i was thinking about growing up in Lebanon, Tennessee, a small town back then to be sure. i had it easy or at least i thought i had it easy.

i was washing, rinsing and drying dishes somewhere around six or seven and did so with my brother and sister until i left Lebanon for good (but never in my heart), likely for the good of the town folk and me) in 1967. i started mowing and trimming (badly) our yard around eight and began mowing and raking — oh the raking — of the large maxi-leaf bearing trees (elms?) totaling somewhere over an acre of land between the yards of the two adjacent neighbors across the street. JB and Bessie Lee Frame and Fred and Ruby Cowan were the neighbors who contracted me at nine and then my brother after me for the yard work. My father allowed the use of his mower, which required us to care for our yard as well.

i was paid ten dollars for the job and did it almost every week between sometime in April until sometime in October. This would have been good money for a boy back then, but i spent most of it on 45 RPM records from the bins at Simm’s Magnavox on South College, baseball cards, sugar water in wax bottles looking like cokes, candy cigarettes, and Three Musketeers candy bars from Mr. Jackson, who ran “little” Eskews on the corner of West Main and South Tarver, stopping on my way home from school.

i never got an allowance. i did vacuum the tiled and carpeted floors in our house, strip the wood floors and then wax, and once cleared all the cinder or clinkers out of the crawl space in between the basement and the floor of the house. My father had thrown the cinders there rather than take them outside when clearing the coal furnace. This was after he had used the cinders as the surface of our driveway. i also washed all of the windows of our home, inside and out.

During high school summers thanks to Jesse Coe, i worked at the waterworks shoveling the shifting sands in the filter for purifying city water and then dug graves and did the mowing and trimming in Cedar Grove Cemetery. i also did the inventory of the parts in my father’s service area of Hankins, Byars, and Jewell Pontiac, nee Hankins and Smith. i pumped gas and serviced vehicles at the adjoining “full service” station when all the stations did it and didn’t call it “full service.” Later, i worked full time as a cub reporter and office boy for the Nashville Banner’s Fred Russell, the sports editor while i was in between colleges. After a rather pitiful scholarship performance at Vanderbilt, i paid for my college completion at Middle Tennessee while living at home and working as a the county and sports correspondent for the Banner, the weeknight FM and weekend AM deejay for WCOR AM and FM, as well as selling clothes during the holidays for Jimmy Hankin’s Men’s Clothing Store.

i’m sure there are several tasks i left out. In high school, i also played football, baseball, and basketball. While digging graves during summer “vacation,” i also played fast pitch softball Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights; American Legion baseball Wednesday and Saturday nights; and for a brief period baseball in a county summer league on Sunday afternoons.

i went to Sunday school, church, youth fellowship, and the evening service every week and often went to other church events during the week.

i hand wrote all of my homework until i learned to type (oh okay, my mother typed nearly all of my papers when i was under the gun because i had procrastinated until the last minute). i figured all of my math problems on paper until i got a slide rule my senior year in high school. i got all of my books from the library and did my research in the card catalogues of the Dewey Decimal system. i had to make calls from home or use a pay telephone. i used maps to drive places previously unknown to me.

We didn’t have air conditioning in our home until the mid-1950’s and didn’t have it in our cars until the 1956 Oldsmobile. i stole my sister’s Vauxhall from her when i went to work in Nashville . That’s when she was given her Volkswagen bug my father had made from two totaled VW’s. My brother’s clunker (okay, Joe, my old brain just farted and i can’t remember the make or the nickname, but i do remember it was a worn green). Those three cars did not have air conditioning.

i walked to school and back. No, it wasn’t five miles, more like a half mile to McClain Elementary and about one quarter mile, if that, to Castle Heights Military Academy

i never thought of growing up as hard. i goofed off a lot.

Although i wanted lots of things and had impossible goals for my dreams, none of which actually occurred, i did not consider myself disenfranchised. i wasn’t expecting anyone, including my parents to help me financially or otherwise once  i graduated from college, and not a lot after i graduated from high school. i thought i had to do it on my own.

