The principal of Central Catholic High School in the year of my graduation, 1958, was the impenetrable Brother George, an average-sized man of erect posture, complete authority and little self-doubt. He walked, always enrobed, as if on air, strewing directions behind him like so many rose petals, raising his eyebrows only for emphasis, master of all he surveyed. If Brother George said something, there was no doubt it was true, and his morning addresses over the school’s public address system were instructions to live by. So when he rose to the dais to finally speak at Central’s decorous baccalaureate ceremonies, there was no doubt that life-altering enlightenments were on the way.
“Today, you begin a new part of your lives,” he began, in typical stentorian tones. “You are leaving another part behind you, but a part that has already been incorporated into your beings, a part that will remain in your subconscious when your conscious mind can barely recall it.” Then, the shocking advisory: “Look around you, left and right, front and back, take a moment. Almost all of these classmates you see surrounding you, all these people you have shared your lives with for the past four years, those closest to you in good times and in bad, you will, I regret to say, never see again. So embrace them one last time, tell them what they mean to you before you go on your way, value this moment. Your lives and your friends will never be the same.”
What? This can’t be true, Brother George, surely---for once in your life---you jest. I felt like I’d been hit by a hammer, coldcocked by an errant paragraph, barely able to recognize the remainder of the address. I had known my friends forever, would continue to know them, there was no way this information could be correct. But gnawing away in the rearmost sections of my cerebral cortex was a sad reminder: Brother George was always right. And he would be right again. This was, indeed, the last time I would ever see my high-school classmates. I couldn’t tell you where a single one of them is today. I couldn’t have told you even ten years after Brother George’s admonition.
Pocahontas Days
At OSU, a couple years in, I met a vivacious young girl named Rita Peyton, part Native American, grew up on one of Oklahoma’s many reservations, her father an Indian agent. It was a year of good times, laughter, introspection, shared secrets, evenings spent on the banks of the University’s lovely Theta Pond investigating anatomical phenomena. Then, just like that, it was over, time for me to leave and begin a new chapter in Manhattan, time for Rita to continue serious pursuit of her degree. I managed to somehow smuggle her into my room despite the watchful eyes of Ma Kratchit for one last night of romance. The next day, I kissed her and headed for a waiting car. “Don’t look back,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it.” I walked away feeling like a sad character in a corny movie, but the lump in my throat belied corniness. Here was an exceptional woman I was leaving for the last time. Oh sure, anything was possible, but Brother George’s words have a way of echoing in your ears. This Last Time business was an obvious albatross humans carted around for the balance of their lives. “Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild. With a faery, hand in hand. For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” Yeats said that.
The Rise & Fall Of Psychedelia
The thing is, we usually get to choose our Last Times. Leaving Austin in 1962, at the height of its magical heydey, was a choice. However good future places got, there would never be another place like that. Our friends, who went west into San Francisco’s Summer of Love, had boundless optimism for the future, but there was only one Summer of Love, one Woodstock, one spectacular Last Time for Peace & Love. Despite Tim Robbins, we never learned how to Make Love Stay, to avoid those dreaded but inevitable Last Times.
The Subterranean Circus rose in 1967, erected on a whim and a prayer, buoyed by magic and color and music and different kinds of high. It foreshadowed others of its kind, a generation of young entrepreneurs, counterculture clubs filled with spirit and information and consciousness-altering suggestions. Minds opened, lives changed, hopes rose, perhaps to impossible levels. And then, of course, the Cosmic Arbiter decided, as he always does, that it was time for another swing of the pendulum. The Circus and most of its friends closed by 1990. When the doors slammed shut for the last time, I was in Miami at a race track. Like my old flame Rita Peyton, I couldn’t stand to watch. These Last Times, I fear, are only suitable for people with uncommonly rugged constitutions.
I Left My Heart In Sausalito
As we grow older, there are more and more of these Last Times. This is the last time I’ll see Paris, visit the East Village, nosh at the Cafe du Monde. The last time I’ll see the sun set in Malibu, drive through Big Sur, hike the trails of Yellowstone, peek at the Grand Canyon. It’s enough to drive a man maudlin, but that’s to be resisted at all costs. Better to appreciate the last time, spin that jack for all its worth. A short few years ago, Siobhan and I were returning from Sausalito to San Francisco via Tiburon on the last ferry of the day, a cherished experience for anyone, and though it was July, the trip grew increasingly chilly. Siobhan, at a consistent 114 pounds, is not one for cold of any sort and usually retreats at its first suggestions, but there she was, erect on her seat, gazing at distant Alcatraz through the light haze, taking in all the scenery.
“You must be freezing,” I said. “Don’t you want to go inside?” No, no she didn’t, came the reply. “I’ll probably never be here again. I want to take it all in. I want to remember everything.” As answers go, a wise and perfect one. We can hope to do no better.
