Field of Steve

Twenty years ago or so I thought more about my old high school classmates and knew less about them than I do now. On Sunday I wrote an e-mail to a guy I kind of hung out with from time to time when I was a teenager. Had I not come across some information about him on the Internet, I’d have never considered it.

Twenty years ago had I been living in Washington it would have been a lot of work to find out about some of the congressional races in another state. Yesterday, however, remembering a name connected to a name in my past, I found out a former girlfriend’s husband is running for Congress. Not only that, some think he’s got a decent shot of unseating the Democratic incumbent. I don’t know him at all, but the woman he married was for a time one of my best friends.

I introduced her here as a former girlfriend, but in truth she was far more friend than girlfriend. We worked together at the college paper. Then a group of us went on D.C. internships at the same time. My roommate and sometimes friend had the hots for her. I tried to pretend I didn’t and told him to go ahead. I said that after I had tried to discourage him from it a few times. Finally I said “go ahead,” because I knew that’s what he wanted to hear, and at the time I didn’t think I was interested. Unfortunately, he only heard the encouragement without any of the nuance. Once we all got out to D.C. she and I talked and it was clear we felt more for each other than we’d let on. We decided to carry on in secret, but got busted holding hands in the TV room at the apartment complex we were living in. He didn’t take it well and I’m not sure I can blame him.

As for the romance, I would go in and out of interest in her, until a point where she’d given up on me, right when I decided I didn’t want to lose her. I spent much of the rest of the semester pursuing her. Things were hot and cold and I was my normal co-dependent self. While things were hot my roommate, Roger, pretended I didn’t exist. When things were cold he was as warm as any friend I’d ever had. The semester at the internship workplace was perfect. My life outside of there was awful. It came to a head St. Patrick’s Day weekend, when four of us went up to New York City.

It was three guys and her. She was the only one I could talk to. Roger wouldn’t acknowledge me at all and the other guy, Tom, was in an awkward situation. My sole comfort that weekend were the times I was alone with her. I’m pretty sure I remember talking to her about marriage while we walked around the city on Saturday night. She wasn’t interested, but I persisted. But Sunday was completely terrible. I decided it wasn’t worth all the stress to try to pursue her when she wasn’t sure she wanted me back and having my pursuit make it so there were moments I had no one to talk to. So after we got back to our apartment complex, I went to her place and told her I was giving up. Then I bawled.

He wasn’t afraid to squeeze her butt, but her mother wasn’t standing right there.

For about the next month we were nothing more than friends. It hurt, but Roger would speak to me again and I slowly got used to the idea of being no more than her friend. Then toward the end of our time there she came back to me. We had this agreement that when we said “good-bye” to each other I’d grab her butt and she’d grab mine, like Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine did in Terms of Endearment. I chickened out, though, because her mom came to pick her up and I couldn’t do that in front of her mother.

I went home to California and she returned to school for a final semester. I worked construction and she finished her last few classes. I had plans to drive to see her. One night I called and she was an absolute snot to me on the phone, one of the few times I ever experienced her being anything other than wonderful. A few minutes later she called me back and apologized, but told me not to come visit. It was over. That moment I said “good-bye” in Alexandria, Virginia was the last time I ever saw her. I think I called her later when the Lakers won the championship to rub it in. I was still angry and pretended it was good natured ribbing, but she saw through it. I think that was the last conversation for a while.

I didn’t take that long to recover. I dated a couple of women that summer and another one the fall semester. Months later when I was again able to recall how good a person she was I wrote her a letter. I don’t remember at all the contents. I probably wrote something about wanting to still be her friend or some such sentiment. She called me late one afternoon, waking me from sleep after pulling an all-nighter to finish a communications law project. From then on we’d talk once in a while. We started as friends, dabbled in something else and last I spoke with her we were still friends.

The first day my first semester back I was sitting in my communications law class and Roger walked in. We hadn’t left D.C. on good terms with each other, because at the time the woman who shall not be named was with me again. But when he walked in he acted as though there had never been any animosity between him and me. He came and sat next to me and was as chummy as ever. He lived in the apartment complex next to mine and we ended up knowing a lot of the same people. I dated a girl who was friends with many of the guys from Roger’s hometown. Roger told them that I had encouraged him to after a woman and then went after her myself. The girl I dated asked me about it, and I told her it was true, then explained the context. I’m not sure it mattered.

My last semester I went back to D.C. at the invitation of Roger’s former boss to do Roger’s old job. I didn’t do anything all that well until the last three weeks. I wanted to get work there, but didn’t make it happen. My parents moved to Utah while I was away and I ended up there for far more years than I ever intended. The girl who was my friend and briefly my girlfriend married a guy she worked with. Now it appears he plans to run for Congress.

