Summer Has Falling Leaves Too; Don't Miss These

From Sunday's Times and News-Star

Let’s quickly review our summer reading list so we can make sure we’re all on the same page.

First of all, the only book I’ve read this year that I wished I hadn’t was “The Last Kind Words Saloon” by Larry McMurtry. Hadn’t read him in years but this was a freebie and, thank goodness, less than 200 pages and with lots of white space. I’ll put bad books down now, just like I’ll change the channel on a TV set, but I read this one to the end because it was Larry McMurtry, who I will always semi-worship thanks to “Lonesome Dove” and “Some Can Whistle” and “The Last Picture Show” and the “Texasville” trilogy. Oh, mercy, and “Terms of Endearment.” But be warned: somebody’s going to drop $24.95 American, plus tax, get to about page 20-something and want to kick the next word that walks by right between the vowels. Read his old stuff instead.

Every other book I’ve read so far this year is a keeper. The weakest was “End of Days” by James Swanson, about the JFK assassination. But hey, that’s on me. It’s not like I didn’t know what was going to happen. His book on Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth was better, but maybe that’s because I went in less informed.

The year’s highlight has been “His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir” by Dan Jenkins, now of Golf Digest, 85-ish, and back in his hometown of Fort Worth after extended road trips to New York City and Florida. His high ranking could be because he is a bit of a hero to me, the best sportswriter to ever breathe air and the reason I wanted to become a writer in the first place. I think it happened around age 10 when I put down my Sports Illustrated long enough to understand that you wouldn’t go to hell for cracking a joke about golf, and that people who wrote about games we loved to play could actually turn them into stories that held their own against anything the Hardy Boys could manage to get themselves into or out of.  

Or the reason I enjoyed it so much could be because it taught me stuff and made me laugh at the same time. Which is why I think you might enjoy it too -- unless you have no taste for history, the foibles of the human race, or giggling. (Which reminds me, thanks to Mr. Jenkins: reading that McMurtry book I just warned you not to read was like being at a nude beach where all the wrong people get naked. High expectations, dismal result. Bummer.)

I’ll say about Dan Jenkins, in a writer-type comparison, what former tour player Bruce Crampton once said when describing the PGA vs. the athletic talents of another pretty fair golfer named Jack Nicklaus: “We all suffer from human deficiencies; Jack just suffers from fewer of them.”

I re-read “The Postman Always Rings Twice” by James Cain and would recommend it, maybe because I like thinking about Lana Turner-type people but also because I can be a crime noir guy with the best of them. The passing of Elmore Leonard inspired me to knock out “The Switch,” from 1978. Beautiful. Read Phillip Margolin for the first time; “Heartstone.” Not great writing but a surprising story and yessir, I think I’ll have another. Daniel Silva and “The Kill Artist” was better, and more along the lines of your international intrigue.

Another new author for me is Byran Forbes; loved “The Rewrite Man,” a “Hollywood” novel from 1982. These were all pump-primers for a summer reading schedule that will contain very little Emerson or authors with hyphenated names.

Before I forget, “The Big Burn” by Timothy Egan is about America’s biggest forest fire ever, and Egan, to complete the thought, can write like a house afire. I should have been less surprised because he’s always seemed smart and thoughtful to me, but the actor Gene Wilder has brought me much joy though his movies “Willie Wonka” and “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” and now through his autobiography, “Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art.”

Finally, this summer I plan to read – and it’s much overdue -- “The Last Hayride” in honor of the gentleman and pro John Maginnis, who died May 25 and took a backseat to no one in his coverage of our state’s politics. And a steady hot-weather friend is Travis McGee, the John D. MacDonald creation who makes every summer better. I read “Dress Her in Indigo” and “The Long Lavender Look” last summer; now I’m on “A Tan and Sandy Silence.” Trust me, it’s a no-risk deal: you can take Travis McGee to the bank and to the beach.

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These Days You Never Graduate From Graduating

From Sunday's TIMES and NEWS-STAR

Speaker: “Congratulations, Bill, on your graduation. Good job. Great job! What do you plan to do now?”

Bill: “Twy to got in to first gwade.”

This is what it’s come to, fellow Americans. We are renting robes and flat hats for preschoolers. Cute, but about as necessary as a thermometer in the Klondike.

As it was too late for Marley’s ghost, it is too late for me and others this week who will go to tremendously long graduation “exercises,” so called because you are worn out when you leave. Maybe you parents of grads-to-be can do something to stop the insanity.

I have got to hand it to West Monroe High, whose light of learning is ever burning, who is shining her beacon through the dark of days to come, and whose graduation ceremony I witnessed firsthand last May. They sang a choir song, had the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer, a  couple of welcomes, an eight-minute commencement “address,” then ran 400-plus efficiently across the stage and were saying good night to all proud parents and grandparents and well-wishers about 100 minutes after the first pitch was thrown out. Hail a work well done.

