Yesterday, i was going to write about my feelings as i waited for my wife. She had an early doctor’s appointment. i mean way early cause it was at 6:00 am. Although she groused about having to get up (she always grouses if she can’t sleep grunches of hours and has to arise before 8:00), she was actually happy as the last time she had an 8:00 appointment with this particular medical jail, it was over an eight-hour ordeal. Anyway (every time i write or say “anyway,” i think of my mother who used it to dismiss the subject at hand and move on to another), i was waiting for her and one of our go to eateries, and was going to write about how i enjoyed this particular place.

Maybe later.

You see, this morning, we didn’t go out for breakfast. i started my morning routine, early, even for me because i went to bed much earlier than usual. Why? Because i was tired. Don’t know why. But i listen to my body and at my age, my body is a non-stop gossip.

So i get up tp go through my morning routine and plan to add a couple of things. Productive or perhaps just fiddlin’ around? Depends on how you look at it, i guess.

Regardless, i went to my little cabin in the woods, which i don’t really have, but the garage serves that purpose in my life.

i noted the sun is rising later. It was dark throughout the house. i walked to the breezeway for the paper and stuff out of the long-lived refrigerator, which they don’t make no more as pointed out by one Danielle Boggs, but i guess the new ones are prettier in the kitchen, and it was dark, but as i emerged from the garage and walked to the driveway to retrieve my paper, which had been delivered by some old man in a late model car when he tossed it out the passenger side window and some ungodly hour long before i made it out and that always hacks me off because our newspaper, now printed in LA ’cause the local publishers valued money over community identity and now the sports scores are not included because the games ended after the deadline ’cause the papers have to printed before sent to down here and perhaps that is really why i favored afternoon papers in my newspaper days as the Nashville Banner and the Watertown (NY) Daily Times always had the complete scores in their editions. But that is another matter, and…

Anyhow, as i walked toward the plastic bagged newspaper, which is never tri-folded and delivered by a “paperboy” on his bicycle, one-speed, mind you, with a basket on the handlebars where the tri-folded papers were carried…oops…

Anyhow, i saw first light, real, no-kidding first light. Like on the bridge of a ship for the morning watch (0400-0800 but not really cause it was truncated due to the morning mess). You see (and man, did i see a lot of them), first light occurs about 45 minutes before dawn. It is truly first light. Like a band of lighter dark on the eastern horizon, gradually turning black to gray, brightening the sky, all of it before that old man sun does his rolling around the heavens all day.

It is a quiet time of day. Peaceful. Doves like it and announce it but they do not disturb the quiet. This morning, there was a different call, a plea, but repetitive. Not dove, not coyote, not owl. i imagined a big bird, or perhaps something like a fox. The sound didn’t disturb my quiet, which feels like i hear it. It is not a passive thing. This quiet feels like it covers the earth with its friend first light. There are no honks or sirens or screeches of brakes or slamming of doors or chatter of neighbors or televisions, radios or whatever blaring stuff, noise mostly.

It is just me on a driveway in Southwest corner suburbia watching first light in the quiet framing Mount Miguel into focus to the east, fading the stars into the depths of the heavens.

Most mornings, i just stand there rapt with first light, marveling at how i got here, where i came from.

i take a sip of my coffee from my last ship’s mug.

I am at peace.

And that, i think, is all i can hope for.

i went on my semi-power walk this morning, succumbing to my doctor’s advice not to run. “Too old,” he said. Probably right, but i did an old man’s jog for a tenth of a mile wishing i was running like i used to on the Coronado Beach from the Amphibious School, crossing Orange Avenue, on the beach to the air station’s security fence, turning around, and back, a distance just about six miles. Ran it every work day with Dave Carey for about six months until he retired (an education in itself, my friend: Dave was a POW; his thoughts about everything were always enlightening, still are). Then i ran pretty much by myself for three years. A lovely run. Note: for Dave, except for that part where they don’t have that stuff in Acapulco.

But i was wishing, walking, not running. So i think. i also have succumbed to listening to my music, what i’ve transferred to my song library, shuffling to get an assortment. Listening, walking, and thinking. Before it was just running, enjoying the world as it was, no interference, no earbuds.

i was thinking about how i was fiddlin’ around with writing something philosophical (ha, ha) about growing old and the meaning of life and all of the craziness that is roiling around this old earth, probably bored from watching repeat stupid on its surface.

Then this song came on. i heard it shortly after it came out when i played the demo during the “JJ the DJ, the Weekend Warrior,” top 40 music show on Saturday and Sunday afternoons out of WCOR AM in Lebanon, Tennessee, the bright spot on your dial (or something like that). i later bought the album in the Sasebo Navy exchange in early 1970 because i wanted to marry Susan Taylor, the lead singer who was also that beautiful woman on the album cover.

Anyhow, i was walking, stopped thinking, just listening. When the song ended, i thought there wasn’t any real need for me to wax philosophical anyway. i mean folks i know would either laugh or get up on some straw principle and beat me up.

So then i thought why not just put the links of songs on this site that have meant a special something for me during a rather gadabout life.

