In the original post, which i began last weekend, i made a geographic error in the description of the gym basement. Bill Goodner, who should be my editor for all things Castle Heights, pointed out the errors in a Facebook message when he read the post. i have revised the post and added a bit with the memories Bill jogged up for me.

As usual, i have about 945,328 tasks to get done in an hour. i’m so busy i even have passed on a couple of spider solitaire games. But i have been watching a ton of basketball games.

Of the dozen or so sports i’ve attempted in my life, basketball was probably the one i played worse than others. This is disappointing in my mother was a star, a record scorer, a Lebanon High School Blue Devil in the initial group inducted into their Hall of Fame. At five feet, flat. So it is difficult for me to blame my height, or lack of it, for my lack of success. Or rather, my lack of making the varsity at Castle Heights Military Academy.

i made the varsity in football my sophomore year, even was the only sophomore to make a road trip (another story). i was a five-foot-six, 128-pound terror of a linebacker but hurt my knee after the first game my senior year. Thus such silly promise was ended. As noted frequently here, i loved football, especially when i realized i was never going to be the next Red Grange, Jim Thorpe, Doak Walker, or Clifton Tribble and moved to defensive linebacker. i enjoyed the practices as much as the games, perhaps even more so because i got to play more and loved to tackle.

i was a decent baseball player at catcher, outfield, third base, shortstop, and finally years later second base. i had good hand-eye coordination, probably would have been a better catcher had someone given me some technical advice on stopping wild pitches, loved third base, and played okay at 44-46 years old in an adult baseball league (over 33) in the Southwest corner.

Basketball? Well, even though i did not see my height challenge as a limiting factor, it was. Even though i was not particularly good at shooting or dribbling with my left hand nor having a decent jump shot, i was about half decent as a point guard, could drive pretty well, and had a fair to middling push shot from the corners…or at least thought it was pretty good.

Before everyone else grew up and i stayed my junior high height, i was the co-captain of the junior high team along with Clinton Matthews who became a high school star who was superb on the fast break.

Even more so than the other two sports, basketball was a challenge for me at Castle Heights. Post-graduates recruited for their athletic prowess dominated the football and basketball rosters. Nearly all of them were well over six feet, except for some very talented guys who topped off just below six feet, like Phil Turner, and Crockett Carr, who i previously have pointed out had a beautiful jump shot. Phil did too and he was deadly.

For three years, i played JV, “B” team basketball. My senior year, unable to play on the JV due to restrictions, i became the manager, and loved it. But not as much as playing. i said then i am even more convinced now, basketball is the best for a complete workout in every aspect of exercise, all parts of the body, aerobic and an anaerobic. i miss it.

However back then, there were alternatives that weren’t run by any organization. i played in pickup games everywhere in Lebanon i could. Mike Dixon was the usual fomenter of my court endeavors. We played at the old Cumberland gymnasium with college guys. We played at Lebanon High School with our high school friends who were our teammates in Little League, Babe Ruth League, and American Legion baseball as well as the Lebanon Junior high football and basketball teams. We even played at McClain School, in the indoor gym/cafeteria/auditorium or the outdoor recess courts.

In the fifth grade at McClain School, we even came up with a cockamamy idea and  pulled it off thanks to Mrs. Edwards, our teacher, who i must admit was as lax as my mother thought she was when it came to discipline. Townley Johnson, Bill Cowan, i think Henry Harding, several others, and myself created an afternoon game against — and here i’m guessing the other fifth grade class. We staged it in the gym right after lunch was finished and they folded up all the tables on each side. i have no idea how it came out, but i think that is the only time i really got hurt on the court. i was driving on the basket and stepped on the side of Townley’s big foot, severely spraining my ankle.

Far and away, my basketball domain was the Castle Heights gymnasium. With the town boys’ lockers in the basement, across from the football, basketball, and baseball dressing room (did wrestling, soccer, track, and others also share that sweat soaked den?). Further down the hall was Major Baker’s  geometry classroom across from Coach Stroud Gwynn’s General Science Major Tom Harris’ English classroom was in the southeast corner, and in the northeast corner was the famous Major Sweatt’s biology class. i did well in grades in biology but the dead frogs and the formaldehyde killed any ideas of becoming a medicine man. i spent what felt about two years in the jacuzzi with my knee the last of my autumns in the football dressing room. Our locker room was a den of iniquity and high school high jinx, but the gym, ahh, the gym: a place where dreams were made.

