Perhaps, just perhaps, Castle Heights Military Academy may have been the breeding grounds for my becoming a pocket of resistance.

There had been some previous evidence i might go against the norm. But nothing, nothing like resisting going to Castle Heights, less than a block and then the tree-lined narrow road up the hill.

In 1958, i protested as strongly as i could with my very determined mother and father about their decision to send me to Castle Heights. They knew it would give me a leg up academically; they had received an excellent tuition price for several reasons, one being my grandmother was a housemother for junior school “goobers” in the Mitchell House.

But i was transfixed with this absurd dream of becoming the next Clifton Tribble, star running back for the Lebanon High School Blue Devils, before i would go on and succeed and surpass Doak Walker at SMU or John David Crow at Texas A&M and to go from there to eclipse the Los Angeles Rams’ receiver Crazy Legs Hirsch or Bobby Lane, the quarterback for the Detroit Lions and then the Pittsburgh Steelers. At least, that was my plan.

Besides it was military school and there were no girls.

i lost.

i graduated as a “Cum Honore” cadet in 1962.

Best loss i’ve ever experienced.

Attending Castle Heights as a “town boy” was a unique, wonderful opportunity. Castle Heights served me well. Had it not been for CHMA, i would have never learned the hard, hard lessons of flunking out of Vanderbilt. Nor would have i met some the best friends i continue to have to this day. i would have never ended up at Middle Tennessee State University and graduated with the best degree i could have achieved in literature. i would have never been introduced to the Navy and learned of my love for the sea.

Castle Heights was a magnificent place: professors, regimen, boarding students, day cadets, academic reputation, athletics of the highest quality, and that insanely great student newspaper created by many but driven by the spectacular “Coach” JB Leftwich.

Castle Heights died, an untimely and undeserved demise, in 1987. Loss of Army JROTC support, rising costs, change in culture, Vietnam and the ensuing disrespect for the military, the cessation of the draft, and the costs of upgrading buildings a half century or older all contributed to the closing.

i often wish i could convey to my daughters and grandsons my experience at Castle Heights. Of course, that is as much a pipe dream as replacing Bobby Lane in the pro football annals.

But there are some folks who are dedicated to saving the legacy of that old prep school on the hilltop. There are many others besides the names one sees in the video. But those in this video have done a great job toward establishing a place to store the history of a great place. Rob and Susan Hosier deserve special mention for their dedication and unceasing efforts.

An aside: When i saw the women who are alumni, i could not help but feel some regret my sister Martha, because of the time and the place, was not allowed to attend. She did great in high school and college, and has achieved many wonderful things, especially as a daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother, but her not being able to attend has been a major factor in my being a devoted advocate to women’s equality.

Thank you Barbara Leftwich Froula (and several others) for posting this video on Facebook. i didn’t cry, but the tears did well up. It was a great tribute to the institution and giving us the hope of preserving the legacy as Don Ash so well put it in his final comments.

They were very good years.

i have a lot of “friends” on Facebook. To be honest, i justify this with the intention of taking this website (or “blog”: i still have a great distaste for this label) to a subscription status,  for which Walker Hicks is providing the expertise as we move in that direction. But i also enjoy connecting and reconnecting with folks from back home in Tennessee, Navy friends, folks who are friends and relatives i met through Maureen, and other folks i have met in my myriad of adventures over a half century of living in a whole bunch of places.

i enjoy learning about what they are doing, what thoughts they have about everything, their posts sharing funny and touching links, and their concerns about their friends and family.

My friends run the spectrum from far left to far right. i admire all of their commitment and passion for what they believe.

However, i do get tired of the lemming-like postings on Facebook. They are loyal to whichever side or candidate they believe represents what they believe. But most of what they post is slanted, if not actually untrue because it supports what they believe is right. They are totally one-sided.

But such postings are also lazy. There is no consideration of the other side of the argument. They also are  mean and debasing to the other side. It is just the opposite of honest and open dialogue about issues and policies.

Quite frankly, i get real tired of the laziness, the meanness, and the manipulation of news, quotes, and lord knows what else to sell whatever they are selling, perhaps to themselves.

