Well, i wrote this diatribe last week about the “stupid bowl.” i vowed i would not watch. It was a most excellent rant, even if i do say so myself.

My intentions were not just good, but superb.

i had decided i would do home projects in the morning and then go for a round of golf, figuring there would be no one on the course. i decided i would record the game because i knew Maureen wanted to watch the halftime show and the commercials. i liked the idea of being on the golf course during most of the game.

Mistake one. Then i asked Maureen if she would like to join me for golf, explaining my intention of recording the game for her. Surprisingly, she said yes.

Mistake two. Then, since we were playing and knowing my buddy Pete Toennies was not a big football fan, i called to see if he and Nancy would like to join us. To do that, i felt it necessary to get a tee time and got a 10:30 time. Subsequently, i found out Pete and Nancy were returning from Santa Monica after a visit with Pete’s mother. They couldn’t play as they wouldn’t get home until midday.

Mistake three. Then Nancy asked us if we would like to join them to watch the game, adding she had made chili and cornbread. Maureen loved the idea.

So i, this old curmudgeon of a former sports writer, succumbed, as in gave in, broke my vow not to watch.

i was not impressed…except for three things.

The commercials were okay, but i thought confusing and, except for a couple, not too funny. The halftime was all glitter, and i don’t think i understood one word of the lip sync. Maureen liked the dancing, but i would rather have seen it in a theater. Chris Collingsworth, whom i had come to appreciate as a color commentator, was absolutely awful, detracting from the game with his predictions of replay calls, and just being…well, like nearly all of the color commentators in professional sports. Unhappily for me, Al Michaels, one of the best play by play announcers in sport for the last half century just went along. Radio communication from coaches to players on the field is counter to all i love about sports. In short, i didn’t like any of the side shows to the game.

But, as i commented to Pete several plays into the first quarter, watching some incredible athletes perform at the highest level is always an enjoyable thing, like watching a ballet with the dancers doing awesome moves, like going to a symphony and absorbing incredible musicians create beautiful music, like going to a museum and standing in front of a piece of artwork and finding yourself breathless with awe at the talent. Yep. Incredible athletes.

And i must say watching on numerous occasions after a great play an Eagle or a Patriot player help an opponent up or patting the opposing player on the back was what i consider one of the most important examples of what sport should be.

And three? Well, it was one hell of a game.

Next year, i plan to make the tee time a bit later so i can miss the whole thing.

Hear ye, hear ye. We have all come to the altar to worship the idols of what they call super on what used to be a holy day, but the whole concept, the playoffs extending the season beyond healthy for athletes, the hype, the hype, and oh, did i mention the hype, and what really isn’t all that super but really sort of stupid.

My wife says she will watch primarily to see the commercials.

i don’t like commercials. i like funny bits but not when there selling something. Just like i don’t like all of those product logos all over golfers and race cars because they are selling something, and i have yet to meet a product marketer who has offered to pay me anything for wearing their logo, and oh by the way, charge me more because they are paying the golfers, the race car drivers, and their agents so much they have to raise the price of the product i would buy if it wasn’t for the golfers and race cars wearing those logos.

So ain’t watching.

Don’t like six hour ball games…of any kind except maybe cricket, but i don’t understand that one so i don’t watch it either.

And halftime show? Razz ma tazz and all that ain’t jazz, just glitter and fireworks and besides that i don’t know one song ever sung by Justin Wooden Swamp…oh, Timberlake. Out of touch and glad of it.

i’m old. Don’t need such foolishness. Don’t like replays either, of which there will be a gump stump of in that six hour marathon of horse derves, beer, wine and other booze.

Football? February. Give me a break. The last football game every year should be on January 1. Period.

♦   ♦  ♦

Now if you have read much here, you know i have soured on pro not sports. It’s entertainment; it’s business; it’s even careers. But it ain’t sports. That doesn’t mean i don’t watch when they run under six hours and the hype doesn’t last two weeks.

Especially baseball. And this week, i watched a program that might tell you why. It was on the MLB Network. i don’t watch that either, but being in San Diego, i caught the news announcing it would be on the air. “MLB Presents: Mr. Padre.” It was a documentary about Tony Gwynn, his Baseball Hall of Fame career, his family, his warmth, and his allegiance to San Diego, refusing higher salaries even with pressure from the players’ union because he wanted to play in San Diego.

