A meditation on missed opportunities
By John Timothy
The Dedication
The late afternoon sunlight streams through the branches of the huge old California live oaks and glints off the raised brass lettering of the plaque. Years after the dedication, these words — "Stockton swimmers," in particular — seem to me a little quaint.
But the people at that dedication ceremony in 1948 were thinking of specific young men they had known, men who didn’t come back from World War II—beautiful young men who swam in the rivers and canals and small community swimming pools of the San Joaquin Valley. In 1948 it was easy to remember them, to see them in their bathing suits with their strong young bodies, horsing around in the water with their kid sisters or with their girlfriends, laughing.
Those young men would never again swim in this magnificent pool.
Now I’m pacing around the perimeter of the pool to take a rough measurement of its size. It seems to be double Olympic length, and wide in proportion. There are high and low boards, spacious changing rooms, a snack bar, a grassy area for sunbathing—all set in a large verdant city park, a typical feature of Central Valley towns.
In grief and remembrance the people of Stockton built this pool. Post-war America was mourning its dead.
Yet, with the Depression and the War finally behind them, people felt optimistic and confident and excited about the future and its possibilities. The word "community" still made sense: we had come through hard times together, and we were going to build something together—a better, more prosperous society. Many of the great public buildings and other facilities we use today are a legacy of the spirit of the late 40’s and early 50’s.
I was a child of this era.
Swimming in Stockton
I grew up in Stockton. Today I’m back in my old home town for the day. I’ve finished my music gig at the shopping mall, and I’ve decided to check out some of my old stompin’ grounds. Though I now live in Oakland, less than two hours west of Stockton, in the last 20 years I’ve only passed through Stockton without stopping, on my way to somewhere else. I have no friends or family here. But today I’ve decided to be a tourist in my own past.
My junior high buddies and I used to bicycle over to Oak Park Pool almost every night in the summer for night swimming. We were cool: doing can-openers off the high dive, looking down girls’ bathing suit tops, and seeing how far we could swim underwater through the eerie blue glow of the big porthole-shaped underwater lights. Afterwards we’d buy nine tiny burgers for a dollar at White Castle and split them three ways. I was a smart-ass kid, self-confident and happy.
But times have changed. As I look through the chain-link fence, I see there’s no water in Oak Park Pool. The gates are locked. The diving boards have been taken down. The steel ladders have been unbolted and pulled up onto the deck.
What’s going on? Maybe they haven’t opened the pool yet for the season. But it’s the middle of May and it’s sure as hell hot enough for a swim! More likely, Stockton (like everywhere else) is in a severe financial crunch, and the Parks & Rec budget has been slashed.
But more disturbing than the apparent financial crisis is the spiritual crisis: everywhere we have lost that shared feeling of confidence and optimism about the future. And we’ve lost the sense of community—the comfort that we’re all in this together.
That there is trash all over the ground in Oak Park is due more to a general lack of personal responsibility than to cutbacks in park staffing. People just don’t care any more. Maybe that’s why the dedication on the plaque sounds so quaint: people so rarely make personal sacrifices for the community these days, and they are seldom honored when they do.
Looking at My Life
But even more disturbing to me than the collapse of society is the collapse of my personal life.
Over the past two years I’ve gradually awakened from a kind of dreamlike unconsciousness to find that a crazy person has been running my life for a long, long time!
I’m living in a warehouse full of cardboard boxes full of junk. My finances are a mess: my income isn’t meeting expenses, I’m in debt, I haven’t filed my income taxes in years. I have no health insurance and no retirement plan. There’s no woman in my life. I haven’t done anything creative in my music for years.
I seem to have lost my story about myself: you know, the story that we all keep telling ourselves about ourselves over and over and over—the story about our past, about who we are now and where we’re going? Well, I no longer believe my old story. And I haven’t replaced it with a new one.
The other thing that has happened is that I no longer believe the myth of the unitary personality: the myth that there is one person, "John Timothy." I still behave to the outer world most of the time as if that were the case, but it’s just an act; I don’t believe it myself. To myself, I seem to be a collection of many different personalities.
I’m dragging myself through life, trying to pay the bills and, out of a vestigial sense of personal responsibility, trying to keep the commitments I’ve already made. My enthusiasms are few, and they are as transparent and meaningless to me as jellyfish. It’s very hard to get out of bed in the morning.
