For those of you who might have missed it, i’m headed back to Tennessee. Home. A short trip.

Vanderbilt Women’s Basketball is honoring my mother for her achievements as a Lebanon High School Blue Devilette during the 1934-35 season. The event will take place at halftime of the Volunteer-Commodore game on Sunday in Vandy’s Memorial Gymnasium.

i get in tonight, my sister Martha Duff, brother Joe and his wife Carla Neggers, and Maureen begin to assemble on Saturday. With luck, Tommy Duff’s entire family will be there for the game.

i have some errands to do tomorrow and perhaps Saturday. The other siblings will be gone by Monday and Maureen and i head back to the Southwest corner early Tuesday. Like i said a short trip.

Of course, short trips do not exist anymore if you are flying. Might as well count off the whole day. It ain’t fun like it used to be. Of course, my “used to be” was when there were no TSA lines, no jetways. Like i could walk to the aircraft on the tarmac. For a long time, i even used an American Airline huge umbrella they loaned you to walk to your plane. No,  i didn’t steal it, but i don’t remember how i got it. But it sure was useful, bigger than even golf umbrellas. Where did it go?

Today, Sarah drove me to Lindbergh Field, aka San Diego International Airport because they play down any association with a man who accomplished an amazing feat but had politically incorrect leanings long before they knew what politically correct meant and it’s easy to excoriate or rather damn dead people because they can’t explain — that doesn’t mean i agree with Lindbergh’s  political stance as i understand it. In fact, i abhor his position, but not his achievement.

i arrived almost as early as Maureen would have had she been with me. Maureen is extremely careful when it comes to air travel. Like if we have a noon flight, she would prefer us arriving by 9:00. That’s 9:00 p.m. the night before. i wasn’t that careful but with all the weather and coming off of the shutdown, i decided to actually get there two hours early. Attempting to get something done on the way, we left home early. I-5 traffic, unusual for that time of morning, dictated ditching the stop. So i get to the airport about twenty minutes before the cautionary two-hours. That was longer than the first leg of my flight to Houston.

Fun.

i zipped through the Southwest check-in. Good job. Then i went to the TSA Security (sic) check. Now these folks went to a lot of trouble to make sure i wasn’t a terrorist. Because of my age i think, i usually get the “PRE” designation, which makes the process a slight bit less onerous, but this time, no “PRE.” Of course, they need to be sure a retired Naval commander who held a Top Secret Atomal clearance now 75 years old is not on some kind of terrorist mission to blow up the aircraft he is riding. And then there were folks older than me who could barely walk, and the woman with her six-year old daughter, and families of three, four, five, sure candidates for terrorism. But what the hey? It doesn’t matter a thirty-second walk has turned into a quarter-hour or longer process from hell for all of the gazillions of innocent travelers. Of course, we need to be safe. But of course, anyone who really wants to blow up an in-flight commercial aircraft can get around such silliness. It’s the nuts who are easily recognized as someone to check they might want to ensure is safe. But oh no.

And then, there’s the Navy. The Navy decided they needed a whole line of security experts rather than relying on regular sailors and marines for security. So they created the MA rating and a designator for security officers. They, of course, no longer are concerned with the Navy’s mission. They are concerned with security, which is, quite frankly a sham. They create frustration and hassle for anyone entering a base while creating one of the softest targets for a terrorist imaginable: just attacking the never ending line of cars filled with active duty, retired and dependents waiting to get on to a base. Not to mention, any terrorist with a brain (thankfully, there are too many) could figure out a way to get through the harassment.

You might have noticed this is a pet peeve of mine. i just don’t like stupid.

But now, i’m on a flight to Houston, seated with a delightful, young Christina, who turns thirty Sunday and an equally enjoyable Walter. They are gainfully employed and apparently love their jobs. They talk of marketing and the things they say are the things i taught and coached about leadership and business management. i do not tell them of my past (except for my going back to attend my mother being honored and how my wife is big into yoga and i play golf…poorly). Their conversation pleases me.

And i am going home. i wish to apologize to my friends, dear friends in Lebanon and Nashville who i will miss. As usual, there is not enough time. Never enough time. Sometimes i think i live in at least three worlds. Home remains Lebanon, Tennessee, the home of my ancestors, a practical, religious, place with some shadow of an evil still hanging in its fabric. But i was never exposed to the shadow and still relish the beauty, the kindness, the kinship of all those folk who live there. Then there is Texas. It is my daughter and grandson’s home. i would like to spend the rest of my with at least part of my day with them. That will never happen for many reasons, but it does not keep Austin from being another world of mine. Then, there is the Southwest corner. People love to deride, joke about, detest California, especially if they are on one side of the political spectrum. i ignore all of that. i live in…sunshine. No air conditioning. Beaches. Mountains, year-round golf and fishing and all sorts of other things, not to mention my wife is a native.

i’ll continue to live there with her. Done deal.

