Gov. John Connally and the humiliation of living

Let’s not pretend that we’re making the grade everyday. I know I’m not.

It would be convenient for me if my failure in life was a mystery. Because then I could point to the vague, to the inexplicable, blaming the unknown for my pitiful circumstances.

I was in the eighth grade on November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. The school principal’s somber voice came unexpectedly over the public address system, instructing teachers to assemble us all outside. The unscheduled request struck all of us, kids and teachers alike, as strange and unusual.

We slowly filed outside where we were directed to take a seat in the football stadium. There, our principal announced the grim news, and then quickly and somberly had us march to the long line of waiting school buses for an early ride home.

Also shot that day was Texas Governor John Connally. In 1986, 23 years after the assassin’s bullets tore into him, the now former governor filed for bankruptcy. His wealth and power were far beyond any of my abilities or ambitions, so I only had one thing in common with him. The thing he did, which I claim commonality over, was how he treated his bankruptcy.

While the things Connally was allowed to keep by the court were far beyond any of my own achievements and possessions, there was a class he exhibited that impressed me at the time.

I even recall that he and his wife had agreed to sell her engagement ring. To me, these incidents exemplified grace in humiliation. I can’t say I’m like that. I wish I was.

Grace and dignity were not something we shared. No, our commonality was humiliation.

I mistakenly thought that devoting years of my life to self improvement would ultimately be beneficial. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake, but it sure seems like it at the moment. In some ways it was clearly beneficial, because I did improve. (And my devotion to writing on Medium and other venues proves I’m very grateful for those studies and lessons.)

But the years of devotion and my strikingly deep investment of time ended up being severely marginalized and diluted by my poor ‘building of wealth,’ and by my measly financial health. And of course there’s all those other things about me, money matters aside, those areas of personal incompetence of which I’m often reminded, even accused.

The thing is, we fail.

And then there’s Puerto Rico

In this regard, I feel a deep kinship with Puerto Rico and it’s poorly maintained infrastructure that’s been so utterly ripped apart and destroyed by Hurricane Maria.

As if a pounding by a hurricane wasn’t quite enough, our president piled it on, publicly humiliating the Puerto Rican people, derisively deriding their mismanagement of infrastructure and debt. This, despite the appalling devastation they are suffering from. Clearly Trump thinks he’s the better man for having said these things. After all, he’s never failed. He’s perfect. And he’s smart.

And, yes, the island’s financial mismanagement and crushing debt is nakedly exposed for all to see. But such humiliation pales against the horrific suffering of its 3.4 million citizens as they wander about glass-eyed, severely daunted by the task of rebuilding, agonizingly challenged by the act of simply staying alive. They don’t even have water.

Puerto Rico’s legacy? One of debt and ineptness, along with floundering in the midst of an unimaginable and devastatingly unaffordable catastrophe. Tragedy all the more amplified by a president’s harsh, judgmental pronouncements.

Maybe I should move there and live out my days beneath a hot, sweltering sheet of discarded corrugated tin. The way I’m feeling right now, I’d fit right in.

On the other hand, who am I to write such a story and include myself? Isn’t that the same thing, in a different sort of way, that Trump does? Tweeting about NFL players while ignoring Puerto Rico? Making things all about him? As I’m doing about me?

Trump and guys like him are contemptuous of failures. Maybe that’s because he’s been such a failure himself. In his case, though, he refuses to acknowledge his shortcomings, so we all end up paying the price for his odious denial.

Having said that, I too have been accused many times of ignoring my shortcomings. So who am I to judge? Look, I don’t mean to excuse the inexcusable, because there’s no doubt that at least a few of us are intentionally awful. But most of us are struggling and doing our best. Life’s hard and we all screw up.

I’ve seen several very smart men and women fail. And what I mean by ‘fail’ is the type of failure that you don’t come back from.

I remember meeting a man who was a janitor in a Dallas building complex. He lived in a rundown trailer with his wife, in an undesirable part of town off of Harry Hines Boulevard. He was the former personal pilot for the owner of a world famous airline. He had taken delivery of the airline’s first 747. His retirement savings had been marauded by bankruptcy and pension raiding courtesy of the all-about-me big wigs. The chief pilot ended up with absolutely nothing. Literally penniless. That’s a pretty big tumble.

While he remained humble and kind, I think of that kind of failure as a curse in a way, what with such a sudden slide into mediocrity. When you fall hard it’s inevitably accompanied by a depressing aura of doom and obscurity, the kind of fate that people often subconsciously label as incompetence. It’s the type of curse that causes those same people to bravely look you in the eye as if everything’s still okay, but then glance away a bit too uncomfortably.

I once knew a man named Mr. Minnie. He owned a work truck. He also owned his tools and the coveralls that he needed to repair furnaces and oil burners in people’s homes. That’s all he ever owned.

This was the 1960s. He never married. He was a boarder living in a small, rented bedroom filled with books and stuffed with piles of old musty magazines.

Mr. Minnie shared the only bathroom with the owner of the home, herself a widow. He was a quiet, modest man who kept to himself. His life was confined to a rented room, his old work truck and daily junkets to inexpensive local restaurants. I should be so contained. Maybe had I made Mr. Minnie’s modest lifestyle choices, I wouldn’t have become a failure. Hard to say.

Governor Connally was left with far less than he had once owned. What remained was his…

At least he had his 200 acres, a house, a kitchen set and a bedroom set. I only have a bed. No dressers, no night stands, no china. And a small, one bedroom rented apartment. 36 steps up. And no kitchen set. I eat and lounge in a $200 bargain chair from Ikea. It always makes me sore. Sometimes at night I go sit in my car, because the seat is so much better. Can you believe that?

Anyway, Connally had yet another trick up his sleeve for me.

I’ve been warned not to put this kind of personally exposing writing on the internet. What with customers or potential investors looking in and all. But I think a person who shows their defeats, and not solely their shiny new clothes, gives the rest of us a glimpse into both their character and into how they deal with adversity. Successes and failures, alike. Joys and defeats, all jumbled up, naked and real.

The truth is, I don’t think I’m handling failure and defeat all that well these days. And I sure can’t imagine that John Connally would have looked twice at a guy like me. He wore expensive suits and ran for president. I wear Carhartt work clothes. But check this out:

Mr. Connally and Mr. Minnie were both modest men, although in very different ways. Connally was wealthy and powerful, while Mr. Minnie was nondescript and anonymous. The chief pilot had literally soared high, but when he fell it was as though he never existed. He’d been anonymized into janitor-man. The guy no one ever looks at. Yet he, too, exhibited undeniably genuine modesty.

I haven’t been successful by many people’s standards. But I’ve maintained my modesty, and I’ve thought deeply about what’s important in life.

And I’ve never forgotten you three guys.

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