Belated Response

In the late winter afternoon chill of February 6th, 1982, the 37-year-old man quickly skimmed through the incoming mail as he hurriedly walked back to his bungalow from the street-side mailbox. Only one piece passed his cursory inspection, instantly commandeering his interest away from the morass of bills and circulars and slick newspaper promo sheets filled with fast food coupons and tire store discounts. The sender of the hand-addressed envelope was unknown but from an address over on White Bridge Road, less than a mile away.

Back inside the toasty cabin, the man freed the letter from its confines. With mild disappointment, he noted the opening salutation: “Gentlemen.” A handwritten form note? But the envelope had his often-misspelled name correctly written in full. It only further piqued his curiosity.

I’m sure you’ve been swamped with would-be jingle writers since the recent newspaper article naming you one of the best. However, if you have just a minute I would appreciate so much you grading the enclosed efforts and forwarding to me in the enclosed self-addressed, stamped envelope.

I sincerely appreciate your evaluation, even if it is negative.

Eliza Mosley

The man lifted his eyes, a quizzical exclamation escaping his lips. Ah, the wonder and power of the press, he thought. Along with the note, the woman had enclosed three separate “Odes”: the first penned about “Gale,” the second to “A Frolicking Fisherman,” and the last to “A Pipe Smoking President,” which began:

                There’s a progressive young man named Carter,
                To ACC he’s proved to be a great “starter.”
                However, in figuring budgets, his pipe he does stoke,
                It’s great for our stockholders but alas, his poor plants
                     he did choke.

The remaining two stanzas told of the search to find “a plant capable of holding its head up with pride” against the onslaught of the presidential pipe’s relentless refuse, unfortunately closing with no indication of just what kind of horticultural presence might indeed withstand the ravages of the oxygen-depriving smoke.

Below the woman’s signature on the opening page, four categories of worthiness awaited selection, should the man elect to reply with his opinion of her work, each category followed by a handwritten line on which to impart his check mark of choice:

• Good or promising. Please call my secretary for an appointment ______
• Fair. We’re not interested ______
• Terrible. Never contact me again ______
• You seem to be a nice person but please try another career change ______

Below the grading area, one last piece of business remained:

                Signed: ________________________________

The man smiled a bit incredulously, not just at the woman’s closing demand for authentication but for the whole crazy solicitation. He was a “jingle man,” as they labeled such people in the advertising business. He had done well, won awards and contributed, with his catchy little phrases and hummable tunes, to the commercial titillation of the American public, repetitiously enticing them—in 60 seconds or less—to run out and purchase products from cars to eye glasses to smoked sausage. Yes, he had been fully integrated into the great mass media marketing mix that prided itself on its ceaseless bombardment of the innocent consumer; it was he, among others, who trumpeted the urgent call to action that helped turn the massive wheel driving the country’s economy.

Now—should he take the time to review the enclosed work—he was additionally being asked to bear his official witness to this woman’s heartfelt but meter-less quatrains and taxing, inconsistent rhyme schemes. It made him think of how clueless many people are with their own absurdly inaccurate self-assessments of their artistic worth. He’d seen it back in his earlier days as a casting apprentice in New York City, recollecting a young singer auditioning for a TV show, eyeing the ceiling the entire time she sang, as if silently invoking some kind of saving celestial inspiration, which never came; recalling so many people blinded by a quest for recognition, hopelessly incapable of seeing how they really were coming across, the honesty of their expression notwithstanding. How can they not see it! Certainly, he could not envision her taking a commercial product in tow and massaging it for the masses. She and jingles did not appear to be an imminent union.

He looked at the rotting fencepost just up the path outside his front window. Hmmph. Maybe he was just fooling himself, too. His work may have influenced the movement of product out there but hardly would win him space in the pantheon of art credibility. That truth loved to nibble on him. With a half-smile, he laid the letter aside. It would make for good conversation later that night with friends.

§   §   §

He had intended to reply to Eliza Mosley’s letter later that week. Her letter, so hoping for immediate validation, slowly slid down his growing pile of things to do. From time to time he’d come across it, moving one pile of things that required his attention to another place of unattended things, which later got moved into boxes, which ultimately wound up in storage.

It was January 14, 2017, and the 72-year-old man decided to move along many of the artifacts and knick-knacks he’d acquired throughout his long life. Delving through one box he came across an old letter. The return address in the upper left-hand corner didn’t ring with any familiarity. He wiped off some grit and opened its stiff envelope. Inside lay Eliza Mosley’s letter and her three odes. He smiled. My God, there’s the self-addressed envelope—with a 20-cent stamp on it!

Some sense of unfinished business, long developed over the gap of time since he had initially read her inquiry 35 years ago, went to work in him with an urgency that did not falter. He slowly took a seat and reached for a pen. Taking her cover letter, with its varying grades of acceptance/unacceptance still waiting to be checked or unchecked, he flipped it over and began to handwrite on the clean backside:

Dear Ms. Mosley,

Thank you for your letter and selected odes. I can see they were wonderful expressions of your favorite focuses. You may wonder why I decided to reply to you now, after 35 years. And maybe you haven’t even any recollection of having written me this letter enclosed along with your poetry. I’m not sure I quite knew how to respond to you then.

Back then, I saw in your work a young writer anxiously tackling her subjects, possibly a tad too earnest in assuring a too-easy line-ending rhyme. But something wonderful comes with the passage of 35 years. People, all people, get better at what they do. Time not only heals all; “all” grows too, it gets better. It evolves and develops. It furthers itself. Simply said, I happily imagine you to be quite the accomplished writer these days, Ms. Mosley!

So, in that spirit, I feel inclined to say that I would indeed cheerily check that first box on your letter, the one that says “please call my secretary for an appointment.” That is, if I had a secretary. In fact, I’ve never had one.

But I do have this idea for a jingle I could use some help with…

The old man then signed his name on the bottom of her letter in the space she had provided. Later he eased himself out to the street and placed the self-addressed envelope with the 20-cent stamp on it in the mailbox, before lifting the flag on the side.

It is not known if Eliza Mosley ever received his belated response.

MAN AT WORK - Long Form

1960s New York City folksinger, two-time major label recording artist…

47-year Nashville studio session singer…

1999 Kerrville (TX) Folk Festival “New Folk” finalist…

three-time CLIO Award finalist…

writer of more than 400 cover and feature story articles for national magazines…

author of 32 books…

14-year advertising agency VP/creative director…

star painter…

40-year head of a jingle company…

NFL historian…

onetime regional and contributing editor for the 4th largest weekly magazine in North America…

cab driver.

That’s me. Occupational contortionist.

