Grads & Granddads

by Dave Williams

Tyler Goold Williams

Our grandson, Tyler Goold Williams, graduated from high school yesterday, June 9, 2023. Very sad that we weren’t there but we’re as proud as we can be.

The Highlands High Class of 1969 graduated June 10, 54 years ago today. Sandra Delaney and I delivered the commencement speeches. I wrote and delivered a soul-stirring celebration of the golden future that lay before us. It rose in power and passion, ending with a wise admonition to my fellow graduates: “You can take this world by the tail,” I told them, “but you must be quick, lest it leaves you holding the shattered fragments of a crystal dream!”

Our parents and grandparents leaped to their feet with raucous appreciation and affirmation. (I think my inspired use of the word, “lest” sold it.) 

My classmates applauded politely, glad that I was finished. Somebody set off a bottle rocket. One guy near the front flashed his junk at me from beneath his robe.

As we age it is hard to deal with the twists and turns of societal influences and cultural whims. I’m happy to report that family values and traditions are still alive and well.

To my grandson, Tyler, in words my own grandpa might have said to me, “The world is your oyster, kid. Live it and love it.”

 

Beginnings, part 1: Isaiah

by Dave Williams
May 20, 2023

U.S.S. HARY S. TRUMAN

This weekend our grandson, Isaiah King, graduated from his U.S. Navy training and became a certified nuclear engineer. His first assignment will be on board the U.S.S. Harry Truman, an aircraft carrier.

 

Captain Underpants

He’s come a long way from the ten years he lived with us and grew out of diapers to become Captain Underpants.

Isaiah arrived at our home in Glendora, California, with his dad, Nathan, in the early oughts when he was barely 18 months old. They had driven down from Alaska in a beat-up pickup truck in the dead of winter. They needed a place to stay for a couple of months. As things go, they were with us for ten years. It was an unexpected challenge at the time but as I look back on it now, their arrival was a gift. Isaiah was our first grandchild, but also the baby CarolAnn and I would never have together. It also secured our bond with Nathan.

From my shoebox of Isaiah memories…

———————-

One evening when he was very young the three of us were watching TV together and the show we were watching had a woman about to expose her breasts. CarolAnn told her grandson to cover his head with a blanket and not look. He did as he was told. A few moments later, still under the blanket as we watched the show, he asked excitedly, “Are they HUGE?”

———————-

Nathan & Isaiah at Carrows

I was pecking away at my computer one early morning when Isaiah, age 7, came in quietly, picked up the phone from my desk, and rang his dad’s room on the intercom.

“Dad?  Would you come get the peanut butter for me?  It’s too high in the pantry and I can’t reach it. — Okay, thanks.”

“Isaiah,” I said, “I would have gotten the peanut butter for you.”

“I know, Grandpa,” he said wisely.  “I just figured Dad needs to get up and get ready to take me to school.”

————————

“Nana,” Isaiah said earnestly, “I have diabetes.”

My wife and I had no earthly idea what he was talking about.

“What do you mean?” Carolann asked.

“I had to go potty real bad,” the five-year-old explained. “I have diabetes.”

CarolAnn and I stared at each other blankly for another moment or two until, as the Brits say, the penny dropped.

“You mean you have DIARRHEA?”

“Yeah, diarrhea.”

————————–

Sleep peacefully, America. Captain Underpants is maintaining our nuclear navy.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Isaiah King

Copyright 2023, David L. Williams

 

 

 

We are stardust…

by Dave Williams

Bobbi & Nick return to Woodstock

Bobbi Ercoline died a few days ago. She was 73.  Nick, her husband of 53 years, paid her a simple yet powerful tribute:

She lived her life well and left this world a much better place. If you knew her, you loved her.

I never heard their names before this week but suddenly realized I do know Bobbi and Nick,  I’ve known them most of my life. They’re the kids on the cover of the iconic Woodstock soundtrack album published 54 years ago.

The picture of Nick holding Bobbi in a blanket on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York, freezes a moment in time that symbolized my generation’s place in history; we were naively idealistic kids who believed we could end war and hatred by simply declaring we’d have nothing to do with them.

They called us the Peace & Love generation.

“We are stardust, we are goldenWe are billion-year-old carbonAnd we got to get ourselvesBack to the garden”
– Woodstock: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Peace is elusive but Bobbi and Nick found lifelong love on a wet hillside in August of 1969.

Our generation is still hanging on to the dream.

Getting old

by Dave Williams
March 9, 2023

“At old age, one realizes that life is truly a dream.”
— Michael Bassey Johnson, The One Ironauts Body

I was looking for a pithy quote about aging and this one struck me right.

How many times have I thought and written that the past comes back to me in fleeting memories as old black-and-white photos? I know the people in the pictures. I know the places existed and the captured moments actually occurred but they are no more real to me now than barely remembered bits of an old movie I saw a lifetime ago.

