July 29, 2025 • 10 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Success Story by Robert Turner. What is to be will
be Our only refuge lies in that which might not
have been December eighth, nineteen fifty two, two thirty a m.
After a while, the blinding light was like actual physical
(00:21):
pressure against his tightly squenched eyes. He tried to burrow
deeper into the protectively warm, cave like place where he
had been safe from them for so long. But he
couldn't escape them. Their hands, their big, red, hideously smooth hands,
had him. Now. They were tugging and pulling at him
(00:42):
with a strength impossible to fight. Still, he struggled. He
tried to cry out, but there was no sound from
his constricted throat. There were only the frightening noises from
outside louder. Now he tried to twist and squirm against
the hands dragging him toward that harsh, blinding light. He
(01:02):
was too small, too weak compared to them. He couldn't
fight them off. He felt himself being stretched and strained
and forced with cruel determination. He didn't want to go
out there. He knew what was waiting for him out there.
He couldn't go, not out there where. When Jeff mc
kenny was three years old, he tipped a pot of
(01:24):
scalding water from the stove on to himself. He was
badly burned and scarred. He hovered between life and death
for several weeks. Jeff's father was out of work at
the time and they were living in a cold water tenement.
Something about the case caught a tabloid's attention, and it
was played up as a human interest sob story. He
(01:44):
came to the attention of a wealthy man who volunteered
to pay for plastic surgery. Then followed long months of
that kind of torture. But Jeff mc kenny came out
of it not too badly scarred, not on the surface anyhow,
but his face had a strange hue. There was a
frozen mask like cast to his features when he smiled.
(02:06):
He was eight when he saw his father killed. He
was in the taxi the older mc kenny now drove
for a living, when the father stepped out of the
driver's side into a busy street without looking back first.
The speeding truck took the car door and Jeff's father
with it for half a block, wedged between front wheel
and fender. Jeff never forgot the sound of that, and
(02:29):
the screaming, nor his shock when he suddenly realized that
the screams were his own. Jeff was a strange boy.
He didn't have an average childhood. The poverty was more
extreme after his father's death. He stayed home alone while
his mother was out working at whatever job she could get,
reading too much and thinking too much. Once he looked
(02:52):
at her with haunted eyes and said, mother, why is
life so bad? Why are people even born into a
world like this? What can she say to a question
like that? She said, Please, Jefferson, don't talk that way.
Life isn't all bad. You'll see some day, in spite
of everything, you'll be somebody and you'll be happy. The
(03:14):
good times will come. They did, of course, a few
of them. There was the day he went up state
on an outing for underprivileged boys and went fishing for
the first time. He caught a whopping trout and won
a prize for it. That was nice, That was fun.
That was when he was thirteen. That was the year
the gang of kids caught him on the way home
(03:36):
from school and beat him and unconscious because he never laughed,
because they couldn't make him laugh. The year before, his
mother died at the Orphanage, he didn't mangle much with
the other boys. He spent most of his after classes
hours alone in the school's chemistry lab. He liked to
tink her with chemicals. They were cold, emotionless, immune to
(03:58):
joy and sadness, yet they had purpose. He played the
cello too, with haunting beauty, but not in the school band,
only when he wanted to, when nobody was around and
he could really feel the music. Once, on the way
home from his cello lesson in the music building, he
saw some boys playing football on the Orphanage athletic field.
(04:21):
He was suddenly seized with a fierce determination to belong
to grab at some of the shouting, laughing happiness these
boys seemed to have. He told them he wanted to
join in and play too. He didn't understand why they
laughed so at this idea. They stopped laughing though, after
the first time he ran with the ball and they
all piled up on him, and he didn't get up.
(04:43):
He lay there, looking so ghostly and breathing so harshly,
and with a trickle of blood coming out of his ears.
But Jeff didn't know they had stopped laughing. He recovered
from that skull fracture all right. Worse though, than any
of the unhappiness she suffered during his life, Worse even
than the shocks of his father's and mother's deaths, was
(05:05):
the thing that happened to him. When he was twenty
and working at the laboratories of a big drug company.
He met and fell hopelessly in love with a girl
named Nina, a girl a few years older than he was.
