James Dean; Fairmount, Indiana

Four or five years back my brother Bernard and I met at the Indianapolis Airport, rented a car, and headed north to attend the biannual family reunion.  I suggested that we take a detour eastward so that I could visit James Dean's grave.  "Weren't you there not all that long ago?" he asked.  "I was there in 1992 as well as 1962, but in the recent instance my camera malfunctioned and in 1962 I didn't have a camera with me.  If I have no picture of such an event, it's as if it doesn't count."  

Movie stars are not really my thing but I've always had a soft spot for James Dean simply because he grew up not far from where I grew up.

My memory has always told me that I saw "Rebel Without A Cause" on Sept. 30, 1955.  And I recall that my buddy, Gary Miller, who was 18 to my 15, and who drove us the twelve miles to the nearest movie house, mentioned that he'd heard on the radio earlier that day that Dean had just been killed in a car crash.

Very unlikely!  While it's true that James Dean was killed on Sept. 30, "Rebel Without A Cause" wasn't released until October 27th!

Why had my mind tricked me into a lie?  Have I simply slipped into romanticisms that have caused me to embellish experiences?  Gary most likely did tell me that James Dean had been killed, but probably didn't say it had happened that very day.

Clearly, I'm not to be trusted.

What if I'd written a memoir ... titled Literary Crushes & Grave Matters maybe ... and innocently mentioned that coincidence?  What if the memoir was so charmingly written that Queen Oprah picked it for her book club?  Then some sharp-witted reporter would come along, log on to Wikipedia, & easily dig up the embarrassing truth.  I'd find myself enmeshed in scandal as James Frey with his A Million Little Pieces found himself and now Herman Rosenblat with his Angel at the Fence finds himself.  Oprah would denounce me. 

 "I'm terribly disappointed in Mr. Fitzgerald," she'd say.  "He owes me an apology."

And god knows, since there's no place to hide in Oprahville, I'd start trembling.

I'll need to be very careful here on out.