Last of the Last

They called the Center ‘Camelot.’ That golden period between its inception in 1969 through most of the 1970s when there seemed to be no cap on money available and the innovative ideas just kept blossoming each and every day. It was the introduction of adventurous, entertaining, and informative television over the relatively new public broadcasting medium.

I was part of the adventure for roughly five years before succumbing to the siren call of the North luring me home. Back then, programming at the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting was fresh, innovative and a wonderful experience to produce. Hodge Podge Lodge and Consumer Survival Kit were just some of the many new approaches to great informational/entertaining television.

Those memories all came tumbling back when I read about the last remaining staff member from that period finally retiring. George Beneman was a director when I was there. He recently retired as Senior Vice President/Chief Technology Officer.  My, how the time has flown. That period of the Seventies was followed by forty plus decades of solid production work done at the Center.

Years after I left, I returned to my old Maryland stumping grounds to revisit some of the old familiar haunts. Davis’ pub in Eastport, Annapolis reminds me of what the Bohemian Flats must have been like on the West Bank of Minneapolis back in the ‘40s.The pub has been around since the ‘40s and their clientele hasn’t changed much since then. There are the usual neighborhood relics, a few old watermen, the hangers-on and now the ever-present tourists drawn by concierges and travel blogs.

Like the watermen of old Chesapeake, Davis’ pub remains stuck in the past. Its walls are adorned with fading photographs of tall ships, wooden boats, log canoes and skipjacks. Across the street the intoxicating smell of seaweed, salt air and brine mix with the fresh varnish on a yacht anchored there.

Our first home purchased in Reisterstown, not far from the Center, looks much the same as when we lived there. So too with the inner harbor of Baltimore before Freddy Gray’s shadow darkened its shoreline. New construction has finally painted a delightful façade over the old water place.

Many of my life/career changes started around that time. From 1972 through 1977, I sold programming during the day, wrote Westerns at night and toe-stepped the Chesapeake on weekends. Our family started there and real estate first began to pique my curiosity. It was a most audacious start to something great…the rest of my life.

Back then I had long harbored great fantasies of sailing the bay. A boat ride on our friend’s runabout brought back a rush of old mental images. The air is clearer on the water and there is a nautical language reserved for the fleet of foot and strong of stomach. My friend spoke of new moons and dark skies. He waxed on philosophically about the Orionids, the Leonids, North Taurids and Geminids; all meteor showers reserved for his patch of moonlit sky.

The houses seemed to have gotten bigger and the sea lanes more crowded since our last visit. But the inlets and bays were still nature’s nurseries. The Chesapeake Bay supports more than 2700 species of plants and animals, including 348 species of finfish and 173 species of shellfish. Approximately 284,000 acres of the Chesapeake Bay are tidal wetlands.

The Bay and its tidal tributaries have 11,684 miles of shoreline, more than the entire United States West Coast. Estuarine science and research is relatively young. Only in the last several decades has there been a good understanding of estuaries and fisheries.

My job selling programming was a precursor to my own business ventures born several years later. Our home was the first of a number of real estate investments. Two western novels were written, edited and then shelved for almost forty years before my new career as a writer took off. It was in Maryland where I attempted the JFK Fifty Mile Race but only got twenty-four miles before hypothermia brought me down. That failure propelled me to a lifetime of running.

Our General Manager was a brilliant yet incredibly personable leader. Dr. Frederick Breitenfeld had an enormous influence on my fantasies of becoming a writer. His encouragement gave me the confidence to keep typing forward. He was the best boss I ever had.

It’s come full circle now. Sailing the Chesapeake, revisiting old friends through the MCPB Facebook page and writing as my new moniker to carry. I’d like to believe it all began there when a young sprout came up from Tennessee to test the waters of this fledging television business, tip-toed the bays and inlets and let his imagination sail in the fresh ocean breezes.

It was nice to be home again…if only in my imagination.

Going Back into the A Shau

Sixty years after the fact, I returned to my old barracks at the Presidio of San Francisco. It was part of a journey arranged by Brian and Melanie to celebrate my Eighty years of pondering life’s ‘what ifs?’ Our journey began where my military life was born and ended on the beaches of San Diego a week later.

Fast forward two years from that Kerouac-inspired Road trip and I once again ventured back into the A Shau (pronounced A-Shaw) Valley in South Vietnam. This return journey was precipitated by a phone call from out of my past, the decision to reread the novel (part autobiographical) that encompassed that part of of my life and the thought of giving birth to yet another storyline wrapped in the same mid-Sixties environment.

Funny how things turn out. After writing the first version of “Love in the A Shau,” I assumed I had put that part of my fictional past behind me. I was done falling in love freshman year, feeling the exhilaration and angst of that first romantic entanglement, harboring wonderful fantasies of our future together and ultimately experiencing the painful realization that it wasn’t meant to be.

That long, monotonous bus ride from Minnesota down to boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri was but a dark spot on my collective memory. Yet I can still feel those emotions in the middle of the night when my sweetheart and all my friends were safely ensconced in their beds, dreaming of their bright collegiate futures ahead of them.

But much to my surprise and chagrin, my journey as author and protagonist was relived all over again with that reread. For reasons that gradually began build in my subconscious, I slowly came to realize that returning to the A Shau was an exhilarating experience and I was sorely tempted to go there again…in the form of yet another novel. Perhaps my journey back in time wasn’t over yet.

Standing in front of the barracks with my two kids brought up a plethora of mixed emotions. I was still around; a lot of my barracks buddies weren’t. Some were brought down by the conflict overseas, others made their eventual escape back to civilian life and the rest simply disappeared. But what if, I asked myself, a different scenario had played out. That thought then became the genesis for another possible novel that had long been percolated in the far reaches of my back brain.

