Dave Griffiths

Friends. What are they good for? Plenty.

Here’s an example that could have gone sideways. Every Wednesday morning, I attend a gathering of the Veterans Adaptive Sports and Training program at Pineland in New Gloucester. All are welcome to hike, play bocce and pickle ball, hunt, hike, bowl, toss some disc golf, you name it.

Tai-chi is where I come in. I was in a group last winter when I stepped back awkwardly and tripped, hitting a table edge that opened a four-centimeter bloody gash in the one part of my head where hair still has some purchase.  

In an instant, my tai-chi instructor, a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer who knows first aid cold, cradled my head and went through some concussion protocols, while another guy asked me how many fingers he was holding up. I was worried, but not for long. Being conscious and prone, I had a wide view of vets old and young looking down with furrowed brows and the good sense not to interfere with the experts. 

Someone got my wife on the phone, and she said she loved me.

Within minutes I was in a well-staffed New Gloucester ambulance headed to Central Maine Medical Center, where an emergency room doc sewed me up (no concussion) and told me to go home.

That night, I woke up with this image percolating in my brain: Four or five guys stood in a circle above a scared 11th Cavalry trooper laying on a stretcher waiting for a dust-off chopper in ‘Nam.

“You’re good, man.” 

“Heading back to the world, buddy.” 

“You’re outta here, dude.” 

I don’t know what happened to that way-too-young GI. I hope he found his way home. But I do know that his buddies were solid when it mattered. 

Moving on to my natural habitat as a curmudgeon, I was doing physical therapy on my arthritic ankle at a place in Poland when I spotted three young people in the waiting area. Two were glued to their phones, barely blinking. The third one wandered around, asking about various equipment to the point where it irritated her mother. Wonder which one of the three will make it in a world where curiosity is a sure sign of intellect and fruitful ambition?

(Fortunately, our two adopted sons — one from Chile and one from Guatemala — did ask the occasional question as they grew up. They also excelled at sports. Had they been our biological sons, third-string chess club would have been their only hope.) 

Back to my favorite topic — food. You may not ever make it to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Why would you? But if you do, check out Nelson’s, a renowned restaurant that serves what may be the best chicken-fried steak, sanctified by rich gravy, in the culinary universe. I was working for the Tulsa World newspaper as a copy editor, and I can testify. (Update: I looked it up on Google. Now it’s called “Nelson’s Buffeteria.” Buffeteria?)

I love music. Blues, classic rock, jazz, classical, country, all of it. But opera? I don’t get it. A guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of bleeding he sings. Then we’ve got musicals, which at least don’t fetishize violence. But in both cases, especially musicals, you’re in the middle of a compelling narrative … when suddenly everyone starts singing and dancing. Wrong. Finish the story! Then you can prance around later while people like me get up and leave. 

The New Yorker magazine just ran an article about the hoity-toity gastronomic world of risotto. My wife calls on her unmatched kitchen skills to make it just right — turning arborio rice into a silky side dish.

Well, I tried some on a recent visit to one of North End Boston’s fine Italian restaurants. Three hours later, cruising up Interstate 95, I sneezed and out popped a kernel of risotto. Maybe that’s what folks mean when they say their food was so good they “inhaled” it. 

Football fans have been mocking British football for decades, but now we’ve got major American networks covering a league that doesn’t even play on our soil. Worldwide, footballers are the toughest of athletes, helping opponents up off the ground and patting them on the back after high-speed collisions. Can you imagine that in the NFL, where even a routine first down or sacking an aging, immobile quarterback leads to in-your-face-look-at-me preening? I’ve watched maybe 20 minutes of the NFL this year, and that was too much. 

Anyway, best wishes for a happy new year. We could use one.

Dave Griffiths of Mechanic Falls is a retired journalist.