You Had to Be There: From Web Town to Psych Ward – A Memoir
by Terrence McCarthy
Published June 15, 2010 by Createspace
Sometimes when I'm with my friend Bob and his wife Penny, she will
interrupt him saying “TMI, Bob.” Too much Information. So when
Bob and I get together without Penny we exchange TMI and tell the
whole story, sometimes for the third or fourth time. I think it's in
those long detours to explain that Bob and I learn about each other
and tell each other who we really are.
Terrence McCarthy's memoir “You Had to Be There” is TMI.
McCarthy's memoir is incredibly honest. In reading it we learn who
Terrence McCarthy really is. In his unpolished style with detours
and repetitions McCarthy seems unconsciously to reveal more and more
about himself.
Born at the beginning of the Baby Boom, growing up in an
unremarkable town in an ordinary family McCarthy is in some ways a
Baby Boomer Everyman. It isn't the usual memoir we read, grunts in
Vietnam, famous reporters or writers, movers and shakers, people who
make history or stand in the middle of it. But he's not Everyman,
he's Terry McCarthy and in reading the book he has written we come to
know Terry McCarthy like a good friend.
If I were teaching a class about the 60s and 70s in America I
would assign “You Had to Be There” as required reading. It is
full of anecdotes that make the era real. He struggles with his
inner demon and goes from one college to another and finally drops
out. He joins the Air Force and goes to Myrtle Beach and then
England while Vietnam is raging. He gets out of the Air Force and is
lost at home, finding a job in a local factory or mill, meets his
future wife in a local watering hole, finishes college, becomes a journalist, a
copywriter and then quits and works for 11 years in a locked psych
ward as a counselor.
It's not the stuff of history but in fact it really is, an
ordinary life in extraordinary times, lived well and with great
awareness. It is ordinary and good people like Terrence McCarthy who
make an age what it is and in this Terrence McCarthy is an
extraordinary person, a person I enjoyed getting to know.
I hope McCarthy gives us a sequel, this book brings us to the
middle of a good life. A sequel and we can share with McCarthy the insights of
growing old. More information, please.
You Had to Be There at Amazon
I don't know Terry McCarthy. He left a comment on my Blog one time and by the time I saw it, it was a time when the blog was languishing, I couldn't reach him at the blog he said or anywhere else. I was born a year before Terry, went into the Air Force a year before. We were both stationed at RAF Chicksands at the same time. Like him I finished college after the Air Force and then got a regular job and did well. Then like Terry I quit and went to work at Juvenile Hall, he went to a locked pscyh ward. And like Terry I've written a memoir of the same time. I enjoyed reading his memoir and recommend it to my friends.
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