Author: thegraymaniac

I love pockets, I have always loved them. The need for pockets came about during the Middle Ages when people had a need to keep their coins somewhere. At first they started putting them in bags and hanging them around their necks. They wasn’t good, because it was easy for some “cut purse” with a sharp knife to cut the string and steal your money. Then people started carrying their “purses” inside their pants so the thieves couldn’t get to them. Problem with that was when you went to pay for something you just about had to take your pants off. People started cutting slits in their pants so they could get to their purses…and from there some smart person figured out that “sewn in” purses or “pockets” would be a dandy idea. This was sometime in the 1700’s.

This was a great invention!

I recollect being about 4 the first time I realized I had pockets. I was out in the front yard around the porch and noticed the little bugs we used to call “rolly-pollys” I had caught a double handful of them and having no other place to put them…I shoved some down in my pockets. Of course, I didn’t get them all out…so I heard from Momma on that one! From then on though, pockets were for everything.

I have pockets full of rocks, marbles, worms, crickets, bugs, arrowheads, marbles, coins, clover, grass, lightning bugs, and just about anything else you could get into a pocket. If I go to buy a pair of jeans, or pants I’m going to wear every day the first thing I will check out is the depth of the pockets. I don’t like shallow pockets. You sit down on the couch, or in a chair and lean back a little bit and when you get up there will be a bunch of stuff there that has “oozed “out of your pocket. I don’t like losing my stuff, so I check my pants out really well before I purchase.

I have had some important things in my pockets before too. I put mine and Paula’s wedding rings, which were in those little black ring boxes, one in each pocket. I have carried an old pocket knife which Dad gave me in my pocket, before I put it up because I was afraid I was going to lose it. (I put a tiny piece of marble from Greece in my pocket and I can’t tell you what famous building up on top of a hill from whence it came…so shhhhh.) There have been other things…

I’ve also, at times gotten holes in my pockets and have lost things…mostly change. I’ve lost a ring or two that I had put in my pocket and they just slipped right out, and down my leg and into the grass of “neverwhere” where they probably remain today. But I’m pretty careful.
I worked with a man over in Calhoun, named Max who I never, ever saw wear anything but overalls. He loved those pockets and had something specific for each of them. He passed away unexpectedly one year while I was still there and they buried him in his overalls with a John Deere hat on. I think it was one of the most appropriate uses of clothing I have ever seen. He would have loved it.

Well, just to show you that I do “practice what I preach” in this case, I dumped out the content of my pocket and posted it along with this little story. As you can see, I had just a few things squirreled away in there. Whenever I go to the Drs. Office and they weigh me, I always mentally knock off ten pounds for “pocket contents and clothing” I guess when I quit carrying stuff in my pockets it’ll be a sad day

Can one second last an eternity? I think it can.

Could our Universe fit on the head of a straight pin. I think it might could.

For you see, relativity is everything.

What we think we know, and what is truth, are probably polar opposites.

Mostly because we are not open to thinking…. past “what’s for dinner tonight?” We take the easy answers as the gospel.

To find truth is like being a gold prospector.

Every great once in a while, one may find a small nugget laying on top of the ground….but most of the time, the gold has to be sought after with singular focus, and with hard, backbreaking work. Digging, uncovering, carefully looking, spading through tons of muck and nastiness until finally the main vein is located.

Truth is like gold. Actually it’s much more precious.

I pick up my guitar and strum a few chords. Try to come up with a melody or a run of chords which makes sense or sounds good. I don’t devote as much time to musical pursuits now as I used to, perhaps as I should. Time’s not my friend in this arena. I think back to my Grandpa at times.

He had arthritis in his hands as far back as I can remember. Being born in 1893, he was 57 years old when I was born…67 in 1960 where my memories of his banjo playing start. The arthritis hampered his playing but I remember some of the tunes: “Cripple Creek” “Home Sweet Home” “Swanee River” many more. I tried the banjo, but it never made sense to me…I was lucky to be able to learn to play the guitar. Grandpa wrote songs too. He had two hymns published and I have the songbooks where they are sitting there on the page in black and white. I’ve never sang them, but I should. Mom always wanted me too, but for some reason I never got around to it. I regret that.

