Tuesday, January 30, 2024
By Donovan Baldwin
In 1962-63, while a senior at Pensacola Catholic High, I worked as a theater usher at the Saenger Theatre (that's how they spelled it), on Palafox Street, in downtown Pensacola, Florida. On Saturday nights, we would have a midnight movie. At about 12:30, all the adults went home leaving us teenage ushers in the "custody" of an off-duty Pensacola police officer... in uniform.
Ralph, a Pensacola police officer, who shall remain last nameless, was a nice guy and the cop who usually worked the midnight movie with me and my coworker, Jim.
It was customary for the ushers, to hold onto an empty popcorn box, to dip extra popcorn out of the leftover popcorn bin (usually a lot). We would set the box up on the half wall between the lobby and the back seats and would dip into the box as we watched the movie.
On Saturday nights, Ralph the cop would dip in with us.
One particular Saturday night, Jim, the other usher, dipped into the popcorn box and accidentally knocked a shower of popcorn over the back row. People jumped up angrily, including some large, angry specimens of humanity. Jim apologized, and all seemed forgiven.
A few minutes later, I went for the box and, being a bit clumsy sent another popcorn shower over the heads of already disgruntled patrons.
Like Jim, I apologized profusely, and, with a few growls, and tugs on their sleeves from wives and dates, they sat back down.
After a while, Ralph the Cop, reached for the box and sent it AND the fresh load of popcorn it contained into the back rows.
I didn't wait to see how Ralph was going to handle his faux pas. I ran for the lobby and hid behind one of the ornate pillars. On the other side of the lobby, Jim had chosen the same tactic.
And there, between us, behind another pillar, hiding out in full uniform, badge, gun, cuffs nightstick, and all, was one of Pensacola's finest, Ralph the Cop.
Labels: Pensacola, Saenger Theatre, short story
Friday, November 09, 2018
POEM: CHILD OF MAN - "SEAGULL"
By: Donovan Baldwin
BACK STORY: In the 1950's, a great deal of sand was dredged up from the mouth of the Bayou Chico, near Pensacola, Florida. Some of this sand was used to make a "peninsula" of sorts, upon which a chemical company installed the gas tanks shown in the picture I took somewhere around 1970.
The dredged up sand, and resulting "gas island" as it was sometimes referred to, made a great habitat for seagulls, who would lay their eggs in the sand. It also made a hunting ground for at least two destructive boys, who were just on the edge of learning the difference between life and death.
The following poem was written many years ago as I thought about those days, and those birds and their eggs.
FEATHERED FURIES DIVE THE BEAST
SOME FROM THE WEST, SOME FROM THE EAST
"Be gone! Now leave the seagull's land,
You are not welcome, child of man.
You've taken lives ere they began,
You've smashed our eggs hid in the sand."
He raises up his BB gun,
Blinks as his eyes brush past the Sun.
Holds and squeezes...down falls one.
He runs to see what he has done.
"Now gone a year, and gone a friend.
The tale unfolds without an end.
As man-child joins the ranks of men,
But, others come to hunt again."
Feathers gray and white, now red,
The eyes are closed, the bird is dead.
One instant in the man-child's head,
There comes, then goes, some unnamed dread.
"They learn from us, from how we die,
As from us they learned to sail the sky.
There are a few, as years pass by,
Who sometimes learn to heed our cries"
HE LEAVES THE BEACH ON LEAN, BROWN LEGS,
BEHIND...
DEAD BIRDS...CRUSHED SEAGULL EGGS.
Read more poetry and writing by Donovan Baldwin at
http://ravensong.mysite.com.
Labels: birds, donovan baldwin, eggs, Florida, Pensacola, poem, poetry, sand, seagulls
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Liberty Valence Was Shot Too Many Times For Me
By Donovan Baldwin
In 1962, age 17, I was a theater usher at the
Saenger Theatre , in Pensacola, Florida.
Teenage dream. Free movies!.
Just had to stand there, red blazer or vest, and black bow tie, a few nights a week, holding a flashlight, and help people find their keys, answer questions about the next showing or coming movies, and, eat popcorn.
The first movie I worked was "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence", with John Wayne, Lee Marvin, and Jimmy Stewart, three of the biggest stars of the day.
First night was great... but, by the third showing, I was beginning to get a little tired of Liberty Valence being shot.
By the third NIGHT, I wanted to shoot him myself.
CUT TO THE CHASE, ALREADY!!!