Of course, i’m biased, but if you want to see a documentary based on a good human playing the game he loved, then you should check this one out. The network is showing it several times a week over the next two or three weeks. i’m sure there are others, at least in the past, like Tony. But he truly was “Mr. Padre.” He identified with San Diego and with baseball, and all San Diegans, not just baseball fans, loved him. He was the way baseball should be.

It is a very well done, heartwarming documentary, not a local thing but done by Major League Baseball. i recommend it if you want to feel good…and just a bit sad Tony’s gone. i drink Alesmith’s  “.394” pale ale every time it’s available.

And if you don’t have the MLB network or care not to watch, here;s a great read from Jon Heyman of CBS right after Tony passed away: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/the-great-tony-gwynn-will-be-remembered-for-two-amazing-talents/. Good read.

♦   ♦  ♦

But today, Saturday, i’m trying to figure out if i should tackle some of the innumerable tasks around the house, write, or maybe, just maybe play golf…i’m pretty sure tee times will be available anywhere.

i wrote this several evenings ago after completing William Faulkner’s “The Bear” again after a long time. i wrestled with posting it here, but i’m trying to be completely honest when i post, and this is me. When those special moments hit, i just write. It’s like getting up on waterskis for the first time, or getting to the point where you become confident snow skiing. A wonderful feeling. i don’t understand it, know it doesn’t happen to everyone. i think it’s close to Maslow’s level of self-actualization in his hierarchy of needs theory. But it doesn’t matter.

i thought a few of you might like it.

I am a renegade, a vagabond, a wanderer, a mariner.

Don’t know why, but i know such pursuits can play hell when one ages and becomes more sedentary. Still trying to figure it out. Plays with my mind when i still want to get up and go, but my get up has went. So i wrestle with that.

Recently, i’ve been away. Not down, just sort of reassessing where i am, what’s going on around me, thinking about what i am going to do the rest of my life. It’s something that seems to be occurring more frequently for me. I think it’s from what i’ve been since i left home about a half century ago: a renegade, a vagabond, a wanderer, a mariner.

That’s not bad. I’m 74 now, and i don’t have a job, which means i’ve got time to reassess and realign and change…well, maybe not change too much. But i keep writing, always come back to writing.

i don’t know why. Grammatically and editorially, i’m a mess. i’ve sort of lost the need for correctness. i find most “correctness” evasive. So i write. Gotta couple of books out there still in the works. Gonna get ’em done, and then i’ll probably quit. i like working around the house, playing golf, spending time with friends.

i am getting back to reading. There’s this bookshelf behind me full of books, i mean really full. i’ve read the majority of them, but those need to be reread, and there’s a whole bunch of classics i’ve promised myself to read before i go.

i’ve just been having a hard time staying with one. When i was a teenager until sometime around my second and career Navy period, i would read into the night, way into the night. At 127 Castle Heights Avenue, i would read under the covers in my bed with a flashlight until two or three in the morning. Read The Hobbit in one night (i think Joe gave it to me). Started around 7:30 and didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Read most of Faulkner and Warren in a fury. Their novels became my priority, and fit into every nook and corner of my life not filled with such trivial things as working, studying, even carousing. But i’ve sort of lost that and need to get it back.

Then about five months ago, our friends Pete and Nancy Toennies over a dinner decided we should start an exclusive book club, just the four of us, figured we wouldn’t get anyone trying to strut their stuff, just us and the books. We liked the idea. i thought it possibly could get me going on reading again. So i suggested William Faulkner’s “The Bear,” about a third of Faulkner’s book Go Down Moses. Most folks thought of it as a long short story, but ole Willie Boy told someone it was a seven-part novel.

Never figured that out. But i wanted to read “The Bear” again. Over about fifty years, i figure i’ve read it about ten times. But i confess, i was most entwined with the story of the bear hunt. Ike McCaslin, the primary figure in the story and the teenage boy in the hunt was my hero. In fact, my dog, or rather the dog for whom i was his human, the wild and magical Labrador was named Cass, short for McCaslin, Faulkner’s Ike.