I got caught up in the folk music craze of New York City while at Fordham in the early- to mid-1960s, the journey starting when a friend invited me downtown to check out a folk trio in need of an additional singer/guitarist. Not long after, I joined them—that new four-man group quickly whittled down to just two. Pam Meacham and I would debut a 12-year professional career with a 45 rpm single on Dot Records in 1966 (“Get Together” Dot 45-16868) as the Children of Rain, though the label issued the recording as Pam Meacham and the Children of Rain (see Wikipedia). In 1968, as Ross Legacy, Philips Records released our 45 single “Makes You Wanna Sigh” (Philips-40620), a country-flavored folk-rock piece that led us to Nashville during the record’s promotion. Connecting immediately with supremo Nashville producer Buddy Killen, we returned to New York City and asked to be excused from the remainder of our Philips contract; a move designed to free us to record with Buddy. We moved to Nashville in August 1969, me writing for Killen’s Tree Publishing Company, the No. 1 country music publisher in the world, while Pam and I performed as a duet, mostly on WSMV Channel 4’s early morning “Ralph Emery Show” and “Noon” show. Buddy threw us a curve, though, recording us not in Nashville but instead, in March of 1970, taking us to famed Muscle Shoals Sound in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for our inaugural sessions.

It was a wide-eyed experience for us both. Here we were, still soaking wet behind the ears musically, and we’re being recorded by Buddy Killen with one of the most renowned rhythm sections in recording history. One of my better songs came out of that session, “Santa Ana Wind.”

As Pam & Alan Ross, we would go on to perform on more than 400 live Nashville TV shows between 1969-76. (See YouTube) The special order double CD, Pam & Alan Ross – Master Sessions, includes 24 master recordings spanning our career (1966-76), including the two major-label 45s.

But when Pam bore our second child, I found myself looking at an additional career to augment paying the bills. Enter advertising.

SHORT, SWEET, AND TO THE POINT

Without a shred of experience, I talked my way into my first job as a copywriter, explaining that the basics of songwriting and copyrighting were the same: Tell it quick and sweet and with a hook.

Three years later, after a stop at another ad shop, I returned as a partner in the oldest ad agency in Nashville at the time, Culbertson, King, Condiles & Ross. In all, I was with four different ad agencies (1975-85; 1987; 1989-90), figuring creatively in more than 70 advertising excellence awards on the local, regional, national, and even international levels, including a trio of CLIO finalist awards plus the top marketing award in America—the prestigious EFFIE—awarded for CKC&R’s full-media campaign for Vanderbilt University football (1980). Pulling on my musical experience, I wrote and produced nearly all the soundtracks, many of them award-winning, for the broadcast commercials.

Hand in hand throughout my ad years, I was also writing, producing, and singing jingles, many for rival companies. What a magical little format—the musical equivalent of a sprint.

The timespan with jingles, from my first singing session for Binaca Mouth Spray in New York City, in 1967, through a 2013 lead vocal for Knoxville (TN) TVA Employees Credit Union, extends more than 46 years. In all, I estimate I’ve sung, written and/or produced more than 1,100 pieces of recorded music for radio and television. I’ve been heard on Captain D’s Seafood Restaurants, Tennessee Pride Country Sausage, Burger King, Toyota, Pizza Hut, Vietti Foods, Judy’s Hamburgers, Kia, FFA, and even two Democratic presidential campaign theme songs (1972, ’92), plus hundreds of single-market financial institutions and car dealerships.

Musically, while hard at it with jingles in the mid-1980s, I joined, along with Garrett Randolph, the folk nouveau group  S P A C E, founded and conducted by former Arista recording artist Scott Jarrett.

It was a novel trio—all of us lead singers, songwriters, guitarists, all with completely different vocal and guitar styles. We drilled for two years in rehearsal before we ever played out live, though we did a lot of recording throughout. The group touched on folk, country, pop, rock, and chant—all originals.

The album is quite an eclectic mix. The cascading harmonies on “Love Letter #1” are a brilliant testimony to Scott’s arranging talents. And we recorded the Gregorian chant-like “Sext” out in an old stone church in Dickson County, Tenn. The inspiration for that piece came from a retreat at a Trappist monastery, where the monks mesmerize with their round-the-clock chanting seven times a day. Best of all, Scott saw to it that  S P A C E  was a democratic venture from the get-go with regard to song selection, who would sing the lead, etc. At our very first rehearsal, he set the tone: “I’d like us to start with this song of mine, but I’d like you, Alan, to sing the lead (‘I Wanted to Say I Love You’).” Two years later, he picked that song to kick off the  S P A C E  album.”

PAINTING THE FINAL FRONTIER

Twelve years before  S P A C E’s  three-year run, in 1974, I reacted passionately to an old and odd inspiration emanating from one of my boyhood hobbies, astronomy. I envisioned painting a to-scale rendering of the nighttime August sky, resplendent with Scorpius and the Summer Triangle, that would cover the entire ceiling of the bedroom—all 411 stars, all 35 constellations, all in perfect relative perspective to one another from the pilot’s seat: the pillows. Degree of difficulty: recreate what appears to be stars in a dome onto flat wall and ceiling surfaces. Channeling my inner Michelangelo, I labored more than 80 hours through an arduous three-step process of marking each star point, flagging each star point so that the next mark could be seen when made from the bed, before finally painting each pinpoint star, some with several coats of paint if they are of brighter magnitude.

I found I could achieve a realistic reproduction of the sky with a certain kind of phosphorescent paint, which, when you turn off the room lights, reflects the light back at you for a period of time. Using a star map and employing a simple freehand theory that from any two points you can create a third point and make a triangle, I ever so slowly move about the room, bringing the entire circle of stars to a realistic scale without once having to redraw. It’s uncanny how it works out.

The ceiling star mural was an instant hit with the press. Both city dailies, The Tennessean and the Nashville Banner, did stories on the unusual astral art. The city’s well-read monthly magazine Nashville did a piece on it too. My father, Scottish-born American illustrator and fine artist Alex Ross (Alexander Sharpe Ross), hailed the wonder of his son’s celestial spectacle when he first observed it. “You’re the star painter!” he told me. Over a span of 40 years (1974-2013), I painted half a dozen star ceiling murals in private homes.

THE AMERICAN TOUR

In the fall of 1990, my ride down the advertising highway unceremoniously came to a close. Now, the jingles too were drying up. That summer I’d taken a working road trip, embarking on a most unusual advertising marketing stunt.

I hit the road with my latest jingle reel and my guitar, and called on ad agencies from Alabama to Virginia on a five-state tour I whimsically dubbed the “American Tour: mid-Atlantic leg.”

Ad people from all departments at each agency gathered into the conference room to hear and witness me perform a live acoustic concert of the new jingle reel—a dog and pony show rarely experienced by agency personnel at their own shops. As with the star ceilings, the press loved it, Marketing News catching up with my act in Washington D.C., and doing a large spread with photos on the ad oddity in the publication’s July 8, 1991, issue.

The agencies on the whole were appreciative but a bit uncomfortable, I think. For all their creative output, ad agencies can still be somewhat stiff in their corporate, day-to-day demeanor in the workplace.

But only one jingle came in from that two-week-long tour. Surely the drought would soon end? It never did. By the following fall, it became obvious I might have to do something far different from the high-profile jobs I’d known to that point.

Taxi. Taxi!

WHERE CAN I TAKE YOU?

The cab game is one tough road. Through the fall and winter of 1991, I would awake at 4 a.m. and head out to the headquarters of Allied Cab Company in Donelson, Tenn. Each day began by renting the cab for $30 a day.