Photo by Bruno Martins on Unsplash

Recently I’ve thought a lot about getting old. I don’t feel old but as often as you insist, “You’re only as old as you feel”, the numbers are stunning.

Two of my friends turned 60 yesterday. That’s a significant number in the story of one’s life, I remember it well.

I turned 60 alone, in a high-rise apartment in Chicago. CarolAnn and the rest of the family were home in California. She was getting ready to join me in the Windy City.

August 6, 2011. It was a good day. I didn’t have a lonely birthday pity party. I watched some baseball on TV, talked with my wife and kids on the phone, and then walked to a nearby fancy seafood restaurant and treated myself to a birthday dinner. I went to bed that night wishing I could have celebrated with my loved ones, but knowing there would be next year and many more birthdays to come. And there were.

That was twelve years and seven months ago, and yet just a couple of weeks past. I’m 71 now and my newly 60-year-old friends seem like kids.

Suddenly it occurs to me that there may not be “many more birthdays to come.” My definition of “many” is now questionable.

I remember celebrating my dad’s 60th birthday. It looks like a fuzzy black-and-white picture that spilled from the shoebox.

I think of the older friends and family members I’ve had who lived into their late 80s and 90s. But I also have a list of very dear friends I lost when they were much younger than I am now.

Sharmayne was older than me but she never reached 65.

I always thought of Jerry Grisham as a second father. He died long before 71.

Dad was 72, almost exactly a year older than I am now.

Remember when you were a kid on the Ferris wheel? After many wonderful loops past the stars, the operator suddenly stops the wheel when you reach the bottom, and opens the bar. It’s time for you to leave. And you think, “But those other people got on before I did.”

That’s how it must feel.

At times I lean toward being overly morose about all of this but I shake myself loose thinking it’s just part of the never-ending process of growing up. And then I remember my school friends who died decades ago, some so young they never even had a chance to fall in love.

That shames me back to my reality.

I’m fine, I really am. I’m healthy and happy. I’m convinced that joy is the key to long life. No pity parties for me.

The only thing is, in my mind’s eye I can see the end of the road for the first time in my life. It’s not so much depressing as it is a curious wonder, a totally new experience.

I don’t have many new experiences these days, so this is good. I’ll wrap my head around it soon.

But yes, at some age it will occur to you that life is truly a dream.

I just thought you might like to know.

My drunken conversations with Fred

Fred Bonetti when he was young, a serious actor at Pasadena Playhouse.

“Confucius said, ‘A day spent in idle conversation is a day well spent.’ 

Fred was drunk when he told me that.

I was drunk too, so I believed him.

Well, what’s not to believe? It’s a cool observation attributed to one of the  supercool  philosophers  in  history.

Problem is, Confucius didn’t really say it, apparently. I’ve Googled the shit out of it.  I think Fred made it up.

Fred and I talked a lot of philosophy during our late night conversations. After the onstage curtain calls and the final theater patrons had left the building, out came the large bottle of Albertsons vodka and a couple of cans of Diet Sprite. From that moment into the wee hours of a Saturday or Sunday morning Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were our bitches.

I couldn’t quote philosophy but I could understand the concepts, sorta. Fred could quote famous thinkers word-for-word and explain what they meant. Sometimes he even took issue with the likes of Kant and Kierkegaard. He considered Descartes a fool merely for being French.

Fred has been gone for almost twenty years. I miss him, even though he was irascible and often insufferable. He was also one of the funniest men alive. He could noodle on a piano with a four-inch ash dangling from his “ciggy-poo”, as he called it, while reducing his fellow comic actors to puddles of laughter with his bawdy jokes, his rubbery face and his exquisite sense of timing. He was the master in a house full of funny people.

Most of my dear friends from Stagedoor Comedy Playhouse are gone now, as is the building itself. I loved that time of my life and though I’m not inclined to be overly nostalgic I do enjoy basking in fond memories from time to time.

I miss the laughter and my drunken conversations with Fred.

Making life small

I took this picture near our home in Texas. It’s a big place with small beauties.

I’m starting a week of vacation tomorrow. I like my job but it forces me to focus on the world’s problems and there’s never a shortage of them.

Today I’m checking out from the big world of bad news. Putin, the pandemic, politics and the price of gas will swirl on without me for a few days. I’m on time-out.

I just came in from the patio where I drank coffee and watched the dogs rush back and forth chasing birds thirty feet above them.

It’s a beautiful day. Spring isn’t far off.

We sprang forward last night. I don’t like time changes but I’m not going to fuss about it right now.

Photo by my uncle, Michael Webster. He sees things the rest of us look past. 

CarolAnn is having a fun day out with one of her girlfriends. (“Girlfriends” sounds kinda silly at their age, but I’ll never admit I said that.)

