loader from loading.io

Organ Recital

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

Release Date: 10/14/2022

Owls show art Owls

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam tells us about some early morning attacks that are happening in his part of town. You'd be surprised at who is doing the attacking. ----- On the top of the Tangles Hair Salon on Bit and Spur Road in Mobile sits a hat and a headlamp with its light on. The headlamp is the type that an early morning jogger wears before the sun comes up. How it got up there is a heck of a story. Dennison Crocker jogs before daylight nearly every morning. His headlamp lights the way. One dark morning near Bit and Spur Road, a giant thunk, thud, and whoosh caught Dennison off...

info_outline
Can I Transfer? show art Can I Transfer?

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam recalls a time when he was very much out of his element and was slightly afraid for his life. ----- About midway through the fourth quarter of Alabama’s loss to Vanderbilt, my son, who is a student at the University, sent me a text. It read, “Can I transfer?” I laughed. As a Tulane student we were fond of saying that on Saturdays in the fall, the New Orleans Superdome hosted a cocktail party for students to mix and mingle in the stands. Occasionally we would look up and notice that a football game was going on in front of us, but we never let it...

info_outline
FBI show art FBI

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston tells us about a bomb maker he met who sends the bombs he makes to his friends. Oddly enough, you and I should be happy he's doing it. ----- There’s a man on the outskirts of Mobile who spends a good part of his days making bombs. He uses items he finds around town and buys from retail stores. He then sends his bombs to his buddies to see if they can disarm them. It’s a game and, believe me, it’s a game you and I should be grateful they’re playing. I’m participating in a seven-week course called the FBI Citizens Academy. For two hours each...

info_outline
Infantilized show art Infantilized

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

On this week's Keeping It Real, Cam Marston reacts to a book review about society and how we're raising kids. It's not the kids fault, Cam says, it's definitely the parents. ----- The Economist magazine reviewed a book called Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood. The author, Keith Hayward, argues that western society is keeping kids less mature than previous generations. He tells of a young lady who insisted on spelling the word hamster with a P. When corrected repeatedly, she called her mom and put her on speakerphone to tell her boss not to be so mean. That’s laughable, but...

info_outline
Lucy At The Vet show art Lucy At The Vet

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam's family dog heard what he said to the vet. And she has something to say about it. ----- When I walked through the back door our dog, Lucy, looked at me as if to say “you and I have some unfinished business.” Lucy had been feeling bad. She was lethargic and had thrown up in four or five places in the house. On the rugs, of course. I got to my hands and knees to try to clean them up. It was nasty. She definitely wasn’t herself and my wife, who Lucy seems to regard as The Kind One, took her to the vet. My wife texted that afternoon saying, “Please go...

info_outline
Questions show art Questions

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston says he has a question for you. And he's curious if you have a question for him. ----- A story that lives in legend in my family is the day my mother interrupted a story about a boastful largemouth bass fisherman and my mother, in full innocence, asked “Who had the large mouth? The fish or the fisherman?” She had never heard of a largemouth bass. But, considering the context of the story, it was a legitimate question. The group fell silent and stared. Someone then explained to her about the species of fish. While the story gets repeated because of...

info_outline
Waxed show art Waxed

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

On Keeping It Real this week, Cam reacts to Tuesday's presidential debate and shares something he's learned about himself in the recent years.  ----- Trump got waxed Tuesday night. Wow, did he get waxed. I watched the debate not knowing what to expect but man, to me, he got crushed. Trump later proclaimed it his best debate performance ever. He was outgunned. In hindsight, he never stood a chance. The pundits downplayed his shellacking. They emphasized some of the points he made but largely overlooked how badly he performed. Fox News was doing cartwheels to find something to like about...

info_outline
Gettin' Lucky show art Gettin' Lucky

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

Cam's back from his one month sabbatical and creating commentaries again. This one he simply calls Gettin' Lucky. ----- Dr Suchan Shenoy is one of the regulars at Restaurant Five in Tuscaloosa on Saturday mornings. I join the regulars when I’m in town visiting my son who is a sophomore at the University. Dr Shenoy is an OBGYN at the DCH Hospital there. He and I sat together and we made some small talk. I don’t know any of the regulars well, but I enjoy their company when I’m in town. Dr Shenoy could relate to my situation. I was a new guy sitting amongst a group of old friends in their...

info_outline
Really? show art Really?

