I Should Have Been More Careful

Pope Barrow

Description

I Should Have Been More Careful is about one man’s ceaseless quest to fill his life with as much fun as possible. Although this mission sometimes resulted in disaster, the author never gave up. Some of his escapades were inspired. Some were ridiculous. Some worked out well. A few did not end well. His fascinating companions, near-catastrophic mishaps, and decades of risk-taking and rebellion provide entertaining content for this collection of humorous, hair-raising stories.

Sujets

• Adventure (Guyana)
• Biography
• Mistake
• Travel
• Fun
• Adventure
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665736930
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR:
John D. Echeverria, Pope Barrow, and Richard Roos-Collins, Rivers at Risk (Island Press, 1989).
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL
 
 
 
 
 
 
POPE BARROW
 
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2023 Pope Barrow.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3694-7 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3695-4 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3693-0 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023900581
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 01/25/2023
 
These stories are dedicated to my father, M. Pope Barrow, Sr.,
a consummate raconteur who taught me
that fun and adventure open the door to a good life.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgement
Introduction
Chapter 1       The Fun Started Early
Life and Death on the Farm
Dealing with a Dangerous Outlaw
Mentoring
Guns and Vehicles
For the Love of Speed
Run Like the Wind
Chapter 2       Teenage Escapades
The Underpants Caper
Alcohol Is Not Your Friend
Chapter 3       Cars and Motorcycles
Motorcycles I Have Loved (and Lost)
How to Destroy a Perfectly Good Car
Chapter 4       College and Law School
Rebel without a Cause
King of the Moon
Abandoned at Vassar
The Great Gatsby
What’s Next?
Chapter 5       An Irresponsible Young Adult
Party Games
The View from the Tree
Chapter 6       Hitting the Road
Where’s Henry?
A Hick from Maryland Does Not Belong in North Africa
Lost White Boy in Search of Enlightenment
Too Deep in the Jungle
Acapulco Gold
Baja California
The Last of the Big-Wave Body Surfers
The Dog Ate My Passport
Chapter 7       Kayaking Adventures—and Misadventures
Free Falling: No Mistakes Allowed
The Last Steak
Fear Can Be Your Friend: A Short Essay
Disaster Averted at the Gauley Fest
Pigs with Horns
Chapter 8       We Be Sailin’, Mon
We Were Damn Lucky
Sailing with a Scaredy-Cat
Captain Runaground
The Potato
Chased By Bulls in the Azores
Captains Courageous
Sailboat Racing on the Chesapeake (Are We Having Fun Yet?)
Close Call on the Dreaded C&D Canal
Chapter 9       It Was Not All Fun
Cousin Arthur
Fear and Loathing at Lisbon Elementary
Behind Bars
A Betrayal of Trust
Swimming with Sharks
Marriages and Divorces
Frog-Walked Out of the White House
A Very Bad Day
Chapter 10     The Comedies of Old Age
The Cookie Monster
When Everything Gets Old
The Emperor of All Maladies
My Last Big Adventure
 
