One of the folks i have reconnected with on Facebook is Norm O’Neal. Norm was a radarman (right, Norm?) on the USS Hawkins in 1968-69 when she was my first ship. i do remember him but must confess not as clearly as i would like, a difficulty i have with many parts of my life over fifty years ago…okay, over 50 minutes ago.

Norm sends out some wonderful emails and occasionally posts something on Facebook. Many are beautiful photographs of animals (so i can forward them to family members who are crazy about animals) or historic events. My favorite emails of his are humorous.

This morning, he posted quotes from Steven Wright, a comedian and award-winning film producer. Being challenged to know any performer who did not perform before 1985, i did not know Steven Wright, i looked him up on Wikepedia (God bless you, Wikipedia. If it wasn’t for you and my confessing you are my frequent source, people might think i know a lot). From Wikipedia:

Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an American comedian, actor, writer, and an Oscar-winning film producer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical, and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, non sequiturs, anti-humor, and one-liners with contrived situations.

i mean i have to like anyone who comes up with a lot of paraprosdokians and non-sequiturs. It’s my kind of humor.

But i digress. Wright’s quotes are below. p.s. i think he stole a couple. Thanks, Norm.

The Quotes of Steven Wright:
1 – I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
2 – Borrow money from pessimists — they don’t expect it back.
3 – Half the people you know are below average.
4 – 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
5 – 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
6 – A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
7 – A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
8 – If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.
9 – All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.
10 – The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
11 – I almost had a psychic girlfriend, ….. But she left me before we met.
12 – OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
13 – How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
14 – If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
15 – Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
16 – When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
17 – Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
18 – Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.
19 – I intend to live forever … So far, so good.
20 – If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21 – Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
22 – What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
23 – My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
24 – Why do psychics have to ask you for your name
25 – If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26 – A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
27 – Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
28 – The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29 – To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30 – The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
31 – The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
32 – The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
33 – Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film.
34 – If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
35 – If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

i’m back on Facebook.

Actually, i never went away. i monitored, but not as intensely or frequently. i shared links to the posts on my website and my Democrat columns, and i posted albums of pictures i’ve scanned for posterity because i’m too damn old and ornery to learn how to share those old photos with my family any other way.

The truth is i like sharing stuff back and forth with friends and family. Those reconnections and new ones give me a lot of pleasure. i decided i just couldn’t give up those connections.

But i’ve made some rules. i’m only going to “like” posts i truly enjoy or find especially interesting. i am no longer going to “like” a post because i want you to know i’ve actually read it.

i’m going to skip all those pass-along jokes, feel-good videos, prayer requests, political comments, copy and paste demands, etc. That doesn’t mean i don’t respect you. It just means i’m not on the social media for such stuff. i like the social aspect.

You see, i set myself some goals, not resolutions, before the  end of the year to reinvent myself. i want to live the rest of my life in a better, healthier, more productive, and more giving back mode of operation. i also don’t want to sweat things anymore. i want to truly retire except for that giving back thing, which i plan to do through writing.

Well, i backslid on those goals, not resolutions, pretty soon after the turn of year. Not completely, mind you, not even too badly, but i did backslide in my opinion. But you see, i have an automatic reprieve. My birthday is January 19, which i share with Robert E. Lee, Edgar Allen Poe, Paul Cezanne, Jean Stapleton, Tippi Hedren, Phil of the Everly Brothers, Janis Joplin, and Dolly Parton, among others.

And of course there is James Winston Watts, who developed the frontal lobotomy.

It all seems to fit.

So i’m renewing my efforts to reinvent myself. Whatever is left in this life for me, i intend to enjoy it.

This morning, i completed a project, the first one among many. It’s not that impressive. i made an herb table which we will put out in the old dog prison (no dog, no prison) where Maureen can work on raising her herbs and potting flowers.

It’s really not impressive. i made it out of scrap lumber and some sheet metal. It is not square, but i did it with no plans, just sort of began puttering.

Still it’s a change. i have somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand projects in my garage and office, and that’s not counting the four billion and growing list Maureen has for me. This herb table is the first step in completing those tasks and the beginning of the reinvention of my reinvention.

And as i drug the table from the garage work area to the old dog prison, i passed the rose bush Maureen has in a planter.

i didn’t see this at first what with rousting about the table. i experienced the aroma first, one of the sweetest smells i’ve come across in a while.

Then i saw the rose. ‘Bout damn near perfect. Not a bad way to kick off a reinvention.

The story is dated and a bit overwritten. The writer, Laurence Zwisohn, was obviously a fan of the King of the Cowboys.

i have justifiably been accused of overwriting and being “sappy.” i also was a huge fan of Roy Rogers, shown below with Trigger (i purloined this photo off of a Mexican website, http://undiacomohoyhuaraz.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html).

Roy Rogers could not exist today, nor will anyone come along like Roy, nor will anyone come close to emulating Roy’s life.

My father in his later years and i would watch Roy’s movies together. Now, on rare occasions, only my daughter Sarah would deign to watch them with me.

i don’t think there are many folks in the generations following mine could understand, let alone enjoy Roy’s “B Oaters.” Many would complain they were not realistic. Many would complain about Roy’s lack of faults or the villains, you know, the ones in the black hats. Many would complain of the violence. After all, the villains did shoot people (Roy just shot the guns out of their hands), and there were lots of fights where Roy fought fair and his adversaries would cheat, throw dirt in his eyes, and use chairs and such to try and whack Roy unsuccessfully. As expected, or even known beforehand, Roy would ward off the yellow-belly cheater’s attack and knock him out (often after catching him in a horse race — no horse was faster than Trigger — diving and taking him and the culprit rolling down a hill) and win the fight. But yes, it was a fist fight earning an R rating by the supercilious.

