By this point, it’s all become tiresome anyway, because the entire range of thought varies from wishful thinking to doomsaying to educated guesses. Few want to admit that we don’t know what’s to come, but that’s not the kind of thing that gets readers or prompts buzz on social media. We crave certainty and hard answers, but one of the scariest things about life is that there are times when we just don’t know, period. And that lack of knowledge about what’s ahead has prompted some people in my circles to be worried, angry or otherwise highly concerned. At least one person I know has moved overseas, and I’ve heard rumblings from others that they have considered it. And if I had a dollar for every comparison I’ve read or heard between this moment and (insert gloomy historical precedent here), well, I’d be leaving motor yachts as tips.

Now, honesty compels me to admit that I’m not thrilled about how things turned out, any more than I was the first time around. But I’m looking at things with some perspective. As a historian, I know that movements ebb and flow, and at some point this wave we’re in now is going to crest and break, and things will swing the other direction. It always does. We just don’t know when it will happen. (I remember thinking in 1993 that we were finally seeing a new generation, one closer to my own, finally getting an opportunity and that the future was limitless. My generation was about to get its chance and we were going to change the world. Well, we know how that turned out.)

I’m also conditioned by the fact that I grew up in, and still live in, a state whose government is in miniature what the new/returning administration would like to enact nationwide. Ours is a state in which, any time a law or a ruling comes down that’s the least bit progressive, our state’s attorney general (who wants to become governor so much it’s written all over him) is among those immediately filing a lawsuit to stop it. Very little of this is new to me, and I know how to adapt to what may be to come.

Even beyond this, it’s that I’m long past weary of the burlesque that so much of life has become, and how the burlesque of popular culture has infected our governance. This has bothered me for a long time: that part of the process of choosing our leaders, the people who would have to answer that phone call at 3 a.m., involves how willing you are to dance on camera with a talk show host, or the quality of your campaign’s memes, or any of that business. But now it’s gone beyond even that: that you must out-patriotic the other guy, must out-respect-the-military the other guy, must out-religious the other guy, must deliver the coldest put-downs, and now you have to be willing to deploy four-letter words in public…it goes on and on. I’ll write more about this someday, when I can organize my thoughts about it, but it’s been exhausting seeing things that I have quietly revered all my life be hijacked in the name of financial or political profit, or otherwise fall victim to this societal burlesque. And once that burlesque pays off, the culture coarsens that much more, and good luck moving whatever it was back to what it was before.

More than that, though, it’s that I’m a pragmatist. Even if I don’t care for what’s about to happen, I have responsibilities here. In a week or so, I will have classes to teach and television programs to produce and students to look after. I have responsibilities to my family. And I also have responsibilities here. After all the years and all the money we’ve plowed into our little homestead out in the woods, we can’t afford to just up and walk away from all that. We wouldn’t want to, anyway. Too much of our lives are invested here. Moreover, I have as much of a stake in this state and this country as anybody else.

Maybe some folks would say I’m giving up. To me, it’s embracing reality. It’s the Stockdale Paradox in action. It’s accepting the realities, being clear-eyed about them, and finding the best way to move ahead. And it’s also knowing that even with the stuff going on at levels far beyond my own, there’s an awful lot of things that need my attention closer to home. I’m no good to my students and colleagues unless I do my job there, and that’s a ton of work in itself. I’m no good to my family unless I do my part for them. And I’m also no good as a citizen unless I participate as I can, vote when the elections come around, make my voice heard when it needs to be heard, help those in my community who need it. All the platitudes and good intentions in the world won’t matter if I don’t back those good intentions with the work of my own hands and heart. In sum, I have plenty with which to keep my hands full, and to be part of that fifth column of decency I mentioned some time ago.

And, even beyond that, it’s the long view. I know that no matter what happens in the public sphere, it’s not going to change how the birds land in our back yard and search for the seed we’ve scattered for them. It’s not going to keep my cat from demanding to sit in my lap any time I’m in my recliner. It’s not going to repeal gravity or change the laws of aerodynamics. It’s not going to change how gorgeous Rita Hayworth was in three-strip Technicolor.

Even more, I think about how the last four years seems to have passed in a blur, about how life seems simultaneously so long and so short, especially the older I get. It becomes a blur. Something I remember feels like only yesterday, but on cross-checking it I realize it was three years ago. The days pass into weeks, the weeks into months, and the next thing you know another year has passed. It’s sobering. And you realize, especially as you begin to lose those closest to you, that life is too short to spend it with a cloud over your head.

Moments like the one we’re in now, when the long view is so necessary, and when life will go on regardless of what happens at the macro level, make me think of what the eminent historian Will Durant wrote:

Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts — between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks.

Life will go on. So will we.

As I write this, I’m in a hotel room in Athens, Georgia, a stone’s throw from the University of Georgia’s main campus. Tomorrow morning, I’m meeting with an archivist who works with the huge media library over here, hoping to get guidance on some projects that some associates and I have in the works.

The fact I’m over here on business makes this visit an exception. Most of the time, I’m over here for my own purposes. Many times it’s been to visit my friend Bobby, who now lives just a short drive from downtown. Other times, though, I’m over here to chase some ghosts. And every time I come over here, there are that many more ghosts to chase.

Once upon a time I wanted to live here. For some reason, I decided during the first half of my junior year that I wanted to go on to graduate school. I’m not sure I knew why. I think a friend and I had talked about it, and I wanted in, especially since it would give me a chance to get out of the nest. I still remember the night I told my mother, as we browsed in the housewares section of a massive hardware store during a particularly enjoyable shopping trip a couple weekends before Christmas. I started planning from there.

There were several universities on my mind. The most obvious was the University of South Carolina. I mean, it was right there in the middle of my home state. However, my mentor and unofficial adviser at Lander told me that going to my home state’s university for graduate work could confine my prospects. He said I should expand my horizons, and suggested Vanderbilt and Wright State, among others. Intrigued, I sent away for information and added those to the roster.

But somehow my heart got set on the University of Georgia. Location had a lot to do with it. I knew of Athens, and my dad often listened to a country station from there (WNGC, which provided us with our weekly dose of “Leonard’s Losers” – get me outta here, Percy!), but had never been there. It was far enough away for me to have independence (important, given that I was spending my college years still living at home, with most every move benevolently but still carefully watched by my parents, if not the whole tiny town) and yet not too far away. And, to be honest, the town’s reputation as a haven for independent types, artists and oddballs appealed to me. Now, granted, the Athens of the mid-’90s was nothing like the Athens of those not-so-long-ago days that spawned R.E.M. and any number of others, but it still appealed to me.

