This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It was sent to me by Joe Mirsky, Assistant US District Attorney, Appallet Division.
THREE RIGHTS MAKE A LEFT
My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
'In those days,' he told me when he was in his 90s, 'to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.'
At which point my mother, a sometimes salty woman, chimed in: 'Oh, bull----!' she said. 'He hit a horse.'
'Well,' my father said, 'there was that, too.'
So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.
My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, Iowa, would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.
My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. 'No one in the family drives,' my mother would explain, and that was that.
But, sometimes , my father would say, 'But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one.' It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.
But, sure enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.
It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.
Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive.
She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. 'Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?' I remember him saying more than once.
For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.
Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)
He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning.
If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests 'Father Fast' and 'Father Slow.'
After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: 'The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored.'
If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, 'Do you want to know the secret of a long life?'
'I guess so,' I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.
'No left turns,' he said.
'What?' I asked.
'No left turns,' he repeated. 'Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.
As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.'
'What?' I said again.
'No left turns,' he said. 'Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights.'
'You're kidding!' I said, and I turned to my mother for support. 'No,' she said, 'your father is right. We make three rights. It works.' But then she added: 'Except when your father loses count.'
I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.
'Loses count?' I asked.
'Yes,' my father admitted, 'that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again.'
I couldn't resist. 'Do you ever go for 11?' I asked.
'No,' he said ' If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week.'
My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.
She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.
They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)
He continued to walk daily - - he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.
One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide- ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.
A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, 'You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred.' At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, 'You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer.' 'You're probably right,' I said.
'Why would you say that?' He countered, somewhat irritated.
'Because you're 102 years old,' I said.
'Yes,' he said, 'You're right.' He stayed in bed all the next day. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.
He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us
'I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet.'
An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:
'I want you to know,' he said, clearly and lucidly, 'that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this Earth could ever have.'
A short time later, he died.
I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.
I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, or because he quit taking left turns.
Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about those who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.'
There's Got to Be More to His "Galveston" Than That Glen Campbell Sings It
By Bill Cherry
If you know singer Glen Campbell's real relationship with the island, you can't help but wonder if there isn't more to the story than that a songwriter named Jimmy Webb wrote these words and tune, and that Glen sang them:
Galveston, oh Galveston. I still hear your sea winds blowin'
I still see her dark eyes glowin'
She was 21 when I left Galveston.
and the last verse
Galveston, oh Galveston. I am so afraid of dying
Before I dry the tears she's crying
Before I watch your sea birds flying in the sun
At Galveston, at Galveston.
Glen Campbell was born in rural Arkansas and was one of 12 children. Somehow his dad scraped up enough money to buy him a Sears Roebuck guitar. By the time Glen was 16, he had dropped out of school and had left home for big city lights where he was sure he would be able to play gigs full-time.
That was 1953. And that was when he hitched-hiked his way to the chase lights and neon of Galveston, with the hopes of being able to sign on with one of the big bands or a famous act that was playing there at the Balinese Room, the Studio Lounge or the Pleasure Pier's Marine Ballroom. A lot of unknown talent took that chance back then. And sometimes it worked. It did for wonderful jazz pianist, Johnny Garcia, whose music and personality Galvestonians still miss.
But for most, just like Glen found, all that was available was to play for tips at Louise Bird's Pirate Club, a second rate nightclub, or at a Postoffice or Market Street cathouse, and to save enough money to move on to the next Town of Dreams with the hope that Mother Fate, this time, would shine her light on them.
It was at Miss Jesse's Postoffice Street cathouse where Glenn played.
By 1961, Glen Campbell had left Galveston and had zig zagged his way to Los Angeles where he found a market for his extraordinary talent as a guitar player. As a studio musician he played in the record sessions of artists like Sinatra, Elvis, the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, Dean Martin and Nat "King" Cole. By 1968, he was hosting his own TV show, "Glen Campbell's Goodtime Hour." It was the following year, 1969, when "Galveston" was born and become another of his extraordinary hits.