This is not some diatribe about how tough i had it compared to the youth of today. I cannot judge that. i come from a different place and a different time. There are moments i actually think they have it a lot tougher than i did. They have to grow up faster. Their paths are not as clear. There are more people and cultural movements and internet information, both true and false affecting their decisions. What they have to achieve to obtain independence is a far greater leap than mine.

It just seems to me everyone, those my age as well, keep trying to make things easier, trying harder to “keep up with the Jones’, wanting to be more engaged with everyone else.

i keep remembering another line from Dave Carey. i don’t think it’s in his book. i remember him saying it to the senior Navy officers attending one of our seminars on leadership.

“Easy?” he questioned.

“Life ain’t supposed to be easy,” Dave explained, “There is always something happening to make it hard.” Dave, the former POW, should know.

“Life is dealing with the hard things confronting us as well as we can,” he said: i’m paraphrasing here as i don’t recall Dave’s exact words.

That’s my point. i don’t believe we reach the satisfaction of living a good life by obtaining wealth and a lot of things to be admired (we think). i don’t think we gain satisfaction by going on an eternal vacation, sleeping in, lounging around, playing at things we like to play.

i think there is a much greater satisfaction coming from dealing with the harder things popping up in our life and working well. Work is not something to escape. Work is a place we can excel. Working hard.

Another thing: your or my solution, your or my political philosophy, your or my religion, are not going to make this a perfect world. If you try and fix it your way, or they try to fix it their way, someone is going to be left out, someone is going to get hurt. Laws, policies, programs are imperfect. That doesn’t mean we should quit trying to make things right for everybody. That just means to me we need to fix things in our own relationships first. To quit looking for the guilty, quit accusing those of different opinions of being evil.

i can’t fix all of the things wrong in this world. i would like to be a part of improving them, but i can deal with all of the people i come across in this world as individuals, good people with good intentions.

Yes, there are some bad people out there. A few are actually evil, insanely evil. The vast majority are basically good people. Yet we focus on finding something wrong with people who don’t meet our expectations, our perceptions, and then disparaging them, beating them up with accusations not knowing the real intent or actually what happened.

In yesterday’s (Tuesday, July 24) San Diego Union-Tribune sports feature “Off the Wall,” there was an item with the subhead of “Rush to Judgement.” It was about a video that went viral on the web. The video shows Will Venable, the first base coach of the Chicago Cubs catching a foul ball, walking over to the stands, and making a soft toss to a boy in the front row. The boy doesn’t catch the toss; the ball rolls under the seats behind the boy and the man in that row picks up the ball and hands it to his wife.

End of video. Beginning of vilification and damnation of the man. i too was pissed at this callous fellow and in extension all Cub fans — if you are a suffering fan of the bumbling Padres, you don’t like Cub fans, especially when they show up more than your fans when the two clubs play in San Diego — for being so wrapped up in their Cubbies and themselves (oh okay, my brother-in-law and nephew are huge Cub fans and at least they aren’t that bad). Regardless, it looked bad. So bad.

What really happened? Earlier in the game, the man had caught a foul ball and given it to the boy. The boy’s mother told the man if he caught another to give it to another child; her son had the one the man had given him. The video cut off before the man’s wife did give that second ball to another child.

Shame on us. So how many times do we jump to conclusion and excoriate someone before we know all the facts and that person’s intent? Pretty much all the time, and damn near all the time when it comes to politics and religion. There are enough villains out there who need castigating and banning and deleting from our lives. We don’t need to be calling out the wrong folks.

So that’s today’s rant of the old man: Life ain’t easy. Deal with it. Don’t go around blaming folks when you don’t have all the facts. Live your life doing the right thing and treating people the right way.

Back off the insanity.

Ode to Three Sisters and Their Mother

The old lady came busting out of the old century;
where she had been
an exquisite china doll of immeasurable beauty;
young men chased her
to allowable limits in the Victorian South
after we turned from reconstruction
while Teddy was roustabouting with Spain
in that little skirmish we often forget.
Remember the Maine.

But Granny came busting out;
fire in her belly, grit in her craw, pluck in her spirit, gleam in her eye;
with the handsome man who won the chase,
taking her and his bloodhounds
to the retired circuit rider’s farm out on the pike
where Granny’s circuit rider father would
preach occasionally without the horse or mule
in the hamlet of Lebanon,
smack dab in the middle of Tennessee,
Where some bright folks built the square
over a cold water spring
they discovered in “Town Creek”
in yet an earlier century.

