Time Travel Times 5

Suppose you could travel in time to see Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, Socrates, or W. C. Fields. Or you could revisit your teen years through the power of Beatles music to alter your present—or accompany a time traveler from the future. Wouldn't you leap at the chance? In Time Travel Times 5, Vincent Miskell, the author of Godspeed Inc. and Rescuing the Future, invites you along on five fantastic journeys through time:

Selling July 4th: They'd never have gotten around to proposing the damned thing that summer if it hadn't been for me! Sure, everybody knows now that it was signed July 4, 1776, but it wasn't always.

It Won't Be Long: With a Little Help from the Beatles: No tears fall from my eyes, but the surging crescendo of countless trumpets and gigantic singing angels make me want to cry. I am shaking and almost sobbing with an ecstasy that propels me straight up into the azure air.

W.C. Fields Sends this Regards: "Young lady!" Fields dramatically bellowed in his high nasal voice. "My eyes must accept your too corporeal reality. Here, give me your hand."

Wizard of AZ: Milton H. Erickson, M.D, stood, politely shook my hand, and asked me to take a seat in an authentic wooden chair. As I maneuvered sideways in my lavender high-heels and purple-print dress, trying not to fall on my rubber-girdled butt, I wondered how many times this had happened before. But there was no way to tell because each attempt erased the earlier ones.

Dogs: The dog looks at me with a fiery loathing in her watery brown and usually fawn-like eyes. It is 4:33 in the morning, and this is the sixth time I've interrupted her sleep to head toward the bathroom or grab another book from the pile in the living room.