Words to Live By - Or Maybe Die!

We columnists, or as Sid the Mangling Editor classifies us, “contributing writers”, must use words and we must obtain them from quotes or out of a thesaurus or from graffiti.

So we use borrowed words.

We cannot make up words, because all of the good ones have already been discovered. Misspelling existing words does not count as new ones. Sid misspelled “rudiments” for several months until I called his hand on it. I was right, but it didn’t keep him from putting my work two pages behind the “Partners for Pets” appeal.

I used the word “myriads” incorrectly in a column once, and a man stopped at our table at the Gazebo the next week, introduced himself as being a graduate of my alma mater and later sent me an E-mail that Dr. Zimmerman of that institution would have chided me for my error if he were still alive. I would like to start regular communication with him since we have something in common, but I cannot find my English textbook from the first half of the last century and I know that he will be continuously finding fault with my word usage.

Most educated folks like to quote famous people. Mark Twain is quoted more than anyone else, with the possible exception of Madonna. Twain wrote about steamboats and young boys in caves and Indians (he spelled it “Injuns”, and I am glad that Dr. Zimmerman was not around. Twain would have been in big trouble). He did make a comment about government on occasion, and I really like the one that says “Congress has been proven to be the only truly Native American criminal class”. He deserves being read. Or you can read Madonna, if you wish. Each has left a mark on civilization.

On occasion I receive an E-mail purporting to be quotes from Will Rogers. They are referring to Will Rogers the writer and raconteur, not Will Rogers who sells Fords on Lafayette Street. You can tell how Ford sales are going in Marianna by observing where Will has lunch. Good sales….Madison‘s. Low or no sales……..sardines and saltines at a local convenience store.

Dr. Tom Kinchen is president of the Baptist College of Florida in Graceville. When he was Chair of the Chamber of Commerce I got to know and to admire him. Not that I don’t admire all Baptist preachers. I praise them so I can cover all bases on my way down Life’s path. John Wesley may have gotten it all wrong, and I want to be assured of some mercy at the Pearly Gates.

Dr. Kinchen is fond of quoting Winston Churchill, as am I. Churchill should have the lion’s share of the credit for our victory in World War II. He is praised for rallying his people in the darkest of days. Tom should be careful, though. Once Churchill announced that the people of Britain would have to do without the necessities of life in order to save civilization. Later that evening he hosted some newsmen, and regaled them with stories as he smoked a Cuban cigar (an H. Upmann, my favorite) and enjoyed a snifter of brandy. When questioned about this seeming contradiction between his earlier words and his actions that night, he explained “I said ‘necessities’ not ‘luxuries’ ”. I hope that Tom never quotes this. You know how the Baptists are about brandy.

I am certain that I do not have to remind the twelve regular readers of my column that several weeks ago I won a medal in a 5K run/walk. I am quite proud of it, and I would show it off in public more often, but I pinned it to my pajamas and the ribbon is somewhat ragged now.

Since then I have been receiving quotes via E-mail that are gleaned from the “Runner’s World” magazine. They are meant, I am sure, to be inspirational, and I will leave it to you to determine who forwards them to me. Here is one:

“Winning is not about headlines and hardware (medals). It’s only about attitude. A winner is a person who goes out today and every day and attempts to be the best runner and best person they can be. Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism, and never, ever, ever giving up.”



Anyone who reads that challenge without feeling his heart beat faster is on the way to becoming a vegetable, and I am far from that. The day that I received this I went out and cut a minute off my best three mile time. How could I not?

And then I received this one:

“I usually run the first half of the marathon and run-walk the last half. It gets harder to run 26.2 miles at my age, but I’m inspired by the memory of friends I’ve lost”.

This was written by an 87 year-old grandmother of ten who is a marathon runner.

Wait just a cotton-picking minute (words from Tennessee Ernie Ford)! If there ever was a case for Jethro Gibbs of NCIS, this is it! This woman is eighty seven years of age, and she has lost all of her friends? That is suspicious. Where did she lose them? Are they really lost, or just tucked away in leg irons in an abandoned warehouse? Were they truly her friends, or were they “drafting” on her in these marathons that she has run for the better part of a century, and so she sought revenge?

And ten grandchildren! This indicates more missing persons. Where are the parents? Grandchildren only get here by way of children. I know about this, first hand. Most grandparents wish that there had been a way to skip children and go directly to grandchildren. Someone had better keep a constant check on this marathoner’s grandchildren if they are in their teens and they hang around dear old granny very much, especially on race days when there is a full moon. Forewarned is forearmed (I don’t know who first said this. It might have been Mark Twain, or maybe Madonna)!

