Month: December 2018

2014 IS A’COMING.

One week from today it will be 2014. I turn around and look back at all the wonderful and terrible things that have happened in this world since my birth in 1950, and I am simply awestruck.

It seems like a totally different world now. For things to have moved on so quickly is also sometimes disconcerting to those of us who are moving into the “older American” demographic. I try to adapt to new things, and I think I do fairly well, but I don’t think it is possible to just pick it up like the youngsters who start out in life with all the new and modern electronic gadgets, gizmos, and equipment. My little two and a half year old grand kids amaze me at what they can do, which seems second nature to them, but are things which I consciously struggle with when I have to do them. All I can say, is that if things start to go too much faster, I am not sure I can hold on to the caboose of the train without falling off.

Yes, 2014 is coming. Coming fast, and maybe in some respects careening out of control.

I don’t like the way some things are happening. People’s love for other people, which has always been less then it should be, is getting to the point of being minuscule. Many of the things I read and see about the way humans are treating other humans makes me sick, and I guess it makes my kind of glad that I AM 63 years old. If I was a lot younger, I am not sure I could survive the world with the type of outlook that I have. But, I have to hold out hope that there are better days to come. I have to do that for my children, grandchildren and their unborn children who will come into this world one day and struggle to live in it.

2014 is coming and as we go through this season of “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men” I really wish we all (including me) would try to live those words a little more, and not just sound them out meaninglessly into the air, never really thinking about what it would REALLY take for there to BE Peace on Earth.

I really think that the thing that we need to think about the most is what can we give to the world, and to the people we love? I have spent weeks now looking for presents, trying to select just the right things. Material things. But when I stop and think about it I know that one of these days all of these material things will be meaningless. When I think about it, the most valuable thing we can give to the ones we love is our time. That’s the thing I think I have been the worst manager of lately.

I work and work on things that I think are important in order to get extra money, or try to make ends meet, when I should be putting more faith in the one whose birth we celebrate during this time of the year to take care of things. We as humans always try to take too much on ourselves. We try to do everything on our own without giving our creator a chance to help us. I think during the coming year I am going to try and take a little more off of my shoulder’s and have faith that things are going to be ok.

I hope that during the coming year I can get back on track with my writing and communications, my music, but most of all just helping others when I can. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and let’s get ready to celebrate 2014, a year which is open for opportunities for us to become better people…to become better human beings. We only have to look just a tiny, tiny bit closer for the opportunities…they’re there, believe me, they’re there.

I had a walk yesterday and timed it to end at 6:03 p.m., which is/was sunset for the day. I wanted to do this because I had read where scientists said that yesterday was going to be one of the longest nights in the entire history of the planet. Yep, that’s right. At first they were saying it was going to be THE longest night ever, but then they decided that it was sometime back in 1912 in which that happened. But last night was a very long, dark span. I slept deeply and much longer than usual. I had unusual and vivid dreams. Perhaps it was because my legs were like lead weights as I walked yesterday, or maybe it was just my imagination. That aspect of my personality doe run wild every now and then.

In some respects it was really kind of eerie. It was as silent as I can remember with the exception of a few dogs barking off in the distance. I closed my eyes as I walked down the long straight away next to the railroad track, almost an entire quarter of a mile, and tried to imagine how our distant ancestors must have felt in this season of the year. Sitting in a cave or at a rock overhang, with a tiny fire as the only heat and light. Straw as a bed, and perhaps a fur or two as cover. Hungry from not having enough to eat that day. Howls and growls of animals drifting in through the opening of their abode. A lot of them who would have considered us as prey. It’s amazing to me that our species is so tough. It’s remarkable to me that humans made it through that primitive phase.

