Paying respects

I was reminded this weekend why many older Wisconsin residents choose to spend large parts of the year in warmer and drying climates. As someone whose joints don’t like the cold and damp, I found myself wistfully imagining being in the heat of a desert sun. It was about that time that my brother who lives in Texas sent me the picture of the oversized tarantula that was crawling up the wall of his house, and noted that it had just eaten a scorpion. On second thought, the cold wet weather of northern Wisconsin in the spring time isn’t so bad after all. Admittedly, some of my achiness over the weekend was my own doing. After all, no one forced me to trudge through standing water in 50 degree weather and intermittent rain showers on Friday afternoon to play a round of golf in the annual Chamber golf outing. I could have advocated that we stay in the clubhouse instead and play cribbage until it was time to go to dinner. Of course, the merits of that plan didn’t necessarily make themselves known until we were all soaking wet and halfway through our round. Fortunately we were playing at Tee Hi, which is the smaller of the two courses. The folks at Black River Golf Course had more time to evaluate their life choices. As it was, I didn’t linger after golfing as much as I would have normally. As most people who have weatherrelated joint pain, I could feel myself having to work at being a pleasant human being. I wanted to make sure I was well away from other people when joint-ache grumpiness caught up to me and I began yelling at the bunnies, squirrels and raindrops to stay off my lawn. Fortunately for the sake of my marriage, I had the house to myself on Friday night. I spent my time buried under several layers of blankets attempting to shake off the lingering chill and watching an endless stream of tributes and recollections in honor of Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson, who my parents always claimed I am just coincidentally named after, was arguably one of the most influential musicians of his time. His songs had lighthearted lyrics — at least on the surface — and were accompanied by complex melodies and arrangements. A lifetime ago, when I was in my freshman year of college, I skipped out on a macroeconomics class to stand in line at a downtown Chicago bookstore and purchase his autobiography for him to sign. The autographed book is still one of my prized possessions and was well worth missing a lecture on market driven solutions to economic policy. The girl who sat next to me in class shared her notes with me from the lecture I missed, so it is was well worth the El fare. When introducing myself to people, I routinely was say I am Brian Wilson, like from the Beach Boys. Admittedly in the past decade, that phrase has been increasingly met with blank stares. To those born in this century, describing myself in terms of someone whose peak fame occurred when their grandparents were young indicates more than the gray in my beard or my hairline chasing my neckline, that I am an old fogey. So what if I know all the lyrics to Surfing Safari or In My Room. You have to respect the classics and when you get down to it, Brian Wilson was a classic. His musical inspirations impacted generations of musicians. Genius always comes at a cost and Brian Wilson’s involved lifelong mental health and addiction battles. Those battles left him a shell of what he was in his prime. There is only a certain amount of melancholy musing you can do on a gray, wet and dreary weekend before you start to feel your own mortality creeping up on you. Not that thoughts of family, friends and loved ones who have passed are ever far away with the list growing longer with each passing year. I thought about that on Sunday morning as my son announced he was taking me out to breakfast for father’s day. Since I didn’t see any golf cart shaped crates sitting in my front yard, I figured a breakfast was about the best I would get. It was a good breakfast, made even better by my son reaching out and grabbing the bill from the waitress. Thinking about the past and those who have gone ahead only gets you so far. It is important to spend time with the living. Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.