|
I was born in Brooklyn in 1951, the second child of three. We lived in a three story walk-up in a lower middle class neighborhood. At the time, Ebbets Field was still the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, children scurried under desks during air raid drills, and America was the hope of the world – still is, in my opinion. I recall New York’s steamy hot summers filled with stick ball games on city streets, chattering neighbors sitting on stoops, and a neighborhood dominated by rather benign gangs called the Halsey Tots and the Halsey Bops.
The sixties came and so did the Kennedy assassination – what a day that was – and the 1964 New York State World’s Fair with its promise of a ‘great, big, beautiful tomorrow’ where technology and science would solve all the world’s problems. I can remember visiting the various exhibits from GM, Ford, General Electric, Pepsi, and other dominant U.S. corporations and thinking surely by 2011 there will be flying cars.
In 1966, my family left Brooklyn for the hills of San Francisco. I attended high school at St. Ignatius on Stanyan Street just two blocks from Golden Gate Park and not far from the corner of Haight and Ashbury. I ran cross-country and track and interrupted workouts in the park to stop by free Grateful Dead and Doobie Brothers concerts in the meadows and polo fields. The Viet Nam war seemed never-ending and my beloved Golden Gate Park drew thousands of protestors. The 70s ushered in more changes when I moved to Silicon Valley, enlisted in the Marine reserves, attended college, and started my career. I joined a computer company in 1978 in whose employ I have lived on three continents and conducted business in over 40 countries. If Einstein’s Trunk has an international feel, you can thank my employer for that.
Brooklyn is my birthplace, but I have lived in California, North Carolina, Washington, Idaho, South Africa, and Switzerland. I still have a home in Boise and love both Idaho and Switzerland. No wonder my hero, Rulon Hurt, had roots in Idaho, graduated from Boise State University, and lives in Zurich – very similar to my history. What a coincidence!
I currently live and work in Zurich, Switzerland with my encouraging and ever-resourceful wife, Kim. Zurich is a cultured mixture of old and new with its steepled churches and cobblestoned streets in the older section along the Limmat. It has a diverse blend of old and new, which I like, with medieval architecture intermixing with perhaps the world’s premier shopping boulevard, the Zurich Bahnhofstrasse, stretching a mile from the main train station down to the Zurich Lake. And, of course, there is the international banking industry with its well-earned claim to secrecy. No wonder so many thrillers, including Einstein’s Trunk, use Zurich as a backdrop.
I hope that you enjoy reading Einstein’s Trunk as much as I enjoyed writing it.
-Jim Haberkorn
Zurich, March 2011
|