A whole bunch of thoughts are rumbling through my mind, many of which might upset some folks more rigid in their thoughts than i am. i hope not.
But as i went on a power walk this morning, it occurred to me “Labor Day” is mislabeled. i mean why would you call it Labor Day when everyone is doing everything but laboring. The idea seems to have gotten cattywhampus anyway. It seems to me folks are not going to find satisfaction by having nothing to do even though that appears what labor unions want — and big business keeps ensuring there is a necessity for labor unions, so i’m not arguing for or against. i would think most folks, certainly me, would want to have productive work that gives me satisfaction where i am paid for what it’s worth, not to do nothing nor to amass a fortune far beyond what my work is worth. My time at sea in the Navy and writing sports worked for me.
Guess i missed something growing up
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Then, when i got back and was cooling off from my walk (after all it was 71 degrees in the Southwest corner at midday , checking email, Facebook, etc., i somehow ended up listening to a stream of blues, original blues, 1950’s/60’s blues on YouTube (or whatever jumbling of real words that site is named). The folks who sang are the ones to whom i listened after nine in Joe’s and my second floor room at 127 Castle Heights Avenue on WLAC AM Radio with Big John R, Hoss Allen, and Gene Nobles.
i just sorta stopped what i was doing and listened.
It occurred to me that years ago, my ancestors and others bought and continued to enslave people who happened to have different skin pigmentation. In a way, looking at the way they faced adversity, from a different perspective, it freed those who were enslaved. If you listen to that music, that blues by the people who lived it, their ancestors set them free, even though they have faced abuse and prejudice, they are free in many ways. And folks with my skin pigmentation became enslaved to cockamamie ideas about equality, which enslaves them to this day.
Lord, lord, i love the blues. Not the stuff they play today that sounds like blues, but the folks who sang it because it was part of their life.
Sorry if i have offended anyone, but today, i just felt like saying it.
Folks, i gotta tell you i had a glorious year back between 1957 and 1958. It was my eighth grade year. Then, things got off track. i had it all planned out, but the plans centered around my making it to 6-2 and topping out at 180. That didn’t happen.
i finally reached 180 but considering that part of the dream was 65 years ago, this is not a good thing. Although all of my friends kept growing, i stopped at 5-7. Good bye, dreams. Things got a bit off track, not bad, just off track.
But certainly those twelve months were as good as it ever got for me. i had played Babe Ruth baseball that summer of ’57 and caught Mike Gannaway, which continued on and off for another five years. He was a phenomenal pitcher, being awarded a baseball scholarship to Georgia Tech. When i wasn’t catching, i played shortstop, third base, and left field. i was a respectable fielder except for high fly balls hit straight at me. i was a banjo hitter but competed with Bobby Lannom for the batting average crown. He won and later went to Tennessee on a baseball scholarship where he captained the Vols.
Then came Lebanon Junior High School. Ahh, the stuff dreams are made of. i was co-captain of the Colts along with Jimmy Gamble, played fullback, and due to a misprint scored my one touchdown via a 447-yard punt return. We lost one game. i cried.
In basketball, i was the co-captain of the Blue Devils (Coach Jimmy Allen had changed the football team name, but Miles McMillan kept the high school moniker) along with Clinton Matthews. i quickly learned who was the star, and at point guard, i consistently fed Clint for those amazing layups. We lost one game. The lost was the final game of the year-ending tournament to a team we had beaten twice in the season.
i had a major role in the eighth grade operetta and the eighth grade play. i was in the glee club. i played piano (my last year of lessons) at a competition at George Peabody College in Nashville. The piece i played was something by Bach that sounded like a bumble bee to me. i didn’t win. Mrs. Gwaltney, one of my favorite people from my past and the piano teacher said most of her students would stop and start again when they made a mistake, but i just kept on playing like nothing had happened. i don’t remember that, but it sounds like a pattern was developing in more than piano.
Oh yeh, believe it or not, i made pretty good grades.
What happened? The football star’s growth was halted by genes. His parents, despite his kicking and screaming, sent him up on the Hill to Castle Heights Military Academy where post-graduates were bigger and faster. That by the way, was the right decision.
i certainly did all right, but that pattern of making mistakes and just keeping on chooglin’ kicked in big time.
Now, looking back, i wouldn’t change a thing. Even the things that didn’t work out kept teaching me about life. i have met some marvelous, marvelous people, and made incredible friends out the gumpstump. They still are my friends. i was married to two wonderful women who couldn’t abide my goofy ways for an extended period of time, but i loved them and still do.
All of this allowed me to go to sea, and eventually meet the most wonderful woman who is almost surely the only woman who could put up with me. i have two wonderful daughters and a great grandson. Approaching 80 (138 days to go to be exact…if i added right, which is a challenge), i have had a grand adventure.
But every once in a while, like when i start and restart organizing all of this stuff, i run across an envelope of photos that brings back yesteryear, like the one i discovered Friday in a shoe box on which i had written “Lebanon Junior High.” Memories explode like bottle rockets with Roman Candles. And i am in my dreams.
i hope you enjoy a snippet of that year:
Mike Gannaway and the goofy guy.
