eventy nine year old, fledgling novelist, Jerry Franks, announced that the book he wrote, just published, 1891: A Novel about Stanford University, will be part of a four volume saga entitled, fittingly enough, The Stanford Saga.

Franks said, “I have finished six chapter of the second volume, 1892, and have pretty well mapped out the rest of the book which was easy because the first Stanford-Cal game took place in March of 1892 and Ernest Johnson, the only African American in the Class of 1895, enters the picture at the beginning of the second semester, so 1892 had significant historical developments with which I could work.

“The third volume, 1893, will be murkier because Senator Stanford will have died and the university will go through significant financial difficulties plus the country, in general, will suffer economic difficulties---the Pullman Strike and the Panic of 1893.

“The final volume, 1894-95, at the moment, is only a hazy concept. For those graduating in the Class of 1895, it must have been an unhappy experience, going from the frivolous pranks and an atmosphere of dreams of future success to the reality of a nation in an economic depression, without hope or jobs, facing a future back home or on bleak streets of San Francisco. Those remaining at the university also faced trying times, no money for salaries or even coal for the power station. Without benefit of prescience, the Saga will have end on a note of uncertainty for the very future of the university.

“Uncertainty will also apply to finishing a four volume saga in your eighties. In fact, taking an old joke further, if you really want to make God laugh, tell him you’re going to write a saga. Time will tell.”

This was brought home to Franks in the past year when he was diagnosed with CMML---a form of leukemia that probably won’t kill him, but may help something else do the job. Beyond that, just the realities of growing old will slow him up. His best hope is that younger writers will become interested in his project.