Once again, i have retreated from my disdain of government proclaimed days of honoring stuff except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day, and Thanksgiving.

But heck, it’s Mother’s Day. Gotta do it.

Today didn’t start well. The plan was perfect. The execution of the plan went down the toilet. i know the exact moment.

i called Sarah’s name softly. She was not awake. i did not hear her instruct me to wake her up if she was still sleeping last night.

No problem. i’ll get it ready myself. So i began to prepare breakfast in bed for the mother of this house. She sleeps later than me, so it should be easy. i got out a tray for her plate, silverware, and napkin. i even used the nice silverware. i got out her plethora of condiments for her “Bread et Cie” bread. i peeled and cut the fresh fruit, blueberries, kiwi, banana, and a sweet tangerine. i placed the bread in the toaster to toast in a timely fashion, i got out the egg, pot for cooking the egg between soft and hard boiled the way she likes it. i got out the very European (in my mind) cute egg glass holder and put it on her plate with the fruit. i pulled up a spice medley for soft boiled eggs to prepare. i made a pot of coffee for her. i got out the orange and mango juice she likes and a small pitcher of water so she could mix it to her standards. i put her morning pills on the side of the plate. i printed out a poem and a photo of the gift she would be getting because i can’t get any gift for her on time because she checks our expenditures, especially mine every half-hour or so every day. i was near putting it all in motion, but then i realized i had to take her the coffee.

So i got out the frother about the size of a small tin of Maxwell House from years gone by. Her coffee is Trader Joe’s variety. Then i got out the ground cinnamon; then i got out the chocolate bar and the grater; then i realized i would need another plate for her to grate the chocolate, which she usually does over the sink; then, i got out the creamer; then i got out the almond milk for the frother.

Then i decided i needed to get a twelve-foot van from U-Haul just to get the stuff from the kitchen to our bedroom.

That was the exact moment i knew it wasn’t going to happen.

i gave up just as she opened the kitchen door to the dining room and smiled at me.

She had a nice breakfast at the breakfast table. After she made her almost coffee.

We laughed about it as we usually do.

*     *     *

i will call my daughter Blythe later today. She is a wonderful mother. i will wish her and her mother, Kathie, who is also a wonderful mother, my best and my thanks for being such wonderful mothers

i almost pinned on one of Maureen’s white roses to my shirt to honor my mother, Estelle Jewell, who left me almost exactly six years ago at 97. i thought of my grandmothers, Mama Jewell and Granny Prichard, and smiled remembering how much love they had for their children and grandchildren. i thought of others: Aunt Evelyn Orr, Virginia Harding, Martha Duff, Carla Neggers, Kate Jewell, Abby Duff , Aunt Colleen Prichard, Pat Boggs, Aunt Louise Jewell, Aunt Alice Jewell, Aunt Barbara Jewell, Aunt Naomi Martin, Nannie Bettie Lynch, Patsy Boggs, Ann Minolti, Millie Crawford, Dani Boggs, Stefanie Johnson, Nikki Guardado, and others i have unintentionally omitted, and i was glad they were mothers for all of us.

The amount of love all of them and nearly all of the mothers in the world carry in their hearts for their offspring cannot be contained in this world.

But today, on Mother’s Day, i want to especially acknowledge my second mother. In fact, she was a mother to every child she met.

Bettye Kate Prichard Hall had four miscarriages  before Dr. Lowe told her she couldn’t have children because it would be too dangerous to try again. So she just adopted all children she met. Her love for children also had no bounds, could not be contained.

If that white rose wouldn’t have looked so ridiculous on my tee shirt, i would have pinned on two, one for Aunt Bettye Kate.

He is being honored as one of, if not the originator of Rock ‘n Roll.

Gone. Little Richard. As my brother Joe posted:

There will be a paaarrrteeee in the Big House tonight!
Rock in Peace, Little Richard!

Paaarteeee! Indeed.

i clearly remember him the first time i saw him: “The Girl Can’t Help It.” i didn’t really forget Jayne Mansfield, but he was so different, so in touch with what i thought Rock ‘n Roll should be. Twelve-year old listening to WLAC blues from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 am (if i didn’t get caught with the radio under the bed covers after ten) because such music was frowned upon, if not forbidden where i come from but i was enthralled (still am) with the man in that crazy outfit with his leg up on top of the piano beating those keys like he was tenderizing meat and taking us to places where we had never been before and found out it was a place we wanted, maybe even needed to be. There are other stories i shall not share here out of respect for a couple of folks, including the late, great Little Richard himself. And later, he became an outrageous icon for unification of just about every label we have pasted on folks. The simple minded may not have understood, but he was saying to me to treat people as people. And he was doing it with rocking and rhythm outrageous.

