Month: August 2017

 

Tonight the air has a bit of coolness to it. It’s the week before the first of September.

The first week of September. Traditionally, when I was a kid, this was the first week of school.

I know that nowadays the kids go back early. By now they have been back for a couple of weeks. They already are doing their homework, the band is practicing for the first football game. Humdrum has set in and they are already looking forward to Fall break. But, things weren’t always that way.

The week before school started back….in the fifties, and especially the sixties, was my second favorite time of the year, right behind Christmas week.

Baseball season was long over, and the dog days of summer with their ninety degree days were starting to subside. Boy, was I glad!

What started out on May 31 as enthusiasm for a long break from the regimen of learning, ended up as loneliness by the middle of August. I’d read all my comic books two or three times each. I’d listened to all my 45’s over and over, until I knew all the words to all the Elvis songs by heart. Even “Just Tell her Jim said Hello”.

I was stuck in the house listening to my Mother tell me all the things she needed me to do over and over and over….

So, when the last week of August rolled around and Daddy asked me if I wanted to go pick up some school supplies, I was ecstatic.  School was starting back!  It was for real and not a drill!  Soon, I’d get to see all my friends again, get into a comfortable daily routine, and get out of the house for 8 hours every day.  Don’t tell anybody, but I really loved school.  I know that’s weird, but I did

There were no Walmart’s back then, so it necessitated a trip to Sears and Roebucks in Rome.  Daddy always liked going there anyway to look at shotguns and such, and Mom liked it because they had a large inventory of clothing back in those days. Back then Sears and Roebuck was the equivalent to a shopping mall all rolled in to one store, and if they didn’t have it in the store, you could order anything, and I do mean anything, from their gigantic catalog.  That regular Sears catalog weighed about 12 pounds, and was 6 inches thick.  I never liked the regular catalogs, but oh the Christmas catalog!  When they sent that wonderful, gorgeous Wish book out sometime in late October, I could spend hours upon hours gazing lovingly and longingly at all the treasures it contained.  Somewhere, packed away now, I have a 1963 Sears Christmas catalog that I bought some years back at Trade day.  I sincerely wish I could find it and thumb through it again.  Ah…the memories.

But, back to school supplies.

When I first started to school back in the fifties, we were instructed that we need yellow #2 pencils and “wide rule” notebook paper.  My Daddy would buy several packs of the yellow pencils.  In the depths of my memory, I think the pencils were made by Dixon Ticonderoga.

The pencils we had in the first through the fourth grade were excellent pencils.  It seems like one of those fine deep canary yellow instruments would last a month, and the graphite was extremely hard to break.  This would have been 1955-1958. After thinking about it a little bit, I looked it up and found out that they hand made the pencils up until 1958, when they started “mass producing” them.  Well, there ya’ go.  After the fourth grade, I went through a pencil a week, sometimes one a day.  You could sharpen one of the mass produced pencils in one of those super sharp grinding sharpeners, which hung on the walls in all the rooms and sometimes you had to sharpen them three or four times to get down to some lead that wasn’t already broken.  I trace the decline in American education and the reputation of American made goods being superior to all others, back to those pencils!

I found a package of old Dixon-Ticonderoga pencils at Trade day a few months back, which came from the early 1950’s.  I’m saving them for the apocalypse…if and when it gets here.

Of course, being kids, we would eventually “push the envelope” in our later years in grammar school and use the frown upon #3 leaded pencils, and even….sin of sins…would sometimes use the #4’s if the teachers didn’t notice.  That graphite in those pencils was as hard as a rock, and the subsequent handwriting on the paper was very light!  I remember one of our seventh grade teachers swearing that we were trying to make her go blind straining to read our papers.  Most teachers simply outlawed the use of the lighter pencils for any school work.

Along with the good old yellow #2 pencil, there was “Blue Horse” notebook paper.

Being from Georgia, we were inundated by Blue Horse products, because the manufacturer, Montag was in Atlanta.  Blue Horse had one of the neatest marketing ploys ever!  There was a picture of the Blue horse on every package of paper you bought from Montag, worth a certain number of points.  You would cut the little blue horse out, and save it, until you got enough points to send them off and redeem them for a prize!  Back in early 50’s, Montag put out a price paper that had “over 50,000 prizes for all you girls and boys”  Those prizes ran the gambit from a tiny little beanie (which I finally saved enough points to get one year) all the way to the “horse head” blue horse bicycle for the top rewards gatherer.  Schools also would get money for students sending in premiums for prizes to Montag.  As you can imagine, the blue horse brand of paper was quite popular in the 50’s and 60’s with both student and school.  I remember kids going around and begging and bullying to get those blue horse heads!  I hid mine until I had enough to get that beanie.  It was a piece of junk that fell apart in a couple of weeks.  Quite a disappointment.  But it was good paper, and you could count on it to fit into almost any notebook, because of the way they punched the holes.  The paper sold for a nickel a pack and contained about 25 5-hole punched sheets, allowing it to be conveniently placed in either 2 or 3 ringed binders.