They married, and for the first few weeks Jeff mc
kenny had happiness he'd never known before, until he came
home from work sick one afternoon and saw Nina with
(05:28):
the man from the apartment over them. She didn't whine
and beg for forgiveness. Nina didn't. She stood boldly while
the other man laughed and laughed, and she screamed invective
upon Jefferson mc kenny, telling him what she really thought
of him, a gloomy, puny winkling who couldn't even make
a decent living, telling him that she was through with him.
(05:51):
A blank spot came into Jeff's life right then. When
it was over, Nina and the other man were on
the floor, and there was blood on the kitchen carving
knife in Jeff's hand. They didn't find him for a while.
He changed his name in appearance and hid in the
soiled seams in ragged fringes of society. He learned the
anesthetic powers of drugs and alcohol. He gave up trying
(06:15):
to get anything out of this life. Then they finally
picked him up, fished him from the river into which
he'd jumped. There were days of torture after that. Without
the alcohol and drugs, his wrecked system craved right. There
was the final hell that could have broken him completely,
but it didn't. It was like the terrible crisis. After
(06:35):
a long illness, things began to get better, to go
to the other extreme. After that, a state psychiatrist brought
Jeff's case to the attention of a noted criminal lawyer.
Neither Nina nor her lover had died from their knife wounds.
On the plea of the unwritten law, Jeff mc kenny
got off with a suspended sentence. The lawyer and psychiatrist
(07:00):
learned of his interest and knowledge and talent for chemistry
and got him another job in the experimental laboratory of
a big university. Later, he married a girl named Elaine,
who worked at the lab. With him. They had two
children and lived in a small, comfortable cottage just off
the university campus. For several years, they had all they
(07:23):
wanted of life, comfort, health, happiness. Jeff thought that life
could never be more wonderful. All of his former bitter,
cynical views fell away from him. Hadn't he, with all
odds against him, finally won out an acquired peace and
contentment and a purpose in life. What was wrong with
the world in which that could happen? Then there was
(07:47):
the topper. Jefferson mc kinney discovered a new drug which
would cure and eventually eliminate a disease that was one
of the world's worst killers, the drug for which thousands
of scientists had been seeking for years. He was fated
and honored, became a national hero. The story of his
life and his discovery temporarily pushed even the doleful forecasts
(08:11):
of an early Third War, the Big War, off the
front pages, and jeff was humbly proud and grateful that
he had paid now the debt he owed to a
society that could make a final victory like his possible.
In a zenith of almost holy happiness, he stood one
evening on a lecture platform and a huge auditorium in
(08:33):
a great city before thousands of worshiping people, to make
it thank you speech after being awarded a world prize
for his great scientific discovery. But in the middle of
his talk he broke off. Suddenly a flash of blinding
brilliants slashed through the windows. Horror painted his face in
a whisper. He cried, no, no, it would make it
(08:56):
all so senseless. His eyes looked like the eyes of
a man with flaming splinters jammed under his finger nails.
His face seemed to pucker and grow infantile. Then he screamed, no,
leave me alone. I told you I didn't want to
come out here to be one of you. Damn you.
Why did you bring me out here? For for this?
(09:19):
There were the shards of glass from the great auditorium
windows floating inward, turning lazily. There were the brick walls crumbling,
tumbling inward, scattering through the air in the same seeming
slow motion. The dust cloud and the sound, the flat
blast sound, came after that, as the entire building, perhaps
(09:40):
the world, disintegrated in the eye searing light. December eighth,
nineteen fifty two, two thirty a m The flat of
a rubber gloved hand striking flesh made a splatting noise.
A thin, breathless but concentrated crying followed. The doctor looked
(10:00):
down at his charity clinic patient. The woman under the
bright delivery room lights look at him, fighting like a
little demon. The doctor said, seemed almost as though he
didn't want to come out and join us. What's the matter, son,
This is a bright, new, wonderful world to be born into.
What are you going to call the boy? Missus mc kenny,
(10:22):
The woman under the lights forced a tired smile. Jeff
Jefferson mc kenny. That's going to be his name, she
whispered proudly. The babies, terrified squalling, subsided into fretful whimpering.