But home is home. Vanderbilt is honoring my mother. This photo was taken a couple of years before she passed in 2014, just shy of 97 and nine months after her life mate had gone. She lived in  a Lebanon that was a wonderful place to live for her oldest son. Her being honored and her and her husband’s life were, in many ways a miracle for me.

i plan to write of the halftime ceremony honoring her and revisit thoughts about her and Jimmy Jewell’s life again, hopefully from a different angle.

And air travel, despite Christina and Walter, and good flight attendants, still sucks. i want to walk on the tarmac in the rain with a huge umbrella to my flight.

It  was mostly a day of old man preventive maintenance.

Tuesdays are trash days, and is my habit, i arose early, did my routine to-dos, and took out the trash. i went from my dermatology check (all’s fine for a change), had a crown put back in, and…oh yeh, i took a nap. i did a little organizing and some preps for my trip back home. Maureen cooked some superb tilapia and a new cole slaw. i sat down and watched about ten minutes of Kentucky drubbing Vanderbilt in my favorite gymnasium of all time, switched to “Who Shot Liberty Valence,” but since i already knew the answer as i have watched this movie about two dozen times, after a while i turned that off as well.

Maureen was reading, sitting on the love seat with her legs up and Dakota in her lap. She occasionally watched the ball game (i’ve succeeded into turning her into a baseball fan beyond my wildest dreams, but she is only half interested in Vanderbilt basketball: i think  that will change if i ever get her to a regular season game in Memorial Gymnasium), and as a movie aficionado sans westerns, she wasn’t thrilled with Liberty or his shooter.

Before our supper, which is nearly all ways on dinner trays in the family room, i started a fire. It was borderline too warm, but i professed feeling a bit chilled as an excuse. i also know fire in the hearth days are numbered and i can never have enough. i have reported earlier how i was once known in early October in the Southwest corner to open up windows and turn on a floor fan or two in order for it to be cool enough to start a fire.

Maureen put up the cooking stuff and i washed the dishes. i added a couple of eucalyptus logs (they burn as well as oak and the smell is delightful) and stoked the fire. i sat back in my chair (i still don’t and never will have my recliner; designer wife thinks they are ugly and don’t fit with the decor; i don’t care and like recliners, have resigned myself to my fate, and laugh when i can make fun of her for not having one) and turned on Handel’s “Water Music” and a book.

When i play “Water Music,” which is often, i always think of two things as it begins. i picture myself on a plush barge with Henry VIII punting down the Thames with another barge attached alongside with the orchestra performing the piece. And i think of my daughter Blythe’s wedding. She chose excerpts from Handel’s work for her music and instead of the traditional “Here Comes the Bride” for her walk to the altar, the horn section of “Water Music” was played — okay, i don’t remember the section so now i will have to look it up again, but that’s okay as it means i have to listen to the whole thing again today — and her Daddy still beams thinking of Blythe, Jason, and her music.

i am well into the book. It’s “The Slavish Shore” by Jeffrey L. Amestoy. The biography was recommended to me by Dennis Smith, a good friend and retired history teacher. Dennis and i were talking at a party toward the end of last year when we discovered we were both big fans of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and his book “Two Years Before the Mast.” Alan Hicks and i hardly ever get together without discussing some aspect of Dana’s 1834-36 sailing adventure from Boston to the west coast and back. Dennis recommended Amestoy’s story of Dana. i bought one for myself, my brother-in-law, and of course, Alan and his family.

It is a good book. Dennis was correct.

And it was about as pleasant an evening as i can recall. Quiet. Fire in the fireplace. Handel’s “Water Music” wafting in the air. Maureen and the cat. Reading. Thinking about all the good things in this world, and how lucky i am to be where i am and who i’m with, and somehow Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Our House” flashes into my mind:

And you know what? Old ain’t so bad.

From my “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar archives thanks to Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Pipey, and cousin Nancy:

Rule of Defactualization: Information deteriorates upward through bureacracies.

Goofy guy’s Extension of the Rule of Defactualization: …Therefore leading to the heads of larger bureaucracies essentially knowing nothing about their organizations.

i have always loved women. Put them on a pedestal. Been really close to many. And i must say in spite of difficulties with a few who have no use for me, i still care for all of them.

There are special ones of course.

But there is one in addition to Maureen, my wife, who is extra, extra special to me. We met in 1963. She was a freshman at Vanderbilt. i was a sophomore. Our relationship has been very serious at times, and very platonic at others. Through it all, even during long periods when we lost contact, we have always been friends. Even when we had relationships with others, we remained close.