Grandpa was a talented, but strange man. I don’t ever remember him wearing anything but overalls except on Sundays. He kept his wallet in the top center pocket and would get it out and count his money at least once a day. He had his pocket watch in the “watch” pocket of those overalls and checked it quite often. It was a good watch….I’m sure one of my kin got it, but I don’t know who. At one time he owned a lot of land up where he lived at, but by the time he died, he owned practically nothing and didn’t know who or where he was. He gave me the greatest gift that I could ever receive though, right there out on his clapboard front porch, and that was the gift of music….the gift of the love of music.

It was not only the times I watched him sing and play, and the times I sang with him, but the sheer amount of time he would listen to his little AM radio. It was the times he would take our his hymnals and practice for the upcoming Sunday for hours. I had nothing to do on rainy days at his house. No TV, just the books and the radio. So I listened to a lot of hymns and a lot of country music. I think I cut my teeth on one of his hymnals…literally..as I lived at Grandpa and Grandma’s house until I was past two years old. Chewed one of them up I was told.

A lot of times when I get inspired to sing, or play the guitar or write a line of a song I can hear in the background deep down in my brain:

“Goin’ up t’ Cripple Creek, goin’ on the run
Goin’ up t’ Cripple Creek t’ have a little fun
Goin’ up t’ Cripple Creek, goin in a whirl
Goin’ up t’ Cripple Creek t’ see my girl”

Read more: Bill Monroe – Cripple Creek Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Judgement.  Is this all there is?  We are judged for everything it seems.  We also do a lot of judging of others. Both consciously and unconsciously.  I have done it.  You have done it.  Everyone judges. Everyone seems to want somebody, some other human being that they judge to be beneath them.

Due to their economic station, due to their geographic location.  Due to the color of their skin, due to the job that they are in.  Due to their gender.  Because of who they love, or don’t.

Due to the culture in which they grew up.

We judge.  I judge.

I don’t know at what point in humanity’s history the judging began.  Was it when we started living together as tribes?  Was it when we started building villages, towns and cities? Was it when we developed worship of God, or Gods?

It really doesn’t matter.  We judge, a lot.

I remember as a young child we at the very first had no television.  We had a Philco radio with a built in record player.  Daddy listened to music on the radio, and that was also where he got his news.  That radio, and newspapers.  The Atlanta Journal and Constitution! That was the hookup.

Daddy usually only bought the paper on Sundays, and that thing was huge! There were so many sections to go through.  At first, I was only interested in the comics. Brightly colored and filled with so many comic strips, and so much fun.  Dagwood and Blondie, Snuffy Smith, Steve Canyon, Dick Tracy, Pogo, Peanuts, and many more.  Great writers and wonderful columnists.  One of these days I want to write about this great paper, but suffice it to say at this point this was our main hookup for news.  Then we got Huntley and Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite.  These were men that were easy to trust.

There were three networks then.  There were censors who wouldn’t let the people making the TV programs put bad words in their programs.  They even made Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke sleep in separate beds on the “Dick Van Dyke” show.  I know a lot of things may have been taking place “behind the scenes” back in those days.  Human beings certainly aren’t perfect and there were a lot of injustices taking place in our society back in those days.  There was a lot of hard judgement going on “behind the scenes” actually.  Not just in the fledgling TV industry, but in all of culture and society in America.  People in normal society were doing the judging every day, and no television show of that day and age accurately portrayed what was going on in America and rest of the world.  It was simply a sanitized version of life.  No family in America was like the Cleavers, or the Anderson families.

It didn’t take the information age too awful long to catch up with the rest of society.  That was in the late fifties and early sixties, and it’s now 2018.  Fifty years later and we are dealing with television news shows that you have to take your children out of the room for, because of the bad words in them.  We are dealing with channels with programs and shows you have to lock you children out of so they cannot watch. There are shows on which there is nothing but judging going on.  “Vote you off the island” has become a catch word.  You are not judged worth.  “Pack up your knives and go”  You can’t even cook a decent meal.

