Those Were The Days (Mary Hopkin)
Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two.
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And dreamed of all the great things we would do?
Those were the days, my friend,
We thought they’d never end,
We’d sing and dance forever and a day;
We’d live the life we choose,
We’d fight and never lose,
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la la la….
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days!
Then the busy years went rushing by us,
We lost our starry notions on the way,
If by chance I’d see you at the tavern,
We’d smile at one another and we’d say:
Those were the days, my friend (remainder of chorus)
Just tonight I stood before the tavern,
Nothing seemed the way it used to be,
In the glass I saw a strange reflection,
Was that lonely woman really me?
Through the door there came familiar laughter,
I saw your face and heard you call my name;
Oh, my friend, we’re older but no wiser,
For in our hearts the dreams are still the same!
Those were the days, my friend,
We thought they’d never end,
We’d sing and dance forever and a day;
We’d live the life we choose,
We’d fight and never lose,
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la la la….
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days!
Every time a good friend or family member dies, we’re thrown back into memories of happier times, joyful shared experiences and, despite the calendar, they never seem all that long ago. Ten years seems like nothing now, twenty years seems like five as the freight train of life goes speeding along with just an occasional whistle. It seems trite to say stop and smell the roses, but for God’s sake, stop and smell the roses. Take that trip to the Grand Canyon you never got around to, treat yourself to a weekend in that expensive hotel on Central Park South….what the hell, it’s only money. Which is nothing compared to the most valuable commodity in everyone’s life….Time.
Friends
The first friend I can remember was Jackie Mercier. He lived down on Boxford Street in Lawrence, right next to the B&M ballfield. Jackie was an animated little kid, played all sports though excelling at few, loved to swing from the vines next door at Mickey Murphy’s house. If you got into a scrap with Jackie, even if you were winning, he would somehow come up with an exotic wrestling hold he had learned from his older brother, Bunky, and get the best of you. If you were outnumbered in an impending fracas and all the other kids had bailed on you, Jackie Mercier was there to fight it out to the end.
Jackie, not so different from other little kids, wanted to be a fireman. One day, on the way home from school, I pulled down the alarm lever on one of those red “fireboxes” that used to be scattered all over town. I guess I just couldn’t believe they really worked. Almost immediately, the bells in the tower of the nearby Protestant church began ringing as everybody said they did when the fire alarm went off. Oh oh. I looked at Jackie.
“What did you do?”
“I guess I rang in the fire alarm. We better get out of here.”
“No, Billy, I gotta stay here and tell them.”
“Are you crazy—they’ll put me in jail or somethin’.”
“We gotta tell them there’s no fire.”
“Geez, Jackie—they’ll figure that out for themselves. I thought we were best friends.”
That was the phrase that got him, of course, and we skulked out of sight, although I was squealed on by another kid who led the firemen to my house, where they explained to me the hazards of false alarms and exacted my promise that this would never happen again.
Jackie eventually changed his mind about being a fireman and decided he wanted to be a “telephone man.” This meant daily climbing up the large tree in his yard to string wires hither and yon, pretending to converse over the phone but close enough to hear one another without amplification. Jackie was a happy-go-lucky uncomplicated kid who looked to have a simple blue-collar life.
As time passed, we sort of navigated in different directions, he more interested in cars, me more interested in sports. We saw each other often, but there was less and less to say, despite the many hours and emotions we had invested in the earlier friendship. A little sad, but no big deal for a couple of kids growing into their middle teens and being swallowed up by all the excitements of adolescence. Eventually, we didn’t see each other at all. And one day, when I was off at college or marauding around Texas or wandering through Mexico, my mother called to tell me Jackie Mercier, distraught over some shattered relationship with a girl, had walked off a high story of some building and was dead.
I had some experience with dead. My grandfather had died, but grandfathers will do that. And my father had died, but he was 63. Jackie Mercier was, well—like ME—just a kid. How could such a thing happen? If Jackie Mercier could be dead, anybody could die, including you-know-who. Talk about a grim loss of innocence.
When things like this happen, you swear you will value friends more, make a point of checking on them now and then, spending time. But you don’t, really. Bob Sturm worked for me at the Circus for six years. Every day, we sat around and talked, manned the counter, shared one another’s experiences, spent a good part of our lives together. But when Bob moved on—and under good terms—we saw each other once more, period.
Yeah, I know, it’s normal to move through various stages of your life and to encounter new people along the way, perhaps people who are more in tune with what you are doing now. But it seems a shame to passively discard the old ones. I guess there is just so much time in life to spend with friends but does that excuse traveling within an hour’s drive of an old friend and not stopping by? I’ve done that, you have, too. Oh well, we’re on vacation, we have to optimize our time, a one-hour visit will turn into four.
Some people don’t behave this way, of course. Sharon and John Cinnie, our friends from the gym, go to more nuptials than The Wedding Planner. They drive all over hell’s half-acre visiting friends from up north they used to work with or having weekend dinners with people they just met yesterday. If too much time goes by, Sharon marches up to the treadmill and announces that it’s time to get together for dinner next week, “and bring Allen.” Sharon and John, unlike the majority of us are good “friendship-minders.” They go to the trouble of keeping in touch and they enjoy the rewards.
