i do not know what lies awaiting around that corner over that hill on the other side of that bridge;
i do not know who is beyond those corners, hills, bridges waiting for me;
but
after a youth of not knowing even if i thought i knew therefore fearing the unknown often resulted in anger and hate until i grew older learning fearing the unknown the folks i do not know is folly;
so
i do not fear what is and who are out there around the corner over the hill on the other side of the bridge;
i am only sad for those who fear the unknown leading to anger, hate while i venture forth out there around the corner over the hill on the other side of the bridge with the joy of discovery of what is out there i do not fear what is and who are out there around the corner over the hill on the other side of the bridge.
If i were a good boy today, i would have spent my day filling out about 438 feedback forms requested from every imaginable type of organization. i even have one from a medical group that arrived via snail mail, including the free mailing for the enclosed envelope.
The dentist, the audiologist, the dermatologist, the optician, the vehicle maintenance shop, the vet, and several hundred more i cannot recall all wanted me to rate them from heavenly to awful.
With each one, i remembered the 45 reminders i had an appointment and should show up a half-hour early, so they could be sure i wouldn’t wait too long…or something like that.
i kept thinking of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with its final scene when the custodian in the huge government warehouse is towing the well-packed ark into the rows and rows of government top secret crates.
i think all of my feedback forms would end up in that warehouse.
Then i consider rating them all at the bottom of the scale and berating them for sending me so much…er, crap. But i realize that would bring about and unending number of texts, emails, and phone calls to assuage their displeasure. Not worth it.
So, i turned to my never-ending project of organizing Maureen’s and my photos, somewhere in the range of four million.
Then, out of a shelf in my bookshelf/credenza falls a unique bit of my history. It is the only sports action photo that exists of me: Heights vs. Carson Newman freshman team, October 1960, tie game 6-6,. This was the third quarter. Number 30 is me. i, along with the guy behind the ball carrier (unidentified) and number 82, Greg Hill, made a gang tackle on the sideline.
Ordinarily, that photo would be here. But my app running my website, Go Daddy, does not like my scanner. Or my scanner doesn’t like my website. Or either one or both do not like this technilogically challenged old man. So i’m posting the photo along with this post on Facebook.
Regardless, it was a nice day rather than filling out feedback forms.
In June 1964, i received the form letter in my mailbox. My dismal grades from being in the wrong major and raising cane far too much…and perhaps not being bright enough, my NROTC scholarship was defunct. and i would have to go into the Navy as an enlisted sailor or enter the Naval Reserve.
Still not ready to accept defeat, i, with my parents financial support, signed up for the reserves in Nashville and would try to bring my grades up to a “C” average at Vandy in order to resume my college career. At the time, a flunkie had to wait an obligatory six months, the standing rule at the time, at least in Tennessee.
In August of that year, the second shoe stomped on my head. i had done well in the summer session taking drama, philosopy, and one of the best courses i ever had, British and American Fiction under Dr. Sullivan.
Unfortunately, i was required to take Statics, the engineering course i failed in the spring. i got it up to a “D” but the time i spent on that final exam pulled the other exams down just enough to miss my goal of a “C” average. This head stomping shoe was a letter was from Vanderbilt informing me i was no longer welcomed as a student.
The letter did not note that i had just missed making history of the dubious sort. That one “F” in Statics was the only “failed course” on my record. Had i made a “D” that spring rather than a retake, i would have been the first person to flunk out of that prestigious school without failing a course. Of course, i had chalked up 14 “D’s” over those four semesters. Oh, well.
It was time for me to look for a job. Then Major JB “Coach” Leftwich pulled out his magic wand and with the relationships he had established with The Nashville Tennesseean and Nashville Banner, i became the cub reporter and office boy in the Banner’s sports department.
Those nine months was an incredible school for sports writing, already my dream. Fred Russell taught me so much and became a big supporter for me. Waxo Green, George Leonard, and Mike Fleming escorted me through sports journalism. Bill Roberts, the crusty, old style, managing sports editor, took me through the mechanics and technical side of the business.
After those nine months, i was locked into pursuing sports journalism as a career.
Note: i have written of a great deal of this here before, but feel the info was a necessary preface to the rest of this post.
Then, i needed a place to stay. My previous time at Vandy had been in the dorms except that summer when i commuted from my parents’ home in Lebanon.
Fortunately, there were four Kappa Sigma brothers also looking for a place beyond dorm living. i think Gerry Peeples found the place. We moved into the 1920’s home near Vanderbilt in September 1963.
The house was huge with a winding staircase to the second floor with four bedrooms, two heads, and a kitchen, also unused. There was an unused large room on the story above where we once showed some movies. The basement was huge and where Terry led the effort to make beer, a lot of bad beer.
The four Vandy students had the upstairs bedrooms.
Since my new job required me to leave around five each morning, my bedroom was what once had been the study behind the formal dining room. There was a small bath in the hall with a shower. All of the doors downstairs were pocket doors.
The living room or salon in the front held our television. It became a gathering place.
Maple Manor became legendary. We would have parties after campus parties. Folks would come over and stay overnight, some because they shouldn’t or couldn’t leave. It was usual to find guys sleeping on the living room couch or the rug and even on the floor in the dining room. Once, there was a couple of guys sleeping on the dining room table.
It had been lived in by two old sisters and their mother for years. It was to be torn down the next year. It had a sparse maple tree in the small front yard. Naturally, we named it “Maple Manor.”
Oh, the stories that old house could tell. Fortunately, it is gone now.
