REMEMBERING A LONG-AGO GOODBYE
Galveston Daily News September 7, 2019 The year was 1967. The summer night was sultry. On the floor of a dancehall in my hometown, two teenagers swayed to the Casinos’ bluesy hit song, “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye.” We had come of age together wanting to believe our feelings were special and, though archaic to some, would survive our departure for distant colleges. The band reaffirmed our faith by delivering each verse of the Casinos’ song in a close harmony punctuated by big brass: Kiss me each morning for a million years/Hold me each evening by your side. We…
PROM MEMORIES STAY WITH YOU WITH THEIR PROMISE OF TRUE LOVE.
Beaumont Enterprise May 5, 2019 It’s prom night. We wait for a table in a restaurant behind a gaggle of teenagers in chiffon dresses and rented tuxedos. They are excited to be one night away from freedom. Yet they cleave to each other, holding close the partner with whom they shared the mysteries of young love. A song comes to mind by Nat “King” Cole: They tried to tell us we’re too young, too young to really be in love. As a parent I tried to give that message to my children, to spare them the pain. Don’t get carried…
TRIP TO MOON CHANGES VIEW OF WORLD
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE February 4. 2019 I used to celebrate each new year by pondering what lay ahead. Now, as I struggle to remember where I left my glasses or parked my car, my focus has shifted more to where I’ve been than where I’m going. But such a perspective is not all bad. I was reminded of this recently while watching a Public Broadcasting documentary about the three astronauts of Apollo 8 who were hurled into lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968. Their mandate was to map the moon’s far side while testing new technologies needed to put a man…
ANGLERS KNOW FISHING IS ABOUT MORE THAN CATCHING
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS NOVEMBER 11, 2018 Running the west beach in the early morning, the most interesting people I encounter are fishermen. They frequent the pocket parks where they can drive to the shoreline to unload their gear. My fascination derives less from their sport than their demeanor. They stand for hours in the surf rhythmically casting, or sit on the beach alongside rods anchored in the sand, lines splayed into the gulf. Gazing out to sea, well beyond their bobbing corks, fishermen view the earth as peaceful, simple — one horizontal boundary dividing sky and water. On the surface,…
WE MISSED SOME KEY LESSONS OF THE GREATEST GENERATION
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 21, 2018 BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE In the 1991 World War II movie classic, “Memphis Belle,” a battle-damaged B-17 limps home from a bombing run. The pilot (Matthew Modine) struggles to keep the plane out of the trees while his crew tends feverishly to “Danny” (Eric Stoltz), an injured gunner. The airfield in sight, Modine hears his men doing the only thing left to help Danny hang on. Off-key and choked with emotion, they’re singing to him: “Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling; From glen to glen and down the mountain side; The summer’s gone and all…
EULOGY TEACHES LIFE LESSONS
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE July 8, 2018 As a lawyer and journalist, I’ve drafted thousands of essays. None of them ever made me cry, until I wrote and delivered the eulogy for my best friend. When his family made the request, I was still struggling to accept his untimely death. But I felt I could tell his story as well as anyone. I didn’t foresee that a more important story would be told to me. As I grappled with my remarks, I realized how much more than a friend he had been. He’d witnessed the most poignant moments of my life, and…
LAST GIFT FROM MY MOTHER
THE GALVESTON DAILY NEWS Mothers Day 2018 https://mackgibson.com/last-gift-from-my-mother/ When I was young, my life was a series of firsts. Now, in my seventh decade, it’s become a litany of lasts. I used to take for granted dining at a favorite restaurant, seeing a friend on the street, or my cat rolling into a ball at the door awaiting my return. Of late, it has dawned on me that there will be a last time for all of these. I just don’t know when. I never recognized this phenomenon playing out in my mother’s life, until it was too late. She…
HUMBLE WEDDING, BUT HIGH HOPES
Published in the Beaumont Enterprise A steady rain was falling the morning I arrived for jury duty at the Mickey Leland Court House Annex in Houston. A kind of nouveau monument, it acts as a symbolic nexus among the diverse neighborhoods around it. The jury pool consisted of 50 voters who reflected well the demographics of the area. Every age, race and nationality were represented. We nervously settled into benches five rows deep in the rear of a court room while the justice of the peace, silhouetted against a seal of the state of Texas, blessed plea deals between prosecutors…
WORKING CLASS NEEDS RUNG ON THE LADDER
