I met Gene Robinson a year ago and haven’t seen him since.
He came at me the way a hummingbird zips up to a flower, flits around from blossom to blossom and then is gone before you can take its picture.
“Merci beaucoup,” he said cheerfully as I left a box store and held the door open for him. I turned to him, smiled and said, “You’re welcome!”
“Do you speak French?” he asked.
“No, but I know what you said,” I replied with my smile still in place, and that was all it took.
Before he told me his name Gene Robinson told me he’s 73 years old. “Really?” It surprised me. “I’m 66 and I look like your grandpa.” He grinned and acknowledged that he doesn’t have much gray hair and that his face is portly enough to avoid creasing. Then he explained that his mother was white and his father was black. “I got my dark complexion from my father,” he said. This also surprised me because he was about as black as black skinned people get. I didn’t say that, of course, but I couldn’t have if I had wanted to because Gene kept talking.
“My mother’s people were from France,” Gene told me. “That’s why I spoke to you in French.”
Gene is the kind of person you meet throughout the South. He’s a talker and he never met a stranger. I know you can find those people everywhere but there are many more of them here in Texas than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. If you’re in a line of three people at Kroger you’ll be swapping recipes by the time you reach the checkstand.
Gene told me he was born and raised in New York City and that he has lived all over the country, and he continued to flit from topic to topic for another three or four minutes.
There we were, two elderly men who had never met standing on a sidewalk smiling and looking each other in the eye.
It was weird but oddly exhilarating.
Then Gene seemed to be finished.
“Well, I got other things I need to do,” he said, “so I guess I’ll say goodbye to you. It was nice meeting you. My wife says I talk too much. She says, ‘You’re always talking to total strangers as if you were their best friend. Why do you do that?’ I tell her I don’t know. I just like people, I guess.
Then Gene stuck out his hand and told me his name. I took it and told him mine.
“Merci beaucoup, David,” he laughed. Then he waved and walked away.
Here in North Texas the seasons change overnight. And then they change back again. A couple of days ago we hit 94 degrees. Today we’re going to stay in the 40s. Next month or next week we might have snow, then back to 85 for a couple of days.
Texas is famous for it and I love the variety.
We all mark the passing of time with changes in the weather. If it never changed we would seem to be living the same day over and over.
And yet… the days and years of our lives often seem to change like calendar pages flying off the screen to show passage of time in old movies.
You know what frustrates me? I can’t remember everything. The past 66 years are written on my brain in fuzzy black and white memories like the photographs of my childhood. They’re all mixed up in my shoebox of a brain. I sort through them from time to time and while I can usually remember a relative few specific places and people the entire experience of my life is mostly conjecture.
I figure young people of today will have the opposite problem. When they’re my age they’ll be sorting through hundreds of thousands of pictures of cats and babies they once knew and meals they once ate.
Making sense of your life is as hard as predicting it
Nancy Webster 1949 – Grant Union High School, Sacramento
Carolann and I just returned to Dallas from a one week visit with our families in California. We had a wonderful time with our sons and daughters-in-law, our grandsons, aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers and assorted others.
That’s what family reunions are all about. We return home for the first time in years and laugh about old times. We share a bit about our current lives, embellish our common past and commiserate over how old and fat we’ve all become.
We can’t believe how big the kids have gotten.
We take pictures, have another drink and laugh some more.
We pay tribute to those of us who have died and when we finally say our goodbyes we share sincere hugs, promising we’ll do this again soon.
Sometimes we know that won’t be possible.
When I was a boy my mother was my queen and goddess. She was there when I woke up and tucked me in when I went to bed. She sang Doris Day songs while doing housework.
Que sera, sera…
Whatever will be, will be.
The future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera…
What will be, will be.
She cooked, she cleaned and she sang after making sure that I started each day with a single thought:
“This can be a good day or a bad day, it’s all up to you.”
— Nancy Webster-Williams
She kissed me good morning, fixed my breakfast and lunch and kissed me goodbye.
My little sister, Linda, Mom and me. Folsom Lake 1955.
Last Saturday, April 22, 2017, twenty of us – her children, grand children, great-grand children, siblings and extended family — gathered in a social room at her retirement home. Together again for the first time in many years we laughed and chattered and took a thousand pictures. We promised each other we’d do it again sooner rather than later.
At the end of the day when I hugged and kissed my mother goodbye she looked deeply into my eyes. No longer fuzzy headed, slightly confused or overwhelmed by the attention and the noise she said earnestly, “Take care of yourself, David. I love you.”
She said it twice for emphasis.
My brother Jim, sister Linda, me and Mom this past weekend.
She looked at me again and I looked at her. I’m 65 now but I was seeing my mommy of 60 years ago.