But back to the silence. The man, as much as the man could have went into seclusion from Rock ‘n Roll and returned to religion. But he couldn’t stay away. Couldn’t. And there was i, a deejay to pay for the rest of my college because i had blown an opportunity and had to put my shoulder to the wheel and was pushing and astounded at making it happen with being a deejay, a weekend, top-forty rock ‘n roll self-proclaimed warrior amongst other gigs when Okeh records took Little Richard on the rebound.

They call it  a “modest” hit. In 1966 Middle Tennessee, i think “modest” is way over inflated. But there was this one deejay who thought it was great, Little Richard great, maybe even greater, a lesson or two even. He played the “A” side as frequently as he could get away with it.

So i hope, up there at the party, the man who once proclaimed, “If Elvis is the “King of Rock ‘n Roll, I am the Queen,” is singing this song.

And how can you not listen, tap  your feet, feel the beat, laugh, and then learn a few things listening to “Poor Dog,” i mean lines like “it’s a mighty poor dog that can’t wag its own tail” are right on. Right on target.

Enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR0gmaOix5c

The world, it seems, is trying to get back to what it used to be.

It won’t, of course, never does. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes that’s bad. We just don’t seem to have the collective smarts to know which.

So i try to just roll with it. And my world just got a little bit better.

For one, golf courses are opening in the Southwest corner. It is interesting to watch as even though there are guidelines, it depends on who is reading those guidelines as to how it plays out on each course. Sort of stupid, like just about everything else going on these days.

Don’t care. i played with the Toennies and Maureen Wednesday and i played  FMG (that’s Friday Morning Golf which has been in existence since 1991) today. Rod Stark, Marty Linville, and Pete Toennies  wore ourselves out having fun on a course we used to play consistently along with Sea ‘n Air at North Island, and Admiral Baker in Mission Valley. But the Navy is more cautious or silly or afraid or smarter or more careful than the Marines, so those other courses remain closed.

Don’t care. i’m playing golf, out, safe, letting go.

And then last night, i went to heaven. i mean, it had to be heaven. i was there.

It had been another day of hunkering down, working on eight weeks. To be honest, i think most of us would do well with hunkering down without a cause or edict to require it or  some very inconsistent federal, state, local, and imbecile rules for going about it.

Why?

Well, the three of us ran out of things we could communially watch on the infernal machine that has evolved from that tiny console with the black and white screen with one channel in the early fifties into…oh lord, i don’t need to go there. Maureen and Sarah are much, much more into television than i. They love movies, all kinds. They enjoy series, all kinds. i certainly am the biggest problem because, unless it’s something that fits into a very small niche of my past, i’m blowing it off.

Yesterday about lunch time, Sarah discovered a streaming service and was watching a very old, ORIGINAL Looney Tunes cartoon with Elmer Fudd. i was engrossed. i had been trying to find some original cartoons for about forever but had given up. Sarah, far more capable in dealing with streaming, the web (Sorry, Jack Webb, not yours), or anything with more than an off and on switch than i had figured it out. So i asked about more original Looney Tunes. Maybe after supper we decided.

Then i went for an afternoon run/walk after a couple of “virtual” doctor’s appointments or check-ups, the curse of old age, and the run/walk was wimpy by old standards but lord, does it make me feel good. My doc pretty much directed me to stop the running part because i’m old and i could break and the ensuing events likely would be ugly. Then, i looked around and realized there are very few guys, if any within ten years of my age, who could still run. So i, in my usual flow of common sense, said the hell with it and now am running (ha, ha) in a fartlek a little more than half of a three-plus mile route three to five days a week.

Oh, it felt painfully good, even more than the old days. That running thing. And it was in glorious Southwest corner weather, mysteriously returned to us after a strange wet spring.

i cooled off, showered. Maureen did one of her incredible pasta dishes with an equally incredible salad as usual, and we watched the weather and news (what we could stand of the local variety) while we ate. We discussed our options and i asked if Sarah could find some more original Looney Tunes on our streaming service. It  was tough but she did.

