Month: August 2024

Fall is coming.

The days of Summer are numbered. The only thing left in the garden is Okra and a few scraggly tomatoes growing up too high for the bugs to get. The humidity is so bad that when I took my camera from the inside to the outside yesterday, I had to wipe the fog off the lens for twenty minutes before I could take a picture. You can’t walk around the neighborhood without having to wring a quart of sweat out of your T-shirt when you get back. So…I’ll trade the last of the fresh Okra to get rid of the humidity and the bugs.

Perhaps an early frost this year? An early end to the “dog days” of the Summer of 2024? Usually the first frost is very close to my birthday…which is October 21, but I definitely would not mind a good hard, white hoar frost much sooner. I love them. I love the crisp, snapping, hot Apple cider, make a pot of chili days, which start out in the mornings with a white icy ground and ease up into the mid 60’s by afternoon, with a bright warming Autumn sun in the sky.

I love those days. The ones where you wear a sweatshirt but not a coat, and you see the kids out tossing around a football. The ones where the wind kicks up little whirlwinds of red, orange, brown and yellow leaves. The smell of somebody off somewhere in the distance burning a pile of those same dry leaves. The sunsets which are bright and clear with a few streaks of purple… oh how sweet and precious are those days. More valuable to me than piles of gold or diamonds. Especially when they are populated with my loved ones.

I want to be even more aware of the wonderful days of Fall this year. I want to notice how blazing Orange the pumpkins are at Halloween, and how wonderful my wife’s Thanksgiving dressing smells and tastes. And then I want to see the little one’s eyes light up at Christmas when they tear into their gifts. I want to hug my new grandchildren, and smell the fresh newness of their lives. I want to see things through their eyes. Especially the littlest of the group.

I never took the days of Autumn for granted. Even as a child I knew they were something special. The first poem I ever wrote was about the beauty of a special Fall day. The first song I played on my guitar and sang to was “Autumn Leaves” ” ….the falling leaves, drift by my window, the autumn leaves of red and gold…”

And so I hope for an early fall, an idyllic fall, a peaceful fall, a loving fall, a prosperous fall and a memorable fall. Not just for myself, but for all of us who need one right now so very badly. For those of us who have already seen more of them than we will ever see in the years ahead. Seventy two is looming for me in October……

A taste of simplicity, a smell of memory, a sight of loveliness, a sound of familiarity and the feel of hope…for the future of all mankind. An Autumn of change..and not just in the weather.

Reflections……

I love sunrises and sunsets. Trees and rivers…beaches and snow capped mountains. Birds and bees, foxes and beaver. I have seen all of these things with my own eyes and I know them.

Almost anything which exists in nature has it’s own beauty and symmetry.

But I also love churches and cemeteries. I love bridges and lighthouses…rusty old wagon wheels and sewer covers.

Remains of ancient buildings or a lovely finely crafted arrowhead. These things created by man also have beauty.

I have appreciated the chance to live, and to witness these things, and so much more.

I love the family of which I am a part. I continue to be here because of them. I want to protect them, though I know they are well able to protect themselves. My children long ago grew to adulthood.

All things change.

The personal relationships. The human achievements. The natural world. They all change. We humans are foolish to even believe we will always be the dominant force on this planet. That will also eventually change. Whether by our own hand or by nature’s whim. We are transient. We are today’s dinosaurs.
We ought to be smart enough to pull together as mankind, and reach out to the stars, and try and extend our race to some of those other Earth like planets which are just waiting for us.

But instead we are petty. We are too busy hating each other for our miniscule variations in skin pigment, sexual attraction, and perceived different philosophical values, to see that we are all …simply… human.

I think daily of things we might do to make ourselves of service to each other. Simple things…nothing complex. Compassion, love, kindness, recognition, respect, civility, friendship, giving. One word sermons. I think daily of my age, and of the chances I have had to be better, but was not. I hope I can live long enough to practice some of what I should have been doing all along.
I would not wish to be young again…not in this day and age. It has taken me all these years already to realize how deep are my shortcomings. I wouldn’t relish reliving those learning experiences.