…and the children would come around wartime,
dropping among the years of the first big one
we resisted until the Luisitania
took its hit and sank like a rock;
…and the children came,
five in all until one died
as young family members often did
in those pre-antibiotic days.
The handsome blood hound man who chased
criminals through the woods
took his own hit,
a decade after the war.
So the little maelstrom with grit in her craw
packed up the chillun’s and the belongings
making the trek to the groves
of central Florida
for a couple of years to
escape the sinking of the hound man
and the attendant feelings thereof.

In thirty-two, they came back home,
each with some grit in their craw.
Granny, the queen of grit,
went to work,
taking care of those who needed care
outside the family in order
to take care of her own.

…and the children grew up early,
cooking the meals, washing the clothes, cleaning the house,
gathering eggs, milking the cows,  pulling the weeds;
before playing ball,
earning money until
they went to college in the little town,
or went to work,
or both.

The second big war came, again
in a wave of terror,
This time in an atoll’s pristine harbor,
taking hits, sinking to the shallow harbor depths.
Remember the Arizona.
The brother went off to war after marrying
a woman of another religion from down the road,
west a bit, in the big city.
He flew a plane named after his lady Colleen,
returning to the Tennessee hamlet, still
with fire in his belly, grit in his craw, pluck in spirit, gleam in his eye
before leaving for the orange groved paradise
he found on the southern trek several years before.

The preacher man was gone;
The hound man was gone;
The brother was gone;
The three sisters and their mother,
fire in their bellies, grit in their craw, pluck in their spirit, gleam in their eyes,
with their three new men
stared at the world,
staring it down straight in the eye,
wearing it down with their labor
until the world cried “uncle,”
admiring their fire and grit and pluck.

There were circles entwined with circles of family;
the circles orbited around the threes sisters and their mother:
all was well.
…and the world rolled on;
Granny finally gave up her pluckish ghost with grit in her craw;
no longer would she braid the waist long hair,
tying the braids atop her head
as she had done for so many years;
the three sisters rallied with
fire in their bellies, grit in their craw, pluck in their spirit, gleam in their eyes.

The grandchildren of the matriarch
spread with the four winds, remembering.
When the circles got together,
the three sisters remained the constant,
demanding the world stay in their orbit,
and the world was warm with laughter and love and
a sense the world was safe
as long as they all inherited
fire in their bellies, grit in their craw, pluck in their spirit; gleam in their eyes.
The world is older;
Granny is gone;
the youngest sister recently joining her,
the oldest failing fast:
The three sisters leaving us slowly with
the fire waning to embers, but still there is
grit in their craw, pluck in their spirit, gleam in their eyes;
staring down the world.

Such a lovely world they have shown us.

No, not the California scenic highway, or the highway that used to be scenic in more places.

101. That would have been her birthday today. Estelle Prichard Jewell.

She was spunk. She was matter of fact. She was an encyclopedia of family and Lebanon history. She was athletic. She was strict. She was love.

She was part of a remarkable lineage of grit (i’ll post my poem about her mother and her siblings yet again in a post later today).

She was remarkable.

i’ve written quite a bit about her here. i am hoping to have some surprise news about her in the near future. i will finish this with just photos.

She is my mother.

i miss her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were no photos on the internet that i could find — of course, there are ton of things on the internet i can’t find: i remain technically challenged. In fact, there was no mention of Hurley’s at all.

Looking at a Google map, i believe it was on Brewer Street, off of Thames Street. The Tennis Hall of Fame was on the other side of Thames. There was a grocery store on the opposite side of Brewer, if that was the name of the small street, almost an alley.

And there was Hurley’s. In Navy Officer Candidate School, it was Quebec Company’s go to place, or at least a certain group of Quebec Company, actually three of Quebec Company’s OC’s, Lanny Harer, George “Doc” Jarden, and moi.

