Month: January 2019

One of my very first memories is bright sunshine and the smell of bleach. The warm spring wind is blowing and my Mom is hanging sheets out on a clothes line. I’m sitting on the red brick steps leading out from the little four room house in which we live into the back yard. I know we had a washing machine, one of those with the wringer on the top to run the clothes through….but no dryer. I was probably four years old…the spring of 1955. I’m not sure what else I did and didn’t do on that warm spring day. Someone took a photo of Mom and me though. It’s around somewhere, I don’t know where though. I have the memory, and that’s better than a snapshot because I can still feel the heat from the sun, and the smell of clover in the soft wind. I can still see the fresh, clean sheets flapping in the wind. I look up at the blue sky, so much more deep and dark blue then it is now. The world itself was so new, so exciting. Everything I loved and wanted back then was so close that I could reach out and touch it, and I had a perfect sense of security.

People lose a lot of things in their lives. We lose our innocence and we lose our money. We lose our car keys and our sunglasses. Sometimes we lose our dogs and cats…though I hope not too often. Sometimes we lose our car in the parking lots. I’ve had to use my little “beeper” by hitting lock over and over so I could find my cars a lot of times. Wally world parking lots are big and when I go in, I’m not thinking to good sometimes. Losing humans is a totally different matter.

When you lose a person, a loved one, the security of your life takes a huge blow. The sky darkens and the blue is hidden. When the fresh smell of life turns into the cloying odor you smell when you walk into a funeral home you realize that you should have touched them more, talked to them more, and said I love you more.

But then, every day when we wake up we have another chance. Another chance at the sunshine and warmth of spring. Another chance to smell the flowers, taste the food, and see the sky. We have another chance, because most of us still have loved ones, we have another chance to do all the things with them and for them that we might have liked to do with those who are now gone. I loved the moon tonight through the trees, shining so brightly and crystal clear. The moon encompassing the souls of all those who have gone before us…saying “I understand”

Sometimes when you dream, you wake up wondering why you dreamed what you did. There are all kinds of scientific explanations about what dreams are; about what causes them.

I have on some occasions been having a dream, got up and gone to the bathroom, or something else, and lay back down and resumed that very same dream. I wonder how that is possible? I suppose with the human mind, many things are possible that we do not even imagine.

I think as humans age, they dream more and more….perhaps because they actually sleep more, but perhaps, it’s because they are transitioning. The body and the mind seem to be “unlinking” somehow. Sometimes the dreams are due to diseases which attack the brain. My Daddy had Lewy Body dementia, which causes very vivid and (to the person with the disease) realistic dreams. They swear things which they dream have really happened.

Scientific explanations aside…..I wonder if our dreams are somehow a pathway to a place beyond where we are now?

I used to sit up with sick people back in the day, some of them who were on death’s door. They all dreamed throughout the night. Many of them told me of dreaming about people who had gone on before them, or about sweet dreams of pleasant things.

One man with whom I had worked in the Weave room at Trion, fixed looms all night long in his sleep, including the hand and arm motions involved. I asked him once when he woke up if he remembered what he had dreamed. “I dreamed about going home.” he said. “I dreamed about going home” A couple of weeks later, he did.

I can only remember two dreams from my early childhood. This was in the days when we lived over on the end of Simmons street in Trion. We moved there early in 1955 and moved out in the summer of 1962.

Both of them were very vivid and real to me.

In one of them, we had walked out the front door into the front yard and heard a great din of sound from above us. I looked up, and the sky was filled with every size and shape of space ship or flying saucer imaginable. “They have come to get us.” my Dad said. Then I woke up. Mind you, this was somewhere around 1960 or 61 when I had this dream. Long before “Star Wars” or “Star Trek”

“They have come to get us….”