But that is not the heart of this testimony. Like gossips and intestinal gas, over-wrought and over-thought graduation ceremonies are likely going to always be with us. Someone in charge will refuse to budge, which means that Junior could have played a round of golf, ate a cheeseburger and read Proverbs in the same amount of time it took him to “get graduated” on his “special night,” the night that nearly killed him since he couldn’t use his cell phone the whole time the commencement speaker was droning about “the real world.”

Instead, the heart here IS the real world, one in which we have graduation ceremonies for people who not only can’t drive, but have so far barely graduated from “car seat” to “seat belt.” A friend the other day attended a pre-K graduation. Pre-K graduation? The kid is going to Kent State? Kansas? Kentucky? Somebody is graduating and moving to Kenya?

No. A ceremony was held – rented caps and gowns and the whole shebang, which is French for “wasted money” – for people who were going to but had not yet entered kindergarten.

 “The award goes to Timmy for Best Broccoli Eater! Susan, you get best Paste Putter-Upper. And no question, the award goes to Zack for Best Jumbo Crayon Eater.”

Why? The answer is that somewhere, there are parents with too much time on their hands. They invent things like pre-K graduation because it is a time-filler and they are “doing something for the kids.” What they are doing is causing every parent in school to take out a loan. This is almost as bad as our bending to something as insane as political correctness. Gentlemen! Wake up!

Another buddy went to fifth-grade graduation this week. Odd. On the bright side, he didn’t have to buy a robe and flat hat. He DID have to buy photographs. Always, there’s a catch. Is there no end?

Eighth-grade graduation is so commonplace that we don’t even question it anymore. I guess we want them to all be together that one last time before they go off to high school, which is the building two blocks down the street. Sigh …

An end-of-the-year program is understandable for children. Singing. Cookies. Everyone hanging around. FREE. But a structured graduation? What worlds are left to conquer for a kid who has already “graduated” four or five times before he’s actually a high school senior?

If they didn’t have fifth- and sixth-grade graduation ceremonies back in the day when that was as far as some of our granddaddy’s got before quitting to work at the saw mill, no way should we have them now. If we do, no way should we charge money for them. An illustration of time efficiency, fiscal responsibly and respect for the masses could be a neat final lesson for our real graduates.

Or we can just keep on with the stupid way we do it now.

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Not All Men In Cyperspace Are Really Stars

From Sunday's Times and News-Star

Guitar picker Brad Paisley warned us in song that guys can be “so much cooler online.” Just because I’m slow as a caterpillar carrying a tiny caterpillar piano on his back doesn’t mean I can’t run a 4.3 40-yard dash on the Internet.

It’s always foggy in cyberspace. 

So let’s be careful with that initial date when we meet someone for drinks and dinner that we’ve “seen” before only on a computer. To illustrate, I have a date tale from one of my Second Moms.

“OK,” she began, “I have a story for you…”

Few of hers have been as good – as bad – as this one. 

Since her husband passed away most unexpectedly only a few years after she’d retired, she decided to explore online dating. “It was more about being lonely than anything else,” she said. 

How about a dog? Great idea! Most shed less than a man.

But she wasn’t really home much so she had to give up the dog and try another route. We both hated that: dogs rock it.

“During my self-pity I decided to look at one of the online dating services,” she said. “Wasn't looking for a boyfriend. Just someone to talk to, maybe go to dinner. Never had a desire to but got curious. The range of guys was from 60-70 years old. Here is what I’ve learned from reading their profiles.”

Here’s where it starts getting good…

“Many are very Godly men,” she said. “I don’t doubt that but it’s almost too religious if there is such a thing.

“And they all have motorcycles or horses.

“And they lie.”

HA!

“Some are just downright scary,” she said. “One in particular gave me the heebie jeebies. He’s riding a mule and looks like he lives in a swamp.”

He’ll probably have a reality show soon, but there’s more to love than money. So my Second Mom passed and settled on trading texts with a guy who looked “OK.” They decided to meet in a Shreveport/Bossier casino. Safety first: my girl knew there would be people around.

“How can I describe him?” she said. “Let’s see: his profile picture is probably 10- to 12-years old. His description was 6-3 and 245. My description of him is he had neck problems, was kind of stooped, and the lies kept coming for five minutes until he stood up to go to the boat. I said I thought we were going to talk a while first. He sat back down.”

Eventually they piddled around on the boat a bit, then he followed her to a local diner. 

“He apologized for his appearance,” she said. “Huh? The reason he had trouble talking was that he only had four or five teeth. It didn’t matter because by this time I knew we were not a match. In parting he added, ‘You’re a cute little thing.’ OMG.”

She actually wrote that to me. “OMG.” At which point I was ROFL.

(OMG means “Oh my god” or “As if” and ROFL means “rolling on the floor laughing” or “HA! I just spit up chocolate milk through my nose!”)

No matter your age, some things – some reactions – in the dating game never change. “OMG,” she wrote in summary of Dr. Debonair’s closing line. So beautiful.

“He later sent a note that he was interested, was I?,” she said. “I still haven’t answered that.

“I want to emphasize this. I was extremely cautious. I was never alone with him and considered my safety first and foremost. Been there. Done that. Case closed.”

Turns out both my Second Mom and my science teacher were right: there are vacuums in space.

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