Certain liberties are taken with respect to historical sequences in this work of fiction.
Here we find gifted Ohmie among the very first of the American boomers, born just over nine months after VE Day. Following his seventeenth birthday, and university graduation, he travelled to Oxford, England, as a Rhodes scholar. And was there that his soul was introduced to troubles.
 
“Anybody here seen Abraham?” Ohmie asked the thousandth person, this time near the banks of the River Cherwell. No one had. Abraham had taken his Christmas holiday break to travel to Germany in search of family members missing since ’39. He’d been secreted to the states as a child, living with relatives in Conway, Arkansas. Oxford was his choice for post graduate study. It was also close enough to Germany to search for his family. He was the first person Ohmie met.
 
“Anybody seen my old friend, Abraham?” Ohmie kept asking. He didn’t notice the person behind him taking notes.
 
Ohmie was big for his age, actually the largest Ohmie ever. When he finally learned that his friend Abraham had been killed crossing the Berlin wall, he took it hard, very hard. He ignored the thing in the recesses of his mind that told him to find a rock suitable for perching himself.
 
The Cuban missile crisis which brought the world the closest it had been to destruction, JFK’s assassination, America’s Vietnam War, the Berlin airlift … and the ale rendered Ohmie unwilling to return to his studies.
 
Tears flowing unapologetically down both reddened cheeks, Ohmie told his more recent friends of Abraham taking him under his wing the moment of his arrival. Sadly, Abraham was the first real friend of his entire life. Ohmie was not taking it well. Abraham was replaced with what the barman called mild ale, a stout dark brew with a malty palate. Though on the light side as far as alcoholic content, it sent Ohmie on some troubled years. Within weeks he’d dropped out of his courses and began a life of near sleeplessness, near catatonic wanderings, crashing with acquaintances and strangers alike. It wasn’t long before he found himself in Liverpool.
 
“Anyone know anythin’ ‘bout ‘lectric?” a band member at the Liverpool tavern yelled. “Me amp…”
 
Unafraid to tackle anything and anxious to hear more music, Ohmie ambled to the stage. By then he had mastered a buzz maintenance, how to reach a half drunken state and there remain. “I’ll give it a go,” he said, having adopted local colloquialisms. Within a few moments, with nothing but a pen knife, he had them at least squawking. “You’ll need a new transistor,” he said, "but that might last the night.”
 
An invitation to travel with the group to Germany as stage hand and equipment manager struck Ohmie as a way to honor John. The Beatles had their man.
 
+++
 
There were six of them in the rented room, two to a bed, and two on the floor on pallets. Ohmie was the last to come in to try to sleep on this particular night, or early morning. “Roll over Beethoven. We’re rockin’ two by two,” he said, giving George a little shove, scooting him over. In the bed nearby, John Lennon’s eyes sprang open. He reached for a pencil and his notebook.
 
Putting their heads together the next day, John and Paul McCartney realized that several of their song ideas had come from Ohmie. They resolved to spend happy hour the next day with him, notebooks in hand.
 
Half plastered, Ohmie attempted to rise to go to the loo. Just then returning from the same, George reached to help steady Ohmie. “I wanna hold your hand, Mate. I’ll tell you something. I think you’ll understand.” John and Paul’s hands busily wrote the treasure down as Ohmie wobbled off. Plopping himself back down, Ohmie looked at the band members, all poised, with pencils, staring at him. He didn’t catch on.
 
“You see her, mates, that bird, standing there?” Ohmie asked. Four pencils touched paper. “My heart went boom when I crossed that room. I saw her standing there.” He went on until his next ale arrived. Just then the manager approached, angling to scooch the boys over in order to sit. “Twist a little closer now,” Ohmie said. “Work it on over.” Four pencils began writing.
 
After leaving, the manager having begged the group to stay over another few weeks, Ohmie asked if they had seen the girl in question. “Ah, gi-irr-rl. Is there anybody gonna listen to my story?” he asked, no one looking at him, but all four focused on their notepads.
 
Caught up with him, John glanced toward the girl at the bar. “I think she loves you,’ John said in tease.
 
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ohmie said dismissively. “With a love like that, you know you should be glad. Love me do,” Ohmie spoke into his ale. “You know I love you.”
 
Pencils bore into their paper, George’s lead tip breaking, to his great befuddlement.
 
