Sonny Liston, A Man (and an Era)

A Prelude

Approaching age 68, my desire either to express myself creatively or to try to change the world has diminished considerably. A motorcycle accident during a routine ride around town in March left me with serious injuries that will limit my physical capabilities for the rest of my days, and the state of the world over the past couple of years just keeps me in a state of borderline despair usually manifested as apathy. I move between San Diego, my acreage in Prescott, and my small condo in Miami Beach, doing pretty much the same thing in each place.

In Prescott recently for five weeks, I followed a series on the NBC Phoenix outlet about the ongoing drought in the Southwest. Lake Powell is drying up, and Lake Meade, fed by it, is at such a low level that there is danger of it no longer being able to generate hydroelectricity. Builders continue building, investors keep on investing, people keep going about their wasteful ways perhaps because the catastrophic reality of this situation is too grim to contemplate. "Conservatives," for lack of a better label, continue to insist that there isn't enough evidence to warrant drastic action, even though they seem to think it's a fine idea whenever the U.S. invades another country and kills several tens of thousands of noncombatants because they think the country maybe, possibly was harboring weapons of mass destruction. Doing anything proactive about climate change though--just in case--is the stuff of wacky muddleheadedness.

When it all goes dry and life is no longer sustainable, these same A-holes will screw up their faces and claim there was no way of knowing this would eventually happen. They'll call the forward-thinkers a bunch of screwball liberals, fume that there's no point in placing blame about the past now, and look about for someone else to invade so that we can acquire the resources necessary to "preserve our way of life." This time, however, with the climate no longer cooperating, one wonders if there will be any way of life left to preserve.

A Prequel

I was a kid of the 1960s, more an observer than an active participant, and barely 15 years old when the 1970s started. I turned 8 in December of 1962, was just learning to read with any amount of comprehension any sort of publications like San Diego's Evening Tribune, Life Magazine, or Readers Digest, all of which my parents subscribed to. I couldn't have identified many celebrities other than Johnny Downs, the former Our Gang member who hosted the after school cartoon program in San Diego, and perhaps Walter Cronkite, who always made me uneasy because he was on TV every damned night talking about natural disasters and various crummy things that had happened in the world that day.

It's fun now, as a much older adult, to review some of the news stories of the time that I was too young to truly understand, and to read about the history of places that were just vague names in the news then, but places I've visited and come to know since.

Sitting back in Prescott by myself in the evenings, hearing and reading about Lake Meade, I began looking up little factoids about Las Vegas. Coincidentally, I've been getting a lot of recommendations about boxing history sites sent my way on the newsfeed of my social media. In that way did I get to thinking about a celebrity from my childhood, the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1962 to early 1964, Sonny Liston.

A Man

Liston is interred in a cemetery along the flight path of what was until very recently known as McCarren International Airport in Las Vegas, with the simple inscription on his headstone of "A Man." The site has occasional visitors who seek out his final resting place, but fewer and fewer as time passes. His life is a bit of an enigma, not least because no one is really sure of either the date and year of his birth, or the exact date and cause of his death in his Las Vegas home during the holiday season of 1970.

He was, in a sense, the champion nobody wanted. Born poor to a sharecropper family in Arkansas, put to work in the fields at an early age, and beaten incessantly by his father, in his early teenage years he shook the fruit from a tree, sold it, and made his way 300 miles north to St. Louis to find his mother, who had relocated there to seek factory work. Big and exceptionally strong for his age, he tried going to school but was ridiculed for his complete lack of literacy or prior education. He tried to make an honest living, but the only employment available was unskilled and low paying.

The young man turned to petty crime, leading a small gang in muggings and armed robberies, becoming well-known to local police. In time, he was arrested and sent to Missouri State Penitentiary. Liston never complained about prison life, finding it the only place he'd known where he was guaranteed three meals a day. A Catholic priest in charge of the prison's athletic program suggested that he take up boxing. With his exceptionally long reach, large fists, and natural talent, he soon excelled to the point that he obtained an early release on the condition that he have a sponsor for an amateur career.

Prison officials were not happy with the sponsors who came forward, with their connections to organized crime, but thought it a better solution than keeping Liston in prison. Thus did Liston's future lifelong connections with the mob begin. While boxing as an amateur, he did additional odd jobs for them as an enforcer and debt collector. Inevitably, he became known as a "usual suspect" among the St. Louis police, and this marked also the beginning of his lifelong negative encounters with law enforcement.

He moved later to Philadelphia, but fared no better.  Perhaps tired of being harassed, he at one point beat an officer unconscious and took his gun, for which he earned more jail time. By now he was earning a fair amount as a professional boxer, and had little need to commit petty crime. It is difficult to know to what extent these problems were of his own making, and to what extent he was unfairly profiled and targeted. There was the stigma of his mob connections, but there was also the context of the pre-civil rights era that he came of age in. Targeting a black male unfairly, particularly one who was becoming reasonably successful in his profession, did not arouse the widespread sympathy or indignation of the public that it would today.