There would likely be others who would complain about animal cruelty. They would likely want Trigger to be put out to pasture, and the cows not be herded and branded.

Even though, as Zwisohn points out, “Indians” were always friends with Roy and never fought against him, or him against them, there would be some “Native Americans” who would object to the portrayal of these indigenous people as degrading.

Atheists would decry Roy and Dale’s fervent religious beliefs. Rocks would be thrown at the couple from all angles. The left would deride him. The right would demean him. Journalists would haunt Dale and him, looking under every rock, trying to find dirt to print. Some would probably just print something on a hunch. Attorneys would be looking for a kid who missed getting an autograph so they could sue.

It was a different age, a different mindset. Sure there were folks who were no better, perhaps worse than many today. Certainly, there were backdoor deals by the bigwigs in every facet of American life. Prejudice raged in every direction. There were actresses who were abused, but some using the director’s couch to climb the ladder of stardom. Hollywood was a nasty business with a dark underside and shaky morals.

But Roy and Dale were above that. They lived a rather incredible life of religious belief, unblemished behavior, and success.

The museum made way for a highway in Apple Valley. They moved it to Branson, Missouri. It lasted for a while and then closed for lack of interest. Sad. It was a good place to go and feel good.

But if you want to feel good about at least one couple getting it right for them, then read Zwisohn’s article. It’s almost like magic, like pretending. But Roy and Dale did exist. The piece is a bit long, but for me well worth the read:

http://www.royrogers.com/roy_rogers_bio.html

And every once in a while, the Western channel during daytime programming, not prime time, will vary from their usual inundation of Gene Autry movies to show one of Roy’s. Watching it for me is like getting healed. The bad guys lose, the good guys win, and Roy and Gabby ride off into the sunset, obviously after Roy has sung one last love song to the heroine.

i almost threw it away.

It was in the middle of a bunch of stuff in a box of many boxes i was cleaning out.

It was yellowed and sort of fragile. i was afraid it might crumble into pieces.

But it was a newspaper clipping, easily recognizable as a sports item. “Lebanon Wins / Over Watertown” the two-line, one column headline read.

Being an old sports reporter and editor, i paused and read the three paragraphs and cringed. It was not the way i had learned to write sports stories on athletic contests: first paragraph twenty-five words or less letting the readers know “who, what, where, and when;” all other paragraphs short and written with the least important parts of the story at the end, so the editor when making up the hot-type page could throw out linotype lines from the bottom up to make the story fit in the space. Half-way through the third and final long paragraph, i found the reason the clipping had been saved. i wondered if other such stories had been stashed away by my Prichard family. The important part was even underlined: “Captain Prichard ended her high school career by leading the scoring for the evening with  ten points.

i shook my head. i’m pretty sure my mother, the captain they lovingly nicknamed “Runt” since she topped out somewhere around five-feet tall, played one more game. i’m pretty sure she told me they had one tournament game, which they lost. Still, “Runt” had a pretty impressive run. Her single game and season point totals remained a Lebanon High School record for a quarter of a century. She was one of the initial inductees into the Blue Devil Hall of Fame. i still laugh when i think of her standing between Rita Rochelle and Louis Thompson, both of whom dwarfed her.

And to give the un-credited writer credit, he or she did mention nearly every player for both teams, men and women.

When i concluded, i thought it would be good to post the clipping. After all, there are a lot of Lebanon and Watertown folks who might recognized the other names.

One thing that hasn’t changed from one year to the next is organizing. For some while now, my focus has been on photos. i have photos everywhere. Some are in boxes, lots and lots of boxes. Some are in albums; mine, my mother’s, my aunt’s, Maureen’s, and Maureen’s family; lots and lots of albums.

It is a task, not likely to ever be completed, but one that nearly always take me back to happy memories.

Yesterday, i stumbled upon some framed pictures in a box. Boom: memories of love:

1983. Maureen had some photos made of her to remember her by when i would leave right after our wedding, report to my new ship, USS Yosemite, in Mayport (Jacksonville), Florida, then leave for almost eight months on a  deployment to the Indian Ocean. One of the owners of Parron-Hall Office Interiors where she worked was also an amateur but very professional photographer.

One of the photographs was a beautiful shot we framed. i hung in my office wall opposite of my desk so i could spend most of my days at sea looking at her. This one, smaller head shot, i kept by my bedside in my stateroom just forward of the office.

She hasn’t changed much, and i love her as much as i did on those eight months at sea, in some ways maybe even a bit more.

Circa 1993. Also framed in that box was one of my favorite photos. It was taken at Dan’s A-Frame in Grass Valley during Thanksgiving, i think in 1993. It’s my family. We were seldom together because Blythe was in Austin with her mother. So the photo is rare and therefore, even more precious to me. The focus is not perfect, but i still have another copy framed in the house to look at and think of how lucky i am to have all three in my life.

2016. There are more photos, but lying next to the pile waiting to be scanned along with the  two above  was a small painting. Sarah had painted it for me as a Christmas gift this year. It was to remind me of the trees outside my sister’s house on the hill sloping fiercely down Signal Mountain. It captures that memory perfectly. It also shows off another one of her talents.Both Sarah and Blythe are exceptional artists, something they got from their mothers. i am always amazed at how talented they both are in so many different ways, and as i often tell Maureen, the two of them are already successful as humans and are destined to be successful throughout life.

Now i must stop and get on to appointments and errands. But tonight, i think i’ll look for some more boxes with photographs. They won’t be hard to find.