The “social” media networks are filled with super hyped partisan bantering that more often than not becomes name calling, curse filled, vile and foul language that should not be spoke or written.  I have written some four letter words in some of my posts on social media, but never have I witnessed some of the language and some of the direct threats to life and limb as I have seen on Facebook and Twitter.  That’s the only two I really ever get on, but I’m sure that it’s also bad on some of the other media outlets which I don’t frequent.  And, it’s all about judgement.

It’s all variations of the same types of things I listed above in the first paragraph.  Judgement.  Judging.  Self Righteousness.

When will it stop?  Is this all there is?  Judging.

“imagine all the people….living life in peace…..you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one….”  thank God I’m not the only one, and neither are you.  Let’s evolve.  Let’s develop.  Let’s live and let live.

 

 

 

Rambling thoughts from many years past:

There are far, far too many children with cancer and other serious diseases in our world. Far too many young adults dying with “old people” diseases:

“There are far, far too many chemicals, poisons, drugs, in our water and food”

There is far, far too much hatred one for the other in our world. Far too much war and atrocities being committed by humans against other humans:

“Hate is not a hereditary quality, but a learned behavior”

There is far, far too much torture of our planet going on. Forests are disappearing, oceans are polluted, the air is filled with noxious smoke, the earth itself is being drilled into incessantly, pumped full of hot water and steam in order to choke out a gallon of black goo…:

“When the Earth dies, all humans will also die. As far as I know there are no outposts on Mars”

There are far, far too few children learning to put a pencil to a piece of paper and write:

“When the plug is pulled, how will knowledge be communicated?”

I used to be able to pull my car in my Grandfather’s yard and do just about anything to it which needed doing to make it run. I changed points and plugs, solenoid switches and alternators, starters, rings and pistons. Now when I open the hood of my car all I see are computer plug ins. The one thing I recognize is the battery.

I used to check books out of the library to read, or go to one of the numerous used book stores to buy a book to read, or to trade for one. Now, I buy a “book” online and they send a few bytes of information on the internet and I read it on an electronic pad. I still own lots and lots of physical books though…including a lot of instruction manuals and textbooks.

There are far, far too many people who think their God lives inside a big brick building:

“If you make room in your heart, God will be there. If God is in your heart, you have made room” You will know, there won’t be any doubt.

Peace….

I’m afraid of heights.  I also don’t like flying.  I don’t like big crowds and speaking in front of a group of people terrifies me.  Funny how things that are simple and basic to some people make other peoples knees turn to jelly.

I don’t know where a lot of these fears came from.  Some of them have just developed over the years.  Some fears we have always harbored.  I have always been afraid of death.  I never even wanted to think about it until the last few years.  It’s a subject that most of us definitely want to avoid.  I think sometimes we feel like if we talk about it, it might jinx us and we will end up on the “mortar board” at some funeral home before the days out.  Also, it’s a pretty depressing subject to broach.  Nobody wants to be depressed, so nobody talks about it.  I can’t remember the first time I thought about it, and was scared.  I think it was when I was about four years old.  Really, it’s true.  As a little kid when I should have been thinking about playing cowboys and Indians, I was mulling over the great unknown.  It’s been a bummer over the years.

Lately, I have come to the conclusion that by talking about death maybe we can make it less scary.   I am not as afraid of it as I used to be.   It’s not the little kid fear of going to hell and burning up in a blazing fire type fear anymore.  It’s more of just an apprehension of something unknown.  It’s a disappointment that I might not be around to see my loved ones complete most of their journey that they have started.  It’s the conversations and contact with my family that I don’t want to give up.  The touches and looks of people you love, and who love you.   Most of all, it turns out that it’s a selfish thing.   Imagine that.  I have so many selfish reasons for living that I don’t want to die and give them all up.

I don’t want to give up the beautiful sunny days like the one we had yesterday.   I don’t want to give up the good books that I enjoy reading every day.  I don’t want to.

But, it’s not what we want that we get is it?

There are so many theories and theological thesis about what happens to us after we die.  It’s hard to pin one down and stick with it.  One thing that I can assure you though is that it will be different from any of them.  I don’t think that man has been given the knowledge, through any type of religion or science of what really happens.  It may just be peace.  Peace would be nice; I’ll take that over some of what I’ve heard over the years.

