i was looking for something to make a little bit of extra cash, like a full-time, high-paying job, just to keep Maureen from feeling stressed about finances.

During a discussion with my close friend, Steve Frailey, he told me they were looking for a safety guy. He described the work as walking the Pacific Tugboat old creosote wood pier (one of the few left on the bay) numerous times a day, checking the pier, the workers, the boats, and other equipment for safety, to ride the boats for safety checks at least once a week, to conduct training in San Diego and at the Long Beach facility at least once a week. i thought “Hmm, these are all things i would love to do, bring back memories, and i could visit my friend Alan Hicks (who was the Marad Director of the Southern California Gateway), a geographic bachelor living in Long Beach.

Well, it wasn’t for a king’s ransom, and i never did quite all of the things i should have, but i did improve the safety, environmental compliance, and provided support in other ways. i think i helped the company, which was my goal.

i gave it up three years ago. Decided my skills weren’t quite what they used to be, and i also realized i didn’t have the drive anymore to manage relationships in a work status. So i stepped aside. An extremely capable, professional, and much younger Shawn Quigley took my place. Good move all around.

But occasionally, i miss it. Like this morning. i was screwing off, procrastinating, when some old posts popped up on Facebook. Memories came back.

Because of the nature of the job and commuter traffic, i usually arrived at the pier between 0530 and 0600. It was my favorite part of the day. i would walk the pier around first light and enjoy the sights, sounds, and aroma of the bay waking up. If lucky, i would embark on a boat for one of those safety rides. i posted these photos to try and capture my pleasure of the experiences. They didn’t fully capture my feelings, but i think these will give you and idea:

Yep, miss it, just like i missed my ships at sea.

My caring and beautiful daughter Sarah, the younger of my two caring and beautiful daughters, did an artistic rendering for a small sign. She was giving it to a friend who had been her friend in a time of need and now going through some significant problems of his own.

She told me the saying came from a song made by a punk rock band. Since i don’t know any punk rock bands, although i have heard a couple have band names include “sister,” and i can’t recall ever hearing a punk rock song for more than a nano-second before i switched the radio dial, i liked the lyrics on the sign. It read:

“Fight to Live; Live to Fight.”

i decided it should be modified (for me) just a bit:

“Love to Live; Live to Love (and if you have to fight, fight judiciously and fiercely).”

But that’s just my take. i still like the original.

Sarah, if you have a photo of your artwork, i would like for you to share on my link to this post on Facebook.

i watched a replay for as long as i could stand last night. It was Vandy getting clobbered by Kentucky in Lexington. Football.

i made it all the way to halfway through or so in the second quarter when i began to fast forward through all but the plays. In other words, i was watching the action only, about twenty percent of the broadcast. My modus operandi now is to tape all sports contests, don’t check the scores, then watch the replay, beginning about forty-five minutes after the actual beginning. That way, i can fast forward through the commercials and the half-time bozo show of shouting “experts” and end up pretty much right on time at the end. Then when an athletic contest becomes one-sided or boring or both, i will simply turn it off, check the score real-time, and if there has been a turnaround and the contest is close, i will return to the taped version.

i didn’t return to the Commodore-Wildcat thrashing (44-21).

But while i was watching, a thought kept coming to my pocket of resistance brain. Several times, a Kentucky player was penalized for an offense, obviously guilty, some unsportsmanlike offense even by today standards — when i played all of the shenanigans of showing off, bashing your opponent, etc. was unsportsmanlike; now, it’s cool — and i noticed the UK fans were booing, not the player who had committed the foul where even the attendees could see, not just the beat-your-brain-to-numbness replays on the telly. No, the fans were booing the official for calling the penalty.

This is not a knock of the Kentucky fans per se. Had it been at Vanderbilt and a Commodore had committed the infraction, the few faithful VU fans would have behaved in the same way the UK fans did. In fact, it would be true at every football game and most sports with maybe the exception of tennis and definitely not in golf.

All of this got me to thinking, sometimes a dangerous business. Football fans (and others) appear to have channeled the Roman gladiator games. They want blood. They come to see blood. They dress up in really silly and ugly outfits to celebrate the possibility of blood. They beat their fists on the stadium structures, stomp the stadium floor with their feet, turn red in the face, and possibly even froth at the mouth with the anticipation of witnessing blood.

No, it certainly isn’t quite as bad as the Romans slaying each other and cheering about it. But it’s close. There have even been instances of thousands and thousands of fans cheering an opponent getting injured.

Today, there is an informal boycott of NFL games by people who are upset with the players not showing respect for the National Anthem, the symbol like it or not, of our constitution. They have some legitimate complaints about racial profiling and the unfairness of our government officials in racial matters, perhaps our population in general. i can’t speak for them. i am not too wound up about the boycott either way except as i have written earlier.

