Month: January 2019

I wonder if anyone has people from their childhood whom they hold in high regard? People who were not your parents or other kinfolk.

Were there people in the background of your childhood who you would hold up as examples of respectible citizens to your children or grandchildren?

What was it about them that led you to respect them?

Did they holler and scream profanities? Did they tell you to hate other people, or that other people should be hated because they were different in some way from you? Did they let you get away with doing that to other people?

Instead, did they share things with you? Did they counsel you in a calm way about the way life should be lived? Did they live their lives as examples of humanity which you wanted to follow, and want to emulate?

Did you love them and respect them for their kindness, their morality, their stalwartness in the face of stubborn problems, and life’s bumps in the road? Did you admire them for the way they could solve problems between others without getting all “red in the face” or threatening to go get a gun and shoot somebody? Did they cook you a meal when you were hungry? Did any of them come by your house with hand me down clothing that their kids had outgrown because they knew your family could use them?

I remember a lot of people like that around here. Teachers, coaches, millworkers, neighbors, store owners…lot’s of others. I could start naming names, but those of you who grew up around here know the ones I’m talking about. They were here both male and female. They were Christian and non Christian. They were black and white.

I have to wonder, when we have those people to admire and to revere, and to hold up to high esteem because of their character…..why would we want people of lesser quality to “represent” us as leaders in our country? I cannot figure it out.

I look at the photos of our new “mega-gym” and it looks like a college gym…wow. Quite nice, but I think back to the old “Y” and I’m so glad I grew up with it! I’d love to take a time trip back and play in our old intramural basketball league “The playboys” Me and Marion Wingfield, Jim Warnock, Agnew Myers, and….heck I don’t remember now boys, help me out…maybe Don Reynolds? Bad when you can’t remember.

We had the grill, wonderful cherry cokes and great hot dogs. We had an indoor heated pool! J.W. Greenwood taught me to swim in that pool. That man loved his students! Helped teach me baseball, golf. He was good at it all and dedicated because he loved this town and its kids.

We had the Weight room, pool tables, ping pong…all that good stuff. I think the Webb’s and the Maddux boys were in charge of that area…leastwise I remember them being there a lot. We had our proms up in that gym, on that ancient hard wood floor, and never once worried about falling through into the pool on the level underneath..it was a well built place. I left a lotta sweat out in that gym from PE classes with Sam McCain, Gordon Jones, J.W., and Donnie Hayes. Also, a lot of good and BAD memories.

All in the 60’s! I don’t know what we woulda done with a huge gym…We really wouldn’t have needed it back then. Guess we were a little provincial. We had some great football teams, and players. Wallace Clark, was as fast and tough a running back as I can remember. Stacy Searels came along a little later as did the 74 championship team. Good players all. And they got their share of “the glory” They deserved their “bylines” and they got them.

I look back at my old copies of the “Bulldog” Barker, and see where back in the 60’s we had all kinds of stories. Features about writing, people, academic activities, some fiction sometimes. Ms. Wingfield believed in a balanced approach. Sports had its place, but wasn’t the only thing in the Barker, like this past weeks issue was. There were other things which were equally important. Plus she taught…really taught journalism. I can’t count the number of rewrites I had to do. I wrote about Homecoming Queens, Honor Roll, Teachers profiles, Student profiles, Literary meets, book reviews, poetry, the Band…You name it. I remember Billy Hyden being in there with me and I think Bink Dawson, but again…can’t remember it all, wish I could. I mean no disrespect to whoever currently is over this area. I just loved Mrs Wingfield.

I watched a professional football game tonight where it appeared to me a bunch of millionaires were trying to hurt and maim each other. They were constantly in each other’s face talking smack. Seems to be that way in many sports at that level. I get to where I hope my grandkids don’t choose to go that path. I wonder sometimes if we don’t put too much emphasis on sports to the detriment of other things. Hey, we’re falling behind a lot of other countries academically, but by dang…We got the NFL! We got the NBA! Some of the citizens of those burgeoning foreign countries may OWN them one day…hell they already own some, I reckon.

We got our new gym though, and I’m proud of that. I just hope we will provide great facilities like that for our band, for kid’s who want to sing and work in the arts. Great facilities for kids who want to learn to garden and grow things, to raise animals. Kids who won’t ever go to college on a sports scholarship. Kids who will grow up doing the “ordinary” things that keep the world running.

There is a place in our world for all of these and more. In my heart I hope we are doing enough for all of them.

A million old memories run around inside my brain. Picking a particular one out often requires a lot of searching. Sometimes my memories are incomplete. They are like your satellite signal during a heavy rain. They go and come, and kind of get all fuzzy and blurred.

I see people I know I know, but I can’t place. Names often escape me, especially when it’s been a while since an interaction.

I think it’s just a lack of concentration at times. I remember things I don’t need to remember, and forget what I went to Walmart to get. I make lists but forget to take them. My mind is on more serious issues like the Federal Deficit.

