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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 794July 4 Weekend, 1960Three years later in a red Volkswagen Bug, I roared out of Peoria free, white, and twenty-one, north on a two-lane highway, singing along with the car radio, %u201cThere%u2019s a Summer Place.%u201d Destination: the home of Mike Hager. He lived in the resort town of Wisconsin Dells. We had planned at Misery how my family could meet his family the summer before by taking our vacation at the Dells. For some reason, maybe a funeral out of town, Doc and Mrs. Hager never showed. Mike came alone.My father had shot home movies of us all on one of the small tour boats. On screen we cruised across mirror-smooth water, among beautiful rock formations with my mother pointing up at the delicate cover of green forest. Thom stood in the background, smoking, hating the vacation, hating us singing along in the silent movie with the tour guide who was an Irish tenor happy to hear we were the O%u2019Hara Family. Fluttering in 8mm Technicolor, we all took turns holding my little sister, Margaret Mary, isn%u2019t she cute, forever the new baby, who was three, and always imitating us, talking anachronisms about things the family did %u201cbefore the baby was born,%u201d as if she had preceded herself, till I told her to cut it out.When the boat reached %u201cThe Wonder Spot,%u201d a place in the forest where baseballs rolled up hill and we all looked like we were standing at gravity-defying forty-five degree angles to the ground, Mike and I had taken the movie camera from my father and we shot each other sideways and upside down, and when I ran the movie backwards through the projector, everyone laughed.I even showed the movie once at Misery. I was the first boy in the whole history of Catholicism to return to the seminary with a movie camera and a projector, but I had to mail them both home because Rector Karg said, %u201cJust when I think you%u2019ve thought up everything, you think up something else.%u201dAt twenty-one, I was embarrassed because I looked no more than fifteen. My summer job was pumping gas at a filling station owned by my father%u2019s best friend who was the rich Mason. He had given me the