Recently my chronological odometer turned past the 75 mark, but I like to think that my factory warranty remains valid. (No, I do not know the expiration date, but checking insurance actuarials, presumably I’m good for another 13 years. That’s better than my ancestral DNA would indicate, a median of 80 years.)
But I digress.
I was born in 1948, a fourth-generation native Oregonian (and I shall spare you my rant about the factual and semantic problems inherent to the misnomer “Native Americans”).
Though I’ve lived and worked in Phoenix and San Diego, my roots run deep. It was a sentiment shared with my late friend Governor and General Joe Foss (and if you ask “Joe who?”, then you stumbled onto the wrong blog). He said, “I was born a farmer and I’ll always be a farmer.”
I grew up in a Northeast Oregon town of about 900, attending a four-year high school with 120 students. A great grandfather and grandfather were mayors; one got the streets paved. I was on the city council as police, park, and library commissioner. Maybe I’m the only police commissioner anywhere who loaded ammo for his “force.”
The ranch was a life lesson. Aside from growing wheat, peas and cattle, we raised horses, mules, bison, and llamas. My youngest brother considered camels but Dad’s response was predictable: he Just Said No.
Summer vacation? What’s that? Ten-hour days before, during and after wheat were typical. I think the record was fourteen. The routine was almost happily broken by runs with Dad’s tricked-out fire truck. Previously he’d been chief of the rural fire department because he owned the truck.
Upon turning 75, I harkened back a quarter century to recall my 50th birthday. (Sidebar: one of my valued friends was a Navy test pilot who said his 30th birthday was the biggest surprise of his life). Like almost everybody who attains half a century, I pondered the fact that I was farther from The Beginning than The End.
Somewhere in my archive is a list of Things I Learned In Fifty Years. I wish I could find it because some of the entries remain even more valid now. Particularly “The guilty will punish the innocent.” You can make of that statement what you will, but from my perspective here in Arizona Territory, it’s applicable to the XXI Century. Like totally.
So how to make best use of the remaining time?
Well, assuming 13 years is valid, that should be more than enough to write the four books I want to complete. The subjects remain Beyond Top Secret lest one of the dozens of my blog readers usurp my originality. One of the incomplete manuscripts has sulked in the back of my file cabinet since about 1980, victim of the inability of my coauthor to finish his portion before he up and died on me.
If my warranty expires prematurely, I will not be overly disappointed. I was blessed with a mother who gave her sons the gift of curiosity, and a father who provided a strong example and good living off the land. Recalling the family motto: Spes Alit Agricolum. “Hope Flies With the Farmer.”
Like so many American families, mine has a record of long voyages and risk taking. From Northern Europe to England in the 8th century, to America in the 17th (Mayflower and all that) ultimately to the shores of the Pacific. And here we remain—there’s nowhere else to go even if we wanted to.
It’s been a long journey, often dangerous. Both sides of my family were engaged in the Revolutionary War but my father’s side was split. Lieutenant Colonel Tench Tilghman was George Washington’s aide de camp who took news of the Yorktown victory to congress in 1781. Tench’s father and brothers remained loyalists.
My mother joined the DAR on two ancestors who commanded the militias at Lexington and Concord: Captain John Parker and Colonel James Barrett, respectively. She had a cousin named Parker Barrett.
My maternal great-great grandparents trekked the Oregon Trail in 1852, and Martha Jane Nye left a journal that I transcribed about 120 years later. I still think it would make a terrific book if my agent could convince a publisher. Those people had soaring optimism—and heart. They left behind everything they knew for an uncertain future in the Oregon Country. It was a five-month race against nature, starting when the grass was high enough to sustain oxen pulling wagons, and ending before winter descended with chilling-to killing finality.
I wonder what the Founders generation would make of their posterity today. We seem to be pushing away their principles with both hands. The nation and its culture are bitterly divided, and whatever healing followed the debacle we call “Vietnam” has withered in a welter of political bitterness, open corruption, double standards, and frequent violence.
I’m reminded of the oft-cited ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”
I’ve done almost everything I was capable of doing if not everything I wanted to do—particularly becoming a military aviator. (I couldn’t catch a break: asthma, eyes, and flat feet.) But I grew up restoring and flying historic aircraft, earning a decent living writing about them, now tallied at 50-some books and 800 articles worldwide. Believe-you-me: that is not easy to do.
OK, I’m eligible for a Geezer card because my hearing impairment arose long before I reached “retirement” age. A lifetime of shooting, dating from before ear protectors were perfected, and several hundred hours in open cockpits. But I wouldn’t exchange that disability for anything.
My most memorable month: May ’65 when I soloed and made Eagle Scout.
My worst month: June, several years running when I lost life-lines including three writing colleagues and two of the closest friends I’ve ever had. Two died violently: one flying a P-38; the other—a retired Marine general—was murdered in a home invasion. For years I grew twitchy around the middle of May because experience proved I was not being superstitious.
I grew up with two accomplished younger brothers, both multi-talented and successful in business and academics.
I won state and regional championships in high school as a percussionist and speaker-debater.
I’ve traveled to Canada, Mexico, Britain, and the Philippines. I have hunted in Africa, and led a national championship shooting team.
I have enjoyed—and deeply appreciate—the friendship of men and women who share two qualities: all are ethical and unusually intelligent—and most are accurate.
And late in life I found Her, The One, whom it would have been dreadfully easy to miss.
Thank you, God. For everything.
