Sometimes, Mose Allison just sings my mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxZ-scE9mDk

He made it to the New Year.

Jimmy Nokes died Saturday, January 1, 2022. This is fitting because this year nor the world will never be quite be the same without Jimmy Nokes.

i didn’t really know him until high school. i knew who he was. i played Little League baseball on his father’s Noke’s Sporting Goods team. He was on the team. But it was a long time ago.

i have a dim recollection of my father making a comment that flew over my head about Nokes, out way too late for a grade schooler, running away from some trouble through the hole in our backyard fence, not realizing the top strand of the wire fence was still intact and taking a knockdown whack. Nokes later told me how he was amazed my father laughed, sent him on his way, and didn’t report his foray to Mister Nokes.

i saw Nokes a lot at his father’s store up at the top of East Main where i bought everything related to sports: my Rawlings infield glove i wore from Little League until it was so worn (and comfortable) it fell off my hand in one of my last high school games, my Nellie Fox 32″ inch bat with the thick handle.

Then, in high school, Nokes and my best friend Henry Harding began to hang around together. The three of us began to spend some time together. It grew.

After high school, Nokes (heck, i don’t remember every calling him “Jim” or “Jimmy”), Fox (nee Charles) Dedman, Henry, and i began to play golf, redneck style, at Hunter’s Point Golf Course when it opened as the first public course in Lebanon.

The par 5 fifth hole (i think) ran across the back of the course, bounded by a barbed wire fence separating the course from a cow pasture. There was a small pond, a water hazard in front of the tee box that required the drive to travel about 75 yards to clear. Every time we played from the beginning until one day several months down the road, Nokes would top his drive into the hazard.

Then one day, he got to the tee, took a mighty swing and sliced the ball over the pond. Nokes was jubilant at getting over the pond. But his drive was a hard, low slice. As his immediate celebration subsided, he watched his drive hit a fence post and recoil into the damnable pond.

The four of us and a couple of others (Eddie Callis i remember as joining us) would go out to Nokes’ house on Old Hickory Lake, mostly on Saturday nights. We played penny ante pokers for hours. Crazy stuff, like Mexican Sweat and those games that had about forty wild cards. i will have to ask Henry about the names of the games. i forgot. Nokes always claimed i was the big winner because one night i won the last silly game for probably five dollars.

And then i left. We didn’t really keep in touch, even though we met at a couple of Lebanon High School Class of ’62 reunions, notably the 50th. Then, we really got back together through email, my columns, and my posts.

Nokes read of my wife falling in love with Vidalia onions during my last operational tour on USS Yosemite homeported in Mayport (Jacksonville), Florida. Living south of Atlanta, Nokes sent a crate of Vidalia onions to us in the Southwest corner.

In another post or column, i mentioned how proud i was to be an adopted member of the LHS ’62 class but wished i had an annual in order to associate photos and names of class members. Nokes sent me his annual.

Gregarious. Full of life. Laughing. Boisterous. Caring. Nokes.

They don’t make many like Jimmy Nokes.

i will miss him.

Much of this is contained in an earlier post: https://jimjewell.com/a-pocket-of-resistance/dark-side-of-three/#comments

Rest in Peace, my friend.

Christmas is over. Daughter and wife have retired for the evening. The fire is mostly embers with a few last flickers of flame. Underneath the tree, the floor is bare. The dog is asleep on the floor. The cat is asleep in her “bed” on the loveseat.

Satiated with Maureen’s sumptuous feasts, two of them, and Christmas concoctions, i am thinking of hitting the rack early. My planned evening entertainment was cancelled. My Commodores were not allowed to  beat Stanford in the Hawaiian basketball tournament because of COVID among the Cardinals: “No contest.”

The rain outside is intermittent. The house is quiet.

The next week is packed with getting ready for the New Year.

For some reason, i am struck with William Ernest Henley’s poem Dave Carey used to quote in his motivational speech about his years as a POW. Although the poem is oft faulted by critics, it was one of my favorites before i had heard Dave recite.

It’s time to get ready for the next year:

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.   

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul.

Bring it on.

This was written last night. It is now Christmas Eve. Although we tried, we did not play Friday Morning Golf this morning. It was only spitting when we arrived, but the rain was sporadic, frequently torrential.

As Bob Shults; Rod Stark, his son Matt, and grandson Cole, and i ate breakfast in the club house, one single golfer teed off. When he finished his swing, another torrent of wind and rain pelted him. There was too much wind for an umbrella. He stopped under a tree just forward of the first tee. We didn’t see it, but we were pretty sure he quit then.

Just over thirty years ago, Rod, Marty Linville and i were at the Miramar Naval Air Station course with similar conditions. We had coffee in the clubhouse while waiting for our tee time. Rod, the premier golfer in our group, noted that if it started raining in a round, he would finish the round, but he wouldn’t start a round if it was raining at tee time. Marty and i, following the lead of the premier golfer, both affirmed, nodding our heads vigorously, “Yeh, finish if it starts during the round, but don’t start if it’s raining.

We walked outside as our tee time neared. It was raining in sheets. Marty looked up at the sky, assessed what was happening, and said, “Heavy mist.” We played.

However, we were thirty years younger. Perhaps we are either wiser or less hearty. Our choosing not to play today was a good choice.

May your Christmas and New Year be wonderful. The below is from my thoughts on Christmas last night:

The fire in the hearth was really not needed. It was in the low 50’s outside, high 60’s inside. A rain storm was moving in for the weekend. The rain, the fire, the decorated and lighted tree in the corner evinced the feeling of Christmas.

Handel’s “Messiah” was playing. We read. No television. No movies. The heat was off and the interior temperature was moving lower. The fire was good.

i felt still. Quiet. The beautiful and amazing work of Handel filled the sir. The fire’s heat warmed me. i looked at the tree and thought about how this holiday thing has morphed over the years. With all the lights, commercials, decorations to the hilt, Hallmark tear jerker movies, movies upon movies, this idea of Christmas seems to be hidden behind the decorations on the tree.

Lots of folks don’t believe, don’t care about the meaning. Some question the veracity of Jesus’ birth. Some, especially the older ones, don’t believe in Santa in spite of what Francis Church wrote to Virginia.

You know what. i don’t care.

Not true.

i don’t care if people spend too much, emphasize the giving , the meals, the church services, or the decorations too much, or even the plethora of sports around and even on Christmas Day.

Sitting in my chair, that quiet, still feeling gave me hope, hope that even with all that distracting stuff, all of us would stop for just a second and hope along with me that there would be:

“…on earth peace, good will toward men.”

That is what i care about. i think that covers it.

Merry Christmas.