Stepping back in time often feels like an impossible dream, confined to the realms of science fiction. Yet, sometimes, the most mundane objects can transform into our very own Time Travel Machines, capable of transporting us back to moments long past. For me, it was a seemingly insignificant detail within a New York Times article from June 28, 1973 – Richard Nixon’s ban on soybean exports. While the headlines screamed of Watergate and Vietnam, this small piece of news, buried “below the fold,” unexpectedly became my portal to the past.
Scanning those yellowed headlines online, a peculiar sensation washed over me. Could I have actually held this very newspaper in my hands as a child? It was plausible. My family were avid readers of the Times, a paper my father even contributed to. Though at ten years old, my world revolved more around baseball scores than political dramas or agricultural policies like soybean embargoes, the Watergate scandal had already begun to etch itself into my young consciousness.
Intrigued, I delved further, wondering if my father’s work might also be within that same edition. What could have occupied his thoughts amidst these pivotal moments in soybean history? A quick search revealed that in 1973, he was the editor of the Sunday Book Review. While daily bylines were scarce, I soon unearthed a gem from that summer – an August review of two science fiction novels: Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love.
Heinlein, as my father penned with characteristic wit, was:
“…authoritarian; he is sexist; he is Buck Rogers out of Ayn Rand after an unfortunate tryst with Zane Grey… He is also a damned fine story‐teller; not to read him is to lack curiosity and the capacity to enjoy.”
Chuckling at his words, a sudden, vivid memory surfaced, so clear and present it felt like the universe itself momentarily shifted. The summer of 1973!
An iconic front page of The New York Times from June 28, 1973, showcasing the Watergate scandal alongside Nixon’s soybean export ban, a snapshot from a bygone era that serves as a powerful time travel machine to the past.
I pictured my father in a yellow armchair in our New Hampshire living room, cigarette in hand, pen poised over Time Enough For Love. Impatient young reader that I was, having devoured Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land, I was eager to get my hands on this new release. But work came first; the book was his for review.
Then, the moment of handover. I vividly recall him finishing the novel, a grin playing on his lips, fully aware of my youthful impatience as he passed Time Enough For Love to me.
Remarkably, that very copy of Time Enough For Love still sits on my bookshelf today, complete with my father’s dog-eared pages and cryptic marginal notes.
A personal time travel machine: a well-loved copy of “Time Enough for Love” by Robert Heinlein, held by the author, a tangible link to memories of his father and a summer in 1973.
The threads of memory, however, are often bittersweet. A year and a half later, my parents separated. By 1976, life had carried my mother, sister, and me from New York to Florida. Home became geographically distant from my father, until his passing in 2008. He would have turned 85 the previous Sunday.
Yet, in this moment sparked by a soybean article and a newspaper archive, I found immense joy in reconnecting with the memory of him, armchair-bound, crafting his literary critiques. It’s somewhat astonishing, yet fitting, that the humble soybean became the unlikely catalyst for this journey through time. If, as I believe, the soybean’s influence is truly all-encompassing, then it’s no surprise it can also function as a personal time travel machine, unlocking doors to our past.
One final detail from my time travel expedition: the frontispiece of my cherished Time Enough For Love contains a list of Heinlein’s pre-1973 publications, annotated in my youthful hand. The exact timing of these markings remains unclear – it seems improbable, though not impossible, that I had read two dozen Heinlein novels by age eleven. The distinction between a “dash” and a “check” mark is also lost to time, though I know I read every book marked in either way.
Childhood annotations within “Time Enough for Love”, acting as a further time travel machine, revealing the author’s early engagement with science fiction literature and the passage of years.
Despite my current, less favorable view of Heinlein’s works, a touch of regret lingers. I never quite achieved “closure” on that entire list of books. Perhaps, in the end, I simply did not have time enough for all of Heinlein. But thanks to a soybean, a newspaper, and a book, I journeyed back to a summer long ago, proving that time travel machines can be found in the most unexpected places, powered by memory and nostalgia.