None of the alleged infractions for which he was targeted were particularly egregious, but they gave him the reputation of a troublemaker as he moved up the professional ranks. By the time he reached first rank status and talk of taking on Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight championship became serious, the NAACP and eventually President John Kennedy himself were urging Patterson not to accept the challenge. Cus D'Amato, Patterson's trainer and much later in life the mentor and father figure to Mike Tyson, personally opposed the match due to Liston's troublesome connections. The fight was finally arranged, however, and Liston walloped Patterson in the first round to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

The champion's crown was always an awkward fit for Liston, and for the entire nation. He was seen as a poor role model, unworthy of the prestigious title. He vowed to do his best to be worthy, but was deeply disappointed when he returned to Philadelphia and found virtually no one at the airport to welcome him. Nonetheless, tutored by his wife, he learned to sign autographs with simple messages, and to read everyday signage and advertisements. Advised by Joe Louis, a close companion, he mastered the basics of being a public relations-conscious celebrity. By nature, he had a rapport with children and the elderly, perhaps because he felt they were the only people who had no designs on him and wanted nothing more than to meet him and shake his massive hand.

It has been argued that Liston, rather than Muhammed Ali, was the first civil rights era heavyweight champion. Ironically perhaps, through his mob connections he was accustomed to dealing with white people in a matter-of-fact, businesslike way. He was nonpolitical and noncommittal about the movement, participating only in a single demonstration with civil rights leaders against a church arson. After living briefly in Denver, the mob helped him purchase a house in an all white neighborhood on a golf course in Las Vegas. Despite the initial concerns of neighbors, he proved to be an affable family man, and remained there for the rest of his life. He made goodwill trips as champion, posing in a kilt and attempting to play the bagpipes in Scotland. He was persuaded to pose for a famous December 1962 magazine cover while wearing a Santa cap.

By the time he was challenged by Cassius Clay--later Muhammed Ali--in February 1964, he had gained at least tolerance by the public. Although Clay trained regularly at the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach, he was not permitted to stay overnight during the buildup to their fight there. Hampton House, a well-known stopping place for black celebrities across the causeway near Liberty City, provided his accommodations. Liston, meanwhile, was a guest at the Casablanca in the north part of the city, as an apparent exception to Jim Crow laws in the final months before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Beatles were in town, taping their second Ed Sullivan Show appearance at the nearby Deauville, and Liston was in the studio audience with Joe Louis. Neither expressed any great interest to meet them, but the Beatles would later visit the 5th Street Gym and have a famous photo op with the man who would soon dethrone Liston.

The rest of the story is a bit sad. Liston did not train diligently for his first fight with Clay, and was TKO'ed in seven rounds, perhaps disabled by an injured shoulder. He trained even less for their second meeting the next year, being felled by the famous "phantom punch" in the first round. It is widely believed that he threw the fight, and there is much speculation as to why. Pressured by the mob, threatened by the Black Muslims who favored the man now known as Muhammed Ali, never truly comfortable as the champ, perhaps he just figured he'd had enough. He had a nice house and a comfortable life. Perhaps, as in Rocky III, he'd become complacent and Ali served as his Clubber Lang, though unlike Rocky, he exhibited no great determination to redeem himself.

As a kid, I recall reading that he'd been arrested not long afterward in Vegas for a concealed weapon violation. My sense was that his life was going downhill. His wife Geraldine would say later that every negative encounter he had with the police in the time she had known him began with a round of drinking, which he apparently liked to do often. Still, he lived a relatively quiet life for his final five years. Like too many boxers past their prime, he attempted a comeback in the late 1960s with some success, but was also beaten a time or two. By 1970, he was almost forty years old, perhaps more, and neither enthusiastic nor agile as a fighter.

Geraldine returned from a holiday visit to St. Louis in early 1971 to find Sonny dead. The cause has always been something of a mystery, and the exact date of his death, like that of his birth, will never be known with certainty. He'd won the last bout of his comeback a few weeks before, and it has been speculate4d that he'd been told to take a fall. Perhaps it was a final act of defiance, an assertion of his independence, that led him to be murdered. Perhaps he'd actually suffered a heart attack at home alone, and was unable to seek help.

An Era

Liston's passing was not widely noted by the media in early 1971, just a couple of months before Muhammed Ali would challenge Joe Frazier the first time for the championship. Ali would lose that one, but as we know it was far from the end of his career, which had been detoured for three years after he refused induction into the armed forces at the height of the Vietnam War. He would regain the heavyweight championship more than any other, and become a living legend. His first loss to Ken Norton in 1973 was widely believed to be the end for him, but he apparently saw it as comparable to his 1964 defeat of Liston, where his opponent had not taken him very seriously and showed up to fight in less than his best condition. Never again would Ali enter the ring less than thoroughly trained.

Later in life, Ali would express sympathy for his old nemesis. He felt that there was a dark moodiness about Liston, a sense of a man who'd had it rough, seldom seemed to catch a lucky break, and dealt with life's setbacks in his stoic way. He was not the only one to feel that, in retrospect, Liston was a more complicated and intriguing character than the man portrayed by the media.

Comparisons to other boxers, or other eras, have limited usefulness. Liston was in some ways a transitional figure in the transitional era of the early 1960s. By circumstance, he was concerned primarily with his own wellbeing rather than with the social change going on around him. He was independent minded, yet beholden to powerful others who always loomed large in his consciousness. The tone of his life and times has more the feel--the brooding darkness--of the Godfather movies than the good-guys-always-win aura of the Rocky series. The public expected much from the heavyweight champion of the world in those days, and never more than in the nascent civil rights era. Liston made some efforts to live up to those expectations, with encouragement and advice from Joe Louis. In the end, however, his unsavory connections and run-ins with the law limited his ability to polish his public image.