Stuart Bentler was a pretty good friendship-minder. Though he left Gainesville in the late sixties (and we had just met him in ’67), he always kept in touch, inviting his old pals down to Tampa, making a point of stopping by on his way to Atlanta or wherever, insisting on meeting whenever we were in Miami for a race. Stuart didn’t like everybody, but he valued his friends, many of whom will be here Saturday to see him off one last time. We can’t atone for a lifetime of sometimes neglected friends in one fell swoop but we’re pulling out all the stops to send this one off with a celebration he would consider appropriate. We don’t buy into everything the Bee Gees told us, but we do subscribe to one line: Just Give Your Best To Your Friends.
Oprygoers. Us?
Well, as a matter of fact, yes. A couple of times a year, we round up a few of our podners and mosey on out to Weirsdale to the Orange Blossom Opry. Weirsdale is a little over an hour from here over slow roads or we’d go more often. The house band, led by singer Lorri Gill and featuring excellent help on lead, bass and steel guitars, fiddle, keyboards and drums, can play and sing anything. Country music carries the day, of course (It’s the Opry, right?), but these people delve into old Buddy Holly stuff, torch songs, whatever. The several hundred people in the audience travel in from all over for the weekend shows but the core support comes from that famous enclave of Tea Partiers called The Villages. We’re not letting them scare us off, though. Where else can you get good music and an ice cream cone for a dollar?
Manatee-Killing Tea Party Runs Amok
Everybody knows what the Tea Party members oppose: High taxes. Big government. Obama’s health-care plan. And just now in, manatees, for crying out loud. Yep, a Citrus County Tea Party group has announced that it’s fighting new restrictions on boating and other human restrictions in King’s Bay (Fla.) that have been proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In a fabulous, if typical quote, Edna Mattos, 63, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, says “We cannot elevate nature over people.” Why not? Seems like a good idea to us. But Edna says, “That’s against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.” Yeah, that’s right, Emma. Drag out your old pals, the Bible and the Bill of Rights, when you and your speeding boat buddies want some excuse to go out and slaughter a few more animals.
Training Report
In his first work at Calder, Wilson went a quick 37 flat (15th best work out of 60), galloping out in 50.3. That’s the good news. The less good news is he beat Juno by two lengths, though her work was still 23rd out of 60. He’s back out there Saturday, going a half, probably by himself. Juno gets a few extra days til next Wednesday.
James Fought The Law And The Law Won
On one side of us on 112th avenue, we have Hal and Jennie in front and Candy in the back. On the other side, Allen’s family in front and Chris Powell in the back. We used to have James Powell back there, too, but he left awhile back and a shame it was, too. After learning the tile trade (he did a lot of the work at Disney), James learned a bit of the construction business. Enough to put up one of our barns single-handedly and to build a cottage extension onto our house for Siobhan’s stepfather to retire to for the last year of his life. It’s Siobhan’s lab now, doubling as a small guest house (beloved by Stuart Bentler, by the way). James was always available to help with pump and well repair, tractor maintenance and general handyman needs. He’d come tootling over with his giant bag of PVC parts or nuts and bolts and fix whatever the problem was. In trade, Siobhan would help him with his horses. James even had a couple of good ones several years ago, winning a few stakes races at Tampa Bay Downs.
James never worried much about dying, so he saw no need to go to the doctor. Matter of fact, he was pretty anti-medical. After an early negative experience at the dentist, he went home and knocked all his teeth out so he wouldn’t have to go back, a slight overreaction in the minds of some. James thought he would just have a heart attack or something and die one day and that would be that. He was a little bit right. He did have a heart attack one day, but, instead of dying, he decided what the hell, I’ll go to the hospital. Unfortunately for James, the nearest hospital (about 10 miles) is the one in Williston. We probably don’t need to say more about this place than that when we went there to see James, he was the ONLY patient, a scary omen. When we got there, he looked pretty good, seemed cheerful. Not much later, alas, subject to the talent and limitations of his facility, James had a stroke or maybe even a few strokes. Next time we saw him, the right side of his body was compromised and he couldn’t speak. Too late, they took him to a real hospital in Gainesville, but the damage was done. Despite a few hopeful signs, it’s pretty much been one step forward, two steps back. James goes directly from bed to his electric wheelchair now, unable to use his shriveling right arm or leg. His wife, Chris, visits often, wheeling him through town.
The other day, James’ nephew, Dale, came by to visit. On most of his trips to see James, Dale hauls him out to the training center to watch Dale’s horses work. This happens rarely, so naturally each episode is a big event in James’ rather dreary existence. Last visit, however, Dale just stopped by to haul a horse back to his home in Georgia, so there would be no training center visit, a fact lost on the confused James, who thought he had been forgotten. Unwilling to give up his rare opportunity to leave the nursing home, James boogied out of there in his wheelchair, headed for the training center, a mere 15 miles away. Very slow miles. Discovering James missing, the nursing home called the Williston P.D., a valiant force of three which put out its own version of an APB. They eventually discovered the puttering James at the Dollar Store on the outskirts of town. He only had 14 more miles to go. Naturally, James temporarily lost his wheelchair privileges and even now is forced to wear an ankle bracelet that locks the doors if he gets too close to an exit.
The seed of crime bears bitter fruit. The Shadow knows.
That’s All, Folks….