John Wayne did it!!!
Everybody go home!
Of course, for a while, each new movie had an appeal, but, over the next year, even that, and the free tickets to the Saenger, and its sister theater down Palafox Street, the Rex, wore thin.
Since then, movies have never quite had the attraction for me as they once did.
Part of that is simply age, but, part of it was being... well part of it.
Sometimes, if we get too close, or something becomes too common to us, it loses its appeal.
You know what? I think I'd like to see John Wayne gun down Lee Marvin one more time for old time's sake.
Labels: donovan baldwin, Florida, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Palafox Street, Pensacola, Rex, Saenger Theatre, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Context In More Than One Context
By: Donovan Baldwin
We all know it's easy to take things out of context, and, yet, hard at the same time.
We see a statement, an action, an event, as a discrete item and judge its "badness" or "goodness" based on some immediate evaluation. Yet, that event is formed, defined, and assigned value by the context in which it occurs.
Most of us get that, and, after the heat of the moment is past, we can step back, as it were, and see things as part of a larger whole.
However, we sometimes forget that our own evaluation is formed dependent upon a context of our own, one which is a part of us at all times.
What we have lived, experienced, learned, right or wrong, is going to influence our evaluation of that statement, action, or event. My life as a boy, roaming the woods along the edge of
Pensacola Bay, swimming and
snorkeling in the Sun, in
Florida, has had a lifelong impact on how I view the world, for example.
Even "where" and "when" we have lived, in addition to "who" we are, has its impact on how we see and evaluate everything around us...including our own beliefs as well as the thoughts of others.
I think
most of us can agree on some basic "bad" things...murder, theft, intimidation by violence, yet, many of the bad and good things we see daily are defined by our "contexts", by our "contextual apprehension" of what is being said or happening around us.
I read a lot about "mindfulness" in today's world, usually applied to weight loss, success in business, or personal relationships.
Perhaps mindfulness of our personal beliefs, thoughts, issues, and
context, might serve a purpose in our daily lives.
Labels: context, donovan baldwin, life lesson, Pensacola, Pensacola Bay, snorkeling, swimming
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Frank Was Drunk And Disorderly...Again
By: Donovan Baldwin
When I was a boy in Florida, there was a family three houses from ours. They had three kids at home, and one grown and on his own. N
Nice enough people, except Frank M., one of Mrs. M's older sons. He could be nice too, but, he had this bad habit of getting drunk and disorderly...often.
My father, interested in radios and electronics, bought a
police scanner so he could monitor the calls and maybe get some "news before it was news".
One of the first nights he had it on, there was a series of calls between
Escambia County sheriff's deputies about something going on at the end of our street, Cary's Lane, in Warrington, Florida. Warrington was not part of
Pensacola at the time.
That Summer night, with the windows open, we heard the sirens of multiple police cruisers converging. Flashing lights were bouncing red in the darkness (before blue lights).
We were glued to the exciting story unfolding before our ears, you might say.
Suddenly, a deputy came on the air, "It's okay. It's just Frank M. again. We're taking him home."
The lights went out, the night became still, the radio was silent, and the room suddenly lost the excitement it had held.
We heard knocking on Mrs. M's door as the deputies delivered Frank...again.
Simpler days.
Today, he would be thrown in the lockup, go to trial, cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars, and have to pay a few hundred in fines...which he would get from his mother.
But, we were a smaller world back then, and, perhaps, neighbors more comfortable with each other's sins.
Labels: donovan baldwin, drunk, drunk and disorderly, Escambia County, Florida, Pensacola, police scanner, Warrington
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
The Pleasures Of Reading The Old Stuff
By: Donovan Baldwin
I read almost anything, but, I still enjoy reading "the classics", at least in bits and pieces.
I go back, and dip into the
Iliad and the
Odyssey,
Moby Dick,
The Three Musketeers,
Tale of Two Cities, old Roman poetry, and so on, for many reasons.
One reason, of course, is that I had the good fortune to have had a bit of a classical education.
Three years of Latin at Pensacola Catholic High School: Caesar's Gallic Commentaries, some Cicero, etc. Confession; flunked third year Latin. Sorry, Mrs. Semmes. You did your best.
Most of it just remains jumbled bits and pieces these days, pushed out of my cerebral cortex by hurricanes, elections, practical college courses, tech manuals, too much alcohol on too many late nights, and life in general.
But, that's one reason I like to read the old stuff.
