Coffee With Friends

I enjoy having coffee most mornings and talking about the events of the week or anything else someone wants to shoot the breeze about. Those coffee chats usually have one or two additions to our coffee group each year. This year, I saw that group broaden by four individuals. Their backgrounds are as different as our accents and hairlines.

A couple of those gentlemen are from Massachusetts, and a third from Connecticut. All three were stock car racing fanatics. They’ve raced cars themselves, built them from the ground up and sponsored a few. All three have been successful business people and done well in their lives, but they are as grounded as they can be.

The fourth gentleman is from Colorado and, like myself, has a background in the fire/rescue services and has a daughter who is an accomplished law enforcement professional, as is her husband.

They fit in quite nicely with our core group and I feel honored to call them all friends. We share many of the same beliefs, but sometimes differ on how to move forward, but we all want the same things for our great country and the next generation coming forward, but fear for what the future may bring.

Myself, I had a relatively modest upbringing. My dad was a self-employed barber, and my mother was a “stay at home” mom. That didn’t mean she didn’t work, because she did, and her challenges expanded expeditiously after the death of my dad from cancer at the young age of 45. This left my mom with three children, ranging from 9 to 16 years old. She raised us on her own, with me being the eldest of the three.

I do think the term, “the good old days,” is a relative expression, which for me relates more to the tenure of life which surrounded us growing up. The level of respect which we had for one another and societal norms is evident.

We did have many challenges during our times, especially as we dealt with issues such as an unpopular conflict in Southeast Asia that saw over 58,000 brave men and women give their lives for a questionable foreign policy. We also were scared by the inability of government to deal openly and honestly with regard to that conflict and even with a second-rate burglary attempt.

We also had to confront the simmering racial divide within our nation and recognize the need for change. If a man could lay and bleed with you on the battlefield to uphold democracy, he also should be accorded the same rights as other citizens when he would return home. In America, we never should accept the idea of a second class of citizenship but, instead, celebrate the equality of all of our citizens and recognize the diversity of the fabric which makes up our nation’s landscape.

I do reflect back on a time when our lives were a bit simpler, and sometimes long for those days – a time when we were not attached through electronic leashes - when families might sit down to a meal and not have a smart phone as the centerpiece on the table instead of a conversation concerning our day. Regardless of how trying it was we thought to educate our parents, we realized, later in life, just how wise they really truly were.

How we would head home after playing outside in the neighborhood when the streetlights came on, and not having to receive a text on that phone which kids consider so vital to their lives today.

That was a time when public safety professionals, teachers, nurses and others were truly respected and not questioned and disrespected.

Yes, I do miss 25-cent-a-gallon gas, going to the movies for a quarter and the 15-cent hamburger at Howdy Beef Burger in town. I don’t miss having my knuckles cracked with a ruler when I got caught talking instead of studying in class. No, there are a lot of things we all miss from the past and some things we could easily live without.

The one thing I will miss, however, is being able to have a conversation with both my parents, or to have my dad sit next to me in the golf cart in the morning and give me a little advice on how to putt a little better. It also would be nice to have him with me at the Red Sox Spring Training game or to have him and my mom enjoy the pleasures you and I tend to take for granted here on Marco Island.

I yearn to see them both sit down next to my sister, brother and me as we shared one more meal together and talk about the “good old days,” as they remembered them, and hear them laugh at their recollections. You see, both my parents left us all too soon, as did my brother last year.

My four new friends, as do I, also feel that sense of loss of the “good old days,” and maybe that is why we are friends. We all hate the fact that politics have become worse, respect has been lost and integrity has taken a vacation. Let’s start working together to bring it back in style.