Choirboy...

My grandfather bought this statue on one of the many junkets he and Grandma took to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He said it reminded him of me. I had grown up singing in a prominent Episcopal choir of men and boys that emulated that English tradition. Ten years, from age 7 to 17, three nights a week and Sunday services. I paid my dues. Grandpa liked that.

The problem, for me, was that when I was 18, I looked 15. Skinny, blond, and pink cheeked. I hated the whole choirboy image. In sixth grade, while casting for a play, I wanted to be John Raitt, Bonnie’s dad, as he had been in the Broadway production of Carousel. He was barker Billy Bigelow, a tough guy who always wore a tight black turtleneck that showed off his muscles. My own turtleneck only held a scrawny little blond kid who couldn’t scare a Chihuahua.

So when Grandpa gave me this statue, it represented everything I was trying my best to outgrow, even though as a present from him, it was huge.

I immediately stashed it in my parents’ house for about ten years. 

Then, softening to the image, I replaced the cross with a sword and made space for it in my bachelor pad. This guy stood on a wooden table beneath the undulating orange parachute that draped down and across the ceiling of my bedroom. Holding his sword at the ready, the choirboy became my own wooden Indian and hat rack, subjected to the humiliations of inappropriate head wear, eye-wear and even the underwear of a cute guest or two if I got lucky.

Sometimes he would lay down his sword and hold a perfectly rolled joint. A good boy gone bad.

Perfect, we were starting to make some headway.

Yesterday I was looking at him, just the two of us alone in the room. We talked, reminiscing about how we met over 50 years ago, his childhood in San Miguel and what a long strange trip it’s been.

No one thinks I look younger than my age anymore. He is unchanged, that bastard. These days I have no problem with being reminded of my choirboy years, nor with being compared to this guy. We’re buddies now.

Sometimes we really do change the way we feel about things.

Everything changes, Well, almost everything.

Memories of the way my mother made eggplant casserole back in the day is set in stone though. It would still be every bit as disgusting today as it was way back then.

Home...

Escaping the labyrinth, looming monoliths of steel and glass, thousands jockey for position in a crowded pack, all horses blowing with monoxide flatulence. Windows closed tight, the sound of fans recycling canned air, unheard over megawatt sound systems inside the bubble. Commuters flee the city, girded tight in battle garb. A colorful noose hanging loose, my exit finally loomed ahead like freedom calling, inviting me down the  last paved road home.

Sharp right turn off worn asphalt onto a narrow dirt lane, mostly hidden by a late summer explosion of uncut green and brown. Eager wheels kicking loose stones, a tree-high cloud of dust rolling and tumbling in my rear view, Mark Knopfler and I, both cranked up, singing/shouting about MTV and color TVs.

Finally, just ahead, a rural mailbox, peeking out above tall weeds, marking the serpentine driveway that ends in my front yard. A private oasis. Turning in slowly, a sports car not designed for that rutted path, sweat soaked horses heading back to the barn. Cutting the engine, ears begin to quickly acclimate to remote woods, only the popping sounds of the cooling engine to remind me of our race to the finish.

Ruth knew when I was only moments away, Ohio the Wonder dog told her. In our country setting, that good dog barked out a profile of any vehicle coming down the road, her pitch dictating friend or foe. God help the UPS man and the meter reader. Ruthie expected me to pull in when I did, and had started running from the door of the old frame house. For some reason, I thought of the label in her cheap blue jacket that promised “As Warm as a Collie’s Fur”. An odd boast, it seemed. Lowering the front windows, a dust cloud kicked up by my sudden stop holding its shape, shifted ghost-like into the trees, hiding from sight behind the ruins of the old barn.

Like a pearl diver breaking the surface, I sucked in large gulps of air, a cedar scented breath of freedom flowing in through open windows. Ruth’s blue coat, an approaching blur, long blond hair flapping horizontal in the wind behind her. Cool Fall breezes flushed out the stale, recirculated air, as she ran up to the passenger side, jabbering with excitement.

Leaning in, her attention turned briefly to a caterpillar, scraped unscathed from the lowering window, now feeling its way along the rubber track, unaware of the staring eyes of a little girl, a giant just inches away.

It’s OK, I thought, Ruth wouldn’t hurt a fly, or you. You can live here, Mr. Caterpillar.

Planting one brown laced wingtip on the ground, Ruth scurried around the car and jumped up into my arms, jabbering again. Ohio sniffed and danced at my feet. Emmylou was singing inside the century old wood house as crickets found their voice again, singing along with their courtship songs that had been so rudely interrupted by my arrival.

