What if I wasn’t so naïve taking everyone at their word and following the course that life set for me whatever that was called destiny indeed or predetermination, the Calvinists might have said predestination, and used more of my native intelligence rather than sublimate, yield to the dictates and mandates and resuscitates of an education that drilled me rather than thrilled me, or what if I followed other’s advice to achieve success in a single field rather than playing the field and succumbing to the lures of multiple disciplines and curiosities, I guess I could have done worse than be a swinger of birches, but sometimes the astronaut’s flight to the moon steering the straight course looked the better choice…
What if my father-in-law Mike had gone to Hollywood after he helped out on the set of a movie in Connecticut and his wife and daughter and son had followed him in a new career miles away from being a stone mason and liquor salesman so his wife always asked but it would have meant I had never met his daughter or married her or produced our son and she wouldn’t have said go to graduate school to get a better job don’t pay attention to me/my mom don’t drop your dreams because of a family like my dad did but he ignored that dictate I did not and maybe I would’ve met a different Donna from sunny Cal…
What if I hadn’t stopped studying college calculus in my senior year of high school because I didn’t have to send that transcript to Lake Forest to insure my scholarship, and I understood the physics for majors at LFC and continued in science at the behest of the department chair who showed me Dr. Jeong’s holograms and I studied quantum theory and one day narrated the threads of string theory like the best sellers by Oliver Sacks…
What if I had asked about my father and wasn’t satisfied with my mother’s answer and became obsessed in high school with the coverup like one of my classmates who sought out his real parents because he wasn’t happy with his adopted ones which led him to rebel until he became a drunk and philanderer who opened a book store and likened himself a poet become a shade roaming Capitol Hill but I roamed the Hill in another guise of a punk with a gaze but no footing…
What if I went to graduate school immediately after college to pursue American literature or history or theology to carry on where Perry Miller left off with a focus on 20th century literature that illuminated regional writers in ways that predicted the flourishing influence of evangelicalism in American politics and culture by delineating the sermons of Jonathan Edwards before writing shows for PBS but I haven’t seen this sermon on American Protestantism out of Ken Burns but am well aware of Christian Nationalism albeit Christians once denied that Catholics were part of their sect but the bishops are trying to make it so…
What if I paid more attention to my college girlfriend’s advice about making videos of rock songs she should know working at WXRT and the guys at Wax Trax placed TVs around the store to show videos before MTV started and how could I turn that trick since I was trying to write music reviews but not getting anywhere the video market may have been the middle door to a career in music for someone who didn’t know how to read scales or play an instrument besides getting knocked out of the rotation as a disc jockey at KCFR when it was a progressive station the night before it switched to classical which I knew little about…
What if I had taken the head paperboy job at the Denver Post succeeding Eddie who was graduating from high school and involved in Junior Achievement to become a business major before all those MBAs matriculated as postgraduates like my college roommate but I was too much the outsider hippie who wanted nothing of standard values or rolemaking…
What if I had taken the computer programming job at the American Medical Association in Chicago after training at CNA to become a master of code who could have worked for IBM or StorageTek in the preliminary years of tech corporate upstarts the burgeoning computer world was desks in high-rises at that point a sit-down job when I wanted the world…
What if I had interned at the New York Botanical Garden or worked for the Central Park Conservancy and lived there when the South Bronx was a hellhole and Times Square was porn central only to return to Denver to work at DBG in a professional capacity rather than as a dirtball temp would I be the director now…
What if I had excused the single education class I took in college as a fluke the professor not cognizant of Teaching as a Subversive Experience and the Summerhill School books I read outside of classes in history and English and become a teacher right after college even Mr. Becker invited me to teach at Regis rather than in my late 40s would students have connected better or were my world experiences after a career change important for them to hear…
What if I had attended UCD for a degree in landscape architecture rather than an alternative school like Conway could I have been hired by the Denver planning department when the Platte Valley was being studied and made into what is now a new neighborhood but I always thought the viaducts should have been preserved as architectural follies that might have inspired Denver’s own High Line but people weren’t ready to think that way in Denver…
