Yesterday my wife and I celebrated our 56th wedding anniversary. It was not very elaborate and certainly not exciting. We met with two of our grown grandsons, the only family currently in town, for a quiet dinner at a local steak house and talked mostly about them and their plans going forward. At my age, “quiet and not exciting” is just the way things are.
The upside of life as I approach 80 years of age is that I have a lot of time to “reflect”. To help me in this endeavor I have begun to read more and to look back at points in my life that have led me to where, and with whom, I am today.
Bare with me…….I’ll get there.
In mid-December of 1957 there was a high school basketball game between Palm Beach High and St. Ann’s. Both student bodies knew the others and there was little doubt as to who would win the competition so after the game many of the players and fans hung around in the little walled patio just outside the entrance to the old gym on Iris St. After showering I gravitated with the other Wildcats to the group and ended up striking up a conversation with a cute sophomore Crusader co-ed with world class dimples. Within a few days I had called her and we had our first date.
I had known Dee Conklin from seeing her at the Lido Beach over the summers but had it not been for that chance encounter…….
We’ve all heard phrases and references regarding “the road not taken”. They usually revolve around various regrets and another pair of words; “what if ?” But let’s accentuate the positive………had it not been for that one decision a 15 year old girl made to hang around after the game………
I’m back……..
I take a lot of naps these days. I find that it’s easier to justify laying down in the middle of the day if I tell my wife that I’m just going upstairs to read. My current literary pursuit is the Classics I’ve never read. I’m midway through Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and I have stumbled on a passage that should be remembered and quoted even more than “It was the best of times, it was the worst……….”
Along the lines of important turning points in our lives and the importance of a single day and happening; Mr. Dickens reflects in the closing paragraph of Chapter 9…..
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
I generally keep my eyes open for only a few minutes before dozing off and sometimes I’m even rewarded with a pleasant dream of years gone by. Maybe there’ll be a pair of dimples in the one this afternoon…..
profile: definition ....
meaning: 1. a short description of someone's life, work, character, and information about the person's interests and beliefs.
meaning: 2. an outline of that same person's face as it is seen when someone is looking at them from the side. If you see someone in profile, you only see them from one side.
From these two definitions I can only conclude one thing: profiles as such and offered by job seekers, politicians, and aspiring writers, risk falling into very obvious categorical traps ..... they will be hopelessly self-edifying and boldly "two faced"!
To avoid these pitfalls I intend to state an illusion and immediately counter it with the fact. If the latter is too candid or disturbing, just disregard it! This will allow me to come off (in your estimation) as the fine upstanding, clean cut, like-minded, and adventurous elderly gentleman you were hoping for.
Illusion: I'm an accomplished "sailor" and have spent over 50 years routinely putting out to sea, first under canvas and in my latter years with only the diesel iron wind at my back.
Fact: In all of my voyages I've never spent more than eight or nine full nights underway and that was only because, over open water, Walker's Cay was too far from Palm City or Havana from Key West. In reality, as the sun begins to set I'm usually tucked into some snug little cove, the hook set, and an icy drink in my hand. I'm not an accomplished sailor, I'm a fantastic "anchorer"!
Illusion: I'm a semi-talented "writer" that creates interesting characters in situations and settings that, sometimes, move a story along.
Fact: In most cases, I am the "character" and I've already lived the story. Then all I need to do is figure out how to just pretend I'm sitting in some sleazy dive in the Keys after a few beers and start to tell my story to ........ (only problem is: .......... is it “i” before “e” except at sea?)
Illusion: Because I am openly conservative and speak with a Southern drawl, I'm looked upon as a right-wing good-ole-boy that picnics under Confederate monuments, lives and breathes Fox News, drives a gun-racked Ford 150, and wears his "Make America Great Again" hat to bed every night.
Fact: I'm very discouraged with what is going on in Washington in general and at the White House in particular. I supported its current occupant and, seeing what options are shaping up on the horizon, I may be forced to continue doing so but he(and we) could do so much better. Do I have to surrender my judgment and intellect to remain a Republican?
I won't dwell on the President's Smoot-Hawley like policies on trade and tariffs ... time and the markets will be the final arbiters and greed on my part forces me to hope for the best. Needless to say, I endorse his impact on the Judicial Branch of Government and I could care less what next week's "horndog rumor" and accompanying hush-money payoff have in store .... I'll leave that to his poor wife and "Morning Joe"! But I do have one pet peeve: we don't need a $5,000,000,000.00 wall to keep out Guatemalans and their Central American neighbors. They only constitute the latest installment in 4 centuries of migration to our shores and may be the hardest working bunch yet assembled. The hardships they are fleeing are not unlike the pogroms against Jews in the Middle East or the 19th century Irish potato famine. The seemingly demeaning statement of: "how would the roof ever get patched or the grass cut without them?" or a variation thereof has been directed at virtually every American's fore-bearers. Unless you stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock or the swampy landing at Jamestown, there was always somebody "better than you" waiting to curse your arrival ……… or put you in chains.
On the flip side of all of this, and without inserting its own Illusion, we don't need porn starlets and their attorneys being featured on Sunday morning talk shows answering pointed questions from wax haired "contributors" about our Presidents libido! What we do desperately need is a media culture that will demand the resurrection and employment of an old concept ...... news REPORTING! On my home cable TV hookup; Fox News is on channel 44 and MSNBC resides on 42. The Guide tells me that the channel between them ...43 ... is dedicated to financial news but that can't be true. The call letters may be CNBC but, judging from the disparity in the adjacent editorializing, it must be Star Wars! ..... the distance between the adjoining galaxies is so "far, far, away"?
Over the past few months I've become a reluctant, almost incarcerated, soccer fan. The game is played, not with a pitch .... but on one, lasts an hour and a half, and often ends with a score of nil-nil. I endure all this because my sole source of, even remotely, unbiased television news and happenings in the good old USA can be found only on the British Broadcasting Corp ..... go Cardiff City!
Jim Powell
View all posts by atthecampusshop
Jim Powell along with his family, friends, and classmates 