In the other dream, we went out the back door to our neighbors fence. It was a very intricately made fence, kind of a “woven” effect. There was a great multitude of people standing out there, starting from just outside our door, and stretching as far as the eye could see. Sitting on the top of that intricate fence was God….in flowing robes and long white beard, and people were approaching one at a time for their judgement. Some were going through a gate in the fence, (which was never there in real life) while others were being zapped by God with his staff. I figured that the ones going through the gate were headed to heaven. The others…well…I woke up before it was my turn. I expect this dream was the oldest of the two.

So, here I sit wondering about dreams. I’ve been thinking about dreams all day.

I wonder if I’ll be going home, or if I’ll be picked up by aliens, or if the judgement of God awaits. Perhaps none of the three, perhaps all of the three.

Probably something totally different and unexpected that nobody…nobody…dreams of….

I’m sure I’ll dream again tonight and maybe I’ll remember what I dream. Maybe not.

As for ya’ll my friends….pleasant dreams.

I wanted to be a poet. I had remembered riding in the 1960 Ford that my Daddy owned down through Summerville back when I was in the eighth grade. I had a little green notebook, wire bound at the top, and I was writing poems as we drove along.

I was unusual at that age, I suppose, because I could do anything in the back seat of a car without getting “car sick”. I used to read comic books in the back seat on the long rides out and back to Blue Ridge. There were some pretty curvy roads along that journey back then. Most of the time we had to go over to Chatsworth and cross Fort Mountain, and coast down the steep roads into Ellijay praying that the brakes wouldn’t overheat and catch on fire.

Once when I was very young, we got caught in a snow storm going up Fort mountain, and Daddy had to walk back down into Chatsworth to buy a set of chains for the tires on his ’53 Pontiac, so we could even make it back down off the mountain. My Mom was deathly scared of crossing that mountain anyway, and thereafter was even more terrified of it.

I remembered the huge, beautiful snowflakes which covered up the mountain that day, and wrote a poem about it in that green notebook those few years later. I saved the notebook, and continued to write some poems from time to time in it.

When our High School started a literary magazine in 1967, my junior year, they had a contest for the best poem turned in to be published in “The Sampler” which was what they called it. I reworked my snow poem and turned it in, not expecting it to even be published…..but was shocked when I won first place! The prize was a painting by my classmate Wayne Greene, who was using the name “Gerald Johns” back then.

At some point over the ensuing years, I lost that little green notebook. I did manage to keep a copy of that Sampler though, and I’ve also still got that futuristic green monster of a painting that Wayne did, squirreled away somewhere in my storage building.

Great days, wonderful memories.

I grew up in the fifties in America. I was a great time. The middle class was growing. Most of our little families in the mill town where I live were able to buy the houses which had been duplex apartments owned by the company and convert them into nice little single family homes. My Dad was able to buy his first new car in 1966. A Ford fairlane. It was a pretty good little car. Had a 289, 8 cylinder motor. We ate more hamburgers by 1967, where we had ea…ten pinto beans and corn bread back in 1958. I think we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken to eat out for the first time in the late sixties. I was able to buy two comic books a week for a quarter a piece in the late sixties, where I had only gotten one per week back in the fifties, even though they were cheaper. I found some friends who had been collecting since the early fifties and was able to catch up on some of the series I had been wanting to read, but couldn’t afford.

We think our brain controls everything, but sometimes I am not so sure, especially when it comes to our deepest most “heartfelt” emotions. That’s right, heartfelt..from the heart.

For eons, before mankind starting looking at everything from a scientific standpoint, humans thought the heart to be the center of all our emotions. Not until the age of enlightenment, and the acceptance of scientific methods did it become widely acceptable that our brains were the center of everything which make us human. Yet we still continue to associate our hearts with love.

All Valentines usually have some tie in with hearts. We give someone our heart when we fall in love. We still get broken hearts. We bless people’s hearts, not their brains!

Of course I know very well, that science is correct yet I wonder why my heart soars, and swells when my little ones do something loving. I feel it with a flutter in my chest, not in my head. I feel that warmth deep in my core when I think of the love I hold for my wife, my family. I still remember the gut wrenching pain which welled up from within me and the sobs of grief which racked me at the deaths of my parents and my daughter. If my brain was in control on those days, it wasn’t doing a very good job.