So this little tour of my old haunts on a warm afternoon is not just a stroll down Memory Lane. I’m desperately searching for some kind of thread that will lead me out of the labyrinth.
School Days
I leave Oak Park and I drive three and a half miles back to the old neighborhood. Madison Elementary School is still there. It’s painted institutional beige now instead of institutional green. The "temporary" portable classrooms from my school days are still in use. Occasionally in my dreams I’m back at Madison, walking those halls, heading for the cafeteria or for Mrs. Lussenden’s room.
California used to have the best public school system in the country; that, too, came from the optimism and commitment of the 40s and 50s. I was a beneficiary of that system. So, how come I’m not successful?
It’s Saturday. The classrooms are empty. But even if I walked in on a weekday, there’s nobody here now who would remember me. When you’re 20 or 25 you can go back and maybe find one of your old teachers. But not when you’re over 50.
I know Mrs. Lussenden is gone; she was old even in those days. Looking back, I see that she was the first of many people who tried to mentor me. She wanted to steer me towards writing. She turned me on to the adventure stories of Howard Pease. Pease was a local writer and an adventurer, or at least a traveler; his books were about the sea and far-off mysterious ports of call.
I see now that many people in my life offered to mentor me in one way or another, or were available for that if I had only asked. But I was stubborn and headstrong, wanted to do it my own way, and had no idea what “mentoring” was or why it might be valuable.
In elementary school, I was a dreamer and a goof-off. But by high school I’d become interested in the challenge of academics. I had motivation, focus, discipline and self-confidence, and I brought all these to bear on my studies. Why have those qualities slipped away from me? What has happened to my character?
Two years ago, I was forced to admit to myself that my 20-year mission of making a living as a musician had failed. I had no one to blame but myself. I had not been able to apply the intelligence and discipline I once had to either my music or my finances.
The Adventures of Boys
I leave Madison School and head over to the old railroad bridge—really my main destination on this tour. This was the "magical" place that belonged just to us kids. Two or three times a week a local freight train lumbered over the bridge that spanned little Smith’s Canal. The bridge itself was not a drawbridge but a turning bridge. The whole bridge rested on a big concrete block in the center of the canal; huge machinery beneath the bridge stood ready to pivot the whole bridge 90 degrees horizontally so that a sailboat, for example, could pass through on either side.
Of course, nobody had ever actually seen this happen. The rumor was that the bridge had been opened just once after the war to allow a yacht to pass upstream a few blocks to American Legion Park, where Smith Canal ended in a little lake. This was supposedly part of a big celebration welcoming the troops home; an admiral or somebody important was on the yacht.
My buddies and I climbed all over this bridge. I don’t know if we actually hunkered down among the huge gears as the freight train rumbled directly over us or if I just imagined doing that—imagined it so often and with such emotion that it has become as vivid as memory in my mind.
Near the bridge on both sides of the canal were wonderful open fields of tall, grassy weeds, a perfect setting for dirt-clod wars. The only building nearby was a big mysterious factory with its own rail siding. As I drive into the area, I quickly notice that the fields are gone, the factory is gone, and even the railroad tracks are gone. Suburbia has taken over completely. Can I even reach the canal without trespassing through somebody’s backyard?
I find one last section that has been subdivided, but where not every lot has been built on yet. I park my truck and walk through the remnants of the old fields and up the bank of the canal. But the old bridge is gone too! What a massive project that must have been to tear it out.
When the last open fields are paved over, when all the railroad tracks are torn up and all the bridges are torn down, where will the young boys go to get away from the adults and just be boys?
Hanging out together on the bridge, my friends and I talked about many things, including, as we got older, the mysteries of girls and sex. This was one arena in which I had some success during my 20s and 30s. But I haven’t been able to find that permanent relationship that I have been open to for so long. Three years ago I met a woman I wanted to marry, but she dumped me after a year. I still don’t know why; all she could say was that she didn’t feel comfortable. Maybe she just figured out how crazy I really am.
Walking back to the truck I marvel at how even something as massive as a railroad bridge can disappear without a trace. The wild anise, though, still grows among the tall grass of these fields; its licorice smell was part of the magic of this place. And the feisty crows still voice their outraged complaints when you enter their territory. Nature somehow hangs on.
Before I leave town I want to drive by the old house on Marine Avenue.
A Happy Childood…and a Troubling Revelation
I had a happy childhood. Our family had a lot of fun together. And my parents loved each other and stayed faithfully married until they died. (I didn’t appreciate how rare that was until I went away to college and talked to other young adults about their childhoods.)