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE In a ramshackle house in Middletown, Ohio, a rust belt city decimated by the decline of the steel industry, a young boy cowers in the arms of his older sister. A drunken brawl rages between their mother and yet another step-father. Dishes crash. Sobs waft. The girl considers calling their grandfather on the secret phone line he’s installed in their toy box for times like these. This is the violent world of young J.D. Vance, who, thirty years later, will go on to author the 2017 best seller, Hillbilly Elegy. A commentary on the terrible toll the…
SONG PROVES YOU CAN ALWAYS GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS CHRISTMAS MORNING 2017 My father used to tell me that during World War II the thing he missed most was Christmas in his hometown of Rising Star, Texas, population 800. In desert towns of North Africa, and bombed out Italian villages, he would listen to Bing Crosby on Armed Forces Radio singing everyone’s favorite holiday song, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” It reminded soldiers of what they were fighting for, but dreaming about it also broke their hearts. I came to know and love dad’s little town because, after my sister and I were born, our family…
IT’S ALSO A WONDERFUL MOVIE
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE December 24, 2017 Every December I’m reminded of the only banker who ever gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. He’s George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) from the classic movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” who gives up his dreams of traveling the world to live a life of quiet desperation running the family’s small-town business, the Bailey Building and Loan. When, on Christmas Eve, his bumbling Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) loses a big deposit that threatens to ruin the bank, George becomes suicidal and wishes he’d never been born. His wish is granted by apprentice seraph Clarence Odbody…
ECHOES AT SUNRISE- How a midnight marathon cast my father in a new light.
Marathon and Beyond Magazine April 2013 I didn’t cry when my father died. He was a kind man but a mean drunk, and I judged him only by his limitations—that is, until my limitations as a distance runner cast him in a new light. It happened at 5:00 a.m. on a two-lane blacktop during the Texas Independence Relay: eight runners, 200 miles, 33 hours straight, retracing the 1836 route of the Mexican army between victory at the Alamo and defeat at the Battle of San Jacinto. From Gonzales, population 350, to Houston, population 3.5 million, the race is a running tour of…
MAJESTY OF MUSIC FIGHTS ALZHEIMER’S
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE OCTOBER 22, 2017 House lights dimmed in a Broadway theater. The brassy overture of “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” erupted from the orchestra pit. Toes started tapping. Seated one row ahead of me was a woman roughly the age of the famous singer/ songwriter, 75, swaying to the beat. Silver hoop earrings danced below her cropped gray hair, and a purple shawl was splayed across striped jeans. She had come to hear the life story of Carole King as told through her music. But, in equal measure, to recall the memories that King’s music evoked from the gray…
WATCH DOG REMINDED ME WE CAN’T PLAY CHILDREN’S GAME FOREVER
Galveston Daily News September 24, 2017 In the movie “Moneyball,” professional baseball scouts tell high school sensation Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) not to put off his playing career because, “We’re all told at some point that we can no longer play the children’s game. We just don’t know when that’s gonna be. Some of us are told at 18, some of us are told at 40, but we’re all told.” That admonition recently hit home with me in real life. At the end of my street in Pirates Beach West an old German Shepard, in good weather and bad, would…
BONUS BASEBALL FLASHBACK ! APRIL 2014
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE (April 28, 2014): It’s springtime, 2014. The Astros are in the cellar. All is right with the world. But we still love them. Not because on any given night they might start a kid from the carwash in left. Or because April means another shot at the worst record in baseball. No. Because despite the futility of their efforts, in them we still see a glimmer of hope. The kind of hope we learned at ball fields of our own. In my first decade, our diamond was a place with rusty bleachers and a few old soda cans…
MEMORIES ROLLED BACK
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: My mother died 15 years ago. There were things I should have said to her, but didn’t. I wish I had another chance. She used to push me in a baby carriage, dragging my older sister along, for two miles from our house to Herman Park in Houston. After traversing the sidewalk along busy Bissonnet Street we’d arrive at our destination, the statute of Sam Houston on his horse. My sister called it the hoppity hop, which instantly became part of my family’s lexicon. Not long ago the statue came to mind unexpectedly. It happened while I was…
PAUL SIMON: FOR EMILY, WHENEVER I MAY FIND HER
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: I marvel at how indelibly I recollect certain images and sentiments from my high school and college days. The most poignant usually channel the optimism I felt about the future. Though later buffeted by reality, their clarity still resonates. The speed and intensity with which they come flashing back is a blessing and a curse. A line from a song, or a whiff of a special perfume, can produce a smile or a tear. I think it’s because back then each day held the promise of something new. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good, but all things…