Before there were jet planes, cell phones, or men on the moon, there was a Moon, and men and women who enjoyed entertainment, thought about "stuff" even if not fully understanding it, had conversations with one another as they tried to understand themselves and the world around them, and the "stuff" in it.
Reading old stuff, not just "classics", but writing from earlier times, is about spending time with them...people...like you and me...in their time. Dressed funny, and talking weird, and probably drinking really bad wine, but, still, like you and me.
Old friends.
Labels: Caesar's Gallic Commentaries, Cicero, classics, donovan baldwin, Latin, Pensacola, Pensacola Catholic High School, reading classics
Monday, October 16, 2017
Poem: If Children Could Understand
By: Donovan Baldwin
I long again to see,
The white sands I walked,
When but a boy.
>
Then, but a child, I knew not,
How deeply embedded in my soul
Was every grain of sand,
Each whisper of the wind,
Every roll of wave, and
The bending of each tree.
>
Now, half a century, and
Many hundred miles
Downwind from boyhood,
I see each sight,
Smell each smell,
Joyfully recalling,
The place I felt so happy,
To leave so far behind.
>
If children could understand
What the world they so little love,
Will mean to them in later years.
>
Perhaps then, they would live
In happier circumstances,
Enjoying at home
The passage of each day,
Rather than one far day
Longing to return,
To a time and place,
They truly loved.
NOTE: Photo was taken by me in 1971 of the Pensacola Yacht Club, from across the mouth of the Bayou Chico
Labels: Bayou Chico, boyhood, children, memories, Pensacola, poem, poetry, white sands
Sunday, October 15, 2017
My High-Heel, Pointed Toe, Cowboy Boots...
By: Donovan Baldwin
I was once guilty of animal cruelty.
Sorry about that, but he started it.
Here's how it happened.
I used to go horseback riding in Pensacola, Florida. This would have been about 1966.
The area is car dealerships now. Back then, there were fields, pecan orchards, and a riding stable. I went riding every week for several months.
At first, I rode wearing tennis shoes, until one day they gave me an ill-tempered horse, who had a habit of turning his head and trying to bite your feet.
They warned me. Told me to just kick him in the mouth and he would stop.
Well, seems this horse didn't mind if you kicked him with tennis shoes. So, I rode him up to their store, went inside, and bought a pair of pointy-toed, high heeled, cowboy boots.
Got back in the saddle.
He tried to bite one more time.
I kicked him one more time.
Problem solved, resolution achieved.
Of course, in those days I had no more use for the boots, except when I went riding.
However, I thought they made me look cool.
When the army sent me to Germany, I found they had a certain appeal to some Germans...especially of the female persuasion.
A lot of times we do things that seem to make sense at the time.
Sometimes, when the real reason has passed, we find other reasons to keep on doing what we do. Sometimes it doesn't really matter.
I could have switched horses, I guess, and never bought my fancy, pointed toe, high heel, cowboy boots.
Although they generated interest, I really didn't pick up more chicks, and they hurt my feet.
The horse won in the long run, I guess.
Labels: cowboy boots, donovan baldwin, Florida, horse, horseback riding, life lesson, Pensacola
Monday, October 09, 2017
Growing Up As Part Of A Neighborhood...
By: Donovan Baldwin
In 1945, at the end of World War II, my dad started work at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, while I was busy being born in Atlanta, Georgia.
He found a home for us, Mom, my sister, and me, and brought us down to Florida six weeks later in a 1939 Ford, I believe.
We lived in an area called Warrington, which lay between Pensacola, and the Naval Air Station.
Warrington had a grocery, a drugstore, a hardware store, shoe repair, a barber, a gas station, and other amenities.
Dad drove to work through the shopping area daily for the next 30 years.
We moved three times over the next four years, but, in 1949, my parents bought the house I lived in for the next 20+ years. I went to school in Warrington. We shopped there. All my friends, until high school, lived there.
People in the drug store, the grocery, the gas station, knew me as "Mr. Baldwin's boy". I had identity and community.
I think that is one of the finest gifts I was given, with health, and a good education...that feeling of being known and identified as part of a neighborhood, a community, for all the years of my childhood and youth.
So many kids today don't get to know that.
Always sure of myself as "Mr. Baldwin's boy", I also got to be Tom Sawyer, running off with Huck Finn on the Mississippi, or sometimes Jim Hawkins, aboard the Hispañola, at sea in search of treasure, with adventurers and pirates.
