Sleepy Dimwit

 I hear complaints like “I wake up at 3 am and can't go back to sleep.”

Why would you want to?

If I asked you “Why do you take a nap?” you might reply,”Well, dimwit, because I'm sleepy!”

Which I take to mean that your body is telling you that it needs to sleep —  right?

And you accept that, and respond by napping.

Then perhaps you can understand that if you awake and don't feel like you can go back to sleep, your body is telling you that it doesn't need to sleep.

Then why should you not accept that ? ? ?

Dimwit!

Regulation

An allegory is a complete narrative that seems to be about one thing, but is actually about another

Well, I must be chasing rabbits …. am I going down the rabbit hole? 

Here I go, off on a tangent, pursuing another topic that ensnares my wandering attention.

Recent court cases relate to interests commanding almost universal attention. They shift my focus.  I can't resist

There is much ado regarding constitutional guarantees of freedom. I note that there is no specific guarantee of my freedom to hold and express weird opinions.  And yet I dare to do so.  

Someday someone who finds my simplistic musings offensive may try to make it illegal for me to publish.  Not to hold such trivial beliefs — but to express them in the public  venue, where they may represent a danger to society.

I am concerned — it comes to my attention that Jay Leno has an extensive collection of automobiles.  Around 180 by actual count.

Why would anybody need that many?  Is he qualified to drive them all?

Probably some of them have gas tanks holding more than ten gallons of gas, and perhaps capable of speeds in excess of a hundred miles per hour. 

I suggest a need for government regulation. A permit to purchase a vehicle.

Absent any constraint I may tomorrow set out to buy an automobile — or two — every day.  And you have no way of knowing whether I am qualified to have even one.

Assume that I am limited by my choice, or circumstance, to one shabby old sedan --  am I allowed to drive it?  Free of any governmental requirement for proof of competence?

In 1952 I obtained a Texas driver's license. In 1960 I got one in Arizona.

1990 found me in Colorado.  Another driver's license.

In 1998 I relocated to Alabama — and used their driver's license until I returned to Texas in 2003. 

 2013 found me in Utah. Another driver's license.  And then I returned to Texas in 2014, and my Texas driver's license.  Can you spell peripatetic?  I had to look it up.

How many different state DL's have I had? The point is that I recognize governmental authority, and the requirement for meeting relevant qualifications to be permitted to drive on the streets and highways.

It is not necessary to explain that the reason for such licensing is the rather obvious fact that an automobile represents a potential danger — if it is driven by someone lacking fundamental knowledge, and who is not aware of and in compliance with rules of safety. 

My history indicates my acceptance of regulation.

All of this recitation of my history of different licenses is meaningless. But a simple substitution in the discussion of guns for automobiles  — with the implicit correlation of a license to carry (a gun) for a license to drive illustrates my contention that “Constitutional carry — (or permitless carry)” is unwise.

Next thing you know, they'll be allowing cars without drivers on our streets!

Ridiculous.

Vanishing shells

 

I was transported to Galveston in 1945.

I attended Davy Crockett Elementary School, San Houston Elementary, and Lovenberg Junior High.

When not encumbered by attendance to these institutions I traversed the six blocks from my home to the beach at 39th Street.  I fished.  I played in the surf and taught myself to swim. 

More important I began a fabulous shell collection.

Piles pf “jingle shells” — small pelecypods — were common, up to several feet in length and a foot in height.  (the piles, not the individual shells).

It was common to pick up lightning whelks of six to eight inches — so common that if a shell had a chip broken out of the lip I discarded it.  Moon shells were abundant.  Angel wings, delicate beings that they are, were usually broken; a perfect shell was rare.  Rarer still, a connected pair.  The assortment goes on —  too numerous to list. I accumulated a fabulous collection.

Mollusca, classes Gastropoda and Bivalvia.  (the latter, in the ancient times of my collecting was referred to as Pelecypoda.)

Unfortunately, the truth is demonstrated of that old axiom that “three moves are a s good as a fire.”  For somewhere in my frequent changes of locations I lost my shell collection. Much regret.

I was away from Galveston for several years — but the sand in my shoes was irresistible. I came home in 1962.

As soon as my suitcase was empty I hurried to MY beach.

“My beach” refers to the strip of sand beneath 39th Street.

To the uninitiated the beach is monotonously alike from the East end of Broadway to the inviting stretch past 61st Street.  Where the seawall ended, and the pavement of Seawall Boulevard took a precipitous dive from the top of the seawall to the sand of West Beach.

If you don't remember the seawall ending there, you are just too young.

I found my beach waiting patiently.  It greeted me kindly, and with tolerance for the tears of nostalgia that interfered with my vision.  Briefly.

For I had a lot of catching up to do.

Off with my shoes, to wade in the shallow edge of the surf.

Standing, staring silently out to the horizon — as distant as ever.

Checking the tide tables, I made a point of returning at low tide.

To hunt for shells.

I was frustrated,  Disappointed, and in subsequent trips to the beach I confirmed my sad initial impressions. 

There were no shells.

