Month: May 2018

In this day and age I see, read and hear a lot of things I don’t understand. Back when I was a kid I think I was able to understand things better.

I understood trust better. Many people would give you their word they would do something, and they would. If they didn’t, it would get around that “so and so” don’t keep their promises. If you were in a business of some kind, a couple of cases of that might ruin you. Politicians who were not ethical didn’t get re elected. Relationships were built on trust.

I understood helping one another better. Neighbors would actually really do things for each other. I remember my Daddy mowing our elderly neighbors grass many times. “I already had the mower running” he would say. I remember brown paper bags of fresh garden vegetables being given from one place to another. “We got more Okrie then we can eat and more tomatoes…the neighbors across the street have more corn.” Out and back it went. People got together to help each other can vegetables for winter. A big mess of fish was shared, already cleaned. People…helped..each other. Look around and see if that’s happening now. Maybe sometimes…but most times not. In my neighborhood now I only have one person who has been there over a few months. The rest of the houses are rental houses. I should really take the time to try and get to know them anyway, but I haven’t. My fault there. It’s just a harder thing now for me.

I understood relationships better. There was only three TV channels and I had to go outside and manually turn the antenna to get one of them. Instead of constantly watching TV, we played. Baseball, football, hide and seek, freedom, board games galore, weekly Rook matches and so much more. My cousins were my close friends and playmates, along with our “neighbors on the street”. I could still name all of the ninth street gang if I wanted. There were a bunch of us. When it snowed during the winter, we cut up cardboard boxes and sledded all day. Didn’t even stop to eat lunch. We walked to the golf course with our clubs on our backs. We spent the night with each other. Does this kind of thing still go on? Do I just not see it anymore because I’m a grown up?

I feel like sometimes we have lost touch with each other, and when I say that I mean real physical touch, not just being electronically in contact. Don’t get me wrong. I have enjoyed and bought into a lot of the new age of communication and interrelationships. It was easy to slip into it, and it does have its good points. I think not being face to face with real people, and actually seeing and experiencing their needs and their own personal mannerisms and emotional expressions has robbed us of a certain ability to properly relate with other human beings. We see many people ask for prayer, and they get many likes and comments, but I bet one personal phone call or in person visit would mean more than 100 “likes” I came to a realization just the other day when I was “texting” my son. Texting is handy and necessary in some cases, but dammit there was no reason why I shouldn’t have just called and talked to him right at that moment…so I did.

I just saw statistics that more than 2700 hundred people will die in the State of Georgia over the next year due to the lack of Medicaid coverage because of political differences. That’s more people than the population of my entire town. If a tornado or a flood killed that many people it would be declared a disaster. If that many people died in a terrorist attack, we would go to war. As it stands, in this day and age, it’s just a number. Nobody’s outraged about it…nobody much anyway. Least not nobody who can do anything about it. I just understand it anymore.

I have gotten in my “steps” today…but that’s about it. I feel like other than walking this morning, I’ve just been lazy today.

I know that summer is coming on quickly and the hot, sweaty days that are ahead will be an aggravation. I think I used to enjoy summer a lot more as a boy, back when golfing and baseball and staying out all day and far into the dark of the evening was a way of life.

It seems so long ago. So far back in my memory. The gray memories. The black and white years.

I tried to think back yesterday, after my granddaughter went through High School graduation, to my own graduation. There are very few photos that were taken, and I think the cap and gown is long gone. There weren’t many of us that year, back in 1968…I think 49 or 50? Heck, I’d have to get up and hunt my annual in order to remember exactly, and like I said…this is a lazy day!

I remember we had our ceremony at the football field, and I recall shaking hands with Carl Searles, who was on the Board of Education back then. That’s about it. There are still a few of us kicking around from that ceremony and hopefully there are some who have retained more of the day then I have.

I wish we’d had just a smidgen of today’s techology back then to preserve that landmark time in our lives, especially since my memory today is as spotty as a dalamation dog. I may just get up and find that annual after all, just to nudge my recalcitrant brain a little….

For all those October winds…that blew in the winters for all these years now. For all the Decembers which have crossed my path as quickly as a snow bunny….and for April’s spirited and joyous showers. Even for July’s blistering heat which hasn’t bothered me or made me sad. I am thankful..I am thankful. I have lived them all, and God knows I am thankful…and not yet empty of time’s draw.

I simply find when I look at the calendar.

And subtract the year I was born from…

The year it is now…

It gets…

Larger.

soundcloud.com/lbowers50/the-veteran

Sometimes I forget to remove the beam from my eye before I complain about the splinter in someone else’s eye. I plead guilty to sometimes not practicing what I preach. Am I alone?