But Maureen, Nancy, and Pete were more diligent than me, finishing before me. They weren’t enthralled. They spoke of the boring part of the family history intertwined with the tale of the hunt. It pretty much killed the idea of our exclusive book club.

So i put Go Down Moses on the coffee table and there it sat for about three months. i had read the good part, or rather the part about the hunt. I mean that is really cool stuff, and i haven’t been a real hunter since i shot that small bird with my Red Ryder BB rifle through the barbed wire fence on my great uncle’s farm around ’54, and sat there and cried as the bird, unreachable through the fence and the bramble, flapped furiously, then fluttered, then died. The great woodsman, ten years old, cried for a long time. But while reading past the hunt, i felt the magnificence, the connection with the earth and time eternal in that hunt. But when i got to the connections of a Mississippi family from a time long forgotten, i was a bit hesitant to resume. After all, i had other things to do.

But in my period of old age reflections, i actually picked up Go Down Moses sat in my “reading” place by the fire (where the infernal, dominating, glazed-eye producing flat screen could not be seen except by a contortionist, which i have never been and am absolutely the opposite now, whatever the opposite of a contortionist actually is).

So i sat down and read beyond Boon and Sam Feathers and Ike, the youth, and Lion, the cur dog, and Major de Spain and Ike’s older McCaslin cousin and the woods…no, the forest now long gone from a state we can no longer comprehend, and the land, like mine had been in my mind growing up, where the native ancestors lived and hunted, not as some have claimed in nobility but in human quest for survival until they corrupted the hunt into some ritual like we all eventually do and then the men from across the sea and over the Cumberland Gap came and brought their roaring sticks of killing fire and took the land, not because they were more or less noble, but because they had more firepower than bows and hatchets and then they brought people from Africa in bondage and the world changed forever and then the war of brothers again altered the state of that world and first, cotton began to take the land and the mixture of the old tribes, the slaves with darker skin, the plantation owners who had become rich and powerful, and the poor folk of fairer skin who did not fare as well as the plantation masters and those who cared for all humans had to deal with this strange liaison between these four elements of people and the intricate, complicated, and troubled relationships to reach a  reasonable compromise in their minds and in their action which was as close to right as they could get, knowing they could never reach really right but abrogated their charge to keep seeking that right, gave up.

And ole Willie, sitting up in that stable loft with the haymow under and around him with his bottle of Lem Motlow’s uncle Jack to be sipped out of that self-same square bottle during contemplation, caught me again. He seemed to have captured, maybe even originated my thoughts about living, the land, the South.

I realized my wife and my friends could not be enamored of the whole of “The Bear.” Their worlds were not embroiled with the noble land in that Southern corner. For me, there is this Southern thing holding sway; Willie captivating me as no other, not even Robert Penn, driving me away from my writings, holding my soul in his custody like a jail keeper.

And in echo of a long, long time ago, i could not put it down: the very part i had skipped before, not recalled as i recommended the reading, loving the story of the hunt but enchanted, enraptured by the flow, the complexity, even the boredom of the twists and turns of family heritage, the history of those four elements of human struggling to be…well, be human, not just human but the appointed part of human separating us from the others. Humanity struggling to be at its finest but failing, always falling a bit short so that trying, establishing routines, traditions to not be broken, not bowing to change or newfangled disruption, no, not disruption, destruction of the land from which we came, maybe not originally but which had grabbed us and fostered roots to that very land, which is gone, long gone, soon to be in only written recollection of folks, even me, long gone.

And so i will read again. Willie once more: The Fable; Sanctuary; The Unvanquished; As I Lay Dying; The Snopes trilogy, The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion; Light In August; Absalom, Absalom; maybe not all, but the very sound of the titles drive me toward him now.

And then, ther reading will follow. Since my Navy days, i have had difficulty sticking to one thing: too many things to do and not enough time. Trying to get all done. Just like the Navy. Tours too short to get things done. Operations, crises, orders from on high. A curse. My father, a product of the very thing ole Willie was capturing on that pad of paper up in that stable loft: a Southern thing; folks driven by their fate of being born and raised on the Southern land ruling their lives, their own fate with an undeniable surety, the will of that self-same land that refused to give in, but now splattered with fields, then manufacturing plants, and even more recently houses of the development men has given way, only existing in designated, appointed parks, like wild animals in zoo cages, regardless of what they call them, regardless of the noble intent to save that wildness, to nurture the nature of the wild even as it disappears before our onslaught of “civilization,” cities, and edifices of steel and concrete and ribbons of roads with exits where no roads, yay verily even no sign of man used to be, seemed to have gotten most of his things done, near a hundred he lived finishing things, following the creed of the land turned mechanical while i start only to be confronted with another change, another requirement to meet someone’s need, perhaps mine, but not quite getting there, moving on.

