TBO's Melancholy midnight...

[TBO]

Means more now than it did in 1986.

 

 

Sent from my Jack boot using Copatalk

 

 

[Huaco Kid]

That's what we need more of.

Mostly,  all the time.

[Huaco Kid]

 

[NPTim]

Feeling nostalgic? I’m feeling nostalgic for B. C.

You just like Eddie Money because he used to be a copper.

Edited August 1, 2020 by NPTim

[Mayhem like me]

And he has the gravelly voice .


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[janice6]

8 hours ago, TBO said:

 

Means more now than it did in 1986.

 

 

 

Sent from my Jack boot using Copatalk

 

 

 

50 years later, I went back to my hometown. 

It wasn't my hometown anymore, I was a stranger, it was nothing I remember. 

My real home turned out to be where my present home and family are.  The past is gone, over, forgotten, family is the only thing that's real.

[railfancwb]

12 hours ago, janice6 said:

50 years later, I went back to my hometown. 

It wasn't my hometown anymore, I was a stranger, it was nothing I remember. 

My real home turned out to be where my present home and family are.  The past is gone, over, forgotten, family is the only thing that's real.

Raised my children in a town. Wife and I might have celebrated our 50th living there had she not passed. Retired shortly after she died, then moved an hour out. Ten years later might as well be a different town. 

Even more drastically disconnected with the town where I grew up - my classic home town. Once my parents were gone I have almost no ties to the place. 

[janice6]

2 minutes ago, railfancwb said:

Raised my children in a town. Wife and I might have celebrated our 50th living there had she not passed. Retired shortly after she died, then moved an hour out. Ten years later might as well be a different town. 

Even more drastically disconnected with the town where I grew up - my classic home town. Once my parents were gone I have almost no ties to the place. 

I'm sorry you lost your wife.  It makes life harder, alone.

[Eric]

 

[railfancwb]

1 minute ago, janice6 said:

I'm sorry you lost your wife.  It makes life harder, alone.

Thanks. It does.

When they were in the “young children” phase of life, the wife of one of my son’s good friends passed on. This friend remarried fairly quickly. Not surprising, as hormones and young children all needed him to remarry.

My son saw this and teases me that I should be dating if not actually pursuing another marriage. Reasonable from what he saw. From my standpoint, I’ve been there. No wish to be broke to harness by another woman nor to break another woman to harness at my age.

I enjoy seeing attractive women, certainly, including those not a great deal older than my grandchildren. But the wake up question is “but what would you talk about afterward”. 

And it is sometimes so very lonely... all those things we were going to do after retirement now done solo or not at all.

[railfancwb]

I normally think of this because of a death. But it is equally appropriate, if not more so, as a metaphor for life.

The Sandbar - Travis McGee (John D McDonald)

 

Picture a very swift torrent, a river rushing down between rocky walls. There is a long, shallow bar of sand and gravel that runs right down the middle of the river. It is under water. You are born and you have to sand on that narrow, submerged bar, where everyone stands. The ones born before you, the ones older than you, are upriver from you. The younger ones stand braced on the bar downriver. And the whole long bar is slowly moving down that river of time, washing away at the upstream end and building up downstream.

Your time, the time of all your contemporaries, schoolmates, your loves and your adversaries, is that part of the shifting bar on which you stand. And it is crowded at first. You can see the way it thins out, upstream from you. The old ones are washed away and their bodies go swiftly by, like logs in the current. Downstream where the younger ones stand thick, you can see them flounder, lose footing, wash away. Always there is more room where you stand, but always the swift water grows deeper, and you feel the shift of the sand and the gravel under your feet as the river wears it away. Someone looking for a safer place can nudge you off balance, and you are gone. Someone who has stood beside you for a long time gives a forlorn cry and you reach to catch their hand, but the fingertips slide away and they are gone.

There are the sounds in the rocky gorge, the roar of the water, the shifting, gritty sound of sand and gravel underfoot, the forlorn cries of despair as the nearby ones, and the ones upstream, are taken by the current. Some old ones who stand on a good place, well braced, understanding currents and balance, last a long time. A Churchill, fat cigar atilt, sourly amused at his own endurance and, in the end, indifferent to rivers and the rage of waters. Far downstream from you
are the thin, startled cries of the ones who never got planted, never got set, never quite understood the message of the torrent.
*****
This metaphor for life and death from Pale Gray for Guilt (1968), one of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels, came to mind the other day. I looked it up, and here it is for easy reference.

https://www.miskatonic.org/2014/12/12/the-sandbar/ 

 

 

 

 

 

[Swampfox762]

19 minutes ago, railfancwb said:

Thanks. It does.

When they were in the “young children” phase of life, the wife of one of my son’s good friends passed on. This friend remarried fairly quickly. Not surprising, as hormones and young children all needed him to remarry.

My son saw this and teases me that I should be dating if not actually pursuing another marriage. Reasonable from what he saw. From my standpoint, I’ve been there. No wish to be broke to harness by another woman nor to break another woman to harness at my age.

I enjoy seeing attractive women, certainly, including those not a great deal older than my grandchildren. But the wake up question is “but what would you talk about afterward”. 

And it is sometimes so very lonely... all those things we were going to do after retirement now done solo or not at all.

Seriously?  Think about getting a rescue dog...

[Historian]

 

[railfancwb]

3 minutes ago, Swampfox762 said:

Seriously?  Think about getting a rescue dog...

Have cats, but not traveling companions tge way dogs can sometimes be. 

[janice6]

17 minutes ago, railfancwb said:

Thanks. It does.

When they were in the “young children” phase of life, the wife of one of my son’s good friends passed on. This friend remarried fairly quickly. Not surprising, as hormones and young children all needed him to remarry.

My son saw this and teases me that I should be dating if not actually pursuing another marriage. Reasonable from what he saw. From my standpoint, I’ve been there. No wish to be broke to harness by another woman nor to break another woman to harness at my age.

I enjoy seeing attractive women, certainly, including those not a great deal older than my grandchildren. But the wake up question is “but what would you talk about afterward”. 

And it is sometimes so very lonely... all those things we were going to do after retirement now done solo or not at all.

Don't mean to get too morbid but, I worked with two guys that were well passed retirement.  I knew my retirement was coming up shortly and I was so looking forward to it.

I asked one of them why he was still working and not home with his family making the best of the time left.

He told me that work was fun and he had plenty of time for retirement after another few years.

One weekend he was found on his lot with the lawn mower.  He had a heart attack and never got the time for family at all.

The other guy said that his life was his work, that his wife understood that he needed to have a feeling of self worth.  He died at work.  His wife wasn't there and they didn't have much time at all.

These are the reasons I push for retirement and family so much.  The chance of something like what happened to you is the biggest fear I have.

God Bless!

[Eric]

 

[Historian]

6 minutes ago, janice6 said:

These are the reasons I push for retirement and family so much.  The chance of something like what happened to you is the biggest fear I have.

 

We all have our reasons for being, Janice.

The only reason i go to work is to make sure i leave two people better off than i found them.   And every day...i take shots and deal with people i wold rather never have to deal with again...to ensure...they have a future. Other than the smile of my wife and the laughter of Little Historian...i've had a lot of sadness and PTSD issue that i've earned and made friends with. 

If i kick off it's God's will.  My goal is to make sure those two people live a far better and happier life than i have.

I've done my time.

[holyjohnson]

i got nothing there to go back to,

and no one left there to see.