I need to strive more and more to start with empathy and understanding before jumping straight to anger and judgment. I have only ever walked in my own shoes and the only way to comprehend another person’s walk is by listening.

I know I have never learned one single thing from someone else by talking at the same time as they are talking. The only thing you can hear when that happens is yourself. I’ve never felt compassion from tuning someone out. Oh, there are people I have done both ways, but it was my actions which were callous.

Forgive me for sometimes only listening to myself. To anyone who I have ever not offered the chance to learn from what you know, and what I don’t, I’m sincerely sorry. I forgot how many times 7 times 70 can be.

I took a ride with Ted Bowers this morning at the newly reopened Trion Golf Course. He was driving a golf cart out of which we frequently exited to swing at the little white dimpled ball. Some would call it playing golf, but what I did today more closely resembled gardening than any sport.

I could not remember the last time I partook in this activity. There was a golf card in the bag which read “Calhoun Elks Lodge golf course” It was dated 2002, and had the names “Larry”(me) and “Joe”, who was Mr. Joe Sultan…my boss at the time. Since the rubber grips had dry rotted off all the irons in the bag from sitting in my utility room, I figured 14 years was about right. There were 14th generation spiders and cobwebs who were inhabiting that bag and protested loudly when I removed their home, and forcefully ejected them last night. A lot of water, a flood and a torrent has gone under the trestle bridge since these clubs were last used.

My Dad’s playing days had passed when I put those clubs away. I had suffered one heart attack and one stent at that time, and thought I was in good shape. I wasn’t though. I lost my job with Mr. Sultan’s company. A good company and a good job. I still don’t know quite why til this day…but it was a hard blow to me. I went on from there to 12 hour night shifts, constant uncertainty and anxiety, deaths of my parents, major surgery with permanent damage, and overall health decline. It is only since last June, that I began walking my way back to some mobility. I must tell you though my friends, that if I see you out and don’t recognize you, or if I sound uncertain about some past event which I should remember, or some part of our friendship which I should remember and I don’t…please forgive me. My memory is very spotty. Much more so than I let on at times.

However, I did still remember how to swing AT a golf ball. And so we did this morning. It was fun. Some great memories returned to me as we trekked the course. I could picture J.W. Greenwood, my old coach driving the green on number one hole. As I sat there waiting I saw many more men who played there return to life. Jack Shamblin, with his huge all or nothing swing. Harold Florence, who had a low flat swing. Roy Williams Sr., up on his toes at the height of his swing. There was Otis Tanner, with his huge backswing and follow through. Skinny old Faye Brown, who could hit the ball a mile. Tommy Brown, and Jimmy Brown, and Michael Brown…with who me and Daddy played so many rounds. I saw Lamar Chandler on his tractor mowing the fairway. I heard the “Loving Spoonful” in the background playing “Hottown Summer in the city, back of my neck getting very too gritty” My theme song during the two Summers I worked there, mowing ditches and working in the downstairs clubhouse. I’d peep out the doors on Monday mornings during the summer and “Muley” Camp would be out there hunting golf balls. Only on Mondays..Only day it was allowed.

I passed over the creek at number two hole and remembered the dozens upon dozens of yellowjacket stings I had gotten waiting off to the side on one of those Mondays for some guys to play through. I had gotten them all stirred up by poking a stick absentmindedly in the ground. I had to run and jump in the creek to get them off me. Old Doc Clemens had to give me a couple of shots to keep me breathing. Cousin Rick had been standing right next to me and hadn’t gotten one sting. Same cousin Rick who was the only person to see me hang back at my Daddy’s funeral and sob like a baby. Some people always seem to be there at the strangest times.

My Dad, the old lefthander…Same as me, or me the same as him. That’s the way he taught me to swing. He couldn’t hit them long like Jack Shamblin, but always straight and deadly around the greens. I imagined him there today too. J.W. in the background teasing, saying “You lefties need to turn around and hit that ball right” If he had seen me today he would have laughed his head off, and rightfully so.

I’m glad they opened the place up…think I may go back for another round of memories sometimes.”

Things are strange now. I don’t know why, so don’t even bother to ask.

I do know that when I was younger, we had four seasons. Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. Now we’ve changed over to only two…..Hot and Cold. The trees and plants are confused, and so am I.

We used to have people in the “middle” when it came to politics. They seemed to be the ones who got most things done, as they would mediate between the two extremes of the spectrum. Now, there are very, very few of these people remaining. Not enough to do any good it seems. They are going the way of the Dodo Bird. Extinction.