So, plans got made. I started getting things lined up, taking the Graduate Record Exam and having my scores sent to the appropriate places, getting applications in before deadline. And in the summer of 1995, not long after I graduated, my mother and I drove over to Athens for the day, just to look around town. It was a long drive through rolling hills and beautiful countrysides before we got to this odd city that seemed to be on top of a hill. We parked and wandered around, going into quirky little shops, stopping in an art gallery where several photographers (including Michael Stipe) had their works on display, having lunch at a neat sandwich shop across from the university campus. We went over to campus and I spent an hour or so in the massive stacks of the library, making photocopies (remember those?) of sections of books that I never knew existed, on topics that fascinated me. I couldn’t put my finger on why Athens held me in thrall, at least not in a way I could express that others would understand, and at one point my emotions boiled over into a flash of impatience toward my mother that, though I will always regret it, is typical for someone who’s in their early 20s and feeling frustrated. I was caught, I suppose, between being in a place that represented possibility and being in the company of someone who represented the world I was trying to escape.

The year after I finished college turned out to be what we’d now call a “gap year.” It wasn’t planned that way, but that’s what happened. I didn’t have any job prospects or anything lined up. (It turned out to be a good thing, for I spent much of that time off fighting a case of depression that, now that I look back, I’m amazed I made it through with my mind intact.) But one day the phone rang. It was a professor in the history department at UGA. They were looking at applications. Was I interested in starting in January? Oh, was I ever. But I knew so much would have to happen in a big hurry. The finances would have to get squared. I’d have to find a place to live. I’d have to move a couple of mountains. I had to conclude that although I would love to, I wasn’t in a position where I was honestly prepared to do it, and I declined with regret. So, on I went, with Georgia as my primary focus and South Carolina as my safety school, with visions in my head of moving off to Athens the next August to start my new life.

Well, not so fast. In the mail one Saturday arrives a letter from Athens: thanks, but no thanks on admission for Fall. I was heartbroken. I’d just been offered a slot a few months before, and now I’m chopped liver. What gives? My mother took me to lunch, and in our booth at the Huddle House the next town over, I stewed and considered next steps. The next week, I wrote back (by postal mail – remember, this was the mid-1990s, and e-mail had yet to make it to our tiny town) and expressed my displeasure over this perceived inconsistency. Why was I okay for January but suddenly no good? In full early-20s righteous indignance, certain that I was getting the shaft (and blissfully unaware of how admission processes actually work in high-demand programs), I demanded an investigation. Which, obviously, did not turn out in my favor, as a very polite letter a few weeks later explained.

South Carolina did want me, though, and I made my peace with that. In August I moved to Columbia and started graduate work at the big university. And it’s funny how life works: you don’t get what you want, but you end up finding what you really needed. That first semester, I met people I’d never have met otherwise. I built some friendships that last to this day. I had faculty members whose example showed me how to do the job I have now (and at least one faculty member whose example showed me what to never let myself become). This was doubly so when, after a year in the graduate history program, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in journalism instead. As I quickly found out, it wasn’t as easy as changing majors as an undergraduate, and I’m still boggled by how naive I was to think it could be. Be that as it may, the folks in the J-school were kind enough to help, and the basement of the Carolina Coliseum, with its windowless offices and classrooms, became my new home. I’ve often felt those were some of the best days of my life, and some part of me will always yearn for those times. Those were days when I was with classmates with whom I seemed to click, when I had professors who really saw something in me that I had yet to see myself, and when things just felt happy. And to think: had I gotten in at UGA, I’d have never had that. (Heck, I might not have survived it.)

None of that stopped me from driving over to Athens every now and then, though. Maybe I couldn’t get in as a student, but it was a nifty day trip and I could visit favorite haunts: not only could I spend hours in the library, but I could browse at Wuxtry Records and Jackson Street Books, enjoy a sandwich at Yudy’s, visit any number of the interesting little shops along the streets, and generally indulge the latent bohemian inside me for a little while. It was all of the pleasure of living the daydream without the reality of actually living there, and it was fun. You get to know the landmarks, and you love it while you have it, and you hope it can stay that way forever – for the heart is sentimental, sometimes foolishly so.

At the turn of the century, life took me to another part of the country. I was back a year later, to take up the job I now have, but it took four more years for me to get back to the little town with the big university. AEJMC was having its regional conference in Athens, I needed to attend conferences to build up my tenure and promotion portfolio, and so it all came together. In early March of 2005 I drove into town for the first time in nearly six years. Athens had been fixed in my mind as it was the last time I saw it. But as I drove along Broad Street, things…well, they didn’t look right. Yudy’s was gone; on its exterior was now the logo of a nationwide coffee chain. So too were gone a number of the quirky little taverns and shops I remembered. Slowly, the eccentricity was giving way to the chains. At least the Holiday Inn, which was hosting the conference, was still on that weird split-level lot. I pulled in, got my room, and then hiked up the hill to a pizza joint on Broad Street. After that, I walked over to Jackson Street Books, where I happily prowled the shelves and brought back a couple of treasures, and I spent the evening reading away, happy as could be.

If being away for five years was a shock, it was far more so when I came back nine years later. Bobby had invited me over for a visit to his home, back when he lived a few miles over, and then to dinner in Athens with a friend of his, a former network correspondent who now taught at the university. So much more had changed, so much more had become streamlined and franchised. There were signs, still, of the old Athens – Wuxtry Records remained, proud and unbowed, exactly as I remembered – but the town I had known was slipping away, ever more.

Every time I’ve been back, something else has been missing. Jackson Street Books closed in the middle of the last decade, as the realities of the weird new world of commerce proved too much for an independent bookstore to overcome. The Holiday Inn that I stayed at two decades ago is now an empty lot, soon to host yet another of the gigantic construction projects taking place around town. (I’m writing this from the Holiday Inn Express a couple blocks west, which replaced it.) Tall hotels and apartment complexes now flank the uphill approach to Broad Street. The Varsity, which used to be just outside town, is closed. The university itself, as all large universities seem to these days, has expanded its footprint and huge new buildings have appeared in places I remember as sleepy blocks of town. (Although Wuxtry Records remains – bless them – and it’s become a ritual for me to buy another t-shirt when I’m in the store. I can never have enough Wuxtry t-shirts.)

I know it’s progress. I know that you can’t want a place to remain the same forever. I also know that a place rightfully belongs not to the sentiments of those who cast their hopes elsewhere, but to the people who live there now. It belongs to them, and not to the “remember when” types.

