So long, March .... bye-bye, Winter .... unfinished original & four addendums

FramWinter begins November 1 and ends March 31. Snow and cold might yet torment us for a while longer, but they cannot last. I will also say happy birthday today to Benny and to Bud, who managed to arrive just before March departed. The music, I would think, is self-evident .... I might change it .... I could not decide with what "music to end March by" .... but, perhaps, the selection is an omen and may be appropriate since the Rolling Stones will be in town on June 3. (Yes, really. Can you believe it?) Actually, this is an unfinished post, but I put it up anyway because I like to note the end of my birth month and I ran out of time .... hmmmm .... out of time. I might add more to this post. I have thought of publishing something like this, and then just adding new thoughts to it periodically -- a never-ending post, so to speak.

Scene II, Act I / "A Wife for a Month" by John Fletcher 1624

"I would chuse March, for I would come in like a Lion ....

But you'd go out like a Lamb when you went to hanging."

Lassiter / "Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey 1912

"I reckon you will. An' I'll never ask you. I'm a man of strange beliefs an' ways of thinkin', an' I seem to see into the future an' feel things hard to explain. The trail I've been followin' for so many years was twisted en' tangled, but it's straightenin' out now ...."

Addendum No. 01 / April 4, 2015: Never an ending ??

I just might try this for a while .... a never-ending post, I mean.

It will be an interesting end of May / beginning of June for me. On May 26, I will be taking former wife No. 2 to the Mayo Clinic for a follow-up medical appointment; on May 28, I will be an observer at an event about twelve hours flight time from home; on June 3, I will be attending the Rolling Stones concert back home .... I just purchased four tickets .... rock 'n' roll, baby ....

I have decided to open this post up for comments, at least temporarily, since it is "temporarily never-ending." What is life without experimentation? Although I prefer the past in many ways, like it or not life is learning about the present ....

Addendum No. 02 / April 7, 2015: The story of books

Wolf Larsen / "The Sea-Wolf" by Jack London 1904

"Wolf Larsen answered with an indescribable air of sadness .... 'My mistake was in ever opening the books.'"

Among my earliest memories are of my mother reading to me. Then, she taught me to read. It was the only area in which I excelled when I entered school.

I was eleven when I approached the librarian to check out four or five books from the "adult section" of the local public library. There was nothing left in the "children's section" either unread by me or of interest to me. The librarian telephoned my mother, who said it was fine for me to have them, and I left the building on my way to an entirely new world of reading material.

It was just a few weeks later, my self-confidence at new heights, a clerk at a local bookstore asked me who was reading the books I was buying. I replied that I was reading them. She shook her head and rolled her eyes. The books were not salacious in any way, simply, rather, it would seem, unusual reading for boys: Biographies on men like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin; studies on space and undersea exploration, and on archaeological discoveries; novels by prominent literary writers: James Joyce, Norman Mailer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henry Miller; philosophy from Bertrand Russell.

That was the beginning. Having had a pair of dynamic English teachers in terms of reading throughout my six years of junior and senior high school fueled the fire and opened still broader vistas. Having had a professor in college who often read poetry in class with emotion and a Virginia accent and another who enjoyed reading passages in Old and Middle English sent me deeper into classic poetry and into understanding the evolution of language.

The pattern never changed, only the number of books I consumed any given year. During peak periods, I was reading up to about one-hundred-fifty a year. I no longer read voraciously, but I always am working on something.

I live alone, so I usually am reading a book while I am eating .... most of the food I eat is cold by the time I finish it.

I live alone, so I usually fall asleep at night with a book next to me.

I live alone, so I usually ....

Addendum No. 03 / April 10, 2015: Newspaper work
Ernest Hemingway / Letter to Charles Fenton 1952

"In newspaper work you have to learn to forget every day what happened the day before .... I was working on a newspaper and so I cannot remember as I should .... newspaper work is valuable up until a point that it forcibly begins to destroy your memory. A writer must leave it before that point. But he will always have scars from it."

 

Those who wander by here on occasion probably know that I have been an on-again / off-again journalist. The last time I actually was gainfully employed practicing it (regular hours / regular paycheck) was May 2009 .... although I still occasionally indulge, both formally and informally. Anyway .... I have been thinking about stories / interviews I wish I would have the opportunity to do. Here are a couple, in no particular order.

Hearing Patti Smith singing, "Be My Baby," in one of my recent posts brought back thoughts of Ronnie Specter. I would so love to be able to talk with her about her experiences in the world of music and her days with Phil Specter. She must be a walking encyclopedia regarding many of the key elements in the history of rock 'n' roll. After the interview, I would like to take her out to dinner.

I had a brief association with the rodeo circuit when I was young, and I would like to sit down with a few of these fellows -- the last of the real cowboys -- and hear them talk about the things they have done and seen. I have had one-on-one sessions with professional football and baseball players. I have not interviewed any "major league" athletes from other sports, but I think rodeo guys might be the realest of the real among any and all professional athletes.

War, contrary to the opinion of some, is not my obsession or something I idealize, but over time I have interviewed a number of extraordinary warriors. I would like to talk with more of them and compare notes and hear their individual stories. At the top of my list right now is Robert O'Neill, the SEAL who shot and killed Osama bin Laden. In actuality, though, I would rather interview him twenty years from now when the event has entered the realm of history and he has had ample time to reflect upon it and to live with it in a personal sense.

