Author: thegraymaniac

I was talking to a friend today about Christmas,and life in general. We were both amazed at the differences. He remembers when he lived at home and there was no running water, and his folks owned two cows because he loved to drink milk so much. His Dad was a WWII vet, who spent the first 7 years back from the War mainly at the VA hospital and was never in good shape after he got out. They never had much, but his Dad steadfastly refused to take “charity” even in the form of Christmas gifts for his children. He remembered one year that a man offered some Christmas presents but his Dad refused. His Mom drove them to the man’s house and they put the presents in the trunk. After they already had them, and had them opened on Christmas morning, his Dad’s anger quelled somewhat at the site of them playing with the toys.

It was that way with a lot of our Dads from that generation.

I was a happy boy every Christmas at my Grandparents, where we usually spent Christmas, to receive my one “big” present and one little present. I also got a few more comic books to add to my burgeoning collection. Most of the time we got a few more things than that, especially after I hit my teen years and Dad’s job and pay got better. But, the joy of the younger years lingered and perhaps even outshone the later years. Having to decide what you really wanted the most…it was a story similar to Ralphie’s obsession with the “Red Ryder” BB gun.

The other thing which was exciting and which we looked forward to, was the big “brown paper bag” of goodies from the local church. There were apples, oranges, nuts, and candy. More candy than I would see at any other time of the year with the exception of Halloween. The Halloween candy was long gone, and my favorite candy of all time, the “orange slice” was in that brown bag. I was able to trade with some of the other kids at the church, and ended up with as many orange slice candy as possible. Grandpa would buy those soft peppermint sticks by the box too, and they disappeared quickly if he didn’t hide them.

….and so my friend and I talked about old times. Once a season pig killings, hunting hen eggs, eating squirrel and rabbits and churning butter. Catching fish, and going to the “little shack out back” with the Sears and Roebuck catalog sitting there waiting on us. Things most folks wouldn’t know how to do, or want to do nowadays even if they had too.

Well, I gotta go now and get on Amazon and see if they can ship that last Christmas present I need for someone special and get it here for Christmas.

From 2013

Sometimes I wonder, where do I stand….

Not on any kind of Issues.

I am what I am, and I will be what I will be until the day I die. I am difficult. I am complex. I’m too quick to anger, and too slow to forgive.

Is there anybody else out there like this?

It really doesn’t matter because I am only a quickly aging, very insignificant old man.

Honestly, what I think and how I feel mean very little to anyone outside my immediate circle. The largest majority of the human race are this way.

We should really try harder to stand with each other, together. Revel in the warmth. Help others if they need help no matter which side of the political fence they stand. I know….it’s hard. If it was easy, the world would be at peace.

The nicest moment of the day today was when my two five year old grandchildren ran up and hugged me as I arrived to celebrate my oldest son’s birthday.

I knew I was not standing alone.

One day we all will have to stand alone. I don’t want to look back then and regret wasting time on things I cannot control, or which are not as important as I think they are.

So, I’m going to try harder. It’s the only thing I can do right now.

My son has the 1948 model Philco combination radio/record player sitting in his house now. It’s the the one I spent countless hours sitting in front of during the first 8 years of my life.

There were radio shows on a lot. I first remember hearing people like Sid Caesar, and Red Skeleton on the radio. I remember listening to the Lone Ranger. Then there were the local radio shows. There was lots of preaching. Here locally we had “AA Tanner” and some others who I remember preaching on the radio a lot. I was a Baptist before I ever went to the first grade and just didn’t know it. A lot of my views have altered since those early years, but I still remember the musical cadence of many of those preachers…waxing and waning, I could see them swaying out and back in my mind and jumping up into the air when the spirit moved them.

