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.

Nah, not because i’m old today. There’s a certain joy in getting past three quarters of a century. Of course, being old, i’m not too sure what that joy is.

Thus far, it has been wonderful. Maureen and Sarah took me to Bleu Boheme last night, one of our favorite French restaurants. We sat at the bar as we prefer. i perused the menu and went right back to Moules Frites au Saffron (mussels and fries) as i usually do. Being old, i refrained from my Bombay Sapphire Martini up with an olive as i have ordered in the past. After all, i’m old. Don’t feel it. But there are enough aches, pains, and doctor checkups to make me admit it. Maureen and Sarah were wonderful. i did miss Blythe and Jason and Sam but there’s a distance problem you see for someone who landed in the Southwest corner. Still is was as good as it could be.

Bleu Boheme even gave me a card with their entrance on the front page:

And my view from my seat at the bar was pretty cool:

It is a comfortable spot and except for my inability to pronounce French correctly (at least that is what my fluent wife tells me), they make you feel at home.

And i really like what they do with their candles.

But the thrill of it was being with these two:

And then we came home. Sarah gave me her gift. She knows me well. That pier, that Pacific Tugboat place is one of my favorite places to go.. The harbor smells, the old creosote wood pier (one, if not the only one still operating on San Diego Bay) takes me back to a wonderful existence i had for twenty-two years.

Let the big day begin. i’ll be working. Home projects. Like this being old.

The tough part is i made a promise to reply to each birthday greeting from everyone. Thus far, i have done that, but it’s getting tougher. i’ll keep at it, but thank all of you for your well wishes…just in case.

After supper tonight, my wife and daughter expelled me from the family room because i am not real fond of movies of this age and i landed in the “living room.”

This is akin to B’rer Rabbit being thrown into the briar patch by B’rer Fox and B’rer Bear.

i lit a fire, sat in the sitting chair (a good thing) next to the fire i just lit in the hearth, put my ear buds in, turned my iTunes on my music to listen to J.J. Cale, Mose Allison, Jimmy Smith, and Dvorak if i can stay awake that long.

i am in heaven. The world is good.

Yesterday, i began a series of posts about how i think about things with the intention of continuing along that line. But before i closed the books on last night, i went to a book i referenced to John Moriarty, a good man and one hell of an expert on whiskey which is intrinsically related to John being a wonderful Irish man. John had commented on a photo i posted of my aunt and infant me in a black and white photograph. i recommended to John a photographic book i acquired back in the late ’60’s because i was a devoted William Faulkner reader.

Before coming to what i should post next, i went back to that book, long after i should have gone to bed last night, because after all i had to get up before most humans to get to my tee time for golf in the rain. In the late night after everyone had gone to bed, i went through the book with incredible photo of the good and bad of how life was in my South.

Martin J. Dain’s Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County captures that good and bad of times past. The photos are pure art. Dain took quotes from Faulkner to consider on most of the pages.

As i read late into the night, i recognized something in me i had forgotten. i even wrote a poem (sort of) about my recognition of where many of my beliefs are based. But i had forgot until i read Willy’s quotes accompanying the photos.

Well folks, here are many of them, which are oh so wonderfully better than anything i could express:

What i perceived the Wilson County Courthouse to be on the Lebanon square before they tore in down and turned it into a parking lot and ruined the aura and history of the square:

…a Square, the courthouse in its grove the center, quadrangular around it, the stores… school and church and tavern and bank and jail in its ordered place… 

But above all, the courthouse: the center, the focus, the hub; sitting looming in the center of the county’s circumference like a single cloud…musing, brooding, symbolic and ponderable, tall as a cloud, solid as a rock, dominating all: protector of the weak, judiciate and curb of the passions and lusts, repository and guardian of the aspirations and hopes..

and

That was the danger, what a man had to watch against: once you laid flat on the ground, right away the earth started to draw you back down into it.

and

Father…said time is dead as long as it is being ticked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

and

…I’d have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone. (i have great reservations about the rest of this quote because of the sensitivity of what we now perceive as politically correct, but folks, this is in my mind, is in no way a negative comment on race, but a confirmation of how we are all human; and i don’t think of the word as being confined to folks with a skin tone darker than mine; i think of it as a lazy abomination of the correct pronunciation and the word itself being applicable to people of all skin tones; and i am sad so many people regard the word as terrible when it is the thought, the meaning of the person invoking the word that should be despised or accepted based on the intended meaning of the word; no, not the word; and i am a minority in this sense; but i won’t use the word because folks will immediately and wrongfully label this boy from the South as a racist, which i am not but have had this kind of prejudice used against me more than once; and i am old, so deal with it) That is when i realized that a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behavior; a sort of reflection of the white people he lives among.

