Month: December 2019

I am a very cautious person. It’s one of the main reasons I’m still around. Caution, and a big old slice of good luck pie.

I learned to drive when I was 15. When I turned sixteen, my Dad told me to drive down to the triangle and get a loaf of bread from Hurley’s grocery store.

I drove at 35 mph down there, plunked down .59 cents for a loaf of sunbeam, got back in Dad’s little green Ford Fairlane, and promptly backed square center into one of those stinking huge light poles that they surrounded with two tons of cement.

I drove 25 mph on the way back home…

It was another 3 or 4 months before Dad let me take the car out again. I drove about 2.3 miles to the house of a girl I wanted to date. I was shy, and awkward as hell. I couldn’t think of things to say conversation wise, so I drug out my guitar and sang to her. It was kind of embarrassing and I’m sure a little strange.

Doubly so, because I flooded the car out when I started to leave, and then when I pulled out of the driveway I accidentally pushed the accelerator down too hard and “dug out” of the driveway. I did make it home safely. From that point on, my driving skills improved, and I can say without a doubt that since then I have logged hundreds of thousands of miles. Mostly cautious miles.

Since I got blackballed at the old local industrial complex, I ended up living in Trion and commuting out and back to work in various cities for about 38 years.

I worked for five years selling medical supplies all over North Georgia. My territory was huge. I put in 150 miles a day most days east….it was a great job the first three years, but not so great the last two. I had a lot of close calls those years, but lucked out and had no accidents. I did however, not latch one of the side panel doors one the supply truck one day before I took off to Calhoun. I don’t know when it flew straight out. I didn’t notice I was spilling bandaids and antibiotic ointment all over the roadway on 136. I only noticed when I turned right on River street and sheared the door off on a telephone pole. That was a hard one to explain to the boss. I was able to backtrack towards Trion, and I ended up finding most of the supplies.

I went to work for Big B Home Health care, and they gave me a new van with their logo on the side. I got to drive it out and back to Rome every day because I was on call 24-7 to deliver Oxygen and O2 supplies to people who needed them. I came home one day and parked it in my steep driveway on ninth street. I was in a hurry, and forgot to put on the parking brakes. I looked out a few minutes later, and the van had jumped out of gear and had rolled down the driveway, across ninth street and jumped the curb across the street and rolled 30 more feet into my across the street neighbors back yard, right next to the back alley. Nary a scratch did it have. Looked like I had just parked it there. I went over and drove it out the back alley and back into my driveway. This time I set the parking brakes.

Like I said, caution is the key….along with a big old slice of luck pie.

I would like to do as we used to do when I was young and unknowing. Go off into the woods and saw down an old cedar tree and bring it into the house and decorate it.

Most of the time we’d go to Mr. Kellet’s farm, where we bought milk, and he’d let us cut one. Back when I was very young, eight or nine. The smell of those trees haunts my memory now, just as the happiness and innocence also haunts me. I knew nothing then of the world beyond my doorstep. I didn’t realize the terrible things going on out of my little inner circle.

But, they were out there. Not as obtrusive and as evident as they are to me now in this 67th year. But there nonetheless.

I watched my three little ones in their innocence and happiness this morning, and I wondered how life will play out for them. I’ll only be here for a portion of that, but I’m concerned. I know the things I have seen since my time as a child in the fifties as compared to today. Such a vast change. Such a different world. A sandpaper world now compared to my smooth white paper one.

Of all the unknown quantities which lay ahead for them, I cannot even guess. All I can do is love them, hold them, and let them know they are cherished now. So loved. Perhaps if they are able to retain some of those memories in the future, it will give them strength.

Just as I went down in the woods today to a spot where a little cedar tree was growing and put my face close to it and breathed in deeply…and momentarily was comforted. All would be right, all would be alright. Just for a moment.

In my past, in the days when I was growing up, one encouraging word from the right person could make my day…. maybe my entire week.

If my Dad told me I had done a good job on something….anything really, I redoubled my effort to do an even better job the next time.

I had the most difficult time learning to tie my shoes. I can remember, because I was almost six before I could tie them well. Dad never got mad, just kept encouraging me to try again. “You’ll get it” he said. And I finally did.

I had a lot of problems with some relatively simple motor skill tasks. I was smart in other ways. I could read before I started school, and I was always good at doing adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing in my head. I could figure percentages of things especially well…..but I had trouble keeping my pants zipped. Go figure.

