The third Immutable Truths of My Home Town is: Everyone is half the man his father was.

It is as established a fact and as impossible to escape as gravity. It’s also most “provable” if father and son were in the same line of work and were lifelong residents, because then the comparisons are direct and clear. Say father and son were carpenters, a typical convo about them would go like this:

“I went by your place today and saw your new deck,” says A. “It’s a beautiful job.”

“Thanks,” says B. “Butler’s kid did it.”

(Butler’s kid, by the way, is 52.) “I thought so,” says A. “Looks like his work, with all the different shapes and metal stuff in it. Really creative.”

“It’s unusual, for sure.”

“Unusual?” says A. “It’s brilliant … and unique. Never gonna see another one like it.”

A long moment passes, then A lays on the inevitable.

“But, honestly, compared to his father’s work …”

There’s no need for him to finish the sentence — at least not in front of a local yokel. Anyone who’d argue that point is not only a damned fool, but has just made an enemy for life.

For all I know, he could be right. Maybe Butler’s kid’s work CAN’T hold a candle his old man’s. But it doesn’t matter. What matters in The Great Generational Comparison Game is that Butler’s kid — like all kids — is half the man his father was. So am I. So are you. And so is everyone else. And lest you wonder, I’m no sexist: All you women are half the women your mothers were.

While the direct comparisons are the worst, no one wins indirect ones either. Say your dad drove cab or was a maintenance man or a ward of the state, but you’re a nuclear physicist, brain surgeon or the president of Yale. Well, guess what, Spanky? You’re still Number Two. And you always will be. So it’s either like it or lump it. End of sentence, end of issue.

You think you can’t win … and you can’t. Take the case of Brunswick’s kid.

Brunswick’s kid was a winner from the get-go. An Eagle scout, three-star athlete and valedictorian, he goes on to Annapolis where he graduates with highest honors and becomes a jet pilot. In what seems like the blink of an eye, he’s the youngest captain in the Navy, in command of an aircraft carrier, and is rumored to be an eventual shoe-in for Chief of Naval Operations. Incredible accomplishments, yes — but only on paper and not in My Home Town.

His dad, Charles “Good Time Charlie” Brunswick, was a guy who early on in life displayed enormous potential. Unfortunately, it only stayed potential. To him, close enough was always good enough. Could’ve been lots of things — a star athlete, an outstanding student, a success in any field he’d pursued — if he’d ever pursued anything but fun.

Like his son, GTC was in the Navy, but that’s as far as the resemblance went. GTC was an enlisted — and listless — sailor. He put in his time, and not much else, and after four years got out with nothing to show for it except vague memories of gin mills and cathouses, a Born to Raise Hell tattoo, and a seabag full of tax-free booze and cigarettes.

Against all odds, and lucky for him, he married a woman with brains, ambition and her own business and best of all, who passed on HER genes to their only child, so GTC always had the creature comforts.

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Can’t win for losing

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But as impressive as Junior’s accomplishments were, they pretty much counted for naught among MHT’s old farts. Whenever there was an Enterprise blurb about the son’s latest and greatest, a three-way conversation ran along these lines:

“You see where the Brunswick kid just got some sort of commendation from the fleet admiral?” says one.

“Yep,” says another. “He’s a top dog for sure.”

“And STILL on his way up,” says the third.

“But kinda a stick in the mud,” says the first guy. “Too serious for my tastes. Nothing like Charlie.”

“Got that right,” says the second guy, keeping the momentum going. “Doubt he could tell a joke if his life depended on it.”

“Charlie,” says the third guy, “a laugh a minute … the life of EVERY party.”

And on and on it goes, every comment sticking one more pin the Junior’s balloon.

Charlie could tell jokes for hours, never repeat one of ’em. He could recite “Casey at the Bat,” “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” even “The Night of the King’s Castration” without ever missing a beat.

And who could forget the time he filled all the Elks Club’s sugar bowls with salt? No one, that’s who.

And on it goes till the cows come home, making the only point that matters in The Great Generational Comparison Game, which is that between fathers and sons, there IS no comparison.

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A matter of character

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When it comes to the parent-child comparison derby of MHT, my brother and I are lucky, if not blessed. Each of us followed in one of our parent’s career paths — my bro as a doctor, me as a teacher — but we did it out of sight of the locals. My bro left town in 1962 and ended up practicing in Florida the entire time. The locals know he’s a doctor, but that’s about it. For all they know, he’s a witch doctor. Thus in his absence, is the absence of any comparison. All anyone can definitively say about him is he’s always been a good guy.

As for me? Well, I’ve lived in town all my life, except for about eight years, when I was in college and the Navy. But I taught at Paul Smith’s College for 41 years, so the locals HAVE to know what kind of teacher I was, right?

Wrong.

Listen: Geographically, Paul Smiths and Saranac Lake are but a few miles from each other — 12, to be exact. But given the socio-psychic gap between the two, it might as well be 12 LIGHT years. I could’ve been the Mr. Chips, the Captain Blye, the Irwin Corey or the PSC campus, and the locals are any the wiser for it.

As a matter of fact, my vague, if not unknown status in the classroom, was highlighted by a blurb in a Historic Saranac Lake newsletter. The article was about local doctors, going back as far as they could, and in each they included updates on the doctors’ spouses and children. In my father’s, they had that he was an ophthalmologist who’d practiced here from 1946 to 1956. They further added that my mother, a teacher, and that there were two sons. First was my brother, who also was a doctor. And second (I guess saving the best for last) was li’l ole me who they said was — and I quote — “a local character.”

When I read that, I was at first miffed.

For one thing, even if they consider me a local character, I don’t. Not that I deny having a peculiarity or two — cuz I sure do — but hardly enough to put me in the local character category, especially not compared to the REAL local characters of bygone days, those wild wooly whackos who walked, and sometimes crawled, on the streets of MHT. If there was a Richter Scale for local characterhood, with me, the needle wouldn’t even twitch.

Second, did they think teaching was a leisure-time hobby and I just indulged in it during vacations and leaves of absence from my local character job? Had that been the case, I can guarantee you I woulda croaked naked, starving and homeless sometime around 1975. The nerve!

But then, after I’d calmed down and had regained my legendary cool, the more I thought maybe being labeled a local character, rather than a teacher, was more appropriate. And maybe it has even higher status than a teacher — especially to my fellow hardcore locals.

Then when I thought about it some more, I concluded there was no “maybe”: On MHT’s status ladder, a teacher is a distant second to a local character. I mean, let’s get real: Go to any town, city, burgh or hamlet in This Great Land of Ours and throw half a brick in any direction and you’ll hit AT LEAST one teacher. This is especially true here.

But Saranac Lake local characters are as rare as gold nuggets. And in my humble opinion, they’re a helluva lot more valuable too.