AND YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD BE GLAD

Journeyman Greene (Once Upon a Town, 2002, etc.) celebrates the life and mourns the death of his oldest friend.

Greene, now approaching 60, first met Jack in kindergarten back in Bexley, Ohio. Bob and Jack, together with Allen, Chuck and Dan, comprised the “ABCDJ” troupe that remained kindred spirits, devoted throughout the decades. Greene’s tribute to Jack records some of the treasured moments they shared over the years: Commonplace youthful adventures, the little markers of days, attain a significance as Bexley becomes Grovers Corners in Greene’s memory, a memory apparently sharpened by advancing years. He writes of Bexley’s Audie Murphy Hill and Alum Creek, of Toddle House burgers and Toll House cookies. There was the Ferris wheel on Main Street and Chuck Berry and the Beatles, too. He writes of girls and the discovery of sex; of the catchphrases special only to the ABCDJs; and ultimately of humanity. Jack, for whom “not having a killer instinct was the best thing about him,” was Greene’s Everyman, not really extraordinary, just good.

In this Tuesdays (And All Other Days) with Jack, the author mostly sidesteps the maudlin.