Hello from Jacksonville Beach, Florida. This is my third time here this year. Usually, I’m wandering and pondering through here in the spring. But, since it’s where my girlfriend, Rebecca, calls home, I continue to roll in, happily. First time in Florida in the depths of summer. Still hot, humid. Still soothing to the core of my ramblin’ soul, especially those evenings with a warm breeze from the nearby Atlantic Ocean, the ancient body of water as mysterious as ever.
In a couple hours it’ll be midnight. Earlier, I sat by myself at Miller’s Taproom nearby, watching preseason NFL football and sipping inexpensive Coors Light on draft. Rebecca will soon walk into her apartment shortly following another evening serving fine culinary delights and nice bottles of wine at her place of employment. Currently, I’m sitting on her bed, watching “How I Met Your Mother” reruns and typing this column to my heart’s content.
In the immediate background blasting on my work laptop? “The W.A.N.D.” by The Flaming Lips just popped onto my Spotify shuffle. Ah, one of the truly great and soul-stirring melodies of the modern era: “Time after time those fanatical minds try to rule all the world/Telling us all it’s them who’s in charge of it all/I’ve got a tricked out magic stick that will make them all fall/We’ve got the power now, motherf *****s, that’s where it belongs.”
Earlier today, upon waking up to another morning of glorious sunshine streaming into the apartment, it was decided to rally ourselves and scrounge up some breakfast at Orange Blossoms just down the road from her complex. Onward. Eggs, toast, side of meat, hashbrowns (with grilled onions) and cup of steaming hot coffee. Hearty conversation and banter over plans for the impending fall and winter months. There is nothing like sincere conversation over coffee at a diner enjoyed at your own pace and in your own time.
Leaving the diner, I noticed a slew of vintage automobiles in the parking lot. It was an impromptu classic car show. Saturday morning. Grab some coffee, a lawn chair and sit down to admire your dream vehicle from childhood or stand up and explain to passerbys your utter passion and obsession for said vehicle. Like clockwork, I moseyed on over to the 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air. The cream of the crop of the classic car world, the Babe Ruth. The “Great Bambino,” you dig? No matter the others — Camaro, Mustang, Corvette, Chevelle, etc. — the ‘57 Bel-Air remains king. It’s just always been that way. The slick lines and sheer cool factor, like it just cruised off the set of the film “American Graffitti.”
I turned to Rebecca and said, “New life goal: buy a classic car before I turn 50.” Nine years from now. Might as well prepare for the mid-life crisis early, eh? At 41, I’m subconsciously sliding into this phase of life where I not only now look forward to visiting Florida, but also am thinking of where I’d park my imaginary classic car safely in front of my apartment building in downtown Waynesville. For a lifelong minimalist (me), I’ll make room for a classic ride. They say you can’t take your wealth with you when you die, so might as well floor that accelerator on a 1970s Chevy C-10 pickup until your time comes.
Scanning the classic car gathering, I started getting flashbacks of when my father had a vintage vehicle when I was a kid. As someone who graduated high school in 1960, my father grew up and came of age in the golden era of cars, the 1940s through 1970s. When he was a bachelor in the mid/late 1960s, he was able to buy a new Ford Mustang every year on his meager salary. And he did so for many years until he married my mother and shifted trajectories.
By my arrival in 1985, my dad had returned to his love of cars. This time, it was an MGB, a small, spirited British sports car. I have many fond memories of riding down the backroads and along the cornfields of my native North Country in the passenger’s seat of his orange 1975 MGB convertible, the vehicle bucking each time he’d shift the five-speed manual transmission. By the time I left for college, he’d sold the MGB, sadly. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t browsed Facebook marketplace lately in search of a reasonably-priced MGB, maybe even take the old man for a drive the next time I find myself back home.
Who knows? Regardless, it’s nice to picture and envision things like that, surprising your dad with an MGB jaunt through the old neighborhood, only to immediately snap back into the reality of “the here and now” when getting back into my rusty, musty truck. Put it in drive and head back to Rebecca’s apartment. Time to sit down at her desk and work on some articles to meet the incessant deadlines that roll in each week. Open the laptop and type away wildly in this devil-may-care of tone and intent. Toss up words, sentences and paragraphs into some semblance of coherent thought for you to hopefully consume with gusto, or at least with some sort of puzzled amusement.
As per usual, my mind is restless. It never takes a day off. Existential thoughts of how the rest of this year (decade) might play out, and if we as human beings will someday come together in the name of compassion and honest truths. I remain an eternal optimist. Some say I’ve got my head in the clouds giving humanity that much credit in possibly getting our shit together. I say thinking otherwise just leads to other trap doors further and farther down the rabbit hole of every person for themselves. I mean, nobody makes it out of here alive, anyhow, might as well lend a hand to fellow man. It beats being a pessimist.
This all circles back to a recent conversation I had with Rebecca, about how our generation was the last to be “real deal kids” before the internet overtook our lives. By the time the year 2000 rolled around, I was 15. That slice of time for me between middle school and graduating college (1997 to 2007), we had the Clinton and Bush administrations, Sept. 11, the war on terror in the Middle East, introduction of social media and YouTube, and the invention of the Apple iPhone. Right after, in 2008? The economic recession and election of Barack Obama. But, that’s a column for another time. Stay tuned.
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.