So Galveston's mayor, Eddie Schreiber and his wife, Sue, flew to Los Angles and were in the audience when Glen sang it on his show. Then Glen came into the audience and introduced the Schreibers, and they stood and waved to the audience and the millions watching nationwide.
What an extraordinary boost from an entertainer whose only gig in that city had been in one of its cathouses.
Awhile back, executive director Maureen Patton brought Glen Campbell to the Grand 1894 Opera House to play what she had told him is a beautiful place on "the right side of Postoffice Street." He packed the theater Saturday and Sunday, and, as you can imagine, brought the house down when he sang "Galveston." This time Mayor Schreiber's son, Dr. Melvyn Schreiber, was in the audience, and Maureen introduced him from the stage, and then she told the story of Dr. Schreiber's dad and mom's adventure to Los Angeles 35 years before.
Now days, the most requested Glen Campbell song is not one of his famous hits like "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" or "Galveston." Instead, it's a tune written by Jerry Reed, "Today Is Mine." My friend, himself a Galveston afficionado, well-known Houston radio personality, Scott Arthur, told me that for years that lovely ballad has been one of the most asked for songs by radio audiences. I noticed that as is with the case of "Galveston," the words could easily be autobiographical.
When the sun came up this morning, I took the time to watch it rise
And as its beauty struck the darkness from the sky
I thought how small and unimportant all of my troubles seem to be
And how lucky another day belongs to me.....
Like most men I've cursed the present to avoid the peace of mind
And raised my thoughts beyond tomorrow and visioned there more peace of mind
But as I view this day around me, I can see the fool I've been
For today is the only garden we can tend
Today is mine.
If you listen to the lyrics of "Galveston," it's hard not to know in your gut there's a story that has not been fully revealed to us, about a 16-year old from rural Arkansas, who came to the big lights of Galveston, played in a cathouse where he saw illegitimate love for the first time, and tried to make sense of it all. Every Galveston teenage boy of that era wrestled with that. The common thread? "Maybe I can rescue her from that life."
And then there is the final paradox of this story. Scott Arthur also had a business called "High Spirit Tours." It took Galveston visitors on narrated trips to the island's haunted places. Wouldn't you know that one of those reported-to-be haunted buildings was Miss Jesse's Postoffice Street cathouse, the place where old Glen played for tips more than 50 years ago.
This is a very interesting column in today's (June 29, 2009) Galveston paper. The author is the paper's editor, Heber Taylor, And let me say up front. Mr. Taylor is a fine journalist, one of great character, so he doesn't lie.
MY LIFE LONG FRIEND, ROBERTA POWERS LEWIS SENT THIS TODAY. I WANTED TO POST IT SO THAT YOU AND MANY OTHERS COULD READ IT. -- BILL CHERRY
Friends:
Some of you may already know this. I knew about part of it from years ago, but did not know there were two instances in Japan at that time in history. We are facing the same crisis in a spiritual way today and quite likely a grave concrete physical happening like that of what happened in Japan in WWII will be coming to us also. God wants us to pray and respond to what is happening and what could happen.
During WWII an extraordinary thing occurred twice in Japan. When atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima, a small communtiy of Jesuit priests were in their house eight blocks from the center of the bomb blast and had just finished saying Mass. In the radius of a mile, thousands of people around them died and the surrounding buildings were destroyed. Yet they and the house where they lived were untouched. Most of the people died at ten times the distance of the priests from the blast's epicenter, and the few survivors who were at that distance were all dead from radiation soon afterwards. But, these eight priests not only survived, they did not suffer from the effects of radiation. The temperature around the blast was more than 20,000 to 30,000 degrees F and that blast wave hit at sonic velocity with pressures (at one kilometer) greater than 600 psi. People cannnot survive 350 degrees F and 30 psi. Yet, after being examined by 200 scientists and doctors they were found to have no effects from the radiation. .
Likewise at the community center or City of the Immaculata, located in Nagasaki a group of priests was not touched by the atomic blast from the bomb dropped there that day. Both groups were faithful to saying the rosary each day and leading lives of much prayer for themselves and the world. We have the messages of Fatima, Akita Japan, Medjugorje, Rowanda, Garabandal and many others urging us to pray and do penance for ourselves and the whole world in these times of spiritual death and blindness. God does not need our help, but He wants it. And He can do all things.
