November 2, 2019: Bill Is (Gasp!) 79
Every year on the second of November---All Souls Day in the Catholic Church and the Day of the Dead in Mexico---Austinite Dave Moriarty holds a Not Dead Yet Party for his aging friends in the capital of Texas. This is a true test of will power for the partygoers since Moriarty’s place is situated at the top of a challenging flight of stairs. Some would-be customers abstain due to the rigors of the ascent. Calloused questioners might wonder if it’s worth still being around if you can’t even make it to a senior citizen party, but not us. Even raising the question might bring a cascade of tears from our old Austin pals like Harry Edwards, whose physical impediments have restricted him to schnapps-tasting, lawn croquet and sitting on the front porch reading books about the care and feeding of nutria.
It’s a sad fact that many of us are flagging or, alas, have already flagged. It seems like just yesterday that we were tossing around the old horsehide on the B&M Railroad’s vacant lot, fishing in the Shawsheen River, riding the Ferris Wheel at Canobie Lake Park, not giving a fig about the future. The days move slowly in childhood, it seems an eternity from the end of baseball season in October to the beginning of Spring Training in February. Once Christmas has passed, it will be several millennia before it returns. When Summer is done, the long, dry desert of education takes centuries to navigate. For God’s sake, where is the ice-cream man today, it’s almost seven o’clock? I can’t wait til I’m an adult and no longer have to live in an oligarchy.
Then one day, a shock arrives. Grammar school is finished, it’s on to greater heights. Best Friends Forever will be left at the side of the road as we move on to new places, different buildings, changed schedules. How difficult will it be, this high school, with its glib Marist Brothers, its arcane subject matter, the two-mile morning trek through occasional sleet and snow? Are we still so eager to trade in these harmless nuns and their little rulers for grown men with little tolerance for foolishness? And what about THIS—it’s only five years until we have to sign up for the military draft! US—in the Army? There must be some mistake. Potential enemies of the USA are collapsing in laughter at the thought.
We have now become better aware of time. Grandparents pass away. Someone’s father dies. The kids on the block are less visible now, off on their individual pursuits, which used to be our own. Where have you gone, Jacky Mercier, the neighborhood lifts its curious eyes to you? High school, with all its thrills, chills and spills races by in a flash. Those girls, for so long not welcome in our clubhouse, are suddenly prizes to be desired. Will we go to college or get a job? What will happen to our unfortunate friends who answer in the latter? And if we do go to college, what will we study? The parental suggestion box is heavily influenced by potential salaries, something to be expected from a generation which grew up in The Great Depression, but not necessarily our cup of tea. Most of us will be the first in our families to so much as sniff a university. Here is our first big opportunity to let someone down. What will we do?
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| The Old Philosopher at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. |
The Old Philosopher Rambles
Questions, always questions. Since life turns on the tiniest flight of fancy, how would things have turned out if a high-school graduate stayed home, say, and matriculated at little Merrimack College instead of wandering all the way out to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater? Is there something innate in most of us that would eventually lead us to a similar destination, just via a different route number? Or are the twists and turns of each option so profound that our predilections are overwhelmed and we are sent whistling off on an unanticipated new course? The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind, but some of it might have to do with The Great Plan. Some have one, some don’t.
Siobhan Ellison knew she wanted to be a veterinarian when she was seven years old. Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night—nor even an uncompromising husband—would stay this woman from the swift completion of her appointed rounds. Bill Killeen, on the other hand, had some notion of a career involving writing and publishing, nothing in particular, let the Fates have a hand in it. Ergo, Siobhan rode the express train directly to her station, while Bill took the local, dismounted at numerous depots and dabbled in this and that.
One characteristic they both possessed, however, was the desire to call their own tune and maybe that matters most of all. You may wind up in Rhode Island instead of Roanoke, but wherever you land, you’ll be making your own decisions, choosing your own game, and happiness partly derives from being unencumbered by the unwelcome dictates of others. Siobhan and Bill were blessed with an abundance of self-confidence, of course, an unexplainable element in limited supply which seeps into one’s pores (or doesn’t) during youthful trips through the jungles of family life, schooling and the street. Self-confidence will carry you to any number of curious subway stops. You just have to make sure to get off at the right one.
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| Above, Bill in Monument Valley with Jimmy of the Navajos; Below, our hero at the Alamo with lover boy Nestor. |
Getting There Is Half The Fun. Or Maybe One-Eighth.