INSPIRING MOVIE HAD REAL-LIFE COUNTERPART
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: It’s graduation season. The time when college seniors worry about their future. And so it was in 1967. In that year’s award-winning movie, “The Graduate,” Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) returns from college with his diploma and a problem. He wants his future to be different than the affluent, automated life of his parents. At a haute welcome-home party a family friend advises Ben to remember one word about his career — “plastics.” It would become the clarion call for a generation of college students, including me. We understood the metaphor. We saw our parents’ society, like plastic, as…
DREAMS AND REALITY MEET AT THE BRYAN MUSEUM
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: Dreams and reality seldom cross paths, except at the intersection of 21st Street and Avenue M in Galveston. There, in the two-story vintage Bryan Museum, a collection of rare artifacts portrays how the dreams of Texas settlers clashed head on with the brutal reality of the frontier. That collision comes to life on the first two floors where all manner of regalia, weaponry and documents recount the violent history of Texas and her heroes — Crockett, Bowie, Travis and Houston to name a few. But, tucked away in the cellar is a display telling a story of…
WORKING CLASS NEEDS A RUNG ON THE LADDER
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: In a ramshackle house in Middletown, Ohio, a rust belt town in decline, a young boy cowers in the arms of his older sister. A drunken brawl rages between their mother and yet another step-father. Dishes crash. Sobs waft. The girl considers calling their grandfather for help on the secret phone line he’s installed in their toy box for times like these. This is the violent world of young J.D. Vance. Thirty years later he would tell about it in his 2017 best seller, “Hillbilly Elegy.” It’s about the demise of America’s steel industry. But more importantly, the…
TROIS BELLS SE RAPPELENT DE CE QUI EST IMPORTANT
Parfois, la meilleure chose à la télévision est une publicité pour les anciennes chansons. Les maisons de disques pensent que nous allons les acheter parce qu’ils nous font sentir bien. Je n’ai jamais acheté, mais je regarde toujours. Il n’y a pas longtemps, les «Three Bells» des Browns sont venus. C’est une histoire de la naissance, du mariage et de la mort du petit Jimmy Brown, tous mémorisés par des cloches d’une petite chapelle. Cela m’a fait penser à des choses simples comme le son d’une cloche peuvent nous rappeler ce qui est important dans la vie. Sur ma course…
AGE OF AQUARIUS MIGHT HAVE ARRIVED
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: The latest in man’s search for cosmic kin is the discovery of seven Earth-size planets orbiting a dwarf star named Trappist-1. Using new technology, astronomers not only confirmed the existence of the new solar system but its potential to support alien life. At 40 light years, or 235 trillion miles, from Earth, the planets are a stone’s throw in extraterrestrial terms. However, it wasn’t their proximity that captured my imagination, it was their constellation. Aquarius. I first encountered that name 49 years ago, while a student at the University of Texas. Then, like today, anger was boiling in…
RICE COACH CRAFTS WINNERS THE OLD FASHIONED WAY
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: In the world of big-time college football, true student-athletes are an endangered species. Pressure to win at any cost has put coaches and administrators under the gun. At some schools, curriculums and admission standards have been compromised. Athletic prowess has trumped intellect. Not at Rice University. In the world of head football coach David Bailiff, the real test is signing quality athletes when the freshman GPA average is 4.08 and 83 percent of applicants are turned away. But, he relishes the challenge. I met Bailiff at a lunch meeting of the Houston Mortgage Bankers Association. He was…
OLD SONG STILL STIRS MEMORIES OF YOUTH
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: What is it about old songs that gets to us? Maybe it’s because they have the power to transport us back to better times. It’s odd how a song will bring to mind one image out of thousands of possibilities. Usually it’s because of a special person or occasion. Over the years, I’ve attended my share of special affairs, usually with women in fancy clothes. The venues were posh, dinner clubs and soiree’s. Some worthy of a song, I suppose. But, the one song that is special to me is not about all that. It’s about a fifteen-year-old…
FRIENDSHIP IS THE ELIXIR WE NEED
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: Our political system is sick. Just when you think the patient is recovering, another wave of bile bubbles up. Is it any wonder that fewer of our best and brightest are willing to risk the truculent tweets and sardonic sound bites of a public life? It wasn’t always like this. The year was 1960. No one was more aggressive in advancing his political beliefs than the conservative author, columnist and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. And yet, at his death in 2008, he counted most of his former opponents as friends, a phenomenon sorely missing in the…