I know some of you are really praying and doing penance already, but thought you would like to know this true story. Pass it on if you can.
For about a year, we were subjected to terrible TV reception provided by AT&T U-verse. It never worked properly the entire time we were subscribers.
The receivers quit working one by one, the pictures pixelated relentlessly, and hours were accrued as we hung on the phone trying to get service.
About a month ago, when I called the service representative refused to send a technician out, and then slammed the phone down. She had pitched a fit and hung up on me!
So we decided AT&T's time was up, and that we really should have done something about it sooner.
Last week we subscribed to a package with Time-Warner that provides TV, land line telephone and high speed Internet. Within less than a day, AT&T found out we were switching services, so they turned our account over to their collection agency, who called and told us that if we didn't pay what was due on our account immediately, they would turn it over to their attorney.
We were not delinquent and we had not gotten the bill for the June service. So I authorized the phone company to draft my bank account for about $110.00 to solve the problem...a problem they had created.
By the way, the bill they were outraged about came by mail yesterday.
I don't see how AT&T is going to survive. If they are treating us this way, they are treating others this way. No wonder customers are abandoning them by the thousands. I now know why my daddy insisted on selling his telephone stock, saying at the time that their days were as numbered as the railroads had been.
As they do every summer, the Dallas Fine Arts Chamber Players will perform every Sunday in July in the beautiful setting of the Texas Discovery Gardens at Fair Park, 3601 Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd. Enter at Gate 6.
The small auditorium where the concerts are held is, of course, in doors, air conditioned and has restrooms. But the entire wall -- floor to ceiling -- behind the stage is glass and offers a full view of the park's gardens. I can't tell you how spectacular this is.
The concerts are FREE. Doors open at 2, and the program begins at 3:30. No reservations or tickets necessary.
This year, the series is titled the Basically Beethoven Festival. Click here for more information. Patty and I will see you there!
OK, while even though not of sterling silver, I wasraised with a silver plate spoon in my mouth.
I admit it.
<<==Luke the Schwan Man 469 441-3744
A driver picked-up our laundry every Monday and brought it back on Friday. His name was Richard. The sheets were washed, starched and ironed. My daddy's dress shirts were each folded and individually packaged.
And the laundry man was different than the uniformed man who picked-up and delivered the dry cleaning. His name was Mr. Wheeler.
Mr. Covini brought fresh eggs and butter every week, Mr. Crawford sent his driver with the prescription drugs, and Bovio's Grocery's barely English speaking delivery man, Beyanke brought our groceries in a big basket on his three-wheel bicycle.
Mrs. Levin at Nathan's would send the store's driver out to the house with several new outfits she thought my mom might like. Often my mom would pick a couple, then send the others back.
There were no MasterCards or Visas. Each store sent their own bill once a month.
And then little by little the civility ensured by door-to-door service has all but vanished, and I don't like it.
ONE REMAINS: THE SCHWAN MAN
Schwan's has an enormous catalog of frozen foods, from steaks and lobster to garlic potatoes and blueberry cobbler. The ice cream is of Bluebell quality.
Once every two weeks, our Schwan Man, Luke, comes by in his big yellow-cream colored refrigerated truck and we get our supply -- the basics of each of our orders are strip steaks, skinless chicken breasts and shrimp skewers.
While I understand Schwan's is in most of the larger communities nationwide, in Dallas you can have Luke as Your Schwan Man just like we have. 469 441-3744.
Bring civility into your life. Start by using the Schwan Man.
The other afternoon about 2, Patty and I were in a Dallas area where we seldom go. Bad enough to be hungry, but worse to be hungry where you are unfamiliar with the restaurants that are nearby.
On a whim, we picked GREAT CHINA RESTAURANT in a nice strip center on the corner of Preston and Frankfort. The food was extraordinary.
Let me add that this isn't one of those goofy Chinese buffet affairs that I personal abhor, and even better, the smell of stuff frying in grease isn't in a smoke cloud hovering at the dining room's ceiling.