Later on, they also sold wire ringed notebooks with some really hard colored cardboard on both sides of the paper.  Those things lasted practically forever!  I remember keeping a really thick one of those notebooks all the way from the 8th grade to my Senior year, in which to keep my personal notes and other things, such as doodles, drawings, poetry and genealogy notes.  I kept that notebook for many, many years….right on up until somewhere in the late 70’s to mid 1980’s before it fell to the wayside somewhere.  It might still be lurking around somewhere in a box in my storage building or somewhere else quite obscure.  I wish it would turn up, because I know there are some great memories hidden inside.

 

 

 

 

I think I had an episode of near insanity today at work.  I think it was due to what I was doing at the time. Because it’s all so absurd!  I was standing there this afternoon in this clerk’s office talking about doing DCR’s on CAR’s, and all that kind of stuff (and if you know what I am talking about….poor you!) and then I thought, this is crazy!

What has humanity come to when we place such importance on doing documents on how to produce rugs at the optimum quality to go into people’s bathrooms?  Not only documents, but entire Manuals, thick manuals at that!   Heck, the first time somebody puts them down, they just gonna get pee’d on by their six-year-old.  It was so stupid, and hit me with such a weird feeling that I  had to physically grab hold of the desk where I was sitting to keep from jumping up and  running down the hallway howling and whooping at the top of my lungs.  (I restrained myself, however)  It was a surreal experience.  I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone almost and that I was not really real, but just living in a kind of strange and hideous netherworld.  I hope I never feel that way again, honestly!  It was disconcerting.

Back in my Grandparents time, people worked the land for their food.  They had cows and chickens and other animals to help provide what their family needed.  Grandma made most of the clothes, and a lot of other things that were used by the kids.  There may have been three or four other books in the house besides their old worn Bible.  Everyone was kind of left to their own imagination for entertainment.  Guess it was really kind of boring, honestly.  It was simple anyway.  Maybe simple is good!  Maybe simple is the setting for which a lot of us are pre-set.

I don’t know exactly when the change happened.   I think maybe right after World War II.   Things have surely changed though.  Technology keeps making giant strides forward like some kind of possessed behemoth running amok here on the Earth like something out of H.G. Wells, trying to take us over.  It’s like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only WE created the alien technology, it didn’t come in a pod from outer space!

We have gone from the agrarian age, that age of simplicity and “boredom” (which equals out to time to do things we can’t find time to do today) to the age of information ( which equals out to NEVER having time to do everything we think we NEED to do)  in a space of 60 years or so.  From my weird experience in the office I am almost positive that our brains (at least some of our brains, mine included) are unable to absorb the pace of technology that has run over us like a steamroller on hot tar.  It’s flattened a lot of us!  I use a computer; as a matter of fact I am using one to write this.  But if you put a gun to my head and said tell me how it works or I will shoot your brains out, I would have to say “Is pushing the Start button a good enough answer?”  I can’t tell you how MOST things work, I only just learn to use them out of the necessity of not being left behind in the dust by the scads of younger folks who want to climb over me on their way up the corporate ladder!

I am afraid I have bought into this unreality though.  I use DVD players and Nintendo’s, and Computers to play games, and to work and sell things on EBAY, which is a place for selling things in which the customer never gets to touch or feel the merchandise until AFTER they buy it!  I use Satellite Radio, my car diagnosis itself for problems and tells me when it needs to be fixed; my Mom has a pacemaker that the Dr. can adjust by holding the phone up to it.  And on and on and on we go!!  Woo-hoo what a crazy ride!

I wonder now, if we could go back 100 years, after having a taste of this “Brave New World” would we?  Before Jet planes and electric guitars, would we?  Before electric shavers and microwaves?  Before Atomic bombs?

I don’t know about you, but if the Big Red Button was sitting in front of me that said “Go Back”  I don’t think I would even hesitate a second before I pushed it.  Would you?  At least I think it would keep me from running down the hall someday at work, in a fit of insanity hooting and yelping like a hound dog!!

We have one of those Amazon “Alexas” and from time to time I’ll holler “Alexa play songs from:  ”  and then just choose an artist I want to hear and she’ll start playing the songs.  I asked for songs by the group “Chicago” today while we were in the kitchen messing around.  I’ve always loved them.  In my list of favorite groups they would have to be #2 behind the Beatles.  I’ve always loved their songs…especially with the brass in the background.  It always makes me a little sad at the same time too, though.  Hearing that “band sound” always reminds me of a lost opportunity to do something I really wanted to do.

I always loved music when I was a kid.  I sang, and played guitar and I could “pick up” tunes and play the chords for them and sing just “by ear”  I never learned to read music though….still haven’t.

