The Jim Garraty Chronicles Quotes

“I didn’t plan on writing a four‑story cycle. In fact, for a long time I didn’t plan on writing much of anything after Reunion: A Story in 1998. That novella felt complete — Jim grieving at Marty’s grave, Mark heading off to show a house, Jim returning to New York alone. The door seemed closed. I figured I’d written my one good piece of fiction and that was that.

But stories have a way of tapping you on the shoulder when they want to be told. And sometimes they tap for decades.

Before I get to that, though, I need to talk about South Miami High — because that place, which I never wanted to attend, ended up shaping the emotional landscape of these stories more than I ever expected.

I was supposed to be a Southwest kid. Tropical Elementary fed into Riviera Junior High, and Riviera fed into Southwest Senior High. That was the plan. That was the path. That was where everyone I knew was going. But in the spring of 1980 — around the time of the McDuffie riots — the School Board decided that disabled students who had trouble getting to class on time at Southwest (which didn’t have an elevator then) would be transferred to South Miami instead. I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t get the transfer rescinded. And I didn’t want to attend Coral Park, which would have been my school if I were able‑bodied. So I arrived at SMSH with a chip on my shoulder and a bad attitude.

My first day didn’t help.

I hadn’t slept the night before. I got to my bus stop an hour early. The driver didn’t stop because she was expecting a kid in a wheelchair — which I wasn’t.

I waited until nine in the morning, woke my mother, and she drove me to school. We got lost. I arrived late. The office didn’t have my schedule. I sat alone in the auditorium until Mr. Passman came down from the second floor and hauled me off to Business Math — a cruel joke for someone who hates math. By the time I made it to lunch, I was exhausted, depressed, and wondering what I’d done to deserve this detour in life.

And then I saw him. A tall man in a gray suit, white hair, handlebar mustache, walkie‑talkie in hand — someone who clearly mattered. I nodded politely, because even on a terrible day, I knew how to be respectful. I started to walk past him, and he said: “Good morning, Captain! I’m Dr. Burchell, and welcome to South Miami.”

I’d seen his name on the postcard announcing the first day of school, but I never expected to meet him — certainly not on that day. Yet there he was, greeting me with humor and warmth, noticing the knockoff fatigue jacket I wore with the Americal Division patch and captain’s bars. In that moment, the school I didn’t want to attend became a little less foreign. A little less hostile. A little more mine.

It’s funny how small moments like that stay with you. They become part of the emotional soil you write from, even decades later.”
― Alex Diaz-Granados, The Jim Garraty Chronicles: A Life Told in Four Movements

“I was supposed to be a Southwest kid. Tropical Elementary fed into Riviera Junior High, and Riviera fed into Southwest Senior High. That was the plan. That was the path. That was where everyone I knew was going. But in the spring of 1980 — around the time of the McDuffie riots — the School Board decided that disabled students who had trouble getting to class on time at Southwest (which didn’t have an elevator then) would be transferred to South Miami instead.

I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t get the transfer rescinded. And I didn’t want to attend Coral Park, which would have been my school if I were able‑bodied. So I arrived at SMSH with a chip on my shoulder and a bad attitude.”
― Alex Diaz-Granados, The Jim Garraty Chronicles: A Life Told in Four Movements

“[Mark] didn’t go see A Bridge Too Far with me. He went to see Star Wars first.

When he finally did see Attenborough’s film — sometime in July — he called me afterward.

“It was impressive,” he said. “Really impressive. But it wasn’t as fun as Star Wars.”

I felt a small sting of disappointment, the kind only a twelve‑year‑old can feel when a friend doesn’t love the thing he loves with the same intensity.

“But I get why you liked it,” he added. “It’s your kind of thing.”
― Alex Diaz-Granados, The Jim Garraty Chronicles: A Life Told in Four Movements

“y I was twelve years old in the summer of 1977, and Miami felt like it was sitting under a damp wool blanket. The humidity was so thick you could almost see it, and our aging 1972 Sears Kenmore central A/C unit was fighting a losing battle against it. My mother, Sarah, paced the hallway every time the compressor made a new sound — a rattle here, a cough there — mentally calculating what she could afford to repair and what she absolutely could not afford to replace.”
― Alex Diaz-Granados, The Jim Garraty Chronicles: A Life Told in Four Movements