The year giveth and the year taketh away. We gain a new friend, lose an old one, an extremely inadequate trade but better than nothing. Our once pristine bodies continue to regress but we find new ways to slow the descent. We may not be up to summiting Half Dome these days but we can still climb Cadillac Mountain. The time has come to substitute brains for brawn and we have learned our lessons well. We have assembled a fleet of cardiologists, urologists, oncologists, physical therapists, massage practitioners, chiropractors, pharmacists and personal trainers unequalled in the History of Man and we have Webmed on speed-dial to advise us when to summon each.
We have had the good luck to be born late enough to experience the Replacement Era. Need a nice new knee, a snappy new hip? Just sign here on the dotted line, we’ll call you in the morning. Heart petering out, kidneys running on empty, liver fried? We’ve got you on the list, just try to hold onto that subway strap until the right donor shows up. Don’t like the shape of your nose, the curve of your lip, the size of your breasts, the plumpness of your gluteals? Dr. Shapeshifter, that magic man, will turn you into a fairy princess or a golden adonis, just remember to bring your platinum card.
We have learned that the Key to Success is what we have learned. We know now, of course, that a coterie of friends, associates, auto-repair-men, baristas, golf pros, ticket-scalpers, the folks who sit in the next box at the symphony, are far more integral to our wellbeing than we once thought, that social interaction is critical to survival, that five minutes spent in conversation with the newly bereft widow next door is a better bargain than arriving at work five minutes early and that we benefit from the transaction as much as she does.
We have learned to balance caution with impulsiveness, that reckless abandon should be reserved for special occasions, that an all-night drive to Sheboygan might not be necessary after all. We have discovered that mad money is best spent on travel, the benefits of which are exponential and unending. We have statistical evidence that owning a dog is associated with a 20% lower risk of death from any cause, and the same may be true of cats and coatimundis. We have learned that it’s occasionally acceptable to howl at the moon, but better to do it when the neighbors are away. Oh, and for those straightlaced doubters who have been abstaining all these years, proof positive is now available that marijuana will not turn you into a werewolf and it’s coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Try it, you’ll like it.
One of the few boons of getting older is the constant opportunity to also get smarter, to discover beneficial things you didn’t know, to stash Factoid # 5673 in the vast recesses of your memory closet to be retrieved later when circumstances demand. You never know when you’ll be required to remember that Des Moines is the capital of Iowa or that antivenin (crotalidae) polyvalent is the antidote for rattlesnake venom. There are community colleges everywhere that will let you in with no questions asked. You can still sign up for Introduction to Humanities, Bus Welding 101, or How to Raise Nutria For Fun & Profit.
In confronting all the updated ideas, the spiffy new technologies tumbling out of the overstuffed closet, we will occasionally make a mistake here and there. Don’t let them be discouraging, just plunge ahead. Take the good advice of your old pal, Neil Gaiman:
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.”
What We’ve Learned: No Place Is Perfect
“Listen to the sound, listen to the sound,
Listen to the tune that the wind brought down;
Listen to the old time sound of the fiddle
Telling of a place you never have found.”
The old Dillards’ song holds the romantic promise there might be a place perfectly suited to each of us, a refuge, a home, salvation, if we could only find it. Many of us swoop from coast to coast, town to town, valley to mountain in search of Eden, but only Adam and Eve enjoyed the experience and they promptly blew it. Maybe we’ll be happier in the south of France, in Greenland, living in a shack near the Firth of Forth, kibbutzing it up on the Sea of Galilee. The travel industry constantly suggests that far is better than near and there is better than here. Taking that slogan to its logical conclusion, we now have sporadic bands of would-be travelers waiting on mountaintops for altruistic extraterrestrials to transport them to happier climes. What’s it all about, Tammy?
Camelot, of course, is only a mirage, a temporary resting place, because even Heaven has warts. Around age 30, I traveled to Hawaii with a collection of cronies interested in establishing the first head shop on The Islands. We camped out in a hotel a couple of blocks from the beach in Waikiki, meandered around Oahu and took in the scenery. Originally, I had the thought I could live there forever, the incomparable weather and idyllic beauty of the place proving worthy hypnotists. But beauty is as beauty does and there were many snags in establishing a business on Oahu. The rents were atrocious, the available buildings few and the cost of living laughable. A small bungalow a few blocks off the ocean near Waikiki cost $400,000, and we’re talking 1970 money here. After a week in Hawaii, I still thought it a wonderful place, perhaps a part-time residence.