Epilogue         Memory, Truth, Fiction, and Reality
Unreliable Perceptions
Flawed Recall
Postmodern Philosophy
Quantum Physics and Schrödinger’s Cat
Psychedelic Experiences
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This little volume would have emerged a lot earlier, and would have been a total mess, if not for the expertise of my skilled editor and loving partner, Amber Jones. She dedicated countless hours of her retirement years to the project of cleaning up my language and punctuation as well as ensuring the stories make sense.
Despite the misery of having to confront my shortcomings as an author, I am eternally grateful to her for her efforts to make this book readable.
INTRODUCTION
As you get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two.
– Sir Norman Wisdom
The author-undertaker Thomas Lynch once wrote that the one thing death can’t steal is our stories. 1 That is not correct, because if you don’t sing your own songs before you die, someone else may do it. And you might not like how they sound.
Even worse, your stories could disappear.
So I decided to write down some of the stories I love to tell so that death can’t steal them.
My father made it clear to me as a young boy that it was important to enjoy life and have fun. It might, in fact, be the most important thing in life. He never said so explicitly, but observing how he lived, it was obvious that fun was at the center of the chaos.
Most of the stories in this little volume describe the ways in which I relentlessly searched for more fun—and the consequences thereof. Some of my escapades were inspired. Some were ridiculous. Some worked out well. Some did not. There was sometimes a bit of risk involved in trying to have a good time, especially if you like doing the kinds of things I liked to do.
Playing around and having fun seems a frivolous goal. What good are you doing for mankind? For the planet? On the other hand, if you are miserable all the time, it’s going to be hard to save the planet or achieve anything else. No one is going to want to help you with it, for one thing.
Seeking a good time as a way of life may seem to be a bit of an ego trip, but it is not completely without philosophical support. Decrying the modern obsession with work, Bertrand Russell said that without leisure “a man is cut off from the best things.” 2 Immanuel Kant tied it into enlightenment, overthrowing the bonds of conformity, censorship, and the burdensome rules of society.
Recent research backs the importance of fun. In her book, the science journalist Catherine Price points to some convincing studies that suggest that fun is important to health and happiness. She isolated the three essential elements involved in having the kind of fun that leads to good results: rebel and be playful, connect with people, and be present in the flow. 3
I have not always nailed the trifecta, but, in my life, I have very often nailed the first element.
And I sometimes paid the price.
1
THE FUN STARTED EARLY
LIFE AND DEATH ON THE FARM
Early in life I began my relentless quest for adventure and fun, accompanied by the unfortunate consequences of this search.
I lived on a dairy farm in Maryland. This offered abundant opportunities for lots of fun and also opportunities for risky, stupid behavior; questionable choices; and catastrophic accidents.
My frazzled mother’s idea of child rearing was to announce to her three hyperactive young boys, as we ran around the house breaking fragile items and knocking pictures off the wall, “You boys go outside and help your father. We will ring the bell when it’s time to eat.”
The bell was a big iron monster mounted on two tall wooden posts outside the kitchen door of the main farmhouse. You could hear it ring from far away. My mother and her cook used it at lunchtime to call in the people working at the barn or out in the fields (and the children running amok somewhere in the woods) at lunchtime.

Our family farmhouse
My mother’s vague instructions about “going outside” opened up 300 acres of adventures and trouble. The possibilities to screw up were endless. My two younger brothers and I had fields to roam, trees to climb, tall windmills to fall from, snakes and other wild creatures to play with. One of my brothers fell out of a barn door and broke his arm. I broke my fingers and arm and had several teeth knocked out. Cuts, broken bones, animal bites, and bee stings were routine.
This kind of unsupervised mayhem set up a pattern for later life—a pattern rife with reckless behavior and risky activities, often ending in injuries. The common denominator was the endless quest for fun.
Ours was a hard-scrabble, labor-intensive dairy farm, which my father drove into bankruptcy. Several times. I lived there until I was 16. These days almost no one grows up on a real working farm like ours. In my stuffy Ivy League college, when I mentioned that I lived on a farm, my classmates were baffled. To them, a farm was a place where one kept their polo ponies. But one does not live there.
Farm life in those days was a far cry from city or suburban life. My companions were domestic and wild animals, cows, horses, dogs, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, foxes, ducks, birds, snakes, groundhogs, pheasants, wasps, bees, other insects of all kinds, turtles, and fish. And of course my siblings, who were available to fight with. Night life was owls hooting, frogs croaking, and lightning bugs flashing.
As companions, animals can, in many ways, be superior to humans. The domesticated ones are not hostile, critical, or suspicious. You can hold them and pet them. All they want from you is food and protection. Best of all, they seldom, if ever, lie to you or reject your companionship.
We had three dogs, Champ, Tippy, and Nippy. I also had a pet duck that I took to the county fair where he won a prize. We also had calves, a pony, and two horses. Although our farm was a dairy farm, we had added pigs, chickens, and a few strong-smelling goats.
Our chickens were beautiful, dressed in colorful feathers. They came in dozens of varieties and several colors.