Great China Restaurant is a well-decorated and appointed fine-dining restaurant where everything is prepared to order and from fresh ingredients. You'll be pleased.
It was one of those things that may be driven by young people's libidos rather than could they be fairly sure they would be compatible; maybe someday marry.
At any case, she moved in with him. He had owned the home they set up housekeeping in for at least fifteen years before she got there.
After the first year, the relationship's value diminished for both of them, diminishing incrementally day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year. Finally, he wanted her out. She said she didn't have anywhere to move.
They argued and fought about his proposal to end their relationship. Nothing was going to encourage her to give up her free lodging. Afterall, she didn't even have a job. How could she pay rent or buy food?
She told him it might help his attitude toward her if he would move himself into one of his home's spare bedrooms.
Finally, he went to the Justice of the Peace, filed an eviction on her. Days passed. Both were still living in the house together. Of course she was in the master bedroom now, and he was in the 10 x 11 guest bedroom. When they spoke, they argued. Most of the time they said nothing to each other...went their own ways.
But wouldn't you know, she didn't move by the court-given deadline, so the constable, following Texas real estate law, came out and stood guard as her former boyfriend and some hired laborers removed all of her possessions and stacked them in the front yard. Then the locksmith changed the locks on the doors.
So my first question is simple: How did not being married take away the possibility of a commitment? My second question isn't so simple: How's he going to get this woman's junk off of his yard? Praise God. Amen.
NOTE: Dr. Michael M. Warren, while also holding the prestigeous Ashbel Smith professor of surgery position at University of Texas Medical Branch Division of Urology, has been one of my heroes for a long time. The reason is because he's a big thinker and speaks out about many subjects, from religion and philosophy to science, education and medicine.
He frequently writes a column on health care and medicine for The Galveston County Daily News. This one shows that at least Dr. Warren knows what patients think, so I asked if I could share it with Activerain readers.
Anyone Care to Tell Doc to Be Patient?
By Michael Warren
Published June 9, 2009
Nowhere in the medical-school curriculum is there a course about what it's like to be a patient. Wouldn't it be good to put every medical student into the hospital and do to the "patient" some things done to real patients?
First, we could dress the doctors in those specially tailored hospital gowns and let them walk out in the hallway with "you know what" exposed.
Then we could feed them hospital food. Give them all some of the special treatments like enemas, and put tubes everywhere. We could wait until they just fall asleep and wake them up to ask them if they want a sleeping pill. We could wake them up again to take their temperature and blood pressure.
It's interesting being wheeled about on a stretcher, so all you can see is the ceiling. We could leave them outside the X-ray room for several hours and on the hard X-ray table for a few more.
How about a good bed bath? A few shots would also be nice, and we could finish by putting them in a room full of health-care workers who wouldn't talk to them.
After that, the doctors would probably think marine boot camp a gentle experience. It would give them a new outlook on health care from the patient's point of view.
When they are finished, we will send them a bill and make them pay good money for the experience. Now that's realism. You could add more such experiences to the list, but I do have some compassion for my fellow doctors.
Those of us in the health-care business often do forget about the patient. We get so fascinated with all the new technology that we lose site of what we are supposed to be about. We are supposed to be caring human beings entrusted by you to care for the well being of all. We are well paid for this trust. Although we have spent considerable time learning how to be successful, we must always remember that it was you who allowed us to do it.
If you did not desire to spend billions of dollars each year to teach new doctors, to build "state of the art" hospitals and fill them with the latest equipment, and do all the other things necessary to develop one of the best health-care-delivery systems in the world, we would not be able to do anything but make a few simple drugs out of plants and do a little blood letting like our ancestors.
Caring is still the key for successful medical care. It is cheap; it doesn't require major technology or equipment. It doesn't even require a great deal of training. It does require some effort and time, but it's worth it. Are you getting the caring you desire? If not, fix it. As the expression goes, "the patient is always right." .
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OK, while even though not of sterling silver, I was raised with a silver plate spoon in my mouth. 
;)
;)