It could be the concussion I suffered riding my tricycle down our brick steps when I was four. I busted my head open, was bloody as hell, and got knocked out. It took 12 stitches to close the wound, and I told Dr. Allen to “keep his shit’n hands off me,” while he was doing the stitching. “Where’d he learn that language?” He asked “From his Mom”. Said Dad.

It could be the severe high fever (106 degrees) that I had right before my third birthday, which caused my eyes to cross so severely, you could barely see the blue. They stayed that way for a year, then gradually uncrossed. I don’t remember it, but I’m sure my brain was about fried.

But I got over those things. I was encouraged to improve. So I did.

I used to love to take broom handles and hit rocks from my Grandpa’s dirt road driveway, out into ol’ Uncle Lark Davenport’s corn field. That field was all rocks and no dirt anyway, so he never cared. I spent many, many hours whacking rocks. I was an awkward and backward 12 year old the year..the last year, I was eligible to play little league. I was embarrassed to try out, but two great men in the community encouraged my efforts, and all of the hours I had spent whacking little rocks with a skinny stick paid off as I found I could really rip a baseball with a baseball bat. Made the Allstars that year.

I wanted to write my Freshman year in High School, but was afraid I couldn’t do it well enough. Mrs. Wingfield, who was the English teacher and editor of the school paper read some of my poetry, and encouraged me to enroll in journalism class. I ended up writing quite a few articles, and a lot of poetry. I was just looking through my old scrapbook of “inches” I wrote for the paper the other day. I thought of Ms. Jesse’s encouragement, and how she believed in me. She was a great teacher.

I could go on, but I guess my point is clear. All the things I ever succeeded at even moderately were the result of being encouraged. Trying to make me do something I don’t want to do, especially if someone is coming from a bullying attitude, or an attitude of “my way or the highway” just makes me buck up like a mule. I have even shut down in past years with people who insist they were dictators, and their word had to be obeyed or else. I once walked out of a meeting with a “boss” like that, walked to my car, and turned it on and drove home. The guy called me and begged me to come back…because I was running his factory one handed. I didn’t.

I’ve walked out of college classes on the first or second day (and some halfway through the course) because the professors were discouragers instead of encouragers. I did not need them, or their negativity in my life.

Of course some of these actions have cost me….some of them were foolhardy. But I didn’t stop to think at the time.

I don’t encourage anyone to be like me. To be like I was. I got lucky and married a sane wife with good sense, who balances out my impetuous nature with her common sense.

I’ve helped her raise three wonderful and successful children. I hope I encouraged them more often than I discouraged them. They certainly grew up with one slightly off center, brain impaired Dad.

I think nowadays we as a country, as a world…need to encourage our children and little ones. Let’s tell them that there’s nothing….nothing, that they cannot accomplish. And if we tell them, and they truly believe us, perhaps they will save this world and usher in a new age of peace and prosperity.

If I don’t see you, or talk to you before then, have a Merry Christmas..Happy holiday, nice days off, or…..whatever you want!

The only way I can much remember things is to kind of “hack in” to my memories. I can’t go directly there. I have to have something to “jog” the hacking process. I have to put in a query and wait for the old “hard drive” gray matter to eventually bubble it up to the surface. This process could take minutes, or sometimes days.

I ran across my old 1968 High School annual yesterday as I was putting up some photo albums and I flipped through the pages. I looked at some of the pictures and some of the things which people wrote in my book. I flipped past the page showing the “class favorites” and I paused a moment and reflected. As I remember, I always wanted to be “something” when I was in High School, but as it turns out I was pretty innocously anonymous. In the annals of mediocrity, I stood amongst the crowd lost in middle.

It mattered a lot to me then, but I really didn’t know how to be popular. I for sure wasn’t the smartest, the handsomest, the best dresser, the most atheletic, the most likely to succeed, the wittiest, or anything resembling any of those traits. I didn’t even vote for myself for any of these…to be honest, I don’t even know if it was a voting process. Can’t remember.

I think today about what matters from back then, and it seems to me that the memories of those days are the most important. I certainly have a lot of those, and if that’s the measurement, then I’m not doing to badly.

I remember a lot of things. Perhaps one of these days I can find the time to write them all down.

