In any bureaucracy, paperwork increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing.
All posts by Jim
Grelb’s Addition to Murphy’s Law
If it was bad, it’ll be back.
Some random thoughts i have had…for Sam
As i have mentioned before, i still long to have known my grandfathers both of whom passed over that bridge before i was born.
Joe Blythe Prichard died of what i am pretty sure was asthma in 1932. He and his wife, Katherine Webster Prichard, lived in Lebanon all of their lives except for a brief period when he played semi-pro baseball in Arkansas and from 1929 through 1932, and when they moved to Gotha, Florida with the hopes of the climate improving his failing health. When the move did not produce improvement, they returned to their home in Lebanon he had built on the farm of his father-in-law’s property on Hunter’s Point Pike.
Hiram Culley Jewell died of tuberculosis in 1939. He and his wife, Carrie Myrtle Orrand Jewell, moved about twenty miles from near Statesville to Lebanon around 1900. He had been a farmer in Statesville, worked at Lebanon’s pencil factory, bought a steam engine tractor in 1918 and turned it into a portable sawmill. He worked the mill until he lost a large part of his hand in the sawmill. He then was the caretaker for Lebanon City Schools, McClain and Highland Heights elementary schools and Lebanon High School. He installed the gym floor in the basement of the old high school located on East High Street.
(Note: i have several photos of Culley but could not find them before leaving for a golf trip with my friend, Peter Toennies in Park City, Utah — more on that later — but i will add the photo when i return to the Southwest corner).
i have other photos of them. i have a few stories about them. i know what they did for a living. When i asked my mother and father about their fathers, i got some of those stories, but they never really talked about what the two men were like, what they thought about things, just facts and their memories.
By virtue of a divorce and distance, i have not spent enough time with my grandson Samuel James Jewell Gander, named after my father, not me. If someone asked Sam about me currently, i don’t think he would know much more about me than i know about my grandfathers.
i’ve doubled down on leaving him enough of me in writing that he should have some idea after i have passed over that bridge.
For Sam:
Practicality without logic is impractical.
Toughness without compassion is abuse.
Loving without sharing is guilt.
Religion without humanity is demagoguery.
i must confess i am curious to find out how many folks will voice disapproval.
Boob’s Law
You always find something the last place you look.
Old Style Football
i wish to confirm that Marty Linville’s grandmother was indeed a full-blooded Cherokee. Her name was Marquita. After Marty stories, i wish i had met her. This is the second of my stories about my buddy and fellow curmudgeon.
This is one of my favorite stories about Marty. It is a story that could never happen today.
Marty went to Pittsburg State, now a university, to play football. He had been an extremely good quarterback in high school. His coach was an old school football coach named Carnie Smith. Carnie deserved to be called old school. He became the head coach in 1946, two years after i was born. He coached Marty’s father, Big Don Linville.
Don appropriately had the nickname of “Big” as he was huge, about 6-4, 6-5, with hands that would make mine disappear when i shook his hand. He went to Pittsburg State after serving in the Navy during WWII on a submarine. i am still trying to figure out where he could sleep in those cramped quarters. After the war, Don played lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers for a number of years before becoming a teacher because it paid better. He is a marvel of his own.
Before Marty matriculated, this other guy named Rod Stark went to Pittsburg State and played for Carnie Smith as a lineman (Rod is one of the finest golfers with whom i’ve ever played). Carnie, as i have alluded, was old school: three yards and a pile of dust was the game he coached. Marty was a superb quarterback and started his sophomore year (freshmen weren’t eligible until 1972). Carnie had two rules for his quarterbacks: 1) Do not throw a pass inside your 20 yard line, and 2) Do not throw a pass if you are inside your opponents’ 20 yard line.
In his first game as a starter, Marty threw an 80-plus yard touchdown pass. That was inside his own 20 yard line. Carnie took him out of the rest of that game and the next one. On the third game of the season, the Gorillas had driven down inside the opponents 10 yard line. Marty threw a pass for a touchdown. Coach Carnie sat Marty down for the rest of that game and the next one.
Three yards and a pile of dust. Don’t mess with Carnie.
More than twenty years later, Major Marty Linville reported to the Naval Amphibious School, Cornado. Where he met another Pittsburg State football player, Rod Stark, who, at the time, was the Director of Amphibious Training. They had never met previously. They became friends. Their families became close. Their children grew up together, and Marty and Rod played golf together for forty years. i was lucky to be a tag-a-long for thirty-nine of those years.
i didn’t play for Carnie Smith, but i did play for Stroud Gwynn at Castle Heights Military Academy: single wing. Three yards and a pile of dust.