Mike Tyson, who admired him greatly and was sometimes compared to him, provides an interesting study in contrasts. Liston was about a decade older when he reached the top, more seasoned by life, and less overwhelmed by sudden fame and fortune. His mentors had been mobsters, who saw him more as a useful commodity than as a talent to be nurtured, He never had a true caring mentor, a Cus D'Amato of his own, Though many admired him quietly, he also never had a true fan base as a celebrity... nor did he seem to seek one. By the time he became champion, he had been married for a time and had a stable home life quite incongruous with his public image. The limited literacy Liston attained was through the efforts of his wife, as government in the era he grew up and in remote rural areas especially, had little interest in providing its citizens with a basic education,

Given the relatively benevolent option of reform school in his youth, it is hard to know how Liston might have developed. He was, by all accounts, a bright and perceptive individual. Like Tyson, and like all people of exceptional attainments, he had that special intelligence that enabled him to direct his talents toward greatness. One has to admire, even wonder, at the tenacity of a boy barely thirteen years old making his way to St. Louis, illiterate, with no sense of geography, little understanding of money, and no experiences outside the rural environment where he was born.  Never seeming to catch a break, perhaps the luckiest twist in his life was going to prison and discovering boxing.

McCarran International Airport, named for a former Nevada politician with notoriously unenlightened views on certain ethnic groups, was renamed for Senator Harry Reid around the time of the latter's passing. Planes still pass over the otherwise peaceful cemetery on a regular basis. The gravesite is not well known, but has occasional visitors. One has to wonder, hearing the roar of jet engines, considering the work and effort it takes to keep a fleet of airliners moving toward their destinations, and thinking of all the people aboard those planes--coming and going for various purposes--whether a small part of all that energy and life force might periodically mingle with the desert sunlight and through some cosmic mix produce a positive vibe over the final resting place of Charles "Sonny" Liston, A Man.

Never truly loved or esteemed even as the
champ, Liston nonetheless was not without
a sense of public relations and good nature..

In publicity photos, to my young mind he
appeared more impassive and intense than
angry and menacing.

The famous December 1962 magazine cover

During changing times, Liston's opponent for the February 1964 title fight met the Beatles 
at the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach.

 

This essay is not carefully fact checked, though I'm consolidating my impressions on reading several articles and reviewing several documentaries as conscientiously as I can. Corrections or other comments are welcomed.

A Weirdly OK Year

 It's cliched to say that 2020 sucked. In a global sense, sure, but for me it really wasn't that much of an Anus Horribilius or whatever the fancy term is. I retired in December 2019, a couple of days after turning 65, headed out to Miami Beach for a few weeks, then took a cruise back to San Diego through the Panama Canal. About a month later, the whole world shut down while I was on a planned week-or-so trip to Prescott with little more than a change of clothes. I was there until early May, then back in San Diego in time to see downtown La Mesa burn just after Memorial Day. At the end of June, some tweaker-of-color tried to break into my condo at 3:30 AM, and I have very little doubt that his addled brain was emboldened by the zeitgeist. I would be back out to Prescott two more times, and Miami Beach again for the first time since the beginning of the year for a few weeks in mid-September/early-October.

Before you knew it, the year was at an end again, and here I am back in Miami Beach for a month. It's been pretty phenomenally lazy, a year into retirement and now accustomed to not really having to do much of anything I don't feel like doing. Social life for most people has come to a standstill, but it doesn't bother me that much because my social life was always more or less at a standstill. I listen to discussions on TV about teenage pregnancy, abusive relationships, and such problems, and can't comprehend such things really. It's been eons since any female gave me the smallest opportunity to get her pregnant or abuse her, even if I wanted to. It seems the whole world, in the first year of my retirement, has been modified to reflect the lifestyle of yours truly.

Financially, it's been a challenge. I was planning on depending largely on my rental income in retirement, then the virus started affecting tenants' ability to pay rent. On top of that, there were two extremely expensive tenant turnovers, one coming right after I thought I was recovering from the other, and totaling $45,000 in repairs and expenses by fall. My smaller, simpler place in Yuma also had almost monthly nagging expenses, appliances going out and such. I spent most of August in San Diego working on one of the places myself, but it still was draining my savings at an alarming rate.

On top of all this, I'd put a metal roof on the Prescott place in December and replaced the oak crown moldings inside that the painters had F'ed up and painted over before the final tenancy, only to find I had a pack rat infestation under the house on coming out to see it. I battled it myself with little help from a basically useless pest control company. Then in March, my neighbor to the east finally put his vacant lot up for sale. Clobbered and reeling from expenses, I nonetheless realized that the chance would never come again and managed to cobble together the money to buy it from him by cashing in part of my Roth IRA and dipping for the first time into my equity line of credit.

Each time I think I'm getting some breathing space, another calamity comes up, so I'm not going to say I'm out of the woods yet. Buying the neighbor's lot, though, was the culmination of a 20+ year old dream; it was just crappy timing is all. Thus, I'll say that as of early January 2021, life is all right.

Prescott, Spring 2020. The news on
the single antenna station I got there
was relentlessly bad, but breakfast was
always a peaceful if lonely ritual.

Early in the March thru May stay,
looking east toward my newly acquired
acreage and dreaming of better days.

With plenty of time for such things,
my stone lantern got an uplift after
tenants had spent over 20 years
shooting at it and such.

Back in San Diego in late summer, taking
a break from endless work on the back
unit of my duplex, a mid-year unexpected
mega-expense.

Early October, on return from 3 weeks
in Miami Beach. Kinda the epitome of
what it is to be retired and just not give
much of a shit.

During the fall return to Miami Beach.
Same pose; different location.

Home-cooked pork with black beans and a nice
Cuba Libre in Miami Beach, September 2020.