‘Presidio Adieu’ is the working title for yet another novel from that same time period that has been percolating in my brain for some time now. Its birth is very tenable considering the numerous other projects screaming for my time and attention. While I don’t envision its creation anywhere in the near future, it has still gotten my imagination going into overtime once again.

Readers loved so many of the segments of that first book. This was especially surprising coming from my female readers. I worried that the graphic descriptions of war and the profanity of military talk would them turn off.  I feared they might see it as just gratuitous profanity used for shock value. But the opposite was true. As one friend mentioned out to me, quite pointedly. “Oh, come on, Denis, give us credit. We’re much smarter than that. We understand the violence of war and the profanity-laced dialogue that comes with the territory. It just added to the flavor of the moment and painted a vivid picture of the profound changes your protagonist was going through.”

It might be a tough trip back because I tend to get very vested into my characters. Yet it’s not often that I get to go back in time and revisit San Francisco of the mid-sixties. It was a world of barracks banter, office intrigue, sexual liaisons, cunning and stealth and all culminating in the bloody battlefields of the Nam.

To be sure, this proposed novel would have a totally different storyline with a different cast of characters. It would be more of a mystery novel than a story of combat. Yet the same emotions captured, lost, gained and lost again would be present. Whether in the post newspaper office, the barracks or the streets of San Francisco, it would be a world where only a few of the women were virgins and manual dexterity with the boys didn’t refer to their working on car parts.

It would be an interesting journey that I and my characters would love to travel. Proving once again that in fiction you really can go back to what once was and change it for the better or worse.

As I mentioned the odds of ‘Presidio Adieu’ starting anytime soon are remote. But if I do find the time, I think it would be an interesting journey well worth the effort if I can keep my fear of dying in battle and conflicting emotions of love in tack. It would be another trip back to the barracks again. Older and only slightly wiser this time around.

The Rest of Your Life

I have a friend I’ve known for more than sixty years. During the summer months, we lunch at the Monument Park in Saint Paul. We’ve kept our bond of friendship strong since first meeting at our respective first jobs out of college. Now in his retirement, my friend has chosen to spend a lot of his time in caregiving members of his religious community.

We don’t talk about it a lot but he is comforted in knowing that he’s making a real difference in his patient’s lives. There’s a strong religious component to the care but it’s never pronounced nor a banner in his relationship with his patients. He does it because it is the right thing for him to do and it brings a comforting presence to his patient’s lives.

My friend’s devotion to others got me to thinking about how other folks I know, now also in their retirement years, have chosen to spend the rest of their lives. I’ve often complained about the ‘old men at the coffee shop.’ These are the retirees whose lives have descended into gathering each morning at the old watering hole simply to complain about life in general. Most communities have a McDonalds where the disenfranchised gather each morning. Their rhetoric is usually the same. It’s a steady stream of grousing about local and national politics, other nationalities, young people, employers,

Fortunately, there’s another group of folks who have chosen to be more productive in their remaining years here on the planet. Whatever their profession in their other life, they have now gone in another direction which brings them newfound satisfaction.

There’s an old girlfriend of mine who has traveled the world and continues skipping around the globe with her husband. Several other women I know have embraced their passion for the arts; painting, acting, and other creative/theatrical ventures. Another couple decided early on to have a major presence in their grandchildren’s lives and have done just that. Another fellow at 89 years young is still doing taxes and loving it.

Richard J. Leider in his book ‘Power of Purpose’ talks about what researchers are discovering about how an increased sense of purpose can improve our health, healing, happiness, longevity, and productivity. The book has a definite spiritual bent about it. But Leider, without apology, sees this as an important component in his approach to life-satisfying ventures.

Leider goes on to explain that ‘Purpose is an active expression of our values and our compassion for others-it makes us want to get up in the morning and add value to the world.’ His book, details a graceful, practical, and ultimately spiritual process for making it central to your life.

With or without a spiritual angle, finding purpose for the rest of your life is certainly a worthwhile venture in living. I found mine almost by accident. While easing out of my business ventures, I encountered an irascible jerk who pushed me to the limit. I’d had enough and decided to close up shop. That left me with the next big challenge. What to do with the rest of my life? Retirement wasn’t an option. So, what was I going to do until my tour of duty here on earth ended?

Two western novels, written back in 1972 and 1973, were still gathering dust and growing gray with the ages. They were born in the snapping keys of my faithful LC Smith typewriter and an overactive imagination. Each evening, I would escape into our home in Reisterstown, Maryland, close the door and travel out West once again.

Each typewritten page was born, editing, retyped, and set aside. After a year and two hundred and fifty pages for the first novel, it was set aside and a second one begun. Another year later, it was also finished, set aside, and forgotten as my first-born son captured my full attention.

Fast forward fifty years and I went back to those tired old binders of graying pages of threatening Apache smoke signals, a fiery redhead; and a grizzled travel-worn scout and their adventures in the hot Arizona desert.

After scanning that first novel onto a floppy disc and then transferring it into my new Macintosh computer, I was off to the races. It took three more self-published novels before I would let myself admit that perhaps I had become a writer. After that, the plays, movie scripts, novellas, poetry, children’s books, comic strips, song lyrics and more than 700 blogs came bursting forth.

For me the journey is never ending. Fortunately, there’s no time limit on writing. That is, until the words lose their meaning and the story becomes boring. Until then, I’ll just keep pounding away on the keyboard and spin my tales of imaginative folks and (I hope) interesting storylines. It’s become ‘the rest of my life’ and I’m loving it.