Politics is like the seasons of the year. Only two “sides” remaining.

I watched a movie last night that got me to thinking about good and evil. In the movie, the villainess was superhuman. Very powerful, and able to destroy entire armies by herself. I wondered why, with this much power she couldn’t just affect the hearts and minds of the people she was trying to conquer, and turn them to her, without killing them. It seems her power was simply limited to being super-humanely evil. Oh, there were those who went along with the evil, there always are those.  There was no love there.

But the majority of humanity wanted to remain “good”

The good guy won in the end, of course. In addition to also being super human, and super powerful, he had the hearts and minds of the people behind him. “Good always wins in the end”.

Does it?

Our human religions seem to tell us so, but they are after all human religions. They are, after all concepts which we have come up with to explain why we are as we are.  They are uniquely our own.  The concepts are our concepts.

Just like the characters in the movie, which some writers invented.

If there is indeed only two forces in the Universe, good and evil, then I pray silently that the proprietor of good is the more powerful, and although evil will win some battles, good will win the war.  Is that the way the Universe is made?  Ahh, being human I do not know!  I only know things that I can conceive in my own terms.

I used to think I knew about the weather, but I was incorrect.

Swearing an Oath may very well be taken for granted in this day and age. People go into court and place their hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I myself, would prefer to affirm that I am telling the truth instead of swearing.

I consider swearing an oath as a binding promise. If I swear an oath I would intend to keep it. I swore an oath to my wife forty five years ago next month and we both have kept it. It has been bound in love and loyalty and steeled by the forge of mutual experience. As far as I know that is the only oath of mutual fealty I have ever sworn.

Soldiers swear an oath to serve their country. There is, as far as I know, no expiration on that oath. Soldiers have died by the millions in fulfilment of their oath. One could certainly say they took their oath seriously. Remember to tell them so Monday.

People swear Oaths when taking public office and many of them know while they are speaking the words, that they do not intend to bind their actions to their oaths. I feel that if there is one God, then that God will be very unhappy with these people. If there are many Gods, they will all abhor oathbreakers, and if there are no Gods then men with true hearts will despise a rescinder of their oaths, and the Universe itself will not receive them.

My Dad always told me that a man is only as good as his word. Remember that when you give yours. If you don’t intend to keep it, just keep your mouth shut.

What is reality, really? Sometimes I wonder if there are 7 billion different realities on this globe. One for each of us.

We all share similar experiences to some extent, but inside of our brain there’s a different world going on for each of us…therefore a different reality. We are all spiritually different…we each have an individual soul, so the way we experience life is slightly different from everyone else in the world. I shiver a little sometimes when I am in huge crowds…like at a big college football game or something. I think I am shivering in awe…or perhaps fright.

So many souls, so close…intellects interacting yet keeping their distance. Strange. I weirdly wonder if we are creating our own reality as we go along….and in the end I wonder if…our living, thinking, and dying is actually creating our own hereafter?

Guess we will see.

I need to restrain the urging of my heart to complain about the current shift in the demographics of my town and my region, and listen to my brain as it’s telling me that change is inevitably.

Even though I knew that our little town is majority Hispanic/Native American.. .it did not really hit home for me until I was walking through Frogtown on Monday and ever person I saw was Hispanic. I was the stranger in a strange land. It was eery and something I could have never imagined as a child. And yet it is here, and here to stay. What can you do about it, but accept it and work with it. Most of these people are Guatemalan and are very friendly people when you take the time to know them. I stop and talk with them pretty often. They are here to try and have a better life. Who can blame them?

I regret the takeover of the convenience stores by the mainly Indian population. The stores tend to just become beer, pill, porn, tobacco, lottery havens. I stopped at one on the way back from Mentone today and pulled a 99 cent drink out of the cooler and then just stood there for five minutes while the guy fiddled first with his nacho machine, then the gas pumps. Never made contact, or said “I’ll be right with you” I left his drink on the counter, and voiced my displeasure….having already being put in a bad mood earlier by a different group of folks. I don’t mind them owning convenience stores but I’m pretty sure I won’t be giving them much business. If any….

I say all this, to get to this point: Change is hard sometimes. Change is not always embraced with open arms but instead one has to be dragged kicking and screaming towards it. Such is the case with me. I think everyone should have an equal opportunity to succeed in this country. Even the current majority population. I know, we have been given a stacked deck in the past, but the cards are being dealt more fairly now.

I really wanted that lemonade, but just was not willing to be ignored. As Captain Call said in Lonesome Dove “I hate rude behavior in a man, I won’t tolerate it.” I don’t know whether it’s old age or not, but I’m getting the same way.