Dave Williams, Author at The Aging of Aquarius : Page 2 of 30

Dry Beans & Lifelong Friends

Shortly after graduating from Highlands High School in 1969, I started working at a radio station and making a ridiculously high salary of $400 per month. It was a union job and in 1969 that was an insane amount of money for a 17-year-old kid who had never gotten more than a one-dollar weekly allowance. I went wild and rented an apartment for $120 per month. It was a lot of money for a one-bedroom apartment but at 17 the world was my oyster, as people apparently used to say (though I’ve never heard anyone actually say it).

Having never lived anywhere except with my parents I was still a child, nervous about living alone so I invited my buddy, Ray Hunter to move in with me.

I don’t remember how we came up with furniture, but I think the exorbitant monthly rent was because the place came furnished. I can only remember that there was a cheap couch and a cheaper dining room table. I do know Ray and I each brought our mattresses from home and tossed them on the floor in the bedroom. That was all the comfort we required.

To celebrate our official graduation into adult-adjacency we went grocery shopping so we could stock the kitchen like real grownups. It was weird. Neither of us had ever been grocery shopping for anything more than an RC Cola and some junk snacks. Now we were pushing a cart up and down aisles we had never visited. Should we buy baking supplies? What kind of soap did our moms buy? Do we even have a laundry room?

When we got home we put away the groceries like a couple of excited kids opening Christmas gifts under the tree. It involved animated discussions about where things should go to be easily accessible for convenience. To open a can of soup, for example, we should put soup near the can opener. Or the other way around. (Do we even have a can opener?)

On that first night, we celebrated with home-cooked steak. Neither of us had ever cooked a steak or anything else of course, so we did what seemed obvious: we got out a frying pan and tossed the meat onto a gas burner.

As good as they looked and smelled we didn’t understand why fried chuck steak was so tough to chew.

It wasn’t long before Ray and I settled into a steady diet of Fritos and bean dip.

But here’s what started me down this lovely memory path: dry beans.

Weird as memories are, buying dry beans is the strongest recollection I have of that first-ever grocery shopping adventure in our neighborhood Albertsons supermarket. As we wandered down the aisles we snatched up stuff we had seen in our moms’ kitchens without considering whether we needed or had any idea how to use them. Ray grabbed a large bag of dry beans. His mom was a school cafeteria cook and always had dried beans in the pantry, though neither of us had ever eaten any that way, as if dry beans were just poured into a bowl like cereal. We had no idea what to do with them but if they were important to Norma Hunter we knew they were crucial to our nest.

Now, 55 years later I have finally learned how to prepare dry beans for consumption. I spent 12 hours on a batch yesterday and Ray, old friend, I can finally tell you it’s not worth the effort. Canned beans weren’t that expensive even 55 years ago when we were flush with cash.

Dave’s Daycare

by Dave Williams

Cora won’t sit still for a selfie. She’s whining insistently as she does every day. God only knows why. It sounds like whining to me, anyway. It’s probably just how she talks. She talks a lot.

After CarolAnn goes off to work my mornings in the early days of retirement feel a bit like I’m running a preschool. Besides the cat, there are my other two girls, Amelia and Cricket II, our precious Yorkies. Precious, they are, but Yorkies are yappers.

Whining and yapping: It’s another noisy, busy morning here at Dave’s Daycare.

Amelia has a bed on a footstool next to me. She can see out the window from there, but her view is limited. A little while ago her ears perked up and she jumped to the back of my chair to get a better view of whatever had caught her attention. She started barking. Cricket, lying on the floor next to Mommy’s chair, started yapping just because her big sister was, though both settled down quickly.

Cricket and I never figured it out. Amelia probably just saw a bird or a squirrel.

Spring comes early to North Texas. A mockingbird is singing its entire repertoire. It’s the state bird and I love its joyous medley.

Amelia is scared by thunder. This morning in the dark she had to join Mom in bed for comfort but she’s next to me and quiet now.

The rain has just ended. The skies are clearing and the mockingbird sings to us.

The dogs want out. Excuse me while I play doorman and follow them.

I’ve decided that ageism is okay

March 1, 2024 – Prosper, TX

Now that I’m retired from radio I’ve kept busy writing a weekly online column about radio. I get to sleep four hours longer than I used to and I work at home in my sweats but I’m still focused on radio, just from a different perspective. Nothing wrong with that but I want to expand my world so I’ve been exploring some options.