Then you’d have to spend your own money to gas it up. As I was to learn, the pickings were lean after Labor Day in a town that didn’t have much going on back then. You’d race to get in line at the cab stand at the airport each morning, because an airport fare usually paid the best. Then you might line up behind other cabs standing at places like Opryland, Vanderbilt Plaza, or the Stouffer Hotel downtown. Most days you drove 12 to 14 hours just to make back your rental fee and the gas money you shelled out. It was humbling…and scary. I remember a woman cabbie telling me one morning while we waited in line at the airport, “Put aside money during the spring and summer, if you want to have heat in your house in the winter”—an ominous note for a rookie just joining the ranks in the fall.

I rescued unexpected periods of downtime on the job with artistic pursuits. During midday it was slow. You might wait an hour or two at a stand or till the dispatcher called with something. That’s when I’d pull out my song notebook and get to work.

One of those songs, “Fences Without Gates,” made it onto my inaugural album, Poet Warrior, recorded and released the following year, in 1992.

LIFE IN A LIMO

I’d always dreamed one day I’d be riding around in a limousine. I felt it was my destiny. Such are the rock dreams of pretenders and the everyday housewife. Only in this case, it came true for me—it’s just that I was the one driving, not riding in the back.

I had stepped up in the transportation business, quitting cabbing on New Year’s Eve ’91 and soon after latching on with Capitol Limousine in Nashville. They had their own scam with the drivers, too, like having to pay for any dents or scratches that might appear on the limousine under your watch. I liked cabbing better because it was anonymous. When I started driving the limo, I occasionally wound up picking up pickers and singers whom I knew from session work or ad people I had worked with. Awkward.

Not long after, I was mercifully liberated from my stay behind the wheel by one of the flukiest bits of incredible luck, I believe, ever to befall a person.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The week before I took my final cab ride, I flew out to Phoenix to spend Christmas with my sister and mother. I landed on the Sunday before Christmas and had told them I thought I’d catch the Phoenix Cardinals’ final home game against New Orleans on my way in. Since there were few people at Cardinals games back then, a ticket was assured. Once there, being a dutiful fan, I purchased the Cardinals’ 1991 yearbook.

My life changed right then and there.

Perusing the publication during many of the game’s low moments (the Cardinals finished 4-12 that season), I eventually looked over the publishing credits. Near the top of the list was the name Dennis J. Flavin, President and COO of Professional Team Publications, Inc. (PTP); producers, as it turned out, of not only the Cardinals’ book but roughly 75 percent of the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball annual team yearbooks as well. I jumped about three feet. Dennis was my college roommate and best man at my wedding! We were also pages at NBC during our days together at Fordham in the early- to mid-1960s, both paging The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson when it was still recorded back in New York City. I was on the stage-floor level the infamous night that singer/actor Ed Ames castrated the image of a bad guy on a cardboard cutout with a perfect tomahawk throw, as Carson brilliantly milked the moment that would make the show's all-time highlight reel. And if Johnny felt like playing "Stump the Band" with audience members, you'd get on national television. We would stand right behind Carson, ready to hand him the winning prizes should anyone stump Doc Severinsen's band, which was often. We got on camera in those moments of the prize exchange. To impress on you the enormity of television's reach with just one single impression, a girl from Oklahoma wrote the page staff and asked if I was single! Another, who actually lived in New York City, left a message with her phone number at NBC's Guest Relations department! (Yes, we went out.)

But at this time that was almost 30 years ago, and it had been more than 20 years since Dennis and I had been in touch, as respective career paths, geographic relocations, and raising young families unintentionally but mutually stole the attention of our deep friendship.

I kept staring at the publication, thinking any minute the page in front of me would blur and the names on it would change back to the real credits of other unknown people. I couldn’t help but match the similarities of the magazine with the slew of print pieces and brochures I’d written for ad clients for 13 years. I could do this! I thought. I couldn’t wait for the next day to try and reconnect with Dennis.

Indeed, I did reconnect with my old friend. That very week I was given my first assignment from PTP: to edit the 1992 Atlanta Braves yearbook! It would be a spring release following their World Series triumph the previous fall. I would compile and edit five more yearbooks for NFL teams before August of that same year (Atlanta, Indianapolis, Miami, Cleveland, Tampa Bay).

That fateful reconnection via a program at a football stadium opened the door to a 25-year career and counting in the publications field as an editor and nationally published football writer and author of 29 books on sports history. The compendium of articles—for The Sporting News Pro Football Special Collectors Editions, NFL.com, Lindy’s Pro Football annual (21 years), Athlon Sports, the Pro Football Hall of Fame annual yearbook, plus feature stories for NFL team media guides and publications (Cleveland, Arizona, San Diego, NFL Properties)—slowly established my legitimacy with history-related sports articles. When I began writing, I remember consciously wanting to create a niche for myself that would be less competitive than the logjam of writers attacking current modern-day sports. I found that niche in pro football’s history.

Just a handful of the big names I’ve interviewed for feature stories include Sammy Baugh, Otto Graham, Arnold Palmer, Ernie Banks, Michael Phelps, A.J. Foyt, Bob Feller, Sid Luckman, George Foreman, Richard Petty, and Don Larsen. They are 11 of the more than 500 interviews I’ve conducted that include 73 pro football Hall of Famers and more than 300 total former NFL players.

One of my favorites was getting to talk at length with a forgotten NFL superstar of the late 1930s and early ’40s, Gaynell Tinsley, a former Chicago Cardinals end who in successive years twice set the NFL record for longest touchdown pass reception. But his name is not spoken among the all-time NFL greats because he’s not in the Hall of Fame. Tinsley played just three NFL seasons—hardly enough to be given serious consideration by the Seniors Committee that selects the older-era Hall candidates for nomination.

Tinsley—a legend at LSU too, first as a player then as a head coach—wonderfully reconstructed the big NFL marks he set on his 97- and 98-yard pass receptions, both recorded in the season finales of 1937 and ’38, recalling even icy patches of his race down the sideline on the 97-yarder that fell in the shady part of Comiskey Park. It was a great oral history to take down, which was used for a feature story in the Arizona Cardinals 2002 Media Guide. I particularly treasure that interview because, when I spoke with him, Tinsley, 87, was soon to pass away. I was likely the last person to interview him for publication before he died. The same with General Alexander Haig (interviewed for the in-progress football tome, World War Football: The winding gridiron mosaic of WWII, an oral history). He died suddenly not maybe a month or two after our interview. And since Haig was by then long removed from public life, it’s likely I was the last to interview him as well.

POET WARRIOR

The same year that I hung up chauffeur work for editing sports publications I also recorded my first full album, Poet Warrior, produced by Mark Morris and Peter Olach. It featured 10 originals that wound up being among my most popular work over the years: “Late Bloomer,” “Dolphin in the Nets, “My Father’s Eye,” and “Arizona Highways” among them. Later, two additional songs were included, “Golden Acre, Goodnight”—the love tribute to the dear octogenarian who once grew the No. 1 Victory Garden in America in 1945—plus the absurdly weird but historically important “Rappin’ Eef,” my cross-cultural bastardization but preservation nonetheless of the vanishing art form of eefing, taught to me by the master eefer himself, Jimmy Riddle of Hee-Haw fame.