It all comes back to that line about “I’m going over there to chase some ghosts.” I think I mean it not just because I miss Yudy’s or Jackson Street Books or any of the other places that amazed and amused back then. I think I also do it because, inside, I miss the times that those places represent. I miss the optimism of the kid who loved visiting those places, and a time in my life when it seemed all things were possible. Or maybe I over-romanticize those times because, when you know how the story turns out, memory becomes a luxury. Time and sentiment can sand the rough edges off the past’s realities and uncertainties. Plus, when your present reality has its own uncertainties and scary moments, it provides a distraction. (Memory is both blessing and curse, isn’t it?)

But I have to remember, always, that what didn’t go my way three decades ago made possible all the wonders my life has now. Change one thing – no matter how insignificant you think it was – and it doesn’t play out the same. It’s possible that if UGA had let me in three decades ago, I’d be a best-selling historian or some media darling, dividing my time between my homes in various parts of the world. Or it’s just as likely that it could have gone the other way and I’d be working in a box factory somewhere. And yet I wouldn’t want to trade that coin flip for what I have now: a life that, for all its weird angles and worries and things yet to be fulfilled, still provides a lot of contentment and contains an awful lot of love. It feels the way an honestly good life should, and it all happened because things didn’t go my way.

The rest? It’s a nice place to visit, and in my reveries I often do.

But I’m not sure I would live there.

And really, it’s silly. It’s not like there’s some kind of physical, perceptible transition; it’s not like a car crossing over a set of tracks. While we humans make much ado about it, the creatures of nature will carry on with no regard for this human-created milestone. I can’t help thinking this dread is silly, but it’s the same dread I feel about being given a blank piece of paper and being told to create something; instead of thinking about all the possibilities, I feel the empty space and think not only about the vastness of the journey, but of all the ways things could go wrong.

Which is funny, given that 2024 was a wringer of a year for me. I’ve not been fond of the word “bittersweet” but I can’t think of a word to better describe 2024. I’ve had some really peak experiences, done some things I never thought I’d get to do, and had some good times with some really good people. I’ve gone to new places. I had to push myself to take on new challenges and ended up learning new things about myself, and what had scared me turned out to be exhilarating.

But I’ve also suffered losses in 2024. Some of them are the kinds of losses you’re likely to suffer the older you get, but it doesn’t make them hurt less. My mother was in the emergency room the very first day of the year, and the first 13 days of January were a series of ups and downs, until the biggest heart I’ve ever known in my life finally gave out. For years I had known it was going to happen at some point, but no matter how much you intellectually prepare, you can’t foretell the emotional hit. Thankfully, our family came together, did the hard stuff we had to do, made sure Dad didn’t fall into an emotional hole, and we survived.

In my own mind, it’s been an odyssey. The first two weeks of the year were off-and-on feelings of dread, preparing for what could happen. On that last day, as my feelings sank, I began to brace. When the word finally came…well, my grief let go in a very quick burst. And then I focused on what needed doing. It’s how I work through what distresses me. I adapted better than I imagined, although there have been some moments.

That said, that opening led to others. So much of 2024 has been about re-evaluating what I thought I knew. It’s involved the kind of hard work that doesn’t allow for shortcuts. I’ve had to realize a lot of things I thought I knew weren’t really so, and that a lot of assumptions I’d made were faulty. To get into the weeds on this would not only go more deeply personal than I care to in a public forum, but would bore you to tears, so I’ll only say that this year and this journey led me to take lessons from James Stockdale, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius; led me to realize the truth that while I cannot control events, I can control how I react to them; and if I focus on what I can control, that will keep me busy enough.

If I could say 2024 was uniformly sad, it would be useful for sorting purposes, but it would be inaccurate. I’d have to leave out the weirdness of a trip I made in February with a lift-gate truck, during which I took custody of four priceless pieces of broadcast history. I’d have to leave out the surprise invitation to media day at Dollywood in early March, which not only let me drive through gorgeous scenery on the trip up, but provided the priceless opportunity to be a few rows away from the Queen herself as she addressed all we media types in attendance. I’d have to leave out that strange, hurried but exhilarating trip to Philadelphia to visit the flagship. I’d have to leave out a surprise weekend trip to New York, sitting at an edit station inside ABC as that morning’s Good Morning America was underway. I’d have to leave out helping a colleague get a book published. I’d have to leave out a lot of moments that brought me happiness.

Some years, you look back on as halcyon days. Other years, you look back on and think “however bad things are now, at least they’re not as bad as they were then.” I don’t know if I’ll look at 2024 that way, but I am reasonably confident I’ll look back and think of this year as a stern teacher – the kind of teacher who made your life difficult, but over time you realize the value of what you learned.

And yes, 2024 taught me some lessons. Valuable lessons.

But I sure am hoping that 2025 will be more gentle.

Each year the familiar Christmas specials would run, and we knew it was the season when Charlie Brown and Rudolph would make their annual appearance, when Santa would ride through town in a Norelco shaver head and the Hershey’s Kisses would ring out “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” (To this day, those commercials – and the Corona ad with the whistled “O Christmas Tree” – are the only Christmas ads I genuinely love.)

Our church would host various things. We’d usually stage a Christmas pageant of some sort. For many years it was a retelling of the Christmas story, with most of the labor coming from our Methodist Youth Fellowship group. A couple of older kids playing Mary and Joseph, three adult men portraying the three kings (and singing “We Three Kings” as they processed down the aisle toward the manger), and the rest of us in MYF would get the usual bit non-speaking parts as angels or shepherds.

Each year our family gathered for a Christmas dinner, often at my grandparents’ tiny house. We’d have drawn names a few weeks before for a gift exchange, and after dinner we’d swap gifts. It could be a handful but it was good to see everyone, and seldom did it lack for entertainment, especially as the number of cousins increased and the younger ones got into mischief.

My parents would often go Christmas shopping. One of my mother’s love languages was giving, and she was always looking for one more neat thing to put under the tree for somebody. Often my brother and I would go with them, although we’d be in another department of the store (or another store in the mall) while they looked for gifts. When my brother got old enough and set out on his own, I’d often go along on these trips. All the stores would be festive and the local mall would be all decorated. It was exciting. There was anticipation. Sometimes on Christmas Eve I’d stay up late and watch NBC’s feed of the Christmas Mass from the Vatican, and even this small-town Methodist could feel the power and importance of that moment each year.