So when our fraternity had its annual Star and Crescent Ball in early may, we had to have a formal photo of the Maple Manor gang of Johnny Henderson, Gerry Peeples, Terry Lindsay, Tom Chase, and the goofy one — the shorts were a tradition for the Kappa Sigmas to wear at the annual gala.
A month after this, i restarted my college. i went to Middle Tennessee State College (it became Middle Tennessee State University while i was there). i majored in English and excelled, going straight through while commuting with mostly Jimmy Hatcher and several others, getting home at noon, and holding down three jobs, mostly as a deejay for WCOR AM & FM and as a county and sports correspondent for the Banner.
i think the photo shows i hadn’t grown up. i am not too sure if i have reached that level of maturity yet.
I met two of my best friends because after screwing around for a while, i made the Navy my real career. They were two of the best friends i could have possibly had. Now, they are gone. Both crossed that bridge last year. There are so many stories about both, i could write several books. Many of their escapades with me have been posted here. But several things in this last week have brought to mind these two stories.
JD Waits and i met in Perth, actually Fremantle, Australia in 1981 after i reported aboard the USS Okinawa (LPH 3). There are many stories i have posted here and many more to come about him or by him here.
One of the best is the one that came from my stumbling upon a find at a grocery store. It was in the early nineties. JD was the aviation maintenance officer for ASWWINGSPAC, an acronym i will not try to capture here. Due to a relief for cause of an aviation squadron (that, for non-Navy folks is not a good thing), JD was called upon to take the officer relieved as assistant maintenance officer on one of the carriers, i think it was the USS Constellation (CV 64) for a nine-month deployment to the Western Pacific (WESTPAC).
As they were preparing to get under way, i went to the Navy Commisary on the Naval Station to stock up in groceries for our family. In the back of the commissary, there was a freezer displaying a special. It was boxes of frozen “JD’s Fried Chicken.” The prominently displayed subtitle on the 6″x10″x3″ box read “Mostly White Meat.”
Perfect, i thought, and bought a box, presenting it to JD the next day. He laughed and took the gift. i’m guessing he cooked it before the deployment, but he told me he took the box with him and put it on the shelf above his desk in the maintenance shack. His maintenance division saw it and constantly made jokes about it, convinced it was a joke.
Now, after JD and i returned from our deployment on the USS Okinawa (LPH 3), we became close friends, share a condo in the Coronado Cays with a boat slip, we began to show up dressed as Jake and Elwood from “The Blues Brothers” Movie and named ourselves “The Booze Brothers.”
JD, in explaining the box, told his maintenance crew of his and my adventures as the Booze Brothers. The old sailors weren’t buying it, and it became sort of a running joke for the deployment. When his ship was returning to San Diego, JD’s wife, Mary Lou, was on family business in Virginia and unable to be there for the homecoming.
Our daughter Blythe was here from Austin during summer break. She helped me — actually did most of the real work — in creating a 3×5 foot sign. It read: “Welcome back, Jake. Elwood is cooking some JD’s Fried Chicken tonight for your Homecoming. It is mostly White Meat.”
JD was down in his maintenance office while the ship was mooring pierside at the North Island Naval Air Station. Blythe and i were in the crowd of dependents, loved ones, and friends of ship’s company on the pier. JD’s crew were standing in quarters on the flight deck when they spotted Blythe and i waving the sign. They ran down to the maintenance office and found JD.
They were hysterical, yelling “It’s true, it’s true. Elwood is on the pier waiting for you. His sign says he is fixing you JD’s Fried Chicken with Mostly White Meat tonight.
The Booze Brothers were a legend, but they and Blythe did not eat fried chicken that night.
◆◆◆
This week, our Thursday Morning golf group played Admiral Baker South. As we walked up the fourth fairway, i pointed out a pine tree to the right amidst a number of other threes to Karl Heinz, a retired SEAL captain, playing in our foursome.
“Karl, see that tall tree over there?” i asked, pointing. He nodded.
“That is part of our golf legends,” i said.
“Several years ago, Marty Linville and Pete Toennies were walking and i was riding with Jim Hileman. As usual, Marty, Jim, and i had bets going. i hit a slice that landed next to that tree.
“As we rode up to my ball, i explained to Jim, i was going to hit the ball just to left of the trunk with a draw, which after clearing the other trees should drop onto the green. Jim chuckled.
” I took a practice swing, took my stance and hit the ball. It went off to the right just enough to hit the trunk squarely, bounce back and hit me on my forehead just below the cap brim. It knocked me to the ground.
“i lay there holding my head. Jim asked me if i was okay. Pete hurried over.
“Marty walked by, looked at me on the ground and said”
That man on the left walking with his great grandson Sam James Jewell Gander was a man among men.
He died on this day eleven years ago. He was born in a country town with only two paved roads and a coal-fired electric plant that served 500 homes. He stoked his father’s steam engine boiler with slag wood when he was six years old. He contracted yellow fever when he was seven and was in bed for three years in his home on West Spring Street in Lebanon before returning to school.
He quit school before his senior year in high school to help his family when his father developed tuberculosis and could not work. He began as a novice mechanic changing tires to become the best (and most forthright and honest) auto mechanic in Wilson County, finally becoming a partner in a Pontiac dealership, Pan-Am oil and gas distributor and commercial business properties.
He married his high school sweetheart. They remained that way for 75 years.
He went to war as his son was born — me — and served over two years, mostly in the Southern Pacific as a Seabee.
The list goes on and on. He was loved by anyone who met him. Men gave him their highest compliment to him as a “good man.”
And i miss him every day.
Happy 111th birthday, Jimmy Jewell, my best friend.