So in addition to the three years of junior varsity ball (and there are some pretty good stories about that), the lure of that small gym with seating only in the balcony, two rows of seats on the sidelines and four behind the west backboard, was a lure too hard to dismiss. At every opportunity, there was a pickup game. Sometimes when there was not time to change into gym gear, we would take off our shoes and long-sleeve gray shirts and play in our grey wool or cotton trousers with the black stripe down the side and play until the soles of our feet were pretty much just one big blister.

It was nearly always half court, and it seemed every town boy at one time or another would join in. Jimmy Hatcher was irritating (when he was on the other side, “shirt” or “skins”) because i never could block that shot that came from in front of his face, not above his head. Phil Turner just scored at will. Tommy Palmer was a force but i remember him because he taught all of us how to spit shine, a capability that served me well for thirty years. George Thomas could make ugly shots, but he made them. Burton Humphreys could beat you up under the boards and score at will on rebounds. Mike Gannaway also was good under the boards. Jimmy Gamble had a nice one-hand push shot.

And then there were two who were there pretty much all the time they could be there: Mike Dixon and me. If there was no one else there, it was a continuous one-on-one. We played at lunch time and almost every break that would take us close for more than a half hour. We played after football practice. We played after baseball practice. And there were a couple of times we played after basketball practice. Mike had a two-handed jump shot, and when he got hot, he was as good a field goal shooter as i have seen anywhere.

After baseball practice, we would play until one of two things stopped us. Either Mrs. Fahey, who lived in the apartment at the front of the gym, would chase us out because we were making too much noise during her supper or we would realize we were significantly late for supper at our respective homes. Sometimes it would a double whammy when both of those pickup game interrupters would coincide unceremoniously.

i played pickup games afterwards in college, in the Navy, and even one or two in other places and other times.

i am too old for pickup games now. About five years ago, i passed by a court and took some shots at the foul line. i will not tell you the results, but it was pretty ugly, almost as ugly as my putts. But i’m still putting.

Still, the thoughts of those pickup games in Lebanon, Tennessee remain in my mind pure joy.

Tomorrow, i am thinking i might get that old worn basketball out, pump it up, go  a couple of houses down toward the entrance to our cul de sac where a neighbor with some young children has put up a portable goal and backboard on his sidewalk. i might shoot a few, especially one-handed push shots from the corner.

i’ll miss of course, but i’ll remember.

Yes, i’ll remember.

There is this woman. She is only a couple of years younger than me, but she seems much younger. If i got the math right, she is two years minus seven days younger, but so much younger. Yeh, much younger.

She and i have wandered in and out of each other’s lives for about a half-century. Eventually, we married someone else (or is it “else’s”?) and both marriages are good things as they should be. i have never met her husband, but would like to do so as he has to be a spectacular guy. She has met my wife and they are fast friends. This woman and i have remained friends throughout it all.

i won’t write a lot about her here. i have written a lot about her to her. She is a special friend.

The thing i like about her most (not counting her legs: she has great legs among other things) is she is always fun. She is fun around everyone. i cannot remember not having fun around her. Oh, i’m sure over the years we have had serious discussions, but i remember how much fun she is

She is beautiful, inside and out.

She is from Lookout Mountain and lives in Atlanta. She has many friends, several from her sorority days at Vanderbilt where i met her.

i hope the four of us can get together this year and make our connections. Over dinner someplace, of course.

Susan Butterfield Brooks, i’m sure Mike will take good care of you today. You deserve it.

And we will be thinking of you and all the fun you are.

Happy Birthday.

Once a long, long time ago, there was this man. Initially, he was the only man around his parts. Not that he was really the first, mind you, but this fable isn’t intended to produce another “Adam and Eve” argument; no way, no how. But this other first man existed about that long ago, perhaps even earlier.

His name was Albert.

