DUCK AND COVER

A retired judge and baby boomer reflects on his adolescent years.

A former District Court judge, Munger has spent his retirement writing an impressive number of books, from mysteries and short stories to biographies and essay collections. In this, his most intimate work, he looks introspectively at his years as a child, teenager, and young adult in 1960s and ’70s Duluth, Minnesota. Written as a collection of essays and a “string of vignettes” rather than a straightforward autobiographical narrative, the author emphasizes that his “pure, unadulterated visions of the past” emerge straight from his memory. With this disclaimer that specific dates, events, and names may be off, Munger recollects delightful childhood events that are nostalgic rather than maudlin. Like many White adults of the 1950s, Munger’s parents benefited from the postwar economic boom that afforded their children a carefree, sheltered youth spent playing sports, riding bikes, swimming, and ice-skating. Essays cover an almost clichéd collection of stories about the life of a 1960s White kid from a small city, with entire chapters devoted to baseball games, childhood antics (“Low Crimes and Misdemeanors”), and humorous anecdotes such as “puking” on the school principal. In Munger’s wistful retelling, seemingly every group of kids in Duluth had their own makeshift fort, shack, or clubhouse (“sanctuaries from scrutiny”) that evolved from imaginary playhouses to storage units for Playboy magazines, cigarettes, and other teenage “contraband.” Munger hailed from Bob Dylan’s hometown, so there is, of course, the obligatory essay on “Sex, Drugs, & Rock and Roll” outlining the author’s own escapades in the early 1970s.

Though often lighthearted, the memoir doesn’t shy away from honest portrayals of his “obsessive/compulsive” mother and absent father, a personal injury lawyer who was constantly chasing “a big payday.” In one particularly unsettling passage, the author recalls his father declaring to him in the middle of a family fight that his mother was “having an affair with a fancy-assed Twin Cities Doctor.” His mother proceeded to describe “all the women” her husband had slept with. Students of mid-20th-century Midwestern politics are also given insights into the family dynamics of one of Duluth’s most politically active families whose social circles included Hubert Humphrey. Not only is the author’s uncle Willard Munger the longest-serving member in the history of the Minnesota House of Representatives, but his father, Harry, served as chairman of the Democratic Party of St. Louis County. Both are described in intimate detail here. Accompanied by ample family photos and snapshots, this is a deeply personal, approachable, well-written book. A powerful theme that runs throughout is an abiding love of Northern Minnesota, particularly its natural environment, which served as the stage for Munger’s most profound memories and which the author laments is increasingly being replaced by buildings and asphalt. As a successful, powerful lawyer and judge in his own right, the author ends the story with meeting his wife, René, leaving readers wondering about his own career and post-adolescent life.

An often humorous, occasionally poignant reflection on growing up in the 1960s and ’70s.