We have survived all of that to get to this point. Now we are divided by religion and politics, along with race and class. These are the most divisive issues in our world today. Maybe there are some other “minor” issues, but these are the ones which continue to rear their ugly head. These are the ones which people are warring and dying over by the thousands every day. These are the issues fueled by the two “children” beneath the robe of the “Ghost of Christmas Present” in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” He tells Ebenezer Scrooge:

“They are your children! They are the children of all who walk the earth unseen! Their names are Ignorance and Want! Beware of them! For upon their brow is written the word “doom!” They spell the downfall of you and all who deny their existence! “

Ignorance and want combined with all of the divisive issues.

We no longer sit in the dark in the caves and fear that we will become the prey of fierce animals. We ARE the fierce animals and we now prey on each other.

As we head into the Christmas Season after one of the longest nights in the history of the Earth, I wish some type of unknowable magic could be worked in the middle of one of these long Winter sleeps, and we would wake up at dawn as creatures of total love and peace….Peace on Earth, and true Goodwill to all men and women.

…”but Jacob,” said Scrooge “you were always a good businessman.”

“Mankind was my business!” Said Marley.

And so it remains. Mankind is the business we should all be worrying about. Who doesn’t have enough to eat, or four walls to surround them? Who is down and out, and needs help? Who is hurting, either physically or mentally….financially or spiritually?

As my son reminded me, I only gave a dollar to the man who said he was homeless. But he did turn down my offer to buy him a meal at the Maple Street biscuit company….said he’d already eaten. And those biscuits are ‘spensive. I did, however, wish him “Merry Christmas” as I handed him a dollar. Then I went the next day and gave 20 dollar tips to the three young ladies who have taken turns waiting on us at Jim’s over the past year.

I consider mankind my business, oh so much more than most. And not just at Christmas either. I take Charles Dicken’s lesson to heart. Oh, I’m far, far from perfect. And I will never be mistaken for a philanthropist. I’ll muddle through by doing what little I can for my family, my friends, and those whose lives intersect with mine. I want to thank all of my family and friends, and the people around me for all the kind things they do for me. It’s mutual, and it’s a balance.

Merry Christmas if I fail to see you, or if I forget to say it again in the next two days. Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.

With Christmas drawing near it naturally evokes many feelings and emotions in those of us who have seen a few of them come and go. In my case, more than a few.

Christmas, I think, is lived in stages in the hearts of we humans.

We begin as children, with the mystery of Santa Claus. No matter what religious persuasion to which you belong, Santa fits. He’s the epitome of unselfish giving. The uncanny being who can somehow make it around the world in only one night in order to pass out gifts to “good little girls and boys”. His existence alone during the first few years of my life, kept me from committing many awful offenses.

I solidly believed in him. I revered Christmas. Of course, being Baptist raised, I also knew the story of Jesus’s birth in every different gospel version. I knew every Christmas hymn by heart by the time I was eight. (I knew the entire Baptist hymnal by the time I was 12, and still don’t need a book for 99% of the songs if they do the first, second and last stanzas)

But Santa was my hero, and Christmas was my big day. I kept a handmade calendar, which I drew on notebook paper, using a ruler in order to keep the lines straight, just so I could X out the days one by one starting the day after Christmas every year. I kept a calendar even after I knew there wasn’t a Santa, just because I found it reassuring to be able to visually see the days, and be able to make notes on special occasions. For many years after I got out of school, I still had those calendars, along with my genealogy charts that I had compiled with information gleaned from my Grandparents and my Great Grandma Locklear. There was some invaluable information that got gone forever when I lost the big huge notebook that contained all that hard work. I still hold out hope that I’ll be going through some long packed up box someday and find them. They might possibly still be in the attic of the old house on ninth street if somebody hasn’t thrown them away. Wonder if they’d let me in to look?

I remember quite a few Christmas Eve nights spent at my Moms’s parents house in Blue Ridge. Cold, cold nights sleeping upstairs under piles of quilts so tall, that turning over was almost impossible. You see, Grandpa Stewart only had an old pot bellied stove back then, which was a wood burning hog. He shut the air flow down at night and there was no heat at all upstairs. By midnight you could see your breath on those frigid December mornings. By six a.m., the cold had penetrated those six quilts, and as soon as I heard grandpa’s feet hit the floor, and hear the old heater start to go swoosh with heat, I was gone! Besides, it was Christmas morning! I had heard Santa downstairs during the pitch black night going “ho, ho, ho” and I wanted to see what he’d left me.

