THE OLD IS NEVER NEW

For Austin, this is a cold Texas morning. The thermometer hits 40F and people shiver. It has been colder during our stay, but never the cold, frost-filled, winter-aromatic cold we get at home. I can take a deep breath here but it doesn't penetrate every node of my lungs with freshness. I look forward to returning home and taking those deep breaths again.

But there is more than just "returning." There is more, or is there (?) about returning.

A few nights ago we ate out at one of their favourite watering holes. With us was the president of an ad agency who just got all the Spanish TV for Burger King. Celebration was in the air. Somehow the conversation got around to my own Texas experiences. Manny (the ad agency prez) wanted to know all about why I had been in Texas.

I realized I would be delving back and going into old war stories.

"I was in Texas for one part of the 8 part TV series I did for the CBC about America on the occasion of its Bicentennial."

"So who did you meet in Texas?"

"I was hosted by the president of either Texas Instruments or Lytton Industries. Anyway, a corporate Texas bigwig. He would open doors for me, get me to people I
couldn't ordinarily interview. Like Nelson Bunker Hunt, he of the silver-market felony and the son of H.L. Hunt, one of the godfathers of the John Birch Society. I was told not to ask him about his father."

There was rapt attention around the table. I went on.

"We went to an auction of Charolais cattle at his ranch outside Dallas. I asked him non-threatening questions (this was not a pick-the-scabs-ff probe into the detritus of the Anerican system, but a loving look sat a country on its 200th birthday.) I asked the usual cream puff questions: what did he like most about America? What were his most important memories. The answers we pure boilerplate. Then I couldn't resist: tell me why you don't want me to ask you about youtr father. There was a pause and he turned slightly p[ink. His answer was startling: "I may even be more of conservative that my father." And he went on at length about self-reliance and individualism and success by effort. (I would have been tempted to ask him if that included taking the world for a ride by manipulating the price of silver.)

Everyone at the table seemed iknterested. Responses were "Who else did you meet?"

"I interviewed the axe-ahndle chicken restaurant owner who got to be governor of Arkansas - Lester Msaddox, probably a bigger racist that George Wallace. With him was a black man who played the banjo. They sang together."

By now I wass tired of reminiscences. Later I said to mny son-in-olaw: "I don't like always going into the past. That was then and this is now."

"But your past is who you are. You are entitled to be proud of what you ave done."

I was flattered but not rewarded. Everyone wants 6o hear about what I did so many years ago. My interview with Hunt was more than 30 yeards ago! Do I keep my reputation alive by telling old war stories? Does anyone care? Does ot label me as a once-celebrated man whose feet are planted firmly in what used to be?

My son-in-law sees nothing wrong with a resume that goes back to 1946 but sadly, with several esceptions, ended about ten years ago. Even Mark Kolke of "Mark's Musings" encourages me to tell old stories about people I met and talked to during my once-lively career. That was then. This is now.

It is true that we are the sum total of what we have been, shere, who what, and all that. I would rather have people read what I have to say today and comment on it, than remind me, sometimes endlessly, of how they listening to me faithfully back in 1964.