Henry Harding; Mrs. Burton, principal; Clinton Matthews; Brenda Hankins; the goofy guy with the school newspaper. Notice that this was one of the few days, Henry and i didn’t wear the same outfit.
Goofy guy, Sassy Ward, Mike Gannaway, Beverly Hughes.
The eighth grade play, “The Sunshine Twins.” Sassy and i were the twins. Henry played our father.
The twins with Laurene Smith, who played a talent scout.
The Sunshine Twins
Ginny Askew and Patricia Gillespie with the goofy guy.
El Grande Goofy, or Gabby Robinson.
A double exposure, but it is the only one i have of me with these two beautiful and wonderful women, Sharry Baird and Beverly Hughes.
The Junior High graduate.
i hope i haven’t bored you with my trip down memory lane, way down memory lane. All of these people remain dear to me.
Mind you, i am in pretty decent shape for an old man. My friends, family, doc (yeh, yeh, now all of you folks are likely aware health insurance concerns need to make it more technically for legal purposes so they can charge exorbitant prices to keep me safe and them financially independent), and the specialists say, “You are in great shape for someone about to turn 80, but let’s make sure in my specialty,” so i go through incredible tests that some make a small fortune off of me and my insurance, and they all seem to point out i have something that could kill me tomorrow but i shouldn’t worry.
So i feel old, wondering if giving up a bunch of stuff i like in lifestyle, diet, physical regimen, and on and on and on would be worth it.
Then i played golf, Friday Morning Golf, which i’ve been playing with military friends since 1991, and played like…er, like i am damn near 80, and got home and felt old.
After a long nap and a shower, i sat down at this infernal machine. But i shuffled my music from my library, not all that stuff that some computer thinks i should like, and a perfect song for me pops up.
Thank you, Don Williams and the Pozo Seco Singers. i feel better now.
The juggernaut of photo organization continues. i’m too stubborn to get a professional to do it, and i’m damn sure they couldn’t express what i feel about these. So, even if it isn’t possible to get these completed before 2384 when i will be 140 years old, i’m doing it my way, that is, haphazardly, the privilege of being an old curmudgeon. These two are special:
My buddy Ray with me and his daughter, my wife, in our first home on Red Oak Place, circa 1986-87. Man, i miss him.
And this one is an extra special memory, Maureen and i in my and JD Waits’ condo on Antigua Court in the Coronado Cays. JD’s 25-foot Cal sailboat sits outside in our boat slip. My shirt was likely a tee given to runners in a 10K somewhere. From our expressions, i could be attempting to get Maureen to watch Midget Wrestling reruns. It was 1982. We were not yet engaged.
Oh Lord, what a wonderful time in my life over the rainbow:
As i completed this early this morning, editing, changing a word or a phrase or two, it hit me i break a lot of rules writing these things that sort of come off as poems, and for that matter, some might say butchering the language in other writings as well.
Many of my errors come from just writing with abandon, carelessness, poor editing for which i’m famous. But also, i am experimenting with expressing what i feel, mixing my understanding of Faulkner, Warren, Conrad, cummings, Greene, Doctorow, and my brother Joe with my own, and rather independent way of putting pen to paper, or whatever process is now in vogue.
It is storytelling, my storytelling. i do not desire to bring you to my conclusions, even my feelings. i just hope in some small way, i allow you to get in touch with your feelings when i write. This came to my head standing outside the front of our home this morning. i wanted to share.
just past first light, been a while; even the early riser rarely catches first light in the summer when first light is earlier than rising; looking east nor’ east Mount San Miguel, which we intruders shorten to Mount Miguel, is resplendent with its backdrop of the first light bringing gray, then pink with the continuing Sol rising, then almost white, the sky before becoming blue, blue sky of the Southwest corner;
didn’t notice her first; too busy standing there, looking at mountain and sky; it is silent at first light, cool, even refreshing, reminding me of late August back home in Tennessee years ago: blazing hot mornings yielding to preview autumn coolness bringing a sigh of relief, gladness; her gleam caught my eye, the lone gleam in the sky’s vastness; she was dead east about twenty degrees above the horizon in azure, a perfect display of the Morning Star bringing understanding why the ancients named her Venus.
the world is silent as first light grows to dawning bringing contemplation of how the Kumeyaay took it all in before the intruders came from the south then east, taking the land, turning it to easier habitation, concrete, steel, towers; draining a great deal of what it used to be down the drain, gone; comprehending, perhaps, how the ancients came to believe, create their vision of god, as others have elsewhere and before with codes for living; after all, such a god would make sense of it all give the ancients and us a purpose for living that makes sense with Venus, the mountain, and dawn assuring all is right; standing there in modernity alone, silent, taking in the vastness of Mount San Miguel, Venus in her glory, the Morning Star; eternity?
in a near silent murmur, repeating the Lord’s Prayer to myself, the Lord God of my forbears, seeking purpose, solace in the vastness of the morning just past first light alone.
