The summer of ’87. Not my happiest summer ever. That summer I’d finished my first year of college, but because I was in a program that would allow me to alternate one semester of school with one semester of work in my field of study (aerospace engineering, if you can believe it), I had to complete 3 semesters of school in a row to get enough credits under my belt to qualify. So, summer of ’87, after two of the most intense academic semesters I’d endured to that point, I had to do a third. Not the smartest thing I could have done, but I was 19 and what did I know?

I think I took 4 classes that summer. Two engineering classes in the back half of the summer, and Calculus 3 and a humanities class in the front half. I don’t remember what the humanities class was, but it was probably the easiest of the four classes. It would almost have to be.

I have a couple of clear memories of that summer. I read a lot of articles about the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the 10th anniversary of Elvis’ death. I inhaled several pounds of dust working my job in the ancient stacks of my school’s library. I damn near wore out the cassettes of Steve Earle’s Exit 0, Dwight Yoakam’s Hillbilly Deluxe and Rosanne Cash’s King’s Record Shop. Exit 0 in particular got tons of play that summer. If I started playing it when I got on the B41 at night, it would finish up as I walked up to my front door. I also wasted some time chasing after a girl in one of my engineering classes, but I was one broke, burned out, miserable bastard that summer, so not surprisingly my main companion during those months was my Walkman.

And there’s one other thing I remember from that summer. My humanities class, whatever it was called, assigned Catch-22 as one of the books to read. I’d heard of, and probably used, the phrase “Catch-22” at that point, but had no idea what the book was about. Turns out it’s a book about World War II, among other things. Also turns out this book would become one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Catch-22 doesn’t follow a linear timeline. It jumps around quite a bit, and you have to pay attention but that doesn’t mean it’s really hard to follow. One of my library bosses took the same class a year later and hated the book because it wasn’t linear, which I found amusing since that was one of the things I liked best about it. And I’m pretty sure that at least one person on the writing staff for the first 3 seasons of M*A*S*H (the only seasons worth watching, by the way) was a fan, because I remember reading several scenes that were mighty familiar and were only missing Hawkeye and Radar to be practically an episode transcript.

Ultimately, I liked the book enough to drag out my battered old copy every couple of years, until it was lost sometime during the great Tgreen’s Farewell Tour of 2003 (and the less said about that, the better). I thought about replacing it, but always decided that if I was going to read it again, I’d want to read the copy that had taken all those trips on the B41, survived multiple lunches and dinners scarfed down out front of the school building, and then joined me on the commutes to at least 2 jobs upon graduation. No new copy of the book was going to be an acceptable replacement.

A couple of weeks ago I was digging around my storage space looking for a photo album that continues to elude me when I suddenly found myself face to face with my 1987 vintage copy of Catch-22, looking about the same as I remembered it. Pretty soon it’ll be joining me on yet another commute, and I’ll probably use this space to bore you with the details as I take a crack at this book for the first time in at least a decade.

Could be worse, though. I could use this space to share more memories of the summer of ’87. Trust me, you’re way better off reading about me reading Catch-22.

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