Chick Magnet at Seventy

 

Joel and I at Prom

Being a bon-vivant was never a moniker I wore as a younger man.  Awkward and clueless were probably more apt descriptions of that confusing period in my life.  Just ask my girlfriend in high school or the one in college.  Over the years, I haven’t gotten much better.  Even at seventy-two, navigating that sometimes-treacherous landscape called male-female communications can still be a formidable challenge.

Saguaro Pool Party

It’s not that I live in a monastery here in Palm Springs.  The whole Coachella Valley is one fertile field for straight guys who are standing prone and self-supporting.  If they were cheetahs the valley would be a field of gazelles.  But sadly when it comes to finding a man, the single women are all quick to attest that “most of the inventory here is either gay, gray or leaving Tuesday.” (That’s a direct quote I’ve heard on more than one occasion.)

For those of us happily attached another issue can sometimes arise.  Communications between the sexes can sometimes be made more difficult because of the strange environment we all live in here in the desert.  It’s not the normal ‘work all day and rest at night’ routine.  Nor is it permanent vacation time.  Snowbirds, natives or part-timers; it doesn’t seem to matter.  We all still have to talk to one another.

Despite their occasional grousing about their spouse, I think most of the married women here are happy with their state in life.  What it really comes down to is the universal dichotomy between men and women.  Perhaps it’s the age-old survival of the fittest or in this case the smartest.  EI verses FA; emotional intelligence verses financial acumen.  Even if those obstacles are overcome, there is yet another challenge for us men folk here in the desert.

Coda Gallery

Trina Turk Building

                                                         

Case in point, the Coachella Valley is fertile ground for shopping.  From the plush designer shops on El Paseo Drive to numerous consignment stories, shopping seems to be an addiction that affects many women here.  For their spouses, not so much.  I’m a clear example of that.

I hate to shop…more clearly stated…I loathe the simple process of walking into a store…any store…for any reason.  Shopping is antithesis to my very being.  Even driving by a shopping mall can make my skin crawl…OK, I exaggerate a bit here but I don’t even like to be within any proximity to goods and services I’m not interested in.

Believe it or not, female clerks love helping me in this painful process.  I’m probably on their radar as soon as I stumble into their store.  ‘Helpless male in the building’ and all that.  I believe both parties win in the end.  I get the assistance I sorely need and they get to help a male in desperate straits.

A friend recently told me that we all have to be nimble, flexible and live everyday as if it were our last.  He said we’re all dying slowly…or put another way we’re all growing older.  So why not live a little faster.  Is playing this role of mine a bit mischievous on my part? Probably.  Is it dishonest?  I don’t think so.  I just want to savor life every day on my own terms.  Shopping is not part of that equation.

In my new incarnation as a storyteller I want to continue living vicariously into old age.  I want to ride out west or help a young developer in Palm Springs.  I want to give a few suggestions on real estate investments and participate again in the fall of Singapore.  I want to bike across the country with a new lady-friend and participate in a musical celebration at the wake of a lost companion.  I want to charm the ladies with every page I create in my minds eye and on the computer screen.  

Female clerks tend to think I’m cute …but still clueless.  It works for me.  Only my wife knows the truth and she just shrugs her shoulders and is happy I’ve found an illusion to cling to.  The only females who don’t buy into my act are a trio of strong-willed women ages four, six and nine.

It’s my granddaughters who don’t cut me a lot of slack.  They have expectations that I’d like to fulfill and assumptions that I know what I’m talking about.  My granddaughters have other male role models in their young lives.  But I get to fill the role of family elder.  

So if I’m going to grow old anyway I might as well relish the young lives around me.

My role as husband, father, grandfather, writer, explorer and romantic (in my writings) will be all the richer for it.

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.