But now, i have accepted sedentary even though i am not yet branded. Still moving about, still seeking things although most of those “things” are elusive, never to see completion. But now corners of sedentary are sneaking in with the stiffness in the morning, the wobbling feeling of imbalance as i try to steady myself on the path. And i have carved out a time to quit writing my five books and never-ending posts, and putting the yard, the house maintenance, projects in a state of lower priority. To give up trying to find something worthy in our government systems or some semblance of what i termed good journalism long ago no longer existing on that flat screen monster dominating the lived-in room or a show or series or movie that does not curry attention with violence, sex, macabre, or even athletic events now more titillating entertainment than sport.

And i turned that chair away from the flat screen invader of my tranquility, and faced the fire in the hearth, oh that the chair was of the rocking variety, and i will read. Perhaps a half hour, perhaps all night if the next page keeps calling, but it will take my soul for a while.

I don’t think i’ll get to the new stuff, so superbly marketed and refined to attract the audience by the publishers, editors, even agents who serve to sell for their clients and the industry rather than curiosity of the written word, which i believe every real writer desires.

Oh, i’ll read my kin’s stuff, and perhaps some reads about things i hold dear like back home or the Navy. My sister-in-law’s novels are always a good read. Really don’t have any problem with what’s being written. But most of my reading will be from those shelves in my office holding old, tried and true stuff like Faulkner, like Warren, like Hemmingway, like Graham Greene, like Doctorow, like Wordsworth.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this prism of time going back to my youth and my quest to read will even take me back to that land and the people, those four elements of entwined humanity in the South, the land that claimed us, and gave us more humanity folks nowadays cannot understand as they try to make all perfect, at least from their very narrow, slanted point of view, rather than to seek understanding and humanity among men: that’s inclusive before some gnat of a tender soul finds it misogynist when no intent to exclude, defame, or place anyone of any gender or preference on a lower status exists.

Yeh, put that all behind. Read. Old stuff. Good stuff. Literary. And fill my destiny with a routine, which probably should have been my pursuit all along.

Thanks, Mr. Faulkner.

Tomorrow. i turn 74 tomorrow. As with 73, this isn’t a big deal for most. It just means another year older. 75. That’s some big deal. Three quarters of a century. Right now, getting to this one is my focus.

The trip i just made to Austin and back in five days made it a big deal. With all that time to think on the return drive, i decided to grow up. Oh, i won’t stop being goofy or politically incorrect or a contrarian or a pocket of resistance, but i am changing some things.

i want to spend of the rest of my life, not wasting time, being as good a man as i can be, and doing the right thing.

This is tough in a world i know longer recognize. My world of yesteryear (man, that hurts to write that) wasn’t much better if you look at all aspects, but it was mine. And you know what, i’m really sort of tired of people revising history to meet their needs, their goals, without regard to the humanity of the people in the past. There are wonderful historians out there who are trying to delve into the past in an honest, forthright way, to help all of us have a better idea of where we came from. My niece Kate Jewell is one of those. i just finished her book, Dollars for Dixie, and it does service to our past and allows us to learn.

i also realized on that trip, i am an antecedent. Those younger than me don’t listen to my ravings because they don’t know what i’m talking about. i shy away from being concerned because each older generation has worried about the next one going to hell in a handbasket, but i do have concerns. There seems to be a whole lot more of non-think, adopting a cause or an idea because someone cool suggested it or some media of some kind intimated it was good. And then it becomes a passionate cause. That scares me.

It bothers me we seem intent on proving what we believe when believing, faith is enough. You can’t prove it, regardless of what you believe. Quit trying. I have.

It doesn’t matter because i’m not going to change those younger folks. i am amazed so many people my age are ranting and raving, and even, god forbid, trying to influence the mass of politic behind us, like being politicians when they should be in old age homes resting on their laurels.

