Big Mac

By Gary MacLachlan

Since he’s recently put out an all-points bulletin in pursuit of good (and juicy) Brian McLane driving misadventures, let’s get that out of the way first.

Understand, Brian and I are both Syracusans, we were both at Syracuse University at roughly the same time, we were both involved with the athletic department there (me as a member of the crew team, him as the full-time statistician and part-time play-by-play voice of the basketball team), and later we both carved out careers for ourselves in public service, both of us in parks management.

What’s more, he’d been a lifelong friend of my late wife, and a fellow parishioner at Most Holy Rosary on the city’s southwest side. Kathleen remembered Brian, in fact, from so long ago that he was still using crutches when they first met in grammar school.

Brian’s path and mine, in other words, have crossed many times over the years and under any number of different circumstances.

But in all that time I'd never ridden in a car he’d been driving, until one day. That was the day he picked me up at my apartment on Skytop, I got into his car (a large and, frankly, pretty impressive conversion van) and, together, we headed out for what proved to be, at least for me, an eye-opening experience.

Now, in all fairness, it’s not that Brian was a particularly bad driver.  He was just the kind whose attention to detail, if not the road itself, was, shall we say, spotty. You couldn’t tell him that, of course. In that regard, I suppose he was a bit like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man.  I mean, the guy could claim to be an “excellent driver” all he wanted. But the simple fact was, all it took you was five minutes in his passenger seat to realize that the little guy strapped into the chair to your left, and the guy talking into your ear about a mile a minute, was far more Mr. Magoo than anyone’s idea of an “excellent driver.”

I’ll spare you all the details – and I’m still not sure how he managed to pull this off – but that day when he came to pick me up, I was utterly stunned to discover as I watched him pull up the Skytop driveway that his van's side door was wide open, the wind rushing through the interior of the vehicle. What’s worse, its access ramp was protruding outward a good four or five feet to the right, and maybe ten inches off the ground.  Apparently, in his haste to put the work day behind him and get to wherever the hell it was we were going that evening, Mr. Attention-to-Detail had, somehow, managed to overlook the fact he’d forgotten to close the van’s side door and, more importantly, raise its access ramp and fold it inside.

Of course, Brian joked about it when I called him on it – and he, likewise, made himself the butt of his own joke. Which was, of course, so wonderfully Brian. Because I suppose of all the things I’ve learned to love about my friend over the years, his willingness to make fun at his own expense is right near the top.  In a world far too full of those unwilling or incapable of laughing at themselves, Brian McLane could teach a master class on it.

I’ll never forget the time, maybe thirty years ago, when we were together for a conference at a resort in the Catskills. On our first day there, before things ramped up and got busy, we decided to go to the spa for a quick sauna. There were three of us in our little posse: a colleague of ours (who weighed 350 pounds if he weighed an ounce), me (a 6’6” stringbean with inordinately long arms and legs) and, of course, little Brian (with his diminutive frame, laughing Irish eyes, and tricked-out wheelchair).

Maybe it was because it was the Borscht Belt, where, it seems, everybody's a comedian. Regardless, when the guy behind the desk saw the three of us before him, naked except the towels around us, his face barely registered even a glint of recognition. He simply looked up from his work for a nanosecond, drank in the sight of three grown men, each with his unique shape and size, and returned to whatever it was he was doing. But not before asking rhetorically, under his breath, and to no one in particular, “What?  Is the circus in town?”

You would have thought the guy had just told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Brian started laughing so hard I actually thought he might pee himself.  And, of course, his laughter became so contagious that it infected the two of us. Before we knew what happened, we were all laughing like three schoolboys at a sleepover. The only person not laughing, in fact, was the guy whose deadpan delivery had cracked us up in the first place.

Make no mistake, I love Brian. Love him, truth be told, like family. Because, in a way, I suppose he is.  And over the years, and in so many different settings, I have watched him win hearts and change minds like no man I’ve ever known.  And what he’s done from his wheelchair to make this world a more forgiving, empathic and understanding place, and to work on behalf of the disabled and less fortunate among us, is the kind of stuff about which, in time, they write books and make movies.

Years ago, Brian said something to me when he called me on the phone one day, and it was something that he’d subsequently repeat time and time again whenever he’d call. “Big Mac,” he said that first day, a crooked little smile in his voice, “this is Little Mac.  Whatcha doin’?”

Let me tell you, and make no mistake, in my world there’s only one Big Mac. And he’s about four feet tall.  To me, Brian McLane is a giant. A giant of a man.  And – driving skills notwithstanding – I am honored to call that man my friend.     ###

Speaking of which, Gary MacLachlan is an absolute giant of the public arena, especially in the fields of parks management and fire prevention. Gary founded the Town of Dewitt Parks Department, he helped launch the Onondaga County Parks Department, and he worked for years with the New York State Parks Department, as head of its operations in Central New York. What’s more, a lifelong volunteer firefighter in the Town of Dewitt, after his "retirement" from the state, Gary became Dewitt’s first full-time Fire Chief. I am honored and humbled by his words, to be sure. But never lose sight of just how much Gary, himself, has done to leave the world a better place than he found it.    BM