By Jim DoyleMy lifelong friend and college classmate Jimmy Buffett once wrote a song called “Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season.” Amen, Brother Bubba.
No way to make sense of this one, no sir. Hurricanes used to have memorable names filled with dread because of their rarity: Audrey, Betsy, Camille, Katrina. But Rita? Sounds like the blond on the barstool at K.D.’s waiting for her turn in the video poker booth. Gustav and Ike? Two of the Smith Brothers. And this year a hurricane hit MAINE, for frak’s sake. What’s up with that? My tracking chart doesn’t go past Virginia. Even Buffett couldn’t make up a song about that one, at least not without a volcano in the background.
Before I get too far down this malarkey road, let me be perfectly frank about that frankly imperfect representation of my relationship with the author of the World’s Greatest Love Song. (Hint: It’s about beer and a bodily function performed in pairs. No, not potty breaks.) True, we did go to the same institution of higher learning, the University of Southern Mississippi. At the same time. I was a freshman living in the Pike House and he was a senior next door at Kappa Sig. If we ever me, it was probably over a glass of the vintage bourbon of the day, Rebel Yell, vintage Monday. I do vaguely recall signs on campus offering a free concert at the Student Union by my fellow frat boy, but I never went. Hell, if it’s free, how good could he be?
Anyway. . .
Let’s hope this hurricane season is over now, not on the official date of November 30. I’ve seen enough. Coming back from Houston last week on the Port Arthur highway (it’s shorter and faster) I saw a new kind of road kill. Alligators. Five of them, one about eight feet long with a Buffett-worthy character eyeballing him in brogans and coveralls, trying to find a way to lift him into the back of his King Ranch 250.
I have lived south of I-10 since 1972, and not until Rita have I ever been personally affected by a hurricane. Never even evacuated. This year, when Gustav was bearing down on us, I wound up looking at the ducks in the Peabody pond in my hometown of Memphis. So, are things getting worse? I don’t know. Hard to tell. I’ve been suffering from Boomer-itis lately, a creeping sense of nostalgia. I think the old days really weren’t that great compared to now; we just remember them better. Short-term memory goes first.
Actually, the first symptom of Boomer-itis is an incessant, compelling need to turn first to the obituary section of any given newspaper. I have a picture on my wall at home of my first grade birthday party held in the parlor of my home in Bolivar, Tennessee, an antebellum house bought by my father for $5,000 in 1942. According to my brother Thomas, they had to completely remodel the house because the former residents were raising goats in the living room. See, Bolivar is kind of in the country. Anyway, by the time I came along, the goats were gone and the house was restored to its original luster, brightened in the immortal Kodak moment of that picture on the wall by memorable, shining young faces. My friend Blake White is standing next to me with a smile that makes it look like it was his birthday. My cousin Carl Watson is off to the side next to Maria Reynolds, daughter of my dad’s best friend and one of two at that party who is no longer with us.
Maria was one of the sweetest girls I ever knew, and she had a special connection. Her aunt was married to Guy Williams, whom you may remember as the dad from Lost in Space but who will always be Zorro to me. I met him once at her house, wearing my Cub Scout uniform. I was tongue-tied and couldn’t say a word, but I loved Maria’s stories about “Uncle Guy.” Last time I saw her she was a nurse at the local old folks home. I never knew she was dead until I saw her headstone one spring day.
The most recent loss among my party guests is Jody Sharp, a tall kid who moved away in ninth grade and, as far as I know, I never saw him again. He died last week. His obit was in the Bolivar Bulletin. R.I.P. Jody.
Most of my adult life those days, and that place in the picture, and those true lifelong friends, have been a refuge from the storm, more literally lately with whatever forces bring more, and more powerful, winds of change our way, winds of all kinds, actual, financial, political, personal. Whatever eternal truth there may be recognizes the prime directive that life is change, for better or worse. And everybody needs a little shelter from the storm now and then.
May each of you, dear readers, find your shelter.
It’s good to be back. Many, many thanks to all of you who said a kind word to me over the last few years about missing this little bit of doggerel, and special thanks to Patrick Marcantel and Lauren de Albuquerque for finding room in their hearts (and their paper) for me again.
See you on the flip.