Make America Sane Again

After retiring in December, I headed off to Miami Beach for three weeks, then caught Holland America's Rotterdam back to San Diego from Fort Lauderdale. It was my first ever cruise, and though it was pleasant I'm by no means addicted to the lifestyle. Sixteen days on a boat is about enough, and as usual, I'm finding that no matter how old I get, I always seem to be surrounded by people a decade or so older. The bald heads, beer guts, and uncontrolled flatulence got to be a bit much after awhile.

Maybe I'll write more about the cruise itself sometime, but right now the salient thought in my head is how the whole cruise thing is open to criticism by those of a certain political persuasion. It's a bit odd to think of the fuel and resources pissed away on hauling a bunch of over-the-hill retirees pointlessly over the high seas for weeks on end, but the primary criticism would probably be about the labor practices. Holland America hires primarily Filipinos for food service jobs, and Indonesians for stewards and housekeeping. Apparently there are large training centers in both countries. It seems strange to be on a ship for over two weeks with a bunch of old white people being served almost exclusively by non-affluent young Asians. For someone like myself who has lived all over the world and also had to work fairly hard to get anywhere in life, I feel funny about having the same person serve me three meals a day and sweep up around the hot tub while I soak in it.

I was friendly with one lady on the crew, and told her as much. If ever she has time off in San Diego, she can relax while I do the work. Being about forty years younger than I am, I doubt she'll follow up, but I gave her my contact info anyway. There's nothing in particular going on in my head; I'd just enjoy letting one of the crew members actually see some of the places the ship docks in for a change.

For whatever reason, I seem to bond well with the older people I always find myself surrounded by no matter how old I myself get. There were several retired army-types who had been in the same places as myself at slightly different times, and any number of folks who lived in places I'd passed through or spent time in. My cross-country motorcycle trip from summer 2017 provided many a point of departure for conversation. Toward the end of the cruise, I got to talking with one of the entertainers during an elevator ride, and found that he was the nephew of a childhood friend!

One upside of a cruise is that just about everyone is in a good mood, and have their life together enough to be able to afford to go on a cruise. Though the entire Trump impeachment trial took place while I was at sea, there wasn't much discussion of it. The only consistent satellite channels available in most places were Fox News and MSNBC, so it was fun to switch from one to the other and marvel at how people can view the same event and have such a different perspective on it. During the Iraq War and the whole George W. era, I hated Fox and cheered on MSNBC. Now it's pretty much the opposite, with just about anyone with a brain willing to admit that invading Iraq was about the stupidest thing that ever happened.

Love the troops; hate the war... Remember that? Well, decompressing from the cruise and getting back to Realityville while retired and with lots of time on my hands, I find myself reverting to my default piss-and-vinegar world view. As Michael Savage once put it, in and of itself what's so great about somebody who wears a uniform? Firefighters save lives, but they also spend most of their time sitting around playing cards in the station and contemplating the unaffordable pensions they anticipate drawing on retirement.

Actually, since spending six years in the army myself, I've always thought this faux patriotism by people who wouldn't know which end of a rifle to clean was a buncha hooey. I served two tours in the Military District of Washington, the first in the immediate post-Vietnam era and the second during the Iran Hostage Crisis. I went from people flipping me off along M Street in Georgetown as I rode my motorcycle back to Fort Myer to having them come up and thank me for my service. In both cases, my basic feeling toward their behavior was a great big fuck-you.

It always seemed to me that, no matter how manly or macho the work might seem, firefighters, law enforcement types, and military personnel are all basically public sector weenies. Unlike the average Joe Schmo, they don't have to get up every morning and figure out all over again how to make a living. They don't have to hire a tax preparer to figure out how to keep from losing their shirt or having their pants pulled down as the government reams them. They just go off and play with big toys like a bunch of overgrown children. Occasionally it's dangerous, but most of the time that's just exactly what they do for a living, with no worries about healthcare or job security.

What's so High-Falutin' Great American about it? It sounds like the great socialist dream to me. Is it really so different from living in a communist country in the old days, sitting around on your ass without a worry in the world other than not upsetting the higher-ups?  Having spent so much time in the military, it would be hard to label me anti-military or some other sort of anti-American nonsense. I just don't see any particular reason to look up to somebody just because he wears a uniform any more than to someone who navigates the idiocy of everyday life in an advanced society while living by his wits.

In this stream-of-consciousness tirade against all that pisses me off about American society, allow me to now turn to the whole business of making a living and the so-called social contract. My dad was a pretty average and typical American, and like most typical Americans he wasn't that interested in being clever. He didn't want to start and run a business, or to spend most of his waking hours trying to out-maneuver and/or cut the balls off the competition. Herein lies a great irony that causes endless misunderstanding: It doesn't take that many ambitious or even intelligent people to run a society. What it takes is obedient people with a sense of faith in the system... believers in the social contract if you will. All you really have to do to keep a society going is avoid alienating them so completely and screwing them so blatantly that they cease to give a shit.

Republican politicians tend to be ambitious, and intelligent in a running-a-business way that, in my youth, I used to refer to as "butt brains." They don't seem to understand that most people just want to put in an honest day's work without worrying about being laid off on a half hour's notice. They'd also prefer not to have to worry about the job once they've punched out for the day. Democratic politicians, on the other hand, are generally either guilt-tripping inheritors of great wealth or public sector weenies, though strictly of the chairborne variety; soldiers and cops almost always fancy themselves conservatives despite being wards of the state. Many more Democrats than Republicans are professional politicians, and as Thomas E. Dewey once put it, no man should seek a job in the public sector if he can't make more money in the private sector. This, however, is a foreign concept to most "progressive" types. With some important exceptions, Democrats generally know about as much about economics or the dynamics of generating wealth as I did when I got my first job at Jack-in-the-Box. The political views of both sides derive from their own world views, and neither side seems to recognize that not everybody thinks like they do.