Presently it was time to move to the stage and begin warming up. But following the show, after securing all the equipment, the boys invited Ohmie back to the table for one last brew. “It didn’t sound just right,” John was saying to the others who seemed to have their own takes on the matter.
 
“You can work it out,” Ohmie replied. “You can get it wrong, and think it’s alright. Life’s too short. There’s no time for fussin’ my friends.” Four pencils dug into notebooks voiding the clamor.
 
“I say let it be,” Ohmie said, gently setting his mug between notebooks.
 
“Words of wisdom,” John replied. “We need that.”
 
By the time they’d returned to Liverpool, the Beatles were practicing several new songs.
 
+++
 
“Mick, Mick Jagger. You’re Ohmie, right? Heard ‘bout you. S’pose you could help us out, mate? We keep blowin’ fuses, we do. Could use some expertise.”
 
Ohmie said his goodbyes to the Beatles and joined a group called The Rolling Stones.
 
“We just can’t get no, I don’t know …”
 
“Satisfaction,” Ohmie finished for Micky. “’Cause you don’t smoke the same cigarettes,” he said. “No, no, no. See, you have to smoke the same ones he does, or he doesn’t think you’re a man. Now me, I can’t always get what I want, either. The wire has to match the panel. I can’t always get what I want or we’re gonna break a fifty-amp fuse. Satisfaction, see?”
 
Mick took out a pencil and began writing in his notebook.
 
After that night’s show, Mick angled toward Ohmie to thank him for keeping the band on. “Under my thumb,” Ohmie said. “Got it under my thumb, all under control.” Ohmie laughed and clapped Jagger on the shoulder. “One thing though, Micky. When they shoot out that fog, two’s a crowd. Yer taking a risk tangling wires. Tell ‘em get offa your cloud.”
 
Micky reached for his pencil. “You know, Ohmie. We should spend the night together. I’ve been tryin’ to catch you, but… Well, don’t hang me up, let me down. All right-o?”
 
“You should write that down,” Ohmie said with a wink and a grin.
 
During one of the Stones’ larger concerts, one of their larger ones, the Dave Clark Five performed the opening. Dave approached Ohmie about the set up. “Any way you want it,” Ohmie said. “Any way at all.”
 
His small spiral notebook in hand, “You wouldn’t have a pencil, would you, Ohmie?”
 
“Come on. I’ll show you where it’s at.”
 
“You guys left the dance early last night,” Dave said.
 
“Yeah, everybody there was dead,” Ohmie replied. “Oh, sorry. Looks like my pencil’s in bits and pieces. Sorry, bloke.”
 
+++
 
“Hey Peter,” Ohmie responded to Peter Noone of Herman and the Hermits. “I heard you guys practicin’ your Henry the 8th song. It’s a little short, but good.”
 
“Thanks, Ohmie. We can’t get any direction… where to go.”
 
Ohmie thought a moment. “Why not just sing the second verse, the same as the first. People will eat it up.”
 
Peter dug into his pocket for a nub of a pencil. Just then the lights went out all over the building. Ohmie and Peter stood still, listening to the silence.
 
“It’s a kind of hushhh, all over the world,” Ohmie whispered. “The only sound…”
 
“Shush,” Peter said, “the     only    sound    that    you …”
 
Ohmie smiled. Suddenly a scream could be heard from across the auditorium. “WE GOTTA GET OUTTA THIS PLACE!” It was Eric Burdon of the group called the Animals who were to play the next night.
 
“If it’s the last thing we ever do,” Ohmie called back.
 
Uh, anyone have a pencil?” the voice returned. “Ohmie, you HAVE to come work for us!”
 
A solitary light popped on over Ohmie’s head. He was finally ready to return to his calling. “Please don’t misunderstand. I’m just a soul with good intentions, but my mind tells me that it’s my life and I have to do what I want. And don’t put a spell on me,” he added as he made his way out of the building.
 
On the wall of a fountain just outside the doorway, Ohmie saw a man crying. “Don’t let the sun catch you doin’ that,” he said.
 
Gerry of the Pacemakers immediately took out a notebook and pencil.
 
On the train back toward Oxford, Ohmie sat beside a young lady bent on going downtown, presumably London. Ohmie talked about life making a person lonely, but that someone had told him of a place he could always go…” He stopped talking as Ms. Clark seemed more interested in writing in her notebook.