Those were the younger years, the magical years before I knew the “secret” of Santa, and became a part of Santa myself. Those were the years of the Lionel train set when I was 8….one of the few years we didn’t go to Blue Ridge, and the only year I can remember as a child when my Mom woke me up to say “look out the window, there’s snow”. There was.  Those were the years before Mom got sick, before the mental illness which would haunt her the rest of her life, embedded it’s claws into her.

The years before that one had been wonderful Christmases too. I remember the set of Hoppalong Cassidy cap guns, and his replica outfits. I remember the red Radio flyer wagon, which I hauled rocks, dirt, dogs and toys in until it literally rusted through. I remember marbles in drawstring bags, matchbox cars, and tootsie toy trucks. I remember a bow and arrow set with rubber stoppers on the ends of the arrows. Then there were the comic books….usually Superman and Uncle Scrooge. I was a lucky little boy those first eight magical years.

After the first nervous breakdown Mom had when I was a fourth grader, Christmases were fraught for a few years. By the time “normality” returned, I was twelve years old. I looked at a photo of myself the other day from the sixth grade. I was on the end of one row, and had a sad, hollow look in my eyes. As I moved on through the next couple of years, and across the street to the High School, Christmas took on new meaning and understanding.

I had left behind the mysterys of Santa Claus by the time I was an eighth grader. I knew years before that about the secret. Santa Claus only existed as the spirit of Christmas. He was the joy of children, provided by the largess of the familie’s grown ups. I don’t remember exactly what day, or the exact hour I stopped believing that Santa Claus was a real person. I just remember it being a sad day. A day of disappointment. A day of numbness. How could such a thing actually be true?

I think during my High School years I actually became more affectionate of the holidays, and of Christmas. After I got over my initial disappointment at there being no “real” Santa, I began to realize that those of us who knew Santa’s secret actually became Santa ourselves, for those who still did believe. I remember thinking how I would never want to disappointment a child who still believed.

When I grew up and married, and had kids of my own, I wanted to always make sure that Christmas was a most special time of the year for them. I tried every year to make them happy, and to make my wife happy. Perhaps I went overboard on the gift giving at some points, but I didn’t care. My philosophy has always been to make the ones you love happy while you can, because you’ll never know when the day comes that you won’t have that chance.

As the Kathy Mattea song says:

… “Time passes by, people pass on
At the drop of a tear, they’re gone
Let’s do what we dare, do what we like
And love while we’re here before time passes by…”

Its never more important than it is right now, today, this year….to let people know how you feel.  Let the child in you who once believed in Santa Claus take over.  Approach life one more time with that innocence and awe, which made you believe in Magic

The magic is still there in most of us….I can’t say all, because I believe the joy of life and love are absent for some people, and that’s beyond sad.  Some vessels are empty, and some are corrupted .  I pray for those people, I pray they are not beyond redemption.

For this year, this year 2018…I wish all of you my friends and family, a very Merry and Magical Christmas.

December 25th 2018 was the last “best” Christmas the world knew.

Oh, Christmas celebrations continued, as well as New Years day, Thanksgiving and all the rest. People still gather in smaller groups to have remembrances. They still exchange some gifts at Christmas, and have prayer services. They do the best they can under the circumstances.

And what are those circumstances, you may ask?

Those circumstances include a world in which it’s hard to find comfort. A world of constant storms and natural disasters. A world in which there are no great democracies left. The United States ceased to be a world power sometime around 2020. France devolved into nationalistic chaos, Great Britain diminished after falling on it’s “Brexit” sword. China and Russia rose to fill the power vacuum left after the US/Iranian and Israeli War.

The Great World Depression of 2019 had set the stage for all the above events to take place.

