As noted two days ago, Willie Davis ultimately was something of a sad story, after a career considered something less than it could have been, and a descent into drug addiction.

Merlin Olsen, however, went from one achievement to another. He will be remembered best for his days with the Los Angeles Rams, 1962-76. But he also had a long run as an NFL analyst as well as an acting career that led to starring roles in several television series.

He also is remembered — and this is no small thing — for being a good man.

Kids of the 1970 and 1980ss might remember him best for his role on the relentlessly wholesome Michael Landon production “Little House on the Prairie,” but those of us a bit older will always recall him as the guy wearing No. 74 in Rams blue-and-white.

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India is huge. It has something like 1.1 billion people. It’s the world’s largest democracy. But India and the U.S. … not much interaction, and never has been. No wars. No colonial history. No proximity. Not much trade. Not even many immigrants, from India, to the land of immigrants, the U.S.

What I don’t know about India is … extensive. Some of that ignorance is being chipped away, while in the UAE, because the single largest population bloc in the country are expatriates from India. Yes,  the country has more of them than the indigenous Arabs. Something like 1.9 million Indians live in a country of about 7 million people, and the Indian cultural presence is significant. Especially in some of the older neighborhoods of Abu Dhabi.

Tonight, we decided to take another tentative step into the Indian experience … at a popular vegetarian restaurant in the heavily Indian neighborhood of Al Markaziyah.

What did I learn?

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He was 69.

Thinking back about him … he is one of those guys who gives you pause.

Starting center fielder for the Dodgers for more than a decade. Part of the 1963 and 1965 championship teams. But …

But …

Before we go any farther, I have managed to find a column I wrote about Willie Davis back in 2005. Not long after he had been taken back into the Dodgers family after a lost decade (or two), during which he was smoking crack cocaine. Uh, yeah. It was grim, and the time I spent talking to him … well, he wasn’t all there. Some damage had been done.

Maybe he was doomed to be a substance-abuser. He came from a rough neighborhood, and Tommy Hawkins of the Dodgers suggested that’s where he went back to when his baseball career was over. But maybe some of that was about dulling the pain of a career that “everyone said” wasn’t as brilliant as it could have been.

Any way you cut it, what we come back to, when considering Willie Davis is this sense of … missed opportunities.

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But I haven’t finished all sorts of book. In fact, the books I began but didn’t finish … might make a very nice reading list for some college class somewhere.

It also might make for a fun list. In no real order, aside from the last being No. 1 in “you sure you want to admit to that?” on the list.

So here we go:

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What this country doesn’t have much of … is the SoCal/Arizona-style tract homes.

One developer is seeking to remedy this. As you can see by following link to a business blog in my paper, The National.

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But now we are into March, and summer is hanging over our heads like a credit card come due. Even before February was over, we had a day or two that climbed into the 90s,  and the brute force of the Arabian summer was awoken in us. (Having felt it before it had quite receded, in October.)

And those air-conditioners in the house that we have left to molder … well, they are about to become our most necessary appliances.

But you can’t just fire them up without a bit of maintenance. Oh, no.

That is where Mr Mohammed’s assistant came in.

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I love libraries. I love reference books. I like the idea of walking up to my library and pulling out a book I have read before … and read my favorite bits again.

But a personal library is a non-starter when you are an expatriate. How many books can you take when the weight of your luggage is limited? How many can you purchase when books are expensive items, overseas? Where do you store them when you don’t know if you have room in the apartment for a microwave? And how can you keep them when you know you have little or no chance to take them back to California?

That is where the Kindle comes in.

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High school football in San Bernardino County.

There was nothing bigger, in that part of the sports world. Everything else was somewhere down the line. Professionals, colleges, any other prep sport. We were about prep football, and I made it my business to know it and cover it as thoroughly as possible. Great stories, great personalities, great teams.

And we could not even begin to discuss prep football in that time and place without talking about … Dick Bruich.

I knew he stopped coaching after the 2008 season.

(I wrote a massively long retrospective on his career, off the top of my head, while sitting in a 23rd-floor apartment in Hong Kong late in 2008 that I have never published, and probably never will. Among other things, I suggested he was the single biggest newsmaker in San Bernardino County for a 32-year stretch from 1977-2008. Including politicians, celebrities, athletes. Everyone.)

But I didn’t know he gave up teaching all together at the end of the 2008-09 school year.

And what does he do, these days?

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And when he announced, as we turned into the street, “I am sorry I am late. I cannot concentrate.”

Because his roommates — his ex-roommates — had just sprung an unpleasant surprise on him.

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(And I also get to do a list, and everyone likes lists.)

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