Month: March 2019

I know my Daddy was a hard working man. I remember being very young, back when we lived over on Simmons street and Daddy would come home from the mill. I rushed to meet him, and most of the days he would grab me up and give me a hug. Some days though, when he had been working right up until the last minute before the whistle blew, he would still have the grease and oil from working on looms on his hands and he had to go clean up before I got my hug.

Mom didn’t like all that mess in her bathroom sink, so Daddy had a little container of kerosine and some soap he kept out next to the back steps, along with some rags with which to wipe his hands. He’d get most of it off his hands, then finish up in the bathroom. I know he was tired, especially on the days he worked over. Still, he always had a little time to play, whether it was throwing a ball around or going out to where the beagles were penned up and letting me play with them a little.

Loom fixers were essential back in the cotton mill in the 1950’s. Good loom fixers, like my Dad were sought after. They moved around from “upkeep to upkeep” inside the weave room, getting the better set of looms to look after as they became more proficient. New fixers got the worst running looms and had to ask for help from the older more experienced fixers sometimes.

I never realized how hard working in that cotton mill could be until after I was sixteen years old. That was the age in which a student could get a summer job in the mill and make themselves some “good” money. A lot better money than caddying up at the golf course, or working bagging groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. So, in the summer of 1967 I got myself a summer job in the mill.

By that time, my Dad had worked his way up to being an Overseer in the mill. He was the “boss” over the second/third shifts in the weave room. My Dad didn’t believe in doing family any favors though. I ended up doing a job called “taking up quills” We’d take a little buggy and go around to every loom and fetch the empty wooden quills on which the filling yarn had been wound. We’d dump the container into which they fell, in our big rolling buggy, and when that buggy was full we’d take it to the “quill machine” It was there that the quills were reprocessed to be sent back up to the spinning room. It was the location of one of the strangest sights I can ever remember.

Me and Kelley ( a teacher at our High School who also had a summer job in the mill) had filled our buggies up to almost overflowing and were bringing them to the machine. The dumping station was a circulating belt which eventually fed into a smaller belt which took the quills upstairs. A lot of times there was a little yarn left on them and the quill machine operator was responsible for getting that yarn off before the quills got to the smaller belt. There had been a large influx of quills and the operator was standing in between the large cirulating belt and the smaller belt buried chest deep in slowly moving wooden quills. With his arms outstreched and pulling the remnants of yarn off of the quills he looked like some strange multicolored ghost with stringlets of light hanging in all directions off on him. He was covered in sweat and it dripped from his face and neck onto the remnant yarn. “Damn” Kelly whispered, “I hope he doesn’t get buried” He didn’t.

There was no air conditioning in that mill back in 1967, just humidity. The more the humidity, the better, because the looms ran better when the humidity was high. They even had “humidity heads” built into the ceiling spewing out moisture into the air. It has hot that summer. Over 100 degrees inside that weave room most days and with that humidity, it was brutal.

I came home most days and just went to bed and slept for 10 hours or so. I didn’t feel much like doing anything else.

I developed a very healthy respect for my Dad, and all of the other men from our community who had been working in that place for most of their lives. They were tough men. Most of them were good men. Many of them, they just don’t make ’em like anymore. My Daddy was one of them, as was many of yours my friends. I met and worked with a lot of them that year and in the subsequent years in which I worked in that cotton mill. I will have to admit that the next summer I asked ol’ Henry Rider about a job before I did my Dad, and he put me to repainting the walls. It was a lot better than collecting quills!

I don’t know what it’s like in there today. I haven’t been in a weave room in a score or more of years. I do know how hard of work it used to be though. Hard..hard work.

The spirit rises, and the pragmatist subsides, and I think of all the things I do not know…nor will I ever know.

I cannot see the wind, but I know it is there because it blows my hair in my eyes. If I cannot see the wind, what else can I not see?

I cannot hear the sounds that the wolf hears, and many other animals besides him. What sounds are there that even the most sensitive of animals cannot hear? What does the Universe whisper just beyond our ability to detect, that may hold secrets we do not know.

I know I can only sense certain things within the capabilities of my brain to process, and I wish I had the eyes of an eagle, combined with the eyes of an owl, and the radar of a bat. Even still, there would be things that could not be sensed.