The stock market plunged in the United States early in 2019 due to political and economic factors, and the rest of world followed. There was a lot of famine and civil strife throughout the world. Revolutions took place, and coups were common.

In the United States itself, militia groups ran rampant for months on end, until the Federal government declared martial law and the US army went into the countryside and forcefully quelled the revolts. They also bombed most urban areas which had also been taken over by mostly minority militia groups. America ended up as a shell of its former self.

The world as we knew it before 2018 was forever gone. The freedoms for which thousands of American citizens had fought and died for almost 250 years were abolished. Authoritarian rule became the norm.

So, remember this year when you’re unwrapping your gifts with your family. When you’re eating your Christmas turkey. When you’re wishing your loved ones a Happy New Years.  Perhaps we should remember the words of Ebenzer Scrooge when he confronted the Ghost of Christmas future about whether or not the future could be changed:

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

I should have stayed away from the lead based paint chips on the windowsill of that old millhouse we used to live in on sixth street when I was three. They tasted so sweet though. I remember Daddy washing out my mouth, and busting my butt at the same time.

Now, I don’t know if I ate enough of that paint to get lead poisoning. I remember getting a super high fever not long after that, and my eyes crossed so badly Mom said I looked plum pitiful. I don’t remember ever looking in a mirror, so I can’t confirm that statement. I think it mad me meaner that summer. I remember throwing tantrums at home, and throwing rocks at my equally mean and slightly older neighbor Gerri Lynn. I think I stayed a little mean for a few more years.

After we moved to Simmons Street when I was five, I used to play with a kid just two doors down from me named Billy. We got mad at each other one day about something and I slugged him a good one right in the nose. Blood started gushing everywhere and scared me poopless. I thought I had killed the boy and turned around and ran like my tail was on fire back past Jake Woods house to ours.

That afternoon my Dad explained to me in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t right to throw the first blow..only in defense. My sore butt didn’t hurt me nearly as much as my conscious. I was truly sorrowful for what I had done. Dad took me down to the Arden’s house the next day and made me apologize.

I didn’t realize it at the time but that incident set the timber of my personality for the rest of my life. I have never since that day, through anger or strife struck “the first blow” I would and will defend myself and my family, but I will not start a fight.

I will remember that philosophy from here on out, and try and adhere to it here on Facebook also. Peace.

I’ve walked over 5000 miles, probably closer to 6000, according to this “Fitbit “ I wear since I started this daily ritual over three and a half years ago. I don’t know if it’ll extend my years any though.

I can’t remember back far enough in my childhood to remember when my Grandpa Jervis was any active man of any sorts. I remember having to live with my Grandparents for half a year when I was 10 years old, and Grandpa mostly just sat around in his chair and listened to his radio, and sang songs out of his songbooks, and smoked his pipe. Occasionally during that long snowy winter, he would drag himself, bad knees and all, out of his chair and go down to the woodshed and haul a wheelbarrow of wood or two up in front of the porch and toss it piece by piece over the porch rail onto the porch right next to the door. Bad knees, but nothing wrong with those strong arms.

That was 1960, and Grandpa was born in 1893, so…that woulda made him…67. Just like I am today.

I don’t smoke a pipe, and the radio is long gone. I love music, but don’t have any song books except Grandpa’s old ones that I salvaged. I don’t sit around all day anymore though. I hope I never have to.

Seven years ago on this day, I didn’t know it fully quite yet, but I was entering into the hardest two weeks, and then the hardest year of my life. Four bypasses are a tough haul. It’s certainly something my Grandpa never had to go through, and he lived to be 98, albeit the last several years, he was not “himself”. I don’t expect my body will carry me that far, but I’m certainly going to keep on walking, and hope I can get there.

I’ve still got a lot I want to do, grandchildren to watch grow, and junk I’ve collected that will take at least 20 years to get rid of. I have love I want to give, and stars in the sky which I haven’t yet seen.