First out of necessity, then because I genuinely liked the life I'd made for myself. I became quite clever at investing and keeping my cash flow positive. My only conventional job for the past 22 years was as a part-time community college instructor. It's another great irony that tenured professors are almost unfailingly knee-jerk liberal public sector weenies of the worst sort themselves, yet they tend to look down on their part-time colleagues (adjunct instructors, or simply "aaaaadjuncts") as inferiors who couldn't quite cut the mustard, even as they claim to champion our rights in the name of social justice. College administrators, the ultimate superfluous public sector dead weight--and seemingly possessed of an en masse Walter Mitty complex--treat us with ruthless expediency, even as they come out with position papers about the rights of "Dreamers" or some other whining assholes.

It certainly doesn't help that I've been on the wrong end of affirmative action since the day I entered the workforce. There aren't that many Males-Who-Look-Like-Me in my field, and a surprising number I met during my career had done exactly as I did. We took care of ourselves because we knew we couldn't expect The System to take care of us. We succeeded, and must have been something of an enigma to the full-timers--who apparently presume that all adjuncts are jealous of them--but there's always a certain resentment in the back of my mind that I had to devote so much mental energy to something as chickenshit as making a living without being stomped out by some quirk of the system beyond my control. As it was, I lost my healthcare for a few months--during that period when you were fined for not having any--through the sheer incompetence of some classified employee in HR. She actually giggled over the phone when I tried to discuss it with her. I'd have complained, but why bother? Nothing would happen to her, and I'd be regarded as just another grievance-mongering aaaaadjunct troublemaker.

This brings me to yet another sore spot in my One-Man War against societal insanity: Societies in general, and this one in a grotesquely exaggerated manner, don't reward those who follow the rules. This wouldn't really be a problem if everyone followed the rules, but it's precisely the scofflaws, incompetents, shrug-your-shoulders-and-fart ignoramuses, and all around irresponsible assholes that the system actually does reward. Go to work, pay your taxes and bills, and know the authorities will be on you like a jackal if you don't cross a t or dot an i. Thumb your nose at the system, tell the authorities to shut up and give you your free stuff,  or--if you lack the balls to do that--simply claim you are a victim, and a whole world of government "programs," private charities, special services, and fight-for-your-rights advocactes are there for the picking.

You can clog up the hospital emergency room and stiff the bill. You can claim that you couldn't understand the instructions for whatever bureaucratic procedure you failed to comply with. You can screw up on the job until the cows come home. You can enter the country illegally and get free legal services and other forms of human rights infused bullshit that no one would ever consider extending to a native-born citizen. Meanwhile, every knee-jerk liberal within shouting distance will holler about your "rights." You can defy teachers and police, unlawfully assemble... pretty much do whatever you want, then claim--successfully--that you were somehow treated unfairly when proper authority does its job.

The result is that we basically live in a society full of chickenshits. Everyone's scared to death of being sued, shamed, fired, or physically assaulted if they dare to apply common sense to a situation. Government and private business alike seem to specialize in warning people about the obvious, using ridiculous amounts of hem-and-haw verbiage in a country where half the people can't really even understand English very well. We're told that coffee cups are hot, that people with heart conditions shouldn't ride on roller coasters, that national parks might have wildlife. If the admonitions are oral, they are given inevitably over a poor quality PA system with every kind of background noise going on, usually by a bored functionary mumbling at a thousand words per minute. The point isn't really to communicate, but to ass-cover. The national motto ought to be "You Can't Say We Didn't Tell You."

Then, at the end of the day, this nation of scared-shitless people comes home to relax, and what do you think they favor as TV fare? Programs about cops and lawyers! Yep, turn on a TV and channel surf randomly. At least half the programs will feature police stations and courtrooms. Meanwhile, the rest of the world marvels at this nation's truly stupefying levels of violent crime and idiotic litigation. Me, I just have an antenna and don't watch that much TV anyway. Who needs to pay for 100+ channels of garbage when I can get half a dozen free? When it all got to be too much, I used to take late evening walks around the neighborhood, but too many people I didn't know would take to heart that When in Doubt Call the Cops mentality that is really just a reflection of the national paranoia. I got tired of explaining that I lived in the neighborhood and was just walking down the street at an admittedly odd time of day. When it happens to me, it's just life in the good old USA. When it happens to Someone Who Doesn't Look Like Me, I believe they call it profiling.

Bullshit is the glue that holds societies together, and when a society's sense of self comes to completely lack any semblance of verisimilitude--and no one is afraid to point it out anymore--it implodes with surprising quickness and lack of fanfare. The Soviet Union was a recent example. The Japanese have the concept of "honne" vs. "tatemae," meaning the unadorned truth vs. the company line, the just-tangential-enough-to-the-truth bullshit that everyone knows is bullshit but no one dares to point out as such. It was one of various aspects of that society that annoyed me endlessly when I lived there, yet it seems to have taken root in politically correct America... and it's all the more annoying because Americans love to go on about how straight-talking they are. Of course, straight talking isn't always a good idea when everybody is going around with a gun and/or a lawyer on retainer, and tends to take offense at everything they see and hear. It's a toxic mix, and the situation is desperate; we are running out of bullshit!

