Dave Williams is a radio news/talk personality originally from Sacramento, now living in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Carolann. They have two sons and grandsons living in L.A.
“Yeah, thanks,” I replied. “About that, it’s a national holiday for us but not here in Killarney. Why are there American flags everywhere and what’s the deal with those cheesy statues of Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty?”
“Aye, that would be called licking arse!”
Killarney drags out Uncle Sam every 4th of July to flatter American tourists to open their wallets.
Carolann and I howled with laughter.
“We love American dollars,” he explained, “but we also like the fact that you kicked the feckin’ Brits out of your country. We did too, but it took us 800 years.”
The guy should have been doing standup, not driving a taxi. I told him that but he brushed it aside. He was just having fun and glad that we were, too.
Home from Ireland and Scotland, I can’t get the places we went and the people we met out of my mind. The images of the countryside and ancient cities are everything you imagine but even more glorious.
The people are delightful.
I know, I know – we’re tourists. They work at being nice to us, they kiss arse. But in watching the Irish and Scots interact with each other I love the fact that these hardworking, fiercely loyal family people are steadfast; they have many hundreds of years of common history and culture. They treat each other, and us, with the loving respect of kinship. They know who they are.
When I was a senior at Highlands High School (Sacramento) in 1968-69, I ran with a great group of guys, including my best buddy, Ray Hunter, our shared best buddy, Pete Olson, our other best buddy, Jim Postak, and the only kid I ever knew who was allowed to smoke cigarettes at home, best buddy Mike Worsham.
Clockwise from far left: Ray Hunter, Pete Olson, Dave Williams, Jim Postak, Mike Worsham. 1968, on our way to Blue Canyon for a day of tobogganing.
Best buddy Roy Johnson worked at the Der Weinerschnitzel hot dog drive-thru on Friday and Saturday nights. My non-employed buddies and I would pull up to the window, and he’d give us a fast food bag filled to the top with french fries free of charge. We called Roy Lord of the Fries. We usually arrived close to midnight after a football game and pizza at Shakeys or an evening of mini golf and an hour or two imagining that four guys in Ray’s Ford Falcon might chase down some hot chicks in a GTO. We actually did that once and cornered the girls in a cul de sac. We had to let them get away because there were four of us and just two of them, and none of us had the guts or the know-how to smooth-talk them.
Our other best buddy, Paul Jimison, was our secret agent. He was a good guy and always available when we needed him to put on his old man pants and head into the mom-and-pop grocery in nearby Rio Linda to buy beer for us.
The store was named Shop-and-Save. It was little more than a rundown liquor and convenience store in a sketchy part of what passed for a town in Rio Linda. We called it the Stop-and-Rob because it was more accurate.
(You may remember Rio Linda as the Sacramento suburb made famous by my late friend and colleague Rush Limbaugh. He spoke of every yard in Rio Linda being adorned by a car on blocks and a broken-down washing machine on the front porch. Rush said he went there each Memorial Day to place a six-pack on the tomb of the unknown bowler. It was an apt description, and the folks in Rio Linda loved the notoriety.)
Paul Jimison was our age, but while the rest of us looked every pimply day of our 17 years, he already looked thirty-something in his little league uniform ten years earlier. When he let his beard grow out a bit, for four hours or so, he would put on his legendary “old man pants” (loose-fitting khakis, accessorized with muddy work boots and a too-tight flannel shirt) and could easily pass for one of our grandpas. He was never carded.
We were good boys—we really were. We loved our parents and respected our teachers. When we were lucky enough to go on dates, we kept our hands and our dirty thoughts to ourselves. At the end of the evening, we were available for a polite good night kiss at the door but didn’t insist on it. We were all Richie Cunningham years before the TV show Happy Days premiered.
None of that stopped us from occasionally being the bad version of good boys. That’s really part of the journey, isn’t it? Like our parents before us, we experimented with cigarettes and beer when we could get it, but that’s all. Even though this was during the late-60s hippy era, we didn’t do drugs, not even marijuana. All we wanted for a rowdy night out was a shared six-pack of beer and a pack of Marlboros to make us choke, cough, and feel manly.