Then today, i peeled off my “Murphy’s Law” Desk Calendar to today. It read:

Todd’s Two Political Principles

1. No matter what they are telling you, they’re not telling you the whole truth.

2. No matter what they are talking about, they’re talking about money.

Todd, whoever the hell he is, is a very wise man.

i should be writing my column for next Tuesday’s edition of The Lebanon Democrat. As usual, especially in the last year, everything i think about writing i find i have already written there, or i cannot think of anything until sometime late Sunday, so i can start Sunday evening, get tired, go to bed, wake up in the middle of the night, cannot sleep thinking of the column, and get up and get to it, completing the column and the article before the midday Monday deadline, way too late to make Jared Felkins, the editor, feel comfortable even though he’s never complained. But with all of that going on in my mind, i had the urge to write about an event, actually two, that occurred to me today.

As i get closer to seventy-two, yet another milestone of no particular real significance except for it meaning i am older, i have recommitted to some physical well-being. In the last month or so, i have slackened off of my already light workouts and disregarded dietary discipline in the best state of disregarding. i love to eat and love to drink. i can no longer afford to do that at the same consumption rate of my past, but i forget and still try. Someone my age who has my history needs to be a bit more circumspect unless they are ready to go, and i may be a lot of things, but i am not ready to go.

So when the blood pressure monitor suggested i was imbibing and digesting too much, i decided (Again and again; why do i feel like i’m in that movie “Groundhog Day?”) to recommit to physical excellence, or at least what remnants of physical respectability i might attain and maintain.

i vowed to cut back on the booze and the victuals: very moderate success so far, but i am pretty well off because my gourmet chef wife cooks healthy even though i wander off that path whenever i am on my own.

i joined Maureen’s gym where she does yoga four times a week nearly every week. i ain’t into yoga because i discovered early on, there are a whole lot of poses i cannot do and a whole lot more that make me feel stupid. So i went to use all the apparatuses (can someone please tell me why the plural is not “apparati?”) and the weights and especially the rowing machine.

In addition, i decided to resume my early morning sort of aerobic workout. i began running regularly in the final year at Texas A&M NROTC. i had run at several other commands, especially the USS Anchorage, but never kept it up. After i began running almost daily, i was never fast, but from 1979 until the early 1990’s, i would run at least six miles almost every day when not at sea. After work while the Okinawa was in overhaul, in 1982-83, i would frequently run a fourteen-mile course to the Coronado Bridge and back to JD Waits and my condo in the Coronado Cays.

But those days are gone. Sporadically, i do a fartlek, power walk, or some kind of run/walk up our hill to the Catholic Church and up a gradual hill to a convenient turnaround, a distance about 3.2 miles. This practice had fallen into disuse for the last several months.

This morning i resumed the event. Waking at my usual pre-5:00 a.m., i performed my morning ablutions, took the necessary stretching, about quintuple the amount i used to perform before a run, and took off. i decided i would only do a power walk as i knew i needed to build up to running again.

It was dark when i started, giving me the sensation of a morning watch (0400-0800) on the bridge. It was quiet. i was surprised to see a couple of other walkers or runners. The most dedicated of this type go down to Rohr Park at the bottom of our hill and run the perimeter.

Mostly, except for the occasional headlights of a car headed to someone’s work, i was alone in the night. When i reached the apex and turnaround of my journey, this mariner’s eye and soul detected first light, one of the most peaceful times of any day.

Then, as i headed down the hill, i caught sight of something to my right. It looked like a lighting bug flashing once in the middle of the road. i turned my head but saw no more light and no flying bug. i discarded it as a reflection and returned to my task.

About a quarter of a mile further down the hill,  the light flashed again on the periphery of my vision. This time i stopped to look: Nothing.

i have never heard of lightening bugs in California, especially the Southwest corner. Yes, it was most likely two similar reflections. They could have been reflections in my brain.

Lightening bugs are not as plentiful, even scarce back home nowadays. The mosquito spray does not only minimize those nasty critters. i was always disappointed when i could not share one of my Lebanon childhood joys of lightening bugs with my daughters.

But there still were a few back home in the summer but none, none in the Southwest corner.

I am now convinced those two bug lights were an illusion or a reflection, a refraction of light of the moment or in my mind.

Still the remainder of the walk was easy. i thought of the jars with the holes we poked in the top; of running and jumping around that backyard, barefoot in the summer nights, catching bunches of those lightening bugs in the jar and covering with the cap; watching them for what seemed endlessly but was truly only until we had to go in and get ready for bed…and how we would awake to find the lightening bugs in the jar pretty much wiped out.

