Dave Williams, Author at The Aging of Aquarius : Page 19 of 31

Then and now

My radio partner, Amy Chodroff, and I had a conversation yesterday with a man who proposes we all learn to disconnect from our social gadgets just one day a week. Think about that: no Facebook, no Twitter, no My Space, no Google Plus, no Instagram, no Pinterest, no e-mail, no texting, no nothing: just you and the people you can see in real time and space.

I remember decades ago, before Cyber World Genesis, when people were making similar suggestions about technologies and social habits that would seem quaint to us now. “Turn off the TV one night a week”, they said. “Get reacquainted with your family. Talk about your day. Play a board game. Make popcorn.”

It really does sound nice, doesn’t it? (If you’re over 60, I mean.)

All the way back to my own childhood in the fifties and sixties I can remember the social psychologists urging families to always eat dinner together at the table. It suggested we strive for TV family perfection. Dad would be there smiling in his sweater and tie, Mom would be fresh as a daisy after a day spent driving a vacuum and an iron and then wrangling dinner in the kitchen. We could have funny conversations like the Cleaver family.

It all sounds wonderful but what I remember from my real life family dinners is my sister and me whining about the food, being scolded for the griping with threats of being sent to our rooms. There was nothing to do in our rooms at that time. Dad would talk about world matters, money problems and grouse about some idiot at work while dear Mom tried to hold it all together. It wasn’t always like that, of course, but often enough that I learned early that nostalgia isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Like it or not, family and social dynamics change with culture which is largely driven by technology.

Nobody sends handwritten letters anymore. Gone are the summer nights on a blanket in the front yard together watching the stars come out. Rocking chairs on the front porch over a pitcher of lemonade and shared tales of greater glories past are the stuff of fanciful memory and our social fabric.

It’s good to remember the past but a terrible mistake to try to live there.

I think I may give this disconnecting idea a shot, occasionally. Maybe not once a week, like on a schedule. Just occasionally, like opening a shoe box filled with old pictures. It’s fun.

But I’m not going to stress about it.

Out of the mouths of babes

And Jesus said to them, Yes; have you never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise? — Matthew 21:16 (American King James Bible)

Two weeks ago tonight Carolann and I drove to Tracy’s and Martha’s house in McKinney to join their semi-weekly Bible study group. This will come as a surprise to our family and friends in California because we’re not church-goers but we’re not heathens, either. We’re quiet believers.

And frankly, more to the point, we’re new to Texas and have no social life. We need to meet people.

So, there we were, eight or ten of us having snacked and socialized, now seated together in our friends’ living room engrossed in the book of Daniel and sharing The Word.

Tracy and Martha’s eight-year-old daughter Sadie was upstairs in her room, unseen and forgotten.

The Good Book is passed to our new friend, Mike.

(A dog barks in the backyard. Sadie yells at the dog through her upstairs window, telling him to be quiet.)

Mike reads.

MIKE: “Ezekiel describes his vision of God…

(The dog begins baying outside.)

MIKE: “A voice came from above…”

(Upstairs, to the dog…)

SADIE: “SHUT UP YOU RETARD!!!”

We’ll try to pick it up at that point tonight. I’m praying that Sadie is there.

Sunday, July 22, 2012: Abbott, Texas

Yesterday I took my first official Texas road trip, not counting the one that got me here in the first place. I drove a hundred miles from our new home just north of Dallas to visit a friend in Waco and I left early enough to stop and see a place I’ve wanted to see for years: Abbott, Texas. It’s a town of 356 people and just one sad little remnant of an old general store as its only operating business establishment. In that, Abbott is like a million other far-flung places in this huge and proud state with one distinction:

Abbott is the birthplace and childhood home of Willie Nelson.

The most striking thing about Willie’s hometown is that unlike similarly distinguished small towns in America it doesn’t display one single word about its famous son. There are no statues or museums or souvenir stores and not a single sign proudly proclaiming, “Birthplace of Willie Nelson!” Not a word. You either know it or you don’t. I suppose the quiet, hard-working Texans who live here prefer not to have their few streets choked with tourists taking pictures of local kids playing in the streets and fields without asking permission. In that respect Abbott maintains its charm and dignity. It certainly looks the same now as it did eighty some years ago when Willie and his piano playing sister Bobbie were born there.

The Depression-era Abbott Methodist Church*, where Willie and Bobbie sang hymns when they were both just knee-high to a June bug, sits directly across the street from the Abbott Baptist Church. These are by far the best-kept buildings in town. They are postcard-perfect visions of Americana brought to life, old yet gleaming white buildings with gloriously pious steeples and neatly trimmed lawns.

I took my pictures surreptitiously, not wanting to draw attention. My self-consciousness was unnecessary. I never saw a person on the street nor outside of the scattered handful of homes in the neighborhood.

It was Saturday and 109 degrees. Cicadas sang love songs.

