i continue to scour my files and papers to throw out a punch of stuff i have written for about 60 years or to work it a bit to see if it’s worth saving…for what? i don’t know. It’s just me doing stuff. This was something fairly recent:

Brown Penny
by William Butler Yeats

I whispered, ‘I am too young,’
And then, ‘I am old enough’;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
‘Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.’
Ay, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

and me:

the brown penny rolled into San Diego ‘round eighty-two
and
then rolled into a store where stood this beautiful lady
selling panels to a sailor man
and
the sailor man
would be in love then until
till the stars do run away
and
the shadows do eat the moon
and
brown penny, brown penny,
it did not begin to soon
but
right on time.
(as Bob Dylan once said,
“And I said that.”)

Yesterday, Halloween, i did not go to Sunday church services. No surprise since i have only been to those when i was back home.

Nor did i get all wrapped up in Halloween except for my daughter Blythe’s photos of grandson Sam’s get-up and other relatives and folks sending photos of their children in their get-ups, including Jenny’s photo of her and my longtime pal, Bill Oliver who was dressed up like Pancho Villa.

So what did i do?

Mopped about half the house.

While mopping, i wondered  if others get this feeling of…of…pleasure…maybe of just doing a good job. It occurred to me we spend a lot of time and a hell of lot of money feeding the coffers of those who make money off of us trying to make things easier and how making things easier seems to be a little off kilter to me.

i enjoy doing many things, but i seem to get the most pleasure of being with loved ones and friends, and doing things, big things, small things well.

i want to make things better, not easier.

But i am old, several years past three-quarters of a century — i wonder why describing my age that way seems so much older than “getting near 78.”

At my age, doing anything well is a pleasure. i wish i had appreciated that before i grew up somewhere around 70.

i also live in memories — and often repeat them, like the stuff in this post, but what the hey? i’m old.

Tuesdays, i remember three people, all three written about here before.

You see, Tuesdays is trash day around here. i get up about the same time each day, but a bit earlier on Tuesdays when i first attend to putting the trash bin (too big to be called a trash can), the recycle bin (something that didn’t exist before we had literally mountains of trash everywhere and used to burn a lot of stuff ourselves and didn’t even think about recycling although we took a lot of stuff we throw into the trash or recycle bins today we would have reused or repurposed back then), and the yard waste bin, the contents of which we used to use for compost or burned in those halcyon days, all three bins unless the yard man did some special stuff so there are two yard waste bins to put out.

Well, getting up a bit earlier always reminds me of Papa. To me, he was “Papa” but he was my great uncle, surrogate grandfather, Wynne Prichard. When i would spend a week or so every summer and sometimes on weekends in the other parts of the year, he would wake me at just before 4:00. i would quickly dress and we would walk to the pasture fence where he would call the five or six milk cows. The bovines would magically appear. i can still see Papa rubbing the muzzle of the lead cow. He would turn with me turning alongside of him and the cows, in line with one or two walking side by side, would follow us to the barn, where we would milk — actually i would get a couple of squirts in my bucket while Papa filled his up, maybe twice, and pour it in the milk can.

When finished and the milk cans were stored to later take to the house and make butter and buttermilk and strain for fresh milk, we would slop the hogs in the sty and head back to the house. Yep, early on Tuesday mornings and frequently other early mornings (but not Fridays, that’s when my futile hopes for a better golf game occupy my mind), i think of Papa. i see him sitting down to the kitchen table when the second remembered person comes into the scene.

Actually, we had seen Aunt Corrine as we walked toward the pasture to call the cows. She was in the chicken coop, gathering the eggs in her apron. When we returned across the fields and the backyard, we walked up those wooden stairs, through the back porch, took a few steps down the hall and turned left into the kitchen. The aroma of breakfast cooking drew us there like a magnet. After all, heaven awaited with Aunt Corrine’s fresh eggs fried over easy in bacon grease, bacon or sausage not off the farm because they were on this farm, grits (i think Aunt Corrine bought these although i couldn’t be sure and they did have a corn field), churned butter with buttermilk biscuits and molasses, and buttermilk. i was not a big fan of drinking buttermilk, but Papa loved it.

And the third person i remember? Jake Hughes. You see, i’m taking out the those bins out to the sidewalk and separating them at least a foot or two because the trash truck driver told me that was easier for them with those big tongs on the front: they didn’t have to get out and move the other bins to pick up their specialty trash bin, and i put out our neighbor’s bin as well. She was widowed this past spring. i’ll put them back this afternoon along with those of our two next door neighbors. My father did that for his neighbors on Castle Heights Avenue and in Deer Park: nice tradition, i think, and i’ve discovered my neighbors appreciate this one small weekly act of kindness.

i admired Jake Hughes. We called him Jake the garbage man. i didn’t know his last name until much later in life. i still admired him though. He had that old horse wagon with car tires pulled by a mule. He would stop on the street in front of the house, go around to the back, take the garbage can or cans to the wagon, dump them in the bed, and return them to the backyard. Sorta made sense. Did it well. We didn’t have garbage cans out front on trash day. Every Tuesday, i watch all day for the trucks to come so i can get my and the neighbors’ trash bins out of the front of our homes. Unsightly, i think. We didn’t have to do that with Jake the garbage man. He was friendly, and i’m told he made a lot of money from all that garbage. i’m glad. He prospered by doing hard, unappealing work well. i’m sure he caught some abuse because my hometown was glaringly racially prejudice. But he just kept on being friendly, smiling, and doing the garbage collection really well.