In the seventh grade in school, in the spring time was the time for band tryouts for the next year.  I always wanted to be in the band.  I’d looked forward to it for several years leading up to that time when I might be able to join.  I did all the sign up stuff and tryouts on the instruments and was told that my instrument would be…..a clarinet.  A clarinet?  That was a surprise, as I’d always supposed I’d be a trumpet guy, and I liked the fact that there were only three buttons on top of a trumpet.  The damn clarinet looked like something from outer space with all of those buttons and places to press down.

I gave it a try though, and I finally got some sound out of it.  So, we then went on to have some practices.  They put a sheet of simple music in front of me, and after going over what it meant a couple of times, we had to try and play.  I couldn’t discern heads or tails out of that sheet of music with all of it’s notes and squiggles and dots.  Other people didn’t seem to be having as much trouble as I was having, so I figured it was me.  I was such a dummy I couldn’t learn to read music.

I followed along for a couple of weeks by ear.  If I heard it once or twice through I could replicate the melody pretty closely.  I wanted to ask about the music though.  I wanted to get somebody to teach me how to understand it…how to “read” the music.  I was too embarrassed to ask the band director though.  I got increasingly frustrated as we got new music.  Finally, a few days before school was out, I went to the office and dropped out of the band.

In hindsight, I wish I had asked for help, and if not I wish I had stuck with it even without asking.  I think I could have “faked it” good enough to stay in the band, because once I learn a tune…I don’t forget it.  Maybe if I had stayed until band camp the next year, they would have stuck me on the bass drum…cause I was a big guy.  I supposed it wasn’t meant to be though.  At least I got to try.  My poor Paula wanted to play in the band at her school in Maryland, but didn’t know what to do to sign up.  They had nobody there to even ask them if they wanted to play…no adviser or teacher to guide them in how to sign up for band.

So as I listen to the brass play in the background on “Saturday in the Park” I wonder what might have been if I’d been a little more assertive and if someone had been there to tell my wife, “this is how you sign up for band”

We lived band careers vicariously through all of our children, I suppose…..but it would have been nice to have been a “part” of something during my High School years.

I guess there are advantages to being a “lone wolf” too…….

We are all Children of the Earth, regardless of what you personally believe concerning creation, or evolution, or anything of the sort.

I often wonder why we humans set ourselves above nature, above other forms of life and consider ourselves to be the only spiritual form of life here on Earth.  After all, if you believe in the Bible, you will know that Genesis says: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”  Notice he just did that for man….not for woman.

The book of Common prayer says:  “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother “Any man”; and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace. Amen.

The same type of thing is mentioned in the Apocrypha, Sirach 10:9

If one is not of a religious bent, but purely scientific, I believe it would take even less convincing that the components of our body are transformed into some other form of matter once the spark of life leaves us.  Matter is not created or destroyed, it only changes form.  If you are buried, or if you are cremated…if you are given to the sea, you will eventually return “to the Earth”

Many times when I am standing in a natural setting, such as I was this morning, on a solitary, circular track, in a thick and hazy fog, with just the sound of the birds and crickets, I feel as if I am in just as sacred a spot as St. Peter’s Cathedral.

I’m in touch with creation, I am in touch with God….

I am a child of the Earth, just like every other creature who crawls, swims or walks on this globe.  And one day I will return to it.  No matter where the spirit within me goes, I feel like it will be at peace.

I’m still a follower of Jesus.

I still read my Bible.  For the most part I concentrate on the gospels.  You know….Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  I’ve looked in them recently for any verse in which Jesus advocates war.

There are a lot of verses about swords.  That was the prime weapon of the day and age in which Jesus lived.

In Matthew 26:52 Jesus said to Peter: “Put your sword back in it’s place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword”

Famously, in Matthew 10:34  Jesus said that: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  This certainly sounds ominous when cherry picked, but when read in the context of his exhortation to his disciples in the entire chapter, one can immediately see that Jesus is speaking of himself as a sword which will divide the world into faction of believer-vs- nonbeliever:

35 “For I have come to turn `a man against his father, a daughter
against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law –
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
37 Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me;
anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me
is not worthy of me;
38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me
is not worthy of me.
39 Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Thus not telling people to go to war, but telling them that the war they must fight is internal, a war of acceptance that a person must fight against himself and all others with the love for him winning out against all other loves.

But Jesus never advocated war:

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

So, when I see a pastor from a huge Southern Baptist church in Dallas saying that God has given the president of the United States “authority to take out Kim Jung Un”  I have to wonder where in the Bible he gets his information.  Perhaps God is speaking straight to him.  But, mostly I think he’s incorrect.

I’m not too sure a lot of the things that are being said are Christian in nature or intent.

I’ve come to the point where I have quit calling myself “Christian” and simply say I am a
Jesus follower.

I still believe.  I just believe differently than I have believed in the past.

I believe in love over hate.  I believe in treating other people like I would like to be treated.

I also believe that Christianity has been kidnapped by some people in an effort to either enrich or empower themselves during their human existence here on Earth.

That’s not what it’s all about.