Lanny was a big guy from North Carolina and UNC who went EOD. He and i went from OCS to Key West where the two of us shared a room in the BOQ.  Lanny went through basic underwater swim school while i was in Anti-Submarine Officer School. We had a ball but lost track of each other after Key West.

Doc was the hippie’s gift to Navy Officerdom out of Philadelphia and Duke. He showed up on Friday, September 15, 1967 with his head already shaved, which pissed off the first class OC’s who were our DI’s (drill instructors) as well as the barbers in charge of embarrassing us by shaving our heads (except for Doc’s). Doc was not only my barracks roommate on the fourth deck of King Hall, our service numbers were only two numbers apart (Doc’s 726236, mine 726238 — service numbers had not yet been replaced by SSN’s, which is now a taboo thing because we are so advanced and so are small mean people who like to cheat people rather than make a real living — Doc’s father was CO of a top secret, innovative minesweeper out of Charleston, South, Carolina (which fortunately was never deployed, another story). Doc’s orders were to the USS Guam (LPH 9), homeported in Norfolk. My first ship, the USS Hawkins (DD 873) moved her homeport from Newport to Norfolk in July 1969. We hooked up again which resulted in several other stories to tell.

We lost track when i headed west, so west it’s called East, Southeast Asia to be specific. But a grunch of years ago, we reconnected. Doc was in NYC with a converted barn for a home on Long Island. He had wandered around Bali for a couple of years and ended up as a television writer and producer.

We again lost touch. This morning, however, i did a couple of internet searches and found Doc had moved to Wilmington, North Carolina and, although i did not find Lanny, i found this younger guy named Lanny Harer in Raleigh, who just has to be his son. Attempts to reconnect will follow.

But this, after that typically long-winded explanation about who we were, is supposed to be about the three of us and Hurley’s. After Saturday’s Pass in Revue and personnel inspection, the OC’s got liberty from around noon until taps and then again on Sunday until 1700. Big deal. We made the best of it.

We tried the Viking where they had loud bands and a bunch of young folks dancing but the women seemed to prefer the civvy-clad guys compared to the guys in the goofy looking OC uniforms.

We ended up at Hurley’s.

Outside, Hurley’s was not impressive, just another building. Inside it was tables, a small dance floor, and a bar with a stage back of it. On Saturdays, the music was mostly up tempo jazz with some popular stuff mixed in. We would hit Hurley’s early. It was the Northeast version of Mexican Village in Coronado where women could meet Navy officers and sailors. Lanny met a girl from Fall River and they got a thing going. Today, when i see “Officer and a Gentleman” is on some television channel, i think of Lanny.

But before the girl, we would drink and listen to the music. On the way back to the barracks where we always, always arrived just before liberty expired, we would stop at Dunkin’ Donuts. There we would get a dozen jelly-filled buns.

Being somewhat less than pristine, we would report aboard the barracks and then go hide in a stairwell. Some poor smuck OC had pulled duty and had to conduct a security check of the barracks every hour. We would hide in the remotest ladder well on the deck above the smuck’s route. When he looked in the ladder well, we would pelt him with the sugar coated, glazed donuts, and run before he could see who it was. Of course, he would get back to the quarterdeck and have to explain how he was covered in powered sugar, jelly, and shards of pastry.

Then Lanny met this girl. They hit it off. Lanny asked her to meet him the next Saturday. i mean this was serious stuff. She said she would love to meet him again, but she had a girlfriend who came with her from Fall River and Lanny must provide someone to accompany her, a double date, if they were to continue to meet.

Lanny, Doc, and i put our collective heads together and came up with a plan. The friend was not particularly good looking. i got elected to be her “date” but with a twist. We decided to explain i was from the German Navy on a new program to swap officer candidates and i could only speak German. Doc, we claimed, was my interpreter.

This was somewhat difficult to pull off since Doc nor i could speak a word of German. We spent about two hours in Hurley’s that Saturday evening with my producing guttural syllables i thought might sound like German and Doc explaining to my date what i was saying while Doc and his unsuspecting girlfriend listened. My German and Doc’s interpretation became more and more absurd with each pursuant cocktail. The three of us  spent most of the two hours suppressing our laughs until Doc informed the group he had to take me back to the barracks because i had to call my family in Germany (time difference, we explained).

