Memories and good times

Time’s been doing some strange things here in the latter part of my life. Suddenly things that happened a long time ago seem like they happened only recently. Take the marriage between my sister Jewell and her husband, Paul James. Wasn’t that long ago, was it?

But the first Thanksgiving Paul spent with our family was way back in 1989. They couldn’t have been married all that long then, still that means their wedding day was more than 22 years ago, unless I ciphered wrong.

Paul and Jewell had a lot in common, which made for a pretty good marriage. Both were Ma Bell’s employees at one time; Jewel for about 15 years until modernization eliminated her job, and Paul for over 40 years until he retired. Paul worked for several incarnations of Ma Bell. There was the original AT&T and South Central Bell in Kentucky, and in South Carolina, Bell Atlantic, and lastly, Verizon.

When Paul was in Kentucky, he worked in the Louisville area and one of his jobs was to set up WHAS’s (Louisville’s 50,000 watt am radio station) broadcasts of the Kentucky Colonels’ games. That always blew me away to hear him talk about that because I was a hardcore fan of this team.

The Colonels were almost a reincarnation of the U K Wildcats because they always drafted a lot of U K’s best players. My favorites were Louis Dampier, one of Rupp’s Runts, and number 44, Dan Issel, one of the best to ever wear the Blue and White in my mind. He was ably abetted by one Artis Gilmore, ironically one year after Gilmore’s team, Jacksonville State, upset Issel and U K in the NCAA in 1969.

Paul got to know them all, and I was always suitably impressed with the stories he told of setting up the broadcasts, staying around for the games, and then taking it all apart afterwards. I’d have given my eye teeth at one time to have worked in his place.

Paul and Jewell both like to fish on their time off, too. Once, while I was visiting them in Aiken, South Carolina, Paul and I took his john boat out on the Savanna River. The Savanna is an alluvial bank river, which means that it can change its course whenever it chooses. This time we took the boat up an oxbow lake off the river to see if we could see an old alligator Paul and Jewel saw there on occasion. 

Not only did we see the alligator, we took the opportunity to see if the fish were being sociable by baiting up a hook with a juicy Catawba worm and lowering it into the water. It was noticed immediately by a big ol’ mud cat who gladly took the bait. A quick look told us we’d forgot the net though, and he was too big to land without it. All we had to show for our effort was the story of the one that got away.

Time slips away too fast, sometimes. Before you know it, the good times are gone and all you have are the memories. That’s what’s left to us now. Paul passed away this past Sunday, quietly at home. He left us all the richer for having known him, though.

Rest in peace, Brother.