Sausalito and The Icon
April To The Fore
In 1974, with the encouragement of my then-wife Harolyn Locklair and her worldly cohort Shelley Browning, an expert in thoroughbred horse matters, I bought my first mare at the Ocala Breeders Sales facility. The cost was a tidy $16,000, but Bonquill turned out to be quite a bargain and I was off and running in the racing business, an invigorating journey through golden forests and scary minefields, replete with the Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat. Over the years, with whatever partner, we foaled the mares, raised the feisty, loveable babies and sent them off into the world to earn a living, sometimes for better, more often for worse. Months of slow going, however, were eventually compensated for by sudden injections of Good Fortune. During one propitious period, Siobhan and I saw a profit in 12 out of 14 years. Over time, however, we deliberately allowed our herd to thin, conscious of the coming limitations of age and weary of trainers calling with bad news that never seemed to end. No matter how well you may be doing overall, there will inevitably be ongoing disappointments and after forty-plus years you’d like to put a stop to those phone calls.
This Monday, in a bittersweet moment, we led our last homebred yearling, April, onto a Lorraine van and off to the training facilities at Ocala Stud. If she does well, we may continue to race via purchases at the two-year-old sales. Hell, we may do that anyway. It won’t be the same, of course, as watching a critter you bred and raised fly to the front of a pack owned by sheiks and sultans, carrying your colors. For us, April’s trip to the trainer is a momentous event, another in a long series of Last Times. Hopefully, it will be a last time to be celebrated, one leading to a magnificent career filled with those champagne wishes and caviar dreams Robin Leach used to tell us about, a campaign so spectacular it qualifies for the Half of Fame of Last Times.
April (center) has left her two pals for a training stint at Ocala Stud. We tried to explain but the three of them chalked it up to Aberrant Human Behavior.
One Last Time
Those of us rambling around and still healthy in our seventies drew the long straws, fortunate to be elsewhere during the Bangladesh Cyclone of 1970, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre or the particularly noxious days of the Hippie Commune Blight. We have been given an opportunity to slowly wind it down, the time and means to explore the landscape. If, like Lucy Jordan, we will never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in our hair, well, there’s always the Pacific Coast Highway or the Going To The Sun Road or the Blue Ridge Parkway. One of our neighbors, Albin Kisarewich, trekked almost the entire Appalachian Trail in his mid-seventies and lived to tell about it.
Others are not so lucky. In football, the officials administer a penalty for clipping, as well they should. Clipping is a block to the back, often to the knees, sending the surprised victim sprawling in a heap, sometimes injured and wondering what just hit him. Life’s Middle Linebacker has been known to perform the same cruel acts, spinning his creaky roulette wheel every day and striking down unsuspecting humans in their prime. Now and then, they get to pen a quick goodby as the plane nosedives to the bottom of the canyon. Other times, their last words are “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Our beloved gym pal, Barbara Reissfelder, was one of the latter, brought low by a sudden fierce bout of acute leukemia. One summer she was traipsing around Iceland with her husband Bruce, the next she was lost to the ethers. No amount of good grades for a lifetime of kindness, good humor or Christian charity will get you off the hook or Barbara would still be here. The wheel spins, and where it stops, nobody knows until Maxwell’s Silver Hammer comes down on your head.
Lifetime buddy Stuart Bentler was a singular character, always smiling, ever chipper, dressed impeccably for feast or flood. He liked sports cars, beer and women, usually in that order, but the women might ascend if their dresses were translucent or they held part-ownership in a tavern.
One fine California day, Stuart was motivating in his little car when he arrived at crimson traffic light. He pulled to a stop and promptly fell asleep, waking only when his creeping vehicle bumped into the back of a bakery truck. Oops, what’s this?
Stuart visited doctors who shined lights in his orifices, poked his vertebrae, CAT-scanned his innards, tickled his toes, all for naught. His problems were confusing, first some achiness here, then a pain over there. He lost his appetite, even for Heineken, which indicated a grave problem. He lost weight by the day. The medicos, finding nothing, sent him to psychiatrists in desperation. They tried to convince him he was addled. Months passed and Stuart weakened, barely able to make it back to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, where he was finally diagnosed with a terminal monster called amyloidosis, an organ-defiler with a different taste for each day of the week. His faithful daughter Katherine stood on guard.
When Siobhan and I got there, he was barely conscious, but rose to the occasion, smiling and swapping stories about the good old days. He reminded us that we had agreed to spread his remains in Siobhan’s garden when the time came. “I’m pissed off about dying,” he said with his usual smile, “because now I’ll never find out what happened. I’m a curious guy. What’s going to become of the world? Will the Gators ever win another national championship? What will my grandchildren look like? But at least I didn’t drive off a cliff, I got to see everyone again, all my old friends, and Katherine. My life was great, what there was of it. I had a good wife and great children, owned my own business, traveled everywhere, did what I wanted, had fun. I’ll bet you don’t know anybody else my age who still owns an electric yoyo. This is probably the last time we’ll see each other so tell all your Flying Pie readers not to take anything for granted. Do it now, say it now, see it now, tomorrow might not happen. You wouldn’t believe all the plans I had….”
