In 1959, Kevin Fenton was born on a family farm overlooking Rollingstone, Minnesota—a tight-knit village founded by Luxembourgers and so Catholic that the parish school was the only school in town. The farm, and Kevin's memory, is filled with the closeness of his large family. Dennis, the oldest brother, drives everyone—rather dangerously—to school. His sisters dance to records in the afternoons. At bedtime, knock-knock jokes flow between the siblings' rooms. Kevin has the powerful sense of being born lucky.<br /><br />Soon, however, the farm is lost; the school closed; the family fractured. The family's move from the farm, while not all bad, leaves Kevin yearning for Rollingstone and the old family home. He begins a sometimes self-destructive search for new ways to define himself—in friendship, in art, in words—that lasts well into adulthood. And while his losses are still grievous, he begins to see new circuits of possibility and rediscover old sources of strength.<br /><br />Leaving Rollingstone, set in a time of major social change, is a portrait of the inevitability of loss and the power of choice, about how a big-city ad man and novelist reclaimed the enduring values and surprising vitality of his small-town boyhood.<br /><br />
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Kevin Fenton. Leaving Rollingstone
LEAVING ROLLINGSTONE
THE GOLDEN AGE
EXILES ON CREAMERY STREET
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A HISSING TODDLER
FLOWERS, ALCOHOL, INFECTION, AND FLESH
TRANSISTOR RADIOS
THE TEENAGERS ARE WINNING
INSIDE OTHER HOMES
DINOSAURS AND SPIROGRAPHS
THE TEENAGERS ARE LOSING
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS SWINGING BACHELOR SPORTSWRITER
BASEBALL CARDS AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
UNSUSTAINABLE FARMING
FLIRTING WITH NUNS
WHAT IS A VILLAGE?
RIBBONS AND MEDALS
FIRE AND OTHER SOLVENTS
BOB NEWHARTS-IN-WAITING
FLOW
THE LAST DAYS OF BOYHOOD
FATHERS AND FRIENDS
HIPPIES FOR GERALD FORD
APOGEE
THE PATH BACK HOME—AND SISTER MAUREEN’S RECIPE FOR GOD
A HEART-SIZED ROLLINGSTONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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a memoir
KEVIN FENTON
.....
When I try to sum up my Rollingstone experience in the glib way you sum up whole portions of your life during conversation with near-strangers at Christmas open houses and client dinners, I say, “Until I was twelve, I thought goddamnLuxembourger was one word.” It usually gets a laugh. It usually gets a laugh from the Luxembourgers themselves.
Rollingstone was 95 percent Luxembourger. During the First World War, the young men from Rollingstone could still speak Luxembourgish to relatives they met in Europe. Eventually, a few non-Luxembourg families, including my mother’s (who were largely Irish), moved in to enroll their children in the free parish school. My father agreed to move there because he wanted to farm, and that was possible there. He became known as the Irishman. But in the sixties, a dozen names still proliferated in the pamphlet-sized phone book. Off the top of my head, I recall five Speltz families who owned four farms.