The world we live in is a deep mystery, within a Universe with which we are barely acquainted. We are like a new swimmer paddling along on top of the great oceans, thinking that all existence is what we see and feel at that very moment, when beneath us lying deep and huge, is a vast store of knowledge we are not even seeking out. Just beneath the surface.

I’m excited by people who can look at life as a quest for facts, but who still believe that human understanding can only progress so far without intersecting with the place in space and time which will never be quantifiable by any means, or explainable by any words. I am confident that we will find something on the other side of that last door we go through, and it will be something good. It will not be what any of us expect it to be….not what any human explains it to be. But we will run to it with open arms, because it will be all too familiar once that door is opened.

Count on it. Honestly, I would not say it if I did not fervently believe it.

The Circus…

I feel like I have been on a tight rope lately. Balancing.

We all are, to some extent. We balance on that narrow thin rope trying not to slip and fall. You can’t jump off because there’s no net. You are scared to slide your feet along the tight rope and move towards safety, because you might fall and you know…there is no net. So, that prevents both quick action and careful action, doesn’t it? Mostly you just stand there. Balancing.

You stand there lightly, as lightly as you can and balance. Sweat pours off your forehead into your eyes, and you want to raise your arms up to wipe it off, but you can’t because if you let go of the pole you might lose your balance.

Eventually, we all do though.

We all make a mistake. There’s no way you can last up there forever. And then we fall. We all fall…and fail. Failure is what it’s all about.

It’s not as far as we thought, and it doesn’t kill us. At least not this time. But, it hurts a lot because there are no nets. And, the next time we go up, we will have to go higher. You can never go back to same level, you see. They always want you to go higher.

The only difference between any of us is how long it takes to heal, or to get our courage back. Some are more resilient than others. How long will it be before we are up on the narrow thin rope again? The ironic thing is, that it’s not our choice but the needs and wants of others, the spectators, that puts us up there. And, it’s our choices and our wants and needs as spectators instead of participants that put others up there. The higher you go, the more that is asked of you the next time you climb up.

I am going to be down off of the rope before long.

I have been balancing for a long, long time and I am not sure how much longer I can stay up. I know there are no nets, and it’s going to hurt if I fall, but it’s not going to kill me. I am still too strong for that. I may make it to safety! I have been inching my way along, letting the sweat fall off and drop to the ground, and I have been ignoring the jeers and catcalls and even the cheers, and if I make it to the ladder I am coming down.

I have decided I am not going to let anyone else put me back up on the rope again, ever. I am not going back up on my on simply to go higher either. I don’t like the way it feels and after all it IS MY CHOICE whether I go or not. Even with all the pressure, it’s still my choice and no one else’s. I think I will just stay down this time and become a clown. I have been practicing juggling “things” in between falls and I found I kind of like it. The Lion taming ain’t too bad either. They are mostly just roar and no bite. With a strong enough chair, you got it made.

I just hate the high wire. I also am not going to cause anyone else to have to walk the tight rope if I can help it. Heaven help me to help it. Nobody deserves to die from it.

I can tell you one thing without a doubt, my quadruple bypass surgery which I had in 2010 cost a lot of money.

I can take the most money which I ever made in one year,and double it….and it still wouldn’t be HALF of what that surgery and the subsequent recovery cost, and is still costing me in terms of medication,etc. If I hadn’t been working, and had good group insurance, I have no doubt I would have died. I just simply don’t believe my care would have been as detailed and comprehensive. Maybe I’m wrong…I don’t know. Experience over the years tells me I’m at least partially correct.

But even the group insurance at work was pretty expensive. A lot of people who worked where I worked complained about the high cost of the group insurance, but when you have bypass surgery…well….

The weekly cost of the group insurance was five times the cost of what I pay per month for my iPhone.

I find it hard to believe that people who do not have insurance get the same treatment and care as people who have good and decent insurance. I sometimes wonder if people who have had heart attacks in the past, but didn’t have insurance have been sent home from the ER with antacids and told they had bad heartburn. Am I being too skeptical here? Am I being too much of a cynic?

