Memoir Interrupted

Mr. Dunne was busy writing his memoirs. He was deep in his Vietnam War chapter when he had been a correspondent for CBS News. He had once met Agent Orange, but mistook him for a CIA operative.

He would have to be careful about the details of his personal life. What should he say of his romance with Greta, the A. P. photographer? Nothing. It never happened. At least, not to him. He could write about his friendships with Dan Rather and Morley Safer. Except that he never met them.

Mr. Dunne had actually spent the ‘60s back home in Illinois working at a bank. He had led a quiet life except for the splashy times when he was in rehab for his addictions (Folger's Regular Coffee and Salem Lights).

As a young man, on one of the few occasions he left home, he had attended banking school for two weeks at Southern Illinois University. For him this was a considerable journey, over one hundred miles.

Mr. Dunne was not a good traveler. He went places without knowing where he was going. When he somehow arrived at a destination, he didn't know how he had got there. When he returned home, he didn't know how he had got back, or where he had been in the first place.

His poor sense of direction led him to places not on the map; local residents would giggle at his ignorance and tell him to go east two miles until he reached "the slab", which was how the highway was described in their vernacular.

So exotic places and travel were not really on his agenda; he seldom left the cornfields of home.

Still there was his show business period when he worked as an extra at Universal Studios. His biggest role was the day he fell out of an upstairs window and landed on Audie Murphy's horse.

How had he got to California? Plane. A further check of his diary indicated that he had only taken the Universal Tour, but he liked the Audie Murphy story better.

Mr. Dunne suddenly had an epiphany (after a spell-check): he had given up on his memoirs, because he had gotten weary of making stuff up.

It would be hard, however, to skip the Civil Rights Movement. But he wasn't there—he had missed the bus. He had got home somehow, but was glad he didn’t have to explain the details-- although hopping a ride on a freight car would have made a good story. He could have explained how he met Woody Guthrie and rode the rails.

What was that song they used to sing together? "This Land is My Land"?