I got a call from Fed Ex yesterday about the address where I sent “The Jersey.” (See Post #1149). Former I.U. basketball center, Kent Benson, no longer lives there, but they did have his cell phone number and left a message that he had a package. I also went to my I.U. Alumni directory to see if there was any contact information provided, but he was not listed. I’m still hoping that his I.U. jersey eventually gets to him.

While searching through the directory, I stumbled upon a Jim “James” Fairchild that was my age and lives here in Portland. Thinking of the long-shot that he might have been a high school classmate, I did some on-line research and found evidence that he once lived in Elkhart, Indiana. With this confirmation, I immediately called the number that he included with his I.U. profile, but it was disconnected. My only option was to send snail-mail to the address that is probably also outdated. Finding both Kent and Jim are now in the hands of the postal service. 

I never had much contact with Kent, but I clearly remember going over to Jim’s house in Elkhart. He lived on East Jackson Blvd. that followed the St. Joe River. Homes situated on the river-side were some of the priciest in the city, while those on the other side were large but not as valuable. I guess you could say that he lived on the relatively wrong side of the street. His parents must have both worked because they were never there when I was at the house on afternoons after school. One thing that made Jim popular was that his mom allowed him to read Playboy magazine, material usually only found hidden in the woods or under the bed if you were lucky at that age. His mom would actually go through the publication and cut out all the pictures. The allure was to see if she had missed any. We would gather at his house on this mission. I would love to re-connect with Jim after 50 years to get “the rest of the story.”

During the course of my amateur detective work, my wife and I walked to the movies. The showing of “Dark Waters” gave me a lot more to think about than old acquaintances. It was kind of a shocking story, knowing that all this was going on without our knowledge. It portrayed lawyers as the “good guys,” going after the evil that industrial giant DuPont was spreading around the world through the use of Teflon. Most of the story took place in Parkersburg, West Virginia. It made me think of an attorney friend of mine in Austin that was once a client. She was from West Virginia like the real-life character Robert Bilott that actor Mark Ruffalo portrayed. I was anxious for her reaction to the movie, since most of our recent communication has simply been about Indiana and West Virginia basketball. Because she has not yet seen it, there’s no point in spoiling the plot for any readers.

On our mile-long walk back from the theater, my wife was lamenting about the Teflon pans that she used for cooking clean-up convenience, unaware that she was poisoning her family. It made us think about all the trust we place on manufacturers to provide us with safe products. It’s disturbing to discover the harm we do to our bodies through what we consume or breathe-in every day. It was even more alarming to see the effects of harmful chemicals in causing cancer and tragic birth defects in both humans and animals. It made me leery of what’s below the surface of dark water?