And when Christmas Day got here, it was the payoff. All of a sudden, so many wishes had come true, and there were so many goodies to compete for my attention. It was complete overload. My mother would spend much of the morning in the kitchen making all kinds of food: sausage pinwheels, ham biscuits, all sorts of stuff for the family and for visitors to graze on throughout the day. In the evening my grandparents would stop by for a visit, having spent the day visiting all the rest of the family, and they’d unwind with us for a couple hours before heading home for the night. When the last festivities were done, I’d collect my goodies and head to my room and enjoy them, trying not to get sad about this happy day coming to an end. Sometimes there would be a little sadness the next day or so, with all the excitement gone and now life was getting back to normal.

I have so many vivid memories of Christmas past. There was the year my brother was so ill with a cold/throat thing, coughing so hard that he stayed up sick all night; I was too keyed-up to get back to sleep, and so I stayed up all night and played with what Santa had left for me, which meant I spent most of the next day tired and grouchy. The next year, I got my very first computer (a Commodore VIC-20, which I still have), along with a whole bunch of old-time radio cassettes, and I remember so many happy days of coding programs into the computer (which would be wiped the moment I turned the machine off, since I had no storage device) while listening to radio programs from yesteryear. One year in the run-up to Christmas, we went on a shopping trip where the city’s shopping mall had a temporary shop set up selling old magazines, and I went positively crazy buying old copies of Life Magazine. I can’t think of a Christmas season from way back when that doesn’t have happiness associated with it.

But something happened. And, as with all things, it wasn’t abrupt. Some of it had to have come with growing up and growing older, with taking on the responsibilities of adulthood, the difference between being a passenger and actually having to do the driving, and Christmas becomes one more thing you have to manage in between all the others. (I can’t imagine what it would be like if we had kids.) And over the years, of course, you lose people. Some move away. Some pass away. This year will be the first Christmas without my mom, and I’ll only say the sense of reality will be heightened as a result.

It’s beyond just that. Every year, I’ve watched Christmas turn that much more into an industry, and with it the lines of demarcation have eroded. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas used to be this special zone, and Thanksgiving was a distinct holiday, enjoyed in its own right. Now Thanksgiving is more like a speedbump, and in my mind it’s the Rodney Dangerfield of holidays. It’s this pro forma prelude to the hyper-intense, mandatory-fun portion of the already months-long Christmas season that now seems to crank up even before Halloween.

The buildup is made even more unbearable by how aggressive it’s become. Radio stations that switch to an all-Christmas format six weeks before the day itself, for instance (and if I can barely make it through one rendition of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” without screaming, hearing it several times a day is going to drive me straight to a mental institution). The people popping up on television with ugly sweaters and aggressive smiles and over-cheery holiday greetings. (Don’t even get me started on the ads for matching pajamas for the whole family.) The aggressive trend-chasing. It’s to the point where the sound of jingle bells in the background is like nails on a chalkboard.

My issue isn’t with Christmas itself. That, itself, I love. What I can’t take is what it’s been turned into. I know why it’s happened; some of it is cold profit, while some of it’s just been the kind of creep that happens in cultural phenomena. But the outcome of it has been this increasingly aggressive “it’s the Christmas season and we will remind you of it every few minutes! And we will aggressively show you HOW it should be done! And in case you don’t get the point, we will pipe in the sounds of jingle bells!” (I’m not even going to get into how Christmas has been twisted into yet another front in the increasingly all-encompassing culture wars, as our national dialogue – and, for that matter, seemingly everything about public life – continues to get contorted into an increasingly grotesque form of burlesque.) The more aggressive you are about something that you want me to enjoy, the more I retreat from it – and past a certain point, it approaches hostility.

(Side note: It’s much the same reason I avoided the “Must See TV” programs from NBC in the 1990s: the more aggressively you market it, the more it dominates the sphere, the more self-satisfied you present yourself as being, the less I am likely to want it. Friends was 30 years ago and I’ve never watched an episode, and have no plans to. I’m sure it’s a fine program, and I appreciate what it means to a lot of people. In my case, though, it was just so aggressively marketed and so culturally dominant back then that it turned me completely off. And maybe I’m still miffed because My So-Called Life was up against it and therefore never stood a chance.)

No, what I miss is the kind of Christmas that had some room to breathe. I miss Christmas as this quiet feeling of something wonderful to come, and you weren’t quite sure what it would be, but in your heart you had this warmth that assured you that whatever happened, it would be good. I miss the kind of Christmas season that found its own satisfaction in crisp December evenings, when the long shadows of mid-afternoon gave way to the darkness of early evening, when the company of a beloved friend or a family member by the fireplace was more than sufficient warmth for both body and spirit. Christmas meant the little lump in your throat when Linus recited the story of the first Christmas, or when Charlie Brown’s sad little tree was redeemed into something beautiful. And as I get older, Christmas brings back memories of people now gone from my life, from this world, and of what their presence meant, how I could never fully appreciate that until it was gone.

I miss the kind of mature Christmas that wasn’t about the material stuff. Oh, sure, you’d give some kind of little present to the people who meant something to you, but the gift was really kind of a MacGuffin. It was a token to remind people that the real gift was having them in your life, a gift you’re not going to find at any Black Friday sale or on the shelves at any big-box craft store. I miss the kind of Christmas that wasn’t about the Next Big Thing. I miss the kind of Christmas that gave you credit for being able to listen and let your own heart figure it out. (Then again, I am someone who is constantly looking for nuance and subtlety in a world where it seems everything comes drenched in Ranch dressing.) Christmas is a season of searching, of yearning. As my pal Emily once wrote, so many of the great Christmas hymns are written in minor keys and symbolize that yearning for something better.

That’s why, this time of year, the manufactured jollity and the relentless marketing and the fads and the memes only drive me away. I didn’t abandon Christmas; there’s a little porcelain tree on a table in our den (and it’s there because with two mischievous cats who get into everything, that’s all the risk we dare take). Or maybe it’s like Saturday Night Live or MAD Magazine: it was at its best when you were a kid, and all the seasons since are a disappointment. I can’t say.

All I know is, this time of year I’m looking for the simple things about the season, the things that matter most. Or maybe I’m just a distaff live-action Charlie Brown lamenting that it’s all become too commercial*, and throughout this rant I’ve been fooling myself into thinking the good old days were that good, when underneath there was as much profiteering and venality back then, and the only difference is that there’s a thousand more outlets for it now, and it’s more open, the more that public life transforms itself into a corrupt comedy. It’s probably all of that, and then some. Or maybe I’m a phony who wants it both ways.

