Robert Redford | fighting damien

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue
(From the Aldridge back yard)

I just wanted to share with you this picture from our back yard … and the fact that I took it the same day that Lust for Life appeared on TV. So Patti and I had a Vincent Van Gogh day.

……….

When I was in high school in a suburb of Houston, Texas, my parents seemed to be on me constantly to focus on doing what it takes to go to college. Neither of my parents went to college, yet they had successful lives. But they felt they could have done better if they had gone to college, and they were going to make damn sure their kids did!

And, to top it off, they wanted me to be a dentist. When I was 17-18, I resisted this idea pretty strongly. I couldn’t see spending my career with my fingers in someone else’s mouth.

My buddy, Bryan, here in Austin, is the best dentist I have ever known. He is very thorough, very specific, very up front about what is coming next and treats his patients with a great deal of respect … even me. He has been a successful dentist in Switzerland and here in Austin. He is very accomplished, very happy and very good at what he does. I admire Bryan and his life. We all should be this happy in whatever we choose to do.

When my parents were strongly encouraging me to go to college and be a dentist, a very new kind of store opened near us. It was called Wilderness Equipment; it was a store selling hiking equipment, such as shoes, tents, camping stoves, etc. I had seen no store like this ever. While my folks wanted me to be a dentist, all I could think about at the time was being a forest ranger. Yup, just wanted to get a job in the Rockies somewhere, climbing the tall tower to look for any signs of fire. Or work in a national park and give tours of natural beauty.

I never became a forest ranger.

I discovered writing in college and studied journalism and German. I had hoped that after I graduated, I would find a reporting job in a decent-sized town in West Germany, perhaps, Frankfurt, Hamburg or Munich.

That didn’t happen either. I got a job as a reporter/photographer in a small-town newspaper, and I got to put what I learned in college into action. I was a happy man. Throughout my career, I was a reporter, editor, PR man (for a nuclear power plant of all things) and HR communications consultant. I was a consultant for 29+ years and enjoyed working with large and small clients, but enjoyed the challenges they posed even more, regardless of size.

Now with my cancer diagnosis, I no longer work. But I think of work quite a bit. Working occupies a lot of my routine dreams. Some so strong I feel I can reach out and touch the work. In one dream, I worked in a huge skyscraper in Washington, D.C. and everyone who came to the building had to climb a three-story rock wall to get to the elevator to get to their work station. Yes, I bet Freud is having a field day somewhere.

Yesterday, I was thinking about what I would have liked to have done for work if money had been no object. I now know that I missed my life’s calling. I decided I wanted to be the guy who fit all the actors and actresses with their cowboy hats for the gazillion western movies and TV shows that passed through American theaters, drive-ins and television sets..

Yup, I wanted to fit John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Sam Elliott, Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Charles Bronson, James Garner, Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.

And I would have wanted an exclusive on them, too. As for the women actresses, well, how about starting with Racquel Welch, Claudia Cardinale, Angie Dickinson, Hope Lange, Jane Russell, Barbara Stanwyck and any of the co-stars appearing in the western movies and TV shows?

I just think it would have been so flippin’ cool to spend a few minutes of time with each of these people, fitting them into the hats that would come to help define them as icons.

Yeah, that would have been very cool and very much fun.

YI-PI-KI-A, y’all.