I was blessed to have Mark’s percussion wizardry along with fretless-bass maestro Don Kerce accompanying me. We did all the recording on Pete’s little eight-track at his West Nashville house.

That was a major transitional year.

The album kicked off a 25-year career as a soloist, after past musical incarnations as part of a duet and trio. Scorpius Risin’, a ten-year compendium of studio recordings from 1988 through 1997, followed. The project included much of Scott Jarrett’s production on pieces like the title cut, the original first recording of “Fond du Lac,” and “Old Romantic.”

Scott played a double-time ukulele to brighten up the opening of “Simpatico” and added a “snaky” (Scott’s word) electric guitar part on “It’s Not That Bad,” tastefully played by Mikey Wright when we recorded at Thunderbird Recording out in Tijeras, New Mexico, in the spring of 1995.

There are a couple of songs inspired by my wife on there too, including the original vows I sang to her at our wedding, now put to music (“The Ring”). Several years after our union in 1995, I sent a copy of “The Ring” to my cousin in Connecticut when his daughter was getting married. He called me post haste to pay the highest compliment—they were now working the song into her wedding!

ENTER BC

The song also officially marked the debut of the artful playing, engineering, and co-production of Bryan Cumming, the longtime versatile Nashville session player, kicking off our on-going 20-year association in the studio. Bryan and I work like one. His energy, as anyone knows who has worked with him, is boundless and infectious. Every session we’ve ever worked on has been an upper.

We hit full stride in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I first began to musically explore my native Scottish roots. The seven-song Scottish Influence album (2003) was the result, my initial look into Scottish history as a songwriter, which included my first song in the Celtic direction, “My Father’s Eye.”

Two versions of that tribute to my Scottish-born dad, the aforementioned Alexander Sharpe Ross, have been recorded—the first on 1992’s Poet Warrior; the second with Cumming on Scottish Influence. No song I’ve ever written has personally affected me more.

That tune opened the floodgates for a prolific 15-year Scottish songwriting period and was immediately followed by “On the Hill,” part of the four-song series recorded with Scott Jarrett out in New Mexico in ’95. Another song on Scottish Influence, “Bell Rock Light,” a harrowing tale of Scotland’s legendary wave-washed lighthouse, catapulted me into the New Folk finals at the prominent Kerrville (TX) Folk Festival in 1999, where, as one of 32 finalists chosen nationwide from over 700 applicants, I debuted “Bell Rock Light.” In the summer of 2003, with the release of Scottish Influence, that song went No. 1 for two successive rating periods on the Redondo Beach, Calif., Internet radio station Coverunner Radio.

But the recording generating the most attention from that album was the anthemic “Raise the Clans!” a romp through the Scottish ages, highlighted by the calling of the Highlander rolls. At Bryan’s suggestion, we belted out the “heathen clan drums” sound on a pair of empty 5-gallon hard plastic water jugs. The storm sounds, winding flute opening, heathen clan drums, uilleann pipes, and later, the electric guitars—all meshed beautifully to create the alternating nostalgic/driving tone of the piece.

BRANDING ONESELF

Five of my six albums (excluding the Pam & Alan Ross – Master Sessions double CD) are released under the name “wm Alan Ross.” Earlier there were variations using the full name, William Alan Ross, and earlier still, simply going with the lifelong-used Alan Ross.

But the Internet changed all that. For my books and career-long magazine byline credits, I have used my regular name, and I dare say, quickly gotten lost in the global shuffle of a bazillion other Alan Rosses.

In fact, the current first three pages of listings on Amazon of “books written by Alan Ross” reveals no less than nine other book authors also named Alan Ross, some with spelling variations. On LinkedIn, there are 449 professionals named Alan Ross.

One doppelganger-in-name popping up from time to time is the 1970s’ British rocker. He once had a full-page ad in Billboard, with the headline: “This is Alan Ross.” Over the years, since the mid-’70s, I’ve fielded more than a few email and website inquires asking if I’m the UK guitarist Alan Ross. The name game can virtually erase a lifetime of meaningful achievement, if one’s luminescence is less than the namesake’s. My father’s substantial recognition in art has been almost completely eclipsed by a comic book artist by the same name of Alex Ross. But since he gained fame in the digital age, the comic illustrator’s coverage on the Internet dwarfs the results shown for my dad.

With the books and magazine publishing world having swallowed my everyday name whole, I decided a different positioning tactic with my music was necessary. Contracting the seldom-used first name, William—going with “wm” and lowercasing it to deemphasize it even more—did the trick. Not many wm Alan Rosses on the Internet.

The end result? No one who has known me forever as Alan knows how to search for me!  Bwahahaha!

COVER STORIES

Three years before the arrival of Scottish Influence, my writing career, already launched through the pro football articles, received an unexpected boost when the national weekly supplement American Profile began assigning me. For 12 years, on more than 40 cover stories—ranging from spending a night in a Rhode Island lighthouse to covering an Indian trading post in Monument Valley to witnessing a vintage 1860s-reenactment “base ball” team in Ludington, Michigan—my byline went before 10 million weekly readers, as American Profile grew to become the fourth largest weekly magazine in North America.

I got to travel the country to special spots and tiny towns that were the focus of the magazine: a renovated old-timey movie theatre in Graham, Texas; Norman Rockwell’s studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; Pearl Fryar’s exquisite topiary in Bishopville, South Carolina. Two years following my first cover story, I became one of the magazine’s regional editors and, later, a contributing editor. It was a writer’s delight and a traveler’s treat.

Coinciding with my early years with American Profile, I began an association with Nashville publisher Cumberland House, for whom I would eventually write 23 books, including the positive-themed Away from the Ball, which looks at the good and often heroic deeds that NFL players do off the field.

I especially enjoyed editing and compiling the quote book series, of which we did 20—team histories told through quotes compiled on three NFL teams, eight Major League Baseball teams, six college football teams, two college basketball teams, and one NBA team. The college books, eight total, were penned under the pseudonym Wilton Sharpe.

Ron Pitkin (Cumberland House president) picked up the scent after I’d had my first nine books published by Walnut Grove Press. Criswell Freeman had given me a wonderful opportunity to express my sports passion with the original sports quote book series we did for WGP. But of those nine, my favorite beyond a doubt was not any of the sports books but one I got to research, write, and compile about lighthouses (The Lure of Lighthouses). That was heaven.

Ron, though, really saved my ass. In 2003, Caroline and I had moved out to Bisbee, Arizona, and I thought my experienced freelance writing skills would hold me in good stead. But the geographic and cultural shift out there only put me at the end of the line of people the editors were already familiar with. Then one day, three years after the release of my first book for Cumberland House (The Yankees Century), Ron called from out of the blue and asked the improbable:

“Would you like to do a book on the Red Sox?”