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

On this week's Keepin' it Real, Cam Marston wonders if we prefer entertainment to anything of substance. And frets over the consequences. ----- I hope everyone had a nice July Fourth holiday. On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted and signed. It has proven to be one of the most influential documents in world history, generating demands for independence and self-rule across the world. Eleven years later, in 1787, the US Constitution was created and was then ratified about a year later. The energy and enthusiasm and aspirations of these two documents propelled...

info_outline
The Roost is Full show art The Roost is Full

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

The roost is full at Cam's house. And on this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam shares that it may never be this way ever again. ----- My wife and I had thought our summer would be quiet and a bit boring. Two of our four children would be living away and the other two would be at home but either working during the day, away at camp for a few weeks, or playing sports. Plans changed, though, and they’re all back home for the summer. Our house is packed. The roost is full. Our four kids are between the ages of twenty-one and seventeen and they’re all living at home until the fall when my two...

info_outline
 
More Episodes

My friends and I attend an organ recital together each week. It's not what you think...

-------------------

The pickle ball bug has bitten. A buddy put together a group of guys all about the same age to play each Wednesday evening not long ago. We all showed up, most of us knew each other, debated the rules for a while, and we got started. It’s now a regular thing.

Each time we gather we shake hands, we catch up and bit, and each of us, whether we’re asked or not, goes through what’s called The Organ Recital. It’s a part of what happens when men of a certain age or older gather. Maybe women, too, but I can only speak to what the men do. We talk about what hurts on our body, how well or poorly we’ve been sleeping, who we know that is sick. We talk about digestion. About what foods are kind to us and which ones we struggle with. Which spices upset our stomach. Which medicines help and which ones don’t seem to do anything at all. It’s the Organ Recital. It doesn’t last long. Usually someone says, “Hey, enough. We sound like old men. Let’s play.” And that ends it. And then we start putting on knee braces, patella tendon straps, and tendonitis sleeves. It’s so sad.

My father has a golf group that has set up rules around their Organ Recitals. He and his buddies have played golf every Friday morning for the past decade or more. Their rule is that once the last putt falls into the cup on the first hole, the organ recital must end. It’s a rule they’ve all embraced. However, my father says, many of his friends are now nearly deaf and they keep giving their organ recitals anyway because they can’t hear anyone telling them to stop. It’s the rare privilege of the hard of hearing – not being able to hear when you’re being admonished.

My dad is quite the pickle baller himself. He plays several days a week at the Via Senior Center in Mobile. He’s got a regular crowd and they pair up to play and then they swap teams and they do it for hours. Men and women. He invited me a few weeks back. I guessed I’d be the youngest person there, which was true, and that I’d have an unfair advantage because of that, which was untrue. I got my tail beaten repeatedly. These so-called seniors are savage pickle ball players and what they may lack in speed they make up with precise ball placement. At one point my 85-year-old father and I were playing together and across the net was an 83-year-old lady and her sixty-ish year-old daughter. Father son versus mother daughter. The mom had a wicked serve and at any time could place the ball within a millimeter of wherever she wanted it. My dad and I just barely won, and I walked off the court laughing at the thought that my youth – which is very relative – would create any advantage.

At some point in the match, I lunged for a well-placed shot from the 82-year-old mother and pulled something in my lower back. I soldiered on, unwilling to admit to myself that an 82-year-old was making a fool of me on the pickle ball court. I, of course, dutifully reported my injury the next week at my pickle ball group’s Organ Recital. But when asked about the opponent who did this to me, I kept things a bit vague.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.