The Zen of Leon Hale
I didn’t realize it at the time. As a matter of fact, I didn’t realize until just this morning that my favorite columnist, the person who’s writing I would most like to emulate, Leon Hale, was my first writing teacher. He was also my first Zen Master, long before I ever knew what one was.
I didn’t get to know Leon until I moved to Houston in 1989. When I say this, I mean that our relationship was rather one-sided. He wrote a twice-weekly observational column for the Houston Chronicle and I eagerly looked forward to our regular time together as he told me stories about his early life (about the people in it, mostly), and the trips he took in March every year with his O.F. (old friend) Morgan, down to south Texas in search of the line of blooming Mesquite trees that harbored the arrival of spring. He claimed that those wild trees knew what the transplanted Mesquite further north didn’t and would only bloom when spring was well and truly in place.
He wrote about his former secretary, Mildred, and the Big Red Mule who would only speak to him when no one else was around, but my favorite stories were about Leon’s visits with Madame Z, a fortune-teller friend who lived in a remote cabin along the Brazos River bottom. At the beginning of the summer, she would sweep the sand from her red-clay front yard, close up her little house, and escape the Texas heat to stay with her family in Colorado. Each fall I anxiously awaited to hear the story of her return. She was ancient, and we never knew if this might be the year she would not return, and that’s exactly how it happened. One year, she simply disappeared, if she ever existed in the first place. Leon protected her privacy and her identity, and she was as much an enigma as anything.
In semi-retirement, Leon split his time between his front porch in the small town of Winedale, in the Texas Hill Country, and a high-rise apartment in Houston. As he grew older, he would check his driving ability by making an annual trek around Loop 610, which exactly as implied, is a freeway that loops entirely around Houston. At the time, this was the only loop. There are two more ringing the expansion of the city limits, and the suburbs, but the original is still ‘the loop’. Driving the loop is a challenging endeavor at the best of times, requiring multiple lane changes in order to remain ‘on the loop’ and not find yourself on the way to San Antonio or Dallas without intending to head those directions.
I don’t recall when he decided he could no longer navigate the loop safely. I think he simply moved to Winedale full time to avoid it, but don’t quote me on that.
Anyway, back to Leon as my first Zen Master, well before I ever heard the term or the impact it would have on me later in life. Leon wove words into a tapestry that transported his reader to a specific place and time, like a magic carpet. Through his writing, we hear his voice, and we experience the sensation of being present within his story. He grounds us in the intro, takes us on a journey through the middle, and returns us safely to our place in the present at the end, entertained and satisfied.
From our first meeting in the pages of the Chronicle in 1989, I knew I wanted to write like Leon. I wanted to tell interesting stories about everyday people and events. But family and work obligations, and figuring out who I was (although I didn’t realize this part at the time) consumed the decade of the 90s and beyond, and writing took a back seat as my career progression required much of the space in my brain. For a while, I did have the opportunity to exercise my writing skills as editor and chief writer (read that, only writer) of a company newsletter. After several years of running a one-person publication, the president of the company decided that the newsletter ‘sounded too much like me’ and passed it on to some other unsuspecting schmuck as additional work, where it died shortly thereafter. This was a small, but pleasing, vindication. Now, whenever someone comments about being able to hear ‘my voice’ in my words, I consider it the greatest complement and the goal for which I strive.
Leon continued to be my regular companion through his retirement in 2014. At least a decade earlier, the Chronicle had moved into the digital age, and I’d long since stopped receiving the daily paper copy, but the paywalls didn’t exist and I could follow Leon’s life and travels on the web. After he officially retired, he continued to write a blog for the paper until his death in 2021.
It's largely because of Leon Hale's influence that I'm writing now. It’s much easier, with the ease of technology and the availability of free and low-cost platforms, for those of us who have words in our head to release them into the wild. If I were having to write on a temperamental typewriter, sending my inane thoughts to newspaper editors, begging them to consider reading, I’m not sure I’d bother. But if it weren’t for Leon showing me the way, I wouldn’t have ever thought to try.
I can’t recall anyone I never actually met, whose death moved me like his. He was 99 years old, having lived life on his own terms, full of friends, interesting adventures, and love. I wasn’t sad for him, I was sad for my own loss, for the collective loss of his voice in print. I don’t think he’d mind, Daoist Immortals, even unintentional ones, typically don’t.
I’m including Leon’s obituary in the Houston Chronicle, which is a beautiful memorial, and also a link to his backlist of books. He’s been a friend of words for more than half my life. I hope you get to know him, too.
Beloved Houston Chronicle columnist Leon Hale dies at 99
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