A Future Eclipsed

Milton Pizinger Funeral Card

My cousin died a couple of weeks ago. We were never that close. I saw him once at a funeral and fulfilled a promise I’d made fifty years earlier.

An early morning phone call from my sister ended any chance I’d have to see him one last time. While it gave me pause it also allowed me to think about his life spent here on earth. When I was growing up, his was a future seemingly set in stone, predictable and admirable.

Mother and I

As a very impressionable young man, I remember always hearing about this icon at our extended family gatherings. Aunts and Uncles praised his perfect life, wonderful wife and soaring career. ‘Cousin M was what we should all strive to become’ my sister and I were told over and over again. He was the example of what our life could be like if we worked hard and got a good education. But life sometimes has a way of throwing us curve balls when we least expect it.

Cousin M was born and raised in Saint Paul but moved to Irving, California after his divorce in the early sixties. It was quite scandalous back then because of the grand façade my mother and aunts had painted for the younger set. Cousin M’s perfect world imploded when marital imperfections rose to the surface.

Me in my Cretin uniform

I always held this cousin in high regard not only because of his real world accomplishments but also because he got me into Cretin High School at a critical juncture in my life. 

For three seasons I promised myself I’d stop by to see him when we were near the coast. But, of course, family obligations, writing distractions, and daily living kept that elusive goal further and further away until it was too late.

That was the first time I’d heard about divorce and witnessed the cloak of secrecy that our extended Catholic family quickly draped over my favorite icon. Over subsequent years my cousin got remarried and crafted a new life course for himself. An old future altered was made into a new and satisfying one.

But others weren’t so lucky. For them the future as planned didn’t always turn out as expected.

Cousin M’s younger brother was a well-regarded and beloved physician in town. He had his future planned up to and including early retirement, world travel and a focus on genealogy studies, reading for pleasure and more time with his wife and family. He was truly a ‘nice guy’ and deserved a wonderful future. Unfortunately a fatal heart attack at fifty-eight forever ended those plans.

Old KTCA Building

When I began my television career there was a program director who seemed to have it made. He was young, smart and ambitious. Unfortunately he had gotten married too early (his words not mine) and by the time he got to our station his eyes had begun to peruse the yearlings on staff. He hooked up with one and kept it secret to no one for years until his wife finally cut the cord and set him adrift. I think he ended up at some small station out west and ended his career there. Makes you wonder what he might have accomplished if he had kept his anchor at bay.

Another man I know made a name for himself in local politics, had the perfect family, a professional career that soared above the rest and wise investments that made him rich.  Then, venturing into the ‘mile high club’ wrecked his marriage, stained his political image and forever altered his predictable future.

One of the richest men in Minnesota had the reputation as one of the toughest wheeler-dealers in town. He grew his wealth and disregarded true friendships at the whim of a dollar bill. But then the big C raised its ugly head and six months to live forever altered his predictable future.

 

He told others he wanted to travel more after a trip to Europe had opened up a whole new world of experiences for him. But a legacy of disregard for others limited his scope of friends to just his immediate family and they didn’t much like to travel. The obits all painted wonderful portraits of his life but most of us in the know just smiled. It was a future unrealized and in the end, pretty sad.

It seems to me that there are three kinds of fair. The World’s Fair, the State Fair and the County Fair. The rest of life isn’t fair.

Time and again I’ve run into folks whose perfectly predictable future became unraveled through divorce, illness or unwise career decisions. Some were by choice and others by happenstance. But each and everyone found a future unrealized.

There’s an old quote by George Bernard Shaw: “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”

I never cease to be amazed at the seemingly blind wanderings of some of those around me. Whether or not it is age-appropriate seems to be their main mantra. Having found a new cache of time in their retirement, they fill their hours with meaningless jaunts to the grocery store or in front of television set because the time is theirs to waste.

Worst yet are those who wax philosophically about the ‘best times of their lives.’ Like Bruce Springsteen’s’ ‘Glory Days’ they want to relive the past and hold on to what once was…instead of embracing their present day situation.

My Family

Guess I’m naïve enough to believe that the best is yet to come. Then on my death bed I’ll realize it was ‘all good’ because what was bad is over and what didn’t work out is past.

For most of those folks just mentioned it was a future unrealized. For the rest of us it’s

another tomorrow just waiting to be painted with bright colors of discovery, imagination and wonder…and no regrets…at all.

Long Rider

My Mother's statue of the blessed Virgin Mary in my backyard.