So here are the Pozo Seco Singers hitting pretty much all my notes.

Rest easy. The song that shuffled on right after “Time” was Little Johnny Taylor’s version of “Who’s Making Love” with the chorus lyrics of “Who’s making love to your old lady while you are out making love?” i don’t think that will make my philosophical song list…but man, it’s a great song.

Been a while. Things happen. Some good. Some bad. Folks my age remember.

Catching up.

So, in my cloak of bouncing all over the place, this is a conglomeration of thoughts.

The dark has called me away for a while. i know, i know the dark is owned by me. i should control it. For the most part, i do. i tell myself bad to some degree happens to everyone. It’s inevitable. It’s life. Get up. Move on. Don’t let the dark catch you. Sometimes it does, at least sometimes it catches me. i get through it. Lots of experience. It makes it hard to write without whining. And i hate whining, although curmudgeons shine at whining.

Then, there was this other thing called a manuscript. It was mailed this morning to my editor, a princess. i finished the draft yesterday good enough to send to a princess. Oh, i know there will be lots more work: revisions, layouts, photos, etc., but it feels done. It only took about 36 years. Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings: A Memoir i call it.

And so the difficulties and the manuscript are handled, not gone, but handled.

i laid off for a while.

So it’s been a while. Hi.

And Southwest corner weather has been on my mind. Weird weather. Not disaster stuff like north of here where fire and smoke are literally destroying lives as folks have known it, or back home wet, or withering heat, or the northeast where tropical storms or hurricanes are wreaking havoc.

Southwest corner August has been weird. Clouds, humid, cool…er cooler. The marine layer, a denizen here in May and June has stuck around: Cloudy mornings, mist even, sun breaking in for several hours in the day to revert to cloud cover at night. 70’s. Dare i say pleasant? Two weeks ago, it wasn’t cool. It was hot, muggy. Walking a golf course, i had a case of mild heat exhaustion. Would have been scary except i knew and i knew what to do. i mean in Mission Valley, it was in the high 80’s with about 75% humidity. But i am older and it got to me.

So i shouldn’t complain. i remember two-a-days, and golf bargains.

Two-a-days were pre-season practices in mid-August two weeks before school started after Labor Day. Those practices were on the field down Hill Street from Castle Heights, ’59-’61. Heavy cotton jerseys over tee shirts, shoulder pads, cotton football pants with hip pads and knee pads underneath, high-top leather football shoes with rubber cleats and helmets that didn’t quite fit and were echo chambers for good hits. 95-95 we called it: 95 degrees and 95% humidity. And you were a sissy (and i cleaned that up considerably being conscious of the politically correct forces among us) if you drank any water. And to “help” you, you swallowed salt pills by the dozen. Why did we think that was the way to go about it?

Then years, decades later, there were the golf bargains. In the desert. It’s Jim Hileman’s fault with a little bit of help from Mike Kelly. You see in the late ’80’s or early 90’s, they talked me into being the fourth of a foursome to take advantage of golf in the desert, like in the sprawling conglomerate in Coachella Valley of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Falls, Indian Wells, La Quinta, and Indio. In July and August. Great green fees back then in the summer. Essentially your cart fees, which were significantly lower than today’s taxi fares and car rentals, like $20  or less unlike what they charge for carts now. Great deal. Did i mention the weather in July and August hovers around 120, give or take five or ten degrees? Oh yeh, the humidity is somewhere south of 30%, usually way south.

And being brilliant macho men, we would play two rounds daily for three days, with 18 holes on the coming and going days. Then, Marty Linville and i started doing it with a legendary drive over the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountains in my RX7 through what then was a small sod farm and horse ranch area called Temecula, which is now a megalopolis of its own, and we drove up and up and down and down with switchbacks and blind curves and never-used pull-out lanes for slower vehicles and the Paradise Valley Cafe where the original owner, Pistol Annie, toted two six-guns on her hips and wore them into the ’60’s before we headed down the continuous switchbacks into that Coachella Valley, and i shall not tell you of the case of beer in the cooler in the back, which dwindled rapidly accompanied by the number of pit stops sometimes in the aforementioned pull-out lanes and other off the road spots until Marty joined our foursome, and it remained brutal for oh, about, 15 years or so, and of course, we still did it, but slower in the desert heat.

And i’m complaining about 85 degrees and 75% humidity?

Which brings me to stillness.

i started to make some comments about religion and my beliefs, but my brother is much better qualified to discuss this kind of stuff if he wishes to do so.

i simply want to tell you about something i’ve experienced. It has come upon me in the last several years. It was not something i tried or even intended to try. It has not been on a yoga mat or when humming or chanting.

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, i wake up early in the morning. Okay, early damn near every morning. i’m not sleepy, just relaxed, considering when i should get up and become productive. Just laying there in the bed trying not to do anything to disturb the sleeping fawn at my side. Then occasionally with no planning on my part, it comes upon me. Don’t know how to describe it exactly. Stillness. Nothingness (Thanks, Jean-Paul Sartre). Peace. Calmness. i think of nothing. It’s almost like floating. Oh yeh, goodness.

i hope everyone who might read this, and actually, anyone i know, experiences this stillness. It makes me okay. It focuses me on caring about people, especially the ones i love. It gives me peace. i would like everyone to feel that.

