Another first light,
perfect for shooting stars
if i were at sea,
but
i am not at sea,
literally at least,
as i look up and toward
our southern border
to catch Venus and Jupiter
riding over Pegasus
in the sky,
Lord,
in the sky.

i have been contemplating writing something about this post’s title words for quite a while. My contemplations are fuzzy. i still haven’t quite figured out how to write about what i’m thinking. There also are some holes in my facts about what i’m thinking. Some research is required. And quite frankly, i am not sure i will even publish it even if i do actually put a complete writing about it on paper…er, in a computer file. But right now, i wish to share an experience with you:

This Easter morning, April 17, 2022 at 0600 local, 1300 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) while standing at 32.65694 degrees latitude, 117.00966 longitude, in the direction. of 090 degrees (dead east), this was my view:

Yes, i have hope.

As i indicated in “On Track, I” my attending Danielle Lister’s meet ten days ago not only let me connect with a rather remarkable young woman, but it also put me back on track. Here are the other thoughts that afternoon generated:

63 years.

Oh, i’ve watched track and field on television, especially the Olympics and some other special events but only remotely since that warm 1963 sunny spring day on what is now The Edward S. Temple Track on the Tennessee State campus.

That track stadium, like nearly all of them now, was a bit less polished then. When i walked around the Mesa College stadium where they were holding the track events in the Arnie Robinson meet, even though it was shiny and polished with fake grass and some high falutin’ substance for the track, that feeling i had first experienced three score years ago on much less refined facilities returned.

Friday when i got to the area where they were holding the field events, which they call “throw events,” where there was real grass and pop-up tents, and athletes grilling burgers and hot dogs and eating pizza, i was back on what is now Hale Stadium on the Tennessee State campus.

Track meets are like a three-ring circus. There is something going on everywhere. You can’t see all of the events because they are going on hither and yon at the same time. There is a casualness unlike the regimen of football, baseball, and basketball. It is on the whole less dramatic, but for the individual events, it seems more tense to me, even more exciting.  Yesterday, i once again questioned why i didn’t go to more events, or wondered why i didn’t cover them during my sports writing days.

i mean i even had friends, especially two friends: John Sweatt and Kent Russ. They both took me under their wings during Heights football seasons. They both were on the track team.

What do i remember about that? i remember walking up Hill Street at Castle Heights Military Academy from the baseball diamond after practice. The track team was still at it on the football field, track, etc. And someone had turned on the speakers in the press box, and hooked up a turntable. Jimmy Reed ‘s sweet blues with that iconic harmonica was wafting in the wind. And i’m thinking why didn’t i play a sport where i could listen to Jimmy Reed. Oh yes, that oval of a track was composed of cinders, not plastic or rubber.

However, i recognized i was quick and not fast. In one physical fitness competition, i cleared not quite four feet in the standing broad jump. Distance running, i.e. anything longer than 440 meters seemed like work and pain compared to playing football, baseball, and basketball. It was only much later that i discovered how much pleasure i got from running. i was not so inclined in spite of Jimmy Reed’s “Ain’t That Loving You, Baby”

The track meet i attended in Nashville those many years ago was special in many ways. To begin, i was with one of the best athletes, and probably the fastest, i have known in my living. Kent Russ was instrumental in my becoming a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He had been a post-graduate at Castle Heights, played football and ran track. He also was on a track scholarship at Vanderbilt. i soon found out he also was on an AAU 440-relay team with Ralph Boston.

For you younger folk who are too young to remember Ralph Boston, he set the first man to break the 27-foot barrier in the long jump, winning the gold in the 1960 Olympics, and medaling in 1964 and 1968. He was a giant among U.S. track and field athletes and named as the country’s 1960 Track and Field Athlete of the year.

Unbeknownst to me, Ralph was a timer at that meet long ago. Kent parked the car and we walked across a field to the track. We were standing right by the track when Kent introduced me to Ralph. i tried to act natural. i’m not sure i pulled it off.

