He left a secure job in advertising, had his stomach removed while his crumbling marriage fragmented then fell to pieces in this house.


I lived across the tracks in a basement apartment with my one-year-old daughter, cleaned houses and was attending community college.


According to a newspaper dated August 8, 1974, "The world of 440 million years ago has been reconstructed in a 20-display 'Time Machine' designed to take visitors from the formation of the universe 10 billion years ago to the present."


When I was 21, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting were playing in the movie theater, bargain matinee price $1.25.


"From prehistoric origins through the current fight to protect the environment, man's story is presented in dialogue written and delivered by Becker, his voice carried over one track of a built-in stereo system while carefully timed silent bleeps on a second track trigger lights and animation."


When I was 21, I sold my art to make ends meet, started the slow process from realism to abstraction. He was 35 and we would not meet for 13 years. I didn't know about the Time Machine until I found the 4 page newspaper clipping among other things he saved.


*quotes from Courier News

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