I know that hospitals and doctors are sworn to give care, no matter what a person’s insurance status, but do you think that sometimes in the past that ideas and philosophies have filtered down from the top at “for profit” hospitals which have perhaps caused people to be sent home who should not have been sent home? Do you think there have been some deaths because of that? I hope not.

I hope that in the future, when our county’s policies on Healthcare change again…and make no mistake about it, they are going to change…I hope that in that future, with whatever we are going to get to replace what we already have, I hope that no decisions are ever made to not give people who don’t have insurance the same treatment as people who are able to afford good insurance. I hope that poor people will be able to afford some kind of insurance, so that theory doesn’t have to be tested out. I’m not sure if they will or not.

What we have had was far, far from being a perfect system, but I think it was something to build on, if there had been any consensus to actually fix the things which were wrong with it, and build on the framework which it had put in place. I find it so hard to believe that the greatest country in the world cannot come together to find a system which would take care of all it’s citizens when they need medical help. I fear that what we as Seniors are going to lose much of what we have. I hear and read about the “Medicare advantage” plans going away…and they are very helpful plans. I hear and read of Medicare being changed to some type of “voucher” system and I am concerned. I hear about the costs of prescriptions skyrocketing beyond the means of many Seniors to purchase them, and I am concerned.

I fear of one day laying on a hospital bed, with some more stopped up arteries and have some Doctors discussing behind closed doors whether it’s worth wasting the money to try and salvage my old ass again. I tell you what, if that ever happens, I will gladly…gladly…give up my iPhone, especially if I’m still at the point where I feel like I would be useful to my loved ones if I were salvaged again,….

… and especially if I had the will to go forward with vigor, and not just go on and rest forever.

..

Two people that I know died this week. I know it’s not unusual for people to die, but I knew these two people.

One of them was a guy in his late seventies. I don’t know what killed him, but I hope it was painful. I hope he suffered. Why? Because he was a pervert who preyed on and sexually exploited and abused young boys. Boys as young as 10 years old. How do I know? I was one of those little boys. I was one one of those kids in the neighborhood, along with several others, who got lured into his house with the promise he had “something to show us”. Girlie magazines….and then worse. Things started slowly and we were eventually pulled down into a lurid rabbit of doing filthy things. I was able to break free after two years because we moved across town, But, oh God the shame which remained. Oh my Lord the repercussions of those experiences which have remained with me throughout the rest of my life. The mortification of which I have never spoken of with anyone until recently with my wife. And now. How do I forgive, and hope he found redemption? Fact is, I cannot yet do so.

How did the justice of the Universe let him live til almost 80, yet take a beautiful young woman, a mother and wife, before her fiftieth birthday?

This was the second death to which I refer. A petite and energetic woman who was always smiling, always friendly. A lover of horses and other animals who had already suffered an unimaginable tragedy of her very own with the early death of her first husband to cancer. A mother who’s young daughter has not yet graduated from high school. An unexpected death. A sneaky taking by death. An unfair roll of the dice which the Universe is constantly throwing. Oh God, I pray for comfort for this family.

In the same week, a tragedy of the utmost grief and a death too late in the coming which provides a test for my soul’s ability to find any room in my heart for forgiveness and the seeking of my own atonement. Is life fair? God alone knows.

One of the things I used to enjoy the most when I was eight or nine years old was hitting rocks with a stick. I especially enjoyed this activity when I went to my Grandparent’s house.

Grandpa and Grandma lived on the end of an old dirt road and of course that road was loaded with…rocks! I couldn’t wait to get there on a summer day back in the late 50’s. I’d go down to the road right next to the barn and find me a stick about the length of a baseball bat and make a pile of rocks about the size of a quarter. It didn’t matter that the stick was skinny because I could hit those rocks. I honed my hand/eye coordination with hours of hitting rocks into Uncle Lark’s corn field for hours at a time.

“There goes another Home Run for Mickey Mantle” I would holler out in my head. I could hear ol’ Dizzy and PeeWee Reece calling it out over the center field fence at 410 feet.

