March 6, 2008 Issue

Time passes slowly up here in the country. Well, maybe not slowly. But it seems to pass a little less quickly than in other places. Don’t the days seem a little longer in rural areas? The pace of life is slower anyway. I’m sure of that. I think. Aw, what the hell, life if flying by and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

It has been almost 30 years since we opened a business in Destin and called it Harbor Docks. It doesn’t seem that long. Except when I think back and remember that when we started with six picnic tables in July of 1979 my mother was seven years younger than I am now.

I think of my favorite places along this beautiful coast and I realize how the years are drifting on. Mr. and Mrs. Modica were stocking the shelves of their market and they were in their 40’s. Bob and Linda White were selling books at Sundog when they were in their 30’s. Chris and Roxie Wilson were zoo keeping at the Zoo Gallery, and they were just out of college. Trey Nick may have been romping around at Nick’s, but he would have been in diapers, chasing the chickens out in the parking lot.

What can you do about the steady march of time? Not a whole lot. I’ve watched people whose goal, from an early age, was retirement. Aside from being a relatively boring aspiration, retirement is often a let down.

I’ve seen people bull their way through a life that revolved around chasing money. That can be really unattractive. And in the end, a life whose success is based on the attainment of wealth can turn really quickly. Instead of you chasing the money, the money ends up chasing you.

A friend of mine in Colorado has a unique approach to life. If it’s not fun, Karl Siegel is not interested. Karl’s had numerous opportunities to enlarge his property management business in Snowmass. But, it would involve more employees and more work. It would mean more money, for sure. But, it would also mean more headaches and most importantly, less time to play. I don’t see Karl spending a lot of time at a desk with a legal pad and two columns headed “pro” and “con.” For Karl, there is only one pertinent heading to any list of things to do. The eternal question for Karl is “Will it be rewarding?” And for him, that is not a financial question. Karl understands one of the secrets to a good life. If you enjoy what you do for a living, it doesn’t look like work to others.

This is a time of year when “experience” is a term of highly regarded value. In politics it is sometimes used in place of intelligence and judgment. Experience is something usually attained over time. So is judgment. Intelligence is something that can come early, or not at all.

Our political system requires a certain amount of experience. You have to be 35 years old to be president. I remember a late summer evening in Destin in 1968, sitting in front of a television with fuzzy reception, watching the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Now that was a convention! Julian Bond, who now owns a home in Destin, stood before the convention as a 28-year-old nominee for the vice presidency. But, Julian was not old enough to be legally nominated. There is no age limit, however, for eloquence. That was 40 years ago.

Since experience is generally a factor of age, it can have some obvious downfalls. I flew to the Bahamas once with an elderly pilot who repeatedly mentioned the fact that he had 10,000 hours flight time. I remember thinking “That’s about 8,000 more hours than I would have preferred.” A younger pilot with better reaction time would have been more comforting. As we flew past the airport in Marsh Harbour, I leaned over, and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Er, that was the airport back there,” I said. “I was wondering if that was the airport,” came the reply from our experienced pilot.
Time doesn’t fly. It creeps and crawls for a while; later it leaps and jumps. Andrew Weil may have the best approach to aging. Forget about all the anti-aging techniques. Just be the best you can at whatever age you are. Don’t try to do the same things when you are 60 years old that you did when you were 30 years old, or you will be disappointed. And your goal should be to live a rich, full life and then die very quickly.

That’s still somehow depressing. Here in Red Bay we will continue with our own approach to aging. We have the television on an endless loop of Lonesome Dove. Over the last two decades, Augustus McCrae, Woodrow Call, Deets, Newt, Jake Spoon, and Pea haven’t aged a bit. We have memorized Larry McMurtry’s eloquent lines. We know the route to Montana. And through experience we are aware of the pitfalls along the way. Particularly, Blue Duck.
And so it goes.

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