This morning, edging into my 71st year, I thought about Walter Davidson.
Rest assured, Walter has gone from this realm quite some time ago. I knew Walter back in 1967, when I worked on Sundays at a trapshoot north of Grafton. It was privately owned by A. J., "Doc" Kauth, a retired dentist who'd made friends of old patients and acquaintances. All of them were born at least in the early part of the last century, so they're all gone.
The cadre which surrounded him, as well as his property, were offshoots of the money into which they all were throughly saturated. Lawyers and businessmen (and I do mean men; absolutely no way a woman would be allowed into this group) of the most successful kind came to shoot 'birds', as clay pigeons were also called, on Sunday mornings.
Some carried their wealth quietly with some semblance of dignity. The cars these guys drove also spoke to their attitudes. A majority of them had Cadillacs, Chryslers and Buick Electra 225s (Remember them?), and nobody had anything that was more than two years old. Straddling the circle drive outside Doc's estate, it looked pretty impressive, as if some kind of diplomatic round table was taking place.
Not Walter Davidson. Uh-uh. He didn't show up every Sunday, but when he did, he had new stories and new ways in which someone was trying to gyp him out of a few more bucks (as if he would never do that to anyone else). Flamboyant and carrying a stride that belied his somewhat diminutive presence, he had taken over the motorcycle business (Davidson as in Harley-dash) from ancestors and, of course, was riding (so to speak) major profits.
Not that his vehicle wasn't impressive; it sure was. But it was a canary yellow Chevy Corvette. Walter Davidson was 73 when I knew him.
He didn't have it in cruise control, either. Quite the opposite. One Sunday he came in and admitted he'd been picked up on the freeway (one hopes a rather deserted stretch of it) for doing 113 miles an hour.
Yup. One hundred thirteen. No downhill expansion of highway allows anybody travel that fast at reasonable freeway speed, even in 1967, to accumulate speed that intense. It was willful, and for him, all kinds of fun.
Rather than be humbled by the experience, though, old Walter sounded a tone of defiance. "Damn," he said. "They caught me."
At that particular moment, and at the rather tender age of 16, I thought that absurdly inappropriate for someone of that advanced age: 73. Now I'm at that advanced age. And I think: Damn. They caught him.
Now, I'm not thinking about doing 113 or anything near that, and putting people in trouble by my driving isn't anything I had in mind. But seems to me it's time to do something I've always been meaning to do, and to keeping finding things to do so I always have something else to point to. 70 is 70, it's not the new 50. The clock keeps ticking.
I don't even know exactly what I mean by all this, but one thing's for sure: If something grabs my attention (assuming legality), I'm not going to hesitate any longer. I'm not going to worry what someone else thinks. I'm going to be gone a long time, and they can talk about me all they want by then. If that, if someone does, that will be enough of a legacy. People are forgotten soon enough the way it is.
The kind of rich guys mentioned above are the kind that have annoyed me for a long time: their power, their cocky arrogance. I haven't been jealous of their money, ever--research has proven that the more money you have, the more you tend to be obsessed by it--and I don't have a whole bunch of it myself. But it's a big world and people like me can still accomplish a lot, with decent health (which is a work in progress) and enough sleep (which is an ongoing battle).
Seventy and counting. The alternative awaits. In the meantime, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Walter Davidson would approve.
Be well. Be careful. Get a booster. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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