Carrying precious cargo, her blond hair fanning the side of my face, everything that mattered to me was inside that old frame house we were about to enter.

Home.

Christmas Stories!

Carla and I don’t do Christmas anymore, haven’t in many years. Not since the kids went off to go off on their own paths. We never did all that much in the way of commercial gift giving anyway, mostly treating the holiday as we do Thanksgiving, lots of good food. One family tradition demanded that I find a big lobster for us to share. After carefully removing the meat from the largest claw, I mounted bright red claws on the wall, just below the ceiling in our cabin house. A gift that kept on giving.

Some years we didn’t have a lot of money, but it never mattered. We knew that the stores full of stuff held little of value. Sure, we got the girls dolls and such, but mostly it was about the seasonal music, lots of special treats to eat, and a decorated tree that filled the house with the fresh evergreen scent that is the essence of Christmas.

The thing I miss the most though, was a handwritten story from Ruth. From the time she was first able to do so, I asked her to write me a story, about anything at all, just write. That's what I wanted. She thought she was getting away with something because she didn't have to buy me anything, all she had to do was write me a story. I still have most of them, stained and wrinkled pieces of lined and unlined paper, filled with color and imagination, starting out with a child’s scrawl...and ending here. I think this was the last one.

All of them were the best presents a Dad could get.st

Geezer MMA

Fight fan? Most of my closer friends know that I’m a huge MMA fan. I’ve never missed a big UFC event since that promotion first started in the early 1990’s. In general, the fighters, men and now women too, range in age from 20 to 40. Twenty is pretty young to be any good and forty is old for your body to be able to take it. But I want to bring a new element to the sport, something as big or bigger than when women became regular fighters, not just a novelty. I want to start MMA for seniors over 60. Hell, I’m 68, still work out pretty regularly, know and love MMA, and I should be able to fight some other old codger if I want to. People love to see old guys fight, right? There’s huge potential here for an entirely new division…geriatric grapplers, belligerent, cantankerous, and easily exhausted.

We’ll need a few new rules though. Like no punching to the head. That gives me headaches. No punches to the stomach either, I’ve got a hernia. No grappling on the ground, just getting down there and then back up is a bitch, not so easy without a chair or something to lean on. I mean, I swear a blue streak and need pain meds just to put on socks and shoes, so the idea of wrestling and going for submission holds that any decent ground game requires, just sounds too painful to deal with. Naturally we’ll need to change the time for each round just a bit. Instead of three, 5 minute rounds, I’m thinking we need to go to three rounds at 1.5 minutes each with ten minutes in between rounds and a built in pee break. Oxygen and funeral services should be available as needed.

Also, no jumping, or kicking. That shit causes serious spine problems. I would have to take a permanent room in my Chiropractor’s office.

But that pretty much covers it. You must be over 60 and ready to fight like a crazy man. But no kicking, jumping, strikes to the head or body, and no wrestling or ground work. OK?

This is going to be huge. I’m eager for my first fight, more like a caged tiger than just a man. My friends (trainers) and I strategize every morning at our gym, on the couch, next to the coffee machine. Collectively, we’re a frightening killing machine, and I’m their champion.

I just hope to get this fight over before my scheduled hip replacement in February.

Reading and Life Lessons in a Tabloid Gauntlet...

I was thinking about the clutter of cheap magazines and Hollywood tabloids that scream for attention when we stand in the checkout line of almost any grocery store, Walgreen's or Walmart. A wild gauntlet of absurdities.

I happened to be standing in such a line. Did you know that Al Gore is actually a woman?

Apparently Hillary Clinton is an alien, and every Hollywood star over the age of 50 is dying a horrible death. Each rag has the exclusive pictures. Although the publications themselves come and go, they take me back some 30 years when I was standing in that same line with a little blonde girl who was just learning how to read.

Carla home schooled Ruth, with my blessing, as long as an emphasis was put on reading and writing. To me, that's the key to anything else someone may want to do in this world. While Ruth was just starting to learn, she read the billboards, traffic signs, the names of businesses, anything and everything. She would sound them out bit by bit until the whole word popped out, accompanied by a joyful recognition and awe at her own growing ability.

But the checkout line was special for us. That's where we could pick up a National Enquirer, The Weekly World News, or whatever the trash magazines were that I no longer remember. “Dad, can we get the one about Bigfoot?” One of the tabloids always made it to the belt, a special treat. On the drive home, we both looked forward to the time that we would spend together after the groceries were put away...nesting in a big chair, or maybe soaking up the sunshine out on the lawn with Ohio the Wonder Dog rolling on her back nearby. Ruth would read to me from the National Enquirer, pausing as I helped to clarify words and meanings. Asking lots of questions in that funny, unfiltered dialect of a very young child. All those alien adventures, the Kangaroo that gave birth to a human baby, the people that were discovered living 1000 miles below the surface of the earth. We laughed and talked about the stories, her eyes wide with joy at her own discovery of what was and wasn’t real. She loved to bust the stories, like finding treasure, explaining to me why they were fiction and why they made no sense. 

