Impact
Yesterday I went digging around in the archives of the Houston Chronicle, and there was my work from fifty-six years ago. The writings of a young man who knew nothing, but felt that he knew everything, or at least everything worth knowing. I was an older college student at least six years behind my contemporaries from high school who had graduated college well before I became serious about university life.
The reason for the digging was the passing of one of my subjects. A rock and roller. I wanted to verify a date and firm up a memory. Seeing that work made me realize I was fairly prolific and made me wonder once again what ever happened to the clip file I used to maintain. It was a book preserving my articles. Somehow it disappeared. Lost in a move, or maybe it’s still in the attic, buried in a box. That’s happened before. Periodically, I’ll go looking for it, and maybe I’ll do that again, soon. Although, I realized yesterday I could digitally recreate it.
All that writing about rock and roll got me a job at Shell Oil Company and that launched my career in the Texas oil patch. Now here I am, older and maybe wiser. Unlike like the rock and roller, my impact on the world was relatively limited. I think the biggest thing I ever did was help sell a lot of books, but no one will remember my name for that. Although, in the long term, maybe the truly biggest thing I did was help raise three children, who are raising children of their own, and all are living good lives, making the world a better place by being decent humans.