I’ve seen a lot of people going through unbelievable suffering, or who no longer know who or what they are who would take peace too.  The little old lady who was “rooming” next to my Mother at the nursing home who was there one day and gone the next.  She was in bad shape.  She was ready for a rest, and she got it.  I think if you could have broken through the wall of her senility she would have told you she was.  A lot of times people outlive the desire to live, and when they do that, they are ready for peace.  I am sure she wasn’t scared of it.  Maybe welcomed it.

As long as we have the desire, then we should “keep on truckin’” as we used to say back in the 70’s.   It’s when we lose the desire, due to things that are happening to us physically, that it becomes a hardship to keep on keeping on.

So, I guess as my perspective has changed from that little shivering four year old kid, who shouldn’t have even known what death was, to the more knowledgeable but equally unknowing 56 year old that I am now am.  I still have my desire to live and hope that I keep it for a long, long time to come.  I hope all of you do also.  But, when we are ready for peace, I hope we find it and that it turns out to be better than we ever imagined.

 

 

Wonder what Hamlet was really thinking about when he uttered that line.  Fear of the long sleep of death?  Was he maybe just an insomniac…?  Too bad for him there wasn’t Ambien back then, he may have been able to live a normal life! 

Then there’s the line that “Hal-9000” asked Dave right before he “died” “Dave, will I dream?”

Dreams are weird things, and I have been having some really wild ones of late.  Mostly, I dream about work.  Mind you, it’s not enough that I already spend 11 hours a day (I count the hour and a half commute out and back as work too) on work.  Then I come home, do some work on the computer, and read my emails, watch a little news, and now perhaps post a blog now and then. But the ignomy of having to also DREAM about working just really peeves me.  I think I have dreamt of every bad boss I have had over my working career in the last few weeks, and believe me that covers a lot of ground.  But then…there was last night’s dream.

I was in our old house on 8th Street and watching out the door and a train was coming by.  You could feel the house shake since it was only about 60 feet from the railroad tracks.  On the back of the caboose when it passed by there was a banner that said, “It’s not over, til I say it’s over”  The train boogied on by so quickly it was amazing.

I went back inside and the place was dark, and there were cobwebs in the corners on the ceiling.  There was no sign of life, no furniture not a thing moving (not even a mouse)  Then….the dog licked my ear and I woke up.

I get the feeling that this dream is kind of like my life.  I am a reminiscer.  Someone who feels more comfortable thinking about the way things were then about the way they are.  I guess sometimes I figure my life is mostly like the train…chugging on down the track.  But hey….the banner on the back is encouraging!

So, I will keep on writing about the things I like and remember so well from the past, and try and keep it nostalgic, and leave out the politics and problems that we are bombarded with from every side on a daily basis, but I got to remember:  “It ain’t over ’til He says it’s over!”

Now it’s time to go get a little shut eye.  “To sleep, perchance to dream.”  Thanks Will!

