Seasons In The Sun (Terry Jacks)
Goodbye to you, my trusted friend.
We’ve known each other since we’re nine or ten.
Together we climbed hills or trees,
Learned of love and ABC’s,
Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees.
Goodbye my friend, it’s hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky;
Now that the Spring is in the air,
Pretty girls are everywhere,
When you see them I’ll be there.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun,
But the hills that we climbed
Were just seasons out of time.
The Event: A Retrospective
Over the course of history, singular monumental events stand out—occurrences of staggering magnitude which alter or illuminate our times. The Parting of The Red Sea comes to mind, as does The Eruption of Krakatoa and The Elvis Era. Now, forever joined with these colossi, we offer The Event, the spectacular Circus Wake held July 23rd in Fairfield, Florida, memorializing Stuart Laurence Bentler, giant of Flying Pie folklore and all-around Good Guy.
It was a magnificent day in Central Florida when friends and family gathered to pay their last respects to this Cultural Icon. Guests poured in from all over the country—Oregon, California, Arizona, Boca Raton, even—to recount past experiences and trade Bentler stories. Three large tables were laid out, complete with floral enhancements, each containing enormous boxes of photos of earlier Bentler years for wakegoers to delve into. Tiny children flashed around the perimeter, discovering lizards and screaming their delight at frog encounters. Mules were ridden, after a fashion. Friendships were renewed. And Sonny’s Barbecue made sure nobody starved to death. And then, of course, there was the Ceremony of the Hats.
The Fellowship Of The Hats
And at that time Stuart brought forth his only daughter, Katherine, and sayeth to her, “Gather up all of my disciples and let them sup on loaves and fishes or barbecue, even, and when this is done prepare a space in that my many hats might be displayed for all to see and that each disciple, in turn, may choose one hat to wear in remembrance of me.” And it was done and Stuart was pleased and the hat wearers gathered together and was born The Fellowship Of The Hat and Katherine saw that it was good.
On the other hand, the whole thing might have been her idea.
The Great Storm
A couple of years ago, Stuart started seeing a South American woman who was a minister/general manager of a nondenominational Christian church in Fort Lauderdale. She was trying to explain her philosophy to me one night at dinner and it sounded an awful lot like “Universal Truths Which Transcend Mere Accuracy,” which I suggested she put on her little Church marquee. She said she’d think about it but that doesn’t seem likely. Anyway, one night she and Stuart were going to some church-related shindig and it was a night I was supposed to stay over at Stuart’s house. Stuart postponed telling me where the key was located because that was part of Stuart’s schtick—“let’s discuss that later.” He always planned at what part of a visit various matters would be discussed and refused to give early answers or explanations to anything.
On my way to the house it was pouring—one of those South Florida tropical blasts with exorbitant rain, winds howling, the whole nine yards. Worse even, my windshield wipers were disabled and even with the helpful Rain-off it was hard to see a thing. I called Stuart a couple of times on the way over but couldn’t reach him, which was unusual. When I got to the house, all was in darkness and, of course, I had no idea where the key was since we were discussing that “later.” I sat around for awhile and when the rain temporarily eased I made my way out of the car and under the very unsteady tarpaulin Stuart had erected in his carport. From there, I bolted to the door, searching for any likely key locations. Stuart being Stuart, there were, of course, not going to BE any likely key locations. The typhoon returned, rain assaulting the wobbling tarp and leaking in everywhere. Returning to the car would mean instant soaking to the skin, so I remained in the carport dodging raindrops and calling Stuart for the ninth, tenth times. Still no answer. I was reluctant to risk an accident by driving without wipers 15 miles to a hotel but eventually I did. Frosted was a kind description of my general state of mind. I made it to the hotel overlooking Calder, however, none the worse for wear. I was not in any mood to talk to Stuart so I shut off my phone. When I turned it on an hour later, there were 17 calls from him.
“No excuses,” he kept saying, “I just screwed up. Please call me.” Eventually, I did.
“I don’t want excuses, Stuart, just a reason.”
“I just don’t know what happened. I forgot about it for a little while, then I guess the music was so loud I didn’t hear the phone calls. You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m mad at you, but mostly because the whole thing could have been avoided if you’d just told me where the key was earlier. You need to change your modus operandi.” Like that was ever going to happen.
I got over being mad at Stuart pretty quickly but I wouldn’t go back to his house for months. One day, he called from California and asked me to stay at the place next time I was in town for a race. He’d been gone for a long stretch and even though he had people checking on the place he wanted me to “make sure everything was alright. You’d be doing me a big favor.” He figured if I went back there once I’d continue to go back and the squabble would be resolved. He was right, of course, and that was fine. Stuart couldn’t stand to be on the outs with his friends and he’d do whatever was necessary to rectify a problem.
The fact that almost everyone invited showed up for The Event is testimony to the relationships he built up over the years. If there were rifts, he fixed them. If there were irreversible differences, he mourned the loss of a friend much longer than anyone else would. If he couldn’t visit as much as he wanted, he would call. If he thought you had a problem, he was there to offer advice or, at least, a shoulder to cry on. On July 23rd, his friends gathered and reflected, happy to be there, no arm-twisting required. And a classy group of people it was, articulate, attractive, wise in many ways. If it was a tribute to Stuart that they came, it was also a tribute to them that Stuart had chosen them, had valued them so much. And a greater tribute yet that they had proven worthy of that friendship.
And so it is finally over now. The chairs are stacked and the tables assembled and rolled back on the caterer’s truck. The weary children drag after their mothers back to their cars. A few couples linger to look once more over the site of Stuart’s final repose. The sun lowers in the sky and evening looks forward to its own interval. A valued life has passed too soon. Stuart Bentler is gone forever. But the hats march on.
This Woman Is Running For President. Really.
Direct quotes from Michele Bachmann:
“Literally, if we took away the minimum wage—if, conceivably, it was gone—we could potentially wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.”
“This is an earthquake issue. This will change our state forever. Because the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.”
“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this (latest swine flu cases) on President Obama, I just think it is an interesting coincidence.”
“Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”
“We’re in a state of crisis where our nation is literally ripping apart at the seams right now, and lawlessness is occurring from one ocean to the other. And we’re seeing the fulfillment of the Book of Judges here in our own time, where every man doing that which is right in his own eyes---in other words, anarchy.”
“God calls us to fall on our faces and our knees and cry out to Him and confess our sins. And I would just ask your listeners to do that now. Cry out to a Holy God. He wants to hear us. He will hear us if we confess our sins and cry out to Him. Our children are worth it and obedience to God demands it.”
“Spending comes as natural to liberals in Minnesota and the Minnesota legislature as bashing decency comes to the editorial board of our major metropolitan newspapers.”
“This really is the number one issue for our country right now, how are we going to deal with this threat of radical Islam taking over our country.”
“It’s part of Satan, I think, to say that this is “gay”….it’s anything but gay.”
“We need to have profound compassion for gay people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual disfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders.”
And you thought we needed college magazine jokes. How are we gonna find jokes that measure up to this stuff?
That’s all, folks….
You remember, don’t you, to double-click the photos in The Event Pictorial to enlarge them and leave them on the screen for longer viewing? Yeah, we thought you did.
