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Aging renegades
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Aging renegades
  In April of 2004 Banjo Jones, a.k.a. Steve Olafson of The Brazosport News announced that a new paper was coming out in Angleton. The Angleton Observer, being started up by "renegade journalist Micheal Boddy" (his words not mine), was about to spring into existence on a shoestring budget after the demise of The Angleton Times.  Every time I run across that article, which pops up when someone searches for my name on the Internet, it makes me think, "Who was that renegade anyway, and what happened to him?" I guess there was a time when I could have been called a renegade. I've never exactly fit into any niche society has offered me. It's not like I didn't try. In junior high school I was in the chess club, on the expressway to geekdom, but that didn't quite fit. Although our team won the citywide chess championship in Tulsa, I probably was the only person to ever bring a switchblade to show off to fellow chess club members. Pizza, chess, and switchblades: Good times.  High school brought me more of the same. Half the time I was hanging out with kids who were called hoods at the time, but in my closet was a suit I bought with my own money at Lord & Taylor's. It was the height of men's fashion at the time. A double-breasted blue blazer with vanilla ice cream-colored slacks, a shirt that required cufflinks, a tie pin that fit neatly under the knot of the paisley tie, and a pair of oxblood-colored loafers with tassels on them. It was a far cry from the clothes I was wearing, which included Indian boots with a leather fringe around the top, when I was sent home by the dean of students to change my clothes.  That basic trend has continued, with me seeming to always be a few steps off of the well traveled path, though not fully committed to the path less traveled, and staying on it, whenever I stumbled across one. Even now, while Susan and I are in the forefront of smalltown Internet-only journalism, a kind of "renegade journalist" thing to do, I'm not sure what would happen if suddenly we were independently wealthy, however unlikely that may be.  It would be difficult for us to find any path at all that is less traveled, since everyone these days is searching for and taking one whenever they find it. One example is all the professionals that in the 80's were called Yuppies (young urban professionals) and Dinks (double income no kids) who now are getting pretty ripe, and saddle up on their Harley's wearing black leather everything, perhaps even their underwear. That path is really getting crowded, and sweaty.  Perhaps we'd simply resolve to get off the path completely: Spend time in the Last Homely House, watch our children as they take their own paths, and spend time with our grandkids whenever we can. I guess that's about all the "renegade" I've got left, or may have ever had, and that's just fine with me.   |
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