Not easy. Better.

Yeh, i have written about all three of these folks before. i’m sure they had flaws. i didn’t see them. All three did what they did well.

i remember.

i made a vow to reply to every comment on my posts here. In the last couple of months, i have been woefully remiss on that vow.

i apologize. i will not promise i will respond to every comment, but i will promise i will try.

Thanks to all of you who have commented. i cannot express how much your comments mean to me.

Written last night, Monday, October 25, 2021 in case you’re wondering.

Sometimes, sometimes, when you are my age, i guess, it just all falls into place. Or, at least, you think it does.

i experienced that falling into place thing tonight.

i’m not sure most people will understand. There was a time and place, a very small window of such for me tonight. Just hit it right.

Maureen, unlike me, likes to have the television on for background while she reads from her “kindle” (sounds like she is starting a fire to me but that thing is another electronic marvel i cannot abide, this one in particular because i like to feel and smell the paper when i read so the corners can get dog eared). That unattractive black screen was in living color on the Seattle-New Orleans football game, which neither of us was really interested. And then it was over. Neither of us cared to listen, even as background noise, and i mean noise, of the post game banal analysis of the talking heads. Somehow, i ended up with the controls. i went to streaming. As i was surfing, thinking i should just turn the damn things off — and i mean “things” as i had four of those remote thingies on the table, i increased surfing speed to mach 2. i caught a glance of something of interest to me. i backed up. PBS. Shows. “Austin City Limits.” Jon Batiste.

In the past, i have discovered some jewels on that show. Once, we caught Tom Waits when he was very young and relatively unknown, although i knew him because my shipmate, condo mate, the other “Booze Brother,” JD Waits, had introduced me to Tom’s music and revealed Tom was his second cousin.

So i checked Jon Batiste out.

i spent an hour enrapt, making connections.

The man and his band play my kinds of music, many kinds of my kind of music. Incredible.

The talent was amazing, enough just to enjoy all by itself.

i confess i didn’t even know who Jon Batiste is. i know now.

Not only did he wow wow me, he and his buddies and buddiettes (oh boy, that one is going to get me in trouble with someone) put a show on that stage that took me back to his and my roots…okay, my roots. i used to know all kinds of music, was a deejay, collected records, all sorts of music. Then i joined the Navy, went to sea back when you didn’t take much of anything with you, especially current music. i sort of got lost. Now, most of my music is my old stuff with a few more current artists one of my daughters introduced to me.

So Jon Batiste was new to me, but he took me back to old days.

There was the small table radio i put under the covers with me after listening to Big John R, Hoss Allen, Gene Nobles, and Herman Grizzard from nine until the wee hours on WLAC playing blues, real, gritty, soul, blues while i did my homework (ha, ha) in the upstairs room i shared with my brother on Castle Heights Avenue back home. i turned the volume down low and continued to listen as late as i could so i could order some great blues 45’s on Chess, Excello, and Nashboro labels from Randy’s Record Shop in Gallatin. Jon Batiste brought that back to me.

Then Jon sat down at the piano and did a bit of Beethoven and Gershwin like neither had heard before, and i marveled, wondering who the hell thought i should play a sonata at a recital at Peabody College in Nashville or a solo at the junior high graduation — oh i know who thought i had some talent: Mrs. Gwaltney, my teacher before i gave up the 88 for football, and my mother, of course; and i often wonder what my father thought of all that.

And then, Jon shifted back to stuff i knew and some stuff like hip hop i didn’t, but again he took me back, this time to the New Club Baron on Jefferson Street in Nashville where Cy Fraser and i would invade, taking along others, but the constant of Cy and I were always headed there when nothing was going on at Vanderbilt. White boys, honkies, red necks, jiving and being accepted by the otherwise black crowd while we listened to “Gorgeous George” (no, not the wrestler) with his revolutionary keyboard not a piano that looked more like an ironing board, and all sorts of other great acts, even Otis Redding after one of his big shows downtown at the Nashville Auditorium. We felt it.

Then Hurley’s on that side street in Newport, Rhode Island during OCS and while i was on the Hawkins, the destroyer across town at the Naval base. And Hurley’s immersed me in jazz and soul, real soul before it became some voice exercise, and i would listen to “My Satin Doll” until the cows came home.

And Jon played on and i was hearing Jimmy Reed and Eddie Floyd and Slim Hopkins and Sonny Boy Williamson…and Dvořák…and gospels…and Clarence “Frogman” Henry.