I have been thinking about going back to school. I never graduated college, maybe I should go back and be the one old fart in every class. Still mulling that over.

Writing fiction is my passion and though I can string words together nicely I don’t know anything about the craft. I wish I had gotten a writing degree when I was young but I didn’t. Now I’m looking into some online classes but they’re expensive. And what I do know from my experience is that in the end you still have to be willing to do the work. I’ve been mulling that over for decades.

The other thing I would love to do is act. I did plays onstage for 20+ years when I was much younger. At the time, when castmates of my age were trying to get professional acting careers started I said, “I’m going to wait until I’m old. You see the same old people in movies and on TV all the time. There aren’t many of them. I’ll wait until the competition is dying. ”

TV character actor Bert Mustin, 1884-1977. We saw him everywhere.

I have arrived. No, not as a professional actor, I have arrived at old.

I signed up for a free subscription to a casting call website for actors. Some of the jobs are unpaid, and some claim to pay very well. They all describe the actors they’re looking for, mostly young people. Over 50 is rare and calls for actors over 70 are nonexistent. That’s fine, I never expected to burst into Hollywood in a leading role at 72. I figured background acting (still referred to as “extras” if we’re honest) and maybe a sentence or two here and there would be great fun.

But here’s what dawned on me this morning as I was looking at the casting notices and writing courses:

Creativity is imagined to be a young person’s ability. All the websites I’ve looked at for writing courses feature pictures of happy young college types. Casting notices are the same. For some reason, our society assumes brains wither as bodies age.

Years ago in my 40s and 50s, I entered some playwriting competitions and was incensed to find contest entries restricted to “young playwrights”. Some actually specified “under 30”, or words to that effect. It pissed me off, and rightly so. I just lied about my age. It’s none of their business, right? I don’t have an expiration date.

Not incidentally, I won four of the half-dozen playwriting contests I entered.

(Paul McCartney, now 81, was asked ten years ago if he shouldn’t consider getting off the stage and letting younger performers have their place in the spotlight. “Fuck ’em,” he replied. “Let them work their way up like I did.”)

Here’s my point, and I think this may surprise you because I’ve written several ageism rants in this blog over the years. That, in itself, makes the point: I’m still learning and so will you.

I have gotten to an age where I don’t think ageism is a big deal. It’s a state of mind based on the perspective of the observer. It’s normal and natural, and sometimes it is reasonable and warranted.

I can’t portray a man in his 40s no matter how much time I spend in makeup. I’ve talked about this recently on the radio, about radio. You can’t hire a 60-year-old on-air personality for a Hot AC music station, you just can’t. 30 years is a lifetime. Inevitably the old guy is going to impart some of his life’s lessons into his shtick. Just as inevitably, the young audience will roll their eyes and say, “Okay, Boomer.”

This is how life works. When we’re young we think old people are stupid because they’re old. Old people think young people are stupid because they’re too young to know what they’re talking about.

They’re both right.

I understand the need for laws banning hiring discrimination of all kinds but you can’t legislate reality. Life experience and perspective can’t be ignored. It’s the result of personal growth through aging. It’s what keeps us fascinated by learning and passionate about life.

I’m a fat old fart looking for a TV or movie walk-on. Hell, I can even deliver lines believably.

But don’t tell me I’m too old to write. I’ll kick your young playwriting ass.

Son of my son

February 11, 1977 – When my son, Jeremy, was born I phoned my father from the hospital to give him the news. The baby was his first grandchild and my dad said something unintentionally funny.

“A boy, great! Our name will continue.”

“Dad,” I replied, “Williams is the third most common name in the English language. The name is safe.” We both laughed. It was one of those special moments between a father and son that I knew I would remember forever.

28 years and ten days later my son had a son and today is his 19th birthday. It’s a big day for him, bigger than he realizes.

I’ve always thought moms deserve the annual birthday celebrations for having done the physical and emotional work. Creating a human inside of yourself is quite literally an unimaginable miracle.

Fathers are bound to their children, too, but physically less so. We have to work a little harder at finding our way into the spiritual connection mothers create naturally.

“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” – Clarence Budington Kelland

Parents and grandparents talk a lot about how quickly time passes. It’s true but what we don’t acknowledge often enough is that the time we’ve spent with our children and grandchildren, fast as it seems to pass, is also infinite.