In hindsight, I don’t guess I would do much differently. I don’t think I could. I was what I was, and that’s all that I was. Age hasn’t changed me, except to ripen my flavor like an old crabapple which has dropped on the ground and lays there waiting for someone to pick it up.

As for Christmas presents, I have to say I have nothing left of any present I received as a child. Nothing physical anyway. I have vivid memories though of many wonderful things. An entire Hoppalong Cassidy outfit complete with guns when I was four. Oh yes I learned to shoot at an early age. A real Daisy BB Pistol at 8 years old. The front of it broke down and you could shoot one BB, pellet, or dart at a time. I’m ashamed now to admit it, but I once killed a sparrow with it. I was like Opie Taylor though, and cried. Then I went and buried it. I never shot another living thing with that gun. At 10 I got a Schwynn Bicycle, and learned to ride it quickly. I stayed around the streets close to home though. I ranged far from home at times, but usually on foot with a big stick in my hand or a baseball bat on my shoulder. At 11 years old, I got a reflective telescope which I never learned to use. Always every year, there were books, comics and classics. There were ball cards. At 12 years old a Lionel train. I remember all these things now so clearly, as I write if them. I could go on and on…My first record player at thirteen…but, it’s not the things, which are all now long gone which counted. My Dad helped me learn to ride my bike, and to shoot my gun. I remember the look of happiness in HIS eyes even now…just like it was yesterday. His laughter at my foibles and mistakes. That familiar laugh, so distinctive. It’s not the gifts. It never really was. I would bundle them all together, all of them I ever got just to hear that laugh once more. Christmas should be more about presence than presents, more about the giving of memories than the receiving of things which do not last. Christmas is what you receive in your heart and keep forever.

I used to wonder what it would be like to be old. I distinctly remember when I was 12 years old in 1962, thinking that it would be forever before I would be as ancient as my Old Grandparents! Grandma was only 63 that year…two years younger than I am now, and Grandpa was 68. All things are relative aren’t they? My Grandparents lived many more years. My Grandmother died in 1999 at the age of 100..and I, the man who had thought her old at 63 was still recovering from the first of two heart attacks, and could not help carry her coffin from the O’Zion Church that few steps to the graveyard just outside the back door.

She had never seemed to have aged that much at all from that day in 1962, up until perhaps the last year of her life. I certainly did. Relativity.

I looked at my own Grandchildren tonight and wondered what they will remember. I am 65 so I must seem decidedly aged to them. I look at myself through one set of eyes, one angle of perception, and they look with different eyes. I could not see in my Grandmother’s eyes her hopes and dreams for me. My Grandchildren cannot see mine for them. All through our lives, we are hopelessly at odds with a set of expectations for ourselves which we perceive that others have for us, when in fact our own expectations are probably always greater and more pressing.

One thing I do know that my Grandmother wished for me was more happiness and less worry. I know this because she told me so in person one day. The only other thing she wished was that I would come visit more often. I so very much wish I had.

So, for my Grandchildren…I wish for you more happiness and less worry…..and come visit when you can.

Everybody has a story. The rich and the poor. The small and the tall. Every human being contains within them the most wonderful and complex story anyone could ever hope to hear. The story of their life

The very few people who are great writers can express certain portions of their wonderful existence. But even the greatest can only show us a small snapshot of the whole. Think,… it takes you 40 hours to read a really long, interesting biography. That’s just one ordinary work week. It’s just an abbreviated compilation, albeit many I have read have been superb. Oh, that we could know more of the inner monologues of some of the great minds.

Used to be, back in the days of the great philosophers, their proteges would live with them and listen to hours and days of their teaching. Used to be people who wanted to learn a great skill would apprentice to a master for a decade or more in order to become a master themselves. Nowadays we have school, but it seems we get snippets of this and dribblings of that, and never too very much of anything specific, unless one studies to be a doctor, or a lawyer or a PHD. Even then, we don’t know the inner being. We don’t know the whole story.

I like to say, I have composed my greatest works in the bathtub, and have forgotten them as I have toweled off. The warm water does wonders for the blood circulation in the brain.

Be sure of one thing. Do not ever look down upon any other human being. Don’t think you are better than the poorest farmer working the meanest rice field in China. His story might be much greater than your own. In his eyes it certainly is…and perhaps in God’s eyes also.

Ok, call me a saint or a sinner….it don’t really matter.

There’s a really big lottery coming up tonight. Around 297 million dollars. I really hope that I win it. I could sure use it. Least I think I could.