I’m sipping coffee, listening to classic country, thinking happily of my kids and theirs.

Cora, the cat, just plopped down beside me and begged for a chin scratch.

The world is a mess, but at this level it’s still filled with miracles and joy.

Sometimes I just need life to be small.

Down the rabbit hole

January 15, 2022

It was 72 degrees in North Texas  yesterday. Today we’ll top out at 36. Windy as hell. I love Texas weather.

Nick Nolte, 1986

Picking away at a novel I have been picking at for 34 years, I needed a character description for my protagonist. Nick Nolte sprang to mind because I like him. Not the 80 year-old Nick Nolte, the one most of us remember from 1986, which is when my story is set.

That made me try to remember a particular movie he did with Barbra Streisand. I went to Google. It was called The Prince of Tides, premiered in 1991 based on the novel by Pat Conroy. I liked both, the book and the movie.

Gosh, they were gorgeous!

The book was published in 1986. Perfect.

Then I realized I haven’t heard much about Nick Nolte or anything at all about Barbra Streisand in recent years except for an occasional political outburst that I generally consider nutty. But who cares? She’s Barbra and she sings like an angel.

I Googled Barbra.

My first thought was, wow… why is she trying so hard to retain her youthful beauty instead of gracefully looking her actual, beautiful age? She’ll be 80 in April. I think looking 80 would be better than looking 80 trying to look 40.

Barbra recently. (No specific year given.)

My second thought was that I should be ashamed of myself for my first thought,  judging her appearance. Still, I wondered what she’s been doing since her last semi-memorable movie, Meet the Fockers, which came out in 2004.

Say what you will about Barbra, she’s one of the few true superstars in our lifetime who is so blessed with talent that she’s immediately recognized by just her first name. She is an exquisitely gifted actress, both dramatic and comedic. Her voice is angelic, her ability to interpret lyrics with refined passion is unequaled.  Her voice simply takes me away.

I can overlook Babs’ nutty politics. And hey, if she likes what she sees in the mirror, good for her.

After noodling around on Google some more, I’m thrilled to report that Barbra is still singing as beautifully as ever! Here’s her latest, released just last August. (Notice, she’s not seen in the video. Just sayin’…)

And now you know how I can spend 34 years writing one-third of a story.

A nothing-special day

February 10, 2009

This morning I took my almost-four-years-old grandson to school.

His parents are out of town and though he spent the night with his maternal grandparents they both leave for work very early. So, I had the honor of driving to their home at 4:30 AM and being on hand when Tyler awoke around 7:00.

He was very pleased to see me.

“Oh, yeah!”

Still wiping the sleep from his eyes he had suddenly remembered that I would be here for him this morning. He flashed a drowsy grin and ran to me, bare feet slapping the wood floor, his favorite soft baby blanket slung over one arm. His arms went up as mine went down and I lifted him high over my head. We hugged and smiled as is our habit and standard greeting.

I guess he thinks I’m sort of special.

At first, I just sat on the couch and held him on my lap, allowing him to wake up gently.

I don’t like brisk, lively beginnings to a day. I like slow, quiet starts and I think Tyler does, too. At least this morning he did. I held him in my big, bear-like grandpa arms and spoke to him softly.

“Did you sleep good?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you ready for a great day?”

“Yeah!”

February 10, 2009

We talked like that for maybe ten minutes, me asking leading questions designed to put him in a happy frame of mind, him responding affirmatively and with increasing animation. Finally, we decided it was time to get dressed and off to school with a stop at McDonald’s for breakfast.

And that’s the way my day began. No big deal and yet quite remarkable.

As I look back on nearly sixty years of life I am amazed at how little of it I remember with any degree of detail or certainty. I remember the big things but not much of the ordinary and that just makes sense, really.

On a cold, dazzling-bright February morning Tyler and I ate hotcakes and sausage at McDonald’s surrounded by old men in ballcaps sipping coffee and solving the world’s problems.

He’s not going to remember this.

I will never forget it.

Sleep well, America, Captain Underpants is standing watch.

I took this picture of our grandson, Isaiah, ten or eleven years ago when he presented himself to me in our kitchen, wearing his skivvies on his head, proclaiming himself Captain Underpants.

Today is his first day at boot camp in the U.S. Navy as Seaman Recruit Isaiah Daniel King.

We got to talk with him on the phone yesterday before he took his oath to tell him we love him and are proud of him. He said he wasn’t nervous but I don’t believe it. When I was 19, as he nearly is, I was scared to death going to Air Force basic training but I didn’t tell him that. I told him some funny stories about my days in basic and he enjoyed them. “You’ll work very hard and be very tired but before you graduate,” I said, “you will be proud of the man you’re becoming.”

He told his Nana he was excited because they told him he’ll get paid his first day in the Navy. When she told me that later I laughed my ass off.

