On being seventy years old

  Well here it is May 18, 2003 seventy years old for those of us born in 1953. I was waxxing eloquent on this day earlier but now I fear may not do it all justice. Truth is according to Momma I didnt get here till about noon in Newport Tn on the day, qa Monday,  a difficult delivery she says it was. Uncle Prentice said when they stood me up at two years I was about five past six.

   To celebrate Ive gone back and watched Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces for the first time in forty years or so. Too much despair and alienation but it did remind me of similar episodes in my own experience.  1977 was tough and milder shorter episodes in the 80s and nineties but in the last twenty years the mantra has been a quote from Road to Perdition by Connor who later became James Bond: "It's All so eff bombing hysterical."

    I mean look around at what happened to the Southern Baptist Convention and the rise of Donald Trump and MAGA.

     Recently Ive read New Yorker Review about the English Revolution of the 1600s, Cromwell etc. A Good bit is explained there, enough I couldve exempted Whiteford Smith's Western Civilization class at Gaffney High school with an A with a mastery of this one essay.

    I hope some of you read my story on facebook site last few days where I have shared some random aspects of my pilgrimage.

    Sometimes I wish I hadda married even if for a couple years, but I never coulda afford what I was looking for. So enough about that arena though I do hope I was a little more special in romance than the ordinary Alice McDermott made famous in Charming Billy.

   Well the plan was to go to Gaffney and see some classmates coincidentally at the quarterly luncheon, but I have opted for Catfish in Lavonia Ga. And maybe Saturday to Gaffney for the History Museum new wing cause if I am anything now, it's pretty much history.

     One of the cooler May 18th s in my memory hovering in the sixties and low seventies, but then again I'm pretty much a low seventies kind of guy. The decade Lewis Grizzard said and it was the eighties for me, the decade in which he became no longer a promising young man.

    Then again Ive had some very promising moments but none made me as famous as I thought i woulda been by now.

   You know what Hank Jr. said, I have seen my name at the top of the page, sometimes a misprint.

    So thanks to all of you who read this, hoping your May 18, 2003 is special in some way.