Dan was going to pick me up at 7:00 AM but arrived at 6:45. I was ready. Coffee mug in hand. We’d tentatively agreed to meet Lloyd J. to talk about some hay business, but that really wasn’t the reason. We, like men of a certain age throughout America, and I suspect the rest of the world, were engaging in the timeless ritual of congregating in comfortable spots to sip the morning potion of our choosing, and convincing each other that we knew more than anyone else about the subjects of the day. Weather, politics, the price of corn, the war in Iraq, the morning’s headlines….nothing too obscure or too important to ignore.
This ritual plays itself out in myriad of places. The cafe on the town square, the country club men’s grill, the local Dairy Queen, the shade of a catalpa tree, roadside huts, and dinning rooms of grand hotels. The game is the same, only the players change.
There are no formal rules, no specific age limit and no subject off limits, but there are unspoken understandings. Certain traditions to be respected, certain chairs or tables to be reserved for certain people. Confrontation is allowed only on inconsequential matters. What score did you shoot on our golf outing to Pebble Beach in 1974? When was the last time wheat was above $4.00 a bushel? Should one take the Indian Nation Highway going to Ardmore or just take 82 to Sherman and go north?
Economic circumstances of the participants effect the subjects, but not unduly. There would be a ready consensus that the government doesn’t know what it’s doing and taxes are oppressive, but little else. The demographics center on age with the sweet spot being the far side of sixty. Younger men are allowed so long as they don’t say too much and nod knowingly at the sage pronouncements of their older and wiser fellows and chuckle at our clever and never told before jokes. Women are never present as they would certainly dampen the repartee. We could not be so boldly clever and assertive in the presence of the fairer sex.
I’m fortunate in that I live in two worlds. The small town, rural culture of Honey Grove and Doc’s Cafe and the presumably more urbane and sophisticated world of Dallas and the “Men’s Grill at the Club”. In the one I drink my coffee out of a styrofoam cup served by a liveried waiter and in the other I pour my own into a chipped white ceramic mug. In one, some have hot tea, in the other drinking decaf is thought sissified. The one is populated by captains of industry and business past and present (more past than present) and the other by farmers, real and imagined, small business owners, and the occasional funeral director and banker.
It took me an equal amount of time to be accepted into both worlds. One just doesn’t stroll up and take a chair at the “big round table” in the men’s grill any more than one would presume the take an empty chair the the big table by the coffee pot at Doc’s. In both cases I found it useful and acceptable to be insinuated into the group by someone who was already a member of the established social structure. Not that doing it another way would result in being asked to leave. It would be far more likely to be politely ignored. Only after appearing on several occasions with a known party, could one risk appearing solo, and then with some great care, speaking at the appropriate time about something which would draw general concurrence.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made my mistakes and unfortunately they were most often, as the Baptist preacher would say, sins of commission. Early on in the Iraq fiasco, I challenged a sitting member in good standing, whose political persuasions remain slightly to the right of Atilla, on the morality of our pursuit of the Iraq war, and opined that as soon as enough Americans had been killed, we would come to our senses as we had in Viet Nam, declare a victory and bring our dead and wounded home. I can only characterize the reaction as amazement. “Who are you, sitting here in this place, with these people to say such a preposterous thing.” One early morning at Doc’s, having become saturated with an excess of caffine, I suggested, not so artfully, to a table of men who had spent their entire lives doing pretty much what they and their fathers had always done in a town of 1800 souls that, “a little economic development and planning might be useful”. Rural fellows, being more direct than their citified brethern, ignored me completely for the rest of the morning and for the next several weeks. Deservedly so.
Which do I like best? I can’t say. I don’t fit perfectly in either group, but have become comfortable in both. I’ve learned not to appear too smart or too dumb. To not say too much or nothing at all. To listen carefully and to take the words at face value. To not tell stories that have been told in the last ninety days. And if you can’t remember a name that you should, to speak up smartly with, “hey, how ya’ doin’, it’s good to see ya’ again”. Shaking hands is optional. Works every time.
Most of these men are in the last quarter of their life. Some are even in the hurry up offense of the last two minutes of their game. They are not as agile as they might have been once (mentally or physically). They are not hurried, nor have they quit the game. They have layers of scar tissue from life’s experiences that would be hard to surmise. They have “climbed young ambitions ladder” and are satisfied or not with the result. But if you ever have the chance, it’s worth a listen.
I’ll probably be there in the morning.