After two weeks, the island began to wilt. The sameness of the days, partly but not entirely our fault, was wearisome. We made the requisite trip around the perimeter of Oahu, stopped and enjoyed the fabled North Beach, investigated the Banzai Pipeline from a safe distance and marvelled at the signs posting the amazing distance inland travelled by the most recent inconsiderate tsunami. Showing proper deference to local customs, we even partook of shave (not shaved) ice, which was nothing special but much better than poi, which tasted a lot like we imagined Elmer’s Glue might taste, although who can be sure? A rare moment of excitement occurred when a volcano threatened to erupt on the big island, Hawaii, but on our way to the airport the radio gave us the bad news: “MAUNA LOA FIZZLES!”
After three weeks, our golden idol was severely tarnished. We were ready to go home. The cost of doing business was impossible, the only logical location was the dingy Ala Moana Mall, far off the tourist beat, and the affordable places to live were all in the outskirts of Honolulu, where the locals abided. None of them seemed thrilled at the prospect of having us as neighbors, nor we them, for that matter. We began to feel far from anywhere, lost in a strange time zone and barely able to keep track of the Red Sox. Our final trip to the airport for the ride back was a joyful occasion.
Oahu, in many ways, is just like anywhere else, just prettier, if you can see past the burgeoning housing developments. It might be nicest to live on the Big Island, a homeland for jasmine, hibiscus and birds of paradise, where traffic is skimpy, you can grow your own coffee and Volcanoes National Park offers steaming sulphurous vents and lava tubes. If worse comes to worst, that lava moves very slowly and you can pick up your house and move it elsewhere before you’re entombed. On a cautious note, you might want to skip those well-publicized black sand beaches. You can’t scrape the stuff off with sandpaper. Oh, and it rains all the time in Hilo, so Kona might be better.
Austin Reverie
If no place is perfect, there are still some which are much better than others, at least in the short term. When we were kids, growing up on the streets of Lawrence, Massachusetts was ideal. For me, going to college in Stillwater, Oklahoma was aces. There are worst places to pass through one’s adolescence than Austin, Texas. And Gainesville, Florida was a hippie paradise from the late 1960s all through the 1970s. It’s just so hard for a town to retain its charm.
Lawrence was sabotaged by the demise of the local textile industry. Stillwater is proof positive that bigger isn’t necessarily better. Austin is buried under vehicular traffic with no place to park. And Gainesville, poor thing, is undergoing the heartbreak of gentrification. Lovely for business interests but absolutely ooky for hippies.
I am convinced by my inherent provincialism that there could have been no place better to live in 1962 than Austin, Texas. Austin, unlike the stereotypical Texas town, is a haven of hills and parks and springs and lakes and a river (the other Colorado) runs through it. In the early sixties, a poor starving magazine staffer could get a gigantic 88-cent meal in the colorful Mexican quarter at restaurants open past midnight and listen to live music of every description throughout the town, including the now-beatified shrine called Threadgill’s, which continues to exist, though no longer in frontier form.
The town drew an exotic collection of retired beatniks, arty students, musicians, rebels with and without a cause, amateur journalists and general troublemakers. There was a party at someone’s home virtually every night, occasionally with free alcohol, and nobody was checking IDs at the gate. I’m sure there were unlicensed imitators of Austin scattered around the country but I’m just as sure the Texas capital was unbeaten and untied, top of the league for freedom, talent, adventure and excitement. Those days were the catalyst for an unprecedented population rise from about 300,000 in 1962 to a rapidly-increasing 1,000,000 now, and all the woes that go with it. Austin was too magnificent for its own good, everyone wanted to move there. And apparently everyone did. The same thing happens, if to a lesser degree, to anyplace on the hip charts. In most cases, they are torpedoed by their very wonderfulness. See “Soho” in New York and “Georgetown” in Washington, D.C., still booming but not with the original entrepreneurs, the clever people who designed the sets and wrote the songs. But nobody who lived in these places back in the day will ever forget their years of wine and roses. Many of them will continue to search for a reasonable facsimile, checking in at little mountain hideaways, darting off to remote coastal possibilities, hunting for the rare college town which retains its old identity.
What I have learned is that no place is perfect and we’ll just have to settle down with the closest thing, which is a different outpost for each of us. Sometimes it rains too much, other times it’s too hot or too cold, perhaps a little rough on the budget, more cars than there used to be, ornery to garden, but the air is clean, the coffee shop opens early, we can afford a few acres and Sally Forth will cart her massage table to your living room.
For anyone still looking, our old compatriot Leslie Logan swears by Highlands, N.C., where she just acquired real estate and is welcoming guests. Highlands is one of those hot new places more esteemed by 70-year-old hippies than by raw youngsters, famed for its rare beauty and collegiality, possessed of decent weather and a very good bakery. They have doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs and nobody is looking to bust grannies with grass. If you go there, knock three times and whisper low. Leslie will be waiting for you with pie.
That’s all, folks….
