Author: thegraymaniac

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

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

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

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

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

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

How’s that old Rock and Roll song go?

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

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

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

Really though I like this song by John Mayer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ghost of Christmas past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be able to rise from the earth;

to be able, from a station in outer space,

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

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

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

all this enlarges the human horizon . . .

— Norman Cousins, 1973

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

Once back in the spring of 1973, (I think it was) I spent the night right in the center of Spanish Harlem in New York City. The marimbas were playing all through the night, and people were singing, dancing and cooking, because it was a Saturday night. There were screams of joy, and a few of pain. I slept well that night, with the smell of the spicy food creeping into my dreams and making me famished for breakfast.

We had been to the site of the newly built, soon to be opened World Trade Center earlier that evening, and had been invited to go up part of the way in an elevator by a construction foreman. There were four of us young men: a long tall Texas boy, an African American former college football player from Kentucky, our bespectacled New York native Peace Corp member…in whose apartment we were staying, and me…the backwoods Georgia boy.

We rode the subways, visited the harbor where lady liberty stood, and got hot dogs at Coney Island. Nobody had a bad word to say to us, never disparaged our little mixed group, or even looked at us funny. We went about the town fearlessly, never anticipating any harm or trouble. Just three out of towner’s getting shown the ropes by the city boy.

Those lights, music and smells from that night still bubble to the top of my memory from time to time, and I wonder how the world has gotten so much more callous and hateful in forty short years. I’d like to go back in time once again and look out over the lights of Manhattan from those soon to be opened, ill fated towers and yell out to the people below to stay the same as they were.

I thought to myself: “it’s taken me this long to really understand life”.

Warm socks and clean underwear really count!

Leftovers are fine….even three days in a row.

Walking is wonderful therapy, and noticing what’s going on around you is rewarding.

Petting your dog and talking to them like they’re human is perfectly fine.

Realizing that you can’t agree with everyone about everything, but you can agree with most people about “some” things will help preserve your sanity.

Loving your family and those who are as close as family, as often as possible, as completely as possible, and without condition will help preserve your spirit.

Maybe that’s not really understanding life, but simply living it a little more.

In all things there is change. Some for the good, some not. We humans change so many times during our lives. I only now realize how my grandparents…my parents, felt as they were getting older. It’s a definite change.

We start our lives in a full tub of “life”. We are in the very back corner of that full tub….that tub which is a different level for each of us. As soon as we are born, the plug is pulled and our life starts to drain. The closer we get to the “drain” the faster our life moves. The journey will…change…you.

I saw some of the ways it changed my loved ones as they raced towards the spiral at the end. I’m determined I will not change in some of those ways….and yet, much of what happens is out of my control.

So I suppose I will control what I can, and live with what I cannot control. What more can we do?

What more can we ask except for the chance to try and fulfill our best in life? It’s a true gift to be given the chance to even try. It’s a true gift to not be alone….to have people to love, and who love you back.

Inside each of us there are two people. There is the “public” us, the person we show to everyone else around….we show the things we want people to see, the things we think people want to see, the things we think will get us ahead, the things that will make us accepted. Most of our outside life is reflective of this image.

Then there is the “private” us, the being who keeps things secret, the person who most accurately reflects what we really are, the us we share with practically nobody. The things which perhaps others around us could never accept, or would accept with only malice.or misunderstanding. The life we think about when we lay awake in bed at night.

We all are two, no matter what we may think. I believe the more of the private “us” we can show, the more spiritually and mentally healthy we will be. It’s hard though, and I believe it can never be totally and completely done.

There’s always that part of us of which we will never let go.

From 2013- On prayer.

The year was 1954, and it was the first time I can remember being at the “Old Zion” Baptist Church in Blue Ridge Georgia. I remember it for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I had apparently at that young age already admired my Grandfather’s ability to get up and wave his hands around while people sang. I had no concept really of what a song leader was. I may have even thought that people wouldn’t sing at all unless Grandpa waved his hands around. It was the magic of the waving of the hands which caused the singing. I wanted to be magic too. I don’t remember whether or not I asked permission to do it, but I do remember being up behind the pulpit in front of the choir with Grandpa and “magically” waving around my hands. People were singing for sure, but they were all also smiling. I didn’t know they were smiling at me. I just knew they were happy and I thought it was the magic of the waving hands that was making it so.