It didn’t take Albert very long to realize he was a bit different than all of the other animals. It was because he realized he could think, rationalize, figure out things.

So Albert set out to…er, live. His quest to live began with finding water, which was provided by a stream nearby right after Albert realized his thinking was what made him different from the other animals around him. Then he realized, or perhaps not realized, he had curiosity, not like a cat, but Albert was curious because he wanted to know. So he crossed the stream where he drank his water to find out what was over there.

After a while of exploring across the stream, he met Alberta. She didn’t have any makeup on, but by the standards back then, she was good looking compared to all of the other women. But of course, there weren’t any women for comparison. And then again, Albert wouldn’t have been any heart throb to any movie starlets if they had been around then.

So Albert and Alberta hit it off. They went back across the stream and set up house in a dune or small hill where Albert had dug out a room. One evening by the fire he had figured out how to control – yet another thing Albert found different between him and the other animals – Albert put his arm around Alberta, and something between them began to grow. They discovered this growing thing was Albert. They didn’t know where to put it initially but Alberta figured out where to put it. The place to put it was Alberta. They discovered this felt pretty good, so they did this for a bunch of nights by the fire.

Soon Alberta began to get rather large in the mid-section, and they were puzzled. Eventually they figured it out when Alberta gave birth to Albatross. He was a feisty infant and grew fast. He was also a boy and inclined to do stupid things. Then one day, Albatross took on a saber tooth tiger. That was one of the stupid things. It also was Albatross’ last thing of any kind.

Albert and Alberta paid their respects to Albatross by burying his loin cloth, which was about all they could find. As they paid their respects, this large bird flew directly over them, and they decided to honor the slight remains of their son by naming the bird “albatross.”

Still they were intrigued with how good it felt putting Albert’s growth in its proper place. Soon they had a daughter whom they named Albertina. Not too long afterward, they had another boy and named him Alberto.

That’s when Alberta decided she and Albert were having way too much fun, and it made feeding everyone much more difficult. So, being a woman, she told Albert she didn’t want to have fun anymore. Albert didn’t agree, but being able to think, he realized he didn’t have any choice, nodded, and retreated to a solitary spot to alleviate any growth he might experience after that.

Albert, Alberto, Albertina, and Alberto loved animals. They thought they were cute and fluffy. Unless the family needed to eat. Then, the little critters became supper. Not being able to think, the smaller critters took a while to finally figured out they were cuddled and then eaten. That’s when the critters became much harder to find. So Albert, who had met Alberta’s brother, Alvin, teamed up and went hunting for larger game.

Meanwhile Alberta worked around the living spaces with Alvina, Alvin’s new wife. They discovered there were some good tasting berries around. Alberta decided some leafy growths she found on the ground might go well with the meat. So she said to Alvina, “Let us take these home,” and the green leafy plants became known as lettuce. The two women thought the lettuce along with the berries for dessert would go well with the meat the boys brought home.

While the men were away, Alberta and Alvina started talking about how to be prettier, even though it wasn’t needed. There wasn’t a lot of competition, but they were women and wanted to look prettier. Somehow, they decided they would put mud on their faces when they went to sleep at night. They believed the mud would draw out impurities and keep their facial skin soft and without blemishes. So that night after the men had brought meat home, and Alberto and Alvina had prepared their meal of caribou steak and lettuce with berries for dessert, the two women went to their separate dunes where the men had carved out living space (and put the fire in front to keep the space warm and keep off the numerous animal threats at night) turned the dirt they had saved into mud with water they had brought in from the stream, and covered their faces with the dark concoction.

Previously after preparing an earlier meal, Alberta and Alvina left some crushed berries in a depression in a nearby boulder. It sat there for a couple of days until Albert scooped some of it up in his palm to taste. He liked it. It made him feel good. Then he had Alvin try it. They both liked it. So it became part of their evening routine. This evening while the women were applying their mud, Albert and Alvin relaxed after their hunt and the meal, drinking their new found elixir and bragging about who got the biggest caribou. The women had gone to be by the time the men finished the elixir and bragging.

