Fly Like an Eagle

Without meaning to, my friend Kevin Eames – sadly now the late Kevin Eames – nearly ruined a couple of good songs for me.

I remembered one of them recently, when J. and I were on our way home from somewhere, listening to a playlist of a bunch of old rock songs on shuffle, and the song randomly picked by MediaMonkey (one of the apps I use) was "Fly Like an Eagle" by the Steve Miller Band. It was the first time I'd heard it in a long time. I'd forgotten how hokey and pseudo-profound – but also embarrassingly sincere and actually kind of meaningful – it is, including as it does the following lines:

Feed the babies
Who don't have enough to eat
Shoe the children
With no shoes on their feet
House the people
Livin' in the street
Oh, oh, there's a solution

I can't hear this song without thinking about something Kevin said to me at least twenty-five years ago. He told me once that when he was a kid and heard this song, he thought "house the people" was an inquiry into the well-being of "the people" – not "house the people," but "how's the people?", as in (as Kevin said at the time, in a faux-Jersey accent) "How's them people? How they doin'?" (Neither of us said anything, in any accent whatsoever, about how the next line, "Livin' in the street," is a depressing reference to the homeless problem.)

I don't know if what he said was true or not; I don't know if Kevin ever actually misinterpreted the song in this way, or if he was just being silly. But I'll tell you this: Whenever I hear or think about "Fly Like an Eagle," which admittedly is not often, I can't help but hear "how's the people?" in the lyrics.

Kevin told me another time, even before he had nearly ruined "Fly Like an Eagle" for me, that when he was teaching history at a small private Christian school, the school had a Christmas store they called Santa's Secret Workshop, and that one day he heard one of his students sing "Santa's Secret Workshop" to the tune of that great guitar riff that starts off Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" – and that he surprised the student by saying, "Hey, that's Jethro Tull, isn't it?"

And now, whenever I hear Aqualung – again, admittedly not often – I hear a deep voice intoning "Santa's Secret Workshop" in the same melody as Martin Barre's repeated six-note guitar riff at the opening of the song. (And yes, in case you're counting it out on your fingers as I did, "Santa's secret workshop" and "Sitting on a park bench" – the opening line of the song, sung by Ian Anderson to the same melody – do have the same number of syllables.)

I'm sure Kevin's children know that he could be really funny – Kevin told me once that Hilary told him he was "sillier than the other dads," which I have no trouble believing he was. But do they also know, I wonder, that Kevin had friends who prized his sense of humor, were perhaps even changed by it, and who really, really miss it?

I miss Kevin. I'd give anything to hear one of his corny stories again.

1995: A Saturday Night at ExecuTrain

Kevin Eames, in his office at ExecuTrain, one Saturday very much like the one described below (except, obviously, this picture was made during the day and not at night). I really miss Kevin.

A corner of my office at ExecuTrain in the middle of the 1990's (and man do I wish I still had that Marx Brothers poster!) 

The lake and the back of the ExecuTrain building

It's dark outside. Sitting at my desk, not actually working, I can't see the lake that my office window overlooks, but I can see my own reflection in the window, and the reflection of my office and all the stuff in it. From my computer's CD player and speakers Ella Fitzgerald sings "Oh, Lady Be Good." [I realize now, more than twenty-five years later, that she was still alive then, though only for a few more months.] I love that album – The Songbooks (a compilation of some of the best songs from Fitzgerald's "Songbooks" recordings for Verve). I borrowed that CD so many times from my friend and coworker Chris Luse that my boss, Karen, gave me my own copy for my birthday. Ella Fitzgerald and jazz are still new to me, and I love this form of music that is so different from what I grew up listening to.

It's Saturday night and I am at work in my office at ExecuTrain in Alpharetta, Georgia. I'm twenty-eight years old. During a lot of weekday afternoons, when I otherwise would be at work, I go out looking for a house to buy, my first house, which I will borrow from my 401(k) to purchase. [The house I ultimately picked was that blue two-story in Lawrenceville, the one I lived in when I first met Anna, and in which we lived for the first three years of our marriage.] The arrangement I have with Karen is that I can leave work early in the afternoon to go house-hunting with my real-estate agent, Evelyn, provided that I still get all my work done and meet my deadlines. That is why, despite being in what is typically a Monday through Friday job, I am at work on a Saturday night.

My friend Kevin is here, too, working in his own office a few doors down from mine. He has an arrangement like mine with his boss, Jason, except instead of looking for a house – he and his wife Lisa already have a house – he is working on his Ph.D. at Georgia State. [I didn't know this at the time, of course, but a little less than a year later Kevin would have a heart attack, from which he recovered fully, but which was the first manifestation, as far as I know, of the years-long struggle with heart problems that would ultimately end his life, twenty-three years later.] I wish I could spend the whole evening hanging out in Kevin's office and talking about the things we like to talk about--books, music, Rocky & Bullwinkle, and sometimes even work--but we both have a lot to do.

So we are in our offices working. Right now, in this moment [and from the present I am writing in, as opposed to the present I am writing about, "this moment" is actually a quarter of a century ago], before any of what I know will happen to us happens, Kevin and I are both young – I have yet to turn thirty; Kevin is still five years away from forty – and healthy, and we have years of living before us. We have a lot to do; we are at work on a Saturday night; it is dark outside, and we cannot see the lake that's just outside our office windows.

Remembering Kevin

Two years ago today my friend Kevin went home to be with the Lord.

If he were still with us, Kevin would be 60 now -- twice the age he was in this picture (which, yes, was taken thirty years ago). As we see him here, Kevin was young and (relatively) newly married; he was still a couple of years away from becoming a parent for the first time, nearly a decade away from completing his Ph.D., almost a dozen years from starting his career in academia, twenty-five years away from publishing his book (Cognitive Psychology of Religion, of which he was justly proud). I'm glad to revisit this picture of him from when I had known him only a year or so, happy to know he would someday achieve all of those things. But it also breaks my heart a little to see him so young, so long ago.