Roger died a few years later.

I have friends who went through a kind of ritual with their roommates if a former girlfriend mistreated one of them. They’d refuse to say her name. I’m not saying her name here, but for a different reason.

This entry led with me telling how I’d sent an e-mail to someone I probably never would have worried about had I not come across his name and had an easy way to contact him. A simple Google search and suddenly you can fill in blanks about names you barely remember. I don’t think I said anything incriminating here, but I don’t want someone to Google the candidate’s name or that of his wife and find this story, not now anyway. I’ll only inflict attention on people who deserve it or welcome it. It seems silly that I remember so much from part of my life more than 22 years ago. It’s more silly that I’d Google her husband’s name, but the Internet often satisfies my curiosity in finding out how people are doing. I can’t imagine not caring.

On Monday Don Meyers, editorial page editor at the Daily Herald in Provo, Utah called to tell me Sharon Gholdston died Saturday. Just this weekend I had been thinking about her. She was my first boss when I got back into journalism and was one of three people instrumental in my success at getting back in.
After the phone call I had a “She would have wanted it this way” moment. I had a 4 p.m. deadline for a story I was writing. I could either finish the story before getting to my thoughts about Sharon, or rush full boar into a tribute. I knew Sharon would want me to meet my deadline. I almost made it.
The Herald first hired me as a contract reporter. When I went to the Pacific Northwest to drop off clips and resumes, she convinced the editor to hire me full time so I’d stay.
Sharon was a good boss who carried a long leash on us reporters. I once got away with two-word lead — “Spring tempts.” — because she was willing to see how the effort to usher in a season poetically in a newspaper.
She was a good coach and a reporter’s advocate. She was having health issues back then, but got to work most every day and led a young reporting staff through deadlines and scoops and projects. She went to a Poynter seminar for a week and came back and led us through a lot of the exercises. She’d work with a reporter on a story to make it better, especially if it got turned in early.
Beyond her influence on my career, she was good people and made some of the best ribs I’d ever had. It was the newsroom tradition to pool the small cash awards the parent company would give us for monthly recognition and do an annual rib feast in her backyard. That was a good Saturday.
She was the first person to urge me to read Harry Potter, for which my daughter should show a great deal of gratitude.
Sharon was a Southerner who had blended quite well in Utah and, if I recall this correctly, made occasional polite retorts to any attacks on her native culture. I do recall her bristling when someone in the newsroom suggested putting a Krispy Kreme doughnut in the microwave. It just seemed sacrilege.
About two years ago I called her because of an editorial page editor job opening in Saint George. She’d had a single experience with the paper, not an especially good experience, so I called to hear her story. She was candid about what happened, but more than that I remember more how good it was to talk with her.
I owe her a lot and I hope God rewards her generously just for her influence on my life.

Her obituary is here until about the end of November.