It was a long time ago, but i still remember the lesson those lightening bugs taught me.

This is the north side of Lebanon High School on East High before it burned down in 1937 (i’m pretty sure it’s the north side, and i think it was 1937 as my uncle, Bill Prichard, the youngest of the Prichard children began school going to multiple shops and homes because of the school had been destroyed and i believe he was a freshman in 1937). The high school was located on the site where Highland Heights Elementary stood for many years. This photo is from  a post card in my parents’ memorabilia.

Other than my uncle not going there, the old building has some family history.

After my grandfather,  Culley Jewell lost part of his hand in the portable sawmill he and my Uncle Jesse constructed from a steam engine they bought in 1918, he became the custodian for Lebanon High School and McClain Elementary. In the 1920’s and 30’s, my father was my grandfather’s primary helper, cleaning the schools after classes each weekday and firing up the boilers for heat early each morning in the colder months.

After one afternoon cleaning the high school in the early 1930’s, Jimmy Jewell was walking home down North Cumberland on the way to his home on West Spring. Estelle Prichard was visiting her mother in a home on North Cumberland where Granny was a 24-7 caregiver. My mother urged my grandmother to the porch to show her the lean young man with a fine mane of hair walking down the street in the bib jeans he wore while cleaning the schools.

Estelle announced to her mother, she was going to marry that young man.

My grandfather was involved with providing a gym for that high school (i do not know where the high school had played basketball previously). He installed the wood floor for the gym in the basement of that high school building. It was where my mother played when she set the season and single game scoring records which stood for a quarter of a century before they were broken by Ann Lucas (1960?) i regret not asking how high the gym’s ceiling was because i always had a hard time understanding how a gym could be in the basement.

But the high school was an impressive structure.

i have not made many entries this past week: been a little down; still haven’t figured out this not-working thing, but i’m getting better. And this made me feel good. 

Sometime around 1942, Jimmy and Estelle Jewell bought a coffee table to go in the living room of the house they had just bought on Castle Heights Avenue. It was one of two adjacent homes just recently built. They were the last two houses on the block between West Main and West Spring. There was no other homes to the south until one reached a farm house or two past Leeville Pike (as i remember my father telling me).

The table was not a very large piece of furniture with an oval top twenty-eight inches in length, eighteen inches wide, and eighteen inches high. The top was glass, rimmed with a wood frame. The bottom had carved legs. It wasn’t very ornate, but it was pretty, and more importantly, it was serviceable.

It was replaced sometime in the 1950’s i believe. Mother had a local carpenter make her a much larger table with matching end tables. They had marble inlaid tops and were much more elegant and more serviceable.

i am trying to recall where they moved the old table, and they may have moved it into the attic off the upstairs bedrooms. i can no longer call my mother and researcher extraordinaire to set me straight. Now, i call Martha and Joe, my younger sister and brother because they may not have the incredible memory our mother had, but they remember a lot more than me. But it’s late here in the Southwest Corner, and it’s three hours later in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Queechee, Vermont, so i will have to rely on my faulty recall.

Regardless, when Mother died sixteen months ago, the three siblings and their families closed down the Jewell estate accumulated over more than three-quarters of a century. Somehow, i ended up with that small coffee table.

The cane which had held the glass top in place in the frame had broken into pieces, and the wood (i am not a furniture guy, so it’s a guess, but i think it might be cherry) had gathered some scratches and quite a bit of dirt.

i considered stripping it by getting someone to dip it. i have refinished several pieces of furniture in my past, but the stripping agents now are not as powerful, thank you, EPA, and my latest attempts to strip something myself has not turned out well. Finally this weekend, i went out in the workshop side of the garage, pulled out the table, did a jury rig on the cane to hold the glass in place, did a thorough cleaning, and finally used a furniture restorer.

The table will eventually need a more professional makeover. i decided i wanted to try and get it back to its original state as closely as i could.

Prior to this weekend, my chair in the family room had a glass and metal stand about ten-inches square. This was to hold the television remote control, my glass, my phone, my reading glasses, my book or magazine currently being read, and any snacks, cookies, etc.

Now, my parents’ coffee table is sitting by my chair. As it once was, it is serviceable.

i kind of like it.