It Didn’t Quite Fit

My brother has a bestie named John, and they have been cherished friends for almost sixty years.  John’s nickname is Giant.  He stands six-foot-eight and is a handsome dude, a combination of power forward and leading man.

Raised in Hollywood, John was the son of a successful actor.  His playground was an exclusive country club, where he grew up teeing it up with his dad in some celebrated foursomes.  He thought about professional golf; and if you ever saw him strike a golf ball, you could understand why.

His driver is as tall as I am.  When he stands on the tee box and looms over his shot, it is scary.  Even scarier when he hammers his drive!  For you golf fans, think John Daly, and then add twenty yards.  It used to be that he could lose his cool on the course, and that was also scary.  If he shanked a shot, he could wrap his club around a tree, like in a cartoon.  In those days, “Giant” was a good guy to avoid if he missed a “gimme” putt.

He forsook the idea of a celebrity life or pro sports and took his considerable intellect to law school.  After passing the Bar Exam, he became a deputy district attorney.  There he met my brother, and together they prowled the halls of the county courthouse, putting the miscreants in jail. 

John was an awfully good lawyer — smart, hard-working, and disciplined.  Yet, there was something about lawyering that never took.  Even the prospect of going into private practice — where he could have used his name and connections to financial advantage — seemed to constrain him.  The legal profession just did not quite fit.  In more ways than one, John was a guy who was hard to fit.  Sadly, one of the things that did not fit was his marriage.

When that relationship went aground, he bought a boat, lived in Marina Del Rey and sailed on the weekends.  There was something about the wind in the sails that led him to wonder where it had been all his life.  Then one day John decided he could no longer live the life that neither fit him nor thrilled him.  He resigned his job in the D.A.’s office, cashed in a few chips, cancelled the lease, and literally sailed off into the sunset on his Westsail 33.

Many of us have dreamed about stepping off the world for a while, but John lived that fantasy.  He re-fitted in Hawaii and headed south into Polynesia.  For nearly two years he went on a personal and maritime quest to find out what he really wanted, who he wanted to be, what he was made of.  Some of the time he had a sailing companion, but for long stretches he was solo on the high seas.  Before his odyssey was complete, he had sailed the Pacific from Micronesia to the Aleutians. His final eastward tack had taken him into Puget Sound.  In the words of John Denver, “He came home to a place he’d never been before.”

He had gone from two-hundred-seventy pounds down to a lean two-thirty, and he had also become a world class sailor.  For years John sailed competitively — a regular in international competitions.  He gained some renown as a sportsman when he won the solo division of the TRANSPAC race from San Francisco to Hawaii and was featured in a glowing piece by the late, great columnist of the Los Angeles Times, Jim Murray.

While continuing to sail, he built a successful business as a boat broker with an office in Seattle, hard by the chandleries and dockside restaurants.  His knowledge of boats and his legal training worked together to make his business thrive.  When John sold a boat, he threw in some important advice:

• Never board a boat with a gas engine, strictly diesel.
• Never pull away from the dock with alcohol on board.
• Know what you are doing.  The sea is unforgiving.
• Wherever you voyage, by land or sea, stand watch.

He spent thousands of hours in the middle of thousands of square miles of ocean, where he has been both storm-tossed and becalmed.  He has been at the mercy of God and the cruel sea.  It gives a man some perspective.  He still plays the occasional round of golf, but the missed shot does not bother him like it did before.  He is calm and content.  Plus, not long after settling in the Pacific Northwest, he met “the girl.”  They have shared many happy years together.

Some guys are made to wear judicial robes, dark loafers, and socks.  They are comfortable and at home in the wood-walled environment of the courtroom.  They deal in mercy and justice and the rights of the accused.  They love the law.  My brother is one of those.

Some guys are made to wear yellow slickers and deck shoes.  They are comfortable and at home on a sloop.  They deal in seamanship and captains’ logs and celestial navigation.  They love to stand at the tiller with the wind in their face and answer the call to adventure.  John is one of those.