1969–1970

The 1969–1970 period gathers together a series of changes in Dominick Birdsey’s life: a reconciliation with Dessa, his departure from the Public Works Department, the first U.S. draft lottery since 1942, and Thomas Birdsey’s first psychiatric hospitalization. The novel marks this interval against the widening Vietnam War and the Moon landing, while Dominick’s retrospective narration makes the period’s personal crises feel at once ordinary in their circumstances and momentous in their consequences.

Chronological Frame

The period is explicitly marked by a 1969–1970 heading. At its opening, Dominick and Dessa drive to The Falls, talk, and reconcile. On the following Monday, he leaves the Public Works Department earlier than he had planned, telling his supervisor that school is the reason. The chronology places private decisions and public events side by side, without treating either as isolated from the other.

Dominick’s account looks back on these events with knowledge of what followed. He identifies a panic attack that had led Thomas to destroy their jointly owned typewriter in May of the previous year, then describes the first psychiatric lockup as occurring ten months later. By then, the war had escalated and Apollo 11 had landed on the Moon. The interval is therefore measured not only by dates but by Dominick’s dawning recognition that the crisis he had tried not to see was already taking shape.

Work and Personal Strain

Dominick leaves his job partly to avoid facing Ralph Drinkwater. When he encounters Ralph on the way out, Ralph appears embarrassed rather than angry. Dominick notes that the police have not yet taken Ralph in for questioning; the uncertainty remains unresolved in this passage. His decision to quit gives a practical consequence to the strain surrounding Ralph, while also showing Dominick choosing withdrawal over a further encounter.

Leo Blood has also quit the Public Works Department. Their supervisor acknowledges that Dominick came in person to explain his departure, a small difference that distinguishes the manner of the two men’s exits. The workplace episode sits alongside Dominick and Dessa’s reconciliation: the period brings a renewed connection in one relationship even as Dominick steps away from a job and a difficult confrontation.

The Draft Lottery

On the evening of December 1, 1969, Dominick, Leo, and about two dozen other men from their dorm gather around the lounge television to watch the first U.S. draft lottery since 1942. A Selective Service official draws birth dates from a revolving drum, and the men watch as those dates determine who may receive a draft notice. The lottery turns military service from a distant national issue into a visible prospect for young men of their age.

The scene’s prime-time setting sharpens the contrast between spectacle and consequence. The men watch together, but each drawn birthday carries an individual stake: those among roughly the first 120 selected are expected to be called up. The lottery places the twins’ college years within the pressures of the Vietnam War without resolving what will happen to either brother.

Thomas’s First Hospitalization

Thomas’s first psychiatric lockup follows a conversation about Angie, ten months after the panic attack associated with the typewriter’s destruction. Dominick recounts that, on the first of many nights he drives Thomas through the brick pillars and onto the grounds of Three Rivers State Hospital, he returns to their shared bedroom on Hollyhock Avenue. The account identifies this as Thomas’s first such hospitalization, setting it apart from the later institutional episodes in the brothers’ lives.

That night Dominick dreams that he, Thomas, and Ralph are lost together in the Vietnamese jungle, wading through mud. The dream brings Ralph into the same imagined landscape as the twins just as Thomas’s crisis has led to hospitalization. In retrospect, it gives the period a haunting image of shared disorientation, while Dominick’s narration links the family’s private emergency to the war that has filled the public calendar.