Attic Salt for Oct. 11, 2009

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate columnist
• Published: Oct 11, 2009

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

When people ask you to talk at their dinners, the implication is that you have something to say that they might be interested in hearing.

These invitations to talk over the sounds of people eating make me look back, as well as forward for inspiration.

I keep going back to something you hear talked about a lot — a sense of place — perhaps because that is something many of us feel missing in our lives.

For a lot of us, that sense of place has become the inside of our cars stuck in traffic. A post-Katrina phenomenon has drivers pulling into intersections KNOWING that the light will change, leaving them blocking traffic that has the new light.

When we get over the idea that a downtown amusement park would make our lives better, the mayor might direct police officers to write tickets to motorists who put themselves in no man’s land at the intersection of Perkins Road and Essen Lane in late afternoon traffic.

Changing jobs and cities every few years gives the illusion of a fresh start, a new set of people who haven’t heard old stories, new bosses and workmates.

Whole sections of towns and cities look so much alike with the same franchises, fast-food restaurants and big-box stores, moving around isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, however.

As someone who has spent his career in one place, I will say one good thing about staying put is getting to watch people grow older, mellow or grow hard, handle what life throws at them and rely on long friendships to carry them through rough times.

The other night, I found myself at what had been a men’s civic club when I came to Baton Rouge. These clubs were the last bastion of backslapping, corny jokes, “one-hand applause” and thinking, really thinking, that a small band of like-minded people could do good things for a city.

Since I’d last broken bread with the club, it had opened its doors to women. One male club member said admitting women had saved the group from extinction.

Even with women as members and officers, clubs like Kiwanis, Optimist, Lions, Jaycees and Rotary are finding it harder to recruit young men and women willing or able to give their time for community work.

After four years at sea in the U.S. Navy (1966-1970), I came home to a country that had changed a lot in my absence. I dived into college for a second try and had my degree in two years. But it was a family, newspaper work and getting to know Baton Rouge that returned me to American life.

It was through covering men’s clubs and listening to luncheon speakers that I came to know  Norman Rockwell’s America was based on something real.