I want to better understand this Universe in which we live, so that perhaps when I leave this little speck on which I live, I can enter into whatever comes afterwards in joy and not sadness.

I was talking to a friend today about Christmas,and life in general. We were both amazed at the differences. He remembers when he lived at home and there was no running water, and his folks owned two cows because he loved to drink milk so much. His Dad was a WWII vet, who spent the first 7 years back from the War mainly at the VA hospital and was never in good shape after he got out. They never had much, but his Dad steadfastly refused to take “charity” even in the form of Christmas gifts for his children. He remembered one year that a man offered some Christmas presents but his Dad refused. His Mom drove them to the man’s house and they put the presents in the trunk. After they already had them, and had them opened on Christmas morning, his Dad’s anger quelled somewhat at the site of them playing with the toys.

It was that way with a lot of our Dads from that generation.

I was a happy boy every Christmas at my Grandparents, where we usually spent Christmas, to receive my one “big” present and one little present. I also got a few more comic books to add to my burgeoning collection. Most of the time we got a few more things than that, especially after I hit my teen years and Dad’s job and pay got better. But, the joy of the younger years lingered and perhaps even outshone the later years. Having to decide what you really wanted the most…it was a story similar to Ralphie’s obsession with the “Red Ryder” BB gun.

The other thing which was exciting and which we looked forward to, was the big “brown paper bag” of goodies from the local church. There were apples, oranges, nuts, and candy. More candy than I would see at any other time of the year with the exception of Halloween. The Halloween candy was long gone, and my favorite candy of all time, the “orange slice” was in that brown bag. I was able to trade with some of the other kids at the church, and ended up with as many orange slice candy as possible. Grandpa would buy those soft peppermint sticks by the box too, and they disappeared quickly if he didn’t hide them.

….and so my friend and I talked about old times. Once a season pig killings, hunting hen eggs, eating squirrel and rabbits and churning butter. Catching fish, and going to the “little shack out back” with the Sears and Roebuck catalog sitting there waiting on us. Things most folks wouldn’t know how to do, or want to do nowadays even if they had too.

Well, I gotta go now and get on Amazon and see if they can ship that last Christmas present I need for someone special and get it here for Christmas.

Sometimes I wonder, where do I stand….

Not on any kind of Issues.

I am what I am, and I will be what I will be until the day I die. I am difficult. I am complex. I’m too quick to anger, and to slow to forgive.

Is there anybody else out there like this?

Yet, I am only one quickly aging, very insignificant old man.

Honestly, what I think and how I feel mean very little to anyone outside my immediate circle. The largest majority of the human race are this way.

We should really try harder to stand with each other, together. Revel in the warmth.

The nicest moment of the day today was when my two five year old grandchildren ran up and hugged me as I arrived to celebrate my oldest son’s birthday.

I knew I was not standing alone.

One day we all will have to stand alone. I don’t want to look back then and regret wasting time on things I cannot control, or which are not as important as I think they are.

So, I’m going to try harder. It’s the only thing I can do right now.

A MUSICAL RAMBLING- from 2013

My son has the 1948 model Philco combination radio/record player sitting in his house now. It’s the the one I spent countless hours sitting in front of during the first 8 years of my life.

There were radio shows on a lot. I first remember hearing people like Sid Caesar, and Red Skeleton on the radio. I remember listening to the Lone Ranger. Then there were the local radio shows. There was lots of preaching. Here locally we had “AA Tanner” and some others who I remember preaching on the radio a lot. I was a Baptist before I ever went to the first grade and just didn’t know it. A lot of my views have altered since those early years, but I still remember the musical cadence of many of those preachers…waxing and waning, I could see them swaying out and back in my mind and jumping up into the air when the spirit moved them.

