Thank you. Every once and awhile I get the same feeling we all get
when we see boxes on the top shelf of the closet. The urge to reach up and hoist them off those dusty shelves and lift the lid comes over us.
Of course, it's always stuff we've seen before, but as we age our perspective on same-old-thing changes and a fresh sense of how it all fits into the bigger puzzle seems more nearly possible.
Each time I tread these waters I learn something.
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The transitions in Russell's life fascinate me. Why? Because he seems like a person who never had any fun. Such a serious face without a smile to be found! I'd guess it was the loss of his doting mother when he was so young. I don't have a feeling for his dad's personality at all.
Was he all business? Was he a fun companion? Did he just go along with anything his son wanted to do? It is all fuzzy how a young man ended up convincing his father to sell the business and invest in End of the World speculation!
Here's another puzzle.
Who was C.T. Russell's best friend? I don't know--do you?
Did he and his friend play jokes on each other? Did they ever get drunk?
Was he always a Nerd? How did he manage to talk a beautiful woman such as Maria into a loveless marriage?
Was it really only a business venture with security for her and a platform for her writing? Did they ever cross the line into passion?
I think--I mean, I guess perhaps these two were really uptight and closed off to carnal expressions. Either that or the marriage was a false pretense on the part of Charlie. Perhaps he will always remain an enigma.
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With Joe Rutherford, I think I have a really strong idea of what kind of man he was. His father was a stone cold, hard-nosed farmer. Joe had to work very very hard from the time he was a small boy. But this kid had a burning ambition to be much more than a clone. He wanted to become a lawyer and he put everything he had into achieving that goal. Working, going to school and long hours spent studying demonstrate a driven Type A personality.
This man was cunning and strategic and it paid off for him.
He strikes me as the sort of person a Mob boss would love to hire to handle accounts.
He was ruthless, too. If you got in the way of The Judge, you paid the price. Plotting out his life story is like looking at Bugsy Malone or Al Capone. It seems the only thing that could stop the man was rectal cancer. Just imagine the pain and agony connected to a long slow death of that nature! I almost feel sorry for him as a human being.
I said, "Almost."