Day: January 10, 2019

Rambling Down a Curvy Road. (An excerpt from an almost finished manuscript)

Once a long time ago I hung out with a guy…my best friend who had a car to drive:

It’s 1967, and I’m a High School junior. My best friend D.B. Sears and I were headed back to his house out in the country, about eight miles North of Welcome Hill. Along the way, there was a popular little eating joint known as the “Riverside Barbecue.” It was appropriately named, as the murky, slow flowing Chattooga was right across the road. The Riverside, was affectionately known as Dub’s. They probably had the best Barbecue I can ever remember putting in my mouth. They also bootlegged beer, since our county was dry back then. They didn’t care what age you were, since they were already breaking one law, what did it matter to them if you were only sixteen or seventeen years old. Maybe it’s what made the Barbecue taste so good.

D.B. and I were in hog heaven, as his sister had let him borrow her new car. We decided we were hungry so we stopped by Dub’s for a sandwich and a beer. We got our goodies, and D.B. kicked it into high gear up the little hilly, curvy road toward his house. We rounded one steep corner with D.B. doing about 60 miles an hour, and there was a car coming the other way over on our side of the road. D.B. did a one-handed-emergency-avoidance-maneuver (he had a beer in the other hand) which took his sister’s new Buick up the side of a twelve foot dirt bank. The car did a 360 degree turn, and came back down onto the pavement headed in exactly the right direction. Besides kicking up a little dust, you would have never known anything had happened. There wasn’t a scratch anywhere on the car, or on us.

“Sheeiiit,” D.B. stated calmly.

I never said a word, I just took another bite out of my sandwich, and continued to chew, out of reflex.

“What do think about THAT little bit of driving?” Said D.B. in a bragging tone.

I never said a word, I just took a huge swallow of Black Label, and sat perfectly still, like a rabbit that’s just seen the barrel of a twelve gauge shotgun poke through the weeds.

About ten minutes passed before my vocal cords became “unparalyzed” from the sheer fright they had just been given. In that time I had mentally asked God to forgive me for all the things I should have asked him to forgive me for during the three second period of time we were up on that dirt bank.

“We’ve got to find something else to occupy our time, before we get killed,” I managed to wheeze out.

“Let’s start a band.” I suggested

Rambling thoughts from many years past:

There are far, far too many children with cancer and other serious diseases in our world. Far too many young adults dying with “old people” diseases:

“There are far, far too many chemicals, poisons, drugs, in our water and food”

There is far, far too much hatred one for the other in our world. Far too much war and atrocities being committed by humans against other humans:

“Hate is not a hereditary quality, but a learned behavior”

There is far, far too much torture of our planet going on. Forests are disappearing, oceans are polluted, the air is filled with noxious smoke, the earth itself is being drilled into incessantly, pumped full of hot water and steam in order to choke out a gallon of black goo…:

“When the Earth dies, all humans will also die. As far as I know there are no outposts on Mars”

There are far, far too few children learning to put a pencil to a piece of paper and write:

“When the plug is pulled, how will knowledge be communicated?”

I used to be able to pull my car in my Grandfather’s yard and do just about anything to it which needed doing to make it run. I changed points and plugs, solenoid switches and alternators, starters, rings and pistons. Now when I open the hood of my car all I see are computer plug ins. The one thing I recognize is the battery.

I used to check books out of the library to read, or go to one of the numerous used book stores to buy a book to read, or to trade for one. Now, I buy a “book” online and they send a few bytes of information on the internet and I read it on an electronic pad. I still own lots and lots of physical books though…including a lot of instruction manuals and textbooks.

There are far, far too many people who think their God lives inside a big brick building:

“If you make room in your heart, God will be there. If God is in your heart, you have made room” You will know, there won’t be any doubt.

Peace….