Look at yourself in the mirror, where you are now in your journey, and ask yourself if you are happy with what you see. Listen to yourself and decide if what you are saying or writing is helping or hurting other people. Sometimes you may have to change in order to make a difference for the positive in this life. It’s not as hard as we make it out to be…

When I was a little kid, we lived up near the top of fifth street in a little old mill house. The street ran about perfectly from East to West, so that when I went out in the morning and looked towards Taylor’s Ridge I could see the sun come up. Even as a little kid, I got up early. I don’t know why but I have always been that way and still am. In the evening, I could look down fifth street towards Trion mill at the other end and see the sun set over the top of the mill. We lived that close. If I’d been able to throw rocks very well back then, I’d have been able to make about three good throws and would have broken out a window on the third throw in the General office building. I’d never do a thing like that, or even consider it though….you know…

I got to where I appreciated the sunrises and sunsets then when I was four or five years old, and I still do. I got to where I appreciate a lot of other things during those early years too. Pinto beans and fried ‘taters. Good ‘funny books” (later comic books, but funny books back then) Blue jeans, and good white cotton socks. A few toys to play with…back then I liked tinker toys and matchbox cars. I didn’t have a single other kid to play with back then. It was just me. There were a couple of neighbor kids, but they wouldn’t play with me. They just stole my toys if I happened to leave them out.

I really didn’t make any friends until I started to school. There was a pool of about 60 of us kids in my class and we pretty much stayed together all through school. Those were and still are my best friends. The only ones I have ever had besides my wife now….who is my best friend. I don’t often speak of specific instances of things that we did during my “growing up” days….I might get somebody in trouble. I appreciated that small town of that era. Things change though, and things have changed there and not too much for the better. I won’t go through all that though. You people who know…will know what I’m talking about.

I said all of that to get to the dream I had last night. All I can remember is that I was walking up fifth street at first light….not at sunset as you might think, but at dawn. I had such a wonderful feeling that I was going home. I woke up briefly, just long enough to remember that part of the dream. I’m glad I did, because things in this world are just getting really tough. Everything that’s happened over the past few years makes me glad I’m winding down instead of winding up. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy my life, it’s just that as you get older your viewpoint on life changes. I care more now about the lives of my children and grandchildren than I do my own. I would do anything I could in my power to help them, but in some situations there is just nothing you can do anymore except to hope and pray. Hope and pray that the ones you love will be safe for one more day.

I guess I’ve prattled on enough for now. Just want all my family and my few friends to know that I’m thinking of you, and that I love you all. One of these days when I make it to the top of that hill up on fifth street and go on over the top just remember I told you so!

I have sang the song “I’ll fly away” hundreds of times. In choirs, in duets and quartets. Solo.

“I’ll fly away, oh glory….I’ll fly away”
“When I die, hallelujah by and by”
“I’ll fly away”

I’m looking up at the heavens sometimes at night, as I did the other week looking for shooting stars, and I get strange feelings. I get carried away. I feel like if I could, I would simply float up into the air, and keep on going.

Out past the moon, out past Mars and Jupiter. Out of our solar system and into the Milky Way. Through nebula, and skirting black holes. Past dwarf stars and red giants. To gently go where no man has gone before. But I pull back for now.

I am not finished here yet. Not finished. I’ve things yet I want to do. Little ones I want to nurture and love a bit longer. I don’t for how long I’ll get to. Nobody knows, except perhaps God, and I’m certain sometimes he gives extensions for his own reasons.

Truth be told, I’m really tired this summer. I’ve been dealing with health issues of various kinds practically all season, including a bad spell this afternoon with some rogue PVC’s, and tachycardia. You’d think with all the cardio I do, I’d be fit as a fiddle, but I reckon it’s really simply maintainence I’m doing. No matter though. I’m a survivor.

Robert Frost said it best: “for I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep…..and miles to go before I sleep”.

….or in my case before I fly away.

Have a great week everyone, and when you can manage to, “go home and love your family.”

Watching the movie “First Man” yesterday about Neil Armstrong’s life, and about America putting men on the moon was a stark reminder of where we have been as a country, as opposed to where we are now.

