Author: thegraymaniac

As we baby boomers age and die, we will likely be the last generation of human beings who would/could if we chose, put away our computers, our smart phones, and other advanced technology, and still be able to survive without the use of them.

If I chose to, and many times I wish I would, but if I made a concerted and extraneous effort, I could live the rest of my life without personally using advanced technology. That’s not to rule out the fact that it could still be used on me.

I might move to Alaska, build a cabin, and live out my life as a survivalist. It wouldn’t be pretty, probably not very long, but I could do it.

In the future, as technology and the biology of humanity continue to merge…humans will be so dependent on technology, that we would not be able to function, or simply die without it. Our phones may one day soon be so “smart” that they will be implanted in us, and will interface with us through our nervous and autonomous systems. (They will be a lot smaller, not larger as they are now)

Other aspects of technology will take over, or assist our biological systems, and we will become part human/ part computer. My son points out that we are already “Cyborgs” because machines now do much of our thinking for us.

So, I am glad I have lived in the age in which I have lived. I am happy to have been guided by my own human emotions, which have been in daily interaction with other humans like me. I am glad to be 66 years old, and not 6 or even 16. All of the coming changes, the new paradigm of which I have been speaking for so many years, may be seen as beneficial and needed for our race to survive. The coming super humans may be able to solve problems and differences which now plague us, and they may finally be able to be at peace with each other, and reach out to the mysteries of the Cosmos.

Yet, I’m glad I will have already taken my place in history.

I once climbed all the way to the top of Fort Mountain with my daughter on my back, with her singing “little bunny foo-foo” the entire way up and “bopping me on the head” every time the song called for it. Which is a lot. I made it up that steep and fairly long trail with some breath to spare. I would hate to say how long ago that’s been. Someone would probably have to carry me up now!

It’s a shame how most of us cannot stay at optimum operating conditions for our life span. I blame it on lack of options, and lack of willpower.

When I worked at Rome in the eighties, I had to leave home before there was time to fix a healthy breakfast, so I fell into the habit of eating those HUGE honey buns which Mrs Winners used to fix. I think they weighed 3 pounds and had about 3,000 calories. It was fast food for lunch, and sometimes for dinner. Who had the time to cook?

When Paula and I worked at Crown Crafts together for ten years we never had time to fix breakfast. We had to get to Calhoun by 7 am. So it was biscuits from the burger joint across the street which Mr Chow would conveniently bring over to the plant by the box full everyday like clockwork at 7:30 am. Then it was off to Arbys or some other fast food joint for lunch. Then, whatever we could tiredly scape up for supper for the kids. Our poor kids. Having parents who worked like we did…commuting two hours a day to 9 hour jobs. I feel so sorry for them. Kirsten helped us out a lot when she got older.

And so on it went….through my working career. I lived in Trion all my life practically, but always had to work out of town. I paid heavily for my choices in 1999, and again in 2014. Years of neglect, years of bad choices, years of stress and strain on the body.

I get out now once in a while and walk. I walk with the grandkids, and I do a little metal detecting every now and then for exercise ( believe me, you DON’T find the treasure they tell you you’re going to when you buy the detectors) I was piddling around over where they tore down the old Apartments…digging my umpteenth corroded Lincoln penny and sweating like a pig. I looked up and saw the Mayor and his wife drive by, peering out their window…so now my spider senses are tingling about even getting to do this much longer!

I slung my metal detector over my shoulder and started walking back to the truck. I had a bit of a headache, but back somewhere in the recesses of my brain I could hear a little voice singing: “little bunny foo foo, hopping through the forest, scooping up the field mice, and bopping them on the head”

I think Father time, and NOT the good fairy, has turned me into a GOON!!

You get your computer, your phone, your iPad or your kindle and you “open” it up to Facebook. You see a lot of these words: hate, lie, swindle, crook, kill, murder, hurt, bad, awful, terrible, death, die…..you get the picture…right?

I have used some of those words before. They are words invented by humans to describe emotions or actions of a negative nature. I’m guessing they are used twice as often as words describing things of a positive nature. Really though, I just want to talk about one word.

Love.

What does it mean to you?

I know it means different things to us at different times in our life. There are several different “types” of love so they say.

The kind I’m talking about is the kind of love which brings tears to your eyes by just thinking about it. It’s the kind that you think about when you imagine you are living your last day here on earth. That kind of love.

Regardless of what your beliefs are, or what your religion is, or if you do or don’t have one. At least try for that kind of love. At least think about whether or not you have it, or can get it.

Or…if you don’t have it or don’t want it….please see a psychiatrist quickly.

But seriously, I think of it every day. I think of my family…especially the little ones, and the future this world may hold for them. I want more than anything in the world to be around to protect them, advise them and help them. But, I won’t always be…

So, I figure the best thing I can do for them while I’m here is to love them. To be with them. To pick them up when they fall. To try and teach them respect.

Thank goodness I’ve got my wife to help though! I need it. She knows about the kind of love I’m talking about.