Here’s my thought on this: i recognize i am not as fast thinking as i used to be, just like i’m not as physically able as i used to be. i view my role from here on out is providing succor for the younger folks, not trying to make them do what i think they should do. i hope some of them gain some insight from my recollections, stories, and observations. i’m not sure they are in the receive mode. So i also hope folks my age will simply enjoy my stuff and remember their own good times.

i have had many loves, many heroes, many adventures, and many good memories to share. i have had a good life, relatively unique because i never could quite figure out what i really wanted to be other than a good husband and a good father. Sometimes those desires have worked out quite well. Other times, they weren’t so hot.

You know what? That’s life.

My other goal is to be as much like my parents in aging as i can be given the different conditions. They did it differently, but they did it together, right up until the last nine months of eighty years of a marvelous relationship. They lived in a small Southern town and were working too hard to be successful, raise their children right, than to consider the moral conundrom continuing to plague the South today.

My mother had illnesses plaguing her from at least since i was about twelve. Allergies, asthma, over-medication, bone problems, and on and on and on. But she dealt with them with defiance, doing what she wanted to do, loving her family, being exact and with an incredible memory right up to the night i spent with her in the hospital until she went into that final sleep. She lived a good, an incredible life.

My father? Well, i guess you probably know how i feel about him. He had yellow fever when he was seven, damn near died, lost three years of school. After that? Had kidney stones in the mid-50’s, the only in-patient time he spent in a hospital, a week (during the yellow fever combat, he had a care-giver attend to him in the family home) until his last two months of living. Stayed amazingly healthy all of his life while eating eggs, toast, butter, jam, sausage or bacon, coffee, coffee, coffee, all things fried, steak, pies, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, chocolate. Everyone i know called him a “good man.”

And everyone thought he was the neatest man in the world, primarily because if he wasn’t, he was in the top ten.

Well, i am a combination of the two of them, just like my sister Martha and my brother Joe. i am honest in my assessment i will never quite reach their pinnacles of living a good life. Maybe i could have but i left, wanderlust, whatever. No problem really. i have accepted i have spent my life as a vagabond, a renegade, a wanderer, a wonderer. Some really nice folks have tagged me as a renaissance man. i think i’m a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.

My father gave me his thoughts about his age in our garage when he was 87. We were working on a project. i tried to capture his thoughts in short poem. i have posted it before, but to reflect on how i understand what he was getting at, here it is:

Going Quick

Two men, father and son
hunched over a work bench
a number of years ago;
working on a project quietly
in the glare of the naked bulb
hanging above their heads;
they talked a bit,
focusing on the task at hand,
smiling quietly at the bond
they continued to build;
then,
the old man with thick strong hands said,
“You know, son,
i’ve led a pretty good life,
got three good kids who have grown up well,
some good grandchildren,
and
your mother;
‘bout the only thing I hope now
is when I go,
it’ll be quick.”

That’s where i am. Just gotta try to live the rest of it like they did. Regally. Right.

So good night all. i will wake in the Southwest corner just after i was born, 7:30 a.m. CST, January 19, 1944, seventy-four years ago. My plan is to write a lot.

But tomorrow, i will be working on fixing my approach shots, chips, and putts. i’ll still be a lousy golfer, but i have fun.

May all of you have a good day on my birthday.

i don’t how i came up with the name Shelia, but it fits.

i usually name special inanimate objects and pets with some connection, like pets with writers, actors, or singers. i named all of my gps devices, programs, or apps “Shirley” as in “Shirley, you didn’t want to take that turn you just made!”

But “Shelia” just popped into my head, and it sounded real good (to me) with “the Beast.” And so, Shelia the Beast and i just spent two rather amazing days after a short and awakening visit to Austin.

Sarah is going through a life change (i did that as well about her age), and we made a whirlwind trip to Austin in her car.  We powered out (i thought it was powering out, but found out on the return just what “powering out” was all about) with a Thursday jaunt to Van Horn, Texas (850 miles), slept for four hours and made it into Austin (456 miles) midday Friday.

We slept, got caught up with a great guy named George Lederer, and then dined at North Italia in the Domain with my family less Maureen.