“Yeah, they’ll pay him,” I explained. “Then they’ll march him to the base barber and he’ll have to pay to have his head shaved. After that they’ll march him to the base exchange and give him a long list of personal items he is required to buy with his new money: toiletries, mostly. No snacks, no toys, just gear. Then they’ll march him into a building where he’ll be ordered to strip down to his underwear, give him new underwear and basic training uniforms for scrubs to carry in his arms as they they send him through a gauntlet of people who will inject both arms multiple times with vaccines to ward off every disease known to man, most of which you’ve never heard of.”

I’ve told these stories as endearing memories I’ve kept for more than fifty years. It won’t be funny to Isaiah tonight but I assured him it will be, eventually.

When Isaiah gets back to his barracks today they’ll call him outside for his first day of torturous physical conditioning. They’ll yell him into the chow hall, yell at him to hurry up eating and yell at him some more before yelling it’s time to go to bed. He’ll fall into his “rack” next to fifty other kids as the lights go out. Some of them will be sniffling and crying as quietly as possible in the dark but he’ll hear them.

The next morning will arrive hours before sunrise with the demon sergeant throwing on the stark overhead barracks lighting and yelling at him to wake up, make his bed and fall out.

I suppose things have changed in 50 years but I hope not too much. This is how the military turns boys into men. They know what they’re doing and they almost always get excellent results.

They’ll work his butt off, shouting at him all the way, for the next eight weeks. He’ll be dog tired all the time, collapsing on the floor to sleep next to his bunk because he doesn’t want to mess up the bed he was ordered to  make with crisp hospital corners so tight that a drill instructor can bounce a coin off the top blanket.

But there is fun to be had along the way. In memory, at least, if not at the moment.

I told Isaiah of the time our basic training flight (that’s what they call a group of scrubs in the Air Force) was marching down the street with our drill sergeant screaming in our faces the whole way. Everybody had knit sphincters, not least of all a young man from Metairie, Louisiana, named Dawson. He was a pure Cajun kid who talked funny and couldn’t keep in step with the rest of us. The harder he tried the worse it got and the more he was yelled at. He had one permanently crossed-eye that flicked every which way but the right way as he tried in vain to follow directions. I was marching next to him as the beast with four stripes screamed at him barely inches from his terrified face.

“DAWSON! GET IN STEP! DON’T LOOK AT YOUR FEET, LIFT YOUR HEAD, SHOULDERS BACK, GET IN STEP! EYES STRAIGHT AHEAD, DAWSON! EYES STRAIGHT AHEAD!…BOTH OF THEM!”

When Sergeant Tenorio said “both of them!” six of us collapsed in hysterics. That’s what he was aiming for. He screamed at all of us to get the hell out of his flight and march in shame behind the rest of the group.

Isaiah laughed. That’s what I was aiming for.

He’s a good boy and now he’s becoming a good man.

Here’s my first chapter in the Captain Underpants story, written 11 years ago. It includes the origin of the name.

Captain Underpants

Act Two

Sacramento’s Stagedoor Comedy Playhouse was my home away from home in the 80s and 90s. For several of those years between marriages, it was my home instead of home.

I was Felix to Dave Grosby’s Oscar in Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” Gosh, we were terrific.

I don’t have an exact count but I’d guess I performed in some 20 plays at Stagedoor and directed another ten or so. I wrote a few, too. After each performance, the cast and crew would gather around the beer and wine bar in the lobby and relive the glories and horrors of that night’s show. We drank and laughed while learning the fine points of our craft, of action, reaction and timing, through our shared experience. We kept at it until the wee hours, then reluctantly headed to the parking lot with the happy promise that we’d all get together the next night and do it all again.

I was in my thirties then and thoroughly immersed in my life as a single father and my blossoming radio career. But I still had dreams of a different, distant future.

“When I get old,” I told my theater family, “I’m going to get acting jobs in movies and TV. All the young, hot bodies are fighting for stardom. I’ll wait until they’ve all burned out,” I said. “Then I’ll just scoop up all the old man character roles.”

Remember this old man? Burt Mustin. He was on every big and small screen in the 1950s and 60s.

It was my retirement plan. Seemed like a good idea at the time when TV shows all featured the same two or three old men playing minor roles and window dressing, actors who had been around forever learning technique and aging into the life experience needed for old man character roles.

Forty years have slipped away. I guess it’s time.

I just filled out a form for a casting agency to appear as an extra in a TV series filming in the Fort Worth Stockyards. It’s a prequel to the hit series, “Yellowstone”, called “1883”.

I love Westerns. I’ve eaten dust on horseback.

I loved playing cowboy 60 years ago and I loved being on stage 20 years later.  Maybe I’m ready to saddle up again, or just walk down a wood plank sidewalk as a body comes flying through the swinging doors of a saloon.

I’ll let you know how it goes.