Then there was Sunday afternoons at Hurley’s. i know Doc or Lanny accompanied me, sometimes both, but it seems i always went to Hurley’s on Sunday afternoons. i would sit at the bar for the entire jazz jam session. The regular band and quite a few other musicians would show up and play some great music. My favorite song to which they jammed remains one of my favorite songs of all time, perhaps because of my Sunday’s at Hurley’s. They had this woman in the band, the singer, who nailed “My Satin Doll.”

i would sit at the bar, twirling the ice in my bourbon on the rocks, and feel lonely when they would perform a ten-minute or more set of “My Satin Doll.” i was romantic. i was alone. i was sad. But it was good because “My Satin Doll” was consoling.

Strangely, it made me feel good.

Hurley’s is gone now.

The three amigos are spread out. i don’t know if Lanny’s girlfriend’s friend really bought my German act. i don’t eat jelly filled buns.

But i still listen to “My Satin Doll” and remember.

Tomorrow, there’s this old guy who is going to have a birthday.

i know because he’s six months and one day younger than me. Old. i mean old.

We have been been more than friends for fifty-six years. In some ways, this is rather odd. In other ways, such a friendship is entirely predictable.

i, as you should know, am from a small town called Lebanon in Middle Tennessee. My parents and their families didn’t have a lot of money, but always got along okay. In fact they were very secure in their life. Out of Castle Heights Military Academy, i was lucky enough to get a Navy scholarship to Vanderbilt. That’s where i met this old guy.

He was from a big city. i mean, it was a big, big city. New York. 95th and Park Avenue. His father was a successful and very good doctor. His mother was a banjo playing starlet. They had three boys. This old guy was in the middle. He started at Vanderbilt the same time i did.

Then we had to go through Kappa Sigma pledge period together. Whatever one might think of the Greek fraternity and sorority system, one must accept a pledge period can bind a bunch of young men or young women together for life, just like it did for twenty-four of us. Then there was this Navy thing. The old guy enrolled in NROTC because he was interested in the Navy, or rather was or became a scholar about all kinds of ships. He was intrigued with them. Still is. For some strange reason, we got hooked up as a pair making a model of a 5″ 38 twin gun mount, the kind that was on destroyers. i don’t think it was really very good, but it got us by.

Somewhere along this time, some connections came out. The old guy’s parents were originally from Rockwood, Tennessee. My family spent a number of weekends in Rockwood in this wandering Victorian home up on the hill. It belonged to my uncle’s mother. My uncle’s father, the Presbyterian minister, had passed away before our family rendezvous’ in Rockwood began. i never met any of the old man’s family on these trips.

But the connections just kept on coming. Sports. Both the old man and i loved watching sports of any kind. Music. We both loved music, particularly bluegrass. White socks. Yes, white socks. That’s what these two, one from the country, one from the big city wore proudly when they matriculated only to find out white socks were definitely not cool.

Parents. We didn’t know this for a long, long time, but sometime in the late 40’s, early 50’s, the old man’s father was doing some doctoring stuff in Nashville and decided to go to Rockwood before heading for NYC. His car broke down in the early evening right outside Lebanon, Tennessee. So the  good doctor went to the only open auto shop, which was where my father was closing up. My father fixed the doctor’s car in two or three hours. The two talked a lot. When the doctor paid the bill and left, he gave my father a ten dollar tip, in silver dollars. i have them now. At the time, no one knew the old man and i would end up spending a lot of time together.

We probably should have lost track of each other. After all, he was in Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, San Francisco, D.C., and New Jersey (ugh). i was all over the map and all over the ocean. Then we ended up out here on the left coast. We reconnected. We still liked the same things. Our wives got along famously. It was karma.

i could go on about the old man. He’s pretty special. He’s done some amazing things in his life, but remains low key. His sense of humor is just about perfect.

Oh yeh, i should mention the old man is Alan Hicks. He’ll  be seventy-four tomorrow.

He ain’t too bad. In fact, he’s one of my best all time friends forever.

And i was just kidding about the old man stuff.

Happy Birthday, Alan…and thanks for being my brother.

Oh yeh, his brother Jim ain’t bad either except for the hummingbird thing.