Sarah worked there as a waitress, and Jason worked there as a manager. It was old time week. The obvious highlight for me was Sam. To my delight, we spent a great amount of time hugging. He also immediately recognized i no longer sported a mustache, one of the very few who have noticed since i shaved it off over six months ago. He then told me he really liked my mustache. i’m growing it back. There are very few things in my life which will make me euphoric . Sam is one of them.

As we ate, the sisters began talking like…well, like sisters. Blythe is seventeen years older than Sarah, so they would declare when Blythe was in the “mom” role. They were just…what? Together. Then Jason and i talked about his new job. Sounds like a perfect fit, long term, security, all that. Then Blythe talked of an impending promotion. She deserves it. They are in a good place. Blythe’s mother, who was not in attendance, is with them, part of the family unit.

Sam told me he wanted to be a comedian when he grew up. i told him about the original Papa, my great uncle, and how he would come to our home every Wednesday after the farmer’s market. How he would park his Model A Ford on and off the street in front of our house and how Martha, i, and eventually Joe would run out to meet him. How he would sweep us up in his arms. How then he would reach into his pocket and give Martha a Milky Way (Martha, i think i got this wrong before: correct me if i’m wrong) and the marvel of all marvels, give me a Three Musketeers candy bar. i told Sam Sarah would bring him a Three Musketeers from me when they got back from their weekend hiking. He smiled. i was about as happy as i could be.

For me, in that noisy, busy restaurant, things seemed to go quiet, like i was in another place watching. It felt as if it were in slow motion. i heard them talking about things the next generations talk about. It occurred to me i was out of it. Not part of the conversation. Looking on. i thought of my mother in her later years hard of hearing. She would listen intently and nod her head approvingly when she had no idea of what was being said.

i did not nod my head in approval. i felt a quietness inside of me. Serenity, peace coming over me. i was me, an old man. They did not need me anymore. What i do is not part of their world. What they do is okay because they are on their own. The Ganders are in a good place. They all will do all right. Blythe’s mother is there with them. This is good for everyone. i’m just removed, not just because i’m some 1300 miles away. Sarah is going to be fine. i changed from sportswriting to Navy officer, the sea-going time at 28. It worked out great. It will for her also. We just don’t know how yet. She is independent.

Yeh, there were a few tears welling up several times when we said our goodbyes and Sam and i reluctantly quit hugging each other. i hope it didn’t show, because they were not tears of sadness, but of joy for them.

It was somewhat startling to realize it was my life to live here on out. i’ve said for a long time “good, effective parenting is the art of letting go gently.” i have let go. i feel good. Peace. We will see them, talk to them, communicate as they see fit. And all is well.

The next day, Sarah, Shelia the Beast, and i loaded out the van. We were done just after midday. i said goodbye and left. Shelia and i forged ahead on the real power drive. Unlike most women i know, she had a governor. At seventy-five miles an hour. We sat on it. To Fort Stockton, a Texas cattle town if there has ever been a Texas cattle town. i looked around for Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Lash Larue, or Bob Steele to show up on Trigger, Champion, and Topper — as far as i know Lash and Bob horses were named horse.

But i got my sleep and hit the road early. Sixteen hours, two stops: forty miles east of Deming, New Mexico, and of course, Gila Bend, Arizona. Power trip. Now for those of you who have not experienced driving a twelve-foot rental furniture van, you should know they are made for getting their thing done, not for comfort. When i first sat in the driver’s seat, i felt like i was in that old Johnson Dairy milk delivery truck, the one HM Byars required me to drive across town from the old Johnson Dairy east on West Main through the square and up East Main to Hankins, Byars & Jewell for Daddy to fix. It had a three-speed shift sticking out of the floor board. The seat was like a stool. Shelia the Beast wasn’t that bad but it was close.

The only available sound was a radio. i never turned it on. FM doesn’t do well on long drives across the barren wastelands. AM doesn’t exist, although you might pick up some Mexican music. No bluetooth, no “auxiliary.” Oh, there was a CD player, but i had no CD’s. Couldn’t use earbuds with my iPod because i should listen for highway sounds. Nothing but me and the wind whistling through the insulation on the back top of the driver’s door. That’s a long time for limited observance of the passing countryside and thinking, lots and lots of thinking.