My most often used defense is “I don’t remember”

I know I have lived a wonderful life. I definitely remember that. I have loved and been loved. I’ve seen the beauties of nature, and eaten great barbeque and awesome seafood. I have swam in the ocean. I’ve read great books, and have known unique individuals. I have a great group of humans who I call my family who help me fill in the spaces that need filling. So I’ll just keep putting one foot in front of the other and making grocery lists.

What is certain to be a divisive and decisive year in the political system of America continues. Honestly, I try to be open minded and see if I can discern the things which work from both sides which would be of benefit to all Americans. There are fewer and fewer people will who try to stand in the center and find common ground. If you try to do it, you are targeted by both extremes.

The country is like a big old piece of “Turkish taffee” with two big strong kids pulling on either end. The middle gets thinner and thinner, and pretty soon it’s gonna break and there will never be a chance to put it back together again. It happened once already 150 years ago, and we’re still feeling the effects from that.

Buy up canned tuna, bottled water, blankets and sterno and stay alert. Either that or drift on back by the middle sometime and see if we can’t get together on some stuff and move forward. There must be compromise because every single person can’t get every single thing they want.

I have been watching screens for the majority of my life. Television came of age when I was a very small child and my life, most of all our lives in Western society at any point, became intricately intertwined with the things which were being broadcast upon that little screen.

Even at first, although the “programming” was mostly innocuous, it was influential. How I tied a towel around my neck and pretended to be “Superman” and jumped off my porch and sprained my ankle terrible, because no matter what I had seen, I could not fly. I could not…fly…

I had my cowboy guns like Hoppalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers, and I went outside and put caps in my guns (my ammo) and shot the bad guys. All of us little kids did the same thing. It was our right to have our guns and imitate our heroes, wasn’t it? And so we did.

And the screens progressed. They got bigger. They went from black and white to living color. The “programming” became more complex. The news became an integral part of the screen.

I spent more time playing outside than a lot of kids. I spent a lot of time by myself playing, thinking, and formulating ideas. I read voraciously. The televisions screen was mostly a nighttime thing. My Dad limited our time watching it. It was a “privilege” and a lot of times that privilege was taken away as punishment for misbehaving. We weren’t allowed unlimited access. It was probably a good thing.

Throughout the years these information screens, whether you call them a television, a computer, a pad, a phone, whatever you might want to call them…these screens have come to do more and more of our thinking for us. They tell use what is “right or wrong”. They sway our opinions of other people and other things. This “social” media which has been created to play itself out in the virtual “over the screen” world, has come to be so influential, that “comments” and “posts” made using it, can make enemies of friend and family who we have known and loved all of our lives, while at the same time making us “friends” with people we have never known. Never has it been more apparent about this negative/positive media, then over the past year.

As I can continue to see hate and division spill across this screen, the TV screen, the phone screen, and any other type of screen that I look at, I begin to feel very tainted by it all. I want to divest myself totally from all of it….but continue to get pulled into the fray almost every time I look at a screen. It’s a powerful, almost irresistible pull.

I’m trying very hard, trying very hard. I’m devoting some time every day to reading, to thinking, to meditating, to praying. I hope to increase that time, and decrease this time. I hope to go back to mostly “family” kind of things like pictures and prayers, and sharing memories online. I hope I can do a “flip flop” and I also hope I can keep my attention away from the things which are divisive that are being posted by many, many people.

I may probably start tomorrow by keeping all my screens turned off, or at least keeping the sound turned down.

I have jumped off of the high porch again, and have found that I cannot fly…..I cannot fly…and I have hurt myself terribly…..

I leave you with the words of Paul Simon:

“and the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning,

In the words that it was forming

And the signs said,

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls

And whisper’d in the sounds of silence”

It’s hard to practice what you “preach” I find that out on a daily basis when I find myself judging someone because of their appearance, some incomplete information, or something which they have said in haste. I personally think that not judging others is one of the hardest tasks we are called upon to accomplish as human beings. The fact that I catch myself, hopefully means I am developing a mechanism within myself with our creator’s help, to defeat this shortcoming. I know nothing of what a stranger is experiencing.

I love pockets, I have always loved them. The need for pockets came about during the Middle Ages when people had a need to keep their coins somewhere. At first they started putting them in bags and hanging them around their necks. They wasn’t good, because it was easy for some “cut purse” with a sharp knife to cut the string and steal your money. Then people started carrying their “purses” inside their pants so the thieves couldn’t get to them. Problem with that was when you went to pay for something you just about had to take your pants off. People started cutting slits in their pants so they could get to their purses…and from there some smart person figured out that “sewn in” purses or “pockets” would be a dandy idea. This was sometime in the 1700’s. This was a great invention!

I recollect being about 4 the first time I realized I had pockets. I was out in the front yard around the porch and noticed the little bugs we used to call “rolly-pollys” I had caught a double handful of them and having no other place to put them…I shoved some down in my pockets. Of course, I didn’t get them all out…so I heard from Momma on that one! From then on though, pockets were for everything.

I have pockets full of rocks, marbles, worms, crickets, bugs, arrowheads, marbles, coins, clover, grass, lightning bugs, and just about anything else you could get into a pocket. If I go to buy a pair of jeans, or pants I’m going to wear every day the first thing I will check out is the depth of the pockets. I don’t like shallow pockets. You sit down on the couch, or in a chair and lean back a little bit and when you get up there will be a bunch of stuff there that has “oozed “out of your pocket. I don’t like losing my stuff, so I check my pants out really well before I purchase.

