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Ambition Should Be Made of Sterner Stuff
Me and Bobby Rakov and the Rite of Passage
Phoenix, Arizona Fall 1976
Bobby Rakov could have been my younger brother, but in this case the young upstart would have surpassed the elder: I would have been hard-pressed to think I could outdo him at much. We were Phase II Baby Boom children, born in 1955 and 1957, two of the most prolific birth years in the history of the planet — children of prosperity and rebellion, with enough freedom to protest, enough of a bubble to fall down a few times and be padded against serious injury, and enough brains — barely — to think and talk our way out of the messes we got ourselves into.
We were also both New Yorkers, Bobby born and raised in Maybrook, a picturesque Hudson Valley town 50 miles NW of NYC, me from Brooklyn and Queens, although my family had moved to Southern California when I was 16, exactly 5 years before I met Bobby in Phoenix in the autumn of the bicentennial. We both had Russian blood and were part Jewish/part Christian, comfortable in both religions, although we were raised primarily Christian. I drifted into agnosticism in my early teen years, while Bobby recommitted to church-going in his adult years. I knew that he had ties to his Christian roots, as I sensed the joy he experienced in the ritual and ceremony when he was invited to play the…
