The Banjo Clock

By Craig Dieter

A close description of the effects of alcohol and drug abuse from boyhood to young adult. In this book, it’s a candid look of treatment and recovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532086434

Craig Dieter

In his first book, Craig Dieter is examining family dysfunction and drug abuse. He currently resides in Weschester County New York.

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Copyright © 2019 Craig Dieter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-8642-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8643-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019916977

iUniverse rev. date: 11/22/2019

For Marc and Liz

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W riting this has been thought about for years. Some starts have been a bloody mess and depended on my mood. Sometimes my mind was quiet and I could concentrate on what I was trying to convey to the reader but most times I threw out the draft because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I stopped using alcohol at age 32 with little effort and gave up eating meat at the same time. I didn’t need alcohol but drank too much with friends sometimes when I was a teenager. My friends all drank too. So all of a sudden I stopped and learned how to be comfortable with ordering seltzer and lime in front of everyone else. At a holiday dinner, my mother said to have a whiskey: Why not have one, go ahead. She knew I was sober and her asking me to have a drink was a sort of test, a dare to see if I could remain sober. I told her no tersely, then she knew she had hit a nerve and let it go. But it was clear that she wanted me to drink like the others in the family. What a shitty thing to do to your son. I would have preferred some recognition of my mature decision to be drug-free, some encouragement. Instead I was tempted, teased like Adam in the Garden of Eden. I would be made to toil and feel shame for my ‘nakedness’ at the start but as time passed, sobriety became easier.

From his book Nothing to be Frightened Of Julian Barnes writes: Memory in childhood, at least, as I remember it, is rarely a problem. Not just because of the briefer time span between the event and its evocation, but because of the nature of memories then: they appear to the young brain as exact simulacra, rather than processed and coloured-in versions, of what has happened. Adulthood brings approximation, fluidity, and doubt; and we keep the doubt at bay by retelling that familiar story, with pauses and periods of a calculated effect, pretending that the solidity of narrative is a proof of truth. But the child or adolescent rarely doubts the veracity and precision of the bright, lucid chunks of the past it possesses and celebrates. We know to expect the seeming paradox of old age, when we shall start to recall lost segments of our early years, which then become more vivid than our early years, which then become more vivid than our middle ones.

Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Afraid Of (New York:Knopf, 2008):

I was always recalling things and knew about people’s secrets, but I rarely let on that I knew. I was the sensitive one. I am the one who kept the doubts at bay, not just because I am getting older but rather that I want to stay in control. My sister was my care-taker and my brother was a clown. I was stuck in the middle somewhere. My brother seemed to get away with spoiled behavior just like my mother had for her father. She was the youngest in her family, too, and Mom allowed his cuteness to continue all the while forcing my sister to care for us, just like how her sister took care of my mother. There were 10 years difference between my sister and younger brother. There was 15 years between my aunt and my mother. I come to write this either because I have matured or I am saner due to psycho-therapy and medications. Regardless of how, it is time to dissect the events. It’s time to tell some secrets.

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There were several times growing up when I should have been hospitalized. My anxiety was acute and keeping a lid on all this stuff demanded much of my psyche and I became more and more depressed. It was anxiety that brought me to therapy as it became unmanageable. I latched onto others who appeared to understand me. I chain smoked and took medication. One night I spent crying in Sleepy Hollow cemetery which was right up against the park preserve where I would go to think and cry. There is no formal rear entrance despite the grand front entrance with its gates. I walked along its paths passing tombstones; I wanted to be alone. Things got to a point where crying was the only alternative and it felt good. I finally came to the front entrance and climbed the stone pillars with wrought iron bayonets sticking out. I was careful to avoid those while climbing out and made it to the street. I was lucky no policemen saw me and I walked the backroads back to my car. There were many nights like that walking the trails in the park preserve. One night a coyote followed me from a long distance away, never coming any closer than it was; its fur shining in the moonlight. There was another time when I heard a pack of coyotes take down a deer. It was guttural, wild and painful to hear. The deer finally quieted and so did the coyotes. This preserve became holy ground; a place to escape to when I needed to be by myself and talk things out aloud. In the summer, thunderstorms echoed across the Hudson River with a loud boom, louder than the deer. The lightning was spectacular and I could watch the storm approach from the west getting louder and louder until the rain came signaling the coming of the end of the storm. Many times my friend would go with me and we would talk and talk. He understood what I was feeling and why. We sat on top of the hill and watched the river boats. The rain didn’t stop us. The communication between