An Old Man's Rambling Remembrances #28

Today, I watched on C-span, a little bit of the confirmation hearings of Justice Sotomayor. As soon as I left the room to write this, my wife changed the channel to "Light Classical", but while I watched, I was reminded of that "Just so you'll know" comment by Natalie Maines about GBW, which got her so much scorn from the hick music crowd.

I'm sorta thinking that I should say something similar about our illustrious senator, John Cornyn, and while trying to find my remembrance of "I SUPPORT OUR TROOPS (and our Dixie Chicks)", I found the following:


ONE NEVER KNOWS
12/13/99

Last summer, on a whim which had been building for more years than I can remember, I phoned a former high school classmate in Hawaii. The last time I had seen Milton, we had been fifteen years old.

Milton was my third choice of people to call, but he was the one for whom I was able to find a phone number. One of the other choices was living in Washington State, so could not be located in a search of Hawaii. The other, I later found out, has an APO address, so could be anywhere. Milton placed him last on Johnson Island.

Milton informed me of the class of ‘54 reunion, which was coming up in October. I spent at least
ten minutes, and maybe up to an hour, wondering if I should go, “I can’t make it now, but I think I’ll shoot for the 2004 reunion” was my final decision. It should be great fun seeing all those young people grown up to be old folks.

We had several exchanges of mail (Milton had never gotten the hang of e-mail, but thought he
should probably give it a try, as soon as his wife could teach him how). He could receive faxes from me, but I couldn’t easily get them from him, so I’d fax him, and he’d snail-mail in return. He gave me lots of valuable information about what had happened in the intervening forty-eight years since I’d last seen him.

I doubt that he ever knew exactly who I was among people he had known. My year in Hawaii was a significant event in my life from which I returned to the same house in Texas. In the lives of the people who were “native” to Hawaii, it was just another year.

I heard last evening from a recently acquired e-pen pal in California that Milton had passed away last Thursday. In his last letter, he was looking forward to a trip to Australia. I intend to pursue with haste to live, as best I can, a full life. One can never know which day will be his last.

Epilogue:

I never did find the Dixie Chicks remembrance in my vast library, which sometimes gets inadvertently trashed, but I'd like to say this about Senator Cornyn. "I certainly agree with you that any nominee for Justice of the Supreme Court should be scrutenized as thoroughly as possible, but in doing so, try not to embarrass yourself and the state you're supposed to represent."



..