I believe that there is enough mystery here for an Alfred Hitchcock show. I am reminded of Pogo, my favorite comic strip character. Upon being told that a black widow spider, immediately after mating, kills and eats her spouse, Pogo’s comment was: “You mess ‘round with black widow spiders, you gotta ‘spec trouble”.

Does the same go for all marathon runners? I have nothing against them, male or female. In fact, I have breakfast with a lady marathoner often, and I really enjoy it, but when she gets to be eighty seven, don’t expect Homer to be hanging around!

Cousin Ed and the President of Gatorland

Almost every family, particularly the families of the South, will have a character that is usually described as “larger than life”. He may be a father figure or a barroom brawler. The character may be rich or poor as dirt in a two rut road; brave, or maybe just afflicted with bravado, but still will be described as “larger than life”.

In the Hirt family our larger than life character was my father’s first cousin, and thus my second cousin or, as some genealogical freaks would determine, my “first cousin, once removed”. Here is his story.

The year was 1947, World War II was over, and floods of young veterans cast about for institutions of higher learning so that they could ready themselves, with the aid of the G. I. Bill, for the future. One of the schools open to them was the Florida State College For Women in Tallahassee. Ed Williamson, my father’s first cousin, applied there for a position as a physical education instructor, and was hired by President Doak Campbell.

And before the year was out he sent a message to the President of the University of Florida to “Go to Hell” when that worthy ordered that there would be no football at FSU. The Gator president did not take his advice, but Cousin Ed went down in the football history books as the first football coach of Florida State University.

Ed and Jerry David (J. D) Williamson were brothers. Their mother was widowed and had been left to raise them. My father was assigned as their guardian in fiscal matters. The Great Depression was in full force when the two graduated from Leon High School, but they went to the University of Florida on football scholarships. At graduation J. D. became a realtor in Jacksonville and Ed went into high school coaching, first in Newberry and later in St. Augustine and finally Lake City. He was there when World War II began.

Cousin Ed applied for a commission in the Navy, but before it came through he was drafted into the Army. I recall going with my parents down to the railroad depot at River Junction to see him. He was physically fit, but the uniform he wore sagged and bagged on him. He chatted with us for a few minutes, and the train pulled out. A few weeks later he came back through, his Navy commission having caught up with him. His blue sleeve bore the single gold stripe of an ensign, U. S. Navy.

The glamour sea duty for young officers was the patrol torpedo boat, the famed “PT” craft that was fast and armed with torpedoes and machine guns. John F. Kennedy, fated to be our President, commanded the PT 109. Ed applied for this duty, but the Navy, in its wisdom, decided he was not physically fit, so he was given command of an Armed Guard, consisting of twenty eight Navy enlisted gunners, and placed on a merchant ship destined to cross and re-cross the Atlantic, first to England and later to Russia on the infamous Murmansk run.

North Sea convoys could only go as fast as the slowest merchant ship, so they plodded across the turbulent seas at a crawling pace, sought after by U Boats and, when close to the continent of Europe, long range German bombers. And always the storms seemed to seek them out, raging against them, tossing frigid ocean waters across their decks. A man falling over the side would be left to float until he died, which often was within minutes of coming in contact with the water.

When the war ended Williamson came home to Tallahassee, and sought employment at the Florida State College for Women, a facility that was answering the call of returning veterans who would go to school under the G. I. Bill. He was there when the leaders of the university decided that a football team was just what was needed to put the newly minted Florida State University on the map.

There was some dissention about this action. One of the committee said that he had never seen a great university that had a football team. Another came back with “I have never seen a great university that did not have a football team”. That committee member, a gentleman named Coyle Moore, won, and a search began for a football coach that had a PH. D.

After some discussion Cousin Ed was called in, offered the job even though he did not have the PH. D. and he accepted, on the condition that he would hold the position for only one year, “win, lose or draw”.

One day President Doak Campbell called Ed in and read a letter from the president of the University of Florida. The missive stated that the male contingent at FSU would be considered a branch of his school, and there would be no football program. Cousin Ed said: “Tell him to go to hell…..you run your program and we’ll run ours”.

The first season was a losing season, but an interesting one. The call for players went out, and one hundred and twenty five men showed up. There was not enough uniforms or equipment. Attrition took care of the high numbers; Ed only cut one man, a veteran that showed up smoking a big cigar. (Some years later Pete McDaniel, a Jackson County Commissioner and a resident of Sneads, owned up to this ‘honor’. Pete told me that Cousin Ed looked at him and his cigar and said “McDaniel, turn in your shoes”. This was all that the players had been issued).