I went into the Abbott Cash Grocery Market to buy a cold soda pop and just to be able to say I had been there. The store was sad. Most of the shelves were empty. What few items it did carry were all packaged goods crammed together: toilet paper and dishwashing detergent right next to the canned okra and lima beans. No meat or produce. They did carry soft drinks and snacks and a few staples such as sugar and flour that a local woman fixing Sunday dinner might need in a rush. No doubt folks there drive to Waco supermarkets and Walmart for real groceries.

Inside the store I was again struck by the lack of highly conspicuous Willie business. Yes, the word, “Willie’s” hangs discreetly above the awning outside but if you didn’t know differently you’d assume it was the owner’s name, not THE Willie. Fact is, I have no idea what it means*. His voice wasn’t floating out of any overhead speakers. Nothing was. There were no lifesize cardboard cutouts where I might have the lone clerk snap a cute picture of me smiling alongside the Redheaded Stranger. They did have a very short shelf stacked with Willie Nelson t-shirts and video tapes but again, no signs to draw your attention and no explanation as to why the stuff was there if you didn’t already know.

I’m ashamed to admit that I wanted a shirt or a ballcap from this secretly famous old store but was too embarrassed to reveal myself as the tourist I was to give that nice lady some money, which she surely needed. Today I’m sorry about that.

But as Willie sings it in one of his best, lesser-known songs:

“Regret is just a memory written on my brow, and there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

UPDATE: (*In 1976 Willie and sister Bobbie bought the Abbott Methodist Church – shown here – to preserve and maintain it, which he has surely done. At the same time they purchased the General Store and turned it over to the church. That explains the relatively inconspicuous name, “Willie’s” above the awning.)

Just a handful of memories

Our heat wave seems to have broken. It’s below 80 this morning for the first time in over a week. Clouds are gathering for a welcome summer storm.

I think the reason we’re so darned interested in the weather has less to do with our plans and personal comfort than it does our inability to notice the passing of time. If the weather never changed we would seem to be living the same day over and over, though we age rapidly.

When I was young I thought it funny, and to be honest more than just slightly annoying, that the older people in my life told the same stories time and again. My dad did that. His dad, too. And it seemed to me the older people got the more often they retold a dwindling number of their personal adventures. Now I find myself doing it and often apologizing to my kids as a disclaimer. “I may have already told you this,” I’ll say, but then I’ll go ahead and tell it again anyway.

The truth is, as wonderful as a long life can be we are pathetically short on memories.We remember the highlights of our lives as if they were moments that stand out from old movies. The rest of it seems to be bits and pieces of black and white images, remembered without context or emotional texture. This is why we take so darned many pictures, I guess, to try to hold onto special moments and even the ones we know will be deemed insignificant or forgotten altogether a short time from now.

We mark the passing of our lives by changes in the weather and by how fast the kids grow up.

People come and go.

Sixty, seventy, eighty years. Life sounds long but lives fast. And if we’ve done it right we are vastly wiser and happier for all the great lessons we’ve absorbed, the good with the bad; the monumental and the insignificant. They add up to an existence we can rest assured was meaningful. The world would be a bit less joyful if you or I had never passed this way.

Oddly, though, as miraculous as we are we wind up retelling stories.

We only have a handful of memories.

The first day of summer.

Or as we call it in Texas, Wednesay.

If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.

Late spring sits on North Texas warm, wet and heavy. Sometimes the sky is postcard blue, other times dull and benign.

Sometimes it’s black as dread and just as still.

Sometimes multi-streaked lightning bolts rifle baseball-size hailstones at us. Birds are struck dead in flight by wondrous ice ball cannonade crashing through windshields and 90 degree heat.

Sometimes funnel clouds move around like giant old men shuffling aimlessly through corn fields oblivious to the commotion they cause.

All these times will occur in a single day. Excitement is quite literally in the air.

We check the weather radar before going to bed and then sleep warily, warning gadgets next to our heads.

A few hours later it begins again. Peacefully. Quiet with promise, and just a tiny smirk.

The Texas Way

I’ve lived in Texas for almost three months now and it’s true what they say, Texans are friendly.

Total strangers strike up conversations with Carolann and me everywhere we go. This is a sharp contrast to living in California where strangers don’t generally speak to each other except rarely and briefly to request and impart some specific information such as directions to a particular street. These exchanges are always short and businesslike. They rarely blossom into conversation.

Texans don’t need any such pretense to launch into idle and often very personal chit-chat. You can be standing in a line at the supermarket and suddenly find yourself swapping family secrets with three or four people, all of you strangers to each other. By the time you leave the checkstand you’ve exchanged names and maybe pie recipes.

Texans also have a great and dry sense of humor, intentional or not.

I had only been here a couple of weeks when I went for a haircut and mentioned all of this to the very young woman cutting my hair.

“I really like Texas and the people I’ve met here,” I told her.

As she snipped around the edges of my head she gave me the following words of greenhorn wisdom in a cute and perky Southern accent:

“People say Texans are friendly,” she began, “and it’s true, we are friendly but we expect y’all to take care of y’alls own bidness.”

Then, with a drawl so sweet and thick you could pour it on a waffle, she explained, “Texans will give you the shirt off their backs or a meal and bed at the drop of a hat but if ya’ll step into the street without lookin’ we will run you over!”

