Zero to Sixty: Memoirs of an Inexplicable Scot

By Bruce MacMullan

In this insightful and oftentimes hilarious memoir, Bruce MacMullan takes us on a most entertaining journey through time and place. Starting with his first two decades in Minnesota, Bruce manages to recklessly dispose of the first seven of his allocated nine cat lives before he even gets out of college. From a homemade hydroplane incident you won't believe to almost losing his head in a summer factory job, we witness Bruce continuously surviving the almost unimaginable. You may not be able to fathom what transpires when a novice freshwater sailor is forced to navigate a raging Atlantic storm or what strange chain of events unravel by simply trying to supercharge a golf ball in a microwave, but The Inexplicable Scot will soon clue you in. Zero to Sixty does a yeoman's job in defining the geriatric predicament that we're either already in or will be sooner than we think. At some point, we all begin to take a closer look in that rear-view mirror. Bruce simply challenges us to, "Give life its due respect and take it all in with as many laughs as possible...while it is still a laughing matter."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce MacMullan
• Release date: Mar 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781939919052

Bruce MacMullan

Bruce Allen MacMullan, a graduate of Macalester College, is a retired 35-year banker living in Morrison, Colorado. He is foremost a professional survivalist, a "scrape metal impressionist,” a past tennis teaching professional, a deeply disturbed "senior golf tour" wannabe, a husband, father, and soon-to-be grandfather of a next Zero to Sixty generation.This book is Bruce’s first attempt to shed the slightest flickering light on "man's existence" while still trying to foster some semblance of intellectual "return on investment" from his four years of undergraduate studies.

Book preview

Zero to Sixty

Memoirs of an Inexplicable Scot

Bruce Allen MacMullan

Copyright 2014 by Bruce Allen MacMullan.

All Rights Reserved.

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Published by Merry Dissonance Press, LLC

Castle Rock, CO

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from Merry Dissonance Press, LLC or Bruce Allen MacMullan, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

All images, logos, quotes, and trademarks included in this book are subject to use according to trademark and copyright laws of the United States of America.

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 978-1-939919-05-2

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1. Memoir

2. Humor

3. Aging

Book Design and Cover Design 2014

Cover Design by Merry Dissonance Press, LLC

Book Design by Andrea Costantine

Editing by Donna Mazzitelli

E-Book by e-book-design.com.

Going against a trite ‘stop-and-smell-the-roses’ philosophy, MacMullan provides a refreshing reflection on lifelong gratitude. The harrowing and hilarious misadventures create the essence of the man behind the madness and they encourage readers to appreciate their own ill-conceived yet fateful actions. This book could also easily be subtitled: Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind.

~Rosalie Stromme, Yoga Instructor and

Past President of the Red Rocks Book Club

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the gentle, self-deprecatory, laugh-out-loud humor of Midwestern authors, Bill Bryson and Garrison Keillor. Now another Midwesterner has joined that list— Bruce MacMullan. Read, laugh, enjoy and think, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’

~Tim Engels, M.A., author of

InnerChanging and FUNdamental Golf

A fun read where first-time author, MacMullan, smoothly travels you down memory lane with poignant wisdom and humor.

~Russel Frederick Ahrens, author of

One Shoe and the Golden Medallion

"Zero to Sixty is like having a beer with an old friend. Bruce’s heartfelt tale of his sixty years on this planet is a really funny, yet insightful look at aging and all the joys of life’s many wonderful and unexpected experiences."

~Kellie DeMarco, Hearst Television News Anchor

In this personal history, Bruce MacMullan gives the reader a digest of unthinkable and legitimate narrative on the aging conundrum. Kooky and whimsical anecdotes appear at the turn of each page, and I repeatedly wondered how he got through the harrowing events he narrates. I laughed and howled at the often absurd and farcical twists and turns he provides anyone who devotes well-spent time enjoying this memoir.

~John P. Moyer MD FAAP,

Clinical Professor of Pediatrics,

University of Colorado School of Medicine

Dedication

For family, lifetime friends, and all those other seniors out there who are equally perplexed as to where the last six-plus decades have gone

Contents

Preface

Introduction On Your Mark, Get Set. . .

Chapter One Minnesota – Not at All a Bad Place to Get Started

Chapter Two The Real Beav or Just an Imposter?