Susan Butterfield Brooks is happily married to a wonderful man, Mike Brooks. They are both long time Atlanta denizens. They fit well together.

She and Maureen are good friends.

Susan and i, at least from my side, are about as special friends as two people could get. i treasure her thoughts, her inputs for me, her fun, her integrity, and…well hell, i could go on for about forever. She’s that special of a friend for me. Yeh, i think they invented that word “platonic” for us.

So Mike, give her a kiss for me and treat her well today.

And Susan, Happy Birthday, and thank you for being a fantastic woman and even better friend for essentially forever.

When i finished the book last night, i sat down and began writing this with the intent to email it to my immediate family. This morning when i sat down at this infernal machine again, i decided i would like all of my family and friends to have access to it. i changed it a little, added a little, and…here it is:

I did not read The Blackboard Jungle. I saw the movie shortly after it came out in 1955. It was Sidney Poitier’s breakout film starring Glenn Ford. It was also disturbing to me for many different reasons. I did not realize until tonight it was written by Evan Hunter.

I did read Far from the Sea. i finished it tonight. It was equally disturbing for me for many different reasons than The Blackboard Jungle movie.

I am not recommending any of you, especially Blythe, Jason, Sarah, Maureen, or even later Sam read it. That should be your choice, and Blythe, knowing your dislike of sad endings you so well expressed after i got you to read Hemmingway’s Farewell to Arms, i don’t think you should consider it at all. The ending is not exactly sad, but the ending is more along the lines of the feelings i got at the end of The Graduate.

How did i get to this point?

Well, i read a ton of the 87^th precinct police novels, which Evan Hunter, nee Salvatore Albert Lombino, wrote under the pen name Ed McBain, wrote and wrote and wrote (He wrote an astonishing 100 novels under that pen name). It was a long time ago, but i read at least a dozen of the crime novels. I liked his stuff. When i learned he wrote more “serious” fiction, i read his novel under the name of Evan Hunter. I don’t remember the novel, not even the name but i was impressed. Sometime around then, i bought Far from the Sea and put it in my library. Over two months ago, i pulled it out of the bookshelf.

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Reading again. You see i have been dormant in my reading for quite some time. There were always other things to do, which seemed so much more important at the time. And to be truthful, it hurt to read or re-read the authors i once loved to read: Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Twain, Greene, Wouk, Doctorow, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tolkein, and my two favorites Faulkner and Warren, because i was writing more and knew instantly with each sentence read, i would never achieve their incredible talent for writing. So i sort of quit, one, two, possibly three a year. But i wrote a lot.

You see, when i retired i had for years been building my library. I would hate to think, as my mother worried over and over again, how much money i spent on books, music, and sports, both participating and watching with the two last spending activities. It was a chunk, enough to feed the poor in a small third world country. But i have a magnificent library for me now. It’s behind me as i write, or most of it. The Durant’s histories, the Harvard Classics, The Franklin Library collection, sports, leadership, management, religions, politics, Navy, history, philosophy. When i retired…er, completed my Navy active duty service the day Sarah was born in 1989, i planned to read them all, and more. Haven’t got there yet, but hell, it’s only been twenty-nine years and counting. But i have been working and writing a lot…and playing golf and exercising and watching sports and going to symphonies and going to plays (no, not many movies: i watch my old favorites on television occasionally). Excuses.

So as this old age thing started catching up with me, i vowed to myself to stop with the excuses and get back to the reading i loved. After all, i did love it and still do. Just haven’t done it. So i have read three books this month and starting on my fourth.

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This one, Hunter’s Far from the Sea, has been difficult. First off, i didn’t like it. i didn’t like any of the characters. i did not like the premise. i did not like the plot. i didn’t like the focus on sex. i almost put it back in the bookshelf several times, but that would have betrayed my oath to myself, so i plodded. Just a little over half way through, i discovered i couldn’t put it away for a while, couldn’t quit thinking about it when i did. It was still difficult to read. i still did not like much about it. i could put it down, but i began to go back to it in shorter and shorter times in between. Two days after turning seventy-five, i sat down and read for more than two hours, a new record for the old me, and finished around 2230.

As i said, i felt like i felt at the end of “The Graduate.” Only it seemed so much more personal.

Hunter had a lot to say to me. i didn’t want to hear it but i did and it finally made sense. It was really a happy ending after what i thought was the denouement. But it didn’t feel like a happy ending.

It was powerful, and if i hadn’t read it and know what i know now, i would read it. i got a lot out of it for me. Personally.

And after all, that is really what reading is all about, isn’t it.

I’m still not recommending you read it.