Two Gents, Palavering

Bud Elliott and I got together for pastries and hot drinks this Wednesday morning at that fancy French pastry shop at Fig Garden Village in Fresno. It was early (yes, 9 a.m. is early for retirees), and there was only a small crowd, so we were able to easily get a table by ourselves.

I hadn’t seen Bud in a number of weeks, and I immediately complimented him on how good he looked. It’s no secret that he and I have gone through several medical episodes since we quit the broadcasting biz a few years ago — and we’re still going through them. If we had ever thought that retirement — or getting older — was going to be easy — we were both decisively proven wrong, and quickly.

Bud’s latest bout with doctors — other than his on-going ones — took place nine months ago, and it’s taken him awhile to recover. But recovering, he is — and I was delighted to see his progress. We spent the first part of our get-together the same way every other older person I know does — talking about getting older and, yes, the infirmities that accompany that.  Part of the reason Bud and I talk about that  is to try to bolster each other, and it seems to work. We laugh a bit, and I feel better after seeing Bud.

But health matters were not our only topics on this chilly, but sunny,  Fresno morning. Of course, because both of us were in broadcasting for decades — and covered politics the entire time — our thoughts and words turned to impeachment and the president. We talked about whether to blog about it on these pages. After all, when we started this online enterprise a few years back, we both said we wanted to weigh in on issues that we perhaps knew a bit more about than many people, because of our professional backgrounds.

But as devotees of this site — if there are any — likely have noted, we rarely, if ever, discuss politics in this space any more. We both decided — wisely, I believe — that no one really cares about what two old broadcasters have to say about Trump or Pelosi or Bernie or Lizzie or Joe. The only reason, we figured, that we’d write about any of them is to either “vent” or to make ourselves feel good.

Neither of those reasons seemed strong enough, so we decided — at first, independently, and now, together — that we had nothing to say — absolutely nothing — that had not already been said or printed or shouted or Facebooked a million times before. So, no, dear friends, Bud and I will not be gracing you with our thoughts (and, yes, we have them) about the State of Our Political Disarray.

You’re welcome.

We also talked about our adult children. His son recently got engaged, and Bud constructed a lovely ring box for the fiancée. (Yes, Bud is a skilled craftsman.) The wedding may take place this summer in New Mexico, where Bud used to broadcast,  years before he came to Fresno.

I talked about our adult son, who is working in Washington, D.C., with our longtime Valley congressman Jim Costa. Our son still has his condo here in Fresno, and we have no idea whether he’ll return. On the one hand, we’d love to have him back and close to us. On the other, we’re happy that his career has taken off so well. Yeah. That’s called “mixed feelings,” and parents get to feel it, if they’re lucky.

Bud and I also talked about whether he and wife Peggy are going to sell their house in Fresno and move to the Sacramento area, where their adult daughter lives.They’ve been thinking about making that move for a long time, and they now believe — news flash! — that they’ll postpone it for another year.

I’m secretly rather pleased by that because it means it will be easier to see Bud for the next year than it would have been. After all, driving from the Central Coast (where Sharon and I have our retirement place) to Fresno — 108 miles — is a lot easier than the trek from  the Central Coast to Sacramento (260 miles). And since most of my medical professionals practice in Fresno — I have occasion (several, actually) to return here.

One of the more interesting aspects about retirement from a public position is that, after a certain period of time, no one remembers you. Bud and I sat and talked for an hour at the pastry shop,  uninterrupted. In the early years of my being “away from work,” that anonymity bothered me, and likely bothered Bud. After all, we’d both been,  at one time,  pretty well known around here, and people really did recognize either our faces or voices in public spots.

But, as the late, great BBC broadcaster  Sir Terry Wogan, said a few months after he had ended his legendary radio-TV career in London — broadcasters do not leave big footprints in the sands of time. Sir Terry was oh-so-correct. If you ask virtually anyone under the age of 40 to identify Walter Cronkite — certainly the best-known American TV newscaster of the ’60’s and ’70’s — you’d get blank stares.

Yet Cronkite was not only widely known, he was beloved — once chosen in a poll as “the most trusted man in America.” And before Walter, Edward R. Murrow was the icon young broadcasters sought to emulate, and everyone who grew up and older during World War II knew Murrow from his CBS Radio broadcasts. These days, try to find anyone — except broadcasters — who has ever heard of Murrow.

So not being recognized in a foo-foo French pastry place in Fresno on a Wednesday morning is no big deal. But it was, and is, a reminder that life moves on — with us or without us — and that it certainly has “moved on” in Fresno. And that’s as it should be.

We ended our morning confab when Peggy dropped by to pick Bud up. But we promised to get together next week for lunch — when Sharon and I both will be back. The women can talk about their long and great careers with the Fresno Unified School District, and Bud and I can talk about infirmities and politics and whatever else strikes us.

None of it will be earth-shattering stuff, but all of it will “matter” — at least to us, in our small part of the world.  I hope those conversations can continue for years to come,  because that will mean we’re all still around to engage in them.

And that’s the way it was on this Wednesday in Fresno, Walter.