(*Which is funny, considering that a television special that lamented how commercial Christmas has become ended up spawning no end of Christmas merchandise.)

But, still, I tune out as I can, and I search. The magic of the season is out there, somewhere, if I can drown out the din in a world that’s anything but subtle.

On the way out of town, we stopped by the cemetery to visit my mother’s gravesite. We lost her back in January, when a sudden illness took advantage of frailties she either hadn’t known about or had kept well-hidden from the rest of us. (Since she was one of the most selfless people I have ever known, and never wanted to ever be a bother to anyone, I can’t help thinking it was the latter.) Not two weeks into the new year, she was suddenly gone. Everything changed for all of us. We have mostly coped well, but as you can imagine, every family get-together now has a hole blown in it the exact size and shape of her.

My mother now rests on a hill in the town cemetery, in a site that had been bought years ago by my folks as a family burial area. A couple years back, they had a gravestone made and had a granite perimeter installed and gravel poured in. I remember the day I saw that grave marker for the first time, with my parents’ names and dates of birth, and below it the area where, someday, another date would be carved in. It was sobering, for here was a hard, cold reminder that my parents’ days on this earth would someday run out, and they had prepared. This thing I hadn’t wanted to think about? It was no longer unavoidable. I had no idea it would be needed so soon, that within a couple years that second date would be carved in. But we’re not the ones writing the script.

Family burials aren’t new to me. My great-grandmother, who lived with my great-grandfather in a house next door to my grandparents, died when I was eight. It was my first close experience with death and maybe I was too young to really grab its meaning. Two years later my great-grandfather, who had spent two years in mourning, passed away. I remember going to the visitation for him, seeing him in his casket, this man who had been so gentle to me, told me stories, sang funny songs to me, had this marvelous hearty laugh when I’d say something he thought was funny, who always had a stick of gum in the front pocket of his bib overalls that he’d tear in half and give half to me…he was now lifeless in that box, wearing his best suit on the voyage into forever. Somehow I had accepted it and yet was still numb to it. I missed him, I knew I’d never hear that laugh of his again, and yet I somehow knew there was no escaping the reality. I knew he hadn’t been well, and there was one memory of visiting him in the hospital that had genuinely scared me. Somehow I got the concept of death as release. I thought I was supposed to cry, but I was oddly logical about it. I knew crying wouldn’t bring him back.

The next time was almost a decade and a half later. My parents had to rescue my paternal grandfather, who had fallen victim to Alzheimer’s Disease, and we took care of him at home until he could get accepted at a care facility. When he passed away there early in the new year, it was more a relief than anything. The man I had known was long gone. He was buried next to the site my parents had bought for the family, and after the funeral service we gathered as a family and embraced, and many in the circle wept. Again, I couldn’t. I was sad for them, and I knew it was a grim milestone in our lives, but his passing had been a release. The man I had known was long gone before he died. I had already mourned. I was sad for my father, who grieved a man he hadn’t known that well (to make a long story short, his parents separated when he was young, and my dad wasn’t reunited with his dad until he was almost 40 years old). But I hadn’t known my grandfather that well, hadn’t seen him that often, and what I did remember of him was gone. To me the shock came not at his passing, but when my parents brought him home after rescuing him, when this man from my childhood memories was suddenly this frail shell of a man who was no longer occupying this plane. It felt, to use a phrase I sometimes overuse, like walking straight into a plate glass window.

After that, the passings came more steadily. My father-in-law died a few years later, after a long final illness. My paternal grandmother (with whom I had never really gotten along) died a few years after that. A few years later, my mother-in-law passed away. And then my maternal grandparents passed away, though I had known their days were numbered, especially my poor grandmother after a sad, decades-long struggle with progressive dementia. And thus were my parents the last line standing. Now that line is half gone, and emotionally I am preparing for the inevitable.

But, really, the relatives are only half the story of why things feel so different now when I’m back home. It’s because so many of the people I remember from the town where I grew up are now up on that hill, too. Some of them are relatives, but others were part of the fabric that made up the town I knew as a youngster: the eccentrics, the gossips, the neighbors, the people who knew how to do a particular something and could do it really well, the men who helped build the house I grew up in, the folks who were there when you needed them, no matter what it was you needed. The friend, confined to her home with chronic illness, who used to call me to talk about baseball (and whom I loved even though she was a Yankees fan), and her mother, a very sweet woman who looked like Imogene Coca. One by one, they filled the empty spaces in that graveyard. Someday, sooner rather than later, those still among us will join them.

In my younger days I’d go on long walks around town on sunny summer evenings. It let me get out of the house and also gave me some exercise. Most evenings, the far point of my journey would be the cemetery. I’d wander through the paths, stopping sometimes to visit the tombstones of people I remembered or to read decades-old inscriptions on overgrown headstones. And, often, this song would be in my head, for it captured exactly how I felt:

Sometimes I’d hear that the neighbors had noticed me walking up to the cemetery so often. In the way of small-town gossips they wondered what was behind it, as if there was something weird or occult about me being there. I’m not sure they would have bought my explanation: I was up there so often because it was peaceful there, because I was fascinated by the little clues about the lives of those who were now at rest there. I was fascinated by the grave markers of the long-gone Woodmen of the World members, carved to resemble hewn timbers; the ornate marker, tall as I was and longer still, for a family of obvious means; the heart-shaped marker with a lamb atop, the resting place of an infant. Some of those graves were a century old, even then. It was soothing to be there, the stories telling themselves on a warm summer evening, the setting sun glowing gently, the crickets singing away. The people in those graves were long gone, in some cases more than a century, and yet I still felt their presence somehow.

Three decades later, so many of the people who are now there are people I knew somehow. One or two were more or less from my generation, cut down by cancer or chronic disease, and that makes it cut even deeper. If that’s how I feel, I can’t imagine what it’s like for my father. He visits my mother’s grave just about every day. A few months ago I rode to the cemetery with him on the secondhand golf cart he uses for short trips in town. After we’d spent time with Mom, he took me on a meandering tour through several gravesites. Every turn brought us to another grave of someone about whom he had a memory. I’d often hear a sad “he was a good fellow.” Dad is 82 now, has survived a couple of health scares in recent years, and is in good health. His mind is sharp and he can still get in a day’s work in the field on the tractor. And yet there are times when I understand why living a long life is a double-edged sword, why you never want to wish for immortality: you will live to see so many of the people you love be lost. The Green Mile will seem so long.