We chatted for a while when Ralph asked if Kent would mind giving him a ride to downtown Nashville after the meet to pick up his car from his mechanic. Kent quickly agreed. Our conversation turned to the meet. Kent asked Ralph if he thought Bob would break his world record in the 100-yard dash. Ralph said Bob had a chance

They were talking about Bob Hayes, the sprinter on the A&M “Rattler” team. Hayes is in the the NFL Hall of Fame due to his incredible performance as a receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. He played football for the Rattlers, but he also had broken the  world 100-yard dash record earlier in the year.

Ralph moved over for his timing duties. Kent and i watched trackside about halfway from the oval to the finish line. Hayes didn’t break his world record but he tied it. Ralph later commented that the officials were very lenient in that he believed it was wind assisted.

One of the last events was the 440-relay. Hayes ran the anchor leg. When he passed by Kent and me, he was running so fast i thought he was going to run out of his skin. There was no doubt in my mind Bob Hayes was the “world’s fastest human.” Even today, i vividly recall the fastest human flashing past me no more than three feet way.

As the meet wound down, we found Ralph and walked across the field to Kent’s car. When we approached the car, i went ahead and opened the back door and began to get in when Ralph said, “No, no, i’ll sit in the back seat.”

i protested. After all, i was getting in a car with a World Record holder, an Olympic champion, and the driver was his teammate on a relay team.

Ralph then pointed out the civil rights protests were raging in downtown Nashville.  Woolworth’s was in the midst of a sit-in due to their segregation policies. He then told me if he rode in the front seat, there would be a much better chance all three of us could get shot and killed.

i meekly climbed into the shotgun seat (pun intended) while Ralph sat in the back.

i have thought about that afternoon many times. My respect for Ralph Boston grows each time.

I was naive. Only in short glimpses of the news was i aware of what was going on concerning civil rights. i was too busy being a college boy, partying, girls, booze, and even studying occasionally when an exam loomed. i knew the protests were going on, and i was repulsed by the violence against the protesters, but it was a blip on my priorities.

i know it wasn’t an intentional ignorance. i don’t feel guilty. i was a nineteen-year old male. i wish i had been more aware. Done something more. Sometimes in a quiet moment, i feel ashamed. But there was no intent to harm anyone, or help anyone. The testosterone was raging.

Ralph Boston was focused. He was his own man. He felt equal, if not more equal, to anyone. His priority was his track and field prowess. He obviously cared and liked people…of all kinds. He treated me like he treated Kent. i felt i really was a friend.

As with many thoughts of this nature, my feelings ultimately end up as sad. i am sad our country with such a basis like our constitution, regardless of the creators intent, as a powerful statement for equality, could have fomented such hatred and invoked the need for protests. i am sad racial, ethnic, and social gaps still exist and with it, the hatred and violence.

But i’m proud of being a friend, albeit a short-lived one, of Ralph Boston.

And i’ll remember that glorious sunny afternoon i spent watching and spending time with incredible athletes at a track and field meet 63 years ago.

Thanks, Kent.

She was a trooper, like all of them. In some ways, it was appropriate for her to be the last to leave us and join the others.

Hiram Culley and Carrie Myrtle Orrand Jewell moved to Lebanon, Tennessee, all the way from Statesville, twenty miles away in 1900, and considering it was the time it was and the place it was, twenty miles was a long move.

They brought with them their son Jessie, who was born in 1898, a year after they were married. He was the first of that Jewell generation. Virda was born in 1904, followed by Naomi in 1907, Wesley in 1909, Jimmy in 1914, Huffman in 1917, and Carrie Myrtle, who was born in 1918 but only lived a month.

Virda died at 28. She had married Mathew Graham Williamson and they had a son named after his father. As soon as she graduated from high school, she went to work as a telephone operator.

The others lived lengthy lives. And worked. Lord, how they worked.