I wish I had my collection of records back that I owned when I was in College.  Frank Sinatra, Nancy Wilson, the unbelievable Nat King Cole.  I would put a stack of the those old 33’s on the record player and drift off to sleep listening to to:  “the evening breeze, caress the trees…tenderly….”  or maybe Sinatra would be singing: “When I was 17, it was a very good year” It was a very good year when I was 17.  That was in 1967 and the Viet Nam War was going full scale.  LBJ was lying his ass off in order to escalate the war in an effort to win.  He was advised that fighting a guerilla war in SE Asia was liking wading into a pool of Great White Sharks with your jugular vein cut.  He wouldn’t listen.  We wanted to further the aim of “democracy” in SE Asia and help to free the world.  We were afraid of the “domino effect” of losing Viet Nam, and then Thailand, then Cambodia…and so on.  We lost them anyway…or did we?  I just bought a shirt from Wal-Mart last week that was made in Viet Nam.  Damn good quality too.  I thought about it when I put it on, and wondered how much American blood went into that shirt.  I took it back and exchanged it for one made in India.  Far as I can remember, we haven’t had any American boy’s die over there yet. I almost had to go to Nam, but my number never came up.  I don’t know why.  If it had, I would have gone.  I couldn’t have shamed my Dad and my family by being a coward or a shirker.  I was against the war then…but never one of the ones that went out in the streets and protested, or marched on Washington.  I wrote letters to Congressmen, Senators and the President.  I got no answers from any of them.  Today, maybe you would at least get a form letter.  After all most of them are better financed today, thanks to all the lobbyists.  I felt sorry back then for all the Billy Joe Bob’s that were coming back to Georgia from Nam.  They didn’t get the respect they so richly deserved.  They were pawns in an unpopular war, and were just doing their duty.  There wasn’t a thing that any of them could have done individually to change anything.  Yet, they were derided and disrespected.  It was a mistake for people to have blamed them for what the Government was screwing up. One of these days, we are going to have some more boys coming home from a war that is becoming increasingly unpopular.  I wish nobody’s kid had to go over to the sands of Ninevah and sweat it out every day, riding up and down the road looking for trouble and often finding it in the form of an IUD somewhere.  I could never see the logic in going there, and still can’t.  That’s the way I try to look at things, logically.  I kept thinking “The US has NEVER attacked another country unprovoked, they won’t do this!”  I guess that’s what Saddam thought too. Oh man, is thing EVER complicated now.  It would take a book ( and by the way some politician or analyst comes out with one about every other week now, explaining THEIR point of view on things, what they would have done, or could still do) to even begin to explain how complicated extricating ourselves from this mess is going to be.  I am really not sure it can be done.  God knows I wish I had an answer, I would certainly share it with everyone. I guess it’s best on my part to leave that alone.  I have my own feelings on this thing, and no matter what you say bout near 50% the people are going to think you are wrong and 50% are going to think you’re right.

When I was in the 2nd grade we had this really great music teacher.  She was a hoot.  She was an older lady who wore her greying hair back in a neat bun, and always had a skirt and sweater on.  She would warm us up to sing for the “glee” club by doing musical scales, and by doing the “mi,mi,mi,” exercises.  It was great fun.  I think I enjoyed that year of school just about more than any I can remember.

The problem in the modern world is that the sound of music has turned into the sound of selfishness.

Way too many times over the past few years I have met people so shallow, I could just about see through ’em if there was a good light coming in from behind.  When they talk to you, you can tell there ain’t but one thing they are interested in, and that’s what you can do for them!  The almighty “ME”  Heck, Toby Keith even had a hit song making fun of those type of people with his “I Wanna’ Talk About ME!”  You know it:  “I wanna’ talk about me, wanna’ talk about I, wanna’ talk about #1, Oh my Me my!!”  Is that the kind of society we produced?  Now, it may be a generational thing, I don’t know.  I am not trying to be prejudiced here, but I do meet more people who are under 40 in this category than I do people who are over 40!  Not ALL!..don’t get your dandruff up young ‘uns.  NOT all of you are worthless Me, me’s!! Matter of fact, MOST of you aren’t!

I’d like to turn the ship around and head it in the other direction.  But, what do we do?  Is some of it my generations fault?  Probably.  Did some of us unintentionally demonstrate by example that the almight “ME” was the most important thing?  Maybe.  But what’s the solution?

One thing that I do every chance I get is to correct these people when I can.  Most of the time I just tell them, “Hey, how about thinking about something other than yourself, poophead?”  That usually gets their attention right off the bat, and then once they are focused, you can go further into the lesson.  Ask if they have a family at home.  Ask if they have a hobby.   Ask if they EVER think about anything but work.  I mean, c’mon how important is a rug to go into somebody’s bathroom going to be 100 years from now?  (Can you tell I work for a rug producing company??)  Maybe it’s going to be MORE important that you teach your children to preserve what little in the way of natural resources we haven’t squandered yet.  Or teach them to TALK TO other people when they have problems to solve, not just talk AT them.  There’s a world of difference there!

Some of them are too driven even for common sense or practical talk though.

If I have to, I resort to the ultimate option for the Me me’s.  I tell them that their Mom was right when they were little, and if they don’t stop with the MENTAL diddling around they are performing on themselves, they might just eventually go blind to the fact that there is a GOOD and lovely world out there with a LOT of worthwhile people, places and things that deserve the intellectual processes they are wasting on themselves, so that their progeny might one day still have a world to play in, and love in, and appreciate…. (God I love long sentences!)

Next time you meet a “me” person, tell them Toby Keith was just kidding…ok?