Field of Steve

My wife and kids are out of town this weekend and the weather outside on Saturday was gorgeous, so it was clearly time for a road trip . Before heading down the road I, of course, had to fill up the car with . . . oil. So I went to Albertson’s, surely everyone’s choice for auto supplies.
For me it actually was an obvious choice because it was the only place I could get two quarts of oil, a soda (that’s “pop” for you Canadians) and $20. I needed the cash because I was heading to Fat Smitty’s, a hamburger joint on the road up to Port Angeles. Fat Smitty’s turned out to be closed, but that’s no reason to derail this story with sidetrips. Those come later.
Back in Albertson’s as I was walking along the back aisle an old man, an old and short man to be exact, stopped me with the biggest smile and reached out and touched my arm. He was talking to me like I was his old buddy, calling me “Slim,” and I played along. He had the kind of baseball hat on with the mesh back that’s popular with old people and gangstas. He told me he wouldn’t call me “slim” if I didn’t call him “shorty.” We laughed. (Inwardly I laughed because I may not be anything close to slim, but he really is short.)
So the guy decided to tell me a joke. He said these two brothers, age 4 and 6, think that maybe it’s time they start cussing. So their mother asks them what they want for breakfast. At this point I can’t tell you what the rest of the joke was, for obvious reasons. In case it isn’t so obvious to you, I can’t tell you the rest of it because I couldn’t understand the rest of it. He spoke so fast I couldn’t hear a word, except I think there were a couple of swear words. Come to think of it that may be another reason not to tell you the rest.
I laughed like crazy anyway, as much at the situation as at the joke. Actually it should be pretty obvious that I was laughing more at the situation than at the joke, because as I stated earlier I still don’t know how the joke ends.
As I walked out of the store I realized how great I felt, and I owed a lot of it to the short, old guy (The weather and the impending road trip were factors too).
It reminded me of something I’ve been reading in the book Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom, a sportswriter. In the book Albom begins regular visits with his favorite professor from college, which was back when Albom believed he was going to make a living playing the piano (silly college kids). By the time of the visits Albom was an insanely busy and successful sports guy. Morrie Schwartz, with whom Albom was sharing his Tuesdays, was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, a detail that causes me to stray even further from the main point.
Lou Gehrig was a first baseman for the New York Yankees when Babe Ruth was on the team. Gehrig, had he been playing in another era, probably would have been as revered as any player ever. But he had to play in Ruth’s shadow. He put up big numbers in his 17-year-career, was an All-Star seven times and played in 2,130 consecutive games, which earned him the nickname “Iron Horse.” His streak was a record for about 60 years until Cal Ripken broke it a few years back.
What stopped his consecutive games streak was the onset of Lou Gehrig’s disease. (Personally I think his parents were jerks for naming him after a disease. If your last name was “Cancer” would you name your kid “Terminal” or “Pancreatic?”) Anyway Gehrig had a huge impact, in part because he was rumored to be a really good guy. They did a movie based on his life and put Gary Cooper in the starring role. Gehrig’s the one who said “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Trust me, it sounds a lot better when there’s lots of echoing.
But I’ve got a way to derail this subject even further. The guy who replaced Gehrig at first base was Babe Dahlgren. He had a decent career in his own right. He played for 12 seasons and made the All-Star team himself in 1943. But if you ask baseball fans who had the biggest impact on the world, Gehrig or Dahlgren, the overwhelming answer would be Gehrig. But Dahlgren had a bigger impact on me.
When I was 12 years old I was playing Little League baseball and for the first few games I was really, really bad at hitting, which was something that I had been really good at the year before. Babe Dahlgren had a batting cage nearby and taught hitting. So my dad paid for the lessons from Dahlgren, who worked with me and helped turn my season around. I made the All-Star team. Dahlgren died in 1996 and I’m pretty sure he didn’t die from Babe Dahlgren’s disease. It would have been a bummer if he would have died from Gehrig’s.
I don’t say that because of the irony of dying from the disease named after the legend you replaced at first base. I say it because it’s a pretty tough way to go, which is clear in Albom’s book about Morrie Schwartz.
Albom had been living a life of ambition. Schwartz was more into enjoying life long before he was diagnosed with his last illness. He was always emotional, a real people person. As he was dying that trait became even more pronounced, and he helped soften a guy (Albom) who was way too much into work and ambition. He spent much of his past few months sharing his thoughts about life and dying, had a few appearances on Nightline, and of course there’s the book I’ve been mentioning. His thoughts on work and money struck me.
“Why do you think it’s so important for me to hear other people’s problems? Don’t I have enough pain and suffering of my own?
“Of course I do. But giving to other people is what makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad, it’s as close to healthy as I ever feel.”
The man in the store told me a joke and helped me feel alive, even loved. I hope he felt served too. Babe Dahlgren watched me hit and fixed a few mechanics. The result was he restored my own confidence to do something that had been easy and then became hard. There’s money, there are awards, there are things to inflate my ego.
If there are no friends, none of it means much.

Ecclesiastes 4:8-10. – “There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.
“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
“For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”

Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Speech, July 4, 1939, “Lou Gehrig Day” at Yankee Stadium
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t have considered it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrows? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.
“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat and vice versa, sends you a gift, that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeeper and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies, that’s something.
“When you have a father and mother work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body, it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, that’s the finest I know. So I close in saying that I might have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”

www.geocities.com/theedboard

Here’s a study in maturity. A guy named Billy takes a column written by Eric Snider, changes a few words and posts it on his web site as a “humor column.” Eric, who once made a living writing (way to go Herald), asks him to take it off. Billy doesn’t respond, so Eric asks again and complains to Yahoo, which spells the end of Billy’s web site (I, for one, am shocked!).

Billy also has a blog, on which he posts a made-up quote from Eric in which Eric refers to himself as a homosexual and a pedophile. Then he posts something about Eric’s Utah Valley gang members, or some such crap, writing to him and how much they need to get a life. Again, he knocks Eric saying he’s a 30-year-old whose balls haven’t dropped yet.

PARAGRAPH DELETED TO MAKE ME A NICER GUY.

Hey Billy, take the stuff off your blog, apologize to Snider and grow up a little bit. Furthermore, I don’t live in Utah.

www.geocities.com/theedboard