How does a lifelong Yankees fan who’d just written a book on his beloved Bombers suddenly turn coat and write a book about the contemptible rival? Armed with that conflicted conundrum but ever the soldier of fortune, I didn’t hesitate to tell my publisher, “I’d love to do a book on the Red Sox!’”

The Red Sox Century sold close to 15,000 copies, and it wasn’t long before Ron offered me an eight-book deal, which turned into an additional 15-book deal. Like my old pal Robbie Dupree says, “I Got Lucky.”

COOL DOWN

It was a fun eight-year run, but at Christmastime 2008, Pitkin, whose accountant told him his love for books ran too far ahead of his business acumen, had to shutter Cumberland House.

Fortunately, two years prior to that time, I had been contacted by American Profile, who had previously thrown me several NASCAR cover stories, to see if I had an interest in writing a weekly NASCAR column for the magazine’s Hometown Content package that was placed with many of the more than 1,000 newspapers nationwide that carry American Profile. The company paid the contributors but gave it away free to its clients.

Thus, “The Cool Down Lap” was born, running for seven years and joined in 2008 by an additional weekly pro football column, “Over the Ball.” Both columns were in effect syndicated around the country, and the job became a Sunday marathon ritual. I’d watch as many as three major auto races (the racing column grew to also include the F1 and IndyCar series) and, during football season, two or three games on TV, before settling down usually around 11 p.m. to begin writing both columns—a long 16-hour day.

I loved being in touch with my two favorite sports so regularly. It was tough covering NASCAR at first, since I grew up exposed to and loving Formula One. But I came to appreciate the sport I once referred to as “Sherman tanks running in a circle.” Usually disdain divides stock car and F1 fans, but I learned the beauty of both racing series because I was deeply exposed to both through work.

THE FOGS

It’s only fitting that this bio end the way it began, with music.

Ten long years had passed since the release of my last previous album, in 2003. Recording was piecemeal, having moved to Arizona that same year—a three-year stretch that lay mute recording-wise. It was a joyful reunion with Bryan in 2007, when I returned to Tennessee and again picked up my plan to put out a second album of original Celtic material. The new album, a 10-song collection with eight original pieces titled Fogs of August, was released in August 2013 at the pastoral Amber Falls Winery in Hampshire, Tenn. The album, like its predecessor, Scottish Influence, dug deep into Scottish history, uncovering compelling themes.

Strong women of character have dotted Scottish history. Both Violetta Lyon and Lady Anne MacIntosh were incredible paragons in their time. Violetta, a member of the 15th-century House of Glamis, became renowned far and wide as an exceptional huntress and killer of wolves (“Highlander Girl”), an enviable reputation gained by a member of the so-called weaker sex that would have made feminists proud more than 500 years ago. And the Lady MacIntosh opposed her British Redcoat captain/husband during the Risin’ of the ’45 and stowed away the young Scottish renegade leader, the legendary Bonnie Prince Charlie, in the couple’s own home, suffering a prison stretch for her impudence rather than casting her lot with the Redcoats. The Prince’s rebel troops thought so highly of her anti-Hanoverian stance that they nicknamed her “Colonel Anne.” That lead cut on the album went on to be named a 2017 Best Celtic Song finalist in the Just Plain Folks Music Awards competition, selected from 240,000 entries submitted over the years 2010-2016. Just Plain Folks is the world's largest grassroots music organization.

As a fitting finale, I covered Robert Burns’ ageless “Auld Lang Syne,” named a finalist in the 2013 Celtic Radio Music Awards.

The year 2015 concluded my 50th year professionally in music, and I continue to record, now three quarters of the way through a scheduled four-song EP that reexplores my early pop and folk roots. The collection—titled Little by Little—is scheduled for release in late 2017.

PLACE

I remember my mother once saying that every time my dad finished a piece of art or an illustration for sale, he was out of work until the next job came along. From my vantage point, it seemed that some unseen force, God, or universe always seemed to supply him with that next job…and the next…and the one after that. The inevitable connection of the myriad and winding dots that have linked my own life, leave no doubt that something is at work there too.

I think of how many people planetwide are part of similarly miraculous but mostly anonymous life unfoldments, all of us unconsciously weaving the Great Tapestry thread by thread.

Hailing the Chief: A brush with the Nixon motorcade

It was all over in 30 seconds.

That’s the length of time it took to record an impulsive act in public; a totally unpremeditated instinctive gesture that could have fostered dire consequences were it conducted in today’s NSA-regulated world; a moment of irresistible improvisation that could have easily landed me in the immediate company of men in dark suits and darker sunglasses, to be interrogated endlessly regarding any connections to subversive terrorist activity, never to be heard from again.

But in 1969, the world, though only six years removed from the haunting Kennedy assassination, was still leading with a cautious innocence, conducting the regular day-to-day without the burdensome over-the-shoulder fear that all decent neurotic people everywhere carry today.

I READ IT IN THE NEWS

It was an early spring weekday morning with the usual madness centered around the daily prep-for-work ritual: Rise, shower, scarf down a bite, squeeze by my wife in the cramped hallway of our Lexington Avenue apartment in New York City, as each fought to get out the door first.

The New York Times, a recent and reluctant substitute for our beloved Herald Tribune that had shut down three years previously, awaited our attention at the threshold outside the door. No time to read, but…what was this? A headline announced that the president was coming to town. That night, in fact. Riding the elevator together, I scanned the story.

“Listen to this,” I said, reading one bulletin out loud. “Nixon’s motorcade is going to run right through here!”

The article detailed a travel route through the city for the Nixon entourage following their touch down at LaGuardia Airport later that day. To our surprise and ultimately great convenience it mentioned that the president’s cavalcade—destined for a distinguished hotel on Fifth Avenue—would take the 79th St. crosstown thoroughfare.

“Man, he’s coming within a block of us!”

Indeed, the planned route called for the caravan to cruise by just one block north of our East Side two-room 78th Street abode. The president’s schedule called for an early evening arrival, which meant we would be home from work in time to witness it if we chose.

We agreed to check it out.

NIGHT RIDER

It must be remembered that to many of us in that pre-Watergate era Nixon was a villain, a snarky pol with an evil eye who personified a growing distrust with government. To those still lost in the Kennedy euphoria, Camelot had been replaced by Mordor.

That night, shortly after shuffling the lone block up to the travel route, news circulated among fellow onlookers that apparently a delay had slowed the official procession en route from LaGuardia. We lucked out, securing a prized gawking post right off the street on the north-side curb of 79th, a site that would yield the closest proximity to the delegation when it passed by. The unexpected lag had nurtured idle, time-killing comments from the sidewalk assembly. Sporadic laughter lit up the twilight, mostly jokes aimed at the president.

The festive atmosphere had the ring of an impromptu street party replete with anonymous jesters holding the attention of the crowd-in-waiting. But the timbre of that hubbub abruptly and universally morphed into one expectant onrush of excitement, as someone yelled:

“It’s coming!”

GOING MY WAY?