That’s why when we needed Paul and his old man pants.
In 1968, a six-pack of Coors cost around $1.87, and cigarettes were 35 cents a pack. The four of us ponied up less than a buck apiece and sent Paul inside. He was back shortly with the Coors, the Marlboros, an assortment of Sugar Babies, Tootsie Rolls, and a pack of Sen-Sen. With 50 cents worth of regular in the gas tank, we were good to roll.
We howled with laughter and high-fives. Paul was our hero.
I have no specific memories of nights out with my buddies, just the still-lingering sense of camaraderie and fun of the great times that Ray, Pete, Jim, Mike, Roy, Paul, and I shared our blossoming manhood as brothers.
Dear Jim Postak, who has been gone for years already, was the young victim of a hereditary bad ticker. He was a charming and talented singer, a friend everybody loved.
I haven’t seen or heard from Mike Worsham since we graduated. He’s one of those special friends who seems to wander through your life and disappear. He was always smiling and laughing. I hope he’s well and happy.
The rest of us are in our 70s, waddling along on creaky knees as old men are wont to do.
The Stop-and-Rob was eventually shut down after being busted for selling liquor to minors, but it wasn’t Paul’s fault. Word of our success eventually spread to dumber teenage miscreants who assumed the store would sell beer to anyone tall enough to put their money on the counter.
The thing is, they didn’t know the secret of Paul’s old man pants.
(Today, June 20, 2023, is Paul Jimison’s 72nd birthday. Happy birthday, buddy. You finally look like a child.)
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.”
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.”
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“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.”
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Sleep peacefully, America. Captain Underpants is maintaining our nuclear navy.
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 golden We are billion-year-old carbon And we got to get ourselves Back 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.
“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.
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.
Today would have been my mother’s 91st birthday. She died three years ago. I wish I could talk with her today because I have an epiphany to share:
Nostalgia is sweet but stifling. It clutches, refusing to let you go.
She would have been happy for me because the idea makes me happy, but I doubt she would have agreed.
Mom and all her kids
My mother was the dearest, kindest, most giving person I’ve ever known. She was also very smart. She lit every room she entered in a sweet way, laughing and gracious, never commanding. I loved her for all of that.
Mom taught me many important lessons but the one I always remember best is something she told me when I was a very young child:
“This can be a good day or a bad day. It’s up to you.”
She wouldn’t remember that but I think of those words nearly every single morning. They empowered me to be happy. Sadly, it was advice she couldn’t always embrace for herself.
Mom had four children and she doted on us to the point of annoyance.
“All I want is to have all of my kids together with me again.”
That’s what she always said when I’d visit as an adult. As she grew older her sharp humor and wonderful outlook never faded, yet her nostalgic despair grew deeper. It was a deep sadness she masked with her dazzling smile and a small, pretty laugh.
“I just wish we were all still living in Loomis together Those were such wonderful times.”
As I remember it, we loved that home and each other but it was far from wonderful. My dad was overseas much of the time and when he was home he and Mom were both unhappy. They had argued a lot for years; Loomis was the beginning of the end of their marriage but Mom lovingly created and preserved her memories in a photo album of the heart, as we all do. She chose to hold onto the good and forget the bad, bless her. I learned that from her, as well, and I’m grateful for it. The problem was, she embellished her happy memories and lived in them.
Over the past few days, I’ve stumbled across some old family pictures that warm my heart but they also seem distant and foreign. I feel like I’m looking at an old home movie, snips of this and that mixed in a confusion of time. It all seems like several lifetimes ago. My emotions respond but my sense of reality can’t quite connect.
What I see in the past now is how far I’ve come, how much I’ve learned, and how more deeply I love the people and places of my life that made me who I am.
I hold onto the good times and feelings. They excite me about today and tomorrow.
Nostalgia is a nice place to visit but you can’t live there, you can only die there or keep it stashed in your heart and move on.
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.
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.
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.