There was enough countryside. i never get tired of the expanse of our land from Fredericksburg, Texas to descending from Mount Laguna on the downward leg into San Diego and home. It is almost, almost like being at sea. Vastness. Not much of anything out there except a few cattle munching on sparse dry grass, a few scrub oaks at first, then mesas and jutting hills from the landscape with the wonder of how they got there riding in my thinking and then as i closed in on El Paso, then Yuma with mountains corralling the vastness, hemming in that vastness, eliminating the open horizon with the sky. Approaching Yuma, my thinking and the mist lying around the mountains like a sheer stole made me think of Gene Autry again. He took Hoagy Carmichael’s “Old Buttermilk Sky” and gave that vista to me in a song. Western.

Then there are the giant energy wind vanes jutting out at surprising places and miles and miles of solar panels, the new west. The wind vanes have coordinated aircraft warning lights that took me to some space station in an immense cave for a civilization. Star wars. And agriculture: miles and miles, not small plots, not acres, but miles of green. Truck farms. The smell of fertilizer can sensitize nostrils. Made me think of how we relied on smells when we all lived off the land, and how those selfsame odors are offensive to our delicate urbanized olfactory detectors.

And trains. Oh not the steam engines of the wild west or the passenger trains with gentle people peering out at the vastness and the wildness while sipping their morning coffee in the dining car. No. Working trains, containers from the shipping lanes piled high, two to a car, and literally miles. i saw several with at least three miles of cars behind (and in front; whatever happened to the caboose?). It seemed we were all invaders in the beautiful wild vastness.

But of course, there were the people. Few, yes, but people nonetheless, literally living off the land. You know, like we used to. And i wondered about those people: the ranch hands living in two-room huts in the heat of the desert with no trees to provide cooling shade; and the trainmen, brakemen, engineers, plowing through this explosive star sky with no heed of the beauty, getting to the next offload spot, and the agriculture workers tending the fields, pickups, shanties. i wondered how they got their news. The cellular phone did not work for probably more than half of that 1300-plus miles. Antennae on the mountains, sentinels of transponding, but not in the vastness, not where the huts housed these folks. And i wondered what they thought of all their countrymen pounding their fists, yelling about how unfair the other side was, how words have become more important than working, how those other folks out there where there is no vastness have become so small, like their surroundings.

A great deal of the trip was along the border. i mean literally along the border. From the rise on the hills along I-10 through fifty or more miles around El Paso and later on I-8 through the south vastness of Arizona desert, i could almost see in the open windows of shacks and shanties with the soiled cotton curtains blowing akimbo, seemingly never ending, as far as my eye could see. i thought of how the city folks are fearful of them hollering “don’t let ’em in” and not having a clue who they are and what they need, and i thought of the deathly sense of passionless killing. Death, drugs, money, corrupting and how these evils, this lack of humanity played on the lives of the shanty dwellers. No answer. Sad. i thought i would like to go to a shanty and meet these people.

But i’m powering out, Shelia the Beast and me, worrying about the next big rig or some fast driving automobile with no heed of my precarious governor-stretching Shelia the Beast hurtling down that ribbon of concrete westward, westward (as Mr. Cash once intoned).

Time to keep moving. Gila Bend. Last gas stop. Was it a converted Stuckey’s, the Mexican version? Colorful ceramics crammed into every nook and cranny. Chimereas lined up like the Chinese terra cotta army for Emperor Qin’s eternity. Life-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex (with a baby even), a Triceratops, and a Camarasaurus, all near actual size over by the side parking lot.

Then there was the sunset out of Gila Bend. Glorious pinks and grays and whites whispering against the westward mountains until the night took the hues away.

Then as i passed the last outpost with an inn for overnight they call El Centro. Home two hours away with Shelia the Beast climbing up the windswept hills carefully, ploddingly.

Then down, Sheila wished to let it out, but i could feel the load in the bed and braked her down tenderly. After all, we had been through a lot together. i had grown to like the old girl.

Somehow, all that thinking piled on top of itself. The family dinner at North, the vastness, the people in the vastness, me. Doing the right thing seemed to resonate through it all.

It was a cathartic experience, this five-day power trip. The old man is not likely to do it again.

But i sorted out a lot of things in my mind, and i am at peace. At least for a little while.