It was dark now. Every neck in the vicinity craned forward, peering left, eastward. Police had cleared the bustling street a half hour earlier of traffic, rerouting it elsewhere into the numbing city maze in anticipation of the motorcade’s impending arrival. Suddenly, a chain of headlights appeared coming up from Third Avenue, funeral-style but at a quicker pace. The inevitable police escort preceded the convoy. A full 20 feet separated the last NYPD motorcycle from the first official car. That would later prove an invaluable window of opportunity.

My pulse quickened as the train of black government vehicles amid swirling blue lights approached. It seemed like something was needed for the moment, something that would make this a postcard memory. But likely it would pass uneventfully, nothing more than a quick glimpse at a passing series of dark tinted windows at night. But maybe, just maybe the president would actually be looking at the people he was passing by. What if?

The first car was now no more than 100 feet away, when without warning something wildly impulsive came over me, the telltale surge of adrenaline an indicative clue.

I was about to do something!

Immediately after the final cop bike passed within six feet of us—in that thinnest of windows, in that instant between twilight and darkness, before instinct, reason, or calculation could step in the way—I dropped my right leg down off the curb as the first car approached, not 10 feet away. Then, with a look that bordered on the whimsically earnest, I dropped my right thumb down into the classic hitchhiker stance.

This pose I maintained for the full duration of the motorcade, not knowing of course which of the black sedans the president inhabited. Perhaps the secret service nursed the barest trace of humor back then, because today, should any fool willfully step off a curb in front of the president’s car, that person should expect to be immediately apprehended as a diabolical threat—yes, never to be heard from again!

The crowd of heads now swiveled to the right, watching the line of bobbing red taillights trail off toward Park Avenue. The whole thing had taken no more than half a minute.

We laughed the short walk home. Then I never gave it another thought for 45 years. But I now wonder. Did Nixon see my gesture? If so, was I written off as just another irksome dissenter, smirked at in disgust after what he might have perceived as disrespect?

I like to think that the man who worked tirelessly to earn the ignominious moniker of Tricky Dick could somewhere in his own twisted mind see the humor, or rather, the lightness in it all; a nervy attempt by an unknown member of the proletariat at lightening up a moment top heavy with over-ceremonious pomp and reserve. Yes, I’d like to think Dick Nixon was smiling at the odd pantomime taking place outside his magic carpet. Who knows what positive changes might have come for the man, and for the entire world for that matter, from the residue of that one moment of unbridled impulse?

A far scarier thought: What if they’d picked up that hitchhiker from another galaxy?

One didn’t have to reach far for moments of light-hearted irony in New York City in the Sixties.

Studio Stowaway: An Unexpected Visit from Rock Royalty

It started out as a typical rehearsal. Typical, that is, when you live in a major urban center like Manhattan: Packing your car full of guitars, amplifiers and assorted gear, driving through the craziness of New York City, then placing yourself at the mercy of the parking gods, hopefully to find a spot within walking distance of MRC’s recording studios on West 57th Street, before lugging your stuff up to Studio B on the third floor.

When you reside in Manhattan, you live in an apartment, not a freestanding dwelling like a normal house. If you’re a practicing musician, you’ve already got a big problem on your hands. With adjoining walls everywhere, there simply is no acceptable protocol for rehearsing—be it singing or playing an instrument—without turning your neighbors into hostile enemies.

As one of Philips Records’ new young acts in 1968, our five-man band, Ross Legacy, was allowed a massive perk by the label — free use of its studios (they were a subsidiary of Mercury Records) for rehearsals when the facility was “dark,” or not in use. Before that tidy arrangement was extended, Pam—my singing partner and first wife—and I would jump in our green Volkswagen bug and head from our midtown apartment for a house our band knew of in Manhattan Beach, a distant suburb of Brooklyn that lay a daunting hour-and-a-half drive away. And believe me, a 90-minute drive through New York City streets bears no similarity to motoring through countryside.

This particular evening in late 1968, as mentioned earlier, began the same as the others: Hooking up at the building’s entrance with lead guitarist Frank Fuchs, bassist Mike “Eggie” Ekster, and drummer Steve Turok, before freighting our gear up to the studio. The band always had more music to rehearse than the time we were allotted by our generous benefactors, so little time was wasted on idle chatting and catching up.

We had been at it for almost an hour, easing through our limited-but-growing original folk-pop repertoire and settling into a comfortable practice rhythm, as it turned out, just seconds before the most amazing shock of our collective young lives.

Much to our surprise, we had a stowaway in the studio—a world-famous one at that.

As the band was moving through a number, the door to the control room inside the studio suddenly opened. The engineer’s suite had been “dark” as well, the black opaque-like glass all the while concealing the presence of one exhausted producer of the Hamilton Face Band, another of Mercury’s artists, who were recording just down the hall from us in the larger Studio A. Now, a massive Afro emerged from behind the door, followed in quick order by the rest of the man’s instantly recognizable face.

It was Jimi Hendrix.

Five faces went slack in disbelief at the tall, slender, friendly faced celebrity standing somewhat sheepishly before us.

“Hey, y’all,” a smiling Hendrix said. “Sounds good what you got goin’ on here!”

Five faces remained slack in disbelief. Well, it was an odd situation, after all. I mean, just what was the most famous rock star on the planet doing in our rehearsal room, and why did we not know that for an hour?

Then, as if reading our combined minds, he filled in the Why. “We took a break across the hall. This studio was dark; it looked like the perfect place to hide away for a little nap.”

Five faces stared blankly back at the superstar. With a wave and a big smile, he was gone as fast as he had appeared.

It’s funny how you review a major accidental event after the fact. How did we sound? we wondered. Was anything said that we’d be embarrassed by before we knew he was in the studio? Were we in tune? Nothing negative jumped out at us in our excited appraisal of the kingly visit from rock royalty. All to a man, though, wished we had known that he was in the room, so we would’ve been at our best. Needless to say, the remainder of the rehearsal was our finest ever. Within two and a half years, Hendrix would be dead from an overdose and ascend to legend.

Thirty-four years later, I tracked down Fuchs, our guitarist, now in L.A. He had produced some albums and made music himself in the long expanse since our last contact in ’69, the year Pam and I moved to Nashville. He was originally suggested by the wife of the late Woody Guthrie, whom I’d once met in her fight against Huntington’s disease, the disabling robber that quieted the great Woody. Frankie had taken clarinet at 9 then picked up piano and guitar on his own. Later, he spent his college summers as Arlo Guthrie’s accompanist. I used to marvel at that small-world aspect that involved us both knowing Marge. The first thing he brought up conversationally that day, though, was the brief but stunning instance with Hendrix so long ago. Frank still recalled it all with great enthusiasm.

“Man, he said the music was good!”

I’ve thought about that. Sometimes only slight degrees separate true inspiration from total deflation. What if this rock god had said instead, “You suck. Can’t a guy get any sleep here!”

Tim Ross, Everyone!

After 46 years of playing and singing professionally, it was with some trepidation last Saturday in the waning twilight that I ventured into a songwriter’s night at one of the clubs in Printer’s Alley, Nashville’s old-tenured and renowned nightlife hub, a sort of New Orleans-style pared down Vegas strip.

