Times Like This

Slim took over for Bob.  “Slim” Dunlap, that is, took over guitar duties for Bob Stinson when Bob got fired as the founding guitarist of The Replacements.  Bit of a bummer getting fired by your younger brother, and Bob never recovered.  Slim did good work, but the band was never the same.  The end came as it had to for my favorite band ever, and they exited in typically distinctive Mats style; walking off stage one by one as roadies took over at the 1991 Fourth of July concert in Grant Park.  Utterly brilliant.

Roberta took over for me, and Jamie took over for Roberta.  Nick took over for Jamie and now I’m taking over for Nick.  There’s more than enough left in Seaside of what I left behind that I am basically taking over for me.  And the take-over is going well.  There’s been a few architecture and interior design crimes against Seaside’s swanktastic City Hall, but nothing that’s not reversible.  The big stuff is still going in the right direction. 

Whether anything is truly reversible is the question, though.  Stuff changes as time streams forward, albeit at wildly varying speeds.  Sometimes decades can pass in the blink of the eye, as you watch your daughter have her daughter and everything starts anew.  Other times, time seems to slow or stop altogether.  Looking at you, judicial system.   

In any event, going backward has not yet been mastered.  Which is fine with me, because I am principally interested in forward.  Never much of a golfer, you play the stone where it stops sliding, I learned this year in curling (I also learned octogenarians can kick my ass in a sport).  Presently, it is Seaside and Poynette ever forward, at the same time.  Big fun.

I hurled a few rocks into the Seaside mix this week that made at least a few other folks smile in fond remembrance.  Some attorney working for a developer was suggesting he could not get an agreement revision done in time for next week’s council meeting and I had to make it obvious he could.  Which his client, who no doubt pays by the hour, appreciated.  And then there were some volunteers on a Seaside commission who were told something could not be done, prior to my re-arrival.  I said it could and it would, and I would do it.   

Can’t is really not a thing with me.   Can’t and won’t are two completely different things, and “can’t” cannot be a thing if you are working for a city.  Cities do one of two things.  1). Life affirming or improving stuff.  2). Life or death stuff. 

If you are working for a City and you are either not doing or training for 1 or the first part of 2, you have lost the narrative.  Every City job in every municipality, whether that job is in a front-line public safety professional or support role, is to do 1 or the first part of 2.  The difficulty of doing either 1 or the first part of 2 is NOT the job of a citizen or volunteer to figure out.  If you are employed by a City, it is your job.  The part about doing difficult and / or dangerous stuff without regard to “can’t” explains your ridiculously awesome pension. 

If you can’t hack that standard, there is an entire private sector ready to swallow you whole.    

There will be judges and maybe juries pinpointing where the citizens first, can-do spirit of Seaside went slightly astray  Going back to Seaside, a community with so much challenge and opportunity, has been invigorating.  It is a bunch of moving parts, with a few gears grinding or stuck in place, that I have to unstick.  So the grease of optimism, commitment and appreciative inquiry gets applied, along with copius thank-yous and cupcakes for a hard-working staff. 

The gears will get going, time will move on, my replacement will be found, and I’ll start to miss my friends in Seaside again, if not the weekly cross-country flights. 

A few years back, Slim had some medical challenges and his friends came together to help.  “Songs For Slim” was recorded as a benefit for him and his family.  There’s a song by Steve Earle with a chorus that’s been playing on loop in the part of my brain that fills the waking hours with an internal soundtrack.  “It’s times like this.  It’s times like this.  It’s times like this when we learn what we really miss”.

Do I miss the bigger challenge and bigger stakes of bigger cities?  Absolutely.  I miss most the camaraderie of a bigger team, working together against those bigger challenges.  I miss Seaside, and I miss Davenport.             

But then the fire pager goes off in Seaside and I miss Poynette most of all.  And then Marcia texts me and says she thinks I’m missing a call because she hears the fire engine screaming down Main Street.  She notes it is comforting to hear the fire engine’s siren wailing into the distance while knowing I am not in the truck, gearing up while heading to who knows what.

So … right there is what I really miss.  Not Davenport or Seaside or Vernon Hills or work at all.  I miss sitting on the back porch with Marcia, watching the grandkids chase lighting bugs in the yard.  Hearing Engine 33 in the distance heading out to who knows what, and knowing the young firefighters gearing up in the back are doing their part, as I did mine.

Though I don’t know exactly how fast it will get here, what I really miss is the future. 

It’s gonna be great.