King Apathy III

A few days after my 65th birthday last month, I gave final exams for the final time, had a fine send-off from my department, and slipped away into retirement. It was all rather nice and neat, finishing up a semester, applying for Medicare and CalSTRS, and celebrating my birthday all within a few days of each other.

After a week or so of tying up loose ends, I headed out to the Prescott place. The management company still keeps an eye on it--supposedly--since it reverted to my personal use over the summer. It seems to suck a lot of money through the management fee, heating it minimally with propane during this cold winter, and replacing the roof with a metal one even though the original 1996 asphalt shingle roof still seemed to have some life left in it. The unpleasant surprise was under the house, where I discovered a water line leak due to rats gnawing at it, and a nightly cacphony of the hated rodents trying to get into the house through the heating vents and drain pipes.

Though hardly happy with the management company, I'm kinda stuck with them unless I want to battle the problems myself. I seem to have scared the critters--which included a skunk--out from under the place, and so sealed up the holes they'd been getting in through toward the end of my ten-day stay. I caught a huge fat rat, probably pregnant, and the others laid low, apparently abandoning the place altogether. The management company sent out a subcontractor to repair the water leak, and promised to check under the house from now on during its monthly inspections... Yeah, do that!

All told, I now have three part-time residences. San Diego will remain the primary one, the address of record and mailing of official stuff, but I'm going to have to spend time in Prescott lest the animals return to take up residence again. Miami Beach, where I am now, remains a fun little hideaway on the opposite coast, and apparently free of rats since a small invasion of the complex three years ago alerted us to seal up any possible entrance ways. The neighbors' cats like me, and I encourage them to come inside, take a look around, and leave their scent. The San Diego condo, since flooding due to a ruptured water heater during a stay in Miami Beach three years ago, has remained trouble-free. I now shut off the water main before leaving on any trip of more than a few days.

The folks' old house in San Diego, now a rental, has been a money-sucker during the recent turnover of tenants, Then, a week or so after the new ones had moved in, the house next door to it caught fire. I'm sorry for the neighbors, but awfully glad the damage was limited to their own property.

The other San Diego rental, a duplex, of course chose this moment to provide me with a low-level headache, as the tenants can't get the oven door to close and there are no replacement parts for such an old model. More $$$ pissed away on expenses expenses EXPENSES!!! Don't ever think that owning rental properties is just a matter of living off of other people's earnings. There are time periods where I don't make a dime off of them. This is turning into one of those extended periods.

I'd stopped in Yuma on the way home from Prescott to take a look at the place there. To persuade the tenants to stay, I'd agreed to put a cover over the patio and to replace the flooring. This was my first time seeing it since the work was done several months ago. Then, this morning, I get an email from the management company there telling me that they are applying for a loan and apparently getting ready to move. Oh joy, just what I need right now...

Despite this bombardment of aggravations as I start out my retirement, the problems at the Prescott place galvanized me. I'm getting older, but can still rise to the occasion and work day and night to deal with a crisis. The thing is, left to my own devices I don't want to. Retirement is just exactly what I thought it would be ever since I was a kid and the concept reached me that I'd have to spend a large part of my life doing things that I really didn't want to do while on someone else's schedule. For all the talk about the love of teaching, I found a good number of students obnoxious twits, and am proud to say that I can't even remember their names a month later. The evenings in Miami Beach have consisted of cooking up a nice meal, and enjoying it at the picnic table on the boat dock with plenty of sangria or Scotch and soda.

The cats enjoy lounging around, and don't even seem to expect me to give them anything from my plate. Two of them look quite well-fed by their owner anyway. The third one is a black and white "tuxedo cat," virtually identical to the one my folks had from the early '80s to mid-'90s. It doesn't really like to be picked up and cuddled, but will put up with it for a minute or so with some half-hearted squirming around and vocal complaints. When I let her go, she just hangs around as if she wants more.

Will I grow tired of this, and wish I had new challenges, mountains to climb, annoying people to deal with? Not likely. I was always rather oddly apathetic, content to entertain myself with simple things and enjoy whatever is going on around me with a sort of amazed grin on my face. In the back of my mind, the only worry is whether the rodents in Prescott will stay scared away long enough for me to return and freshly terrorize them. Other than that, I wish only for a minimum of complications as I prepare to head out next Thursday on a cruise through the Panama Canal and back to San Diego.

Prescott

San Diego

Miami Beach

Nearing Retirement and Getting Crankier

I was born on Pearl Harbor Day 1954. This means that I'm less than two months from 65 years old. It's sobering to go through all the applications for CalSTRS, Medicare, and Social Security, and to notify the college that I'll be retiring at the end of the semester, a few days after my birthday. I've booked a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to San Diego through the Panama Canal in late January/early February, after planning to hang out for a month at the Miami Beach condo. This is really happening!

Then today, some woman in her eighties with a walker tried hitting on me after I'd bought a bottle of booze at the Rite-Aid. She was driving me crazy, taking forever to shuffle her way through the exit, but I managed a smile when she turned and apologized... and that set her off. Once finally in the parking lot, I straddled my motorcycle, and she expressed amazement that someone so old could still ride one. She asked how old I was, and I hesitated just long enough to show mild irritation before telling her.