I’m 72 and I think often of my grandfathers, though I wish I knew them better. I marvel at the similarities between us. I appreciate the lessons they taught me through their sons and daughters.

My father died 22 years ago but I think of him daily. He is still my hero but I couldn’t tell you why. We just have that bond.

“A father’s love is like your shadow, though he is dead or alive, he will live with your shadow” – P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

Tyler Goold Williams, I love you for your birth, for who you’ve become since, and for who you will yet be. I celebrate each day of your existence. I wish I could hug and laugh with you more often. I hope we’ll spend more time getting to know each other but I assure you this: you are the result of thousands of generations of mothers and fathers who loved one another deeply. You belong in the chain of families whose love created you.

Through all of that, through all of time past and future, you are the only Tyler Goold Williams who has or will ever exist.

That’s why we celebrate birthdays.

Be happy, stay healthy. Live your life as you wish it to be.

Love, Grandpa

PS. Call us sometime. The phone works both ways, ya know.

This ‘n that

A chilly and sunny Sunday morning north of Dallas…

I haven’t written here in a while but just saw a link to one of my blogging partner Anita’s recent posts and it inspired me to mention a few things for this weblog, which has become something of a 20-year journal.

July 6, 2023 Bushmills, Ireland — Me, pensive: Giants Causeway, Bushmills, Northern Ireland, July 6, 2023.

The past seven months have been notable. I went to work at KLIF as usual dark and early Monday morning, July 31, having no idea it would be the last day of my 54-year career. After work, I drove CarolAnn to her cataract surgery appointment. From there we decided to have lunch at Mooyah Burgers in Stonebriar Mall. Enjoyed our burgers, sweet potato fries, and shakes. Walked outside to the car and I collapsed in the parking lot where I remained unconscious for a few minutes. I didn’t feel it coming, felt great in fact, and when I started to awaken I was being loaded into the back of an ambulance. After several hours in the emergency and a night in a private room at Medical City Frisco, several doctors shrugged and sent me home with no diagnosis.

Texas law makes it illegal to drive for three months after blacking out so I took a limited disability leave. Over those three months, I had every heart and brain scan that exists; still no explanation for my passing out. It surprised me to learn that this sort of thing is fairly common and usually leaves more questions than answers. Somebody commented that it must be very frustrating not knowing what happened. Actually, I’m pretty good at letting the unknowable pass without pointless wondering. What the doctors were able to tell me is that I didn’t have a heart attack or stroke and I don’t have any brain damage or tumor. Good enough for me.

By the time my waiting period ended and I was able to drive again CarolAnn and I decided I didn’t need to drive into Dallas at 3 AM anymore. I retired and am happily-ever-aftering with my beloved wife and pets. I love it. I’m doing a podcast called Conversations.buzz and writing a weekly column for the Barrett News Media national publication. Otherwise, I do the occasional chore at home, fix CarolAnn’s dinner, talk to the dogs and cat, and I usually work in a nap.

I loved my radio career and don’t miss it a bit.

Some people talk as if retirement is a death sentence. For me, it’s an endless string of Saturdays.

I have also retired from worrying about the world. These are troubled times and I’ve been studying and reporting them daily for 45 years. After five hours of news five days a week, I’m taking a long break. I haven’t read or listened to any news since that last July morning at KLIF. Ignorance really can be bliss. I expect to get over that and go back to keeping up on current events but I’ll be regularly skipping the political wars and daily tragedies that make the headlines. I guess that makes me selfish. I do care. In my own way, I’ve tried to make the world a little better by bringing daily smiles to morning commuters in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Dallas. I try to be kind to everyone I meet and keep my attitude well-adjusted. I think I’ve earned a break from stress that isn’t all mine.

There is also a great deal of joy to be found in the world if you just look for it.

“Welcome to Texas, now move your ass!”

I’ve been a proud resident of the Lone Star State for nearly a dozen years. CarolAnn and I love it here. Most of all we love the people, the lifelong Texans who grew up with a neighborly live-and-let-live attitude. Unfailingly polite and respectful, always smiling, they’ll invite you to supper and let you bunk down on the sofa before you’ve swapped names.

Texans are a prideful bunch and rightly so. They’ll tip their hat to you as they hold open a door. (Everybody here holds open doors for everybody else.) Kids still call grownups sir and ma’am. Store clerks will joke with you. Strangers smile and wave as they pass.