Chapter Three Trying to Cope With Big Brother

Chapter Four Nautical Naiveté

Chapter Five Why a Blue Collar Career Would Not Be a Good Retrofit

Chapter Six Sports Quest for a Marginal Jock

Chapter Seven A Fun Sport That Doesn’t Even Hurt

Chapter Eight Driving Young and Emerging Alive (An Oxymoron)

Chapter Nine One Helluva College Roller-Coaster Ride

Chapter Ten A Hitchhiking Guide for Dummies

Chapter Eleven From the Frozen Tundra to the High Plains

Chapter Twelve Ahead of My Time in Green Transportation

Chapter Thirteen Golf Exposes the Most Trivial Character Flaws

Chapter Fourteen Why Is Love So Complicated Looking Forward and So Simple Looking Back?

Chapter Fifteen A Fantasy Cruise Gone Terribly Wrong

Chapter Sixteen A Strong Hint of Mental Slippage

Chapter Seventeen Time Keeps Accelerating and I Can’t Seem to Locate the Brakes

Epilogue

Preface

I am a Scotsman at heart, duly christened so many years ago as (Sir) Bruce Allen MacMullan. Without a doubt, I believe I have truly lived abiding by the ancient spirit of the old Scottish proverb, Be happy while ye are living, for ye are a long time deid. I would cautiously add that it is oftentimes difficult for me to not look back at life and ponder both what it all means and why my slot in time is not the evermore it once seemed.

With this last recurring curiosity in mind, let me take you on a little journey over the past sixty-plus years in an attempt to make sense of what transpired between being a carefree kid one second and then, when it all seemed to finally start coming together, suddenly finding myself scrambling to get the most from the handful of years I have left. Somehow, for me at least, six decades came and went when I obviously wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. Now, with a slightly nagging obsession, I am unexpectedly probing for credible answers as to how this could possibly be. Sound familiar?

Coupled with this lifetime quandary, there is one particular idiosyncrasy that I am most intrigued about, and its revelation seems to have no semblance of any rhyme or reason. For some curious and totally undeserved rationale, calamitous outcomes were often circumvented for me by what seems to be no more than plain dumb luck. Black-veiled rompings with the Grim Reaper were a consistent theme in my life from almost the very beginning. Too many close calls were shuffled with a multitude of other bizarre occurrences, and strangely enough, the distinction between the two was often quite negligible. Coming to grips with the matrix of all that has passed during those fleeting years is confusing enough, but frankly, the eccentric path that paved my journey quite frequently feels like it had a life of its own.

I look at my standing today, and after considerable deliberation, I am initially inclined to consider that my personal passage may be nothing more than a mixed bag of this happened then, which led to that, and so on and so forth. In other words, one premise might dictate that my total existence could simply be the upshot of a lot of chance, luck, and/or happenstance.

On the flip side, I’d kind of like to consider a more responsible argument, suggesting that perhaps I could take a little degree of credit for reaching the rather well-seasoned status to which I have become accustomed. With that being said, it is equally disturbing for me to think that with all the opportunities I have had to do good, or make a difference in the world, I suspect I may now be rather short of sufficient goodwill chits to inconspicuously pass through those Pearly Gates to which we all aspire.

Maybe it is my Presbyterian upbringing that still makes me feel a little uncomfortable about the whole conditional process of leaving the secular world behind and then assuming or hoping to transcend to a better place. Did I pass the prerequisites necessary to avoid floating around aimlessly for eternity or should I begin to prepare myself to cozy up to the campfire from hell? My backup plan for that extreme trepidation comes from a rash assumption that, even if things haven’t yet gone exactly as I envisioned, surely there must be sufficient time left to make appropriate amends. I am now beginning to think that this theory may also have some serious flaws.

Think about it for a second. Each and every one of us is here simply because we were the lucky recipient of the fastest swimmer at conception. If our designated spermatozoon arrives at the egg a millisecond late, we’re toast—nothing, nada. We start out as a one-in-a-trillion winner, and theoretically, that fact alone should have given us a timeless warranty or at least a viable option for an extended lease on life. Let’s face it, we all took that initial conquest for granted, and at least biologically, I suspect that we quite unconsciously expected the installments of this life force to march on indefinitely. As time keeps flying by, however, a simple reality check (just looking in the mirror for one) tells me that this forever concept probably doesn’t hold a whole lot of water.