The corner of Thisaway and Thataway

The other day I Googled my RV/Camping blog, Thataway Road, searching for inspiration. Here’s what I found:

Smack dab in the middle of Arkansas there is a tiny town called Yellville, where you’ll find the intersection of Thataway Rd. and Thisaway Rd., just about a quarter mile from Whichaway Rd. Wouldn’t you love to hear somebody out there giving directions to a lost RV family? Shades of Abbott and Costello.

Thataway and Thisaway isn’t the only funny intersection you may come to. In an Arizona retirement community residents undoubtedly get a thousand laughs a day from living, as they do, at the corner of Stroke and Acoma Streets.

If you’re bored and depressed in Albany, Georgia, you can always go hang out at the corner of Lonesome and Hardup.

Presidents are apparently tempting fodder for local street namers. Folks in Houston, Texas, are keeping true to their largely conservative perspective and their well-deserved reputation for being facetious by naming converging streets Clinton and Fidelity. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, people engaged in brief political commentary by creating the intersection of Nixon and Bluett.

You have to love Americans. We don’t get as much credit as we deserve for having a national sense of humor. Just look at some of the street names scattered across our fruited plain:

There are several streets in the U.S. called Psycho Path.

In Story, Arkansas, the only way to get your truck camper to Constipation Ridge is to drive up Farfrompoopen Road.

And, while we’re on that unfortunate topic…

Folks in Central Pennsylvania can direct you to Cowshit Ln. if you will kindly refrain from stealing the street sign. It seems to happen a lot. In fact, that’s why the merchants of Amador City, California, years ago began selling copies of their iconic Pig Turd Alley sign, hoping that it would stop thefts of the actual sign. That must have worked. I bought one.

Some street namers seem to be completely baffled and give up…

Lambs Terrace, NJ

…while others just seem to lack interest.


Vallejo, CA

There are some streets you should steer clear of…

And the famous road less traveled.

Wherever your adventures take you, keep smiling. We live in a very funny country.

Obsolete

I’m sixty years old. It didn’t seem like a big deal back in August when it happened. Forty was a big deal but not sixty.

A couple of days ago I was talking about aging with Gloria, my son’s mother-in-law and one of the wisest people I know. Specifically, I mentioned that as much as I’ve learned about the craft of radio performance over forty-three years of it, none of the younger people I work with seem to be interested in picking my brain. If I offer a small nugget of hard-won wisdom it seems to fall with a clunk on deaf ears. I believe I’ve occasionally seen a furtive wink, a roll of an eye. I’m pretty sure of it.

Gloria nodded sagely. She understood.

It’s a shame, I continued, that as we age we learn so much but eventually we die and all that knowledge of fact, of wisdom and experience, is lost without ever having been shared and appreciated. Worst of all is the lack of respect that piles on top of the years. Instead of being honored, I lamented, old people in our culture are the butt of jokes.

If brevity is the soul of wit, Gloria is a prophet.

“You’re obsolete,” she said offhandedly. “We all are, people our age.”

She said it as if she had just noticed that my shoe was untied and thought I should know.

I’ve been unemployed since October and this is the third time in three years I’ve been between jobs. Radio is an aging technology, an industry being dismantled. We’re sputtering to an end together.

I’ve had a wonderful career and no regrets. If it’s over that’s fine because I still have plenty of life left in me with wonderful friends like Gloria.

I’ll age gracefully. I’ll be obsolete, except to my family. That’s all that matters.

Sometimes, though, sixty is starting to feel like kind of a big deal.

Sorkinese

CarolAnn and I recently got Netflix.

As a writer of dialogue myself I’m a slobbering fan of Aaron Sorkin for his creation of The West Wing and Studio 60. With Netflix I was anxious to get another look at Sorkin’s Sports Night for the first time in a dozen years. I immediately fell in love with the show again and settled down to watch all 45 episodes in three days.

Here’s what I discovered:

I don’t care if you’re watching Sorkin or Neil Simon or William-Fricking-Shakespeare, stylized dialogue gets appallingly self-caricatured if you watch too much in one sitting. Also, like picking up a Southern drawl after spending a weekend in Atlanta it’s highly contagious.

I’ve started speaking Sorkinese.

This morning as CarolAnn was leaving for work we had the following conversation:

Me: What do you want for dinner?

CA: What?

Me: Dinner. What do you want?

CA: Tonight?

Me: Yes, tonight. What do you want?

CA: For dinner…

Me: Right.

CA: I don’t care.

Me: Maybe not now but you will. If it was dinner time right now, what would you want?

CA: Where are my keys? Hey, can you please do some laundry today?

Me: Laundry, yes, but first I want to figure out dinner. And, how would I know?

CA: What?

Me: What, what?

CA: How would you know what?

Me: Where your keys are. How would I know?

CA: Found ’em! Gotta go. Surprise me. Chicken fried steak.

(She gives him a peck on the cheek and goes out the back door.)

Me: Which? Surprise you or chicken fried steak?!