Just to mention a male member of the rock 'n' roll ensemble from the past generation (or two), I would pick Ritchie Blackmore to interview because, in my opinion, he is the best of the guitar men, among the quietest publicly and, actually, comes off as being sort of weird.

I will keep this list to five individuals or types for now, and I suppose I am obligated to mention a politician. I have had some memorable moments with a few, some American and some not, including two sitting presidents and one sitting vice president -- none of whom are alive today. I cannot think of one American politician living today I really would especially care to sit in the same room with to interview -- but, to spread our wings and stretch our horizons, I would love to have a long talk with Vladimir Putin. In terms of politicians among us today, he probably is the realest of the real and, most certainly, the most interesting, the most dangerous, the most historically and nationalistically driven.

Pausing for a moment and thinking a bit more, I would love to reminisce with Fidel Castro, too. Yes, I might even prefer to talk with him even more than with Putin. Castro is history; Putin still is making it, so he can wait.

I suppose I should not mention this, but I will. The best interviews come when a bottle or two of liquor is part of the paraphernalia in the room. That is when words like trust, honor and simpatico become part of the process and the interview turns into a conversation and a true learning experience. I have had a couple of "adventures" such as that, and, selfish man that I am, getting to see inside someone is more important to me than a newspaper story few will ever read.

By the way, Fenton was a biographer, and I think Hemingway remembered everything about his newspaper days very well .... he just did not want to share those memories with Fenton.

Addendum No. 04 / April 13, 2015: Memory of a girl & a dance
Keith Reid & Gary Brooker / "A Whiter Shade of Pale" 1967

"That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale
She said, 'There is no reason
And the truth is plain to see.'"

I remember a girl and sometimes think of her.

I was working at my first job as a newspaper reporter. She was seventeen and, would you believe, I was interviewing her because she was a high school super star? She was the best woman athlete, the top scholar, active in many extra-curricular programs and very attractive. She was about to graduate as No. 1 in her class, had college plans and seemed to be on her way to a bright future.

I remember the same girl about a year later.

I noticed her at an after-hours bar on the outside of city limits. I was waiting for "my love" of the moment, a divorced mother of three who was twenty-five and said she had gotten pregnant the "first time" she "had done it." I will not go into the details of our romance, but I will mention her ex-husband had hit her one night in my presence at a bar, and, as the expression goes, I proceeded to "wipe up the floor" with him. The ex-husband's father, a local political figure and office holder, later threatened to "destroy" me. You might imagine how I reacted to that:

"Thank you, sir, but neither you nor your son matter to me in the slightest. I suggest you keep it that way," said I, with my best smirk on my lips. So ended that conversation and any problems with son or father.

Back on point: I was bored while waiting for my girlfriend, so I approached the former high school super star and her boyfriend. I knew him mostly by reputation. I had heard that she had gotten deeply involved with alcohol and drugs through her boyfriend, who openly abused her. I spoke with her for a few minutes while he was engaged in a game of pool, then asked her if she wanted to dance. She did.

She seemed distracted and disoriented while we were dancing, but when I asked her if she was going to a well-advertised party the next night she slipped out of her daze instantaneously. She stopped our dance, looked into my eyes with near-glaring intensity and replied, "Are you? I'll go if you will."

She knew me in the sense of who I was and what I did. Her eyes had gone from vacant to deeply penetrating. One of her hands was literally clutching my shirt like it was a lifeline to safety. It was clear what she was asking and what she was offering. She was desperate to leave the life she had fallen into -- the centerpiece of which revolved round drugs -- and was asking me to take her from her boyfriend, even offering herself for the chance to escape. Her boyfriend approached and tried to cut in on our dance. I told him to get himself a beer and tell the bartender to put it on my tab. He snickered and left.

I told her that my girlfriend had plans for us the next night, which did not include the party. She sighed, we danced through the same song a second and then a third time, and that was that. I never saw her again.

Cutting to the chase: My girlfriend and I broke up a few weeks later when I moved on to another job and another town. This girlfriend was one of three women other than my two former wives with whom I had a serious relationship. (Seem like too many / too few ??) To be honest, the fact that she had three children with two of them already in school frightened me more than a little, but I was very emotionally attached to her for a while.

When recalling that era in my life, the girl I remember most is not my divorcee girlfriend, but, rather, the one-time high school super star. I never have been able to get her out of my mind -- her face and her eyes and her voice. It makes me shudder thinking about it at times. I played the same song three times on a jukebox. That is all the longer we were together -- fifteen or twenty minutes -- dancing, but I remember how she wore her hair, what she was wearing, even her shoes. I see her listless at first, then her entire being awaken when I mentioned the party. She was a beautiful girl, absolutely, and very intelligent and very talented; I would have said yes to the party had I not been involved with another woman.

It is possible this young lady made it out of a dismal existence on her own. I never heard and I never will know, but I cannot help from wondering if I might have been able to assist her to escape from it if only I had gone to that party. I have been unable to forget that she sought my help and I did not give it.

Then, there is the song we danced to .... when I hear it now my mind drifts and I will close my eyes and I still am dancing with her. There are times I question if I walked away from something even more .... even, maybe, from the end of a rainbow. Why else does the memory linger so strongly, so distinctly? But, mostly, it bothers me and almost haunts me in a sense that I did not try to help her.