and

Man ain’t really evil, he jest aint got no sense.

and

Only a few of us know that only from homogeneity comes anything of a people or for a people do durable and lasting value — the literature, the art, the science, the minimum of government and police which is the meaning of freedom and liberty, and perhaps the most valuable of all a national character worth anything in a crisis — that crisis we shall face someday when we meet an enemy with as many men as we have and as much material as we have and — who knows? — who can even brag and boast as we brag and boast.

and

Years ago, we in the South made our women into ladies, Then the War came and made the ladies into ghosts. So what else can we do, being gentlemen, but listen to them being ghosts?

and

I think man tries to be better than he thinks he will be. I think that is immortality, that he wants to be better, he wants to be braver, he wants to be more honest than he thinks he will be and sometimes he’s not, but suddenly to his own astonishment he is.

and

Yes, the thought, between grief and nothing, i will take grief.

and, the last for tonight as i am into Dvorak now, but more later:

It is not man in the mass who can will save Man. It is Man himself, created in the image of God so that he shall have the power and the will to choose right from wrong and so be able to save himself because he is worth saving.

Thank you, Mister Faulkner.

it is the latter part of the evening and ai am too old and too cite the sources of Faulkner’s quotes. They are listed Dain’s book. 

But tonight, Anton and i are going to spend my last waking moments  together.

Have a good night.

In two days, i will hit number seventy-six. That is one more than three-quarters of a century. i plan to give up any political or religious posts, a plan to which i am likely not to adhere. i will have lots more to write, but my plan is for the writing to be from my experience with the hope someone might profit from my tales, either for learning what to do or what not to do when they are confronted with a similar situation.

So i am going to try and attempt some thoughts i have about life that do include some of my thoughts about religion and politics…and a couple of other things involved in living.

Bear with me. i am now certifiably an old man. 

The Age of My Innocence Lost

All of the requests i receive, primarily on Facebook, for prayers for someone’s family member or loved one ailing obviously are heartfelt, people reaching out for support in a time of anguish and need. i usually reply with some short comment, also heartfelt, with a response like “My thoughts and prayers are with you.” If i there is a personal connection, i usually add something to show i am connected, and my “thoughts and prayers” are real. i hope it gives the sender and their ailing family or friend some succor.

Such requests bring up several thoughts in my mind.

One is to wonder just how heartfelt those other responses are. Is it a quick dash of a reply, almost automatic? Am i being cynical? Perhaps. That is for each responder to decide.

If they have responded in earnest. Then, i believe they are following the guidance my brother, Joe Jewell, described in his book The Elements of Prayer: Learning to Pray in Real Life. If you have not read Joe’s book, you should. It strikes at the heart of our reason to pray and how to do it in a meaningful way.

i also thought about a moment in my youth around nine or ten. i was in our living room, the center of our activity until Mother and Daddy added on the den, breakfast room, and their upstairs bedroom (then the den and breakfast room became the normal place for us to spend our time). But that Sunday afternoon, i was alone in the living room with the small black and white television in one corner. i had been ill, probably bronchitis, the curse of my youth, and i was miserable. Oral Roberts came on the television. i’m not sure why i kept the television on, but it was probably because there was only one channel and television was a novelty at that time in our world.

Oral gave his sermon, to which i did not even listen. Then he started calling down the ill and the afflicted and put his hands on them and prayed furiously, invoking the crowd to pray with him. And miracles of miracles with a great deal of shaking and convulsions, the afflicted were healed; the blind could see; the crippled could walk; the deaf could hear. After this miraculous display, Oral turned to the camera and invited the listening TV audience who were afflicted to be healed. He instructed us to touch the television screen and pray with him for the healing powers to possess our souls or some such entreaty. A bit skeptical, even if it is difficult to imagine a nine or ten-year old to be skeptical, i approached the small screen and placed my hand on it and prayed, or thought i was praying, along with Oral Roberts incantations.

Didn’t work.

i was still sick.

I didn’t lose my faith, but i pretty much gave up on Oral Roberts and those like him.

I have other doses of reality change my views on religion, and although i have criticized formal religion for many sins i think i see, i have always retained my faith.

It is my faith, customized, not likely duplicated; but my faith does not disparage those who practice their religions in a more formal manner, even the atheists, who claim their belief is the only right answer. No, sometimes i even envy those who “know” what is right for everyone. i have even more respect for those who believe, have faith in their spiritual being…as long as either the knowing or the believing does not tread upon the beliefs of others.

And i pray. And when i pray, i try to follow Joe’s guidelines. And i pray in earnest, and when i respond to requests for prayers, those responses are heartfelt, earnest, and sincere.

And i believe.