The strength, resolve and focus that we had as a country to go to the moon…to beat the Russians in our space program, was something which inspired and united us as a people. I know there were a few detractors who protested about the money being spent on that program, and that protest was addressed in the movie.

Overall though, it was a matter of togetherness that included most Americans. Was there a black astronaut at first? A woman? No there was not. I do firmly believe however, that the overall encompassing reach of the program, on all levels…not just the men who composed the crews, led to more inclusion, faster than in other areas of our countries culture.

I know that as far as me personally, the space program was a part of my childhood, which I cannot separate from my psyche. It was an excitement, and an interest from the days of Sputnik and Telstar, all the way through the Mercury program, with pictures of Alan Shepherd and John Glenn taped to the headboard of my bed, right next to JFK’s and RFK’s. It continued through Gemini, with all its tragic deaths….finally into the Apollo program. My favorite photo of all time was from Apollo 8, the first photo of our beautiful blue marble hanging out there in space, like the last gorgeous ornament hanging lonely but divine on the tree being taken down from Christmas that year.

I think perhaps my somewhat obsessive need to photograph the moon, and watch the skies, stems from my childhood wonder with putting men into outer space.

Paula and I were more amazed than ever before about the ability of the scientific community to be able to propel what were essential well built metal “cans” into space, with high powered explosives to launch them, and not only keep the people in them alive, but eventually guide them to the moon. At one point in the film Armstrong was using a handheld geometric chart aboard Gemini 8, plotting lines to try and connect with another capsule with which they were supposed to dock. Computers were these huge and heavy refrigerator sized machines which contained barely a fraction of the computing power of even the earliest PC’s with the original version of Windows. Consider the following from Google:

“So when NASA astronauts rapidly approached the moon 50 years ago, a lot was riding on a computer with less than 80 kilobytes of memory. By today’s standards, it’s a dinosaur. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) weighed 70 pounds. Programs were literally woven into the hardware by hand — it was called “core rope memory.”

What amazing devices of mechanical engineering were those early crafts. What focus and bravery, combined with a sublime curiosity, about pushing the boundaries and limits of mankind’s physicality and mentality to the limit of its endurance these people possessed. Amazing.

While the photos of all my childhood heroes are gone from the headboard of the bed, I still have a plate block of the Apollo 8 stamps which I bought at the West Georgia College Post Office in late May of 1969, before I headed home for the Summer to get married, and start a new kind of life. I remember well Paula and I sitting on Mom and Dad’s couch in the living room on July 20th and watching “the Eagle” land, and later hearing Neal Armstrong’s famous words. “That’s one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind”. But was it really?

I’m not sure what it would take to break America out of its current polarization and deep divisions. Something like putting a man on Mars? I wonder if even that would do it. I wonder at times if we were even as solid of a country back then like I thought we were, or if I was simply looking at the moon through rose colored glasses?

Something to think on from Larry Bowers —

“1619-1865 is 246 years. 1865-2019 is 154 years. We have almost a century left until this country has lived as many years without legal slavery as it did with it. That doesn’t even count another 100 years exactly from 1865-1965 when the voting rights act passed. So in reality that’s 346 years.

Spain, and then Mexico…after it won independence, owned much of the Southwestern US from 1521 after the conquest of the Aztecs, until 1848, when the Treaty of Hildalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War, which the US had instigated. The US got Texas, Southern California, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado in that treaty. That’s 327 years the SW United States belonged to the “Hispanics” and 171 years that the United States has owned it. All citizens of Mexico got to choose to stay in the new United States, or go back to Mexico. Most of them stayed, creating an instant cross culture between the United States and Mexico, which has persisted since then. That’s a total of 498 years that Spanish speaking people have been in this area, as opposed to only after 1848 that white Americans started to go into these areas to settle. (The Gadsden purchase of 1853 further enlarged New Mexico and Arizona)

It amazes me that in just a very few short years, history in this country has been forsaken for media make believe. The myth of white manifest destiny over the cultural patterns of this country, and the belief that somehow the stain of slavery and repression has been washed as white as snow in a few short years belies the facts which lie in the history of America, if any would take the time to read it. Perhaps it cannot be understood.

