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Changed My Life

My uncle David Walton died eleven years ago at the age of eighty-six, at which time I posted a brief remembrance of him. Uncle David.

This remembrance elicited dozens of emails and phone calls from people who knew David or had spent time in David’s legendary Monterey coffee house the Sancho Panza, 1955 – 1967, before the place morphed into a Mexican restaurant.

To this day I get emails from people telling me what an enormous influence the Sancho Panza had on them in terms of how they subsequently lived their lives and related to other people.

What was it about that place and my Uncle David that had such an impact on so many people? The words that come to mind are: welcoming, accepting, encouraging, creative, diverse, exciting. Everyone felt welcome there – young and old, famous and unknown, hip and straight, all colors and creeds and identities – which made the place an emotional and spiritual Shangri-la.

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Thinking about the Sancho Panza changing people’s lives, I remember seeing the movie Zorba the Greek in 1965 when I was a sophomore in high school. Clueless about who and what I might be in the world, that movie catalyzed my transformation into the person I wanted to be. I saw the movie two more times before it left the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, got the novel Zorba the Greek, read it twice, and over the next five years read the complete works of Nikos Kazantzakis, some of the novels two and three times.

When I dropped out of college at nineteen, I was keenly aware that my decision to leave the confines of the straight and narrow was greatly influenced by my immersion in the works of Kazantzakis, and specifically the movie Zorba the Greek.

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Another movie that literally changed my life is The Horse’s Mouth, starring Alec Guinness (who also wrote the screenplay based on the novel). I first saw The Horse’s Mouth when I was a little boy (also at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park) and subsequently saw the movie several more times at key moments throughout my life. The Horse’s Mouth is about an artist for whom making art is far more important than anything else, a story both tragic and beautiful in this regard.

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Come to think of it, the movies Zorba the Greek and The Horse’s Mouth did for me what Uncle David and the Sancho Panza did for so many people. They opened my mind and heart to the possibility of living a creative adventurous life imbued with knowing everyone is unique and worthy and valuable.

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Speaking of unique, readers have informed me they would like to hear the audio version of my new book Good With Dogs and Cats, but don’t wish to join Audible to hear my reading of the goodly tome. Good news! You can get the audio book from Apple Books for a one-time fee and don’t have to join anything.