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Regrets
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That great American philosopher John Wayne once said (I think), "Never apologize. It is a sign of weakness." Regardless of that excellent advice I have listed some areas below in which I believe that I personally have inherent weakness and inability. In just six months and three days I will be eighty years old. It has been my practice for a long time to sit quietly two or three times a year and count my blessings, to list the talents, abilities and gifts that have allowed me to reach the place where I am. I suppose that nearly everyone does that once or twice a year. This year I did it again and was sitting looking at my list of strong points and saying what a fine fellow I was when it dawned on me that this was sort of a mental masturbatory self-aggrandizement. Sure it is pleasant to list all your good fortunes, and you might even convince yourself that it was your effort that got you there. But the more important question to be answered is, "What are my weak points, and wherein have I failed to develop a talent or ability?" So this time I have looked back and tried to determine what my missing talents and abilities were, and I have come up with the list below:
PEOPLE – This will be difficult to explain, but since explanations are one of my strengths I’ll get right down to it. I am not a people person. I live in a world of things and processes and sometimes (more often than not actually) fail to see, know, and understand people about me. This is not a major dislike or distrust of people or a lack of friendliness on my part. It is a product of my thought processes, and it may be an expression of a grand conceit on my part. It may be that I believe I just don’t need anyone. I think it is perhaps best that I am no longer an industrial manufacturing manager. I am not one that works well with committee-driven policy determination or upward flow of direction, and those are directions in which industry is heading these days. I was admittedly a "bull of the woods" manager, a dictator. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to such an approach to management. I profited and suffered from both. So I think that if it were all to do over again I would hope to be a bit more of a people person and perhaps a little less of a "things" person, if that sacrifice was necessary. I was very fortunate in industry to have two people about me on my staff that were almost wholly people persons and who thus blunted at least the sharp tang of my materialism.
MUSIC – I possess not one shred or iota of musical talent. I love music (some of it) and wish that it was a language in which I was fluent, or I was at least able to discuss the subject . I am not capable of playing any instrument. I cannot read music. I cannot sing well. I am not well versed in the history or characteristics of any branch of music. As I have grown older this situation is exacerbated by the fact that the frequency range that I can hear is sharply truncated on the upper end and some of the instruments in a symphony I do not even hear, I am sure. I look upon music as a form of language, and I cannot conceive of any mental or physical characteristic that would keep me from learning in this field. When I was in the fifth grade I took a year of lessons on the violin. I never got a decent squeak out of that fiddle. I can’t even pick out a piece on a piano or xylophone simply because my mind refuses to compute whether the next note is above or below in the scale. I remember a party once where this delightful lady played on the piano without a trace of sheet music, and I asked her about a particular song. She said, "Hum it for me." I did, and she proceeded to play it as well as I’ve ever heard the song played. “Black Magic” – that is what I think it was.
AUTHORSHIP — I always wanted to write the great American novel – to become the Tolstoy of Texas. In my work life I did a lot of writing. I even had a couple of articles appear in nationally distributed trade and technical journals. But write the great American novel I did not. I started a few "great American novels" but never finished them. I can’t blame that on lack of time or opportunity. I have been retired now for 12 years, so I have had plenty of time. Or for that matter if I had just written my novels while in flight on commercial or company planes I could have won several Pulitzer Prizes by now. No, this one just goes to lack of will or purpose. Mea culpa!
LANGUAGES – There used to be a TV program named "I, Spy" that had a character who could speak any language. One of the two "good guy" spies was played by Bill Cosby, and if the team encountered some "bad guy" spy that spoke Inuit or Hausa Cosby could question him until he broke in his own language. I always wanted to speak a foreign language well, not just to understand but to pass for a native. I never got to be fluent in any foreign language. I got pretty close at one time in German. In University I performed in plays that were given in German, and we took the plays on the road to various towns in Texas that at that time rarely heard a word of English – places like Fredricksburg, New Braunfels, and Giddings. Even after graduating from UT I used my German pretty regularly in Europe. I also took a year of French from Berlitz and a year of Arabic from Berlitz, but in no one of the three languages did I become fluent. Even in German as the Germans were applauding the "perfection" of my language it was not difficult to see the slight twitching of their mouths that told me they were lying through their teeth just to be polite. The French didn’t even bother to be polite about it, nor did the Arabs. Charles Berlitz is said to be fluent in twenty five languages, and I have a grandson who is fluent in seven (although I think he pulls our leg a bit). So fluency in one or more foreign languages is another desire that I will have to forego.
CRAFTSMANSHIP — Most of you may not even know that I cherished the ambition to be a physician. How lucky is the local populace that this dream did not come true. I am no craftsman. I think I could learn the science of any trade, but the art is another story. I was at one time the Tool Engineer in charge of all welded and machined assemblies at TEMCO Aircraft. It was the assignment that meant more to my advancement in the company than any other task I ever had. I was spectacularly successful in this job as a welding and machining engineer. The CEO of the company introduced me for years as "the man who built the welded bulkhead". Children, the sum total of all the weld bead I have ever laid in my life is approximately one and one-half inches. But I can still quote nearly sixty years later most of the provisions of BAC5932 welding specification and only recently have lost the ability tell you the composition of 4140 alloy steel.
But all my life I have longed for the facility and ability to DO what I know about. I could tell by looking at a bead that the welder had carried too large or too small a puddle or had the wrong angle on the electrode or a dozen other faults in his technique, but I couldn’t lay that bead myself. I have a maternal uncle who could make anything with his hands and a paternal uncle who was a precision machinist. I think this experience was one reason that I wanted to build my own house out here on the Brazos, and with the exception of the fireplace and the tile work I did just that. Anyway, craftsmanship is not my long suit. Good thing I didn’t go into brain surgery. I can just hear myself making excuses to the grieving relatives.
OPTIMISM VERSUS PESSIMISM – I am an incurable optimist. By the time I have studied a project in detail and determined just how something should be done it is very difficult for me to allow that it might be impossible to do it. This is a management fault. A little pessimism is a good thing. It makes a poor mix with leadership, but it sometimes means that while you might not win on this project if you quit it now, you may live to fight again. There is a time not to swim upstream to the island but to float downstream to the log but I never liked to give up trying to get to the island.
So those are the most major faults to my composition that have plagued me these four score years. List all ye who read, and be wise. Now if it is in your mind to feel sorry for me because of the frequency and stringency of these faults, well just forget it. My list of attributes and good things is several times this long.
MODESTY – I will frankly admit that I am too modest in judgment of my capabilities and talents.
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