Then, no matter where the final road leads I believe I’ll be able to go down it in peace.

In the future, nothing is going to be the same. I suppose that’s always been the case, hasn’t it?

Each generation has our own time, we have our own historical setting. We have the “good old days” which have belonged to us and us alone. The unique time which has been given to us, and which passes us by like a combination run of the tortoise and the hare. Slow the days….swiftly the years.

As I was driving to Rome today for a Drs. appointment, I had that feeling you sometimes get when you think you’ve been there before, and done that before. The deja vu affect. I think it’s simply because that particular drive, that particular way to go, is so familiar. I’ve traveled this way hundreds, or perhaps thousands of time. As a child I dreamed that Mom and Dad and I ran off the road in a rainstorm at the big curve right after you go by Hunters furniture.

I felt a deep sense of nostalgia driving back today. Could have been because the dermatologist froze a big spot on my forehead and kinda cooled my skull down. Maybe cryogenics is the way to go after death.

All I know is that our HS 50th reunion is this summer, and that friends that I loved and played little league ball with, are passing away or are already gone. I don’t feel old, not really but I know time is ticking away….slow the days , but swift the years…

“but, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep…and miles to go before I sleep.”

In this day and age I see, read and hear a lot of things I don’t understand. Back when I was a kid I think I was able to understand things better.

I understood trust better. Many people would give you their word they would do something, and they would. If they didn’t, it would get around that “so and so” don’t keep their promises. If you were in a business of some kind, a couple of cases of that might ruin you. Politicians who were not ethical didn’t get re elected. Relationships were built on trust.

I understood helping one another better. Neighbors would actually really do things for each other. I remember my Daddy mowing our elderly neighbors grass many times. “I already had the mower running” he would say. I remember brown paper bags of fresh garden vegetables being given from one place to another. “We got more Okrie then we can eat and more tomatoes…the neighbors across the street have more corn.” Out and back it went. People got together to help each other can vegetables for winter. A big mess of fish was shared, already cleaned. People…helped..each other. Look around and see if that’s happening now. Maybe sometimes…but most times not. In my neighborhood now I only have one person who has been there over a few months. The rest of the houses are rental houses. I should really take the time to try and get to know them anyway, but I haven’t. My fault there. It’s just a harder thing now for me.

I understood relationships better. There was only three TV channels and I had to go outside and manually turn the antenna to get one of them. Instead of constantly watching TV, we played. Baseball, football, hide and seek, freedom, board games galore, weekly Rook matches and so much more. My cousins were my close friends and playmates, along with our “neighbors on the street”. I could still name all of the ninth street gang if I wanted. There were a bunch of us. When it snowed during the winter, we cut up cardboard boxes and sledded all day. Didn’t even stop to eat lunch. We walked to the golf course with our clubs on our backs. We spent the night with each other. Does this kind of thing still go on? Do I just not see it anymore because I’m a grown up?

I feel like sometimes we have lost touch with each other, and when I say that I mean real physical touch, not just being electronically in contact. Don’t get me wrong. I have enjoyed and bought into a lot of the new age of communication and interrelationships. It was easy to slip into it, and it does have its good points. I think not being face to face with real people, and actually seeing and experiencing their needs and their own personal mannerisms and emotional expressions has robbed us of a certain ability to properly relate with other human beings. We see many people ask for prayer, and they get many likes and comments, but I bet one personal phone call or in person visit would mean more than 100 “likes” I came to a realization just the other day when I was “texting” my son. Texting is handy and necessary in some cases, but dammit there was no reason why I shouldn’t have just called and talked to him right at that moment…so I did.

I just saw statistics that more than 2700 hundred people will die in the State of Georgia over the next year due to the lack of Medicaid coverage because of political differences. That’s more people than the population of my entire town. If a tornado or a flood killed that many people it would be declared a disaster. If that many people died in a terrorist attack, we would go to war. As it stands, in this day and age, it’s just a number. Nobody’s outraged about it…nobody much anyway. Least not nobody who can do anything about it. I just understand it anymore.

I have gotten in my “steps” today…but that’s about it. I feel like other than walking this morning, I’ve just been lazy today.

I know that summer is coming on quickly and the hot, sweaty days that are ahead will be an aggravation. I think I used to enjoy summer a lot more as a boy, back when golfing and baseball and staying out all day and far into the dark of the evening was a way of life.

It seems so long ago. So far back in my memory. The gray memories. The black and white years.

I tried to think back yesterday, after my granddaughter went through High School graduation, to my own graduation. There are very few photos that were taken, and I think the cap and gown is long gone. There weren’t many of us that year, back in 1968…I think 49 or 50? Heck, I’d have to get up and hunt my annual in order to remember exactly, and like I said…this is a lazy day!

I remember we had our ceremony at the football field, and I recall shaking hands with Carl Searles, who was on the Board of Education back then. That’s about it. There are still a few of us kicking around from that ceremony and hopefully there are some who have retained more of the day then I have.