Kevin and Me

This picture was taken at the ExecuTrain office on Abernathy Road in, I think, 1992; it shows a twenty-five-year-old me and Kevin Eames, who was one of the finest people I've ever been privileged to call my friend. I'm grateful that I knew him for twenty-nine years--a long time by many measures, but not nearly as long as I'd hoped.

Kevin passed away two weeks ago after complications from open heart surgery. I was devastated to learn that he's gone. I miss him.

* * *

I'm quoting this from Kevin's obituary in The Chattanoogan:

"Survivors include his loving wife of more than 29 years, Lisa Hamlett Eames; daughters, Hillary Eames and Hannah Eames; mother, Jill Eames Hanson and sister, Jenny Kinsler along with numerous extended family & friends."

The full obituary is here:

https://www.chattanoogan.com/2019/6/8/391667/Eames-Kevin-James.aspx

Jessica and Daddy's Excellent Adventure

Last Friday, Jessica and I drove up to Chattanooga to spend the night on Lookout Mountain and go to Rock City and generally have an adventure. It was our first daddy-daughter overnight outing, and we had a great time.

We stayed at the Sky Harbor Bavarian Inn on Lookout Mountain. We had stopped at Gwinnett Place on the way up to get a couple of sticker books for the trip, and the first thing Jessica wanted to do was sit on the bed in our room and work on her Cinderella sticker book:

Here's the view of the Tennessee River and Chattanooga from our room:

When she was able to tear herself away from her sticker book, Jessica came out on the porch to try out the rocking chairs:

We went to the mall for supper that night, ate some Chick-Fil-A and looked around the Barnes & Noble for a while, and then went back to the Inn to go to bed. (Jessica had insisted that we get a room with two double beds because, as she said, when she and I shared a bed on our Pensacola trip after Christmas, "you kicked me.") It took us a while to get to sleep, and Jessica woke me up three times during the night to say, "Daddy, you're snoring too loud." But we did manage to get in most of a good night's sleep.

We awoke Saturday morning to this sunrise:

and a little later, when the sun was poking up over the horizon:

We met Kevin and Lisa Eames at the Starbucks across from Rock City and visited with them for over an hour; Jessica was very patient with us, working on her Cinderella sticker book and making her own occasional contributions to our discussion. But then we said our good-byes and great-to-see-yous (it really was), and the Eameses went home, and Jessica and I went to Rock City:

It was very windy up at the top of the mountain, here at the point from which you can (so they have for years claimed) See Seven States:

We had a great trip, but of course eventually had to come home. We left a little after two o'clock and drove straight home; Jessica slept almost all the way, and I listened to Bob Edwards Weekend on the UTC NPR station until the signal got too weak, then switched to some episodes of X Minus One on my MP3 player.

I'm so glad I had this wonderful trip with my daughter, and can't wait for our next outing!

Road Trip '09: Faribault, Minnesota, Day 1

We're driving to Minnesota to see Anna's family!

We set out Sunday morning at 9:00, and had a fairly uneventful drive up through the top of Georgia. Around 11:00 we made it to the Tennessee Welcome Center in (or near; we're not sure) Chattanooga:

(Yes, I know it's not an exciting place. But if you ever go there, this is what you'll see.)

We were fortunate enough to meet Kevin Eames and his family for lunch in Lookout Mountain. The Lookout Mountain Cafe, where we've met them a few times before, was closed for renovations, so we ate at the new chicken fingers place, Gutherie's, only a stone's throw away.

After lunch we went outside to visit for a while, and to be entertained by Jessica's running and climbing and gesticulating and her impromptu monologue about squids, armadillos, witches, and whatever else was on her mind:

It was great to see Kevin and Lisa and their family; I wish we could see them more often. But at least we see them more now than when they lived in Iowa!

After we said goodbye to the Eameses, we went only a couple of miles away to one of my favorite places, Rock City Gardens. I have pictures of myself at Rock City that go back nearly forty years, which is just about as far back as I can go without being in utero (or non-existent). I can't remember a time when I didn't love it there, and I was eager to take my little girl there.

I'm happy to report that Jessica loved Rock City as much as I do, though I'm not sure what this face was all about:

Jessica and Anna indulged me by posing as Humpty Dumpty:

And Jessica made a new friend in the Rock City Maine coon cat (a stray rather than an official resident, I think, but they seem to take good care of her):

I had no luck in getting a full family picture in front of the Rock City Gardens June 2009 bench, but I at least talked myself into posing there:

(The bench is there even when it isn't June 2009. They just change the sign.)

In many ways, Rock City reminded Jessica of Stone Mountain--which is why she had such a hard time staying on the path:

However, unlike Stone Mountain, Rock City has Fairyland Caverns, where you can see, among a great many nursery rhymes, Jessica's former favorite, Humpty Dumpty:

Later, after we'd circled Mother Goose village about a million times, Jessica and I posed in front of a vintage fire truck:

Here are a few pictures I took in a study of that beautiful truck:

And finally, Jessica after a full day of walking:

Before we left, we wandered through the gift shop and I bought a copy of my friend Tim Hollis's new book, See Rock City. I'm looking forward to reading it.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We drove for a couple of hours to Clarksville, TN, where we spent the night (we passed Mickey Dolenz at the train station), and Jessica and I went on a late-night trip to Wal Mart to get toothpaste for her, and Pop Tarts for me.

And so ended our first day out on this trip.

(Click here to read about the next day.)