We watched about four of those available.  Okay. i mean they had Mel Blanc as the voice of about a quintuplezillion characters. They were fun. i laughed. But i should have laughed after being in heaven.

You see, the first cartoon we watched was one of the best ever. Ever. i almost cried with laughter thinking about how many of the politically correct, left and right wing purists would recoil in horror at all of the insults, disrespect, humiliation, agenda confronting thoughts and reactions they would have. Not to mention the cruelty, oh the cruelty and violence displayed for those innocent children, of which i confess, was never one.

The first cartoon we watched?  Amazon’s “Warner Brothers’ Cartoon Classics, Bugs Bunny, Volume Three, Episode 19.”

Heaven. It could be my hyper imagination, but i was carried back to pre-teen years. It had to have been watched first with my father. Perhaps on our small television. i don’t know. But i do know he and i watched it the first time together. My mother may have been with us. My brother and sister may have been with us. But that old man and i watched it together. Don’t care if the memory serves me correctly or not. It serves me well and that’s my story and i’m sticking to it.

Bugs Bunny and the Tasmanian Devil. Oh, we laughed. Still do. Bugs is at his best. The Tasmanian Devil is…well, he’s “Taz.” So the Tasmanian Devil dervishes up to Bugs and is tricked into being buried, but he dervishes out of the predicament and asks Bugs, “Why for you bury me in the cold, cold, ground?” and that folks, remains a constant saying of mine.

Then Bugs calls the Tasmania airlines, the one i flew to Hobart, i’m thinking, in 1979, and zoom, a Tasmanian Devilette shows up in her bridal outfit. Oh, so good.

They just don’t, truly don’t make ’em like that anymore. And there are folks nowadays who would find them offensive. And that is doubly sad.

But not me. About fifteen years ago when i was back home, i went into an Auto Parts store for something i don’t remember. There in a display case were two matching floor mats with the Tasmanian Devil with a fishing rod. “Perfect,” i thought. i bought them for my father to put in his Ford Escape (and boy, that has a couple of great stories with it). He loved it. When he sold the Escape to my daughter Blythe and her  husband Jason because my mother had difficulty navigating the step up into the cab, he transferred Taz, both of him, to his Buick.

When Daddy passed, i gathered up the floor mats, and they have been in my car ever since.

Taz. Bugs. Heaven.

So i’m okay with all of this going down. Family. Golf. Looney Tunes. Perfect.

That’s All, Folks.

i am upset.

No, i am offended.

i’ve been thinking about all the folks who get their noses tweaked when someone calls them by a name, either individually or as a group, which they find offensive. Some even get violent about it. So i got to thinking about all the names i’ve been called either as an individual or totally in error as a member of a group. i decided i should do something about it as you might not know what offends me as i often find out i don’t know when i call a group or a person something i thought was respectful and with admiration and they get all pissed off.

So here’s my list of what offends me if you call me out with that name (in no particular order):

Shorty, dumbbell, whitey, shithead, paleface, midget, honky, redneck, goober, townboy, southerner, yankee, Texan, Californian, mister, pussy, Alice, Mary, wimp, junior jock, gob, tar, curmudgeon, asshole, sailor boy, fathead, goofy, donkey, Commodore, Blue Raider,  WASP, Christian, atheist, agnostic, butthead, caucasian, white (as in filling out forms), pinko, conservative, contrarian, rube,  whiner, sissy, hick, macho, man, gentleman, racist, and several more i can’t think of right now (including some dumb cartoon bear who wears a porkpie hat when i don my golf rain hat), but i’m going to let you know if you call me by those i can’t remember now.

So please refrain from calling me the above names and i will attempt to not call  you by things you find offensive or belittling even though i call you whatever that is thinking it is showing respect.

Oh, wait. There is only one of those that really bothers me: racist.

Many of the others i’ve deserved at times. Many of them are accurate descriptions at times.

And some of them: junior jock, goober, townboy, asshole, curmudgeon (after all, my golfing buddies take bride in those last two) i boast about.

And finally, 118 years ago, Owen Wister, in his novel, The Virginian, considered by many as the first truly western novel, had his hero say, “Smile when you say that, partner.”

So when you call me any of those names, smile when you say that, partner, and i’ll be okay with it.