We had maybe only half a dozen 33 rpm records. A lot of Perry Como, Martin and Lewis, Doris Day, and Bing Crosby. We had classical. We had some country…actually we had Hank Williams. There was a spot on the floor in front of the radio where my Mom put a throw rug. One of those round, braided really colorful ones. This was my spot. I wasn’t a very hard child to take care of. I could just be planted in front of the radio and left there. I knew how to change the records before I was potty trained really well. I imagine that caused a few “crisis moments” but really don’t remember. I had the radio, my comic books, and a little later on an old cracked baseball that the High School coach had given me, and a couple of worn out baseballs. I would get my exercise by going outside on nice afternoons and throwing those balls up into the air and them whacking them off into the distance before they hit the ground. I got really good at it.

I learned all of the songs on all of those records by heart. I thought I was a real hot shot singer. My Dad bought an Elvis 45 sometime in the mid 50’s. It was “Hound dog” and “Don’t be Cruel” I personally liked Don’t be Cruel the best. I learned those two by heart and on the night Elvis was on Ed Sullivan in 1957 he sang “Don’t be Cruel” We hadn’t had a TV very long, and when I saw “my song” being sung I jumped up and started doing my best Elvis right there in the little back closed in porch which Daddy had converted into a “den” I thought I was something…but then my Mom laughed at me….

I’m not sure if it was because she thought I was funny, or if I was doing a good job. But it embarrassed me. I’m not really sure why. Being the boy I was though…I never sang again in front of anyone for a long, long time. I would make sure nobody was around, maybe like when I was outside hitting the baseball. Maybe in the bathroom in the evenings while the water was running. Perhaps really low under the covers at night. I didn’t want to be laughed at again. I never talked to Mom or Dad about it, and they never thought anything about it, I guess. They just thought I had turned to baseball and sports.

I got talked into joining the “glee club” in the 8th grade. I think it was because I liked one of the little girls who was singing…I’m not certain. I still liked to sing, and I thought for sure that being surrounded by 15 or so other people singing would keep me from being heard. The guy who was over the glee club was Mr. John Carruth, who was also the Band director at the time. We were preparing music for Christmas, and I noticed Mr. Carruth kept leaning over and listening in my direction. He stopped the rehearsal and said “hey Bowers…sing the next verse by yourself” and I did…and so ended up doing my first solo ever of “White Christmas” at our school musical program that year.

Mr. Carruth had me sing a couple more times before he left Trion to move on to better things. I have to really thank him for giving me the boost of confidence I needed to realize that people would not laugh at me for singing by myself.

I ended up singing quite a bit in High School. We had quite a musical group of students at that time. It was the 60’s and folk bands, rock bands, and hippies were coming of age. I remember Mack Myers, and Agnew Myers, Susan Cavin and a couple more folks had a little “folk” band. They sang some Peter, Paul and Mary on stage at school. I really enjoyed it. We had a really good piano player…Ronald Whitley I believe it was. He was really great. My old buddy Dale Rosser was a good singer, and beat me out one year for soloist at Literary meet, although me and Agnew, and Johnny Brimer, and I think Randy Orr were the “barbershop” quartet and did a pretty fair job. Agnew’s Mom Ms. Sarah Myers was our “coach”…or mentor I guess you’d say. A really wonderful woman.

We had Larry Maddux and company playing country and rock and roll…I remember singing “Your Cheating Heart” with them one time at some program we were having…and from then on that dang Johnny Suits would call me “Hank” every time he saw me. Still did it when I went to work with him in 1988 at Crown Crafts. . Binky Dawson and Wayne Greene were great musicians. Several went on to become Band directors like Bill Locklear.

Yes, we had great bands, great musicians, and great individualists back then. I can’t name them all because there are so many, many more. I’m not sure if it was the times, or if there was something in the Trion water. I know that several of the above named beautiful people are gone now. I don’t know all the stories…I’m just kind of on the “edge” of things when it comes to keeping up with people. It’s a shame we have lost them, because when a musical person dies, some of the music of the world dies with them, and in this day and age, unlike the day and age we grew up in, that’s something we just can’t afford much more of…..

…..and by the way Mom…I know I took that laugh the wrong way….