It’s been said that we older folks may forget where we left our reading glasses or what we ate for breakfast, but we remember our experiences from childhood, especially the formative ones.

This morning a memory surfaced from more than eighty years ago.

In 1944 my father volunteered to play French Horn in the Merchant Marine Band stationed on Catalina Island, about twenty-five miles west of Los Angeles. He rented a small house in Avalon, half a block from the beach.

He and a friend bought a tiny rowboat in which Dad and I often went fishing in the nearby kelp beds.  It was a lot of fun.

One day, as we rowed out into the bay to fish we were hailed by the captain of a large sport fishing boat from San Pedro. He said that one of his passengers had hooked a very large fish.  The fish was trying to escape by swimming directly into the kelp, where his fishing boat couldn’t follow.

“Can you take my passenger into the kelp in your row boat?” he asked. My dad agreed.

The passenger, a large man, traded places with me (since Dad’s boat was far too small for the three of us). I watched from the deck of the larger boat as he and my Dad followed the fish into the kelp.  A half hour later they came rowing back— with a huge fish, the large passenger bellowing for all to hear, “Glory be!!!  Glory be!!!

As a reward, the captain gave us several buckets of live bait. But buckets in a rowboat are too easily tipped over, and soon our rowboat was half filled with salt water and wiggling anchovies. It was a fishing trip to remember.

Glory be!!!

Next week I’ll share another (true) fishing tale from my adventures on Catalina Island in 1944. If I continue to remember it.

Alan

P. S.  As for my reading glasses, I just found them. On my head, just where they usually are. But I also keep an extra pair in my shirt pocket, and another backup pair … somewhere else.

I’ve always considered myself an intellectual.

Even as a kid, I preferred books, ideas, and adult conversations over tinkering with an erector set.  As I got older, I ignored engines, tools, or anything that required grease. If a machine broke, my thoughtful contribution was to make suggestions about who should fix it, other than me

In junior high school, I took a typing class.

At the time, typing was not considered an activity for future intellectuals. Typing was for future secretaries and clerks. While I was learning that my left index finger was responsible for the letter F, the smart kids were studying science, literature, and foreign languages.

Today, by contrast, if you can’t use a keyboard, you are essentially a Victorian.

In high school I enrolled in a bookkeeping class.  Again, this was a practical class, filled with students who did not plan to attend college.  The number of my “intellectual” friends in that class?  Zero.

Nobody bragged about being good at bookkeeping.  No one said, “My dream is to spend my life chasing receipts and reconciling checking accounts.  But I took the class for a practical reason. I wanted to keep track of my own money.

In my late twenties I started a business.  That’s when numbers became more than just a personal passion.  I learned that numbers have distinct personalities.

Revenue is optimistic.

Expenses are inventive.

Forecasts are fiction.

And taxes always seem to know exactly when you’re feeling financially comfortable.

Over the years, my love of numbers helped me buy properties, run businesses, publish books, and support causes I cared about.

Looking back, I realize, a typing class taught me how to communicate.

A bookkeeping class taught me not just how to survive, but to thrive.

And life taught me that the courses that might seem to be off your beaten path are often the most important in preparing you for your very best future.

But if someone had told the fumbling thirteen-year-old intellectual in that typing class filled with future secretaries and clerks that he would someday become a very successful CPA, he would have typed a brief, but thoughtful objection.

Very slowly.  And with many misspelled words.

Alan

This morning, as usual, I woke up and checked my calendar.

The page for today was blank.

I’ve written before about how an empty calendar previously caused me to feel a twinge of sadness. But today I felt relief.

Because today I had no appointments.

No meetings.

No lunch plans.

No conference calls.

No doctors.

No dentists.

No people wanting a few minutes of my time, which always seems to take more than an hour.

After nearly six decades of running a company, raising a family, publishing a poetry magazine, writing books, serving on boards, and generally sticking my nose into more projects than wisdom would recommend, I have become accustomed to a calendar filled with names. For more than sixty years weekdays meant obligation.

But today my calendar was as open as the sky.

I loved it.

When I was younger, I might have panicked. Surely something must be wrong, because everyone knows you should use every scrap of time for accomplishment. Build something. Buy something. Fix something.

But now, at eighty-six, I have a more relaxed philosophy.

Sometimes the highest form of productivity occurs when you give yourself the time and space to create without a deadline or schedule.

Around nine I ambled into my home office and sat in my chair. And then I just sat there gazing out the window at my lovely backyard and watched a squirrel swipe an avocado from a neighbor’s tree.

Then I spent a few hours reading a new book.  At lunchtime I contemplated the contents of the refrigerator.  A man rushing to complete a task or who is late for an appointment grabs food. A man with no schedule is free to study the ingredients and leftovers in the fridge with the concentration of a museum curator.

I considered whether a piece of pie might qualify as a balanced meal (if consumed thoughtfully).

The best moment came in midafternoon when I briefly wondered whether I might like to take a nap.

Then I wondered if I should read. Or maybe write.

Then I decided to postpone the decision.

Freedom, I’ve discovered, is not needing to have the answers, and tomorrow the calendar will probably refill itself. It always has.

But today was a gift — an entire day without a single date.

How do I respond when I receive such a gift?

I say, “Thank you”.

Alan.