“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”
– William Faulkner
There are two types of people who will read this, those who know me and those who don’t.
Perhaps more accurately, those who know my writing and those experiencing it for the first time. I began what would turn out to be my career as a newspaperman with a weekly column on junior high sports in 1961 for the Huber Heights (OH) Community Herald.
They definitely spoiled me. They ran my picture with the column, a head and shoulders shot wearing the kind of shirt the Beach Boys would make famous.
We moved to Virginia in 1963 and I didn’t do any additional news writing until 1978 when I started writing for Broadside at George Mason University. I worked there for three years, the second half of it as editor in chief of the weekly paper.
That was the beginning of 30 years in the newspaper business, with some major highs and some pretty awful lows. I covered most of the really major events – a World Series, a Super Bowl and several NCAA basketball tournaments in the days before they called it March Madness.
I worked for eight different newspapers in seven different states. I had two wonderful years in Greeley, Colo., as sports editor and sports columnist, and seven pretty good years in Ontario, Cal., two covering Los Angeles pro sports and five as a metro columnist with the freedom to write about whatever struck me as interesting.
In the fall of 2000, with my work being posted on the newspaper’s website, I started writing for a site of my own. I have been blogging in various venues for nearly 20 years. Some years have been better than others. In 2007, I collaborated with several of my readers to put together a manifesto for a moderate political party that purported to take the best from both Democrats and Republicans and find a solid middle ground.
Sadly, I’m not sure that middle ground exists anymore.
I have been writing for nearly 60 years, and to steal a line from Jackson Browne, in general I find that the more I know, the less I understand. As guilty as it makes me feel to say it, my parents were good about the big things and not so great at other things.
To be fair, any time in my life when I had a problem that seemed insurmountable to me, they came through and helped me. But I can’t count the times I needed to be picked up at school after a function when I was the last kid still waiting for a ride home.
The worst was a fall Saturday my senior year the second time I took the SAT. I was finished at noon and my parents didn’t pick me up till 5 p.m., after they had done every one of their Saturday errands.
When I protested, their response was that the world didn’t revolve around me. What they meant was that picking me up wasn’t their top priority, but what I took from it was that I was their absolute last priority.
The next time I had something at school on a Saturday afternoon, I walked home. Four miles, not as bad as I thought.
If there was one lesson I learned from all that, it was that I was never going to leave my kids wondering if and when I would show up to take them home. I told them that if they told me what time they would be ready to go home I would make being there my No. 1 priority.
If I wasn’t going to be able to be there, I would let them know in advance so that they could make other arrangements.
Almost without exception, when they came out to the street to look for their ride home, I was sitting there waiting for them.
To be fair, I had very flexible hours at work, and my income was never much more than 30 percent of our family income. I was able to make being a dad a much higher priority than a lot of other men.
I helped with my son’s Boy Scout troop and I coached him in youth sports for five different seasons.
In 2009, at the rehearsal dinner for my son’s wedding, Virgile toasted Nicole and me as “the best parents in the world.” I turned to my mother and said I was more proud of that than of any other role in my life.
She responded, “But you don’t think we were good parents.”
“I have never said that,” I protested.
“But you think it,” she replied.
We didn’t talk about it then. We’ve never really talked about it. My internist said three years ago that if I didn’t talk with her about it, I would never be able to get past it.
But my mother was 90 then, a widow for nine years, and in poor health. Saying anything hurtful just to get it off my chest would have been far too self-serving for me.
Anyway, I’m 70 myself. Wy life is pretty much what it is. I’m nearly 28 years into a wonderful second marriage and I have two children from my wife’s first marriage who are absolutely my pride and joy.
Add to that six grandchildren and four wonderful friendships that all go back more than 47 years and what do I have to complain about?
Donald Trump, I guess.
Mitch McConnell.
Ted Yohoho and all the other right-wing lunatics.
Seriously, when politics is the worst thing in your life and you’re not even a politician, it’s tough to get too worked up.
I’ll end with a few lines from the song that gave this new website its name, Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game.”
“We’re captive on the carousel of time. We can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came and go round and round and round in the circle game.”
Till next time …