We both knew that it would be for the last time.
I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think so. I think we both know and we’re fine. We had a proper goodbye with just the love and none of the tears.
I’ll phone her more often now and I’ll spend less time talking about myself. I’ll talk about us.
I’ll ask her, maybe for the first time ever, to tell me about her life, her thoughts and feelings.
The nice thing about growing older is growing wiser, of course, but sometimes we’re disappointed to learn that our epiphanies are not original.
“The more I learn the more I learn how little I know.” — Dave Williams, c. 2002
When I had that revelation I figured I was a genius. I thought it belonged in a book of quotations!
Every time I have thunk a great thought I soon learned that many other people with brains mightier than mine had the same thought long before me and they usually phrased it better.
“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” – Aristotle, 350 B.C.
Socrates, who taught Plato who taught Aristotle. See how this works?
I still think we should take credit for our great thoughts. When an idea first occurs to us it marks our arrival at a new mile post in our life’s journey.
That’s significant no matter who arrived there first.
I’ve decided to honor my special friends and family members by noting the wise things they’ve told me that made a lasting impression, regardless of whether it was original to them or whether they heard or read it somewhere.
We are, after all, a combination of our life experiences and all the people we’ve loved and admired along the way.
In that spirit I will start here, with my dear friend and former colleague, Dave Grosby, who told me this when we were both young and single, shortly after my divorce in 1981.
I don’t remember where we were when Groz said this to me. I’m sure we were drinking hard and laughing our asses off. That’s how we rolled in the early 1980s.
But you know what? I never forgot it and it did guide me through seven years of my life as a newly single man.
Eventually this sage advice led me to Carolann, the love of my life, who treats waiters, babies and stray dogs with the same respect and dignity she still gives me.
Getting older is like getting fatter. You don’t notice because it happens gradually.
One thing you do notice is suddenly being ignored. You notice because it seems to happen overnight. One day you’re a vital part of society and respected leader in your industry; the next day people merely nod at you with a perfunctory smile as if you were a greeter at Walmart.
This only happens with people who didn’t know you when you were young. Unfortunately, over time that seems to be most people.
Several years ago I mentioned this to my son’s mother-in-law, Gloria, a dear friend who is a bit older and very wise. I told her I was frustrated because my experience and knowledge of my business had always been sought by my colleagues but suddenly nobody seems to have any interest in what I think.
“You’ve reached the age of irrelevance,” she explained matter-of-factly.
I had to let that sink in for a moment:
The age of irrelevance.
Gloria could see I was stunned.
“It happens to all of us,” she said gently. “I used to be the person my managers turned to for ideas. Then one day they weren’t interested in any of my observations or suggestions.”
I didn’t know what to say. It made no sense and yet this is exactly what I was experiencing.
“It’s like when your kids are growing up,” Gloria continued. “They rely on you for everything and then one day they suddenly don’t need you at all. You’re irrelevant.”
Nobody ever warned me this would happen. I don’t like it but I’ve come to accept it philosophically, if not quite emotionally. It still hurts a bit. I feel kind of useless.
Irrelevant.
It’s been a few years since Gloria explained to me this particularly jarring bump. I’m getting used to it and so will you.
I just thought someone should give you a heads up.
My friend and blogging partner, Anita, shares her thoughts on her revelation here: Anita’s Blog.
(Copyright 2017, D.L. Williams. All rights reserved.)
When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s I never knew anybody who was a homosexual. The word “gay” hadn’t yet been been appropriated from its original definition as a synonym for happy. Back then people who were sexually attracted to members of their own gender weren’t discussed openly among normal, heterosexual people. When it did come up in conversation it was always in the form of a disparaging joke or an embarrassed whisper of disgust. As children, we weren’t allowed to know these people existed.
People like that were “in the closet”, a phrase I first heard in my teens. The closet was where they belonged, we thought. We were happy to keep it that way. We assumed “they” were satisfied with the arrangement, too. It never occurred to us that people who were in love with a person of their own sex might wish they could live a normal life without being ashamed of who they were and who they loved.
In my youth “normal life” was on display nightly on our family TV shows: Leave It To Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best. Families were comprised of a wise father who held a good, steady job and provided guidance and wisdom to his children and his wife. Women worked in the home. They cooked and cleaned and made the family dinner.
These old fashioned stereotypes are laughable now but they really did define us. It was who we were and who we would become as we grew into adulthood ourselves. It was simple, sensible and comforting.
Gay Pride Parade, Chicago
It wasn’t until the 1970s that people got tired of being in the closet and came out to claim their place in society. They were shamed and scorned. We didn’t want to think about their sex lives because sex, even among “normal” people, was dirty and private. Sex in any form might be personally glorious but it was socially icky.
