Deadman’s Curve

FEATURED POSTS

April 27, 2024

KINGSLEY AND JOANNE FIFE — Photo by Carmela Cunningham

My buddy, Dr. Kingsley Fife, is 91 years old, hard-of-hearing, and happy in his skin.

I spent the night at Kingsley’s house in Pacific Palisades – a beautiful home high in the hills with a clear day’s view of the Pacific Ocean and Catalina beyond – while Carmela spent the night with Kingsley’s wife, Joanne, who was at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center for a medical procedure.

Kingsley is a driving force with which to be reckoned. That night we drove on rain-slicked streets from UCLA to his house, he in his sleek Acura and me in my big, much wider, F-150 pickup. He knew the shortcuts and was quick to turn here and cut-in-and-out there.

The final zig-zag stretch along Sunset was Kingsley at his best – slowing down for no one and cutting through the night like Bruce Wayne in his Batmobile. When we arrived at his home, I was just happy to be there and glad to have survived the trip.

“Hey Kingsley,” I said. “Didn’t we just drive around Deadman’s Curve back there a bit.

“Oh yeah,” he said, cool as a cucumber. “Deadman’s Curve.”

Deadman’s Curve has changed quite a bit since Jan and Dean sang about it in their famous 1964 song about a road race gone wrong. Many speeding drivers lost their lives to Deadman’s Curve back in the day, but it’s been much upgraded and improved since then.

But that doesn’t stop people from driving too fast and too recklessly along the stretch of highway – especially on rainy nights.

Some of them crash and die and some of them – like me – just tighten their seat belts, follow their buddy, and live to tell about it.

– George Lee Cunningham

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News

April 17, 2024

Minor Character

Sometimes I feel like a minor character in one of those really long James Michener historic novels. I’m one of the guys they check in on a couple of times during the course of the book and one more time when he finally kicks the bucket. In truth, that suits me just fine. I don’t want to be one of the major players – those guys who lie, cheat, sleep around, make a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and then then suffer a tragic death on Christmas Eve. I just want to be me – plugging along, having some fun, loving the same woman for years, and then quietly passing away.

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.