My best friend at Central Catholic High School was a Polish kid with a shortened name, Tom Rys. Tom was a rather plain looking fellow with a quick wit, a good sense of humor, who was fascinated with Jack Paar and Charles Schulz’ Snoopy. Rys was not particularly athletic but he was a definite sports fan, often hitchhiking to Boston with me for Red Sox games and once to see the great Jim Brown lead the Syracuse football juggernaut into battle against Boston University. When it came time to decide on a college, Tom opted to go along with me to Oklahoma State. Two weeks before departure, we compared notes and agreed to meet at the B&M railroad station on a given date. And that was the last I ever heard from Tom Rys. He took the road most traveled and stayed put.
So there you have it, the Great Fork In The Road. This way lies comfort, familiarity, an escort of friends and family; on the other path, there be dragons. Dirty Harry famously remarked that a man’s got to know his limitations and if yours don’t include the abilities to adapt to a turnstyle of new experiences and to quickly rebound from certain adversity, maybe home isn’t such bad place after all. On the other hand, Dr. Seuss advised: “There’s no limit to how much you’ll know, depending on how far past zebra you go.”
In case you ever wondered, it’s a long train ride from Lawrence, Massachusetts to Ponca City, Oklahoma, and the entertainment aboard is mind-numbing. Thank God for the change of trains in Chicago, where I took the afternoon off to see the Cubs play the St. Louis Cardinals. Alas, Stan (The Man) Musial also took the day off, not that it deterred the Cards any. A mere babe in the Windy City woods, I took the wrong el back to Union station and missed my train. Fortunately for me, there would be others and OSU classes didn’t start for a few days.
If you’ve never been to Ponca City, let me save you the trouble: there are more exotic destinations in which to whittle away the hours. There is no railroad station in Stillwater, however, so any old port in a storm. I detrained and caught a bus for the final 42 miles of the odyssey, then a cab to campus. The taxi driver asked me whether I wanted to go to my dormitory or the administration building, Whitehurst Hall. Being a rookie without a clue, I foolishly chose the latter and wound up lugging two enormous suitcases apparently filled with mercury the agonizing half-mile to my dorm, a large and undistinguished building called East Bennet Hall on the very edge of the school’s abundant property. Arriving in dilapidated condition and with skin barely clinging to my fingers, I had a fleeting thought: maybe that damn Tom Rys had the right idea after all.
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| Anniversary Time in Cedar Key; Bill & Siobhan in Antelope Canyon. |
The Halls Of Academe
The first thing I learned about college was that you weren’t in high school anymore. None of your professors were one whit concerned at the study load the others doled out and you were immediately inundated with work no human could ever complete. Being constantly behind was just a way of life, you grew to accept it. At the same time, there was a great feeling of exuberance because you now became the captain of your own ship, free to bulldoze your way through life, learning things trial-by-error, trying not to knock any Ming vases off the table.
My roommate in East Bennet was a kid from Indiana named Roger, who pined for his high-school sweetheart on a daily basis. I was astonished to find someone who didn’t appreciate his new-found freedom, feel the excitement of daily choosing his path, examining the boundless possibilities. But Roger wasn’t the only one. The place was full of homesick wretches unused to being away from the farm, separated from all they knew and loved, weeping at each new missive from home. A full third of the crew I spent time with were gone within two months, unable to contemplate life without Mom, Dad, Rover the dog or Hotlips the girlfriend. Houston, we have a problem: there are Tom Ryses all over the place.
A lot of things are determined in a person’s life by age 20, far more by 25. If I have any advice to give after stomping around the planet for 79 years, it’s this: when given a choice of directions to follow, always opt for the one allowing the most independence you can reasonably manage. Don’t be afraid to push the envelope a little. Take risks, without being foolhardy. You like those? We have more, unrelated as they may be to the bulk of the column. First, consider yoga so that you don't become all stiff and starchy and wind up not being able to tie your own shoes. Second, as John Lennon advised long ago, Give The Gym a Chance so the bones in your feet don't crackle the next time you play jump-rope. Third, even though it's great fun, avoid eating at restaurants too often. Their objective is to wow you by any means necessary, which means resorting to oceans of salt, plantations of sugar and sauces full of mysterious substances guaranteed to add to your already burgeoning body fat. And last but not least, be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck could be somebody’s mother. That last one is a song from the nineteen-fifties, but good advice in any century.
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| Where Bill's third decade began. |
On Pills: A Birthday Sendoff From Dr. Seuss
I take three blues at half past eight
to slow my exhalation rate.
On alternate nights at nine p.m.
I swallow pinkies. Four of them.
The reds, which make my eyebrows strong,
I eat like popcorn all day long.
The speckled browns are what I keep
beside my bed to help me sleep.
This long flat one is what I take
if I should die before I wake.
That’s all, folks….
Happy Birthday to me.
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