Mantle was my earliest baseball idol, and still to this day is my all time favorite. There’s a signed photo of him from his Triple Crown year of 1956 hanging on the wall down the stairwell from where I’m sitting. I wish I had gotten it signed in person, but I never got to meet Mickey.

I’d pick those rocks up and toss them in the air and whack them. I’d whack them and try to knock flying birds out of the air, although I never hit one.

This morning as I was walking down by the river, I picked up a skinny stick and a rock and when I got close to the river I threw it up in the air and swung….I was exhilirated and excited down inside as I heard a loud “crack” and “Mickey Mantle hit another home run” into the depths of the Chattooga river.

I looked around to make sure nobody had seen me, and I walked on….

1968…..

Fifty years is a long time. But I remember fifty years ago. I was a senior in High School. I had gotten most of the courses I needed to graduate, so I had two hours of “study hall” in a row that year. I sat there and read most of the time, but every now and then there was some excitement.

One of the radiators started clanking so loud once that we thought it was going to explode. Turns out it just needed draining out. The water in Trion is very alkaline, and water heaters, and radiators too I suppose, get this calcified sediment in them that causes them to stop working. I guess it does the same thing with kidneys, because after drinking Trion water all my life I’ve got about a hundred tiny kidney stones, and one big one lurking in my kidneys. My Urologist says don’t sweat the tiny ones, but if the big one starts to move “you’ll know it, and I’ll see you at the hospital “

We had several fights that year too. I can’t remember if anybody won. I think it was Mr. Hayes who broke them up

Most of the time though, I read books. I got a lot of them finished too. “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Dumas. “The Egyptian” by Mika Waltari, and most of all “Hawaii” by James Michener. That book made me a fan of not only Michener, but also of historical novels. I’ve read all of his books now, some more than once. Colleen McCollough is another favorite, with her long expansive historical series about Rome. Simply put, I became a fan of reading that year, and have never looked back. Those two consecutive study halls were more educational for me then any High School class I could have taken.

I also had Journalism that year, History and Typing II. I wasn’t much in mechanics, so I never took Shop. I kind of regret that at times, but never regret learning how to type 60 wpm. That skill has served me well through the years, first by being able to type my own papers in college (and charge other folks for typing theirs!) but chiefly with the development of the computer and its accompanying keyboard, I had a leg up on many people. I can still fly on the keyboard when I want to.

Gary Clark was the only other boy in that class with me that year. “Chocks” as we called him. Gary passed away one day suddenly from a heart attack quite a number of years back. I really hated to hear it. He was a good friend.

That year was also filled with some stress. Taking SAT’s, and trying to decide on a college to attend. I finally settled on West Georgia College, and have never regretted it. It was a much different school back then, with a small college feel.

The world was changing back in 1968. MLK was assassinated, then later on Bobby Kennedy, who had decided to run for president after Johnson decided he’d had enough, and had totally screwed up the Vietnam war, and lied about it to boot.

The Beatles were preeminent in music, and brought the British Invasion to a full scale victory.

There were proms and dances. Me and some of my buddies had a rock and roll band.

I dated some nice girls, and generally was the epitome of a slightly nerdy, sometimes cool high school Senior. I didn’t have my own car, and had an 11 O’clock curfew. I had maybe four pairs of pants, five shirts, and two pairs of shoes, one of which was for Sundays.

But, most of all, it was a great year. A year I’ll never forget. I was seventeen and was going to do great things. I knew it all, and Dad and Mom knew nothing. I was wrong, arrogant, and stupid. How many of us weren’t?

I’d love to take the time someday to really write about it in detail. It would probably be a very long piece.

Most of all, I’d love to go back for one last day to that study hall, with its old rope operated windows opened to the spring breeze in early March. I’d love to hear the river rushing by just outside the window, and smell the slightly “burnt” odor of the sanforized cloth running over at the mill. I’d love to hear the “twenty minute til four” whistle blow as I was walking Home up the eighth street hill, to a supper that probably include salmon patties and pinto beans. I’d like to see Mom and Dad again and tell them how right they were about things, and that I loved them for all they had done for me. I’d like to sit in the front porch swing after supper and strum my old Kay guitar until it got dark.

Just one day, then I’d come back…….I swear I would. And I’d be a better man than I am now.