I've been on some stupid dating site for the past several years, and have NEVER not once met ANYONE on it, or even had anyone under retirement age look at my profile. Was all set to meet a lady a few years ago in Miami, but when I sent her a selfie with a neighbor's cat a couple of hours before, she went on about how she was allergic to cats and therefore had to do the usual female cancel-out. Can you see how fine it makes me feel to be hit on by an old lady with a walker? I have enough negativity about anything hinting of romance as it is, and don't really need that to make my day.

Since the year I got out of high school, people have been telling me that I look 10-15 years older than I am. I don't really give a shit, but why must they keep telling me? My best childhood friend is limping around with a cane, and takes about 25 different kinds of pills every day. Nobody tells HIM that he looks old everywhere he goes. What is up with that?

At some point today, I'll have to get around to deep-cleaning my little bitty condo. I love it when it's clean, hate cleaning it, but don't trust anyone else to get it the way I want it. Like the motorcycle, it looks like something a much younger man would have. It is, I suppose, the late adulthood equivalent of a child's tricycle and playpen.

The simple fact is that I've never been that keen on adulthood. I've never wanted to be married, and never cared for any of that other grown-up crap. Kids annoy me as it is, so why would I want any of my own?! Women never seem able to express a 10-word thought in less than 500 words. Visitors leave peanut shells, potato chip crumbs, and fingerprint-smudged glassware all over my nice clean condo. Dealing with people gets on my nerves.  Thinking gives me a headache. In fact, I've never really enjoyed working; I just managed to find something I could do for a living that didn't drive me crazy or bore me to death.

Soon enough, the whole world can kiss my ass. Ever since I was five years old and had to go to kindergarten, I've always wanted just to be able to lie around in bed or on the sofa any time I wanted to without anybody hassling me, and to tell my mom or my teacher or my drill sergeant or whoever was on my case, "PPPHHHFFFRRRTTT!!!" to you! It looks like--finally--I've achieved my life goal.

SDSU Donor Wall, with the oldest man in the world

Teachers' conference in Sacramento early this year.
Oldest man in the world back and center.

Hangout of the oldest man in the world

Older Than the President of My Childhood

Perhaps you're familiar with the most popular entry of my modest blog, "The President of My Childhood." I've been in an odd frame of mind for the past week or so, realizing that our 36th president, Lyndon B. Johnson, died at the age of 64 years 4 months and 3 weeks on January 22, 1973. I was a a senior in high school then, and he seemed impossibly old. His passing wasn't much noted by people my age, as the Vietnam War was still going on and the rancor of American involvement there was still very fresh.

You see, around the first of May, I turned 64 years 4 months and 3 weeks old. It's hard to imagine that I'm now older than LBJ was when he died, barely a month after this video of his last public appearance was recorded at the end of a civil rights symposium at the LBJ Library in Austin, TX. This might seem an odd fact to carry around in one's head, but there's a sort of following among those who have visited the LBJ Library and Museum, much facilitated by social media of course. He was a fascinating individual, tremendously conflicted and of two minds about most things. He hated the Vietnam War, and spent too much time listening to "experts" rather than following the intuition that told him that South Vietnam was simply too underdeveloped as a nation to resist the north's determination to unite the country under one government.

His true sense of pride, and the place closest to his heart, was the civil rights legislation passed during his five years and two months in office. If you understand the background and have a sense of history, this is a difficult video to watch. LBJ went into a deep depression after leaving office, resumed smoking and drinking heavily, and--aside from overseeing closely the construction of his presidential library--seemed hell-bent on his own self-destruction. Roy Wilkins and other leaders present were reportedly dismayed at the former president's appearance, the hesitancy with which he began his remarks. He got stronger though, and by the end had several audience members in tears. Jack Valenti described it as seeing the champ enter the ring one final time, not as strong as he was in his prime but rising to the occasion.

It is, in the end, a pretty good speech from a man who was not that good a public speaker. As one of the commenters to the link puts it, regardless of all that he did well and badly in his life, it's hard to see this man as anything but a good and decent person who loved his country. If you've gone as far as finding your way to this blog, give it a listen and try to understand the spirit of the times and the enormous changes his actions brought to American society in less than a decade since the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It makes me feel that my own life's accomplishments, and those of most of us, are but nothing in comparison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJKq18m0oYs

LBJ was particularly proud of Congresswoman Barbara Jordan
of Texas, shown here during the symposium with Vernon Jordan.

The Wayfaring Stranger, 2019

It's getting onto summer vacation time. I've had unusual difficulty deciding what I want to do with the 12 weeks or so I have off between semesters. Now, I think I've figured it out.

Since 2012, I've had some consistently memorable summers. Even during Japan days, students would comment that I nearly always managed to come up with something interesting to do with my long time off. There, over several years, I attended all the northern festivals while making my way up to Sapporo from Osaka. One year, 1990, I climbed Mr. Fuji before hitting the Nebuta Matsuri in Aomori. In more recent summers, I've travelled to Europe, taken a Colorado River raft trip, visited the hometowns and final resting places of relatives from both sides of my family, signed legacy gifts in Washingon DC and taken the train from there to Miami, re-visited Peru, ridden my motorcycle cross-country, and traveled around Mexico by train, bus, and ferry.

What does one do for an encore at age 64? Well, since 2014 the trips have been built around the concept that I have a home on each coast, in San Diego and Miami Beach, and can make my way from one to the other as part of the adventure. This time, I think I'm just going to buy a one-way ticket to Miami, then make my way back from east to west as I damned well please.