In my own mind, I find myself fighting waves of nostalgia, and the older I get and the more complicated I find the modern world, the more tempting a refuge it becomes. On occasion it’s made me wonder if someday I’ll move back to the tiny town where my story began. Almost as quickly, though, I remember that town no longer exists. Yes, it’s in the same place on the map. Many of the landmarks are still there. The house where I grew up is still there. But it’s not the same. Most of the people who made it the town I remember are now up on that hill. New people have moved in and, in their way, made the town theirs – and that’s good, for it keeps the town alive, and it’s also not right for me to expect that town to live up to my expectations. My nostalgia also elides the frustrations I so often felt, that I had to get out and experience a bigger world than I could ever find there, that the images in my mind from a childhood reading the encyclopedia had to become my own reality that I could experience firsthand, and I knew I couldn’t find that if I stayed there.

I’ve built a decent life, on my own terms. I’ve done not only so many things I wanted to do, but so many things I never imagined I could. I’ve been, as the song says, blessed and lucky. I’m also still hungry for things I haven’t yet been able to do, but it gives me something to keep going, and sometimes that’s as important as anything else. Be that as it may, it’s a life I’ve lived on my own terms. That little town will always be my hometown, and I’ll always be thankful it was. Not for the riches of Nineveh and Tyre would I trade growing up there, in a place that will forever live on in my heart. But in many ways, my idea of my hometown now belongs to history. Now, the rural acreage we happened into many years ago and the goofy little house we built there, the expanse of pines and the wildlife that frequently ambles through…over the last two decades, through financial and emotional commitment, that’s become home, the place that re-centers me, the place where (barring some kind of unforeseen calamity) I’m content to spend the rest of my days, on my own terms.

My little hometown will always call me back. I’ll always relate to Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice president in charge of media, wanting to escape to his days of childhood, giving in to that errant little wish, needing to be reminded that where he came from, there were merry-go-rounds and band concerts, and that maybe he hadn’t been looking in the right place.

The more I’ve been looking behind me, the more I’m reminded I have to look ahead.

Yesterday I had the urge to go back in time, and a URL in my browser’s history popped up and took me to the Sept. 23, 1957 issue. It has an amazing picture of Suzy Parker on the cover:

Suzy Parker was a top model of the day, her name immortalized in a Beatles tune. I first became aware of her because she modeled for Revlon and sometimes appeared in the live commercials on The $64,000 Question. Later she was married to Bradford Dillman, who I remember most for playing Dirty Harry’s officious superior in two movies.

I mean, look at her. Wow.

This week in September 1957 brought more than just a look into Suzy Parker’s world. There was a neat feature in which a photographer took modern-day photos with one of Mathew Brady’s cameras. I was especially interested that the famously grumpy John Foster Dulles was an agreeable sitter, for a comparison with Robert Seward’s portrait.

There’s a big feature about the American court system, featuring portraits of prominent jurists.

If you’re into duck hunting, there’s a photo feature on favored hunting sites:

Robert Frost went to England:

…and quiz show champion Charles Van Doren reflects on his experiences as a winner on Twenty One and whether the quiz show craze helps or hinders education. Two years later he would testify before Congress about how the whole thing had been rigged. It’s interesting to read this piece, knowing what was to come and knowing how his life was going to change after his confession.

As another sign of the quiz show craze, here’s this ad that fulminates against the federal electric utilities. (This post goes into the campaigns of America’s Independent Electric Light and Power Companies, and features some really strident ads that imply that government utilities are but the vanguard of creeping socialism that will take away your freedoms, your Bible, etc.)

In consumer goods, Columbia was promoting its big new stereophonic systems under the “Listening in Depth” campaign. I mean, look at that glorious monster spread over two pages. Columbia Records backed this campaign with a really awesome LP that featured samples from various stereophonic albums, but also had some bespoke tracks. (The special version of Duke Ellington’s “Track 360” started with the sound of a train traveling from the left channel to the right channel. If you’re wearing headphones, the train travels through your head. It’s fun!)

Not to be outdone, RCA is not only promoting its own sound systems…

…but is also promoting the washer-dryer systems it’s producing through its partnership with Whirlpool.

And let’s not forget Philco. Otherwise, they might make various threats. (As they did when they complained NBC’s Today program being broadcast from the RCA Exhibition Hall was unfair competition; as they did when Philips tried to do business in the United States, which prompted the birth of the “Norelco” brand name. Although many, many years later Philips bought what was left of Philco, and that’s why you see “Philips” more and seldom see “Norelco.” So there.)

Schlitz urges you to go bowling! Enjoy a Schlitzframe! Have some Schlitzfreshment! Be a Schlitzer! Get Schlitzfaced!

Colgate reminds you that the real reason you’re striking out on the romantic scene isn’t your personality, your clothes or any other cause except your HORRIBLE BREATH:

Mutual of New York can not only set you up with affordable insurance, but also with inspiration for song titles!

Conn – the same folks who brought you Mr. B Natural (and all the important debates pertaining thereunto) – promises that you’ll be playing music the very first day! (But Conn very carefully doesn’t promise how well you’ll play.)

Chrysler Corporation is promoting The Forward Look, although it conveniently elides any commentary on what will happen if your car ends up being possessed. Or any guarantees about its durability should it be stored in a below-ground time capsule for 50 years.

While these guys are eyeballing each other’s cars, Sputnik is only a couple weeks or so from being sent into orbit. (And to add to the quiz show craze, that same comparison is the opening scene to the movie Quiz Show. Which – as if that’s not enough – prominently featured another Chrysler product!)

If you need an outboard motor, throw renowned all-around lovable guy Carl Kiekhaefer some business:

All this, however, means I’m burying the lede. The big story is Little Rock, the integration of Central High School, and the role of Gov. Orval Faubus. Life sent a photographer down, has this lengthy up-close piece about Faubus, talks to his family.

Meanwhile, real people are suffering. The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was beaten with fists and a chain; Dorothy Counts was threatened and gave up her attempt to attend a Charlotte school; a bomb exploded in the library of a Nashville school because a young Black student had been enrolled there.

Life‘s editorial page examines the events of the week. The second piece got my attention, and it’s why I’m writing about this today. And it’s not because of the legal aspects of it. It’s because the last two grafs touch on the role of the human heart.

It’s interesting to reflect on this same passage 67 years later. For the past few weeks, we have been sorting through the aftermath of the 2024 election. There are those who feel vindicated. There are those who feel distressed. As nauseated as I am by what modern political discourse has devolved into, I’m in neither camp. Instead, historian that I am both by inclination and training, to me it’s the cycle repeating itself. It’s nothing new. Yes, the methods and the media have changed, but the fundamentals haven’t.