My final proposition, trying to make sense of this aging phenomenon, obliges me to also contemplate a rather confusing assortment of cosmic and spiritual considerations. Was there a predestined plan that set my individual agenda without consulting me first, or is there some guiding power out there that persists in offering choice after choice to do it right or, conversely, to screw it up? Which is it? Is the whole gig totally structured, open-ended, or just a haphazard conglomeration of fastidious goings-on? I am currently toying with a sort of hybrid hypothesis that how I got to where I am is most likely a rather convoluted milieu of some or all of the above.

My life, in fact, could be just a temporary timeslot, not much different from a set of cards that are dealt from one hand to the next. How those initial cards are perceived may seem to be important for our future, but maybe they are not as critical as we would first think. Obviously, we all came into this world in a similar fashion, but once we got on the starting line, it is pretty much of a copout to believe that events going forward simply happen of their own accord. Bad timing, no luck, and circumstances beyond our control can be real for some, but they are more often the universal excuses when lives don’t turn out quite the way we want. Probably the most crucial component is the reality that outcomes are the result of both spontaneous (no time to think) and calculated decisions we are all forced to make every day. For me and the majority of people who have made it this far, this simple dynamic is likely the most significant key for staying in the game.

So, you might ask, exactly how indispensable is your original hand? Besides the all-pervasive Lady Luck wildcard, maybe we should first look at our willingness to accept the cards we are dealt. We need to carefully gauge when to take appropriate risks and then, when the circumstances dictate otherwise, to have the patience and common sense to do an about-face and simply go with the flow. Lastly, it is a prime necessity to recognize when to fold ‘em and reserve the option to jump back in the competition another day.

With all of this in mind, I have to feel that my initial hand had more than adequate cards to properly posture me for a good jumpstart on life. These cards, however, were certainly not strong enough to bet the farm before taking numerous hits to help improve my odds. I did have the benefit of great parents. Our family was not rich, but neither were we poor. I grew up in a great part of the country, and stress early on was not a real concern unless I lied or came home from school with a bad report card. Advantage Bruce, you might say, but the game is certainly not over and nobody yet has stepped up to kindly cash me out with a timely surplus of chips.

My life began to take shape in rural Minnesota in the profound era of the fifties. In those times, there seemed to be unlimited prospects around every corner, and in theory, it seemed to be the perfect catalyst for a long and prosperous life. I now understand, however, that there are no lifetime warranties, as I have been a witness to many others who began their lives with an extraordinary set of cards, and yet for some unknown reason, they had no clue how to play to that advantage. The startling supposition here is that I can now see how easy it is to choke on a silver spoon. As a philosopher once said, I believe that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.

The innumerable highlights of my last sixty-plus years show compelling evidence that providence can sometimes be manufactured, but then in the next moment it can take a strange twist where there is no control at all. I certainly understand that my Midwestern upbringing during the late forties, fifties, and early sixties probably didn’t present half the critical decisions that young people face today. I seemed to have made more than my share of poor choices and yet I not only managed to survive but somehow seemed to improve my lot with each little victory or narrow escape. I would like to believe that favorable outcomes were not all coincidental. As I mentioned earlier, the critical choices I made along the way could be looked upon as a reasonable barometer of what defines me some sixty years later. The whys and wherefores may never be determined, but as you will shortly appreciate, how I made it even this far still defies any reasonable logic.

We all share a unique set of life experiences, but I am most certain that if you’re over sixty, the remarkable time warp through six astonishingly fleeting decades in no time flat has to be just as mind-boggling to each and every one of us. Once everyone reasonably assesses his or her personal and ever-so-diminutive journey, maybe the untold chronicle is really not so much how we got to where we are after all. The bigger question in my mind may be whether or not we will have sufficient time left to still do it right, or from a more spiritual approach, whether we will ever get a chance to do it better the next time around.

My hope is that the cause and effect of my many trials might trigger similar questions for you. My personalized life story may or may not offer any direct or enlightening answers for you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t hit on some analogous happenings and perceptions that might also be stirring in your mind. At a minimum, I bet we can sit down at the same card table, and at the very end of our respective lifetime dramas, we most likely could end up sharing some kind of universal bond based on how our cards were played out and how high our chips were intermittently stacked.

Introduction

On Your Mark, Get Set ...

I was born into a modest Presbyterian family in the middle of America’s Heartland (White