As we approach Father’s Day, I find myself thinking about my own father. He has been gone nearly thirty-six years now so there are some shadows in my memory, but all in all, he’s still there: quiet, kind and gentle; generous to the point of indulgent; resolute, dutiful but always humble; honest and trustworthy. A man at peace with himself and the world around him.

He was born on New Year’s Eve,1906 in his family’s clapboard home in Renfrew, a tiny dot on the map in western Pennsylvania. He was a young boy when his family—he was the youngest of seven children—moved a few miles over the mountain to Butler, an only slightly larger dot on the map. He graduated from Allegheny College, then somehow made the momentous leap to Harvard Law School. In 1932, by then with my mother at his side, he returned to Pittsburgh to start his law career. A few years later when the the war began, he joined the Army and moved his young family (mother and my three older siblings) to Washington where he helped to plan the invasion of Japan that (thankfully) never occurred.

Following the war, he returned to Pittsburgh, started his own practice, now the mega international firm of KL Gates. When I arrived on the scene in 1948, he was already 41 (mother was a year older), so I was raised as the caboose of the family train, a fact of my life with its own set of distinct advantages and disadvantages. The good news was that I often had my parents to myself, but there were times when my siblings were away at school that I often felt a bit lonely and left behind. Still, my childhood memories are bright.

My father and I were close, up to a point. We played golf together and often went to Forbes Field to watch the Pirates play baseball. As I entered my teens, I grew restless and because my siblings were all out of the nest, I thought I should be, too. So I went to boarding school, another fact of my life with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. I loved the connections I forged at school, but at the same time, I severed my connections to Pittsburgh. Way led on to way—college, Peace Corps, my career in Washington—and so the hills and rivers of my hometown faded away to be replaced by the great world beyond. I stayed in touch with my parents, and from time to time visited them at High Meadow, their cherished weekend retreat in the Laurel Highlands, but I watched them grow old from afar.

My father’s health began to decline. He died in 1987 at the age of 81. These days that’s relatively “young,” but even more worrisome to me is the fact that I’m closing in on that very horizon. I know nothing is writ in stone, but the mile markers come more quickly now and I wonder if my father felt the same quickening pace, too.

I never called my father “Dad.” I don’t remember how I addressed him when I was a little boy, but later on, I do remember calling him “Pappy” from time-to-time. When his first grandchild arrived (I was only 6 at the time), she had the honor of bestowing his grandfather name. It was “Kirkie” and forever after, that’s what we all called him.

The territory of fathers and sons is a mysterious island, steeped in the mists of time. Its coastline has plenty of safe coves and rocky shoals, high cliffs and sandy beaches. I know that no father is perfect, but I was blessed. My father was a good and admirable man, worthy of emulation. I live in his shadow.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that I am of a certain age, I’m giving myself permission to occasionally recount a story that has been locked away in my personal vault. This is one of those times…

It was nearly fifty years ago, and I was working on the staff of the Peace Corps in Tunisia. (I had previously served as a Volunteer in that country, but that’s another story.) One day, word reached me that a Volunteer who was under my supervision was absenting himself from his job, ostensibly taking some time to watch a movie that was being filmed at a location out in the desert, not far from his work site. It would be a long drive, but I thought this would be a good time to go visit some of my Volunteers in the south.

As I remember it, I drove south some 7 or 8 hours, passing through the larger coastal cities, before veering west on track roads that led toward the small oasis towns on the border of the vast Sahara. When I finally arrived, hot and weary, in the town where my supposedly recalcitrant Volunteer was posted, I turned off my vehicle and stepped out to stretch my aching back. Imagine my wonder and surprise when a very attractive French woman approached me and looked me up and down with lustrous eyes and said, “Oh, you’re so tall! How would you like to be in a movie?”

I looked around, assuming the woman was a mirage or this was some sort of prank, but nothing seemed out of place: a few old men were drinking tea and playing cards in a dusty café, a donkey dozed in a spot of late afternoon shade. I was at a loss for words; “Excuse me?” was all I could muster.

She was all French chic and charm, so out-of-place in this timeless village. “We are making a film, shooting on location out in the desert. We just need someone tall. Let me show you!” Realizing the irony involved—remember; I was here to chastise a Volunteer who hadn’t been showing up at work—I got back in my car and followed my mirage out into the desert.

When we arrived at the set, the first things I saw were several dinosaurs, brontosauruses with huge curly horns, would have been my guess. There were also some strange vehicles that looked like weird hybrids between modernistic sports cars and space ships. There were lots of small people in oversized robes, four-legged robots that looked like dogs and a sea of underground houses. I was stunned into silence. I could not begin to imagine what kind of movie this was. Certainly, not a serious one.

She was talking to me again. “All we need is for you to pop up from behind a rock”—she pointed up a hill—“and knock out someone with a club. Well, not really knock him out, of course. No one will ever know it’s you; lots of make-up. We can probably shoot the scene in a day, maybe two at most. You can be back in Tunis the day after tomorrow.”

I admit I wavered. But the whole scene seemed so out-of-this-world, the approach so unlikely, that, much to my eternal regret, my sense of duty reared its ugly heard and I declined. In fact, I told her the real reason for my visit. Had she seen a young American visiting the set? “Non;” she said. “Désolée.” And that was it. My movie career ended before it began.