Visits to the Alley had been few and far between. Maybe 40 years. It was different then, the Alley. The Captain’s Table, The Embers, Brass Rail and other historical entertainment venues drew some extraordinary nightclub talent back in the day. Mostly people you never heard of, though, or who might have been well known but more on the local level. There was the colorful guitar-playing Ronnie Prophet, a Canadian cross between Vegas Wayne Newton and Vegas Elvis. As part of a visible Nashville music duet in the late 1960s and ’70s, I was awed at some of the superior talent that played down there. Not just the familiar stuff of legends already made―Boots Randolph, Floyd Cramer, et al; most folks knew about that. It was Bobbi Jo Walls and Judy West gracing their enchanting piano-cocktail bar settings that drew throngs of steady regulars, many of them businessmen from the then-thriving downtown area. These and other antediluvian thoughts of the Alley swirl in my head walking to the gig.

Once inside, my wife Caroline and I are told that the club’s event coordinator and host (two different people) will be there shortly to answer important questions, like, When do I go on? This particular writer’s night stipulates that the talent arrive at the venue by 6:30 p.m. to be assigned a time to play between 7 and 9. With the universally accepted knowledge that nothing of any significant consequence will possibly come from the evening career-wise, a short three-song stint is the given format. I hope to get on and get off stage early. To be assigned a later time slot, thereby dragging out the evening sitting amongst the club’s patrons comprised almost entirely of other participating songwriters, would turn what we surmised was a tolerable jaunt into an anguish-laden evening of unending eternity. Are we on yet?

To our great relief, I snag the opening slot. The host is preoccupied setting up video streaming but casually asks my name. Deafening metal music flattens the room from the sound check in progress at the other end of the club.

“Doesn’t that bleed over into this room when both stages are playing?” I ask the bartender. “Nah, the sound drops off about halfway,” is her reply. Riiiiight. If soundproof doors could seal off the open space between the two facing stages, it would only slightly cut the decibel level!

I’m plugged in and ready to play as the clock hits seven. The evening’s host steps to the mike and says, “Please welcome… Tim Ross!” But as I step toward the mike, he tarries for some introductory conversation.

“Tim, tell us a little about yourself.”

“Let’s go with Alan Ross for starters, and we’ll call ourselves square,” I tell him, making a humorous attempt to correct the misnomer without flogging him for it. No reaction on his part, so I briefly tell those assembled at the club about the early Dot Records years with the folk trio Children of Rain, later followed by the Philips label release as Ross Legacy back in New York in the mid-to late-Sixties; how I came to Nashville as a result of the promotion trip on the Philips’ recording, in June of 1969, and decided to move to Music City with my then-duet singing wife, Pam; how I’d segued into the music of my father’s heritage, Scottish folk and Celtic, about 20 years ago, and that I would now do one of those pieces from my Scottish CD.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

The name gaffe is not unprecedented but still amusingly rare. Usually, it’s a just a simple misspelling of my name, complicated by the fact that I’ve added the contraction “wm” for William―my first name―in front of my middle name (which I have gone by for 67 years) as a defense against being swallowed up by the vast anonymity of the Internet and its appallingly infinite number of Alan Rosses. In the music business, “What’s in a name?” is all about the never-ending toil spent cultivating that name and the eventual branding that takes place over time. Will that name be remembered by the masses? Indeed, will it even be pronounced correctly? After 46 years of playing the name game, my industry recognition factor nearly nonexistent, I could do worse than to be called Tim Ross.

If you think about it, a botched name really only registers if you’ve heard of the person; if they actually have a name of some renown. I went around Atlanta one November day in 2007 with Pro Bowl running back Warrick Dunn, a 12-year NFL player for Tampa Bay and the Falcons, when he appeared at four brand new Habitat for Humanity homes, giving away down payments like Santa Claus and stocking first-time owners’ new homes with furniture, computers, food, appliances and the like. It was a well-coordinated event, with partnered support from area sponsors, Dunn’s Foundation, and Atlanta Habitat for Humanity. But I vividly recall the Atlanta Habitat executive director being called up to the microphone to impart a few words to the media that had tagged along for the philanthropic occasion. Insufficiently prepped for her speech, the woman embarrassingly referred to Dunn as “Warwick” three times during her comments. The media appeared to graciously overlook her faux pas.

Back at the gig, the room is filled with two separate publishing groups of 20- and 30-something songwriters and their friends. I am the lone outsider―no publishing affiliation and no recent chart-busting hit. But my opening Scottish jig turns heads, Caroline tells me afterward. “You captured the room.”

And lost it just as quick. Changing the next play at the line of scrimmage, I audible to a classical-sounding folk ballad I penned in 1968. Three female songwriters sitting at the first table in front of the stage, boringly enduring it all―(Sigh) Are we on yet?―pull out cell phones and start texting not five feet from my face, insensitively oblivious to my presence.

An upbeat boogie-rock piece brings back some of the crowd on my final number. In the back of the room, nearly lost in the shadows, a treasure catches my eye: my oldest son has received my short-notice text that I was to go on imminently, beaming himself to the club in time to catch the last two tunes. It’s a warmer feeling than even the nice reception the songwriters-in-waiting give up, as the host again steps to the microphone with noticeably keener enthusiasm than initially displayed in his opening introduction. As I exit the stage, behind me, in a voice of practiced urging, the emcee implores the patrons one last glorious time:

“Tim Ross, everyone!”

Burying Clete

The gold cuff links slipped through the always troublesome slits of the white shirt's French cuffs. I paused to admire the unique wonder of them, each a little gold calendar of the month of June. To either side of the month were the numbers 19 and 32. On the 30th day of that month, a Thursday, sits a small ruby. June 30, 1932, the day my parents were married.

The cuff links came via the usual lineage chain: inheritance. I received a number of my father’s personal effects. Split them with my brother, in fact, at the time my mother said to us both, “he would’ve wanted you to have these.”

But the reason for dressing up wasn’t for anything enjoyable or delightful or happy or fun. I was going to bury my friend Clete today. And that called for me to squeeze into a pair of dress pants and haul out the aging white shirt that my wife said had ring around the collar. Before that it had been a wrestling match between should I wear the cheap suit or abandon ritual and sport a double-breasted blazer with a pink tie. I’ve learned how to dress for a funeral. Actually I’ve learned how to dress someone who was already dead for their big send-off. My father. He was an artist and a colorful dresser, always. His appearance sparkled with dashing style, which was instinctive to him. It didn’t take my mother, two sisters, and me very long to dress this man for burial in splendiferous attire. A striking figure in life, he went out in a burst of color. We saw to it. The lingering effects of that passage 19 years ago have influenced the way I dress for another’s entombment.

So, when I was asked to be a pallbearer at Clete’s funeral service, I knew he would have approved of my preferred farewell celebration attire. Blazer and pink tie it is. I had noticed at the previous night’s visitation that Clete had been interred in a very stylish black country-western dress suit. It looked great on him. We had known each other in various incarnations since first meeting in the fall of 1969. Both of us were fledgling songwriters at Nashville’s famed Tree Publishing Company. Photos of us from that time show hopelessly bowled early-1970s hair, mustaches, and mutton chops, or some combination thereof. During the mid-1980s, Clete sported the traditional de rigeur Music Row haberdashery, the straw curled-brim cowboy hat. The Clete of late, from 2002 on, wore a gracious face and, thankfully, was hatless again. He was lean with a smart braided ’tail, a sweet and dear man.