When Albert went to his living space, the fire cast an eerie glow into the dug out room. Slightly tipsy from the elixir, Albert did not see Alberta on the skin on the floor, but saw this very scary creature with a face that looked like some kind of monster. He grabbed his nearby hunting rock above his head and was about to crush the monster’s skull when Alberta woke up and screamed. Her eyes glowing white through the mud, Alberta still scared Albert, but he recognized the scream, which also scared him. When she explained to him what was going on. He was puzzled, but he could think and knew Alberta was a woman who did not think the way he thought. Albert wisely apologized but was very careful when he went to bed at night from then on. He was very, very careful.

And somewhere in those olden times when it rained and made hunting, if not impossible, certainly unlikely for catching any game, Albert would stay home with Alberta and talk about who they were, what they were, and what life really was. They agreed they were different than other animals. They had already realized they could think, be logical, come to conclusions. But they also realized there was something bigger than them. They thought it might be connected to some bigger power in the heavens, perhaps connected to the albatross they had named after their first son. They also thought it might come from within.

This idea of what was right and what was wrong seemed to be something they understood and the other living things did not. They discovered they not only cared for their family but other human beings.

You see, other men and women began to gather at the stream and set up living there. They found they could be much more efficient if they assigned individuals to specific tasks, creating teams for each part of their life in this community, creating much better living than what one family could do on its own.

That’s when the trouble started.

Some men thought the women should be subservient. All of the women and some of the men disagreed, but the women coupled with the men thinking they were subservient were forced to agree with their men, so the men were considered superior.

Then some other folk tried to cross the stream and join the group. These men who thought they knew everything and disregarded the power of good and right and wrong within them and above them feared the newcomers. They chased off the newcomers and set up boundaries around their encampment. They became isolated. These same men began fighting over who would be the chief. They wanted to punish anyone they perceived to be against them and set up tribal sessions where they ruled and punished their competitors, even killing some of them.

It got really ugly.

Albert and Alberta were scared. Alvin, Alvina, and their children had left some time before, wanting to check out what the other side of their world looked like. Now Albert and Alberta, the original occupants in the area, who had realized they were different and not like the animals because they could think logically and knew inside what was wrong, right, and humane, realized many men and women were acting more like animals, specifically lemmings, and were disregarding what was wrong and right.

So one night in the darkness of the wee hours, Albert, Alberta, Albertina, and Alberto snuck away carrying their animal skins, Albert’s hunting rock, and a bota bag made of animal skin holding Albert’s berry concoction.

No one knew where they went, what happened to them. They became legends in the little village. Some people thought they were gods had gone on to a magic place for the dead, and worshipped them. Some thought they had suffered the same fate as Albatross, death by a “streak” of saber tooth tigers, or perhaps more fittingly, an “ambush” of those big cats. But no one really knew.

But the Albert family didn’t die, at least not then. They wandered until they found a cave, suitable for living, a nice piece of real estate, really, with a great view at the foot of a mountain far away. There were no other people there, and Albert and Alberta were glad because they wanted to listen to that inner power, which was also in the heavens and all around them and do the right thing.

And they lived happily ever after…

Oh no they didn’t.

Some paleontologists recently have found ancient human stools near the cave and began an intense study of the creatures they named “Albert and family.” They found a crude grave, a mound stones nearby. There wasn’t much left, but these paleontologists determined the remains were of the other first man and woman.

Apparently, daughter Albertina and son Alberto separately wandered off to other places after they reached puberty. The paleontologists determined the two young adults had gone to different cities because they enjoyed the night life and being around other people, right or wrong.

These scientists reached the conclusion Albert and Alberta had died, if not happily, at least satisfied they had try to do the right thing.

And that was enough.

There is this guy who turns 50 today. Makes me feel old.

This guy is a bit goofy. i think that’s why i like him so much.

i met him when he was an aviation boatswainmate airman. i was a commander.

He was on a ship i was once on as staffie: one of my favorite reminisces: lifetime friends, crossing the line to become a shellback, Hong Kong Christmas, Singapore New Year, Papua New Guinea, Olangapo in its finest hour. He was on that ship when she hit a mine in the Persian Gulf.

He’s from Kansas.