I guess a lot of people feel that way don’t they? One thing about the lottery is that it’s a cheap dream for a lot of people. What else can you pay a dollar for and get such wonderful daydreams about? I know a lot of people say it’s gambling and you ought not to waste your money on it, but I betcha’ that a lot of them put up a few dollars when it gets up in the 200 million+ range. I bet there are even a few preachers out there who secretly shell out a few bucks on it. I don’t blame them. I don’t think it would be a sin if they won it. After all, they would probably give most of it to their churches, and keep just enough to be comfortable, wouldn’t they?

After taxes and all, I heard it would be about a 90 million dollar take home. I sit around and think about what to do with all that money. First thing everyone wants to do, of course is quit their jobs. That’s a prerequisite isn’t it? I don’t have a job now, so I guess I could skip that one…or maybe keeping up with that money would be my new job. Next thing is to go out and buy a new car and house. I know of a house close by this little town I live in that I want. It’s up on the mountain and they want a couple hundred thousand or so for it. Chicken feed after tonight! And that car? I have always liked those sleek Jaguars, no Porches though. Nothing too pretentious mind you. And then, I would pay off the few companies I owe money to. Otherwise, I am going to be paying them until the day I die. After that, who knows?

Maybe a little Norwalk Terrier to go with the dogs I have now for a pet. Take a trip to Disney World, and actually stay on site for once. Buy my wife a better diamond. Give my kid’s a million or two. After that, I guess I would just have to figure out some kind of hobby that I enjoy. I think I would buy a little RV, a small one… and go around to flea markets and antique malls and look for things to resell and make money on. I kind of enjoy looking for unfound treasures, I guess. That way I could do a little traveling. But then again, I don’t have much of a desire to go off too far. I’m not sure about the trips to Europe and all that stuff. I might like to take that Cruise that goes down the East Coast of the U.S. though.

One thing they always say about people who win big lotteries, is that it messes up their lives big time. I would like to think that I could handle it, but who knows. I’d like to try it and see.

How’s that old Rock and Roll song go?

“The best things in life are free
But you can keep ’em for the birds and bees.
Now gimme money (that’s what I want)
That’s what I want (that’s what I want)
That’s what I want (that’s what I want), oh-yeh,
That’s what I want.”

Or then there’s that other one that they play on “The Apprentice” :

“Money money money money, money
Some people got to have it
Some people really need it
Listen to me y’all, do things, do things, do bad things with it
You wanna do things, do things, do things, good things with it
Talk about cash money, money
Talk about cash money- dollar bills, yall”

Really though I like this song by John Mayer:

Me and all my friends
We’re all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There’s no way we ever could
Now we see everything is going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don’t have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
It’s hard to beat the system
When we’re standing at a distance
So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They woulda never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on the door
When you trust your television
What you get is what you got ’cause when they own the information ooohhh,
They can bend it all they want!

That’s why we’re waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
It’s not that we don’t care
We just know that the fight ain’t fair
So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We’re still waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
Now we keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)

Waiting on the world to change
Waiting on the world to change
Waiting on the world to change
Waiting on the world to change

Guess I really don’t “need” that lottery money after all…maybe I could “use” it though and try and change the world what little I could…

The ghost of Christmas past.

Every year without fail it comes. It’s that time of year again when my nerves become as jangled as old St. Nick’s jingle bells.

I can’t help it. I’ve tried, but to no avail. Every December 25th, right after all the wrapping paper has been torn off of all the presents (usually a TON of them…really…) I start saying to myself: “next year, I am not putting myself through the strain of trying to get so much…to do so much” but, when next year rolls around…..this year now, I start getting that feeling down in my gut that I am just not going to have enough dough, ray, mi to get what I feel like I need to get. Sometimes it get’s to the point where it downright depresses me.

I know when I was a kid, a lot of my best memories of Christmas were, or course at my Grandparent’s home. But, I guarantee you right now that they were a site simpler Christmases than now. One year that I remember really vividly was back in the mid 60’s I guess. We didn’t usually go up there until a few days before Christmas day. And guess what? Grandma didn’t have her Christmas stuff already out! That’s right; she didn’t get it out the day after Halloween like some of us do now. She didn’t have too much stuff anyway. One medium size cardboard box and that was it.