Culley bought a steam powered tractor in 1918, and with Jessie, drove it back from Union Station in Nashville to Lebanon. They converted it into a portable saw mill. Jessie and Wesley worked with their father, clearing trees and turning the wood into lumber in a large swath of Wilson County. Even Jimmy, at six-years old contributed by keeping the steam engine running by feeding the slag lumber from the lumber cutting into the fire chamber.

Jessie became a plumber and was one of the best in Lebanon. He married Alice Guild Kelley and they had four daughters, the oldest dying at birth.

Naomi, as soon as she graduated from Lebanon High School, went to work for Ma Bell as her a switchboard operator as her older sister, Virda, had done. She retired as a senior manager. She married George Maxwell Martin. They had one son. They also raised Graham Williamson after Virda, Naomi’s younger sister died when she was 28.

Wesley became a mechanic, married Gussie Barbara Compton. He got the itch to travel and moved to California in 1941. The couple had two sons and a daughter.

Jimmy Jewell went to work as a mechanic when his brother Wesley got him a job where he was working before heading west. Jimmy became known as the best mechanic in the county. Jimmy married Estelle Prichard Jewell. They had two sons and a daughter, the oldest of which was me.

Huffman Jewell was the youngest. He was a postman and a farmer. He married this wonderful woman, Ruby Louise McDonald, the last of their generation of Jewell’s. She was the last one.

Aunt Louise passed away Wednesday, March 30. i earlier wrote it was fitting she was the last of those brothers, sisters, and their spouses because i remember her as the one who always visited her in-laws when they had physical problems, going out of her way to give them comfort.

She was a comfort: a hard-working, Southern Christian woman from a small town. The kind that made you feel at home. The kind that made you smile. And that farm. It made me feel as if i should have been a farmer. And it was hers. Yes, Huffman worked it, but Louise was part and partial of that farm.

Tomorrow, Aunt Louise will be buried beside Huffman in Wilson County Memorial Gardens.

i wish i could be there. i wish i could have spent more time with her, talked with her more. Times and my living kept me from that.

She was the last of a family of brothers and sisters with strong bonds and caring for each other. They worked with each other, they played with each other, and they loved each other. i am pretty sure that most folks who were reared by that generation, especially in small towns like Lebanon have similar feelings about what Tom Brokaw labeled “The Great Generation.”

i’m also sure Jessie and Alice, Virda and Mathew, Naomi and George, Wesley and Barbara, Jimmy and Estelle, and of course, Huffman, will be glad to have her join them in the sky, Lord, in the sky.

Friday afternoon, i drove over to Mesa College for the Arnie Robinson Annual Track Event at Mesa College. Mesa College is a two-year community college about 20 miles from our home. The meet was for high school and junior college athletes from schools in San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles counties.

i parked and walked around the track and football stadium to the upper area where many of the field events were being held. There were ten or so pop-up tents around the edge of the field. The last one was next to what looked like a batting cage to me. But then, my last track meet was attending the Florida A&M-Tennessee State meet in the spring of 1963, nearly sixty years ago. The cage, larger than a batting cage was where they contested the shot putt, hammer throw, and discus events.

That last tent was for the athletes competing for Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. And there, lying on her stomach talking to her fellow athletes was Danielle Lister. To accurately describe our relationship would take several pages. So i will just use the standard i use for kin: she’s a cousin; i’m her “crazy uncle jim” (CUJ).

Her real uncle, Eric Leo Johnson, had let Maureen and i know Danielle would be competing nearby. Maureen had gone to one of her events that morning, the hammer throw. i was there for the discus.

Before i get into my roiling in my thoughts on track and field, i just want to let you know i have a rather incredible young lady for a cousin. Danielle is pretty, a red-head, smart, engaging, witty, and one heck of an athlete. She is in the top level of JC athletes in California. And we had fun. Oh yes, she finished second in the discus with a personal best of 133′ 9.” There is yet another impressive thing she did at the end of the competition. i cannot divulge what it was for to do so would take away from what she did. Only a few other athletes and her coach know what she did, but i can tell you her ethics, morale, and doing what was right was more impressive to me than what she did in her events.

i am proud to say i am crazy uncle jim for Danielle.