Ruth learned a healthy skepticism early in life, to question everything and to decide for herself. The very same lesson my father had taught me 30 years prior when I was shocked to discover that an article in our local paper wasn’t the truth. Ruth learned that lesson well and she also learned to read.

For me? I knew then and remember clearly now, that there was no better way for me to spend my time on this earth, than cuddled up in a big overstuffed chair, reading, pointing, and laughing... with a little blonde girl who had a purple tongue and breath that smelled of Gummy Worms and Skittles...

Hitchhiker

Blazing blacktop road to the horizon, melting in the unapologetic sun, Flanked by soggy fields sprayed with chemicals for too many generations, all banned now and leeched into the local groundwater. Heading West on that burning sauna of a Florida afternoon, radio says it's 101 in the shade, although there is none of that in sight... just open fields of anemic cabbages raised too long sucking on a Monsanto teat, slowly killing the earth and themselves

Heat snakes undulate skyward, blurring the horizon, dancing in mirage pools that evaporate into the searing oven with my approach.

A shape on the side of the road ahead, at first fuzzy, unfocused, sharpens in flashes until I see him clearly. Dirty, stooped, dragging a piece of cheap airline luggage like an errant child, jumping and bucking, resisting with a broken wheel. His back to oncoming traffic, his left thumb turned slightly outward with my approach, barely visible. An appeal destined to fail, a question already answered by his hunched, defeated shuffle. He was heading the right way, walking hand in hand with a thousand miles of hopelessness, going toward a little farm town that no longer had anything left to offer, as sick and toxic as the water that ran through its veins.

Dustdevils nipped at his heels, pushing him to continue his shuffle down the road to nowhere.

Carla was 21, I was 30. We met at The Reston Times newspaper. She did the classifieds, I handled circulation. In about the time it takes to say “I do”, we did, in the living room of a local JP. We immediately moved to a funky little cabin deep in some very remote Ohio woods. Grad school was the justification but “getting to know you” was more like it. After a year without running water or indoor plumbing, we not so reluctantly left the outhouse behind and moved back to Reston, VA, our old stomping grounds. I needed to get busy, find work or lose my mind. Carla pushed me to interview with an air courier company that was moving its headquarters to Reston. That proved to be a crazy ride, ten years, from graveyard shift customer service, to VP and GM of a spin off in DC and one in NYC. 

Eastern shuttle back and forth.

But back to the couch. Ruth didn’t come along for five years, so four of those years were spent, just the two of us, in a one bedroom, ground floor apartment within walking distance of scenic Lake Anne and the place where we first met. 

Full circle. 1978 Sweet times for us.

As children do though, Ruth changed everything. All for the better. Carla discovered her reason for being and never looked back. It was her passion for Ruth, and then Hannah five years later, that was the impetus for her to quit her job, embrace those girls, and hold on tight 24-7 until they both went off on their own. Carla got rid of the TV and home schooled them, unschooled really. 

Countless hours were spent at the library, in a corner nook at the local Goodwill store and in a sticky red vinyl booth at Friendly’s Ice Cream Parlor. Ruth always ordered a big sundae that she didn’t eat while all three read to each other from a huge pile of books that they lugged from here to there.

I may have been the breadwinner in those days, but Carla was the real star. 

She showed those girls how to be the smart, strong, successful, independent women that they are today, just like Mom.

Octopus!

I realized that I was making approving grunts, like sex noises, as I ate this grilled octopus, alone. Carla is at work so it's just me and the dogs.

This cephalopod was on the agenda. He came cleaned and frozen from Hulls Seafood in Ormond Beach. They're just South of us by 45 miles, a spectacular drive, evocative of another time. Get off of 95 South at Old Dixie Highway. That takes you through Tomoka State Park, twenty miles of Florida jungle, palms, waterways, mangroves. The road is a tree tunnel through old oaks that reach across the road in an embrace, draped heavily with Spanish Moss, all hung by nature and the Gods. A shaded hollow through the trees with sunlight blasting through intermittently, stinging eyes as it breaks through the canopy. A million light bulbs flashing in your face as you drive. Then, quickly, you're out in coastal suburbia. Go to the light take a right. Hulls is on the right. They have a restaurant and a seafood market side by side. It's a family thing. They've been doing it for years, they catch it on their own boats and fix it for you in the restaurant or sell it in the store. All fresh and local, as it should be.