Walking on hard-packed snow at twenty below zero feels like crunching bubble-wrap with your feet. Crawling out of a warm bed at 4:30 in the morning can be just as unnerving and traumatic. Even the Blessed Virgin Mary was buried under three feet of snow.

The cold air nips at your cheeks and stings your skin until the clothes pile on and almost by rote behavior you begin the arduous task of delivering newspapers once again. It was my first fleeting taste of entrepreneurship starting in seventh grade.

The one saving grace to that morning ritual was my salmon-colored transistor radio and the wonderful story-songs it painted in my brain. A world of flashy cars with long fins and beautiful young maidens. The intoxicating sound of rock and roll and all those rebellious images it conjured up in my malleable mind which in turn only lent more fuel to an already rampant imagination.

I thought about those deep winter sojourns when I took my first of many long distance bike rides early Saturday morning. It has long been a summer ritual for me before writing, yard work and the grandchildren’s athletic schedule steal time away from such casual pursuits.

There is something very special about those springtime rides that bring back a plethora of memories. Growing up on Randolph Avenue, Cretin High School and the College of Saint Thomas. Warm summer romances. Late night excursions along the river. Walking hand in hand with that someone special who will probably be replaced by another someone special the following summer.

I guess in our youth such shameful girlfriend swapping is all part of the teenage roller coaster of life; a portrait of angst and pathos switching places with love and lust at seventeen. Living and loving and learning all within a couple of square miles of one another.

Riding down Summit Avenue this morning before dawn is a challenge. I haven’t had my coffee yet and there’s no iPad and quiet time before the rest of the world wakes up. Later on in the summer it’s a more relaxed ride because the morning air doesn’t creep under my layers to bite at my skin. I don’t have to wear long pants and gloves to ward off the chill and the sweat comes more slowly.

There are few runners out this early in the season unlike later on when everyone is training for Grandma’s or Twin Cities marathons. The Tour de France wannabes haven’t yet begun to cluster around my coffee shop before their race down Summit Avenue. Today it’s only the hardcore die-hards or marginally insane who are out exercising this frosty morning. Crossing the bridge, I see the U of M rowing club is out before barges crowd the waterways.

Much like another blog At the corner of Fairview and Summit, this ride will take me past a lot of my old haunts and a retracing of my other lives. Most of those old places are now generations apart from where I am today. But they still bring back a boatload of memories, most of them good and a few very poignant.

 It’s so early on Summit Avenue the governor is still asleep. My first romantic breakup after Sunday mass took place just down the block. At this point in my three marathons I was pretty much a walking, jogging zombie; each step as painful as the last. I worked briefly for the Catholic Archdiocese in the James J. Hill Mansion. Sharden Productions, Inc. and related real estate ventures were conceived in those oak-paneled halls.

The Little French Church. Eight years of Catholic education. Daily mass because we had to and public transportation before it became hip.

  

Moved with public television down to Lowertown when it was still empty warehouses and parking lots. Now it’s a hip thriving ‘happening’ place for millennials. Nearby the Mississippi River has long been a magnet for the land-locked before Laguna Beach and the PCH fueled my own latent surfer’s imagination.

1158 Randolph Avenue. Built for Eight Thousand Dollars by my Mother and Uncle Joe in 1948. A comfortable nest for a wondering wandering mind, blind ambition and soaring expectations. Eight years traveling by bus to grade school in downtown Saint Paul. By high school, I couldn’t wait to escape a dying downtown.

  

Cretin High School. A pivotal point in my life and solid respect for education. The first taste of love or whatever it was back then. A thirst for knowledge that hasn’t gone dry after all these years.

Courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

Senior dance Cretin High School - Courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

Myself and Joyce at the Senior dance - courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

Melanie’s home is just two blocks off of my old paper route. Here the latest rage is teardowns and larger homes because the neighborhood has gotten so hot. Who knew? Fifty years ago we couldn’t wait to ‘get out of Dodge.’ Now they’re flocking back to raise their families in my old backyard.

There’s something about this place that still draws me back even in the chill of early spring. And it has nothing to do with the images that corporate and government Minnesota want to paint for outsiders.

Forget about what the PR hacks are saying or the Chamber of Commerce’s latest spiel about the glories of living in Minnesota. Forget our professional (subsidized) sports teams or even dare I say, Garrison Keller’s Prairie Home Companion as a folksy homespun version of Grandma’s tales of yesteryear.

