Herding sea gulls: The nightmares and beauty of retirement on Hilton Head Island

People always ask, “How do you like retirement?”

And I always say, “I highly recommend it.”

It helps that for a number of years, I was a non-essential employee. I didn’t have to go to work when it snowed.

And then last year — the last of my 45 years at the grindstone, but who’s counting? — we all worked at home due to the pandemic. That turned out to be training wheels for retirement:

“What am I going to wear today? Blue jeans or blue jeans? The Salty Dog shirt or the Hudson’s shirt?”

The challenge now is to know the day of the week. The joy is that it doesn’t matter.

But one day on the beach, shortly after retiring from The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette last July 31, I did remember that it was a Wednesday. I walked by a guy relaxing in one of those itty, bitty beach chairs that I can’t get in and out of. His T-shirt was draped over his head.

He was reading the Wall Street Journal. I sneaked a picture and called it “Hump Day.” I did not know him, but he was instantly my role model.

I go to the beach most days. I highly recommend it.

Many people go there to walk. I’m amazed at how many are yacking on the phone, or staring into their phone, or are plugged into ear buds. They might as well be walking down Broadway. It’s like going to the Grand Canyon and sitting in the car to read a book.

I go to toss balls. We have to exercise our cattle dogs without the benefit of cattle. And that’s my life since last we met. I’m herding sea gulls.

My rat race is finding a parking spot at Harris Teeter on Thursday — when we seniors get 5% off.

I can bring the flag in when it rains.

I can pick up litter as I meander with the sniffingest dogs ever created.

Doug Weaver is trying to teach me how to hit a golf ball, his greatest challenge yet.

I have become a crossword puzzle addict.

Wade Livingston, an old newspaper guy, sent me a book by Charles Portis, another old newspaper guy. “The Dog of the South” was a hoot, but I kept thinking to myself, “Don’t you have something important to be doing?”

At first, there was the recurring dream.

I kept dreaming that the paper was counting on a front-page story with a photo, and I could see the holes on the page, and it was deadline and I had not written a word or done a stitch of research.

Deep in another night, I was called on to come forward and do the eulogy for someone I did not know, but a man said, “Lauderdale will do it.”

This, too, has passed.

OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

Dr. LuAnn Aquino gave me the what-for shortly after I was freed from the salt mines.

And apparently, it was related to salt in a way. I weighed too much. My blood pressure was pressurized. My cholesterol was soaring. And I was pre-diabetic.

So I took off on my Schwinn bicycle. I know it’s a cliché, but we really do live in paradise. Especially when you slow down to bicycle speed to drink it in.

I got healthy, but we don’t talk about that in retirement. If you wanted to, your bursitis and arthritis could be all you ever talked about. A friend of mine said, “When I walk into CVS, they applaud.”

On one of my bicycle byways, someone routinely wrote sayings on the street in colored chalk. I snapped pictures and called them words from the bike path bard.

Maybe you already knew it, but:

“Be Careful When

You Follow The

Masses.

Sometimes The

‘M’ Is Silent.”

Or:

“I’m Old Enough

To Know Better

But Young Enough

To Do It Anyway.”

GOLGOTHA

And that’s where retirement has washed me ashore in the pluff mud of life.

I cringe as I see people who really mattered to our community retire, like Steve Riley at the Town of Hilton Head Island or Rich Basirico at Hilton Head Preparatory School. I can’t even fathom all the lives they touched for the better.

I hope they can finally give themselves the gift of time, to listen to Percy Sledge sing “Hey Jude,” to read the Bible through, to bathe in the breeze as they net a blue crab.

I’ve missed talking to people like that every day, which was the joy of my job.

Capt. Fuzzy Davis, the charter boat king, sent me a text wondering why they called the area of today’s Talbird Cemetery on Skull Creek “Il de Skull on Golgotha” in a 1778 map of Hilton Head Island.

I’m grateful to editor Brian Tolley for giving us a chance to discuss such mysterious matters publicly again, even in retirement.

Send me what you’ve got on Golgotha. I’ll be over here herding sea gulls.

LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com is the best way to reach David Lauderdale.