YOU CAN’T BUILD BY DESTROYING
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: I don’t know why politicians make personal attacks. They must think it wins votes. Not mine. If my children had blamed bad grades on their teacher’s character flaws, I’d have sent them to their rooms. We should do the same to mud slinging politicos. We all know a different opinion doesn’t make a person evil. An attack-ad vilifying someone for an offhanded remark, usually taken out of context, is wrong. Worse, it misrepresents to the world what’s right with our country. Most Americans are fair. We are resolute in our beliefs, but don’t hit below the belt. No…
WORDLESS GOODBYE LASTS A LIFETIME
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: There’s nothing good about goodbyes. So the European Union learned several months ago in Brussels when Great Britain said its adieus. Goodbye to unity, hello to nationalism. Brussels taught an equally harsh lesson to Napoleon two centuries earlier. Defeat at Waterloo, 10 miles south of town, meant goodbye to imperial life forever. Another farewell happened there on a warm summer night in August of 1969. It was a parting of a different kind. I was one of thousands of college students heading home after summer jobs in western Europe. Brussels was the embarkation point of choice. It…
ANDY DEPARTS, BUT MAYBERRY LIVES
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: Andy Griffith is gone. It hurts the heart of every baby boomer. He was one of the last to go, after Barney Fife, Goober Pyle, and Aunt Bea. But, even in their absence, Mayberry lives on. Not because of reruns. Not because of Mayberry Days in Griffith’s home town of Mt. Airy, North Carolina. No, because it’s a place where people still do the right thing. When you find your fender dented and a note on your windshield, it’ll be a Mayberry number. When a dispute is settled over a cup of coffee and a wedge of pie…
UNDERDOG BETS FUTURE ON COFFEE SHOP
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: In the movie “Hoosiers,” before taking the floor in the championship game against its big-city rival, actor Gene Hackman told his small-town basketball team from Hickory, “I love you guys.” We all love an underdog. This lesson came home to me at the Heights Ashbury Coffee Shop on 19th Street in the Heights. It was 1 p.m. on a Saturday. I ordered a decaf latte and asked the barista how business was going. “Well, I’m not sure,” Matt Toomey replied with a grin. “I just bought the place this morning.” Sitting outside under his hand-painted, psychedelic sign, I…
THREE BELLS REMIND ME OF WHAT’S IMPORTANT
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: Sometimes the best thing on television is an ad for old songs. The record companies think we’ll buy them because they make us feel good. I’ve never purchased any, but I always watch. Not long ago “The Three Bells” by the Browns came on. It’s a story of the birth, marriage and death of little Jimmy Brown, all memorialized by bells from a tiny chapel. It made me think of how simple things like the sound of a bell can remind us of what’s important in life. On my morning run I take a neighborhood street. Trees arch…
LESSON ON AN AUTUMN BEACH
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: It is autumn on the Island. The crowds are gone. Winter is looming. A north zephyr buffets us, hand in hand, along West Beach. Ahead an auburn sunset settles over Galveston State Park. Rows of pillared houses stand tall and dark, storm shutters drawn. We hold each other close against the bite of the late October gusts. The aura is peaceful, like our own little world. Few venture out of their cars and homes to walk the beach or brave the harsh winds. The roar of the surf sets the stage. We concede our subservient role. Strange…
PLAIN TALK CAN BRING US TOGETHER
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: Relationships can jump the track. By the time you wake up to the danger it’s too late. The parties are so alienated from rehashing old arguments they cannot work together to find solutions. The best hope is a new beginning. A clean slate. But, with one new rule: Be aggressive to the issue, sympathetic to the person. And so it is with race relations. Just because we disagree doesn’t mean you are a bad person. If we stopped the personal attacks from both sides about past misdeeds, we could focus on the future with open minds. Most…
WORDS UNSAID
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: A venerable legal maxim states “Words alone never justify violence.” Forty years ago their absence guaranteed it. In my first month of law practice a father and his teenage son came to see me. The boy had been sued for divorce. Our meeting was brief and the father spoke for them both. A week later, I learned from the wife’s lawyer that his client would not allow mine unsupervised visits with their infant son. When I called my young client with the news, he took it calmly. A few hours later on the 10 o’clock news I heard,…
HOW OUR NATIONAL CHARACTER WAS LOST IN SPACE
