrier. Sally imagined Frankie pulling up in his Fairlane following his classes at Henry Ford Community College. He gets out of the car with a smile on his face. She runs to the car, kisses him and hands him little Franklin before she runs over to the community college. It is May 1969, and all’s right with her world.

Rambling, Gambling Man by Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band on WCSX-FM woke her. It was not WKNR Keener 13 Dearborn on her radio. She looked at the television and smiled at the Women’s Health Center commercial showing the progress of women over the last 50 years, ending with their credo: We need women doctors. I sure as hell could have used some of that progress 20 years ago, she mumbled.

She looked 25 at 18 after the birth of their son. Now, at 38, she looked closer to 45. She streaked her hair to cover the gray at 30.

Her town home was simple, yet welcoming. Her doorway had a mezuzah. Two long Sabbath candles on a white lace doily topped her sideboard. A cup for Elijah stood between the candles. The matches waited a year for today’s Yahrzeit. Her kitchen had a set of everyday dishes her mother had left her. A microwave was set in the corner of the kitchen, under cabinets. A steel tea kettle lay on the burner. The half-empty refrigerator hummed against the wall. Fordell High School’s 20-year class reunion notice lay next to the fruit bowl on the counter. Sally had no plans to go.

Sally, though not particularly religious, caught herself saying "sh’ma Israel, Adonai, eloheinu."

She picked up a picture of Frankie taken in Palo Alto in front of Rita’s Motel: so young, such a smile, such a big heart.

She said Kaddish for three Yahrzeits a year: for her mother, her father, and Frankie. She didn’t need a minyan. She knew her grief. The words helped her reconnect. Frankie’s was the most difficult. This year their grown son had his own apartment. She could weep without anyone hearing her.

I say Kaddish for you, with you, as you. I chant your poems, speak your words, hear your voice in mine. As I say Kaddish, my green eyes reflect the blue of yours.

She lit the Shabbat candle and recited the blessing.

Remembrance came to her as she read her prayer.

I remember standing by the water temple. How you revered the Holy One.

God’s plan did not work for you, my beloved.

In the days of our youth, I watched you perish.

Your light was mine, for one brilliant moment.

Remember the fall shadows in the apple orchards.

You shivered on the park bench weeks before your Exodus.

My love for you shines beyond any earthly candle.

I raised our son to shine like you.

Praise your life, and your words, and our time together.

May God bless your rest, to which I say Amen.

Oseh shalom bimromav Hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu.

That last night with you I found harmony and peace.

I saw your face at the airport before you saw me. O the depth of your eyes. I told you I loved you that night, I have never told another soul, not even my husband.

May the one who brings peace to the world bring you peace, for I will never know you again. Amen.

After she lit the candles, she closed her eyes to imagine Frankie as he would have looked now. His face would be fuller. His brown hair would be turning gray. He would be growing stocky with age.

She saw the way he looked their last time together: a gangly teenage boy growing into a man, looking at her with kind, hopeful eyes. The colors of his Pendleton; the plaid had faded to sepia in her memory.

The longing she felt for their all-too-brief love affair was as sharp now as in 1967. Things could have been different. She could have been a moderating influence. She smiled when she remembered how he had expanded her consciousness. I had come west to him. We were together as lovers. I would have waited for him. He had me. Didn’t he know that?

Sally returned to Michigan different from when she had left. Although she had only been in San Francisco for four days, she could see how much Frankie had changed in six months. She thought he had begun to change in Michigan.

Sally remembered the day they had read Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay in English class. She could hear Mrs. Jones’ monotone cadence reciting:

"All I could see from where I stood was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked the other way and saw three islands in the bay".

Please write in your notes, she had instructed, that Millay is using an iambic octameter as opposed to pentameter in her Magnus Opus. Can anyone comment on why she chose that form? Everyone had their heads bent forward into their notebooks, writing notes. No one wanted to make eye contact with Mrs. Jones for fear that she might call on them.

After class, Frankie showed Sally his notes as they stood near her locker.

"Bullshit. Irrelevant bullshit. Who cares about her ‘islands in the bay?’

Sally frowned. Frankie laughed.

You’re going to get yourself in trouble.

I’m going to rip the notes out. You know I’m right.

You’re always right.

You know you love it. Who turned me on to Baudelaire?

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t, she answered, laughing.

The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist, Frankie said, quoting ‘The Generous Gambler’ by Charles Baudelaire from memory.

Wow, Baudelaire. Impressive!

And a quote for our esteemed English teacher, Something’s happening here that you just don’t get,"

And paraphrasing Dylan, too.

Yeah, but it ain’t in iambic octameter.

They both laughed. Barbara came walking up. Frankie said hi and left. He didn’t touch Sally’s hand or brush his fingers in her hair. They were careful with signs of affection after the incident in the gym. Social convention frowned upon mixed-religion couples.