Resignation and of success story by Robert Turner
Success Story by Robert Turner. What is to be will
be Our only refuge lies in that which might not
have been December eighth, nineteen fifty two, two thirty a m.
After a while, the blinding light was like actual physical
(00:21):
pressure against his tightly squenched eyes. He tried to burrow
deeper into the protectively warm, cave like place where he
had been safe from them for so long. But he
couldn't escape them. Their hands, their big, red, hideously smooth hands,
had him. Now. They were tugging and pulling at him
(00:42):
with a strength impossible to fight. Still, he struggled. He
tried to cry out, but there was no sound from
his constricted throat. There were only the frightening noises from
outside louder. Now he tried to twist and squirm against
the hands dragging him toward that harsh, blinding light. He
(01:02):
was too small, too weak compared to them. He couldn't
fight them off. He felt himself being stretched and strained
and forced with cruel determination. He didn't want to go
out there. He knew what was waiting for him out there.
He couldn't go, not out there where. When Jeff mc
kenny was three years old, he tipped a pot of
(01:24):
scalding water from the stove on to himself. He was
badly burned and scarred. He hovered between life and death
for several weeks. Jeff's father was out of work at
the time and they were living in a cold water tenement.
Something about the case caught a tabloid's attention, and it
was played up as a human interest sob story. He
(01:44):
came to the attention of a wealthy man who volunteered
to pay for plastic surgery. Then followed long months of
that kind of torture. But Jeff mc kenny came out
of it not too badly scarred, not on the surface anyhow,
but his face had a strange hue. There was a
frozen mask like cast to his features when he smiled.
(02:06):
He was eight when he saw his father killed. He
was in the taxi the older mc kenny now drove
for a living, when the father stepped out of the
driver's side into a busy street without looking back first.
The speeding truck took the car door and Jeff's father
with it for half a block, wedged between front wheel
and fender. Jeff never forgot the sound of that, and
(02:29):
the screaming, nor his shock when he suddenly realized that
the screams were his own. Jeff was a strange boy.
He didn't have an average childhood. The poverty was more
extreme after his father's death. He stayed home alone while
his mother was out working at whatever job she could get,
reading too much and thinking too much. Once he looked
(02:52):
at her with haunted eyes and said, mother, why is
life so bad? Why are people even born into a
world like this? What can she say to a question
like that? She said, Please, Jefferson, don't talk that way.
Life isn't all bad. You'll see some day, in spite
of everything, you'll be somebody and you'll be happy. The
(03:14):
good times will come. They did, of course, a few
of them. There was the day he went up state
on an outing for underprivileged boys and went fishing for
the first time. He caught a whopping trout and won
a prize for it. That was nice, That was fun.
That was when he was thirteen. That was the year
the gang of kids caught him on the way home
(03:36):
from school and beat him and unconscious because he never laughed,
because they couldn't make him laugh. The year before, his
mother died at the Orphanage, he didn't mangle much with
the other boys. He spent most of his after classes
hours alone in the school's chemistry lab. He liked to
tink her with chemicals. They were cold, emotionless, immune to
(03:58):
joy and sadness, yet they had purpose. He played the
cello too, with haunting beauty, but not in the school band,
only when he wanted to, when nobody was around and
he could really feel the music. Once, on the way
home from his cello lesson in the music building, he
saw some boys playing football on the Orphanage athletic field.
(04:21):
He was suddenly seized with a fierce determination to belong
to grab at some of the shouting, laughing happiness these
boys seemed to have. He told them he wanted to
join in and play too. He didn't understand why they
laughed so at this idea. They stopped laughing though, after
the first time he ran with the ball and they
all piled up on him, and he didn't get up.
(04:43):
He lay there, looking so ghostly and breathing so harshly,
and with a trickle of blood coming out of his ears.
But Jeff didn't know they had stopped laughing. He recovered
from that skull fracture all right. Worse though, than any
of the unhappiness she suffered during his life, Worse even
than the shocks of his father's and mother's deaths, was
(05:05):
the thing that happened to him. When he was twenty
and working at the laboratories of a big drug company.
He met and fell hopelessly in love with a girl
named Nina, a girl a few years older than he was.
