Russians
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On Keepin' it Real this week, Cam takes us back to 1988 when he and his team lined up to upset the world order in an all out international rowing competition. It was one for the record books. ----- It was the spring of 1989 in Augusta, Georgia. I was a member of the Tulane University Rowing team and we were there to train for Spring Break. Crew teams from across the south and many of the elite crew teams from the northeast came to Augusta and this perfect stretch of the Savannah River to train during the week and race at the end of the week. A call went out that the organizers were throwing...
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Top Hat
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston has just returned from a few days in Fort Lauderdale. It's a different world down there, Cam says. One that he might have envied at one point in his life. ------ My wife and I returned from Ft Lauderdale Saturday. We were there for a corporate event where I was giving a speech. My client generously offered an extra couple of nights in the host hotel and our room was on the 26thfloor overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I watched the sun rise each morning as I sipped coffee and read. It began as a faint glow on the horizon to a disk coming out of the water....
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Regrets
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam hopes you have no regrets from Thanksgiving. And if you do, that you learn from them. ----- Well, how’d it go yesterday? Any family flare ups? Any thoughts you wish you’d kept to yourself? Thanksgiving gatherings are famous for finding people’s boiling points and the election having been just a few weeks ago, some are still gloating and others still licking their wounds. Any regrets from yesterday? I heard Dan Pink speak last week at a conference in San Francisco. He’s a New York Times best-selling author and his most recent book is called The Power...
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'Tis The Season
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston wants you to know he's NOT A CYNIC. But there are things this time of year that just kinda get to him... ----- ‘Tis the season for pensive and sappy messages. I’m so sorry but it’s true. They’re appearing in TV commercials, in client and vendor emails. Letters received in the mail about the joys of the season and now’s the time to be grateful and all that. I hate being a cynic, but it all appears to be virtue signaling to me. The people I know sending these messages are savage businesspeople and it’s like times running out and they’re...
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Cats
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On the way home from Oxford Saturday, Cam and his family stopped at a service station which led to him thinking about what NOT to put on his Christmas list. ----- For years I had my children convinced I was allergic to cats. I told them the reason we couldn’t have a cat as a pet was that my head would explode in a fiery ball. They wanted a cat. They asked regularly and finally accepted that I was allergic. I’m not allergic to cats. I’m not sure how they found out, but the cat-pet requests are back. Frankly, I want nothing more to do with anything that requires fuel or any sort of...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineA cup of coffee with a friend and a few strangers was a wonderful start to a great day not long ago.
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I’d like to say Hello to Randy Fowler. On Friday mornings he’s in his car on his way to the Restaurant Five in downtown Tuscaloosa with his dog Milo. He’s a regular listener to these commentaries and he reached out to me a few years ago when he liked one to offer a compliment. Turns out Randy’s daughter, Julie Otts, lives a few doors down from me here in Mobile. It’s a small world. Randy and I have visited a few times when he’s in town to visit his daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids.
Several weeks ago, I was in Tuscaloosa for my son’s Bama Bound orientation and Randy invited me to join him and Milo for coffee with his regular crowd one morning at Restaurant Five. I was welcomed as one of their own. We sat, we talked, we drank coffee, and watched all the dogs interact. These old friends have been meeting for coffee for years. They offered greetings to each other, shared inside jokes and laughs. They were wonderfully kind to me and invited me back whenever I’m in town.
That morning, as I waited for Randy to arrive, a very tall man walked past with a coffee and a doughnut and he stopped to talk. He was in town with his son, Grant Nelson, to meet with the Alabama basketball team. He was Nels Nelson. Randy arrived, invited Nels to join us for coffee and Nels did, sharing what life was like in his hometown of Devils Lake, North Dakota. We talked cold weather, the near-by Canadian border in Devi’s Lake, and buffalo. We talked javelin since another of Nel’s sons was a collegiate thrower and my son and Randy’s grandson also throw. Nels, like me, was genuinely appreciative of the warmness Randy and his coffee-drinking friends at Restaurant Five showed him. I’m sure Nels got back to the hotel and told his son – “It’s gotta be Alabama, boy. You gotta play here. It’s simply too friendly to believe. I’m coming back to just have coffee with these people, ya know.”
We were all told as children to not talk to strangers. That’s simply bad advice. Talking to strangers is one of life’s most sure-fire ways of making it a great day. However, it often goes against our inclinations. We worry about improbable outcomes. We misuse our imagination. We think, I don’t know them. What if they don’t like me? What if they don’t want to talk to me? What if they offend me? What if I offend them?
And my reply to all that junk? Who cares? So what. The risk is worth the reward and do you have to lose? Most people are much nicer than we imagine them to be. Our brains, our leaders, our media, whoever, wants us to think that everybody’s out to get us. They’re not. They’re absolutely not. It’s untrue.
Introduce yourself. React kindly to a stranger’s introduction. Find someone new to talk to. You’ll live longer. You’ll be happier. You’ll be glad you did. And you’ll have a great day.
Thanks again for the coffee, Randy, I still remember it. I’ll see you and Milo when I return in the fall.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.