Perhaps the trend of purposeful ignorance has taken such deep root that it can never be reversed. It is a shame that we Americans of the last half of the 20th century have been either unwilling or unable to defend the hard won freedoms and openness that our Fathers fought and died for in World War II. We have given them up to Autocracy and Oligarchy with hardly a fight.”

Reminiscing…

I have always loved music. Whether it be listening to music, playing my guitar, singing, writing songs, or just humming a tune. Music makes me happy, even when it makes me sad. I cry at the first few notes of some songs. One of them I heard on a rerun of AGT tonight was “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” written by Paul Simon. He gave an autistic young man who’s on the program permission to perform it, which is unusual, as he usually keeps performances of that song pretty limited.

I heard the song first on the radio early in early 1970, before I knew Paula was pregnant with our first child. It continued on to top the charts early that year, and while I liked it very much, it bore no major significance to me until much later on in the year.

We realized we were expecting a child sometime in February that year, while still living in Carrollton. It was a bleak, gray and cold, nasty Winter. We’d moved off campus into a little rental house, but we could never get our things totally straightened out, because Paula was beset with very bad morning sickness. It was the terrible, awful kind. I was so sorry for her, but I couldn’t help. The anti nausea pills would come back up whole. It was debilitating. I know she was upset. We knew without a doubt when it had happened. Unplanned, but not unwanted. I know being so sick was a miserable thing.

To make things worse, I could not find a part time job there to make money to pay a doctor, or to save any money for the coming expenses. Winter of 1970 in Carrollton, Georgia. Without our parents to help…I guess we’d have starved. I decided to transfer to UGA in the spring, because I’d heard part time jobs might be available there. I found a part time job at Sears in the Alps road shopping center almost as soon as we hit town. We found a little house to rent, Paula’s morning sickness improved, and things were looking better. Often, as I drove the car around Athens, Georgia I’d hear Simon and Garfunkel on the radio. The DJ there still liked “Bridge” and it began to take on a meaning to me. Sailing through those troubled waters was something we were doing. Maybe we’d hit some calm. I knew nothing.

We found a doctor for Paula, and although she had a really bad kidney infection that summer, which put her in the hospital, she gave birth to our daughter Karrie Lynn, on September 2nd. She was beautiful. Dark hair…dark brown eyes. The pediatrician checked her out and give her a clean bill of health the first day. I went home with Paula’s Mom to get some rest. I was a happy guy. I’d bought a box of cigars with pink bands to hand out.

When we came back the next day, the baby was sick. The pediatrician thought at first it was some kind of congenital heart defect. Then, she thought pneumonia. My Dad and Mom had gotten there, and we were all very concerned. Paula had held her once, the day before…but they hadn’t been able to bring her back again, because she was so sick. We were trying to get her transferred to Emory on September 4th, when the Doctors came out to tell us she had died.

Now at 19 years old…a little over a month away from being 20, I had become a father…my wife had become a mother..but we had lost that beautiful brown eyed baby in just two days. I never even got to touch her. Paula had to stay in the hospital still that night, and for several more nights. We were devastated, heart broken. I barely remember the next few days, with the funeral, the grieving. Paula’s Mom and I had to come to Trion to bury Karrie Lynn by ourselves while Paula was still in Athens. As we left Athens that day for Trion I had the radio on and I remember the DJ said someone had requested “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”. I don’t know who it was…it doesn’t matter, but I knew the song was for me. I wept bitterly…driving down the highway, wondering why, why this had happened to us. I got no answer to that question that day, and haven’t any day since then. Maybe there are no answers to such questions.

Paula and I recouped…slowly. We fostered a little boy named Ronnie for several months in 1971, after moving from the little house to a duplex on Edgewood drive. We built up the courage to try and have another child, and Kirsten was born in August 1972. (Sorry Kisi….revealed your age) Then after we moved to Trion, there was Ted and then Matt. We have been blessed beyond measure with them, with our grandchildren. Our love was deepened by our loss, but the loss was never forgotten.