Thanks for putting up with my ramblings.

President Biden with help of his advisors failed. So did his predecessors. Both Democrat and Republican. Spare me the defensive attacks on the other side.

It takes me back to 1975. Leaning on a handrail of the weather deck above the well deck, i watched. The last few days have been déjà vu all over again as Yogi once said. Not watching, but a rarity for me, i have been checking the news, revisiting those moments about ten miles south off the coast of Vung Tau, Vietnam.

Nixon and Kissinger were wrong with the help of their advisors. So were their predecessors.

As i have written often, in 1975 i watched 35,000, about half of the initial refugees from the Communists taking over their country, coming over the horizon leaving their home of thousands of year out of fear. As i watched, i thought, “i don’t know what we could have done, but we damn sure should have done something different. These people deserve better.”

This is a bit different for me.

Back then, a lot of it was political posturing where ideologues were killing a bunch of people and committing atrocities on combatants, especially those taken prisoner. But the posturing was terrible, cruel, impacting lives of  innocent people.

We really should have done something differently. Those people needed help to remain in the county of their heritage. We didn’t do it. And we lost a lot of lives of our young men and women. i am not smart enough to have an answer but our folks with a plethora of intelligence, understanding of different cultures, should have figured it out and abandoned their political endeavors to do the right thing.

They didn’t.

And here we are again. Only this time, it is a reign of terror for women and anyone who will dissent and in all probability spawn incredible terrorism. i hurt for the women and the innocents who will suffer.

i am sad all of you bigots who are so entrenched in your political beliefs you can’t have concern for humanity.

We should have done something different.

Sad.

i would like to be articulate right now, but the tears make it hard to type on this infernal machine. Can’t think real well either.

You see, i was going through my “memories” on Facebook this morning after breakfast, unusual as i don’t normally bring my computer into breakfast. We had finished Maureen’s French toast and fruit, and i was enjoying my third cup of coffee. The sports pages were a brief read this morning and the comics, as usual, made me chuckle. i decided to check my email and Facebook.

Scrolling down through “memories,” there were a number of photos of my father. That’s when it hit me. i’m sure i would have recognized it sooner or later. Today, eight years ago, he died in the morning. His wife and daughter were by his side. Martha called me as Maureen was driving me to the airport. She had called earlier to tell me the hospice nurse had said it wouldn’t be long. Martha added I needed to get there before he left us. The call en route to the airport told me i was too late. She also told me one of the last things he said was “I wish Jim were here.”

i won’t praise him here. i’ve done enough of that i think. He would tell me that if he could.

My brother-in-law, Daniel Boggs, sent our family an email about three days ago telling the story of Albrect Dürer, his brother Albert, and his famous drawing of “Study of Hands of an Apostle.” It was a lovely story. i replied the drawing blew me away when i first saw it and was the inspiration for my writing a poem as a tribute to my father.

The idea hit me when i was laying on the couch next to Mother’s recliner and his recliner across the room in their Deer Park condo, the place where they had moved in 2002 after 62 years of living, and man, i mean living, on Castle Heights Avenue. We were watching a Braves baseball game. He was holding the remote. i looked at his hands. They were very much like the hands Dürer had drawn (His brother’s hands were the model).

When my father read it, he asked me, “How did you know?”

i don’t know. He inspired me to do a lot of things i didn’t know.

Hands

When most folks meet him,
they notice steel blue eyes and agility;
his gaze, gait and movements
belie the ninety-five years;
but
those folks should look at his hands:
those hands could make Dürer cry
with their history and the tales they tell.

His strength always was supple
beyond what was suggested from his slight build.
His hands are the delivery point of that strength.
His hands are not slight:
His hands are firm and thick and solid –
a handshake of destruction if he so desired, but
he has used them to repair the cars and our hearts;

His hands are marked by years of labor with
tire irons, jacks, wrenches, sledges, micrometers on
carburetors, axles, brake drums, distributors
(long before mechanics hooked up computers,
deciphering the monitor to replace “units”
for more money in an hour than he made in a month
when he started in ’34 before computers and units).

His hands pitched tents,
made the bulldozers run
in war
in the steaming, screaming sweat of
Bouganville, New Guinea, the Philippines.

His hands have nicks and scratches
turned into scars with
the passage of time:
a map of history, the human kind.

Veins and arteries stand out
on the back of his hands,
pumping life itself into his hands
and beyond;
the tales of grease and oil and grime,
cleaned by gasoline and goop and lava soap
are etched in his hands;

they are hands of labor,
hands of hard times,
hands of hope,
hands of kindness, caring, and love:
oh love, love, love, crazy love.

His hands speak of him with pride.
His hands belong
to the smartest man I know
who has lived life to the maximum,
but in balance, in control, in understanding,
gaining respect and love
far beyond those who claim smartness
for the money they earned
while he and his hands own smartness
like a well-kept plot of land
because he always has understood
what was really important
in the long run:
smarter than any man I know
with hands that tell the story
so well.