Something else that hasn’t changed: the fact that it comes down to what’s in the heart and the conscience of each of us. No election, no referendum, no regime can alter the reality that each of us must answer to ourselves – can we live with the person we see in the mirror? – and we also have to answer to an authority higher than any governor or president or king or overlord, and someday we’ll have to answer for how we treated one another in this life. We have to answer to that voice in our heads that keeps us from being able to sleep if we’ve wronged somebody else. Some folks will be able to meet that test. Other times, though, I’ve felt like the traveler in this song, unable to believe the inhumanity humans willingly visit upon other humans:

We hear a lot about the horrible things that happen. News, as I teach my students, isn’t when the river remains within its banks. But what we don’t see anywhere as often are the little acts of kindness, charity and goodness that take place when nobody’s looking. Yes, the people who say horrible things and do cruel acts and scream the loudest are going to get the attention, and to some extent they’ll set whatever the perception is. But what we don’t see are the everyday acts of goodness: the extended hand, the kind word when it’s needed, the gentle moments of human connection that remind us we’re all occupants of this same life and this same little marble that’s drifting somewhere in the great vastness of space.

I don’t get to choose my students. I have to take who comes my way, no matter their race, creed, color, background, politics, identity…you name the variation and I’ve encountered it in my classroom in some way, shape or form. I’m obligated to set all that aside and treat every one of them the best I know how. That’s not only as a professional, but also as a human being. I have to be able to look back on my day and not regret what I said or what I did. That, and I have never discounted the possibility that God sent someone my way because there was something I needed to learn from them.

Anybody who thinks they know how the next four years, let alone the next decade, will go is fooling themselves. Nobody knows. Some of it will involve things that are in our hands, but so much of it won’t be in our hands. What is always within our hands, though, is how we treat one another. I’d hope that underneath all the loudness and tumult that hearts haven’t hardened, that there’s still a fifth column of decency that remains at work, even if we seldom hear about it.

Or, as a couple of more recent observers would remind us: be excellent to each other.

Last year, I got to know Joe Pinner. If you know anything about South Carolina, you’ve likely heard of him. If you ever lived in Columbia, you’ve certainly seen him on television, and may have even bumped into him in person. He was the larger-than-life personality who worked for WIS-TV in any number of capacities: as Mr. Knozit, the children’s show host; as the weatherman on the Seven O’Clock Report (and such was the might of WIS-TV in its salad days, so highly-regarded it was, that it could use the network news as the lead-in to its own news program); as a co-host on Carolina Today; as the on-air spokesman in countless local commercials. Even if you didn’t live within viewing range of WIS-TV, you knew of him, and even out where we lived, where you could only get Channel 10 on the rare mornings when the signal would skip far enough, you knew the name and the face, and the voice. Oh, that voice.

Joe tried to retire in 2000, but was persuaded to do some part-time work for the station. He finally retired for good in 2018, spending his days cheering the fellow residents of his retirement village, visiting his friends, and caring for his wife, whom he dearly loved. Her final illness and her eventual passing saddened him deeply.

Last year, one of his sons sent out a request for people who might be interested in helping Joe write his memoir. He’d actually started work on it a few years before, but it was a project that fell by the wayside while he saw after other things. But Joe wasn’t getting any younger, and the time to act was at hand. I’d just published my book about Dave Garroway, and after years of work I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get into another project just yet. But something in my head kept urging me. Why not?

I’d very briefly met Joe at the breakfast meetings of the Slightly Legendary Old Broadcasters (the SLOBs) in Columbia, but I didn’t really say that much to him. I was, to be honest, in awe that this man I’d known from the television for so long was sitting next to me. (See the story Tom Hanks tells about the first time he was on The Tonight Show, as a young television actor, as he suddenly realizes I am shaking hands with Ed McMahon.) So the day I met Joe to discuss the project, I was a little nervous. Fortunately, it all went well and I ended up with the job.

Off and on that summer, I spent time with Joe and his son at Joe’s apartment in the retirement village. We recorded hours of interviews, his son offering prompts that sent Joe off on marvelous (and often funny) stories. We started going through a small mountain of memorabilia in his home office, and just seeing a particular picture could send Joe meandering down memory lane once again. As a historian, it was fascinating, but as a human being I could detect a wistfulness in his reminiscences. There’d be a note of melancholy, of heartbreak, as he remembered colleagues who were gone – or, hardest to bear, when a memory of his beloved Peggy would come to mind, and the ache in those moments was unmistakable.

After several sessions I was able to get most of the work done on Joe’s manuscript, and we had a draft more or less ready to go. We were close enough, at least, to start going through pictures. But, of course, life got in the way. I had to go back to teaching and seeing after everything at work. Joe also had to see after some health issues, and scheduling became an issue. In the meantime, I was able to get some interviews with people who had worked with him, and I also did a lot of digging through archival resources. Joe was amazed with the work I had done, that I had been able to find so many details and flesh out the stories he told, and after all my apprehension about the project, I was relieved.

Something else that relieved me was finding out that the Joe Pinner you saw on television was pretty much what you got in person. Many were the times in conversation when he would crack a joke or make some kind of funny observation, sometimes at his own expense. As we got to know each other, he would ask me questions: about my background, about my job, about the things I liked to do in my spare time. It was very much like being a kid in the audience on the Mr. Knozit program. Once he even asked me, in that familiar voice, “And what do you want to do when you grow up?” And without missing a beat, I eagerly replied, “I want to be on television like Mr. Knozit!” And it prompted that smile of his. (I think part of the fun we had together was that I knew his trade and understood timing, and could readily provide a comeback. It would have been fun to share a desk with him.)

Sometimes Joe would send a text message to check in on me or to say hello. I’d sometimes think: once upon a time, I was a kid watching this guy on television, thinking he was larger than life, and more than four decades later he is a dear friend who’s checking in on me, giving me encouragement, telling me he cares for me. And sometimes I would be the one offering him an encouraging word. Other times, I’d post something to Facebook and Joe would post a sweet (and often funny) comment.