I did try to build a raft. I climbed trees and sat in them staring out at the bay, dreaming of Treasure Island, and listening to the waves, and, for the voice of Long John Silver.
I got to be a boy, living among friends before "growing up"...or did I ever really grow up? Sometimes I wonder.
Labels: donovan baldwin, Florida, growing up, Long John Silver, Pensacola, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Warrington
Friday, October 06, 2017
How Small Is The Road Of My Past...
By: Donovan Baldwin
In the last few years, I have returned home to Pensacola, Florida often. I usually take a moment to visit the house I grew up in at the corner of Cary's Lane and Bayshore Drive.
On those visits, I was struck by how small, how narrow, and how shady, Bayshore Drive is compared to my memories.
It was always peaceful and shady, but seemed even closer, narrower. After years of wondering about it, it struck me.
The train tracks were gone.
I knew the train tracks had been taken up decades ago, but had not realized the difference. The railroad had maintained a right-of-way for the tracks and the train. Since the tracks were taken up, good ol' Mother Nature, with the help of landscapers, had been allowed to reclaim her land.
Things change.
Big things, little things.
Even we change.
As this change goes on, it's natural that perceptions change. I've been coming to think of Bayshore Drive in the "new" way.
Suddenly, remembering how it was, with the train running by once a day, brings back a flood of memories.
Not just how it looked, but, how life was back then.
Nice. Quiet, except for the train whistle, and the occasional jet from Pensacola Naval Air Station.
I was a kid again for a moment, seeing it with a kid's eyes, but, nice.
Wish I could wave at the engineer and get him to blow the whistle again.
But, Bayshore Drive looks nicer now...prettier.
Even trade, I guess.
Labels: Bayshore Drive, donovan baldwin, memories, Pensacola, train, train whistle
Thursday, October 05, 2017
Poem: Old Sights Through New Eyes
By: Donovan Baldwin
Prologue:
Many years ago, as a small boy, already immersed in the age of automobiles and airplanes, I saw, a couple of times, an old farmer come into my hometown of Pensacola, Florida. He was riding in an old wagon drawn by an old mule.
Quite a sight for a young lad as I was.
The following poem came to me a few nights ago (8/14/2017), as I was thinking about that young boy and the old farmer with his mule.
Old Sights Through New Eyes
Old dusty dirt-colored farmer,
In his old, frayed and, once blue, now faded, overalls,
Guiding his old, weary, dun-colored mule,
Pulling the old, unpainted wooden wagon,
With the old, rusty, iron-rimmed wheels,
Rattling on the old, gray, cobbled streets,
Of the dozing old, Gulf Coast town...
Old hat, to the old.
But, seen with the bright eyes of a boy,
A dazzling new sight.
Labels: donovan baldwin, Florida, old farmer, Pensacola, poem, poem about a farmer, poetry
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Trust In A Small Texas Town
By Donovan Baldwin
A few years ago, around 2006, in Gatesville, a small Texas town, I was looking for an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) at a local Wells Fargo Bank. Not seeing one I went inside the bank and asked the bank manager if they had one. He, greeted me kindly, and, unlocking the teller's cage, led me behind the tellers, past the opened vault, unlocked a door overlooking the drive-up banking area and showed me where their one ATM was located.
This little display of trust reminded me the first time, about 1972, I was asked to give a piece of identification for a check/cheque at a local grocery store.
Until then, I had written a check, handed it to the clerk, took my groceries and left...as did every other patron.
However, hot checks had become such an issue, people writing worthless paper, and businesses were losing so much money, they had to begin requesting identification.
In bigger cities this had been a practice even before I encountered it in my small southern city of Pensacola, Florida.
Over the years, we've lost trust.
At least a lot of it.
You know, years ago, before identity theft became such a big issue you could find people's social security numbers on lots of things. Many organizations, such as the U.S. military services figured out that, instead of issuing individual service numbers to each soldier, sailor, or Marine, they could just use social security numbers for identification numbers instead.
Well, because of identity theft, the military has gone back to issuing individual identification that does not use social security numbers as have many other businesses and government agencies.
I believe most of us still WANT to trust one another, but, every day, we are reminded of bad people doing bad things, and, because of those bad things we have to surrender more of our personal data, and freedoms.
Still, trust is one of the most powerful components of freedom.
I'll keep on trusting until I just cannot anymore.
Labels: donovan baldwin, Florida, Gatesville, identity theft, Pensacola, texas, trust
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Everybody's Somebody in Someone Else's Story
By Donovan Baldwin
In 1963, a metal safety helmet saved my life.