I wish we’d had just a smidgen of today’s techology back then to preserve that landmark time in our lives, especially since my memory today is as spotty as a dalamation dog. I may just get up and find that annual after all, just to nudge my recalcitrant brain a little….

For all those October winds…that blew in the winters for all these years now. For all the Decembers which have crossed my path as quickly as a snow bunny….and for April’s spirited and joyous showers. Even for July’s blistering heat which hasn’t bothered me or made me sad. I am thankful..I am thankful. I have lived them all, and God knows I am thankful…and not yet empty of time’s draw.

I simply find when I look at the calendar.

And subtract the year I was born from…

The year it is now…

It gets…

Larger.

soundcloud.com/lbowers50/the-veteran

Sometimes I forget to remove the beam from my eye before I complain about the splinter in someone else’s eye. I plead guilty to sometimes not practicing what I preach. Am I alone?

I need to strive more and more to start with empathy and understanding before jumping straight to anger and judgment. I have only ever walked in my own shoes and the only way to comprehend another person’s walk is by listening.

I know I have never learned one single thing from someone else by talking at the same time as they are talking. The only thing you can hear when that happens is yourself. I’ve never felt compassion from tuning someone out. Oh, there are people I have done both ways, but it was my actions which were callous.

Forgive me for sometimes only listening to myself. To anyone who I have ever not offered the chance to learn from what you know, and what I don’t, I’m sincerely sorry. I forgot how many times 7 times 70 can be.

I took a ride with Ted Bowers this morning at the newly reopened Trion Golf Course. He was driving a golf cart out of which we frequently exited to swing at the little white dimpled ball. Some would call it playing golf, but what I did today more closely resembled gardening than any sport.

I could not remember the last time I partook in this activity. There was a golf card in the bag which read “Calhoun Elks Lodge golf course” It was dated 2002, and had the names “Larry”(me) and “Joe”, who was Mr. Joe Sultan…my boss at the time. Since the rubber grips had dry rotted off all the irons in the bag from sitting in my utility room, I figured 14 years was about right. There were 14th generation spiders and cobwebs who were inhabiting that bag and protested loudly when I removed their home, and forcefully ejected them last night. A lot of water, a flood and a torrent has gone under the trestle bridge since these clubs were last used.

My Dad’s playing days had passed when I put those clubs away. I had suffered one heart attack and one stent at that time, and thought I was in good shape. I wasn’t though. I lost my job with Mr. Sultan’s company. A good company and a good job. I still don’t know quite why til this day…but it was a hard blow to me. I went on from there to 12 hour night shifts, constant uncertainty and anxiety, deaths of my parents, major surgery with permanent damage, and overall health decline. It is only since last June, that I began walking my way back to some mobility. I must tell you though my friends, that if I see you out and don’t recognize you, or if I sound uncertain about some past event which I should remember, or some part of our friendship which I should remember and I don’t…please forgive me. My memory is very spotty. Much more so than I let on at times.

However, I did still remember how to swing AT a golf ball. And so we did this morning. It was fun. Some great memories returned to me as we trekked the course. I could picture J.W. Greenwood, my old coach driving the green on number one hole. As I sat there waiting I saw many more men who played there return to life. Jack Shamblin, with his huge all or nothing swing. Harold Florence, who had a low flat swing. Roy Williams Sr., up on his toes at the height of his swing. There was Otis Tanner, with his huge backswing and follow through. Skinny old Faye Brown, who could hit the ball a mile. Tommy Brown, and Jimmy Brown, and Michael Brown…with who me and Daddy played so many rounds. I saw Lamar Chandler on his tractor mowing the fairway. I heard the “Loving Spoonful” in the background playing “Hottown Summer in the city, back of my neck getting very too gritty” My theme song during the two Summers I worked there, mowing ditches and working in the downstairs clubhouse. I’d peep out the doors on Monday mornings during the summer and “Muley” Camp would be out there hunting golf balls. Only on Mondays..Only day it was allowed.

I passed over the creek at number two hole and remembered the dozens upon dozens of yellowjacket stings I had gotten waiting off to the side on one of those Mondays for some guys to play through. I had gotten them all stirred up by poking a stick absentmindedly in the ground. I had to run and jump in the creek to get them off me. Old Doc Clemens had to give me a couple of shots to keep me breathing. Cousin Rick had been standing right next to me and hadn’t gotten one sting. Same cousin Rick who was the only person to see me hang back at my Daddy’s funeral and sob like a baby. Some people always seem to be there at the strangest times.

My Dad, the old lefthander…Same as me, or me the same as him. That’s the way he taught me to swing. He couldn’t hit them long like Jack Shamblin, but always straight and deadly around the greens. I imagined him there today too. J.W. in the background teasing, saying “You lefties need to turn around and hit that ball right” If he had seen me today he would have laughed his head off, and rightfully so.

I’m glad they opened the place up…think I may go back for another round of memories sometimes.”