It fits into the general self-improvement kick I'm on at the moment as well. Though always on-the-go during vacations, I tend to spend weekends and days off during the semesters about as active as a beached whale. My San Diego condo isn't big, but it's filled with all sorts of me-stuff that makes it very comfortable just to burrow in and stay home when I don't have a lot of time to wander... even the exercise equipment I need to stay reasonably in shape. I suppose the self-centered nature of the place--and of its component part in Miami Beach--goes a long way toward explaining why I've never settled down with a woman. I like wandering around drunk and naked. I like eating what I want when I want it. I like burping and farting whenever the urge overtakes me, with no one around to take offense. I like being only a few steps away from whatever I'm looking for. I like having things just so.

Most of all, perhaps, I like the feeling of being affluent, and as secure as a person can be in an uncertain world. It doesn't take all kinds of expensive stuff and ostentatious consumption to feel this way, mind you; I also get a kick out of owning no computer of my own while having access to all of them I could ever need. I find it very cool that I can watch TV free, with an antenna, when I watch it at all. I enjoy dressing sloppy, and not shaving or showering, when I have no outside responsibilities and no one to impress. I like having a full head of long, wavy, multi-colored, completely natural hair that I suppose must be striking because so many people have told me that it is. If there's any social aspect to the enjoyment at all, it's in getting the stink-eye from some shallow, conventional soccer mom type, knowing that she'd probably turn instantly obsequious if she knew my passive income exceeds what most people make by working... and having no particular desire that she know.

For a time, the only concern about this pleasant if unhealthy lifestyle was that I might have been becoming something of an alcoholic. Now, however, I'm three weeks into a planned six weeks of drinking no booze at all, and am surprised by how little I miss it. At home--and only when I had nothing in particular to accomplish the next day--I'd been in the habit of going through entire fifths of scotch, rum, or tequila in a single sitting, waking up to a dead TV and splayed clumsily across my second-hand, custom-rebuilt sofa. In a social setting, on the other hand, I've always been pretty moderate, even watching out for other folks who've had too much. On a road trip, I never drink anything stronger than beer, and that usually only as a way to quench my thirst after a long summer day. This made me wonder how much my habit was actually a problem rather than simply an enjoyable form of relaxation.

In the end, I suppose it comes down to my being too wary and untrusting to truly bust loose and get scheissgesichtet around anyone but myself. As an old NCO during my time in Germany once put it when we were idly discussing such things while loading a truck, there's nothing you can do in a bar that you can't do better at home.

Besides all this, I have a rather ritualistic approach to booze. I own a matching set of rather fancy glasses of various types, accumulated second-hand over the years until they've evolved into something rather impressive to behold. Each piece is somewhat valuable, but acquired through garage sales and thrift stores. I always clean them nicely so that they won't have water spots or fingerprints, and--most of all--I'm always careful to drink the booze of my choice from the appropriate glass. I'd rather not drink at all than drink a glass of wine from a champagne flute or such. I can hardly even stand to drink scotch with ice from a tumbler, though I will if there's just a little bit of ice left and no soda water to finish things off.

Thus am I not too worried about my pleasant habit, but just the same it will be a healthy break to get out of town for awhile, and away from my comfortable surroundings and fancy glassware. The plan at this point is to buy a one-way ticket to Miami Beach, and hang out there for a few weeks. With my mostly matching set of glassware there, if I lapse into several drunken nights at the boat dock, watching the planes take off from Miami International, listening for dolphins surfacing to breathe, and dipping in the pool, so be it. I'll stay as long as I want, within reason, and then I'll head back by whatever way suits my fancy.

A song comes to mind, "The Wayfaring Stranger." My piano teacher gave it to me to learn when I was about 9 years old. I'd never heard it before, but it stuck with me. About a year later, I heard it sung in the movie How the West Was Won, but by then I was already familiar with it... and even a bit surprised to hear it somewhere else. Since I was that age in the mid-1960s, I've always had a vague image of myself as a much older man (until I in fact became one) wandering and drifting across this great wide land. I'd be dressed in rags--sloppy clothes anyway--with a floppy hat, a walking stick, an old backpack, and a few days beard growth. Other people dream of being a five-star general, or a corporate CEO, or the president of the United States or something, but I always fancied myself as a kind of carefree vagabond. Whenever I've had higher aspirations, I realize that this is really my essence, and that where I am is where I always wanted to be.

I suppose this is the summer where I "Live the Dream." The plan is to make my way north toward Minnesota. I'd like to take an old friend up on his long-standing invitation to see the rural paradise that he bought after marrying his wife, a former secretary at the first language school I ever taught at in Peru. Then I'll head west, hoping to see Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Missouri River, and some of the scenes in Montana from Robert Persig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In Idaho, I'll make a big left turn and maybe pass through Reno to visit my brother and his wife for a few  days (if it's OK by them). Then on back, via familiar roads, to San Diego.

Mind you, I'm the first to know that living like a vagabond is tremendous fun only if you have the means to head for the nearest airport and fly home when/if it all gets to be more of a hassle than a glorious adventure. This was, after all, what the whole sixties hippy movement was all about: a buncha spoiled white kids mooching off their parents and posing as counterculturalists. Me, I can do such things now without mooching off of anybody or shirking any of my life's responsibilities. I don't care if it's hypocritical or fake or what-not; it's what I want to do... and I'm old enough that I don't care what anyone else has to say about it.

The first of several sheet music illustrations
for the song, and the closest to the one I
remember from childhood.

Another sheet music illustration, and
perhaps the closest to the way I fancy
myself.

An interesting illustation, though not particularly like me.

Using the proper glassware is important to my drinking habits.

It drives me nuts when people drink
from the wrong glass.