Sally felt a shiver run down her spine that snapped her back into her present when she thought about what had happened in the gym. She quickly returned to memories: the first time he had come over to her house, with a copy of the new Beatle album Revolver. He was excited to play a song from the album. You got to listen to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ I have never heard anything like it before.

She put the album on her parents’ stereo. It was OK because her dad was at work and her mother was out shopping. Frankie had tried to crank it up, but she stopped him.

Frankie, she cautioned, the neighbors!

The neighbors, she thought, always the neighbors.

The song was different from anything she had heard. At first, she found it strange. Frankie kept listening to it over and over again. He often talked with her about the lyrics. Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, he would say. What an amazing idea. Stop thinking for a while. ‘Lay down all thought, surrender to the void,’ he would quote. Lennon means the center of all knowledge, something he calls consciousness. It just seems big.

She could hear him speaking in her mind and hear the drumming of Ringo Starr in that song… . It has been 20 years, my love, since you surrendered to the void, she whispered, and I still hold you in the deepest place in my heart.

There is a special place in our bodies that holds grief; the unfathomable torment of love. Sally searched for some redemption, a silver lining. She needed something sweet to temper the bitterness of her sadness. We lie down alone at night, feeling the presence of someone next to us who no longer is there. We think we want someone different, someone who may fill the gap that has torn arms from our bodies. Sometimes we manage a smile for the sweet bitterness of wanting. Sometimes grief leaves us numb, holding our heads in our hands with eyes shut in private moments. Never do we feel whole again.

Sally noticed a note her son had scrawled next to his father’s picture: We all deserve to be happy, none of us gets what we deserve. Franklin never knew his father. His therapist suggested he keep a journal. Sally noticed an entry in Franklin’s Open Journal:

It is the way things work, the way you argue with your father, who has been dead 20 years, the father you never knew. You argue the way each death you experience links to another death, and each day dies in its own pattern. This is the way of the world. Every creature born in this world will die.

In the grand scheme of things, what is one life worth? The world receives what it begat. The generations soon forget. The dead are soon forgotten. Time eats away what once was a grievance. How much did a life surrender in the grand scheme of things? It has always been that way.

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2

SHE REMEMBERED THE time Frankie had borrowed the family car in November to get ice cream, how he smiled when he picked her up in front of Baskin-Robbins. I like your coat, he had said, and your skirt. Her blue pleated skirt flowed from beneath her coat mid-calf.

When he opened the door for her, she leaned across the car seat to kiss him on his lips. It was a spontaneous gesture, unexpected yet pleasant. He saw the smile in her green eyes as she receded back into the car seat.

Brrr, it’s cold outside, she said as she unbuttoned her coat. Can you turn on the heat?

Sure, Frankie said, turning on the blower. The cold brings out the pink in your cheeks. She felt him wincing as the words left his lips.

How corny can I get? he said.

Sally sensed the shyness beneath his outgoing appearance. His vulnerability was one of the things she found appealing.

Well, aren’t you kind? she replied, putting him at his ease.

He felt the urge to take his hand off the wheel, reach over and bring her into the crook of his shoulder, but he saw she had her seat belt fastened. A sense of quiet elation filled the car as if both were free for the first time.

Frankie took a deep breath. It would be a great day to drive over to the park, he suggested with a tentative voice. The oaks look magnificent once they lose their leaves, and the park is deserted.

She smiled. What do you have in mind?

Some time alone with you.

Yes, she said softly. I could think of no place I’d rather be.

Light through the windshield caught the strand of auburn hair across his forehead. A small quiet smile formed at the corners of his mouth.

I am sure the oaks are stunningly stark, she added, and we can have it all to ourselves. Sometimes he can say something that turns my heart to butter, she thought. He can be juvenile sometimes, and other times he is way beyond his 16 years.

Frankie tuned the radio to WKNR. Good Vibrations was playing on the radio, a song by that California band, the Beach Boys. She thought of how Frankie had changed her life. She reached over and caressed Frankie’s hand. I know you were kind, he whispered, as if in a confessional. She sat next to him, her hand massaging the back of his neck.

At the side of the Gully Road near River Rouge he pulled over and kissed her, softly at first, then with greater passion. She responded in kind, letting him feel her body over her clothes. After they had kissed, he looked at her, almost crying, his hand trembling in hers. When she looked directly at him, ready to ask what was wrong, he began to speak.

Let me tell you something, he said then paused. Let me tell you something no one knows. James is not my uncle; he is my stepfather. I have two fathers; they both live with my mother.

His words shocked me, Sally recalled. I didn’t know what to say.

There, I said it. I am waiting for the bricks to fall.

She could still hear his voice trembling.

No bricks were going to fall. He broke into tears. We wept hard tears together, clinging tightly to each other. I felt the pain pouring out of his body.

I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time now. This has been going on since 1962. My mother warned me not to tell anyone.