But…

(You knew that was coming, didn’t you?)

When Texans get behind the wheel of their cars and pickups they’re fixin’ to dance with the devil.

Texas drivers are the most aggressive I’ve ever known. Not all, of course, but enough that it makes an impression worthy of stereotyping.

Here’s just one example: This morning CarolAnn phoned me (hands free, of course) while on her way to work to tell me about a driver who got so pissed off at having to slow down for her in the morning commute traffic that she passed my wife in the suicide (center turn) lane, lurched into CarolAnn’s lane and slammed on the brakes, intentionally inviting an accident. When the accident didn’t happen the angry woman slowed to a crawl and turned on her emergency flashers.

We see this kind of thing more frequently as time goes on. And, as more Californians are transplanted here. Just sayin’…

Still, it could have been a Texan, who knows?

Big-city Texans honk their horns incessantly. If you’re at the front of a line of vehicles stopped at a light the person behind you will honk like crazy when the light turns green before you can move your foot from the brake to the gas.

And yet…

In Texas, you rarely hear about road rage shootings or fights. They don’t want to kill or pummel you, they just want you to move your ass.

Everything I’ve just said is observational. My conclusions are just mine but here’s what I think:

Texans aren’t rude and aggressive by nature, quite the opposite. But they are fiercely independent which they expect of you as well.

“I got places to go and no time for lolly-gaggin’. Step on it or get out of the way.”

These are the same people, by the way, who will stop and change a tire for you. I’ve had that happen twice.

When I had only been in Dallas for a couple of weeks I was getting my hair cut by a sweet young woman with a lovely Texas drawl. I was telling her how nice people are, so friendly and cheerful. She gave me a double-wide country grin and said, “That’s true!…”

“…We’ll give y’all a hot meal and a warm bed if you need it. But if you step off that curb while I’m drivin’, I WILL run you over!”

We both laughed about that.

She meant it.

Christmas Music, Spirits of Our Past

What is your favorite Christmas song or album?

I love Christmas and all the songs that celebrate it but the answer for me, hands down, is the entire Christmas Portrait album by The Carpenters. Even the title is perfect; it’s a glorious audio portrait of everything that fills us with the love and magic of Christmas.

The arrangements, lush orchestration, and Disneyesque choir of this album wrap me in a beautiful soft snowfall and a warm, crackling fire. More than five minutes into an overture and medley of traditional religious carols we are primed for Karen Carpenter’s arrival with her angelic voice singing “Christmas Waltz”.

That album was released in October 1978. My wife and I were in our first new house; our son was approaching only his second Christmas, the first one I figured he could appreciate — bright lights, shiny ornaments, presents, and beautiful music.

And that’s the thing about music, isn’t it? It reflects the powerful emotions of our lives past and gives us a path of hope for the future.

For you, Christmas touchstones may be ignited by Mariah Carey, Michael Buble, or Bing Crosby. Play it loud and often.

In case you’re curious, Elvis had the best-selling Christmas album of all time.

It’s wonderful, but it’s not The Carpenters.

What’s your favorite?

The Radio Book, Introduction

(CarolAnn has always said I should write a book about my radio career. I don’t think it’s a big deal and haven’t cared while I was still working. Now, recently retired, I’m going to try, one short essay at a time. — DW, December 20, 2023)

My senior yearbook picture, Highlands High School, North Highlands, CA, 1969

As near as I can figure, my first day working in radio was June 16, 1969. It was less than a week after I graduated high school with the great honor of addressing my fellow graduates with a speech I titled, “The Crystal Dream”.

I was only 17 but already writing too-flowery purple prose.

The speech concluded, “You can grab this world by the tail but you must be quick, lest you find yourself holding the shattered fragments of a crystal dream.”

(The word, “lest” is a red flag of purple prose.)

Some capped-and-gowned wiseass back near the 50-yard line fired off a bottle rocket. A guy in the front row lifted his gown and flashed me his privates. Parents and grandparents in the bleachers applauded appreciatively; maybe half of my 400 classmates clapped too, glad that I was finished.

Then we got our diplomas, tossed our caps in the air, and life started.

For me, radio started long before that.

More to come…

Planning to die

by Dave Williams

Man, I’ve written a lot of philosophical tripe recently about aging, retiring, and now, dying. I suppose it’s only natural but I’m getting tired of it. Life is for living, not preparing to die.

The targeted ads are getting annoying.

