Memories of a great career all together in one shadow box

Hard to believe how much of a life can fit into one shadow box.

Back in my single days, when classy decorations were one-sheet movie posters and cork boards covered with media passes, I probably had several hundred mementoes on my walls.

Now I have pictures in nice frames and cases of autographed baseballs. My movie poster are smaller and framed and I have some lovely night skylines as well.

The real prizes are an autographed John Elway jersey and an old, sepia-toned photograph taken in 1920 from my grandparents' wedding.

But this particular shadow box really covers the waterfront, so to speak.. Upper left is a pass from covering the Rose Bowl. Just below it is a clubhouse pass from the 1995 National League Division Series, and my press card from when I worked in North Carolina in 1982.

At the bottom on the left is my press pass from the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York. Somewhere else I have passes from the GOP's shindig in 1996 in San Diego and the Democrats in 2000 in Los Angeles.

Upper center was my vanity license plate from the years I was a newspaper columnist in Southern California. My friend Mick said it stood for "clam nest," but he was just jealous that he didn't have a cool license plate.

The home-plate shaped pass underneath was from the 1992 baseball All-Star Game in San Diego and just to the right was a photograph of me interviewing John Elway that appeared in Sports Illustrated in January 1987.

The three smaller passes just below were from the 1991 Nissan Open golf tournament, the NASA launch of the Cassini spacecraft in 1997 from Cape Canaveral and a badge from the 1988 International golf tournament at Castle Pines in Colorado.

Bottom center is my press box card from the 1983 Peach Bowl game.

On the far right were two of the bigger events I covered in 1985 -- the World Series in St. Louis and the NCAA Final Four in Lexington, Ky.

It really was quite a good run.

*****

For the longest time, this 1979 Nicholas Meyer film was one of my very favorite movies.

It had such a great premise -- H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper into the future and discovering modern-day San Francisco was anything but the Utopia he had imagined life in the future would be.

Malcolm McDowell has had a long and varied career, but he rarely plays the hero and even more rarely plays a romantic hero. In this he falls in love with Mary Steenburgen's modern woman, and he and his costar fell in love off the set and got a 10-year marriage and two children out of it.

In a movie celebrating time travel and hope for a better life in different eras, McDowell gets the best line when he professes his love in the final scene.

"Every age is the same. It's only love that makes any of them bearable."

*****

I have three wonderful grandchildren, and my lone grandson is the middle one. Lexington will be 4 years old in November, and he's about to live in the United States for the first time.

My daughter Pauline will be spending the equivalent of the next school year in Washington, D.C., learning Spanish for her three-year tour in Guatemala City. Lex will be in preschool, and big sister Madison will be in second grade.

The baby, lovely little Albanie, will be a year old this Halloween.

It's going to be an eventful year and something of a tumultuous one, but with Virgile and Sterling also in D.C., we ought to be able at least to have a nice Christmas.