He met my daughter when she was staying with us in San Diego for a while in the mid-to-late 80’s (Blythe, you will have to get the dates right: i’m too old to remember exactly). It took the two about ten years to get married.

This was a good thing.

When they got married, in my toast at the reception, i said their love reminded me of the best marriage i had known (not including my last): my parents, Jimmy and Estelle Jewell. Thus far, i think i’m right.

i get downright excited about how much he loves my daughter. i am also thrilled, ebullient about what a great father he is to my grandson Sam.

He’s a keeper. When we are together, we do projects together, we play golf together, we go to bars together. He and Maureen are copacetic. They both are aficionados in wine and cooking.

He is also a manic Kansas City Chiefs fan. Perhaps the Chiefs knew he was turning fifty and decided to get to the Super Bowl for him.

Jason Gander is my son-in-law. i never get to be with him enough. i would like to watch the Super Bowl with him. This is a huge concession for me. i swore off watching the event with the glitz and hyperbole lasting five or six hours. But it would be fun watching him watching his Chiefs about ten days from now.

i can’t express how happy i am he is part of our family.

Thank you, Jason.

i hope the Chiefs win for you.

and Happy 50th Birthday.

(and Blythe, i stole your photo off of Facebook.)

The not so big day is over. Thus far, i have thanked everyone who sent me a social media birthday greeting. If i missed you, i apologize. It has pretty much filled up my day.

i did watch some football. My son-in-law and a dear lady named Linda, who just happens to be married to a complete nut like me, Major Linville, and the son of another of the curmudgeons are huge, some fanatic Kansas City Chiefs fans. And as you would expect many of my friends from back home are fanatic Tennessee Titans fans. So i was ambivalent. When it was obvious the Chiefs had it locked up,  i fast forwarded to confirm the obvious. In the NFC games, since i am on the left coast, i have a number of friends who are 49er fans, and i have other friends and my father who are/was big Packer rooters. So again, i was ambivalent. When that game looked like the home team had it sewed up, i fast forwarded to confirm and finally turned the television off.

Maureen bought a pre-marinated tri-tip from a hoity-toity place in North County for my second birthday dinner. Of course, i had to grill it on my egg knock-off grill.

This was good. Even though the recent rains had dampened the grill, taking longer was a good thing. i took out my computer and put the iTunes control on “genius,” which plays one genre of songs until you change it. Now with my set up, i have rebelled against the unlimited selections from the web “apps” — and “apps” to me sounds like some body parts that need exercise. There is nothing wrong with that. Both of my daughters are experts in such things, and their music selection is excellent with high quality. But i am not a aficionado in music by today’s definition. Not only am i old, i am old school. And my time at sea kept me away from most new fangled stuff after the mid-1970’s. So my iTunes is stuffed with my 45 ‘RPMS, my LP’s (to which i am still converting), and my CD’s. That’s what is on my “genius” playlists.

As i cleaned and greased the grill, i listened to Julian Bream and Andrea Bocelli. Then i hit the “genius” again, and that old genius boy turned it into country. So while i watched the grill heat to 500 degrees and then grilled the steak, i drank wine and listened to Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Bobby Bare, Roy Acuff, and the Sons of the Pioneers among others, shuffling my feet as if dancing like i used to, singing along and not caring if neighbors might be listening and laughing.

The tri-tip was superb. Maureen’s succotash, tomatoes, and potatoes were excellent, as usual, and the wine was just right.

But as i grilled outside, i looked up my hill to the flag, not well lit but enough to meet flag regulations, i saw one light in the sky. It was Venus, bright enough to burn through the onsetting evening clouds. She was a light in the mist, a point off the starboard bow of the flag on the hill.

A signal? An omen? Of what?

i don’t know. i am old enough to not jump to conclusions. Yet i couldn’t think but consider this was a good sign.

Another year. Perhaps it will be as good as the seventy-five past. Perhaps there will be more connections and reconnections with friends and family. Perhaps not.

But old Venus, she knows, and she ain’t telling.

That’s okay. It’s a new beginning. And the new beginning might have an ending sooner than expected. But you know what? That’s okay too.

Goodnight, Venus.