At least, that’s the story I’ve been telling myself all these years. But, as I said, I no longer believe my old story. Because if my childhood was so great, why in hell is my life so screwed up now? Isn’t a happy childhood supposed to be the basis for a happy and successful adult life?
My mom died in 1977; my dad in 1983. Just before he died, Dad confessed to my sister Ellen that he had carried on a long love affair with a woman during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Mom, I’m sure, never found out, as she would certainly have blown up! Apparently Dad kept this affair going even after the woman moved to San Jose. He only called it off when Mom first came down with breast cancer. Whether his guilt finally got to him or he simply wanted to devote more of his energies to caring for Mom, I don’t know.
It was just three years ago that my sister told me about Dad’s confession to her years before. I was pissed off that Dad had told her but he hadn’t told me. I was angry at his recklessness: he had put the family at risk. Even as I write these words I still feel the anger and confusion. I haven’t yet made my peace with this revelation. This is part of the interior work that I still must do.
The Old Homestead
I turn the corner onto Marine Avenue, and I am happy to see the old pine tree still standing in front of the house. High up in its branches my friends and I built a platform from scrap lumber. At night we would sit up there and throw water balloons down at unsuspecting passers-by.
The big redwood fence Dad and I built is gone, replaced by an ugly little chain-link fence. The house is basically the same, but there are obvious differences: someone has added a new garage and most of the stuff in the yard is new.
But the fruit trees that Dad planted are still there, and they look great! Of course, the people who live there now don’t know that those trees were planted by Art Timothy. But I know.
What else remains of Mom and Dad besides a few anonymous fruit trees and a lot of memories? What else did they leave behind?
Everything disappears: swimming pools, railroad bridges, teachers, parents, friends, lovers. Even the wild anise and the crows and the fruit trees all will vanish. Maybe the only thing that matters, ultimately, is a few good years of happy family life.
Into the Ashes
My sisters, both younger than me, have successfully started families. I haven’t. I received the blessings of growing up in a good family environment, but I didn’t turn around and create that environment for anyone else. I didn’t pass on the legacy.
Nor have I composed any music—or written anything lasting—or done any great civic deed—that will outlast me. It seems that I grew up in the best of times, with every advantage, and I’ve done nothing with what I was given. I haven’t even planted a fruit tree.
There’s nothing left for me in Stockton. I could go on and on about stuff that happened, and people I knew, and emotions I felt, but so what? It’s just another meaningless story. So I get back onto the freeway and drive off into the setting sun.
This afternoon spent in the old stompin’ grounds has turned out to be just one more step in my descent into the ashes. There are many more steps to go; I know each one will be more difficult and painful than the last.
When I read Robert Bly’s description of "ashes work" I thought, well, that’s cool, you go through that process and come out the other side, and you feel better, more complete, more truly alive. But my sense now, in the middle of that process, is that it’s a long spiral staircase downward, with no way out, or through, or back. And at the very bottom, the very last step of all ... is death.
A Return Visit
Some time later I drove back to Stockton with a friend to take some photos for this article. Oak Park Pool was open, and people were enjoying it. The high dive was gone, though; it had been replaced by a second low board. The park itself was full of extended families and little communities picnicking peacefully together.
Out at the canal there was a guy fishing near the former railroad bridge. We drove around to the opposite bank to get a better picture. It was impossible to tell exactly where the bridge had been; the right of way on both sides had been flattened out, and houses had been built in their place. The blackberry bushes, though, still grew thick along the canal bank. Their fruit was warm and sweet, and the occasional path through them down to the water hinted that maybe local boys were still having adventures.
Back at Marine Avenue, the pomegranates were beginning to ripen on the tree my father planted.
My descent has seemed to be endless. But at least I now see the possibility that at the bottom lies not death, but simply a solid place to stand. And, from which, the only way is up.
Afterword
I wrote this 30+ years ago. The reader may recognize the signs of undiagnosed depression. Eventually my men’s team gifted me with a session with a clinical psychologist. The diagnosis was dysthymia—the “walking pneumonia” of depressive disorders. [See DSM-5.] After some therapy and lots of personal work, I learned how to manage that condition. And I still like to swim.
Key Take-aways:
The ”Greatest Generation’s” sense of community seems to have withered.
My parents provided me with many benefits that I have failed to take advantage of.
A disappointing past does not preclude a promising future.