They married, and for the first few weeks Jeff mc
kenny had happiness he'd never known before, until he came
home from work sick one afternoon and saw Nina with
(05:28):
the man from the apartment over them. She didn't whine
and beg for forgiveness. Nina didn't. She stood boldly while
the other man laughed and laughed, and she screamed invective
upon Jefferson mc kenny, telling him what she really thought
of him, a gloomy, puny winkling who couldn't even make
a decent living, telling him that she was through with him.
(05:51):
A blank spot came into Jeff's life right then. When
it was over, Nina and the other man were on
the floor, and there was blood on the kitchen carving
knife in Jeff's hand. They didn't find him for a while.
He changed his name in appearance and hid in the
soiled seams in ragged fringes of society. He learned the
anesthetic powers of drugs and alcohol. He gave up trying
(06:15):
to get anything out of this life. Then they finally
picked him up, fished him from the river into which
he'd jumped. There were days of torture after that. Without
the alcohol and drugs, his wrecked system craved right. There
was the final hell that could have broken him completely,
but it didn't. It was like the terrible crisis. After
(06:35):
a long illness, things began to get better, to go
to the other extreme. After that, a state psychiatrist brought
Jeff's case to the attention of a noted criminal lawyer.
Neither Nina nor her lover had died from their knife wounds.
On the plea of the unwritten law, Jeff mc kenny
got off with a suspended sentence. The lawyer and psychiatrist
(07:00):
learned of his interest and knowledge and talent for chemistry
and got him another job in the experimental laboratory of
a big university. Later, he married a girl named Elaine,
who worked at the lab. With him. They had two
children and lived in a small, comfortable cottage just off
the university campus. For several years, they had all they
(07:23):
wanted of life, comfort, health, happiness. Jeff thought that life
could never be more wonderful. All of his former bitter,
cynical views fell away from him. Hadn't he, with all
odds against him, finally won out an acquired peace and
contentment and a purpose in life. What was wrong with
the world in which that could happen? Then there was
(07:47):
the topper. Jefferson mc kinney discovered a new drug which
would cure and eventually eliminate a disease that was one
of the world's worst killers, the drug for which thousands
of scientists had been seeking for years. He was fated
and honored, became a national hero. The story of his
life and his discovery temporarily pushed even the doleful forecasts
(08:11):
of an early Third War, the Big War, off the
front pages, and jeff was humbly proud and grateful that
he had paid now the debt he owed to a
society that could make a final victory like his possible.
In a zenith of almost holy happiness, he stood one
evening on a lecture platform and a huge auditorium in
(08:33):
a great city before thousands of worshiping people, to make
it thank you speech after being awarded a world prize
for his great scientific discovery. But in the middle of
his talk he broke off. Suddenly a flash of blinding
brilliants slashed through the windows. Horror painted his face in
a whisper. He cried, no, no, it would make it
(08:56):
all so senseless. His eyes looked like the eyes of
a man with flaming splinters jammed under his finger nails.
His face seemed to pucker and grow infantile. Then he screamed, no,
leave me alone. I told you I didn't want to
come out here to be one of you. Damn you.
Why did you bring me out here? For for this?
(09:19):
There were the shards of glass from the great auditorium
windows floating inward, turning lazily. There were the brick walls crumbling,
tumbling inward, scattering through the air in the same seeming
slow motion. The dust cloud and the sound, the flat
blast sound, came after that, as the entire building, perhaps
(09:40):
the world, disintegrated in the eye searing light. December eighth,
nineteen fifty two, two thirty a m The flat of
a rubber gloved hand striking flesh made a splatting noise.
A thin, breathless but concentrated crying followed. The doctor looked
(10:00):
down at his charity clinic patient. The woman under the
bright delivery room lights look at him, fighting like a
little demon. The doctor said, seemed almost as though he
didn't want to come out and join us. What's the matter, son,
This is a bright, new, wonderful world to be born into.
What are you going to call the boy? Missus mc kenny,
(10:22):
The woman under the lights forced a tired smile. Jeff
Jefferson mc kenny. That's going to be his name, she
whispered proudly. The babies, terrified squalling, subsided into fretful whimpering.
Resignation and of success story by Robert Turner
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