For some unknown reason that year, I went out with Grandma to cut a tree. Grandma was appointed to all that kind of stuff because of Grandpa’s arthritis in his knees. I can’t remember when he didn’t have it. Besides, he was the type who thought if Grandma needed a tree, then SHE should be the one to get it. We walked for a good piece, up and down some rolling hills. Finally, Grandma spotted a little pine tree. It was about a 4 footer, and had pretty, fully needled limbs. We took the saw and cut it down, and I drug it back to the house. Out came the cardboard box, and my brother and I, and Grandma put on the decorations. Everyone else just sort of hung back and watched. It was great fun! We had to be oh so careful with those glass ornaments, and even had to replace one or two of those big old bulbs on the one strand of red lights that she owned.

When we were through, and plugged in the lights, that little pine became transformed into a veritable “Times Square” beauty. I don’t think it would have won any contests of ANY kind. But for us, it was good. Very good.

My brother and I usually only had two or three presents each at Christmas. There was one “main” present, which usually never exceeded a twenty dollar price tag. Then there were a couple of smaller ones. Grandpa always delivered, with a stocking full of fruit. Oranges, apples, sliced orange candy, peppermint sticks (the soft ones) and all types of assorted nuts. I really looked forward to that stocking! Then, when we visited O’ Zion Baptist Church for their Christmas program, we ended up getting that wonderful brown paper bag full of the same kinds of goodies. The sliced orange candy was ALWAYS my favorite!

I don’t know when things changed, but somewhere along the line they certainly did. The stores all have gotten larger. Then of course we have had the development of Wal-Mart, the king of merchandising. With them around to push the small Mom and Pop businesses into bankruptcy, the way that Christmas has been perceived and promoted has changed tremendously. Every year it’s pushed up by a day or two. It used to be that it was right after Thanksgiving before you saw anything “Christmas” come out. Then, they moved it up a couple of weeks. They have kept moving and moving it until now the Trick or Treater’s are not off of the streets and into their beds, before the Christmas stuff comes out.

It’s not the same stuff either. I looked and looked the other day to try and find something that wasn’t made in China. I finally did. It was made in Viet Nam. I went through a JC Penney store the other day and looked at clothing and found made in Egypt, Viet Nam, Peru, Nicaragua, Singapore, South Africa, etc. You name it. The only thing I found in the whole store in 30 minutes of looking that was made in the U.S., was good old “Cannon” towels.

Well, back where I started. The feeling in the gut. It’s a little worse than usual this year. My situation is a little tenuous, and money is going to be really short. This MAY just be the year when I am forced to do what I think about every year and cut back. Besides, I am not really sure that I want to make China’s economy any better than it already is…or Viet Nam’s for that matter.

Maybe I should go out in the woods and cut down a little old pine tree, just for old time’s sake. (If the pulp wood guys haven’t gotten them all!)

I watched the launch of the Orion rocket this morning…and it brought back a little “thrill” in my soul which I thought was long gone.

How well I remember the early days of the “space race” between the United States and the USSR. The Russians beat us to the punch with “Sputnik” and the first man in outer space was Yuri Gagarin…back in April of 1961. Our first man in space was Alan Shepherd, who launched a month behind the Russians on May 5th of 1961. President Kennedy stood before America only 20 days later and said:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

And so we were off and running, and on July 20th 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. No other country has ever put a man there.

We have gone through many years since then, with other programs taking the place of “deep space” travel. The Space shuttle program…the space station.

All of that was exciting, but not something which would serve to inspire the soul.

Now with the Orion program, humanity seems to be pointed out towards the depth of space again. Away from the Earth, out into the unknown and unknowable. Out to perhaps one day have humanity set foot on another world.

I’m a lifelong reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I loved Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. I also liked less well known authors also, like Frank Herbert and later on Orson Scott Card. But it was mainly Heinlein who really put the reader out there amongst the stars. I really “grokked” his books.

This morning as Orion rose into the sky I thought of a quote I had read from author Norman Cousins, who became famous for “laughing” himself back to health:

To be able to rise from the earth;

to be able, from a station in outer space,

to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets;

to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible;

to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe—

all this enlarges the human horizon . . .

— Norman Cousins, 1973

Hopefully this morning, the United States, and perhaps the entire world again took its first baby step towards a hopeful ultimate destiny of reaching the stars and the planets surrounding them, and “going where no man has gone before.”