Cousin Ed asked for an assistant coach. He got Jack Haskin. Jack was made backfield coach. He later was the director of the famous “Flying High” FSU Circus. And that was the entire staff; no other coaches, no trainers, no nothing. In the University Club, overlooking Bowden Field at Doak Campbell Stadium, are pictures of each coach and his staff. Cousin Ed is there, looking stern and grim. Jack Haskin is next to him, also looking stern and grim. Perhaps they looked that way because the team had no name, and was facing their initial match-up.

The first game was against Stetson. FSU lost by one touchdown. A contest was held to select a name. “Tarpons” was bandied about, but that was the name of the women’s swim team. “Senators”, “Falcons” and even “Tallywhackers”, but “Seminole” won out.

Cousin Ed finished out the season, 0-5, and, true to his word, stepped down. Bill McGrotha, longtime sports writer and author of “Seminoles! The First Forty Years”, referred to him as “gentlemanly” and “benevolent”. His players called him “Mr. Nice Guy”. He was followed by Veller and Nugent and Mudra and eventually Bowden.

But none of those gentlemen ever told the President of the University of Florida to “Go To HELL”.

Optimism

We have all heard definitions of an optimist.

“A pessimist says that a glass of water is half empty. An optimist says that it is half full”.

The little boy who is always an optimist about everything, so his parents decide to cure him by giving him a room full of manure for Christmas. With a joyful whoop, the little fellow starts digging in the pile. “With all of this manure, there has to be a pony here”.

And my favorite: “a pessimist says that there is a little bad in every woman. An optimist says ‘I certainly hope so’ “.

So with optimism in mind, let us think about our country.

The Fourth of July is celebrated as our country’s birthday. Some brave men got together and hammered out a declaration that changed the world. John Adams, later to become our country’s first vice president and its second president, said that we should celebrate this day with “speeches and feasting and fireworks”. Most of us do just that.

But on this Fourth of July I sat in a church, and I heard the speaker bemoan the condition of our country, charging off its problems to the failure of our people to recognize that the Creator influenced those brave men that signed our Declaration. He castigated our politics and our way of life and called for us to return, in essence, to the “good days” of history when all was well and straight and true.

It was fine to be reminded of these things. But as I listened I thought about our country’s history.

I have been a student of this history for most of my life. I know, for instance, that the decision to break away from England was by no means unanimous. I know that our American Civil War could have been averted if men of good will had listened to each other and had been willing to work out peacefully the problems of slavery and foreign trade and states’ rights. I know that, from day one, the press (or the media, as we call it now) has been one-sided,leaning one way or the other, and trying to influence either the people or those folks in office.

I know that there have always been folks who have extraordinary influence with politicians, and who have used that influence for their own personal well being.



I know that each president, except for those who died in office early, has been castigated by his political opponents, as ours is today, and as President Bush was a few years ago, and as our next one will be. The latest finger pointing was just last week, when President Obama removed the commanding general from Afghanistan. We forget, or some of us may not know, that one of the strengths of our country lies in the civilian control of our military. Truman removed General McArthur in Korea, who had been a hero of World War II. Lincoln removed General McClellan, who wasn’t much of a general, and who also had political ambitions, much like McArthur’s. Franklin Roosevelt fired General Short and Admiral Kimmel after Pearl Harbor had been attacked, even though he was as much at fault as anyone for the Japanese military success.

We blame a president for profligate spending of our people’s dollars, when we should know that the Congress must appropriate the money, and we (speaking collectively) want our representatives to “bring home the bacon” in the form of special projects for our town or county or state.

We blame a president for treaties signed with foreign powers, and we forget that the Senate must approve each treaty.

We blame the Congress for passing improper laws, when we ourselves do not bother to protest or to track and criticize the members except near election times.

In spite of all this, I am an optimist about our country and its future. After all, our country is only two hundred and thirty four years old, a span not quite three times my own age. It is possible that I could have shaken the hand of a man who shook the hand of a Signer of the Declaration of Independence!

In 1953 I was privileged to see the musical “South Pacific” on Broadway. It still had most of its original cast. It was grandly and beautifully staged, and to a Southern boy it was magical.

“South Pacific” was a love story and a war story and a story of intrigue and a protest against racism, all happening on a small island in the midst of a huge ocean. And in one song Mary Martin stepped center stage and sang “I am only a cock-eyed optimist, immature and incurably green, but I am stuck like a dope, with a thing called hope, and I can’t get it out of my head”.