But i don’t watch the NFL games anyway. i watched the Chargers while they were in San Diego. After all, my background includes a lot of the three major sports and more, and i wrote about them extensively. When the Chargers left, my interest disappeared. Oh, i still might watch a series of plays just to see the athleticism. Or i might watch the end of a contest i happened upon during surfing if the final score is in doubt. But that’s it.

i have gone to four NFL games since birth. The last one was to accompany Maureen hosting a couple, the wife a client of hers and the husband a big fan. That was 1996 or 1997. i didn’t attend anymore because between all of the idiocy on the field and in the stands and the interminable dead time for television commercials, it was boring.

They are working real hard to make the college game just as boring.

Gladiators.

Seems like old times.

i will still watch colleges games of interest to me, but other than that, i think i will pass. i love the memories of sitting on the hill of the open end of Neyland Stadium watching the Vols in their high-top shoes white pants and helmets and orange jerseys long before fans decided to wear orange — Why? As a football uniform, the old ones were cool. But the color is ugly. Flat ugly except on football uniforms. And unless i’m mistaken, about 98.8 percent of the fans didn’t play football. They bought that ugly regalia for upwards of fifty dollars. Same can be said of pretty much all college teams.

But sitting up there on that hill or in the end zone bleachers and watching the Canale brothers do their thing from the single wing  on a sun-drenched autumn afternoon awash in earth tones was magic, just magic. And it was that way at Vanderbilt’s memorial stadium when i watched Phil “The Chief” King shred defenses on yet another kick-off or punt return. Magic. Or at Castle Heights on that beautiful field later named Stroud Gwynn and now gone with some edifice of finance taking its place. Grey uniforms, maroon and gold football uniforms (oh, i thought those old gold pants were so cool they even felt cool), girls in dresses and coats and mums, the band playing the fight song, the crispness of the air, the smell in the air. And Lebanon High, my unfilled dream, somewhat mollified by watching my classmates in the cool, even cold of the Friday night autumns around Middle Tennessee because George and Virginia Harding would take me to the away games during that undefeated season (and earlier, not so good seasons) and the blue and white would march up and down and i would cheer, not just the team but the individuals who were my friends, and the cheerleaders in their bobby socks and black and white oxfords and the felt-skirts, women who i loved from afar. Magic. Magic i wish i could relive.

Today’s folks seem to thrive on what has replaced it: some homage to coaches being more important than the players, technology, statistics, unsportsmanlike conduct, trash talk. Playing the game is no longer playing the game.

And then there are all of the political correctness about names. Nick Canepa, the elder statesman of sports journalism in San Diego wrote an insightful and funny column today in the sports section of The San Diego Union-Tribune. The San Diego State University “University Senate,” some conglomeration of students and faculty voted last week to get rid of the Aztec Warrior, a mascot of the athletic teams. They also formed a task force for addressing the “appropriateness” of the Aztec’s nickname. Sad. i’ll let you read his column, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/sd-sp-canepa-sezme-aztecs-1112-story.html, if you are so inclined. i think he makes a number of good points humorously.

This political correct incorrectness and the witch hunting, devil detecting, moral turpitude digging currently engulfing our country and most of the world reminds me of another era. It may not look like it, but the judges of others, certainly not themselves, in their conduct of moral or immoral behavior was quite the thing in the Victorian Era. Oh, it was decidedly different because such policing of moral conduct was by a strict code and supposedly was for everyone everywhere. Now, the code…well, it isn’t a code. It’s sort of an individual or group’s personal interpretation of what others do that’s wrong by their standards that mushrooms into some sort of national crisis of reprehension, fueled by the media (again, both sides; but i get tired of writing i’m referring to both sides to ensure someone doesn’t think i’m taking sides).

It’s a straight path to wrong just like it was in the mid to late 1800’s. Even the NFL, which i no longer watch, is trying to police its players for moral uprightness while the owners are some of the most morally vacant folks around. Crazy.

i loved football. i loved to practice. i loved to hit people. i loved to run with abandon. i loved playing the game with sportsmanship as its backbone. Sure there was some guys who played to win including sucker punches, cheating when they didn’t think the ref was watching, employing one-upmanship on the opponents, showing off. But my joy included knocking the crap out of a runner or a defender, then helping them up, or them knocking me down and helping me up. Scoring a touchdown (very few for me) and giving the umpire the ball and running to the sideline, not celebrating in some infantile fashion because it would draw a penalty back then. Shaking hands, win or lose, with the other team and meaning it. Making decisions on the field of play because the coaches had taught me how, not turning to the sideline for the coach to tell me what to do. To play offense and defense and special teams (although they didn’t call it that back then) because it was a team sport, not some specialty, and, by the way, it required more endurance than it does now. It was not, not a game limited to behemoth, freak enormous athletic bodies trying to maim the opponent. It was a joy, a pleasure. i cried after i played what i knew would be my last game. A part of me had passed. i wouldn’t recommend it for any child or youth today. But boy, did i love it.