I’m angry. I’m angry with a lot of the people in America, this “land of the free, and home of the brave”.

I’m angry with the direction American’s seem to want to follow. The direction of harshness. The direction of bias and bigotry. The direction of exclusion. The direction of hatred and condemnation. The embrace of leaders who fan the flames of the fires of discord. Leaders whose lies and deceptions are echoed on media outlets whose only purpose is to keep Americans divided.

I’m angry that so called Christian Americans act more like self righteous know it alls, than followers of the most empathetic human being who ever lived.

To let a person lead them who has the morals of a gangster, the sexual perversions of a lecher? A man who is a glutton, a cheater, a hedonist, a promise breaker, an animal hater, an ignorant uneducated oaf, who basks only in the undeserved  adoration and adolation of masses of mindless crowds of screaming, frothing and uncharacteristically mesn human beings?

People who believe a man with no morals and no conscience, was “sent by God” to be President of this country, when the only reason God would send him as leader would be to punish our country for the genocide of its original inhabitants, and the enslavement of people of color for hundreds of years.

People who do not care about existing orphans and hungry children, but only about denying women the choice concerning their own body, and what to do or not do with it.

People who would be enthralled with a leader who cannot open his mouth without lies and embellishments of the truth spilling out of it.

I’m angry that murderous leaders of dictatorial countries seem to control the direction of our government more than the elected representatives who actually live here and who care about the country and it’s people.

When Putin can threaten us directly with nuclear holocaust without our President reacting, I’m angry. What American President in our history would have put up with this?

What American President would let a Turkish dictator tell us how our Mideast foreign policy should be conducted. Would let a corrupt Israeli Prime Minister call the shots. Would let a Saudi Arabian despot murder a journalist who worked for one of our own newspapers, and get away with it.

All while at the same time bellow and bitch about putting a “big beautiful” huge wall on our Southern border to keep out workers. To keep out women and children seeking asylum from repression, violence, rape and murder? To separate patents from their children with no plans to one day reunite them?

I cannot help but see a bleak future for America.  I see an America that is closer to a Civil War than at any time since 1860.  I hope I’m wrong, but I’m a pretty mild man and  if I am angry, as angry as I am, then I can only imagine how others who are less temperate and thinking than I am are feeling.

Weapon and ammunition purchases are at all time highs.  You don’t have to wonder what people think they are going to be using them for if you are even slightly to the negative side in your thinking.

Me and Mike Brown and David Hayes went up on the banks of the Chattooga river back when we were young, about twelve or thirteen years old if I remember correctly. We were on the south bank, and had originally been going to do some fishing. Summers back then were lazy days, baseball games and swimming in the river, hunting golf balls up at the Trion golf course, and exploring.

All three of us were dedicated golfers and golf ball hunters. We would go up to the slough on #1 hole and find 8 or 10 golf balls, and then move on down to the creeks on #2 and #3 holes. We’d go into that squishy mud barefooted, and feel for the lost golf balls with our feet. Sometimes some of the leeches in the creek would attach themselves to our legs or in between our toes. We never thought anything about it, we’d just pull them off. Occasionally a water mocassin or some other type of water snake would hear or see us coming, tromping up the creek and would splash in the water. I remember one time when Mike and I were hunting up the middle of the creek and a HUGE snake came swimming right down the center. I went to one bank, and he hit the other one. Once it swam by us, we went right back into the muck.

We needed all of those golf balls, because at that point in our golfing career we lost about two balls per hole. We got better as the years passed and we played on J.W. Greenwood’s golf team. In 1967 we won a big trophy and in in 1968 we finished just out of the “money” at the State tournement. I won a couple of individual medals both years and thought I was pretty good. I shot even par at a youth tournament late in the Summer of ’68 and thought I was gonna win for sure. Old boy named Andy Bean shot three under par, and I ended up in second place. He went on to do pretty good as a pro, and me…well, I think I peaked out that summer.