I was 18, and I was spending the Summer working on a construction crew for Soule Construction Company in Pensacola, Florida, as an apprentice carpenter.
One job was widening a bridge over the Escambia River, near Century, Florida.
Talk about getting old.
That bridge, and several other things I helped build, overpasses on Interstate I-110, going into downtown Pensacola, for example, have since been torn down and replaced.
Anyway, they insisted I wear this ugly metal helmet, and, as a rebellious teenager, I took it off at every opportunity.
On this particular day, my job as apprentice was to crawl up under the bridge, and, lying on a beam about 30 feet above the river, set some framing in place so that concrete could be poured later to cap a pier.
As I was under the roadbed of the bridge, there was a huge "pavement breaker" tearing up the concrete above me.
Suddenly, a huge chunk of concrete, about the size of a soccer ball, broke loose and hit me in the head.
Actually, it hit my helmet and left a pretty big dent in it, but, I was okay.
I kept that helmet for nearly 50 years after that.
So many times, so many ways, my story, could have ended. So many stories have ended before they should have.
Sometimes even doing everything right doesn't save the hero.
Everybody around you is the hero of somebody's story, even if it's just their own.
Enjoy them, their story, and their place in YOUR story.
They might not be here tomorrow.
Labels: Century Florida, construction crew, donovan baldwin, Escambia River, Florida, life lesson, Pensacola
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Nuns And Sex Education
By Donovan Baldwin
Warning, R-rated, mature audiences only.
I grew up reading, and attending Catholic schools, in Pensacola, Florida in a sexually repressed era.
I read from one end of the
Pensacola Public Library to the other.
Read a few things that might have appalled my parents, and the nuns, had they known.
Well, maybe not.
For all their strict moral code, the nuns were pretty open about life and literature.
A nun once lifted up part of her habit and poked herself in her breast so that we would understand a line more fully in "The Highwayman". Another once told a class that a woman in lingerie was more attractive and sexually appealing than a naked woman.
Another got mad at a girl reading Macbeth because she was embarrassed to read Lady Macbeth's line, "Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums...", and, don't get me started on sex education with nuns!
Anyway, I did NOT start out to give a sex education class, and that's sort of the point.
From the nuns, I actually learned how to accept life, and sex, honestly, reviewing it openly, thinking and speaking frankly, and later, as a mature adult, about life, sex, death, love, in ways that may make some uncomfortable.
Part of that lesson was from nuns, part from life, and, part from all the mysteries, westerns, historical novels, and sci-fi stories I read so avidly and copiously.
I learned that there were different ways to look at things once you knew about them, but, that there were facts you had to face.
Thanks, nuns.
Labels: article by Donovan Baldwin, donovan baldwin, Macbeth, nuns, Pensacola, Pensacola Public Library, sex, sex education, The Highwayman
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Oh! The Horror Of It All
By Donovan Baldwin
My father lost an eye when he was a boy. I grew up not thinking that there was anything was odd about seeing his empty eye socket.
He had a fake eye, a glass eye, of course, but, had to clean his eye socket with a special towel.
Ever see somebody clean their eye socket?
Once, when my aunt, my mother's sister, known for her "fainting spells" visited, my Dad dropped his eye, and yelled, as you do when you drop something.
My aunt ran into the room.
He turned to look at her, and, she fainted.
He also had a huge gash down his leg, a souvenir from another childhood injury. It opened up fro time to time. When this happened, it suppurated (leaked pus) and, occasionally, the bone was visible.
Oddly, I was not allowed to see horror movies, probably for fear they would mess up my head somehow.
The first "horror" movie I ever saw was "The Tingler" (Vincent Price 1959). I was a theater usher, at the
Saenger Theater in Pensacola, and saw it dozens of times until I was sick of it. (I saw Liberty Valence get shot a lot too.)
I also saw the trick they used to scare theater audiences watching "The Tingler"...which you cannot duplicate watching it on TV...unless you sneak up behind them and pop a paper bag at an intense moment.
By the end of that experience, I had concluded that "horror" movies were: Silly. Stupid. Ridiculous. Funny. Dumb.
Maybe I missed something as a result, but, I've never really missed missing it.
Labels: article by Donovan Baldwin, donovan baldwin, fainting, fake eye, glass eye, horror movies, Pensacola, Saenger Theater, the tingle, Vincent Price