We had maybe only half a dozen 33 rpm records. A lot of Perry Como, Martin and Lewis, Doris Day, and Bing Crosby. We had classical. We had some country…actually we had Hank Williams. There was a spot on the floor in front of the radio where my Mom put a throw rug. One of those round, braided really colorful ones. This was my spot. I wasn’t a very hard child to take care of. I could just be planted in front of the radio and left there. I knew how to change the records before I was potty trained really well. I imagine that caused a few “crisis moments” but really don’t remember. I had the radio, my comic books, and a little later on an old cracked baseball that the High School coach had given me, and a couple of worn out baseballs. I would get my exercise by going outside on nice afternoons and throwing those balls up into the air and them whacking them off into the distance before they hit the ground. I got really good at it.

I learned all of the songs on all of those records by heart. I thought I was a real hot shot singer. My Dad bought an Elvis 45 sometime in the mid 50’s. It was “Hound dog” and “Don’t be Cruel” I personally liked Don’t be Cruel the best. I learned those two by heart and on the night Elvis was on Ed Sullivan in 1957 he sang “Don’t be Cruel” We hadn’t had a TV very long, and when I saw “my song” being sung I jumped up and started doing my best Elvis right there in the little back closed in porch which Daddy had converted into a “den” I thought I was something…but then my Mom laughed at me….

I’m not sure if it was because she thought I was funny, or if I was doing a good job. But it embarrassed me. I’m not really sure why. Being the boy I was though…I never sang again in front of anyone for a long, long time. I would make sure nobody was around, maybe like when I was outside hitting the baseball. Maybe in the bathroom in the evenings while the water was running. Perhaps really low under the covers at night. I didn’t want to be laughed at again. I never talked to Mom or Dad about it, and they never thought anything about it, I guess. They just thought I had turned to baseball and sports.

I got talked into joining the “glee club” in the 8th grade. I think it was because I liked one of the little girls who was singing…I’m not certain. I still liked to sing, and I thought for sure that being surrounded by 15 or so other people singing would keep me from being heard. The guy who was over the glee club was Mr. John Carruth, who was also the Band director at the time. We were preparing music for Christmas, and I noticed Mr. Carruth kept leaning over and listening in my direction. He stopped the rehearsal and said “hey Bowers…sing the next verse by yourself” and I did…and so ended up doing my first solo ever of “White Christmas” at our school musical program that year.

Mr. Carruth had me sing a couple more times before he left Trion to move on to better things. I have to really thank him for giving me the boost of confidence I needed to realize that people would not laugh at me for singing by myself.

I ended up singing quite a bit in High School. We had quite a musical group of students at that time. It was the 60’s and folk bands, rock bands, and hippies were coming of age. I remember Mack Myers, and Agnew Myers, Susan Cavin and a couple more folks had a little “folk” band. They sang some Peter, Paul and Mary on stage at school. I really enjoyed it. We had a really good piano player…Ronald Whitley I believe it was. He was really great. My old buddy Dale Rosser was a good singer, and beat me out one year for soloist at Literary meet, although me and Agnew, and Johnny Brimer, and I think Randy Orr were the “barbershop” quartet and did a pretty fair job. Agnew’s Mom Ms. Sarah Myers was our “coach”…or mentor I guess you’d say. A really wonderful woman.

We had Larry Maddux and company playing country and rock and roll…I remember singing “Your Cheating Heart” with them one time at some program we were having…and from then on that dang Johnny Suits would call me “Hank” every time he saw me. Still did it when I went to work with him in 1988 at Crown Crafts. Binky Dawson and Wayne Greene were great musicians. Several went on to become Band directors like Bill Locklear.

Yes, we had great bands, great musicians, and great individualists back then. I can’t name them all because there are so many, many more. I’m not sure if it was the times, or if there was something in the Trion water. I know that several of the above named beautiful people are gone now. I don’t know all the stories…I’m just kind of on the “edge” of things when it comes to keeping up with people. It’s a shame we have lost them, because when a musical person dies, some of the music of the world dies with them, and in this day and age, unlike the day and age we grew up in, that’s something we just can’t afford much more of…..

…..and by the way Mom…I know I took that laugh the wrong way….

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.