Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Wallace |3:18 PM| Mr. Wallace is dead. More importantly, Mr. Bill Wallace was alive. He was named after the Scottish hero, and he must have been at least 7 feet tall, spiritually speaking. I will always remember him as taller than I was, even if strictly speaking he was about 5' 9". He quit smoking, several times, but I'd bet cash those little white tubes were what killed him. I know he was in Dallas, and I know he was still sailing, I'd like to hope to that he went down with a boat, fighting a sudden squall, clutching the rudder and rigging, cursing to all creation in ways I could only hope to emulate.
I just don't know for sure. I knew he was dying, I lost contact with him but didn't go looking for him, because I didn't want to hear he was dead. Someone, instead, hunted me down to tell me the news. No details, just the inevitable.
He was my math teacher, and student advisor, back in high school. He taught me three of the most important things to a happy existence were fresh baked cookies, smiling women, and afternoon naps. I chuckle whenever I remember waking him up from one of those naps for some advice or so he could teach pre-calc. He kept flags on the walls, and odd items around his neck (like a giant whale's tooth) to spark conversations, especially during class when things got to be too much of a drag.
The school had allowed him to build a workshop in the basement, where he built, piece by piece, a sailboat. He was an admiral in the Texas navy, a salty sea dog, with wild tales photo's of rolling boats and wind powered trips to far off places. I went on his boat once, driving it for a time, as we traveled around Lake Michigan. That boat was later lost, by a friend of Wallace's, who missed an alarm clock's bell and slept through the craft's fateful contact with a coral reef. The friend lived, the boat did not. It's odd to think that a location, an object, that I have stood on and driven is now sitting at the bottom of the ocean, off the coast of Australia. Wallace continued his work on the little brother of that boat, deep in the basement of the school. My friends and I traveled down to the workshop on more than one occasion, and it was like walking into the mind of a man made physical. He had the largest ash tray I'd ever seen, filled edge to edge with snuffed cigs. Blueprints and tools were placed just so on every surface, in easy grabbing range. The skeleton of that future ship against a wall, magazines and books strewn across the floor. I still have the book he gave me, a copy of "The Brendan Voyage", the book for which I was named.
I wonder where that boat will go. The captain has gone down, will the ship follow him home?
Wallace |3:18 PM| Mr. Wallace is dead. More importantly, Mr. Bill Wallace was alive. He was named after the Scottish hero, and he must have been at least 7 feet tall, spiritually speaking. I will always remember him as taller than I was, even if strictly speaking he was about 5' 9". He quit smoking, several times, but I'd bet cash those little white tubes were what killed him. I know he was in Dallas, and I know he was still sailing, I'd like to hope to that he went down with a boat, fighting a sudden squall, clutching the rudder and rigging, cursing to all creation in ways I could only hope to emulate.
I just don't know for sure. I knew he was dying, I lost contact with him but didn't go looking for him, because I didn't want to hear he was dead. Someone, instead, hunted me down to tell me the news. No details, just the inevitable.
He was my math teacher, and student advisor, back in high school. He taught me three of the most important things to a happy existence were fresh baked cookies, smiling women, and afternoon naps. I chuckle whenever I remember waking him up from one of those naps for some advice or so he could teach pre-calc. He kept flags on the walls, and odd items around his neck (like a giant whale's tooth) to spark conversations, especially during class when things got to be too much of a drag.
The school had allowed him to build a workshop in the basement, where he built, piece by piece, a sailboat. He was an admiral in the Texas navy, a salty sea dog, with wild tales photo's of rolling boats and wind powered trips to far off places. I went on his boat once, driving it for a time, as we traveled around Lake Michigan. That boat was later lost, by a friend of Wallace's, who missed an alarm clock's bell and slept through the craft's fateful contact with a coral reef. The friend lived, the boat did not. It's odd to think that a location, an object, that I have stood on and driven is now sitting at the bottom of the ocean, off the coast of Australia. Wallace continued his work on the little brother of that boat, deep in the basement of the school. My friends and I traveled down to the workshop on more than one occasion, and it was like walking into the mind of a man made physical. He had the largest ash tray I'd ever seen, filled edge to edge with snuffed cigs. Blueprints and tools were placed just so on every surface, in easy grabbing range. The skeleton of that future ship against a wall, magazines and books strewn across the floor. I still have the book he gave me, a copy of "The Brendan Voyage", the book for which I was named.
I wonder where that boat will go. The captain has gone down, will the ship follow him home?
1 Comments:
Cheezy ending, I know.
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