Instead I’m talking about a culture of intrinsic family values, a creed of hard work and an unapologetic pride in being from here. They say our cold weather leaves just the strong of heart behind. I touched on this in my blog: Going Home Again. Whether it’s true or not, it is a moniker I subscribe to.

 

Some might argue that I’ve abandoned my state because I spend winters elsewhere. While it’s true I’d much rather hike a mountain in January than shovel snow, I’d like to believe I’ve earned the right to escape when I can.

Delivering newspapers at twenty below zero was a tough way for a kid to get started in business. But there were valuable lessons learned back then.

And besides I always had Buddy and Ritchie and the Big Bopper to show me the way.

Like Snowflakes Come and Gone

There seems to be three kinds of folks who reside in Palm Springs.

Aerial View of Palm Springs

The year-around residents who are seldom called natives since very few of them were ever born and raised in Palm Springs. Then there are the snowbirds who migrate here every fall and leave in the spring. Finally there is that curious tribe of part-timers who live here during the winter months and then go back to their other world when the air begins to bake. They’re neither full-timers nor are they just casual visitors. Most of them would bristle if you call them snowbirds but they haven’t endured the brutal summer heat so they can’t wear that full-time moniker either.

Palm Springs, like a lot of other resort communities, has a transient nature about it. Since its inception in the mid-30s it’s been that place most folks visit but seldom stay. The migration is heaviest during the winter months when a lot of visitors come here to pretend they’re in the playground of the stars, they’re someone else and reality is just that dirty snowbank blocking their driveway back home.

Unfortunately some of the natives find friendships with part-timers akin to those fleeting friendships in the service or temporary companionship on a cruise ship or tour bus.

While some of the locals, confident in themselves, can easily say: “It was great seeing you again. Let’s get together next fall when you return” there are others for whom part-time friendships are tainted by absence and waning interest.

It’s a curious kind of limbo that straddles two worlds; here and back there. The real challenge comes in establishing friendships or relationships amid a juxtaposition of a limited time frame, an artificial environment and focused commitment to the essence of what it means to be a friend. Some of the natives (full-timers) can accept these conditions while others can’t quite grab hold of that concept. I’m not sure why.

I’ve experienced some of those confusing relationships during the three seasons that we’ve spent here. In some instances, I think we’ve became casualties of unrealistic expectations in the land of make-believe. That or some resentment over the fact that we don’t have to endure the harsh summer months here.

My first season here I belonged to a great screenwriting group led by an energetic woman named Judy. Our meetings were lively, entertaining, informative and challenging. Unfortunately that spring Judy left for upstate New York and the group dissipated over the summer. Everyone had disappeared by the following fall.

Over several seasons, my wife and I have met several couples who live in our neighborhood. We quickly became fast friends…for a relatively short period of time. Then much like elementary school ‘best friends’ they disappeared over time and never reappeared. Now when we see them at neighborhood gatherings it’s as if we never met them in the first place. Very strange behavior indeed.

Last season, our fitness center became a casualty of the demolition of the Spa Hotel downtown. When the swim group went looking for another place to exercise it turned out that no other hotel wanted to take on a group of older men and women who simply wanted a place to exercise each morning. The hotels were very clear that they’d rather pander to sometimes drunk, usually half-naked twenty-one year olds around the pool rather than a group of steady customers serious about their exercising each morning. It was strictly for insurance purposes we were told.

Eventually another pool was found but within that group a growing chasm between natives and part-timers ended any hope of reunification. So the old group of year-round residents has their pool and Sharon and her friends found another one in town.

Over the seasons, some members of our loose federation of friends and associates became very comfortable with parties and events at our house. They loved coming here because (to be quoted) “Sharon is such a great hostess and you folks have the space.” But over time the idea of having reciprocating events at their place is no longer became part of their lexicon. A curious turn of events.

On a more personal level, I’ve met several fellow writers with whom I shared some great moments over coffee. But they also seemed to vanish into the background and never reappeared again. I’d like to find out why but their cyber door hasn’t been opened for quite some time now.

So this curious quest for new friends on a part-time basis continues.

2015 Palm Springs Writers' Expo

Fortunately there seems to be a growing cadre of new friends who are unhindered by time spent apart. My mantra is to seek them out here and there. I’m always searching for new ones while trying to hold on to the old ones; even tougher for an introvert like me.

Next season I hope to get more involved in local theater and play-writing. There is a new screenwriting group with the Palm Springs Writers Guild that I want to examine. It should be an interesting journey.

But I’m not interested in ‘empty calories.’ I want substance over distance and honesty over cocktail pleasantries.

Life is too short to expect anything else.