Oh, it was a long time ago. Several lives ago by my time. It was a lovely time usually forgotten amongst the myriad of good and bad of what followed.

Summer, 1969. John and Susan Johnson will have to give you the exact date of their wedding. i was there. Watertown, New York. About as far north as you can get and still be in the U. S. of A. After all, Yanch was not just a fraternity brother but a real friend for whom i had gained the utmost respect. i had come up from Norfolk on leave to attend their wedding but pretty much in a cloud: a one-year wonder Lieutenant Junior Grade who had just found out i was going to another world, unsure of exactly what that world would be. One afternoon, the three of us were riding around and Susan asked me what my plans were.

i did not hesitate. My goal was be a sports writer, a sports editor, and a columnist like my hero, Fred Russell of The Nashville Banner.  Yanch glanced back at me in the backseat and said the sports editor of the paper his father owned and at which he, Yanch, had begun work, The Watertown Daily Times’ sports editor would be retiring about the time i would be completing my three years of active duty. He suggested i might come up there and become their sports editor. i nodded my approval of the idea, thanked him for the suggestion, and could not think beyond the next tour, unknown except i was headed for the Pacific Ocean.

About half-way through being the executive officer of MSTS Transport Unit One aboard a USNS ship carrying Republic of Korea troops to and from Vietnam, i started thinking about what was next. i wrote Yanch if the offer was still a possibility, i was very interested.

Voila! About thirty months later, there i was. But i was making decisions about life, my family’s security. It would not end as i envisioned. None of it. But those are other stories, some too oft told.

At that time, i was on a roll. We were the first section of the paper to go “cold type” on a newspaper that was on the cutting edge of the new technology. Or rather, my national sports news, which came over by wire, i put on the first page of the sports section in cold type with the second page local news with “hot type,” then whatever space was available back with the national wire news in cold type — the sports pages had averaged a little less than a full page of copy for each addition before the change; after the change, i was averaging three to four pages of copy each day: that was a lot of work, but fun.

Even more fun was the hot type and oh so much more personally involved. i would either write or create the copy (and at the beginning of my being the sports editor, nearly all my copy), layout the page on a miniature mock-up, write the headlines, send the copy, the layout plan, and the headlines back to the linotype machines, which would click-clack spit out the little lines of lead. Then i would go back to the makeup tables where the experts stood by the metal frames for the molds, and we would place the galleys of type in their place from my layout model. When they didn’t fit, we would begin to throw out lines of linotype from the bottom, a good reason to write the copy from the most important at the beginning and the least important at the end.

And there was a sense of closeness, of identification with creating the copy. i used (gasp!) a typewriter. i did not take typewriting class at Castle Heights or anywhere else. You see, i had a magnificent typist of the 80-word per minute, no error variety at my house. She taught me the correct method, not the finger hunt and peck method of most sports writers. i called her “Mother.” So i would sit at my desk at 5:30 in the morning, my cup of black coffee, my cigarette smoldering the ashtray to the right on my desktop, and with my notes on my left and clack away. It was not gentle and when i hit the return bar, it was almost violent, wham, followed again by the click, click, click. Then i would pull the copy out of the roller with a flourish, label the top with my editing, number one or two soft lead editing pencil and commence to correct the errors in my copy. For you see although i had become a pretty fast typist, i never acquired the errorless mystique of my mother.

It was a process i loved. It’s gone. But to be honest a great deal of frustration went with it and a lot more efficiency came with this damnable machine in front of me now.

Yesterday while looking for some notes to include in my book, a faded three-column width piece of  newspaper fell out of a folder. Checking it out, i liked how i had turned three normal columns into a three-column box for my article. You see, when i became the sports editor, i announced i would not write a daily column as had my predecessor, Jack Case, the guy who gave Raymond Robinson his nickname of “Sugar Ray,” had done for uncountable years and had just about every other sports editor in the world up until then. i didn’t want to write just to write but wanted to write opinion columns or articles of special note when they happened.

This column was one of them. It appeared in The Watertown Daily Times Friday, May 26, 1972 in the upper left hand corner of the second page in the sports section, the hot-type page. Re-reading it, i realized one reason i saved it separately from the many other pages of newspapers i have saved over the years. i thought it was one of my  best. Still do.

an

And i’m thinking Jack Case, JB Leftwich, Fred Russell, and Bill Roberts are smiling.