XC Run Day 14

Jack Walker at his downtown studio.

I want to tell you about my old friend, Jackson. But to tell that story, I'll need to tell you somewhat of me (I am reminded of Watson's assertion about "The Giant Rat of Sumatra": "...a tale for which the world is not yet ready.").

For, you see, Jackson and I intertwine and cross and diverge and re-cross throughout our childhoods and lives like ocean cattails on the edge of a storm.

Jack is a son of Florida. I am a child of the Road.

Oh, he's seen the world, He's "been there and done that". But his being -- and most of his life -- has been here, as deeply rooted and tenacious as that sea grass on the dunes that remains even after the hurricane has washed away all else.

Me? I have a hard time deciding what my home region is, not to mention my home State or Town. My Dad was in the aviation industry -- in Flight Test -- and all of those families moved. A lot. And often. But there were "staples", if you will. New York -- the Island -- or California, depending on your Company and whether they made airplanes for the Navy or the Air Force; Maryland and, for us especially (because Dad got involved in the very beginning of the Space Program), Florida. Specifically, Jensen Beach, Florida. It eventually became their permanent home, partly because they liked it and partly because they wanted to give their daughter, at least, a place to call "Home". She lives there to this day, and I am glad of it. And, though I lasted only about a year after they built a permanent home there -- I had spent too much time on the road by then, and they knew it, and I had to keep going -- my parents did give me a hometown.

And in doing that, my parents, in a sense, gave me Jack Walker. For while my story of Florida is cracked and broken like the pavement on many of those old highways I love to travel so much, one of its great constants is Jack. In many ways Jack is my anchor to Florida and to a big part of my youth. For whether we were in and out several times in a year or there for a year or more, Jack and I just seemed to pick right back up as if I'd never left. To this day, I can't recall where the breaks were.

And after more than thirty years, most of it not even knowing for sure where the other was, the last two days have felt, to me, just the same. It was just Jack, whom I've never doubted for a second since the day I met him.

So the last two days have been good days. Yesterday was for the past and it was a gift. For while our story continued a bit after we were both back from Viet Nam, a lot of yesterday was of the time before that. A day of Sea Scouts and trying to sneak into the girl's school on Indian River Drive and sailboats and JQ & The Jesters. It was of old schoolmates and friends. Of Norine and me and Jack and Denise, Of Jill and Danny and Buck Mauldin and Carol and Dottie Fox and playing music and adventures. It was a time of two young men just discovering the world and, at a few very precious moments, I felt we were again those two young men who had not yet felt the gut-ache of combat and the agony of seeing the result of your having just taken another human being's life. Two young men who had not yet learned the great lesson of war: there is no glory in victory, there is only survival.

There was catching up, too. The litany of what had happened since we last saw each other; the successes and failures, the good and the bad. We talked of the struggle of trying to create. Of being productive and then dry -- as I have been for the last ten years -- and having to almost re-learn your craft all over again.

I got to meet Nancy -- his wife, friend, partner of almost 30 years -- whom I found, with great gladness, I like really a lot.

I want to tell you of my friend Jackson, but in telling that story I need tell you somewhat of myself. So I have. But it is a story like those highways, a bit cracked and broken.

A story best told in pieces.