Jon Batiste. “Austin City Limits.”

i’m not to sure many of you will get where i was last night. It was damn near a religious experiment.

You see, i also heard Peace.

For the last several weeks and probably several more, my focus has been and will be on putting Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings in the can. i say that because every time i think i’m almost done, i discover something else that should be added, deleted or changed. Consequently, my posts have been few because my time is devoted to the book, and of course to my great escape, bad golf. Oh yeh, even with what you read here, i have watched nearly all of the National League playoffs.

While hard at work (when i’m not on a golf course) over the last several days, i have been considering sports, or rather the three major sports of my era. Changes over the years have altered the core of what i knew growing up and well into adulthood. You folks younger than me probably are all in with the new era of sports. It sure looks like it with the fans i see in the crowds acting out fantasies for their 15 seconds, not minutes of fame, some even frothing at the mouth. Today’s football, basketball, and baseball make me wonder about our sanity. My conclusions after wondering for a while make me sad.

If i were a manager of any baseball team, especially in the majors, i would require…i mean require or sit for any multi-million dollar player (and since even the lowest players in the majors makes at least $500,000 per season not including the bennies and the per diem compensation for meals, etc., which is pretty much more than i made in annual salary for all of my working days, all 1026 players and their replacements are multi-millionaires unless they blow it)…er, i went off on another rant…i would require them to bunt to the opposite side of a shift. Oh, there are lots of folks who want to outlaw “the shift” but we have too many people trying to make the game better…or worse to make more money, but that is just one more layer of interference in one of the most wonderful sports if played like a sport back when.

Bunt. Hit to the open area of the field. Play BALL, BASEBALL.

Then as i watched the San Diego State beat Air Force in football, i watched a quarterback scramble and throw a pass out of bounds. In my mind, the play begged the question, “When is intentional grounding intentional grounding?” The answer is rarely. You see if a quarterback is not in the pocket and throws the pass out of bounds or over the goal line with no receiver within an area code, the pass is not intentional grounding even though it was intentional grounding. And oh yeh, i think it was Dan Marino that started it, but when the time is running out and the quarterback takes a snap and immediately throws the ball into the ground to stop the clock, intentional grounding is not intentional grounding.

Hmm. It makes my head hurt.

My biggest gripe is games, athletic competition, remain barely on the field of play. Coaches control what is going on all the time. Watch them from the sidelines (and in baseball, watch them march to the mound to fix the pitcher (not) or rearrange the fielders, or heading to home plate to protest something some yahoo in a security booth somewhere watching the boob tube who saw something and call the bench coach who relays it to the manager who works the ump usually fruitlessly but sure to take five minutes or more if video replay is involved because those umps or refs have to consult with their yahoo in a booth watching the boob tube) or players, managers, coaches berating referees or umpires for questionable calls, which used to produce unsportsmanlike conduct penalties or ejection from that field of play. Statistics, not athletic ability, now rule football and baseball. The coaches have electronic communication or some other means to direct every play. They call timeouts from the sidelines. The players on the field are puppets even though they have incredible talent, because, apparently, they are short on brains without computers, videos, and statistics at hand. Oh, i forgot they have those little cuffs above their wrists where signals from the sidelines tell them what’s next.

Rules are made to make football safe. Really? You are trying to knock somebody on their butt at the line of scrimmage, in the backfield, in defensive secondary, and somebody thinks they are going to make it safe? The safe football game, and for that matter, the safe baseball game and the safe basketball game are the games where no one plays.

Nowadays, the athletes are all specialists. A designated hitter doesn’t play in the field. A pitcher doesn’t bat — in the American League and minors, and they are trying to make it for all of professional baseball so there will be more players who can make more ridiculous amounts of money when they can’t play parts of the game.

I still watch. Well, maybe not professional basketball because the rules have been tortured and abandoned. If I want to watch that kind of ball, i will go to a pickup game on some concrete, outside court somewhere.

The National Football League is an exhibition of superb athletes doing incredible things, but quite frankly even the exciting parts are predictable. i still watch baseball and the college sports and root for my teams, yet there is an empty feeling when they win, like so what? when my teams win, it’s not about the players playing the best ball. It’s about recruiting and coaches making them robots, incredible athletes totally under the coaches’ control, and those athletes are there because of money, either what they are making or what potential they can have to make MONEY.

We used to have pickup games as kids. Many of us played three sports or more. Now, the parents, the trainers, and the coaches demand devotion to learning techniques to play the game, their sport. A child can’t play a variety of sports. They have to be specialists. And the athlete from early childhood until they stop playing that sport is a slave to the sport, spending hours learning and practicing the best techniques, the correct stance, swing, throw, run, block, tackle…

Sounds like work to me.

Oh it’s a useless rant of a curmudgeon, but dammit, why can’t we just play ball?

i think i will ask Maureen to go with me for a walk on the beach today. i don’t think it will take 12 to 15 hours to watch pro football today on our television (and no, i don’t subscribe to the NFL network), but it will be fun, and i won’t have to listen to the talking heads.

Thank you for allowing me to let off some steam.