Our friendship, though, got off to a rocky start. Unbeknownst to me, until he told me just two weeks before he was murdered, Clete early on eyed me as a rival. He had come to Tree as a tunesmith, but in the guise of a duet. Clete and his first wife, Kathy, wrote and demoed songs together and were enjoying their situation at the giant country music publisher. He told me, “And then you and Pam came to town and stole our thunder!” Clete, in a huff, let it be known in the hallways of Tree that “he might just be looking at going over to Cedarwood,” a rival song publisher. In retelling the event 40 years later, Clete, a master at self-deprecating humor, put that Am-I-The-World’s-Biggest-Dumbass-Or-What look on his face, and said, “My God! I left the No. 1 country music publishing company in the world ’cause I was bent out of shape over you guys coming to Tree!”

He was a man of a thousand stories. After Clete found himself backed into a corner by his own half-hearted threat, he did indeed leave Tree and our paths wouldn’t cross again until 1985. He was forming an acoustic country trio then and had already lined up the name for the group. White Crow. Would I be interested in joining him and multi-talented singer/musician Scott Jarrett? Most certainly! The trio cut several songs, among them an uncelebrated tune, “An Angel You Love,” that deals with a couple in love who cannot connect in this lifetime because of prior attachments mate-wise but who look forward to another time—in heaven—when they will finally get to share their love together. The song was eerily prophetic. Clete had found his true love—in this lifetime; a woman named Marj whom he had been married to for the last 15 years.

Marj had accumulated some wealth through two previous marriages to men who had predeceased her. She and Clete had built a $1.5 million-dollar home on middle Tennessee’s Tims Ford Lake and were just putting the finishing touches on the landscaping, when Marj passed from a quick-acting cancer. In a surreal turn of fate, Clete lost the love of his life just one month before meeting his own violent death. Now, implausibly, “An Angel You Love” would begin Clete’s funeral service, and like the song, reconnect him with the angel he loved.

Living with senselessness

My wife Caroline and I had discussed how odd it is that people suffering the loss of a loved one are supportively bolstered at the time of death by friends and family, who then appear to abandon the bereaved in post-burial haste, everyone going back to their usual lives almost as if nothing had happened. The survivor, though, embarks on the opening leg of a journey of aloneness. With that in mind, we invited Clete to dinner one week after Marj’s funeral. Three weeks later to the day, he too was gone.

The murder part of it is too horrible to think about for long. Maybe that’s why people unconsciously tend to soften an event like that in their minds when pondering it; we linger on all that was good about a person, not the circumstances under which they exited. But I found that when a dear friend was shot multiple times in his own home in what more and more appears to be step-family involvement over estate and money, I frantically looked for anything solid to hang on to, for anything that could make the off-the-charts shock and pain just the least bit bearable. Once more, a formidable foe direct from the calendar had intruded again.

Me and the 23rd, we have this thing. It takes from me people I love. Three times I have lost a friend on December 23rd or have buried them on that date. A drunk driver took the first one, a massive heart attack felled another friend like an axe; now a murder. On top of that, I was jailed overnight 27 years ago on Dec. 23rd for partaking a tad too strenuously in pre-holiday merriment. The 23rd day of the twelfth month is a date I’d like to ban from future calendars.

At the funeral, the first-ever occasion I’d been asked to tend to the dearly departed as a pallbearer, I laid a firm hand on the casket containing my friend, helping guide it into the hearse then again from the hearse to the burial site. I was the last to throw a spade full of dirt onto his casket before the undertaking crew, like ants descending on a meal, completed the sizeable job in mere minutes. Something about being involved with Clete’s burial comforted me. It felt like we bore him home.

When I think about those times when someone close to me has passed, I notice that I tend to look for a positive spin: They were ill and death was a blessing, they were old and feeble and were mercifully taken. If a sudden accident or a wartime death, the hastily held belief became Hopefully it was quick. Death’s inevitability humbles all. We don’t want to think that it’s worse than it already appears. See you in heaven. We’ll be together again one day. All fit comfortably in the uneasy contemplation of death. But none of those stop-gap self-consoling phrases work when the disquieting shadow of murder hangs over the deceased.

Also weaving its way through this emotional morass is a most incongruous intruder—Christmas, of all things. Yet, while undergoing this current blue Christmas I somehow feel connected to the pervasive holiday spirit in a different, subtler way. Somewhere in all the madness, in all the shock, in the loss, the senselessness, the pain, and even with my issues with the 23rd, those eternal words of that tiniest of embattled characters from Dickens’ Christmas classic come pounding through with more pertinence than ever through its imperative plea for hope in a desperate time:

“God bless us, everyone.”

Life in a Limo

I would have liked to describe it as Nigel Mansell driving a limo.

At least that was the thought in my head when I took a job driving a limousine on September 16, 1993, looking, as always—the perennial freelancer—to fill in some of those vital holes in my financial plan. Facing almost constant near extinction in freelancing, the editing work not being what it was, I found myself applying for a job with Ken Fortin’s Capital Limousine Service. After a two-hour interview, I was hired on the spot, with no driving experience, which speaks mostly well for the education my parents provided me.

The first few days I was trained by Stanley, an excellent guide, who showed me the workings of an inside of a limo and told of how people will come up and breathe and lay their hands and fingers and mouths on the limousine, and how you’ve got to wipe it off every time—all part of the protocol and tight detail work required in prepping the big ride for public service.

My first day was spent inauspiciously in the brake shop. But soon Stanley took me out in the stretch limo and put me behind the wheel, a surprise treat, having been told I would probably start with a sedan, a less risky proposition from a driving standpoint.

The best way to equate driving a limousine is to say that you are a captain of a ship. You’re looking at something about 26 feet long. You’re talking about a yacht, a land yacht, as limos are often called. And with good reason: Piloting them is no different (having captained my own 26-foot mahogany Chris Craft cabin-cruiser for 10 years). It has been a good and accurate analogy, one that came in especially handy when parallel parking for the first time.

I’ve not hit anything yet.

After my first week at the limousine service, I’ve still got a clean slate: no nicks, no scratches. It’s a record I’m proud of and will work hard to maintain, not wanting to incur the wrath of Kenneth Fortin, a down-to-business kind of owner but a very fair man, and a nice man too, I might add. Ken is also letting me violate some of his personal rules of etiquette for limo drivers. I am, from what I understand, the first limousine driver—ever—to be allowed to keep his ponytail. Many enter the training period with ’tails, but, as soon as they are judged worthy of working out, are asked to head for the barbers and submit to the clip. Ken views everyone closely, and somehow has seen the glimpse of a far-off rebel with a cause in me, approaching me with respect, if not a little forbearance. He is a man task and duty oriented. And with good reason.