What if I had taken the advice of friends who said that a designer in Dallas that they used had started his own construction and maintenance business and he was going great guns but I wanted to be a designer not a contractor and although I applied to design build outfits like Lifescape most architects scoffed at my background in maintenance and that was probably good advice but I was never one for taking out loans to start new ventures I always paid my way forward but you’ve got to spend money to make money…
What if my sister had loaned me the money to buy that house at Second and Bannock back in the early 70s would I have learned how to clean a place up and flip it for more bucks and develop my way through all the booming neighborhoods of Denver like Baker and West Wash Park and the Highlands and Curtis Park and Cherry Creek before any of them attracted attention even the lofts like Acme that Mickey Zeppelin started investing in and he showed us a 2000 sure foot floor of a space that I could ride around on a bike but we would have to start again on an aging building but would I be like him…
What if I worked for the FBI after the nurse who worked with my mother and lived next door told her husband I was looking for work after college and I had cut my hair so I looked presentable to someone who eventually headed up the Denver or Colorado unit could I have looked into some crazy X-Files or would I have been asked to infiltrate the peace marchers or become Joaquin the master to Corky’s Crusade for Justice…
What if I had been introduced to bike racing at an early age had a father who could support a son’s penchant for pedaling and trained and raced would it have gotten me anywhere except into a business that friends who are owners say is miserable so few people make it selling and repairing bikes but I might have missed the doping craze and maybe a business of my own would have been enough for me…
What if I had continued working for the railroad first Colorado and Southern on the track gang but eventually as an engineer or office manager for the Burlington Northern inspired by two classmates at LFC who were heavy into railroads and counseled me on hopping a freight from Chicago to Denver plus using my best friend’s mother as a contact who worked for the railroad all her life would I have been happy seeing the rail transport industry go through hard times always relying on congress for bailouts…
What if I had gone to the Air Force Academy which was new when I was growing up and my mother knew the Italians in town some legislators and other muckedymucks who might have recommended me to the service academy but I graduated in 1969 and even the classmate who went to Colorado School of Mines and spoke up about ROTC got ostracized so how would I have fared as a wings officer from Colo Sprgs probably not successful which makes me think I knew these things when I made my bed and slept in it…
What if I had learned more German in high school and college when it wasn’t just a requirement but necessary to communicate would I have felt more at ease in Berlin as an exchange student and maybe returned to check the music scene and culture clash at its nexus before even Bowie and Reed and Pop went the weasel but the music I enjoyed when I was there was the smattering scat of Basie’s keys and Ella’s vowels so I ignored the weird floors of warehouse rock and roll mashups with electronica that drew university types and twenty somethings…
What if I had opted for the management route at the Auraria Higher Education Center rather than sticking to landscape and became director of a different division would I have been pleased with the expansive building on campus that practically blocks the view of Tivoli from Larimer Square which was a consideration in lower downtown when view planes were sacred and business was secondary since Auraria with its Marriott and student centers has become more of an incubator than a campus of intellectual prowess just check out the bilious billboard on Speer…
What if I had read something besides baseball and sports stories, biographies of athletes when I was a fourth grader would I have been a different reader now since I mostly read fiction of high style and few memoirs…
What if I had pursued a doctorate at UCD a combination of a BA in American studies and an MA in landscape design could I have wrangled a new category for nature writing at the local institutions or even if I had gone for the degree at Oxford after encouragement from one of my professors there was it too late to become an academic would it have meant much in income something I scarcely ever considered or would it have been an honor that would have sufficed for my current struggling writing career, could it have jumpstarted the publishing…
What if I had stayed on in Massachusetts after finishing my design degree to work with the son of Kevin Lynch in environmental planning for the state instead of rushing home to Denver after a call from my wife who sounded catatonic having had her parents in the household for six months and she was regressing but would I have ever broached the subject of moving although my wife might have liked it still we had established some roots in the Queen City of the Plains…
What if I had taken a sabbatical when my mother had her stroke and cared for her in our home would that have been too much for a son to take on and would she have allowed it instead she was confined to a nursing home and although my sister Norine and I visited her at least twice a week it never felt right…
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“Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve” my mother-in-law would say to dismiss belittle regrets; my mother would not even consider the happenstance: “Que Sera, Sera, Whatever Will Be, Will Be” framed her mind. What if I wasn’t like my mother…?