Tomorrow

On December  7, 1941,  it started for us. 

McGee: "With every passing year  it will seem more quaint, the little tin airplanes bombing the sleepy giants." 

Not many months later, sergeants barely old enough to shave crept through the western Pacific island  jungles. It was not quaint for them. It was ultimate struggle. 

 For personal survival.  For revenge. And yes, for Mom and apple pie.

Fools are  willing to forget these men and women. No one else.

In Memory of Travis McGee

"He will wonder whether he should have told these young, handsome and clever people the few truths that sing in his bones.

"These are:

"(1) Nobody can ever get too much approval.

"(2)  No matter how much you want or need, they, whoever they are, don't want to let you get away with it, whatever it is.

"3) Sometimes you get away with it."

Travis didn't write that. Neither did his amanuensis. But we can thank Trav for telling John D. to use it on the theme page of "Free Fall in Crimson."  And John Leonard for writing it in "Private Lives in the Imperial  City."

The Libertarian Travis McGee

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In his heart of hearts, McGee wanted to round up all the Florida land developers, hustling politicians,  and associated vermin and pen them up with hungry alligators. As a rational man he knew the impossibility, and so he offers us a libertarian solution -- carving the best one personally can out of a world growing uglier: 

" ...There would would be a time again when I would canoe down the Withlacoochee, adrift in a slow current,  seeing the morning mist rising at the base of the limestone buttes. seeing the sudden heart-stopping dip and wheel of a flight of birds of incredible whiteness."

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It's in "Cinnamon Skin," which you shouldn't read first. The way to get acquainted with McGee and Meyer is to start at the beginning "The Deep Blue Goodbye" and enjoy your way through to  the last one, "The Lonely Silver Rain."