It’s OK. I know it is difficult for you to share that with me. You must really feel close to me.

I was scared for him, Sally remembered. The situation sounded dangerous. That was when she really started feeling deeply for him. He shared the darkest secret of his life with me, only me, she said to the silent room. Then he had said words she would never forget.

My parents taught me, beat into me, that it is OK to lie, that the right lies are moral, he said. He could not look into my eyes as he spoke, she remembered.

I have been a liar most of my life, Sally. I don’t want to lie anymore, especially to you.

Some moments remain etched in a person’s mind for life. She could replay those times as if they were queued in a VCR. Sally last saw Frankie in Dearborn on December 20, 1966.

I don’t know what is going on, he had confided. My mother is packing, stacking things in the hallway. James bought a car.

He clung to her as they said their goodbyes.

Then, a week later, they swept him away. It was like they kidnapped their own son. If I could only have convinced him to stay, Sally lamented. Another month, maybe even just another week, we would have gotten him out of that hell house.

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3

SALLY, IT’S FOR you, her mother called from downstairs. Pick it up in your room.

OK, Mom, Sally picked up the receiver. She waited to hear the click before she started to speak.

‘Hello, Sally.

Hey, Barbara, Merry Christmas.

And Happy Hanukkah to you!

That was last week.

Oh. Have you heard from Frankie?

Sally sensed something worrisome in her friend’s voice. No, he probably couldn’t phone Christmas Eve. Why?

I heard his family left in a hurry this morning. His dad is still there. Neighbors say they must have left before dawn. Sally’s heart sank. This is what Frankie had feared, and now it had happened.

Does anyone know where they are going?

Mr. Petrovic is still at Frankie’s house. He said something about a job and an operation in San Francisco, but it was all kind of vague. You know how those Russians are. Sally wasn’t really listening. The words trailed off into her thoughts. I know he will call me. I just need to wait.

You OK? It’s Christmas Eve. My family is going to midnight Mass. Sally smiled to herself. Why do Christians act like Jews have no idea what December 25 means? she wondered.

I will talk to you later.

Happy holidays. Enjoy them with your family. Everything will be OK.

Sally buried her head deeply into her pillow and cried hard. She didn’t want her parents to know what happened to Frankie’s family, or how deeply it affected her. Her mind traveled to the interstate. Her boyfriend was out there, trapped in a family car somewhere on the road to California.

Frankie, she thought, something’s happening here that I don’t understand.

PART TWO

The Road to Nowhere

Get out of town before it’s too late

While the speedboat is frozen in the arctic lake

While the cops are snoring in the frost-hung parlor

And the shotgun hidden under crumpled pillows.

Thomas McGrath, Get out of Town

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4

December 24, 1966

HOME VANISHED IN the crystalline moments before dawn.

As Frankie closed his eyes, he saw himself walking down the steps from the porch, stepping over patches of dirty snow on the brown lawn over the tar seams between broken asphalt on the driveway for the last time. Why the fuck did I step into this car? he thought to himself, incredulously. A panic caught hold of his chest, worried that his mother heard his thoughts.

Just at that moment, she turned and looked him straight in the eye. No one in Dearborn must know where we are or where we are going. What we do and where we go is our family matter. Understand?

Mama wants her privacy, Francis, his sister, Theresa, confided from her seat alongside him. Only the family can know

James stayed silent, his hands on the steering wheel, his eyes looking at the road straight ahead.

The message was clear enough. Frankie already knew he was not to contact Sally. Of course, he also knew that is exactly what he would do the first chance he would get. What will she do when she knows I’m gone? he wondered.

Frankie observed how his mother and stepfather relaxed as soon as they crossed from Michigan into Indiana.

The road followed the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. Chicago’s skyscrapers came into view. James navigated the sedan through the railway yards and up the freeway ramp. Frankie saw his first Route 66 sign. The skyscrapers grew smaller until they disappeared from view.

We have to take Route 66 because snow blocks the northern route over the Rockies, James said.

Frankie heard the freedom in his voice. James sounded desperate, more like a man on the lam than the head of a family. He had escaped from his first marriage when he moved in with Marilyn, but his first wife was almost as reluctant to let him go as Gregory was to release Marilyn.

Rural Illinois spread out on either side of the car. Great rolling prairie fields, brown with white patches of snow lined the road to the horizon. The land opened up, unlike the great northern forests in Michigan.

Frankie imagined Sally. He had not said goodbye. On Christmas day she would be at the movies, following a Chinese dinner. He wondered what movie she was going to watch. He wanted to phone her to let her know where he was and where he was going. If he could run away they could meet tomorrow at the Dearborn library where they could talk quietly and figure out what to do.

He had no idea where the hell they were going. James had spoken about a job in California. The family settled nothing before they left, and now they were on the road. His stepdad played Christmas music on the new FM