You know i was never a fan of the Roman gladiator period. Thought it was right stupid, not to mention cruelty of the extreme. i also don’t think highly of the Victorian period moral police.

i think we need a lot more of individuals concerning themselves with personally doing the right thing today, not entertaining themselves with cheating violence or looking for evil in people with whom they don’t happen to agree.

But then, i am old and perhaps my ideas are just as obsolete as the Romans and the Victorians.

Man, i’ve seen it before, heard it before, looked over it before, just like most of us: digging into the day to day trials, wondering why me? forgetting why, forgetting what i have buried underneath the pile of worries in the quest for success, money, security, running from this devil of world inhumanity, greed, and all of that political, religious, racial, cultural, national, international stuff that can make you sick to your stomach if you think about the cruelty of all of it too long. As i age, health, medical issues, dying of others and of course me add on to the pile burying simple things i forget.

Then along comes Judy Lewis Gray (who will always be Judy Lewis to me) who sends me this link (how long? ’bout six months ago, maybe even a year) to a guy who calls himself some hokey title of “Sean of the South” (like “Son of the South,” you get it, right?). But it was Judy who sent it, so i read it, and i like it. Then, she sends me another. And i read that one too. So then i sign up and every day i read it. Usually makes me feel good. That’s why it’s in my early morning routine. Need to feel good. Some of it is a little bit, just a little bit too much down home Southern, but it still feels good. After all, i’m from just a little bit north of Sean’s traipsing grounds.

And once in a while, Sean makes me stop and think about what’s important, lets me quit thinking about all the problems out there that beat me down, make me sad.

Like today, others have written it, sang it, said it before. But good ole Sean puts it right up there in my fact. And he’s right.

Life is beautiful.

Thanks, Sean…and Judy.

The Country

Although the regular monthly golf tournament with telephone folks has gone away, there is still one golf tradition in the Southwest corner not going away anytime soon.

Rod Stark, Marty Linville, and i began playing golf with each other in 1985 while the three of us were in our twilight military tours, Rod and i in the Navy and Marty in the Army, at the Naval Amphibious School, Coronado — of course, it has, as with all things military, been renamed because some hot shot trying to make admiral or general or get higher if he or she was already a flag officer came up with an idea for the selection board to see they were doing something: truly change for change sake (okay, enough of my whining). Regardless, the three of us often joined by Ray Boggs, my father-in-law, would play on Saturdays or Sunday.

It was tough to get weekend tee times on the four military courses, Admiral Baker North and South, Sea ‘n Air on the North Island Naval Air Station, and Miramar, then another Naval Air Station, now a Marine Corps Air Station. When we went to get tee times, many had already been taken by retired military folks, or as we called them “old farts.” Of course, they could play during the week, but they chose to take tee times on the weekend, the only time active duty could play.

So the three of us made a pact once we retired we would not play on military courses on the weekends in order for active duty to be able to play. Marty retired in ’87, i followed at the end of ’89, and Rod left active duty about two years later. Our weekend golf stopped. Rod became a club pro at the North Course in Sun City, Marty went to work for a military contractor, and i was “Mister Mom.”

Marty and i worked up a round at North Island during the week in the spring of 1991. We discussed our options. Marty had just gone on a nine-hour workday, taking off every other Friday. We decided we would play at one of the military courses every other Friday. Later, Marty went to a ten-hour workday to have every Friday off. We have been playing every Friday since then, now a tradition. We have had as few as one and as many as sixteen join us. Rod got out of the golf business, got his amateur status reinstated and joined us several years later and has been part of the the threesome fixture ever since.

We came to call it “FMG” for Friday Morning Golf. i wish i were better, more like Rod and Marty, but too many bad habits cultivated over thirty-five years keep getting in the say. i like to say my default is to the bad habits.

And of course, the Southwest corner allows to play throughout the year. Sometimes it can get a little foggy.

Sometimes we play elsewhere. Bonita is one of my favorite courses in the Southwest corner. i often go there to practice. Of course, the weather is terrible.

This morning, in  spite of our usual early tee time, was particularly slow. My golf was…well, horrible. i sat on a bench by the eleventh tee box, feeling disgusted with my front nine and three putting the tenth green while we waited for the green to clear. Then i looked out  at the vista past Rod and Marty discussing club shafts. It is the tenth of November. My Pacific is just past the trees. An admiral’s house is in the background. The marine layer hangs out at sea preparing for its evening landfall. On the holiday for Veteran’s day, the North Island runway to the right is quiet. Point Loma, not visible in the photo stands under the cloud bank.

And i have found serenity here for twenty-six years…even when my golf is bad.