Most of us from that era still believe that the most intimate part of normal loving human relations is nobody’s business but our own and we still don’t want to think about the sexual activities of anybody: our parents, ourselves, our own adult children, and most certainly not people whose private parts couldn’t possibly function the way God intended.
The God problem is still a huge obstacle for many people today. Though I wasn’t raised in church I’ll admit that I still find homosexuality baffling and unnatural, but through the years I’ve decided to accept the fact that other people’s private lives are different from mine and none of my business, just as mine is none of theirs.
Over many years I slowly came around to accept this compromise of my childhood indoctrination with limited understanding. Still, when the gay pride movement became a full fledged political issue my reaction has been the same as many others of my generation running to catch up with cultural and social evolution:
“Fine,” I thought. “Whatever. Just keep it to yourselves!”
I still firmly believe that what happens in the bedroom or who we love is a private affair that shouldn’t be flaunted publicly.
Now, in my sixties, I’ve taken the next step: I know that what I think is of no interest to people who believe strongly otherwise.
And I’ve learned as I age that sometimes I am wrong.
I just watched a TV show on HGTV of all places, in which a realtor finds fabulous homes for people who have recently won the lottery. One of the lottery winners was a gay man, a man of hispanic descent with a male life partner who is black. (This show attacked two social issues for the price of one.) I absolutely fell in love with those guys. Their biracial gay relationship wasn’t even mentioned, it was just there. They bought a home together. Neither of them flaunted anything; they didn’t dress weird or talk with a flamboyant lisp. The only reason I know they’re gay is that they were buying a home together and occasionally one would place a hand on the other’s shoulder, just as the man and wife in the story before theirs did.
Those guys were excited about their new home, they love each other and that defines happiness and freedom in every age.
I don’t have to understand their relationship to enjoy it.
Change moves too swiftly for people who grew up in a different world. Political protests, gay pride parades, LGBTQ demands and the like scare us old folks into a corner we can’t understand.
But I’m not too old to learn.
Woodstock 1969
So, here’s the thing: If you’re a young person, try to realize that your parents and grandparents are wise in their years and life experience. They have much wisdom to share, but they didn’t grow up in the same world you did. You have as much to teach them as they can teach you. Just do it gently, patiently and with love.
If you’re an old fart like me, remember that we are the Flower Children, the original Peace and Love Generation who set out to change the world with freedom for all.
Remember?
“Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding; No more falsehoods or derisions, Golden living dreams of visions; mystic crystal revelation and the mind’s true liberation, Aquarius!… Aquarius!…”
— The Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In Copyright 1967 Lyrics by James Rado, Gerome Ragni, Galt MacDermot
We would have had a gay pride parade fifty years ago if we had thought of it.
PS. I’m working on the transgender thing. Please be patient.
(Copyright 2017, D.L. Williams. All rights reserved.)
I was 17 the first time I sat behind a microphone and cued a record. I was nervous but too excited to be scared. I had dreamed of this moment since I was eight. I was ready.
The first button I pushed exploded with thunderous drums, brass and a godlike voice:
On the air at KROY, Sacramento 1969.
“And now, LEE WILLIAMS on a Solid Gold Weekend!”
(Singers) “K-O-B-O, Yuba City!”
The second button I pressed started a rock song and my career.
Liftoff! I felt like I was on my way to the stars.
Program Manager at WHBQ Memphis 1975
Somehow 48 years have slipped away since that Saturday morning in Northern California. My resume is as long as the roads that took me from Yuba City to Sacramento to Los Angeles, back to Sacramento and then on to Memphis, back to Sacramento again, to Los Angeles again, then Chicago and now Dallas.
Along the way I’ve been married twice, became a father and bought three homes in different cities.
I’ve made and lost friends and watch loved ones die.
My son just turned 40.
I’ll get my first Social Security check next month. Medicare has my vitals.
And still, I arise at 2:45 a.m. to go do what I do. The old giant radio studio console has been replaced by computer screens and I haven’t played a song since 1975. I talk about the news these days and frankly, most of the stuff in the news is either boring, depressing or comical in an inside joke way, because at my age I feel like I’ve seen and heard it all before.
In the 60s, at the so-called dawning of the Age of Aquarius I first met my now writing partner, Anita Garner, and was given my dream job at KROY, Sacramento. I was the youngest member of the staff. Now I’m the oldest by more than ten years.
Dave & Amy, Mornings on KLIF, Dallas 2014
Some of my colleagues today are young enough to be my grandkids. As people do between one generation and another we’re nice to each other but we don’t really connect. We can share a laugh and bits of our lives but we can’t relate.
