I started toying with this story a little more than two years ago. Chapter 4 is where I really started to hit my stride telling the story (and, by extension, finding places to insert Chapin references).
The date-related Easter eggs:
November 16: "the Cat's In the Cradle kid," Harry's son Josh, was born on November 15, 1972. However, in 1870, November 15 fell on a Sunday, and I needed that plot development to happen on a business day, so it is pushed forward one day.
January 8: the final (or at least one of the final) non-bootleg recordings of a Harry Chapin concert coincided with a celebration of his 2,000th concert that took place over three days at The Bottom Line in New York City. The first of the three shows was on January 8, 1981.
July 16: the date of Martin Tanner's confessional letter is the date of Harry's death in 1981.
Elements of both funeral scenes are drawn from "Corey's Coming." There are two versions of the song: the original version from the "On the Road To Kingdom Come" album, and the longer version on the "Legends of the Lost and Found" album, which many fans (me among them) deem the canonical version.
Either one tells why "when he finally looked up, Harry saw that he was not alone" and provides the source of the parson's eulogy for Martin: "We need not grieve for this man, for we know that God cares." Incidentally, Ella walking into the parlor "with a shawl around her head" when Harry comes calling to escort her to the town festival in Chapter 2 also comes from "Corey's Coming."
Harry feeling "as if he had traveled nearly a thousand miles only to find himself standing exactly where he had begun" is a callout to one of my favorite lyrics that Harry Chapin ever wrote: You can travel on 10,000 miles and still stay where you are from the song "W.O.L.D." which also appears on the "Short Stories" album.
What I really want to pause for, though, is the name of Martin's attorney.
The song 30,000 Pounds of Bananas was a favorite of Harry’s fans... and was the bane of his band’s existence when performed in concert; Steve once said "I try to stay as uninvolved as possible with this song at all times."
In 1965, Harry was riding a bus between New York City and Ithaca, NY. As it passed through Scranton, Pennsylvania, a passenger regaled Harry with the tale of a recent truck accident. The truck, en route to a grocery store, had jackknifed, spilling fifteen tons of produce all over Moosic Street. Later on, Harry was watching the evening news and heard the dispassionate recitation of the day’s casualty figures from Vietnam. He thought of that conversation on the bus, and remembered the man laughing uproariously over all that spilled cargo, the cars that were wrecked, the property that was damaged... but mostly the bananas.
Yet the laughter and the jokes overlooked one simple fact: a man had died. A human being, flesh and blood, had a wife and family waiting at home... and they never saw him walk through the door again. Not terribly unlike those daily casualty reports. It was often hard for people watching those news reports to remember that those staggering numbers represented real people. A mother who had a folded flag rather than a son. A young woman who had dreamt of her high-school sweetheart coming home and beginning a life with her, left only with a class ring. A boy whose big brother would never throw him another football. Much like 2020, when we listened to the daily COVID numbers, but perhaps never really thought about the woman watching her husband struggle to breathe, or the son who had to tell the doctors to turn off the machines keeping his mother alive.
On March 18, 1965, a man went to work with no thought of becoming a hero. Yet he did. Although he died in that accident, he was the only fatality. When his truck’s brakes failed and he rolled into Scranton out of control, he stood on the truck’s running board and screamed at everyone in his path, warning them out of the way. And when he saw the approaching gas station, he steered the truck away from it, which cost the driver his life but likely prevented a mass casualty incident.
The truck driver's name was Eugene Sesky. I realize his family is not happy about the immortality that “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” brought him, and theirs is a fair criticism. Perhaps he does deserve to be memorialized as more than an opportunity for people to sit on the edge of their seats, tapping their feet and waiting for their cue to scream, “Harry, it sucks!” I can only offer a different tribute, making him the namesake of an advocate, a protector, and a man of compassion - qualities the real man demonstrated with his final act.
Rest well, Mr. Sesky.