This past April his son sent me a message: they were putting Joe in hospice care. I was saddened but not terribly surprised. I soon after arranged a visit, expecting to see my friend at death’s door. To my great relief, he was much as I remembered him, but with an oxygen tube below his nose, perhaps a little depleted but still in fine, booming form. We visited for a while, talked about the project, but by this point we were running out of stories anyway. I’d recently rebuilt the power steering pump on my truck and had posted about it on Facebook. During my visit, Joe asked, “Hold out your hands for me.” He was amazed. “These same hands that can write a book are the same hands that can fix a truck!” I’d been in awe of Joe Pinner, and yet Joe Pinner was in awe of me. At the end of my visit, I put my hand on his arm, looked straight in his eyes, begged him to take care. Maybe somehow I knew that was a last farewell, even if I didn’t realize it at the time, or maybe the memory of the last time I saw my mother was in my head, this subconscious realization of how fragile it all is, how no tomorrow is guaranteed any of us, that we should love those we cherish all we can while we can, that we don’t regret the things we do nearly as much as we regret the things we didn’t.

Months passed, and they had their hands full as it was, and I didn’t want to be a bother. They knew how to get hold of me when the time was right to resume work. In the meantime, I conducted another interview or two with Joe’s friends and former associates, finding once again that people light up when they get a chance to talk about their friend Joe. (Some of the stories I’ve heard are for the ages, and when the book finally gets put together and hits the stands, I think you’ll be very happy – and amused.)

On September 20 I had flown to New York City. A friend who works at ABC had offered to let me sit in as he worked on the Sunday edition of Good Morning America. I would have to be at the huge ABC facility on West 66th early in order to clear security and do a couple other things before the program began. I was also trying to rest after a full day of traveling and then walking around Midtown, and I just couldn’t spool my mind down that well. I tossed and turned for a little while, and about 1 a.m. I had this urge to check my phone. Sure enough, there was a text message from Joe’s son: Joe had passed away that evening. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, but it saddened me. It hurt not just because we’d lost a titan of South Carolina television, but I’d lost someone I had come to love as a friend.

But, life went on. There was talk of a memorial service in November, but with the election, a busy work schedule, and so many other things competing for attention, it may as well have been a decade away. Time does what it does, though, and soon came time for the last farewell.

It didn’t look promising, though. The sky was gray that day, and there was light and insistent rain throughout. I was kind of concerned about it, not only because I’m not fond of driving in downtown Columbia even on a good day, but because my usual parking garage in Columbia is a few blocks away from where I needed to go, and I was bound to get wet. But I owed it to my friend to be there, and I pressed onward. As the miles ticked away, as I got nearer to Columbia on I-126, there were the scenes from that 1975 WIS-TV news intro I’ve watched countless times: the Columbia skyline, that weird interchange where 126 splits into Elmwood and Huger. And even that name – “Huger Street” brings back memories of the stories Joe told about how Nevin Broome, he of the carpet and rug store, demanded it be pronounced “huge-err” and not “yoo-gee.” I used to take this same route when I’d drive over to see Joe at his retirement village, but now I was taking another route to say goodbye.

A left onto Lady Street, past the rear of the Whit-Ash Gallery, another Columbia institution that’s now about to pass into history; across Assembly, and then up to the parking garage. The rain is light but steady. Down the five flights of stairs to street level, then up and over a few blocks, all the while thinking about how much this city has changed just in the time since I lived here in the late ’90s, let alone how much it changed in the decades Joe had called it home. Walking past a downtown restaurant, where sunny guitar music rings out from speakers, I’m struck with a mix of emotions. Lost in my thoughts, it seems to not take that much time before First Baptist Church – which I once saw described as “an entire city block of bricks” – is before me. Up the long flight of stairs and into the auditorium. I’m not accustomed to churches this big, certainly not a sanctuary with two upper tiers of seating. But here I am.

I went through the receiving line, renewing my acquaintance with Joe’s sons and their families. The big pink Mr. Knozit couch had been brought in, right in front of the pulpit, and in the middle was the urn holding the remains of my friend, whom only half a year before I had taken by the hand, looked in the eye, and urged to take care. After greeting the family, I looked for my pals from the SLOBs. We were listed as honorary pallbearers and had a special place in front. Soon enough, I found some familiar faces and was soon at home.

In time, the service began. The string ensemble that had been providing music during the visitation struck up a version of “Mr. Sandman.” I started chuckling. What a Joe Pinner moment! The family came in from a side door, as did the governor and his wife, who sat in the front row of our section.

The service itself was full, and heart-filling. A colonel from Fort Jackson spoke of how Joe had devoted so much time and effort to the same fort he once served at, and presented a flag to the family. Top officials from local arts organizations testified to Joe’s happy promotion of the arts. There was a video about him and his beloved Peggy, testimony to the life they’d built together; at last, they were together again. Three of his WIS-TV colleagues spoke: Dawndy Mercer Plank remembered Joe’s cheery, outsized presence in the newsroom, and sports director Rick Henry had funny stories of the charity baseball games they played in back in the day. Then Judi Gatson gave some particularly moving remarks, made even more poignant by how much she was trying to maintain her composure, and I don’t think there was a one of us in that sanctuary that didn’t wish they could take her hand and help her through, because her grief spoke for us all. There was testimony from a couple of members of the clergy, including a former WIS-TV colleague who ended up becoming Joe’s minister and was with him when the end came.

Toward the end of the service, there was a video presentation. Joe was fond of the song “My Way,” and of course the only version that counts is the one Ol’ Blue Eyes did, and that’s what we got. The visual was a collection of many, many photos throughout Joe’s life and career. So many emotions tumbled around in my heart as I watched, like puppies trying to climb over one another. There were little signs of things I knew, scenes that were familiar, scenes that didn’t seem like they were that long ago (has it really been that long since the “Our Pride Is Showing” campaign?). There was that familiar face I knew from television. But there, too, was my beloved friend – and yes, he has gone off into the big forever. It’s for real.

Broadcasting has changed so much, particularly in the last three decades, and “local station” is more often than not a relative term, since most stations are now owned by conglomerates. So often people get shuffled around from market to market, and the odds of becoming a decades-long presence at one station are not that favorable. And that’s most unfortunate. Joe Pinner was as much a symbol of Columbia as the State House dome or the Adluh Flour sign. But those days are gone. And now, too, so is Joe. He could have made a fortune in a larger market, or maybe even at a network. But he found his home in Columbia. Like the protagonist of Roger Miller’s “Kansas City Star,” he had found his happiness. Now, neither Miller’s hero nor my friend could pull the same happy trick. We’re the poorer for it.

The service ended, and I said goodbye to a couple of my pals and headed out. The rain had let up just a little bit. It was the start of rush hour, and getting out of town got interesting. But, in time, I was on the way home. That evening, sitting at home, I could see just the slightest hint of clear sky, a warm glow of amber from the setting sun. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was our Joe giving us one more smile from beyond.