I’ve had a wonderful life including my career in radio, though sometimes I wish I had been allowed to stay in one house for more than just a few years. As Anita points out in her latest post radio life is nomadic. Moving from city to city can be exciting but as I near the end of my working life I wonder almost constantly where I will finally call home.
Between now and then I will write about the places I’ve been, the things I’ve learned and some of the stuff I’ve thunk.
That’s the beauty of a life. By the time you close in on the finish line you have tales to tell and wonders to share.
What follows on this page are some of those tales and thoughts compiled over the past several years.
And, you will love Anita. See inside her delightful mind by clicking here.
I write less than I used to. As time goes by I am becoming convinced that I don’t have anything original or interesting to say.
When I was young I was much smarter. Wisdom came to me so fast I couldn’t explain it all.
But, over the years I’ve come to realize the older I get and the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.
That was an original thought when I thunk it. Nobody enlightened me. I had never heard or read anything like it. It was a brilliant and original epiphany. But now we have the Internet and ego crushing reality is just a search away.
A minute ago I typed “The more I learn…” into Google and here’s what popped up:
The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why bother to learn? — George Bernard Shaw
And:
The more you know, the less you understand. — Lao-Tse
And the real stunner:
The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know. — Socrates
Socrates had my original thought some 2,400 years before I did and said it more succinctly!
AND, in ancient Greek!
Socrates was a wise guy.
Worse yet, I’ll bet he wasn’t the first guy to figure this out, either. He just had a tremendous publicist.
I suppose having an idea expressed by one of the great thinkers in history come to me all by itself is cool but there’s no point in my passing it along. It obviously occurs to everybody eventually.
Plus, if we all regurgitated every brilliantly mundane original thought we have what would become of the poor philosophy majors who have nothing else to do with their educations?
The other reason I don’t write much anymore is because Americans don’t read much anymore.
We don’t consume information, we spew it.
We Tweet. We text. We spend our days expressing every banal thought that crosses our mind in such a way that we don’t have to bother hearing or reading a response.
Maybe we don’t want response. We’re just spewin’.
Maybe we’re just trying to shut off the noise and hear ourselves think.
I could be wrong about this.
Maybe, but how can I know?
I’ve learned so much, so fast, I’m rushing toward total ignorance.
Let me repeat and clarify that: a gold crown fell off of a tooth while I was eating ice cream. Not while I was chewing on taffy or beef jerky…
Ice cream.
Not crunchy butter brickle ice cream; not nutty sundae, rocky road or Ben and Jerry’s Preposterous Peanut Brutal ice cream…
Just plain old chocolate ice cream.
And guess what? It doesn’t hurt at all, not a bit. I have no need to rush to a dentist for an extortionately priced bicuspid emergency. The tooth has been dead for years. My whole mouth is dead, apparently. I’m just going to leave it be.
And that, friends, is the thin silvery lining surrounding the big black cloud of aging. When you reach a certain point pain apparently serves no purpose.
Clara Cowell stopped smoking last week and chose her birthday to mark the occasion.
Her 102nd birthday.
The British mother of four, grandmother of nine, great grandmother of 12, and great-great grandmother of four decided, after 89 years and tens of thousands of cigarettes, she might be pushing her luck.
Clara’s 72 year-old daughter is more concerned that her mom might be tempting fate. She says the secret to Clara’s longevity has been a lifetime of cigarettes and whiskey. Why stop now? She said it cheeky but may have a point.
Everybody knows that smoking is bad for your health, it’s not arguable, but when I read a story like this I wonder if our culture-driven fears aren’t at least as hazardous as the actual risk factors.
Why are we all so scared? Because we’re told we must be. We live our lives surrounded by warning labels and bombarded with anecdotal horror stories mixed with rumors and urban legends. We’re scared of cancer and heart disease and every sort of illness whether attributable to poor nutrition and lousy lifestyle decisions or just dumb luck and DNA.
We live in constant fear of things that will probably never happen.
And here’s the kicker, the ultimate damned-if-you-do-or-don’t irony: the same health experts who shake their fingers at us when we eat a Big Mac or don’t get enough sleep insist that stress will kill us deader than anything.
Yes, of course we should be careful when we’re driving and mindful of how much bad stuff we ingest but is a lifetime of worry helpful in any way? Of course it isn’t.
Hand-wringing worrywarts are everywhere. They warn us with no uncertain gravity that sugar and butter are bad for us but artificial sweeteners and butter substitutes may be even worse. They extol the virtues of exercise and then some famous long distance runner drops dead from a heart attack.
Clara and her daughter
Sure, don’t smoke. But, diet drinks? Less red meat? I don’t know.
I think we can be too careful. And when you see a 102 year-old woman giving up cigarettes after 90 years I think there are times when a pound of prevention is a silly concession to cultural bullying.
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