Words you don’t want to hear …

… following your second move in a chess game:

“This is going to be easy.”

It was, for James Bradley. For me, not so easy. Well, yeah, losing was easy, considering how out-matched I was.

Bradley out-matched just about everybody with things he took an interest in. He was a painter, a musician, a fledgling pistolero. The latter, there wasn’t much call for in the mid-1970s. Not legally, anyway. Nor within Bradley’s ideas of self-discipline. And a shooter has to discipline himself more than do other people.

After graduation, Priscilla and I lost track of Bradley. A book of students said he was a soldier. If so, he picked up more discipline somewhere.