Back to the banks of the Chattooga that day I was originally speaking of…

We three decided we would find the Trion Dam cave. We didn’t know exactly where the entrance was located so we went past it and ended up climbing the rocky hill that lies just above the dam. I was hopping over rocks like a mountain goat, as I had pretty good balance back then. I heard somebody yell and saw that ol’ David was sliding down the rocks. He had turned his leg and torn up his knee. We helped him back home, and it was a long recovery. No more ball playing or fishing or golfing for him that summer. It was a little bit of a wake up call for me. I’d been way up ahead of him on those rocks and if I had fallen down, it would have been a lot worse than a torn up knee. It mighta’ been goodbye…

I looked up on that rock bank from across the river just a few weeks back as I was taking some photos and wonder what prompted me to climb up that high. Was I crazy?

At 65 years of age I think about how lucky I have been to be able to survive this life up to this point, where some of my friends and comrades have not. Michael Brown has been gone for quite a few years. Old David is still around, and I have seen him a lot over the years. He still has a bit of a limp from tearing his knee up that year. I came out of it with just a few bites from some little leeches, and maybe a bee sting or two. One has to wonder at how fate, luck, time and place have so much to do with how we end up.

I’ve eaten a lot of different kinds of food in my life, especially as a kid.

I had to stay with my Maternal Grandparents a lot when I was young because Mom was sick quite a bit. I stayed there almost one entire school year in the 4th grade, and almost every Summer I spent 3 or 4 weeks with Grandpa and Grandma. Grandpa had grown up eating wild game and he never intended to change as long as he had a choice. He had deer horns lining the upper beam of his front porch from one end to the other…there were dozens of them. Rattlesnake rattlers also hung down from the beam, trophies of killing some of the biggest Eastern Diamondbacks I ever remember, or want to think about.

My Grandpa’s Uncle Larkin Davenport once killed one that stretched from one side of the old dirt road to the other. I wish there had been iPhones back in those days, oh the photos I could have taken! But, back to the food…

Besides venison, Grandpa also had a craving ever now and then for a Possum. Yes….a possum. The kind you see lying dead on the side of the road almost every time you take a trip up the old Alabama highway. Of course Grandpa wouldn’t pick up roadkill! That was for the REAL hillbillies in the backwoods of Kentucky. Up at the end of Snake Nation road in the Blue Ridge mountains, things were done in a civilized manner.

Grandpa would trap or catch a possum when he had a craving for one, and keep it up under a big old, huge wash tub for about a week. During that week, the possum would be fed the leftover vegetables from our meals, along with the peels and scraps from the vegetables. Grandma gave the little beast bread with a little honey on it on the day before it was to meet his maker. I believe it was to “sweeten” the meat, although maybe it was a last little treat for the critter too.

I had to help Grandpa skin the possum, and it was done just like skinning a rabbit. If you have never skinned a rabbit, I won’t go into it right now, but if you need to know, send me a message and I’ll give you instructions. Chances are if you grew up in the deep South you already know.

Grandma was very particular about cooking wild game, so she carefully cleaned the possum and poured nearly boiling water over him in order to get any scraps of hide off. All of this was done early in the morning. The possum then went into a large pot for parboiling. After about an hour of parboiling, Grandma would take the possum out, put it on a large pan, and sprinkle salt and spices onto it. Peeled sweet potatoes where added, and some slices of bacon, in order to add back some of the flavor which was lost during the parboiling process…which was essential in order to make the meat tender. It then went into the oven to finish cooking by being baked.

I have to note that parboiling was also necessary when preparing and eating squirrel, if you were going to fry them. If stewing the squirrel, you just went right on and kept boiling, but added some spices and some other ingredients. I ate a lot more squirrel than I did possum, and they aren’t half bad.

The last possum I ate was back around1960 if I remember correctly, when I was ten years old. My Grandfather was 67 years old that year. I can’t remember ever eating possum again, although venison and fish still graced the table at times. For the most part Grandma stuck with fried chicken, and beef roasts, and other pretty ordinary stuff in the subsequent years. Of course her cooking was anything but ordinary. Never had another biscuit as good as hers, or a cherry cobbler, or fried chicken…or fried apples for breakfast straight off the apple tree, or…well, you get the picture. I have wished a million times I had paid more attention to how Granny prepared food…especially the biscuits!

As for the possum? Well, I ate the sweet potatoes. The meat was just too greasy for me.