So here I am, an optimist stuck with a thing called hope, believing in my country and feeling that we will recover from whatever ails us and we will get better and better.

As soon as we throw the rascals out!

Travels with Stuart

John Steinbeck, one of America’s most popular authors of the last century, wrote many books, including Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row. Some were made into movies, and he received several awards for them. My favorite was Travels with Charley. This chronicled his adventures throughout the United States, driving a pickup truck with a special cabin built on the back and accompanied by the family poodle Charley. The time was in the sixties, and the book had been suggested by no less a public figure than Adlai Stevenson.
So, with a tip of the hat to Mr. Steinbeck I have titled this work Travels with Stuart. Stuart is not a poodle, even though at one time his hair hung down to his shoulders. He is now a member of Piper High School’s Junior ROTC program, and he has a “buzz” cut that looks good on him. He is my oldest grandson.

When my wife Theresa and I were making annual pilgrimages to battlefields of the War of Northern Aggression, we would on occasion deviate from this invasion of the Nawth and pick up Stuart. We would visit U. S. Navy ships which are now museums. Our favorites are at Charleston’s Patriot Point, where we would clamber up the ladders of the U. S. S. Yorktown and marvel at the workings of this giant ship. Then Theresa would ensconce herself on a bench while Stuart and I would explore the destroyer and the submarine.

After Theresa’s death I did not plan on any more trips. A call from Stuart changed that: “Okay, Homer, we are going to Gettysburg, and Dad is driving us”. I could not resist such a command, even though it was from a teenager much below me in rank and age.

The Gettysburg trip was good, and I refrained from correcting the battlefield guides when they leaned a bit too far toward the Union side. Southbound took us through the Shenandoah Valley, a spot that is so beautiful that words cannot do it justice. We saw General Lee’s vault, and placed coins on his horse Traveler’s grave, just outside Lee Chapel. The two of us (Dad was on his cell phone) walked through the cemetery and stood before Stonewall Jackson’s grave. I told him why the fresh lemons were scattered there.

New Market had been covered the day before. The “Field of Lost Shoes” was especially poignant, since many of the young students from Virginia Military Institute that died there were Stuart’s age.

On other excursions Stuart and I have covered Shiloh battlefield, where we spoke of the anomaly of the name: “Shiloh” means “peace“, but one of the bloodiest battles of the War was fought there; the marks of combat still are evident on trees.

We traced Nathan Bedford Forrest’s excursions through Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. Forrest was rated by many historians as the best tactical general of either side. We went to Okalona; his brother died there in his arms. We stood by Tishomingo Creek at Brice’s Crossroads, and marveled at his ability to “call the shots” against an arrogant enemy.

Last year Stuart was with me when I acquired “Ron The Elephant” of local Republican fame. We had gone to Patriot’s Point and then had gotten underway for Wilmington. As we were passing through North Myrtle Beach I spotted a display of statues. We pulled in, and I purchased a six foot by four foot image of an elephant, made of resin, and we brought him back to Sneads in the rear of my Explorer. Stuart fully expected us to be stopped somewhere along the way by a state trooper.

This year “Travels with Stuart” began in Sunrise, his home town, and took us through a part of Florida that is not as well known as the lands that border the interstates and the toll roads. We rode north for a time and then cut over through Indiantown and Okeechobee. I told him of the great cattle drives, much like those that made the West famous in the 1800s. We skirted Lake Okeechobee, where I was once tempted to assist some locals in establishing a barge terminal. We went through Sebring and into Lakeland.

Lakeland is the home of my college. Florida Southern does not have a football team nor a stadium, but it has something that no other institution possesses. It has twelve buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which makes it the largest concentration of his architecture in the world. I described how I felt when I met Mr. Wright and when I sat in an audience of young students and heard him say to us: “There is probably no one here that is intelligent enough to understand what I am about to tell you”. What a way to attract the attention of a group of college students! Wright once said: “At an early age I was forced to choose between an honest arrogance and a false humility. I chose the former, and I have never regretted it”.

We then cut over to a coastal route and visited Cedar Key. In 1923 my father had the choice of two towns in which to establish his Ford dealership. One was Chattahoochee and the other was Cedar Key. I am glad he chose the former.

As we drove I told him about the towns that we went through. Perry, the “Forest Capital”, had a Ford dealer who was single, as was I, in the 1960’s, and Theresa dated him while she was dating me. This amused Stuart somewhat, because young folks do not think of parents and grandparents as ever having been romantic. I showed him where Ted Turner’s plantation is, and we commiserated with Ted because he was once married to Hanoi Jane.

