Today's Featured Biography
Jed Magee
Geez….it’s tough writing about yourself. But since I will admit to enjoying everyone else’s bios I figured why be the scrooge holdout. (Actually, only the second part of that is bullshit. I’m doing this cause Dufloth said if I didn’t, he’d make one up for me and that’s incentive enough.)
In the forty years since PHS I’ve had my share of successes and failures, triumphs and tragedies, buried far too many loved-ones too soon and wore out some of my parts along the way. Pretty much like all of us about now.
My highpoint for all these years, that of which I am most proud, are my two sons. Managed to get through the tough teens without choking the crap out of them, gave them a nudge or two, plenty of rope and wha’ da ya know, they’ve turned into fine young men. Both are following their passions, Tom at 27 is training horses and Ben at 25 is guiding fishermen out of Jackson, Wyo. I’m lucky that we still share as many hunt camps, duck blinds and drift boats as time and schedules allow, continuing a tradition of outdoor pursuits into the sixth generation.
Other than that I’m still doing what I’ve always done. Raising beef cattle and producing crude oil. Don’t get carried away with that image cause being a front end producer of any commodity is no picnic. I’ll say only this: Having no control or influence over your product price is a bitch.
So to mix it up and keep life interesting, I went mining in Alaska for a few seasons. That was pretty wild, a remote fly-in only location. Bears and wolves, in camp, at your tent door add a certain spice to life in the bush. Ultimately the gold played out and the project crashed, but I’ve got some memorable videos, a bag of nuggets, and if nothing else, an extra line in my obituary, “He mined in Alaska.”
In musing about our high school days, I’m really struck by how different the world is today. For example, for my senior English project, rather than write a paper we re-enacted selected scenes from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and for our props I brought real guns to school, with live ammo in the cartridge belts and no one got shot. Today we’re talking swat teams and lockdown.
Another incident that I thought hilarious at the time, and, sorry Jeff, still find hilarious today, was one day at P.E. we had to run the Burma Road, a route the guys will remember that wound up into the park from the field house. With no supervision, once into the park the line of runners was pretty spread out. Soon the word rippled back “Ambush! Snipers! Coblentz is hit!” And here comes Jeff, stagger/jogging, clutching his upper arm, retreating to the field house and the protective umbrella of Coach Klotz, who launched an unsuccessful one man sweep of the area for the perps. My thanks still go out to P.H. and D.M. for providing the best day of P.E. ever. But try it today. Not just swat and lockdown, we’re talking choppers, 24 hr news, updates, interviews, background stories. All for a BB gun “incident”.
And how about the Shack? Yes that Shack. That exclusionary, elitist den of adolescent debauchery. There are not enough cops, counselors, therapists, interventionists, or lawyers to sort out that deal in today’s world.
Yes, things sure have changed. But what once was will always be, like our shared experiences at PHS in those oh so formative years. I look back on those years, and, much like the following four decades, I believe there’s been more good than bad, even if at times I had to look hard to see or find it.
So I hope that you too, fellow Highlanders, can recall those years with a smile and know that I thank one and all for the memories. All the best on the trail ahead. God Bless America.
VIEW ALL BIOGRAPHIES
|