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: As I listened to the TV announcer describe Endeavor’s final lift off I was struck with a sense of loss. Not because Houston won’t be the center of space exploration any more, although that will hurt. Not because humankind’s quest of the unknown has slipped into neutral, or worse stalled out. But, because we’ve lost our nerve. There’ve always been good reasons not to go into space. In 1961 we were mired in a winner take all arms race with the Russians, our spirits and coffers low. They taunted us with their Sputnik and tested us by orbiting…
THE AMERICAN BRAND, TRIED AND TRUE
Americans are obsessed with labels. But, is it branding or bragging? In this age of shameless self promotion, the line blurs. When I was a kid parents preached that hard work, not hard sell, built reputations. Those were the days of quiet heroes like Hank Aaron who “let his bat do his talking”, and Neil Armstrong who took “one giant leap for mankind” then disappeared from view. Both are still household words. It’s not that twentieth century Americans rejected self promotion. We embraced silver tongues, like Will Rogers. Our favorites, however, didn’t promote themselves so much as their ideals. That bred…
ARCHITECT WALKS NEW PATH AS ARTIST
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: In the movie “Sleepless in Seattle” architect Tom Hanks described to a nationwide radio host what was special about his late wife: “When I touched her hand it was like coming home…only to no home I’d ever known. It was like magic.” Architects are like that. Sensitivity amid a maelstrom of hard hats and steel beams. I learned about this delicate balance in an unusual way. Alex Arzu worked at the architectural firm next door. A twenty-seven year old man newly minted from U of H School of Architecture, the marble floors and granite walls of the Decorative…
YOUTH IS ONLY STATE OF MIND, UNTIL IT’S NOT
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: In the classic song “Yesterday, When I Was Young”, which has become synonymous with the singer Roy Clark, he laments “The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned I always built alas on weak and shifting sand.” I thought of this song recently, not because I heard Clark sang it on an oldies commercial, or because he’d been reported dead, another internet hoax. But, because I ran into a young athlete whose grand ideas had been unwittingly swept away by time. He had cheated the reaper out of twenty years by rigorous exercise. His friends…
WHEN HUMAN SPIRIT BUILDS A BRIDGE
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: In the movie Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner made peace with Sioux warriors by riding alone into their camp to return an injured Indian girl. A simple act of faith which overcame all barriers. With our nation divided along seemingly irreconcilably lines, unable to communicate in any language, I am reminded of a personal encounter not unlike Costner’s. It was the day after Katrina hit New Orleans. Some 250,000 refugees were arriving at the Astrodome in Houston by bus. I’d volunteered and was walking to my car at dusk when I came upon an elderly African American woman…
TWO LANE HIGHWAYS ARE SLOWER, BETTER WAY TO GO
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: I like two lane highways. When they pass through a town they have real names like Walnut Street—not Business 10. Next time you drive a rural Interstate notice the service road. Chances are it was an old two lane highway. They don’t even call the Interstates highways anymore, just numbers like I-10. Interstates all look the same. You can see straight ahead for miles—no hills, plenty of time to plan, or scheme. No surprises. Two lane highways have hills and wander through forests. The sight line is rarely more than a few football fields. You can buy a…
THE BLUEBOOK ON THE TRUCK WAS MEMORIES
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: According to automotive experts, SUV’s devalue at 10% per year—all but mine. And I’m the third owner. I bought it new for my daughter’s high school graduation present. It had a big red bow. She took it to college in Cincinnati, and to summer jobs along the way. It was filled with parking stubs from the campus garage. I’d help her load up the truck and move from place to place, then I’d catch a plane home. Each time she’d drop me at the airport and drive away, blond mane billowing. Then she moved to Manhattan, where…
TEXAS MEANS A SECOND CHANCE
“He’s down on his luck. Give him a chance,” my father used to say, values learned in a small West Texas town during the Great Depression. At a time when lessons from that era are being relearned daily, it strikes me that the information age is a hindrance in many ways. In my father’s day when someone new came to town no one did a background search or checked the NCIC files—such things didn’t exist. Bankruptcy, judgments, even jail time were not an automatic barrier to entry unless the new comer had failed to mend his ways. You may say…
SHORTCUTS WON’T CUT IT ANYMORE
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: I’m a marathon coach. Each July hundreds of thirtysomethings brave the heat to begin six months of training for the Chevron Houston Marathon. Most of them finish. Reconciling the dedication of these runners with our country’s loss of its competitive edge is an enigma. I’ve concluded that we lag not because our young people are lazy, stupid or lack qualified instructors. It’s because we’ve forgotten to teach them that, in life, you can’t cut the tangents—the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line. We taught this generation to reach goals by the smartest path…
SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, ALSTON’S STRIKE OUT STILL RESONATES
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: Seventy-five years ago today, September 27, 1936, baseball Hall of Famer Walter Alston started and ended his career as a big league player: One at bat, one strike out, and one error. After his lone day at first base for the St. Louis Cardinals, Alston went on to be one of the top ten managers in baseball history as skipper for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers. It took Alston eighteen years to make it back to the bigs. He managed at every minor league level along the way, encouraging young stars and consoling those who weren’t. After pondering Alston’s…
QUIET CLERK SPEAKS VOLUMES
HOUSTON CHRONICLE AND BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: In the new TV series, “Touch,” a boy who can’t speak uses magical powers to help others. I thought this premise unlikely, until I met a young woman named Lisa. Needing one of those dime shaped batteries, I stopped at a Walgreen’s in Houston. She was dressed in a blue uniform, on her knees, stocking shelves. I showed her the old disc. She took it and motioned for me to follow. I struggled to keep up. On the far wall was a collection of tiny Everready’s, distinguishable only by their microscopic serial numbers. Lisa was…
NOTHING TEACHES LIKE A WALK IN ANOTHER’S SHOES
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: In the movie “Shawshank Redemption,” an inmate escaped wearing the warden’s shoes, prompting actor Morgan Freeman to ask “How often do you really look at a man’s shoes?” For me the answer was never — until I saw a young girl making good her own escape. It happened in a gym with polished floors, retractable seats and a parking lot of SUVs. That’s how fifth grade basketball was played south of the freeway in Houston. Her team arrived in a station wagon — a coach and six black players from north of the interstate, an invisible wall. My…
MUSICIAN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: Ulm, Germany. 1884. A five year old Jewish boy receives two presents. From his mother, violin lessons. His father, a compass. A brilliant musician, but a petulant pupil, he chafes at the mechanical exercises mandated by his tutor. He asks to play his own compositions. When his request is denied, his face flushes yellow with rage and he flings his chair at the teacher, who never returns. The full measure of Al’s musical talent is not realized until age thirteen when he falls in love with Mozart’s sonatas. Years later he would say to a friend about…
LONG FRIENDSHIP GOT TRUMPED BY POLITICS
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: A good friend died the other day. Years ago we began with the same political views. Independent was the label we preferred. No dogma. No narratives. No political correctness. Then came Trump. We thought he was the right medicine for our country. A guy who wasn’t afraid to say what he thought. Who befuddled political pundits by having supported both Democrats and Republicans. Who drove the media nuts. You could put him nose to nose with Putin. He would never crack. We listened to him as we carpooled to work. It felt good. We reveled in the idea…
LOCAL BARISTA SERVES UP MORE THAN COFFEE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: In the fall, the cottonwoods and maples of Dripping Springs, Texas are awash with golden brown and brilliant orange. With the change of seasons, the tiny town is at peace awaiting the arrival of cool weather. Behind the counter in the Starbucks at Voss and San Felipe, Trevor Jones remembers Dripping Springs. He grew up there. His parents worked hard to support eight children, she as a school bus driver and a mechanic, he as an air conditioner repairman. His most vivid memory is the autumn of his eighth grade year. It was a season of discontent. When…
LAUGHING MAN GIVES US HOPE
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS: A man looks both ways then slips onto a subway car in Boechout, Belgium. Shaved head, earphones, and a three day stubble, he is holding something under his jacket. As the train pulls out, the commuters eye him closely. This is Belgium. When he withdraws nothing more sinister than an iPad, they look away in relief. The man stares at the screen and starts to laugh. His shoulders roll. Heads turn back. A passenger glances up from his phone. Soon the man is laughing so hard he’s gasping for breath. The commuters begin to snicker. His laughing…
INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE DOESN’T HIDE TRUTH
BEAUMONT ENTERPRISE: Europeans quibbling over the Euro debt reminds me of how their feuding could have spelled disaster of a different kind. It happened one day at Butlin’s Holiday Camp in Bognor Regis on England’s south coast. I was working a summer job in the amusement park. I ran the tilt-a-whirl. Next to me was a Ferris wheel four stories tall. From atop the giant wheel on a clear day you could see across the Channel to Calais. We had a lot of French tourists. The French and English don’t get along. The former tolerate the latter for liberating their…