So, listen up – I’m only going to say this once:

Whatever becomes of my “remains” when I die is not my concern. That may sound like I’m just kicking the can (along with the bucket) down to my survivors but look, it’s a pass. Don’t worry about it. I don’t. I’ll try to leave behind enough money to pay for the, ahem, cremation procedure (which is something I really don’t want to think about) but after that, do whatever you will with the ashes.

The ashes. Not my ashes.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep…
— Mary Elizabeth Frye

I used to have a grand plan that I told my family: to scatter the ashes in my beloved hometown of Sacramento. Specifically, I told them, sprinkle my earthly remains into the water where the Sacramento and American Rivers meet, just off Discovery Point. My grandpa Webster used to take us fishing there and it’s just upstream from Old Sacramento, where I spent many happy jazz festival days and nights as a young adult.

I told my wife and kids that it would be fitting if a four-piece traditional jazz ensemble played on the shore, perhaps a lively, Dixiesque rendition of the traditional Christian hymn, “A Closer Walk With Thee”.

Or maybe, “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Whatever. I’ll leave that up to you and the band.

That was my thinking years ago when I was still alive in my hometown and a regular, semi-celebrity fixture at the annual Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee.

Imagining the picture of my grieving family huddled together in a small boat under the cover of darkness (scattering ashes in a river is illegal in California, as are most innocuous things) brought a happy tear to my eye. But then life its ownself (copyright, the late, great Dan Jenkins) moved us to L.A. and eventually Texas. Meanwhile, the world’s greatest traditional jazz festival was crushed by cultural and political forces that trashed its glorious tradition after first removing the word Dixieland from the title. Thanks to the annual Sacramento Bee shocking photos of old people having fun, traditional jazz was run out of town.

Don’t get me started.

The point is, I don’t want my wife and kids to have to spend time and money fulfilling a silly idea I had years before I was old enough to think about dying in a reasonable way, which I now am.

I respect and admire people whose final wishes are detailed and specific.

Though he never expressed his desires to me, we took my father’s ashes to Green River in southwestern Wyoming, where he fished as a boy. It was a moving experience for us all. And if my family wants to do something similar to celebrate my life, by all means, they should do it.

But don’t do it for me. Do it for you.

CarolAnn, I’m leaving this decision to you. You’re really good at making decisions. Don’t feel compelled to have me in a jar in your bedroom but if that’s what you want, do it.

Hey, if you still have our cat, Corabelle, dump me in the litter box. I think it’s funny! You’ll get a giggle each day when you scoop it.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Live and love your life knowing that I loved mine thanks to you all.

This is not yet…

The End

November is Norway

Today is November 1, 2023.

I went searching for a pithy quote about November and this is where I stopped looking:

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
– Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson has always cracked me up. I know I know — she is widely considered to be America’s greatest poet. I’m a troglodyte when it comes to poetry. I’ve spent 25 years ridiculing the “Belle of Amherst” since I wrote a play making fun of her work on nearly every page. After I finished writing it I was shocked to learn that Harvard University Press still held the copyright on most of her creations and they insisted on reading my two-act mockery before granting permission for me to quote her.

Even more shockingly, they decided it was fine, go ahead and perform it!

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul…
– Emmy again

You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, I get it, in this famous piece, a bird is implied as a metaphor for hope. I just find most metaphors to be unnecessary and often unintentionally funny abstractions.

And yet, when I went looking for a pithy quote about November I was hoping to find a touching metaphor of life approaching its final days.

Since I turned 70 more than two years ago I’ve made an effort to think philosophically about aging. Songs and stories are always referring to May to December romances and such.

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you

– “September Song”, lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill

I retired from radio yesterday and I’m very happy about it. I have no second thoughts and no regrets.

I just wanted to say something pithy that would express my complex sense of aging and, quite coincidentally, of leaving one’s lifelong career in the past.

Norway would have never occurred to me.

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

-You gotta love her, Emily Dickinson

I have wondered if it was sheer bravado whenever I heard retired people praise their retirement as the “new chapter” in their lives. Maybe it is for some, but I’m all in.

I’ve had a wonderful life and I still do. I’m more aware than ever of how fast my life has gone because I cherish every moment. I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean that literally.

I also know that I’m relatively close to the end of my life, but I’m not there yet.

Happily, I’m finally old enough to get it. These really are my golden years.

You’ll get it when you get here.