Not that they were scarce, or that the shells I found were damaged.

THERE WERE NO SHELLS.

Over the next three years I fished eagerly and intensively all around the island.

I waded into the surf, and found specs, redfish and flounder.  I waded into West bay and found oysters, but no fish.

In a home-made wooden boat I explored fishing in the ship channel; and in the open Gulf just beyond the surf; in West Bay; around the concrete ship; along the backside of Pelican Island; and even to San Luis pass at the west end of the island.

I have a host of good memories, of impressive stringers of fish  And some memorable encounters with sharks.

Some skin divers who explored the waters around Gulf oil rigs have “laid down the law,” and told their families to stay out of the water. 

“Swimming is for swimming pools.”

My own experience echoes that sentiment. I have seen sharks big enough to be dangerous in the beachfront surf where the water was just a foot deep.

I look back on my various entries into the beach waters, and realize that I was lucky.

But the scarcity of shells was an ongoing reality.

A few, occasionally, but the memory of the beach findings of the 1940's lingers. 

Now I read in the periodical “Galveston Monthly Magazine”  the plaintive query “Unraveling the Mystery of the Disappearing Seashells ... Galveston Beachcombers Wonder: Where Have the Treasures Gone?”

Where, indeed?

GRIEF

GRIEF

 The disclosure that follows was written with the expectation that it would be placed in the directory on my computer titled “Not For Publication.”  After much thought I decided to publish it to my blog . . . 

            Grief.

A common experience for everyone.

Family members die; friends die —  and we grieve.  

And each of us experiences, and expresses that emotion in our own way.

When my son Willie died my oldest daughter phoned me at work to inform me.  I hung up the phone, got up, walked to the parking lot, and drove home to my apartment in Austin. I went in and sat in a chair in the living room.  And sat.

And sat. 

I did not cry.

Pop's voice, from many years past, echoed in my mind: 

“Don't cry, Boy. Men don't cry.”

Willie died in 1989.

At some time shortly thereafter my youngest daughter phoned me, and rebuked me for not showing grief.

“After all, he was your son!”

I didn't respond.  But I wondered how she presumed to know how much emotion I felt —  or displayed. 

I don't remember where she was located at the time, but it was far away, in another state.

There was no reason for me to try to assure her, but I was grieving — in my own way.  In silence.

In 1992 —  many miles farther down the road of my life — as I sat in a chair in my living room in Denver, I thought about Willie.

And I cried. I bawled. I sobbed.  Loudly.  In solitude.  I let it all out.  I cried uncontrollably.

Sorry, Pop — but this time I gotta cry . . .

Mom died in 2000.  I was working in Birmingham. I sat, and remembered the years, 1940 to 1945, when I was with my family in Sheffield, Alabama, in Mom's loving presence.

In 2000 I grieved.

But I did not cry.

 In 2010 my sister Millie called to inform me that Pop died. I lived in Alice at that time.  I sat in my recliner.  And I  heard his voice . . .

“Don't cry, Boy. Men don't cry.”

I didn't.

But I did grieve.

In my own way.

Alone.

In silence.

In 2012 my good friend Stan Russell died.  

His family brought him to Alice for the funeral service.

I attended, in the same facility where I had sat with Stan at the 2011 funeral service for his wife, Peg.  Then, sitting next to me at her funeral, he sobbed.  I put my arm around him, to comfort him.

Seven months later, at Stan's funeral I sat next to Ruth, my companion in Alice, and very nearly cried 

To avoid a public display of emotion, I left and went home. 

As we walked to the parking lot I commented to Ruth that I was feeling more grief than I felt at the death of my own father.

I grieved.  In my own way. 

Alone. And in silence.

But I did not cry.

Now, in 2023, I reminisce — thinking of the loving relationships with friends and family —  and I grieve.  Silently.

Frequently, my eyes water, but I do not cry.  Or a t least I do not sob.

Pop wouldn't approve...

“Don't cry, Boy.....”

  . 

Forbidden Topics

 

My father spoke to me while I was yet a teenager:

“There are two things you should never discuss with other people ~ religion and politics ~ remember that.”

There is an ever expanding list of forbidden topics.

• Politics

• Religion

• LGTB, and the countless expansions of affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify...

• Race — including all derivatives of BLM and CRT...

• Gun control — with endless discussions of rights; and what is, or is not an assault weapon.

• Medical matters — the question of the right to make personal medical decisions.

• Personal topics, that would be embarrassing to reveal.

My commentaries frequently transgress these bounds — and are thereby relegated to the bin marked “Not for Publication”

I choose not to publish them in my blog — I fear the certain retribution of the “Cancel Culture”.

I have been counseled that I should — nay, MUST have the backbone to stand up and express my views.

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

But that lofty historical arrogance by Farragut at Mobile Bay was backed by superior force. When one is alone, making provocative observations directed to an adversary of greater strength is a rash indiscretion.

As is the disclosure of some sensitive topic of behavior or predilection.

Therefore does my collection of “unpublished” grow — and my voice remains silent.