The Volunteer I had come to observe? I checked and he was at his post, right where he was supposed to be. And the film? A year or two later, I was back home in Washington, standing in a long line for tickets to that summer’s Hollywood blockbuster: a film, much of it shot in Tunisia, called “Star Wars.”

Sigh.

 

I’ll be right back.

 

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

 

It happens often: my wife looks at me, shakes her head, and says, “Give me your glasses.” Over the years, I’ve learned not to quibble, so I hand over the offending spectacles and wait. She breathes on them front and back, uses a clean cloth to wipe away the streaks, grime and fingerprints, inspects her handiwork, then hands them back to me. I put them on and once again, I’m startled to see a world born anew.

Clarity is a beautiful thing. For all the romantic notions about First Corinthians—“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known”—in this world, right here and now, clean glasses can put everything in much better perspective. I suppose there are all manner of metaphors here—the wonders of transparency, the lucidity of unobstructed vision for starters—but just take my word on this: you see better when your glasses are clean. 

If the looking glass hadn’t just been polished, would Alice have walked through it? If Galileo hadn’t had the presence of mind to wipe off his Danish perspective glass with his lace handkerchief, would he have seen the heavens?  If soothsayers didn’t occasionally blow the dust off their crystal balls, could they have foretold the future? Admit it: clean glass (or, in my case, clean glasses) makes it easier to move through the day without pratfalls or serious injury.

The only creatures who don’t appreciate clean glass are birds. It doesn’t happen all that often around our house, but imagine how stunned—literally stunned!—is the bird who is flying along when all of a sudden he runs head first in to an invisible wall made of clean glass. If he manages to survive the encounter, what a story he has to tell: “There I was, winging along, minding my own business, when all of a sudden something knocks me out of the sky and I’m seeing stars. I swear, dear, I hadn’t been drinking!” 

In this new age of misinformation, clarity is critical. If we aren’t able to see clearly, how are we to distinguish fact from fiction? Looking through smeared lenses, it’s nigh impossible to tell right from wrong, or, for that matter, black from white. Everything appears grey.

In “Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ode to Ramses II, the tyrant commands us to “look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” But what if we can’t even see the torture and pain inflicted on us by the despot because our glasses are fogged? We might have an inkling that nothing lasts forever, but in the absence of clear vision, we’re doomed to believe the fool’s folly. We march along, caught in a snare of lies told by a self-anointed king of kings, a man unable to see that his own statue lies in ruins. Sound familiar?

But remember: I’m only writing about my own clean reading glasses. Heaven forbid I should use them as some kind of metaphor to shine a light on a certain “walking shadow, the poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” 

Let’s all keep our glasses clean.

I’ll be right back.

 

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

It seems that the most exercise many people get these days is jumping to conclusions. While there may be a wholegrain of truth in that aphorism, I don’t jump much anymore. Jumping is for the next generation. I do recall jumping in puddles, or jumping off diving boards, even jumpstarting my first car, but all that was a long time ago. Now, I’m content to sit and watch the grandkids do all the jumping—or in this case, the leaping.

A few days ago, it was the 110th anniversary of the birth of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard who is widely considered to be the father of existentialism. His work encompassed not only philosophy, but also theology, psychology, literary criticism, and fiction. He also introduced us to two concepts that are commonplace today: one is “subjectivity,” the idea that we all perceive the world — and “truth” — differently; and the other is the “leap of faith,” the concept that faith is not possible without doubt. One must doubt the existence of God in order to have faith in the existence of God. Belief without doubt is just credulity, the impulse to be overly naive or prone to believe that something we’ve just read or heard is true, whether it is or not. Sound familiar?

These days, we’re living in the age of misinformation, a world in which artificial intelligence, and its poster child, ChatGPT, have an almost instantaneous ability to make a convincing case for almost any point of view, “shade,” deceit or even outright lies. That makes me wonder what Hr. Kierkegaard might conclude about the existence of God today. Would he counsel a more cautious leap, or might he now conclude that the risk is no longer worth the reward? Caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware!

I have a friend—a man I admire without reservation—who is a devout atheist. (Is that an oxymoron?) My friend has come to the thoughtful conclusion that Karl Marx was right: God, and religion in general, is indeed the opiate of the masses. On this point, my friend and I have agreed to disagree. 

Many years ago, for reasons I cannot remember, I came to a different conclusion: specifically, that the arc of the universe is good, and that there is a divine hand on the wheel. I acknowledge that there is a lot of evidence to the contrary: yet another mass shooting, two horrific wars that drag on interminably, all kinds of ugly bias, homelessness, despair and a political chasm right here at home wider than the Grand Canyon. But something once propelled me to make my own leap of faith, and while I’m no longer a church-goer, I still believe, perhaps irrationally, in the existence of God. This is not a particular faith-based issue for me; I’ve lived among other people with different beliefs long enough to conclude that none of us really know what God looks like, or what specific doctrines or creeds are “true.” For me, it’s enough to feel a divine presence, and, to be honest, to not feel such a presence would make this life a bitter pill to swallow.

So now I sit on the beach and watch the grandchildren play. I watch them run and turn cartwheels and leap. I remember that their joy was once mine. And still is.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.