But, as with all things which concern the heart….the hard wounds never heal, they just scar over and are opened by the memories which trigger the hurt. I would often go to the old Trion cemetery where my daughter is buried, and spend time alone there, talking and singing. Sometimes I would sing that Simon and Garfunkel song. Sometimes just think about things. So tonight, when I heard the first few notes, I had to suck in a deep breath, and start repairing that very old scar again. It’s hard to get the words out still, even after all these years. It’s just as fresh in that moment as it was almost half a century ago.

1619-1865 is 246 years. 1865-2019 is 154 years. We have almost a century left until this country has lived as many years without legal slavery as it did with it. That doesn’t even count another 100 years exactly from 1865-1965 when the voting rights act passed. So in reality that’s 346 years.

Spain, and then Mexico…after it won independence, owned much of the Southwestern US from 1521 after the conquest of the Aztecs, until 1848, when the Treaty of Hildalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War, which the US had instigated. The US got Texas, Southern California, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado in that treaty. That’s 327 years the SW United States belonged to the “Hispanics” and 171 years that the United States has owned it. All citizens of Mexico got to choose to stay in the new United States, or go back to Mexico. Most of them stayed, creating an instant cross culture between the United States and Mexico, which has persisted since then. That’s a total of 498 years that Spanish speaking people have been in this area, as opposed to only after 1848 that white Americans started to go into these areas to settle. (The Gadsden purchase of 1853 further enlarged New Mexico and Arizona)

It amazes me that in just a very few short years, history in this country has been forsaken for media make believe. The myth of white manifest destiny over the cultural patterns of this country, and the belief that somehow the stain of slavery and repression has been washed as white as snow in a few short years belies the facts which lie in the history of America, if any would take the time to read it. Perhaps it cannot be understood.

Perhaps the trend of purposeful ignorance has taken such deep root that it can never be reversed. It is a shame that we Americans of the last half of the 20th century have been either unwilling or unable to defend the hard won freedoms and openness that our Fathers fought and died for in World War II. We have given them up to Autocracy and Oligarchy with hardly a fight.

We are like a flash of lighting in the night sky. A shooting star on a cloudless night.

Our lives are written in damp letters on the back of a foggy door, only to disappear when the sun shines.

We are like one tiny fleck of gold in the bottom of the mining pan, sighted by the great prospector and allowed to swirl around and glint in the light before being poured back into the stream of time.

All too brief to really be knowledgeable about who or what we really are.

We are nothing but thought. Nothing but a vapor….disappearing even as it forms.

I have no real answers, other than try and be human, try to be humane.

Remember everyone else in the world is more like you, than they are different.

I dreamed about the old mill last night, and the smell of Linseed oil was strong.

I was thinking about the old Weave room, back before the air jets and sulzers…the days of the old X1′ s and X2′ s. The old clackety clack of the shuttle’s flying out and back, and the beat up slamming that filling yarn in so tight. That rhythmic beat you could hear before you even hit the front door. “Slamaty..Clamity..Slamity..Clamity” over and over and over again. Hundreds of them in time creating an almost unbearable noise and a vibration that shook deep inside your chest.

I remember no air conditioning, and the sweat falling off in salty rivulets…And the white t-shirts all the men wore being soaked with sweat and dirty and greasy from laying on the Weave room floor up under a loom, legs sticking out in the narrow alleys.

And all the women with their waste aprons shoving those round battreys on each loom full of wound double tight yarn spools fresh out of the spinning room, double checking that it’s the right gauge and thickness. “Can’t have no mixed yarn.” Says the floor boss. You’d get wrote up for that. “Hell with that thick yarn!” Momma says. “Can’t get a break without the battery running out.”

And them’s the good old days?

But when we cut ourselves the blood was red. And some fixer who was caught up would help fill the battries so you could take a break and go to the water house and eat a bite. And the paychecks came home, with one savings bond a week coming out of it. But…in the end the money ran out anyway. And the old looms gave way to the air jets. And things changed and changed and changed some more.

But is it better? I can still hear those old looms in my head. My hearings a little hard, but my eyes are a little misty.

Are things really better?