{"id":100702,"date":"2017-10-23T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=100702"},"modified":"2017-10-23T00:06:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T23:06:40","slug":"three-for-the-road-in-light-and-shadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/10\/three-for-the-road-in-light-and-shadows\/","title":{"rendered":"Three for the Road, in Light and Shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou road I travel and look around!\u00a0 I believe you<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Are not all that is here!<\/em>
\nI believe that something unseen is also here.\u201d<\/em>
\n— Walt Whitman, Poem of the Road<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Fast Eddie<\/strong><\/p>\n

20 Oct 2017 – <\/em>It was getting dark on the street as the young man emerged from his high school on New York\u2019s Upper East Side after basketball practice.\u00a0 He had lost track of time as he dreamed his basketball dreams and headed to the subway for the long ride home.\u00a0 It was December, 1961. A man, dressed in a cashmere overcoat and carrying a silver bowl, was walking his dog on the street.\u00a0 The boy asked him for the time.\u00a0 The man told him, adding with a grin that his watch always ran fast.\u00a0 The boy recognized the grin from what seemed like a dream.\u00a0 He pet the man\u2019s dog, and the man asked him about the imposing school next to them.\u00a0 He asked the boy his name and the boy said \u201cEddie.\u201d\u00a0 While the dog did its business in the street, they chatted for a few minutes.\u00a0 The man wished him luck with his basketball and said his name was Paul.<\/p>\n

As the boy hustled toward the subway, Paul Newman shouted after him, \u201cSee you, Fast Eddie.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next week the boy went to see Paul Newman playing Fast Eddie Felson in \u201cThe Hustler.\u201d\u00a0 He always remembered Eddie\u2019s words:<\/p>\n

Fast Eddie<\/a>: How should I play that one, Bert? Play it safe? That’s the way you always told me to play it: safe… play the percentage. Well, here we go: fast and loose. One ball, corner pocket. Yeah, percentage players die broke, too, don’t they, Bert?<\/p>\n

A Fair World<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1964\/5, New York held a World\u2019s Fair.\u00a0 The United States President John Kennedy had been assassinated a few months earlier, but the Fair celebrated the great future that was coming down the road.\u00a0 The new President, Lyndon Johnson, sent a greeting:\u00a0 \u201cThe 1964\/5 New York World\u2019s Fair is a symbol of our hopes and an instrument of our progress in the most urgent task of our time: the building of \u2018peace through understanding.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

The General Motors exhibit, the Fair\u2019s central attraction, allowed visitors to be whisked around on moving chairs fitted with loudspeakers to see tomorrow\u2019s world.\u00a0 One view was of \u201cthe jungle cleared: a modern community rises on the green carpet of the jungle\u2026.to clear the way, trees are felled by beams of laser light; instant turnpikes are laid down by a machine that levels, grades and paves all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the Lowenbrau beer garden exhibit nearby, under a canopy of green trees through which speckled sun sparkled, a group of American teenage boys was getting bombed out of their minds.<\/p>\n

And in Vietnam, jungles were being cleared, and General Motors was working hard on how to supply the Pentagon with the 469,217 M16A1 rifles they would provide for the slaughter.<\/p>\n

Peace through understanding.<\/p>\n

The Doctor<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was an elderly man when the young, newly married intellectual came to see him. The young man rang the bell, and when the doctor, a short man with tufts of unruly white hair, answered it himself, he was shocked.<\/p>\n

The young man was suffering from neck and back pain.\u00a0 The doctor, whose street-level office was a bit shabby and dark, had no receptionist or fancy equipment.\u00a0 Although a chiropractor, his skills extended to the mind as well.\u00a0 He examined the young man with his hands.\u00a0 What, he asked in a thick Germanic accident, is bothering you?\u00a0 \u00a0I see nothing wrong, he told him, nothing I can solve by manipulating you.<\/p>\n

The young intellectual explained how the tendons and muscles in his neck were painful and swollen, and he didn\u2019t know why.\u00a0 The doctor asked him about his life.\u00a0 They talked about pain, physical and psychic.<\/p>\n

Then the doctor took out a small appointment card and punched a hole in it.\u00a0 Today\u2019s visit is two dollars, he said.\u00a0 I\u2019ll punch a hole whenever you come here, but I really never want to see you again.\u00a0 You\u2019re crazy like my son, who is studying for Ph.D.in chemistry in North Carolina.\u00a0 The both of you are screwed up with all the academic crap you read.\u00a0 Just look around.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take a genius to see what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

As he ushered the young man out the door, he added, \u201cLet me give you some advice.\u00a0 When you feel these pains in your neck \u2013 and they are called spite muscles, by the way \u2013 there is only one thing to do, just say fuck it, just say fuck it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he handed him the appointment card, the young man noticed a series of tattooed numbers on the old man\u2019s forearm.\u00a0 When he stepped out onto the sidewalk, the sun was so bright he could barely see. So he walked fast to find some shade.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely and a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>.\u00a0 He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. <\/em>A former college basketball player, he teaches the sociology of sports, and writes on a wide range of topics.\u00a0 His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Oct 2017 – It was getting dark on the street as the young man emerged from his high school on New York\u2019s Upper East Side after basketball practice. He had lost track of time as he dreamed his basketball dreams and headed to the subway for the long ride home. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}