I really don’t think that even the world’s smartest scientists know everything about the way we humans are wired up. They got the schematics down pat..right down to the DNA. But they haven’t come up with the blueprints for the soul yet. I don’t think they ever will because our Creator hid them….deep down inside our heart.

Thinking back to my childhood, I can remember thinking that I would die young. My Mom was terrified of dying, and unfortunately being associated with that attitude at such a young age somewhat tainted my view of living. It wasn’t really her fault, but was a symptom of her mental illness. Of course, I didn’t know that.

Living was something you did super, ultra carefully. You didn’t want to open yourself up to possibly getting killed by doing something stupid….like playing baseball ( you might get hit in the head with a baseball and get killed….yes it was that bad). I therefore didn’t play little league until my last eligible year…although it turned out I was pretty good at it. Made the All Stars, hit some home runs, had fun!

I tried to staunch my fears when I was raising my kids, but didn’t do well in some cases. They were lucky to have a stable Mom, because I was prone to panic attacks, and had irrational fears of many things: flying, bad storms, etc. I know my kids can remember. I regret those shortcomings, but at the time, I had no solutions. Later on in life, I got medication for my problems, and settled down somewhat. I say somewhat, because I still harbored some of those irrational fears. I did overcome my fear of flying and got a house with a dang good storm shelter!

I feel like that in 2010, when I had my bypass surgery, I became much less fearful of death. I became more capable of living in the day, and appreciating the beauty of the world around me, and being ever so grateful for the family I have to share my life with. Sometimes I still fear the unknown, but not nearly to the extent that I used to.

At my age, I surely don’t have to worry about “dying young” anymore. I do however, certainly want to continue to be able to build memories with my little ones as long as I possibly can.

My Mom lived to be almost eighty one years old, and only in her very final last days do I believe she found some inner strength, and sacrificed her fear of death to the ability to find some peace. I was there with her…almost all her family was there.

Build happy memories friends and family, and do not be fearful of the unknown!

Peace.

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….

Last night was a “three dog night” Everyone knows I guess, about where that saying comes from. The old “mushers” used to sleep with their dogs and on the coldest nights had to have three dogs to keep them warm. Last night all three of our dogs slept inside, although NOT in the bed. Same thing tonight. My Lab usually likes the “outdoors” and has an insulated doghouse up on the porch, right next to the house, but she doesn’t get a choice in this kind of weather. She ran around and chased her ball happily today, just as usual. These animals are remarkable creatures, and worth loving. I feel badly for all the half feral cats running around the neighborhood and hope they are finding some warm places to sleep. Hopefully this “polar” air clears out after tomorrow and we get back to a “normal” southern winter.

I wonder how other people “see” their memories, in their mind. Mine come bubbling up in little gray colorless bits and pieces most of the time. If I sit and purposefully try and remember some specific event which has taken place in my life, I fail to rake much information up into the pile.

I think the reason I write so much is because once I get onto a tangent of thought, once I get a good smell of a past brain remnant, then more and more starts boiling and cooking up to the surface.

I was watching little Eli today, and the thought just popped into sight about Kirsten sleeping on my tummy when she was a tiny baby. I worked at Westinghouse on a night shift back in the early 70’s, and Paula was a Southern Bell operator. She had odd hours. A lot of times when Paula was at work, and it was “baby nap time” I would just lay down on the couch and lay Kirsten on my tummy. It was already quite ample and I had no fear of her rolling off…She hadn’t mastered rolling over yet.

One day though, I was really out of it, and so was she.. and the phone rang. I came out a full sleep and jumped up…And rolled little Kisi on the floor. It was only a short distance and nothing was hurt but her feelings. I do think I took the phone off the hook after that.

File that one under “how children survive inexperienced parents”