I have had some important things in my pockets before too. I put mine and Paula’s wedding rings, which were in those little black ring boxes, one in each pocket. I have carried an old pocket knife which Dad gave me in my pocket, before I put it up because I was afraid I was going to lose it. (I put a tiny piece of marble from Greece in my pocket and I can’t tell you what famous building up on top of a hill from whence it came…so shhhhh.) There have been other things…

I’ve also, at times gotten holes in my pockets and have lost things…mostly change. I’ve lost a ring or two that I had put in my pocket and they just slipped right out, and down my leg and into the grass of “neverwhere” where they probably remain today. But I’m pretty careful.

I worked with a man over in Calhoun, named Max who I never, ever saw wear anything but overalls. He loved those pockets and had something specific for each of them. He passed away unexpectedly one year while I was still there and they buried him in his overalls with a John Deere hat on. I think it was one of the most appropriate uses of clothing I have ever seen. He would have loved it.

Well, just to show you that I do “practice what I preach” in this case, I dumped out the content of my pocket and posted it along with this little story. As you can see, I had just a few things squirreled away in there. Whenever I go to the Drs. Office and they weigh me, I always mentally knock off ten pounds for “pocket contents and clothing” I guess when I quit carrying stuff in my pockets it’ll be a sad day

3.8 billion years ago here on Earth, life was just getting started. It was at that critical time in a sector of space which is 3.8 billion light years away a catastrophic event occurred.

NPR reported on it last week, and said that the occurrence…which was 500 million times brighter than our sun, was the brightest event ever recorded since our ability to reach out into the Universe with telescopes. They don’t even know what it was, or what caused it.

Perhaps since the start of life on Earth coincided with this enormous flash of light, the two are somehow cosmically connected. Probably not though. Somehow it makes me feel rather small, insignificant, and lacking in knowledge, to even think logically about such things.

We think so highly of ourselves, our race, and our superior intellect…when we are so lacking. Compared to what’s actually ” out there” we know nothing.

Can one second last an eternity? I think it can.

Could our Universe fit on the head of a straight pin. I think it might could.

For you see, relativity is everything.

What we think we know, and what is truth, are probably polar opposites.

Mostly because we are not open to thinking…. past “what’s for dinner tonight?” We take the easy answers as the gospel.

To find truth is like being a gold prospector.

Every great once in a while, one may find a small nugget laying on top of the ground….but most of the time, the gold has to be sought after with singular focus, and with hard, backbreaking work. Digging, uncovering, carefully looking, spading through tons of muck and nastiness until finally the main vein is located.

Truth is like gold. Actually it’s much more precious.

I pick up my guitar and strum a few chords. Try to come up with a melody or a run of chords which makes sense or sounds good. I don’t devote as much time to musical pursuits now as I used to, perhaps as I should. Time’s not my friend in this arena. I think back to my Grandpa at times.

He had arthritis in his hands as far back as I can remember. Being born in 1893, he was 57 years old when I was born…67 in 1960 where my memories of his banjo playing start. The arthritis hampered his playing but I remember some of the tunes: “Cripple Creek” “Home Sweet Home” “Swanee River” many more. I tried the banjo, but it never made sense to me…I was lucky to be able to learn to play the guitar. Grandpa wrote songs too. He had two hymns published and I have the songbooks where they are sitting there on the page in black and white. I’ve never sang them, but I should. Mom always wanted me too, but for some reason I never got around to it. I regret that.

Grandpa was a talented, but strange man. I don’t ever remember him wearing anything but overalls except on Sundays. He kept his wallet in the top center pocket and would get it out and count his money at least once a day. He had his pocket watch in the “watch” pocket of those overalls and checked it quite often. It was a good watch….I’m sure one of my kin got it, but I don’t know who. At one time he owned a lot of land up where he lived at, but by the time he died, he owned practically nothing and didn’t know who or where he was. He gave me the greatest gift that I could ever receive though, right there out on his clapboard front porch, and that was the gift of music….the gift of the love of music.

It was not only the times I watched him sing and play, and the times I sang with him, but the sheer amount of time he would listen to his little AM radio. It was the times he would take our his hymnals and practice for the upcoming Sunday for hours. I had nothing to do on rainy days at his house. No TV, just the books and the radio. So I listened to a lot of hymns and a lot of country music. I think I cut my teeth on one of his hymnals…literally..as I lived at Grandpa and Grandma’s house until I was past two years old. Chewed one of them up I was told.

A lot of times when I get inspired to sing, or play the guitar or write a line of a song I can hear in the background deep down in my brain:

“Goin’ up t’ Cripple Creek, goin’ on the run

Goin’ up t’ Cripple Creek t’ have a little fun

Goin’ up t’ Cripple Creek, goin in a whirl

Goin’ up t’ Cripple Creek t’ see my girl”

Read more: Bill Monroe – Cripple Creek Lyrics | MetroLyrics