Looking Back
“There is no greater sorrow
Than to recall a happy time
When miserable.”
― Dante Alighieri
Back in Corning today, with still more depositions commencing in a couple hours. I dread the exercise, but feel the diminishment of my law practice after going on seven years as a hermit. It'd be hard to pay the bills without these mostly pointless legal battles. Maybe the tax, estate, and business planning side will pick up.
The NYT around town section this morning included a review of new restaurants that ran so long I couldn't finish it, with several a short walk from the apartment. The City is the ultimate amusement park for educated adults with cash. It never gets old, or at least hasn't yet.
But I sure have. This morning brought a wave of nostalgia at news of the passing of two of the lesser-known figures in the media ecosphere of my youth.
The first was Donnie Iris, whose 1980 hit "Ah Leah" feels like a bit of musical time travel for me.
The video is a hoot----sort of a horny Buddy Holly with bad teeth.
Alas, Iris was sort of a one-hit-wonder, but man oh man if you're going to have one hit, this was a doozy. Full of teenage male longing, almost reeking of testosterone with the thundering guitar licks and little gasps leading into the big solo. But not the menacing machismo of the present moment--on the album cover and on the video Iris sheds his shirt, and he's something less than jacked, without a tattoo to be seen.
Listening to the song this morning, I can feel dry desert air and smell the 1970 Chevelle with the windows rolled down, Kevin, Rob, Ed, and me careening through the Hemet valley night, orange groves on either side, empty beer bottles rattling around on the floor, searching for mischief in a retirement town that offered none.
Later Kevin came out as trans, and I'd heard he drank himself to death, or at least into an oblivion where no one would find him. Rob joined AA, lost a son to a drug overdose, and had an ex-wife turn him in on felony gun charges to gain leverage in a custody battle for the grands during their divorce. Ed served in the Air Force the same time I did, came home and went to work in some social services agency, buried a wife he loved, and is retiring in a few weeks. But all of that was a long ways off during those evenings of young men behaving badly, with no clue about the pain, with a little joy, waiting just over that next hill
The other obit I encountered this morning belonged to Walter Koenig, who played Chekov on Star Trek.
I was three when he joined the cast for Season 2, in 1967, in an apparent attempt to gain more young viewers among those who thought Spock and Kirk were old stodges. Koenig was picked, in part, because he looked like Davy Jones from the Monkees. And the character's name suggested a future where Americans (well, Canadians if one considers William Shatner's origins) like Kirk could work together on the bridge with not only a half-alien like Spock, but also (gasp) a Russian. Of course, all three were Jewish, so it was a more homogeneous team than the viewing audience understood.
Tempting as it might be to close my eyes and go back there, to the land before Trump, and before Reagan for that matter, there's work to be done, deadlines to meet, and plenty of ways to waste another beautiful fall day bearing the worries of others.
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