Arrival in Sneads was uneventful, but the days that have followed have been exciting to him. Stuart really likes Jackson County, with its rivers and lakes and open spaces. We had breakfast with The Runner one morning at The Gazebo. The conversation, as usual, was great, but a three way one this time.

Evenings have often been spent attending fund raisers for candidates. Stuart reveled in listening to folks like Jack Pizza, who described to him how Air Force pilots were trained to deliver the “where did everyone go” bomb. Michelle Kimbrough sold him on trying for helicopter training when he enlists in the Army. He heard from former paratroopers and from Marines (there are no “former” Marines”) and retired Navy men.

He met Marti Coley, and shared with her a political handout that had been autographed by her late husband when he ran for the Legislature. David wrote “be sure to vote when you are old enough”, and I suspect that he will do just that. He was impressed with other candidates but even more so with the attendees that took time to talk with him on an adult level.

Thursday found us at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. I collected my salute at the gate, which impressed him, and he impressed me by properly landing an F-14 Tomcat on the deck of a carrier while “flying” a simulator.

We visited Partners for Pets Friday, carrying old towels and a cash donation, and he learned about Phil Rotollo, the founder. Saturday we went to Seacrest Wolf Preserve. He donned a vest and worked as a volunteer on the tour led by Cynthia and Wayne Watkins. Cynthia praised him and awarded him a “totally awesome” wolf tee shirt.

My “Travels with Stuart” are not yet over. I am counting on them continuing for a year or two, and leaving me with a grand legacy of great times with a fine travel companion, and perhaps material for another column or two.

AN IMPERFECT FATHER!

In today’s newspapers we see article after article about fathers, fat ones and thin ones, tall and short ones, business fathers and professional fathers: all kinds of fathers. After all, it is Fathers’ Day.

One thing I noted, though, was that each was perfect, or near perfect. I suspect that during this coming week, in a courtroom somewhere, a man will stand convicted of a heinous crime, and a neighbor will testify as a character witness, and will say: “but he is a good father”.
My father was far from perfect, by today’s standards.
I was attempting to write a Fathers’ Day column.
I began with these three paragraphs, and went on to list why I did not consider my own father to be like the fathers that others looked up to, the fathers that loved them, that hugged them, that stayed at home with them.

I told about his seeming lack of emotion when I had difficult times as a child, as a teenager and as a young adult. I explained that he never took the time out of his busy life to take me fishing or hunting.

I complained about lying in my bed, beset with polio and pain and paralysis, with my mother beside me, but with my father only occasionally standing in the door, stoic and solemn. I described the ceremony when my mother pinned my Eagle Scout badge on me in the Chattahoochee Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and he sat quietly in the audience.

My working days began early in my life, toiling at my father’s Ford dealership, first cleaning floors and tools in the service department, later inventorying parts in the parts department while my friends attended Christmas parties during the holidays. I described how he had driven me to the airport in Tallahassee to go to my first duty station in the Pacific during the Korean War, and how he shook my hand and told me to “be careful”, the exact words he used the first time he let me drive our family car by myself.

Then I tried to ameliorate this description, and to justify his failings, by telling of his early childhood and his growing up without a father; his service to his country when he went to France during the Great War; his hard work in beginning his dealership in Chattahoochee and how it survived through the Depression and World War II.

I remembered when I was at home on my “boot” leave and he asked me if I felt if I were capable of being an officer. When I assured him that I was, he said: “Do it. You owe it to your country”. He did not suggest that an officer’s life might well be easier for me. And when I finished my six years of active duty, and returned home, he welcomed me, not with a hug or with tears, but by handing me the keys to the front door of the dealership and telling me to open the next morning, and that I would be back in the parts department at the same wage that I was paid nine years before.

As I wrote out these scathing remarks, taking out some deep seated frustrations, I recalled a letter that I had received from him in his later years. He must have been seventy five years old. He had typed out, on his old manual typewriter, a letter to me that was titled “On Being Proud”. I found it and re-read it. He listed some things that I had forgotten: my eagerness to learn to read and to find out things from books; my work in the Boy Scouts as a leader; my college career.

He told me how pleased he was that I had not accepted a direct commission in the Air Force but had decided to enlist in the U. S. Navy and later to become an officer. He praised my work with our church. He described how happy he was when Theresa and I adopted our three children. He ended up with praise for my service to my community.

And as I read the letter, I realized that I was, indeed, writing about “An Imperfect Father”.

I was writing about myself.