This octopus was five pounds, a frozen ball that cooks down to less than half that size. Caught live, immediately dispatched to octopus nirvana, cleaned and flash frozen. Six dollars. Great deal. I thaw it in the refrigerator for a day, rinse and cover with brine and herbs in a large pot. Let it rest for another day or two. Take it out, dry it off, slather it with olive oil and throw it on a hot grill for a few minutes, just to get the grill marks. By itself with only a sprinkle of salt & pepper or maybe sliced up on top of a fresh Greek Salad, it’s hard to beat.

It’s so damn delicious, easy and affordable…one of the many reasons we love living here in St Augustine…

George Madison Maverick

My Grandfather, George Madison Maverick, was born in 1893. That’s him on the bottom right, with the big ears. This picture was taken at Sunshine Ranch in San Antonio. No shirt, no shoes, no problem. Grandpa was one of 13. That’s his dad, seated on the left. He was the son of the more famous Samuel Augustus Maverick, who was an accomplished surveyor and attorney. Sam played a leading role in gaining Texas independence from Mexico and was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Samuel Augustus Maverick was once paid a debt in cattle. Not being a rancher, he didn't brand them, so the local, unbranded cows that ran free became known as "Mavericks". That coined the term meaning "unconventional" or out-of-the-box".

The Mavericks have pretty much stuck with that behavior ever since.

His grandson, my Grandfather, outgrew his humble beginnings on the ranch, earning a doctorate in chemistry from MIT and becoming a VP in the Standard Oil company. By the time I knew him, Grandpa had retired from Standard Oil and was a professor in the school of business at the University of Virginia, living just outside Charlottesville on 325 acres of land that traced back some 200 years to our family roots there.

To me, Grandpa was funny and loving, often acting gruff to hide the strong emotion he felt for his family or for any underdog who needed a helping hand, including dogs themselves. His word was his bond and much like another George, that guy who became our first president, I don’t believe Grandpa George ever told a lie. A smart, balanced, accomplished, man, Grandpa, like Grandma, knew he wasn’t better than anyone else in this world, but he damn sure was just as good.

From around 1955 through 1970, I spent a lot of time at their place, “Shepherds Hill Farm”, in Charlottesville, Va. If Grandpa wasn’t in his den reading the Wall Street Journal, he was probably in his shop, working on one of the many chests, tables, and benches he produced toward the end of his life.

I own the large chest he carved for Grandma Ruth, to celebrate their Golden wedding anniversary. He was so happy when the shipment of that huge mahogany board arrived from South America, and worked on that chest incessantly throughout the  summer of 1971 while I was staying there. The high whine of his router ebbed and flowed in tandem with a million cicadas while he carved patterns into the wood. Dust Devils of smoke and sawdust swirled in spurts from his open shop doors. Stopping by several times a day, I prodded him: “What’s that going to be, Grandpa? What are you making?” With false intolerance for the familiar question, he would say: “You don’t ask Picasso what he’s painting, do you?” Finally, one afternoon when Grandma had taken the yellow Nash Rambler wagon into town to do some grocery shopping at the Safeway Store, Grandpa changed his answer to: “It’s my casket, dammit! I’ll be buried in it!” Apparently he had been telling Grandma the same thing. She always shut such talk down with: “Oh George, stop!” But now, with her taillights just a red speck down the road, Grandpa saw a photo opportunity. He had me help carry that big mahogany chest out into the sunlight and promptly stepped inside and sat down. Adjusting his straw Fedora, Grandpa he barked: “OK, take a picture. We’ll call it OLD MAN IN HIS BOX. But we have to hurry up before Grandma comes back.”

Now, almost fifty years later, that picture I took stares out at me from the open lid of Grandma’s box. It was her anniversary present after all, not his coffin.

The day before he died, the EMT guys wheeled him out to a waiting ambulance. Grandpa was wearing his straw Fedora and holding a neatly folded Wall Street Journal to his chest. The next day, I was alone with him in the mortuary, saying my last goodbyes. I wished him well on his journey, assured him that we would take good care of Grandma, and slipped a copy of the Wall Street Journal under his folded hands. I should have asked where the hell his Fedora was, but I didn’t. I guess it doesn’t matter. If Grandpa had been able to, he would have joked that the straw hat would burn up immediately where he was going anyway.

Although I don't believe in such things, if there is a place where the good guys go when they die, Grandpa will be front and center...shoe-less perhaps but definitely holding the Wall Street Journal and sporting a worn straw Fedora.