Do you remember the day the Columbia space shuttle blew up? I don’t. I can’t tell you why I have no recollection of the details, but I don’t have the foggiest about the moment I discovered what had happened or when. Sure, the various elements to the story are stuffed in cranial cardboard boxes, collecting dust, in the unswept synaptic corners of my mind, but I can’t recall the day or date or time. I’m like Oliver North at the Iran-Contra hearings.

Why is that? Am I just old? Do I not care enough? Or have I been spoiled by the internet where an abundance of data, including reams of superfluous and trivial drivel, are at my fingertips’ beck and Google call? I can’t even tell you my son’s telephone number, now, because the phone stores it and saves me the gargantuan effort. This is a good thing? Bah, new technology may be saving me time, but at the expense of losing my mind.

Regardless, I can tell you exactly where I was when the Challenger blew up. No, I don’t remember the specific day and date, which could explain my test scores on high school history exams, but I can remember vividly the very essence of Challenger’s impact, that day. I was sitting in a tiny studio apartment at my electric typewriter (no, it wasn’t even a word-processor) working on our first screenplay. My buddy and I had ridden cross-country on a Yamaha 550 motorcycle, winding up in Point Loma, San Diego, in pursuit of Hollywood dreams.

That January morning, as the radio softly kept me updated with background traffic on the nines and the boring drone of beautiful beach weather reports, I studied our script intently, looking for the next great catch-phrase that would have Spielberg begging me to sell him the finished story. Of course, he went on to create Dreamworks, while I continued living in a dream world. That script is stuck, now, in the bottom of a sock remnant drawer where all the sinful socks go whose partners are raptured in the clothes dryer’s second cycle.

Something about the news reporter’s tone caught my attention as it cut through the rumble of jets taking off from Lindbergh Field, which would have explained the modest rent since our apartment complex lay directly beneath the flight path. Near dawn, when I preferred to be sleeping, the daily departures roared full throttle, seemingly six inches above my pillow, and rattled me upright more quickly than cold water in the face.

The only positive side to the noise was that I never needed to worry about over-sleeping and missing work. I would have admitted to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, if it could have silenced those planes. There were moments when I was certain Bruno Hauptmann had gotten off easy. At least he was executed and not tortured, indefinitely.

I turned up the radio and listened to the unfolding drama surrounding the early-morning explosion over Florida of the Challenger shuttle, 73 seconds after lift-off, and the rest of the day became a blur, fading into the background like only so much radio static. My intent is not to tell you the whole sad story of that event, but to say I remember that moment, explicitly, while others are forever lost, it seems, and I am left with nothing but the haziest of dreams like ghosts without the will to haunt.

And I can already tell that I will probably not have the same vivid recall of yesterday’s news, when my mother phoned to say my uncle had passed away — my father’s brother. That melancholy feeling you get, when something impacts your world, tends to blur your periphereal vision as you stumble through the day and you wonder how you safely made it from morning to night without falling off a cliff or stepping into traffic. Something greater is guiding us, perhaps.

Naturally, I am concerned about family and want to know that they’re dealing with this death as well as can be expected. However, when you’re on the other side of the country and don’t have a funeral budget to attend all services — which seem to occur more frequently as you age — the caring and feeding of the family tree results in some roots and branches feeling neglected, at times. As long as my father is handling his brother’s loss, which leaves him, now, the oldest surviving sibling in a dwindled pool of two, then I won’t go back.

My family is Appalachian through-and-through and they’re a hearty stock filled with pioneer spirit, a hard work ethic, and a strong sense of family. I’m proud of that heritage. I never knew my Uncle Owen very well, but the memory that I’ll share of him is one that truly paints a portrait of life in West Virginia and the mountain people that dwell there. They are a caring, charming and generous folk who, for any faults, mean well and are more than willing to lend a helping hand to a stranger as much as to any family member.

When I was very young and my family would make the weekend trips to the heart of coal country in Boone County, West Virginia, we would visit my dad’s mother up the holler where it was sunny for about two hours, at noon, due to the steep lay of the mountainous land. I never knew my grandfather. He died the year before I was born, but I’d like to think I got the sense of the man through his son — my dad — and his brother. During these family trips, I spent more time near my Uncle Owen than the others, as I recall.

My most vivid memory of him is of the early, predawn hours when, on some cold morning, the acrid scent of coal dust would fill the front room of the tiny house after someone stoked the potbelly stove in the corner. He’d arrive home from the graveyard shift in the local mines and be as black as Brer Rabbit’s tar baby, from head to foot, covered in the soot of his chores. I could only imagine the depths and the darkness he braved and wondered how and why men would do such things. Connecting the heat and light of the room to his work, never entered my young mind, but I think a four-year-old should be forgiven some things.

As he unwrapped the black electrical tape from around the cuffs of his bluejeans and boot tops — done to prevent the coal dust from dyeing his socks — I couldn’t quite contain myself, because I knew, when he was done, he’d open his battered lunch pail and show me what he’d brought home. The items varied, occasionally, from either a half sandwich to some snack cake or candy bar, but he’d always share it with me. It was a special treat and I valued it far more than all the coal burned to give me a brighter day. Nevermind that this was the same uncle who, when I was two, put beer in my baby bottle.

The most sought after treasure Uncle Owen would bring home from deep beneath the mountain, however, was a bottle of chocolate pop — soda to you outsiders. It wasn’t carbonated and looked like someone bottled a mudhole I use to splash about in, but it tasted way better. There were no added vitamins or minerals and it was probably as healthy as hand-me-down bathwater, but for putting a smile on my young face, a chocolate soda pop couldn’t be beat.

Oh, there are other stories of hornet’s nests, walnut trees and the time the bull shit down his leg and filled up his boots when we were trying to get him in the truck — uh, the bull, not my uncle. Of course, if you were forcing me to go to market or the butcher, I might shit, too, but none of the tales compare to just him and me, sitting in the early morning light and warmed by the ol’ coal stove, as he unwrapped that black tape and I watched the slit of his reverse raccoon eyes through the silt of the soul of our state. Then, he’d crack open that treasure chest called his lunch bucket and I became giddier than Bilbo Baggins when he first pocketed the Ring.

I believe that those who pass from this material world and form are never very far away. They are as close as a thought. This doesn’t mean I don’t feel the loss. Their energy, like ours, is one with the cosmos and they are fully capable of hearing our hearts, if we’re willing to open up to them. So, Uncle Owen, you will be missed and I will fondly remember my short time spent with you. I’m sorry we didn’t hang out as much as we could have, but the moments we shared made an impression upon your young nephew. Thanks for your food, your time and the fruits of your labor. You’re always welcome in my world, if you don’t mind knocking off a little of that coal dust before you come in the house.

Funny, I got a real hankering for a chocolate pop.

The Kat