Throughout all the years I continued to visit that church during my trips to visit my Grandparents, there would always be someone I would meet out on the street in town, or at the lake, or at the church who would inevitably tell the story about how tickled they were at the little four year old boy who helped his Grandpa lead the music. At first I was a little bit embarrassed about it, but as the “legend” grew it kind of bolstered my confidence in my musical abilities a little to hear how well I sang that day. It was one of the things which kept me singing over the years, and led to me being a soloist, songwriter and the lover of music that I am. Without the positive reinforcement of these wonderful “country” people I might have gone with my natural tendency to shyness and never have been able to perform in front of a crowd. I really thank them for their kindness and generosity.

The other thing that came to mind during the recent service was the way which the prayer used to be conducted at O’ Zion as they called it.

In an “Old Country” Church, anytime anyone prays; everyone prays. If a preacher starts the prayer, it’s not long until all the other people join in praying out loud, each offering up their own separate praises, requests, and wishes to their creator.

When I was little I thought this cacophony was pure noise. But as I go older, it started to take on a different quality. After a minute or two of listening, all of the voices began to blend together into one. There was no longer the ability to pick out one single voice and listen to it, it was impossible.

However, far from being just noise the prayers started to take on a quality of purity and holiness that I have not often felt since. They were almost musical and lyrical in their quality and there was a cadence to them that spoke of a sincerity it is hard to find in today’s world. You knew that God was hearing this and that he could understand each and every one of these simultaneous pleadings. As the prayers began to stop one by one as the individuals finished their contrition’s, it got to the point where it would come down to three, two and then finally just one voice, the voice of the preacher who would always be the one to begin and end the prayers. It was almost miraculous how they stopped. Never, ever all at once, but in an orderly fashion perhaps in the order of the importance of what they had to say or to ask of God.

I sometimes felt like a wind was moving through that Church. Even during the heat of August you could feel it and it was cooling and comforting. During December it would warm the body and cause the soul to glow with love. Some would call it the Holy Spirit. I won’t dispute their word on that. I don’t know if Churches anywhere still pray that way today. I think sometimes people may think it’s rude to pray out loud at the same time as another person. I don’t think it’s rude at all. It sort of just makes sense because then it’s not just a bunch of individuals weakly projecting their unheard mental thoughts towards the heavens, but a bunch of strong worshipers openly telling God their needs.

It makes a difference.

I know it does.

I believe when I first became conscious of being an individual human being, and of having a responsibility to become “something” to the world….something of consequence, I was very afraid. I was not even a teenager when I first had these thoughts. “What will I be?” “What will I do?”

I wasn’t obsessive about it, just concerned.

I dabbled around with music. I have played guitar and sang. I sang at schools and churches. I sang and played at functions, at skating rinks and at dances. But, I never became a “singer” for a living, or a writer. I tried, but I couldn’t quite get it done. I couldn’t drive the nail into the center of the board. I couldn’t quite close the deal. I wasn’t in the right place at the right time. Lord, I wish there had been a “Voice” or an “American Idol” show around in the seventies, or even the early eighties. I’d have sure tried to get on. I’m not sure if I would have gotten in, but I’d have tried.

I thought about sports too. Baseball mostly. I had some talent there, and just didn’t pursue it past my teenage years. I became enamored of golf, and although I never was nearly as “good” at that game as I had been at baseball, it suited my goofball nature better than baseball.

I thought about these things this morning while I was sitting on the couch, drinking a cup of coffee and looking over my “Ancestry.com” account. If you have ever dabbled with that site, I don’t have to explain what it’s all about. It’s a place where you can plug your name and some dates into a spreadsheet of sorts and from there you plunge headlong into your ancestral past. I’ve been playing with it for a long time now. I’ve traced ancestors from my Dad and Mom all the way back to nearly the Middle Ages. It’s amazing how the information has evolved over the years since I first started meddling with it. I have found everything from Civil war soldiers to ancestors who were on the Mayflower, to Kings of England. Most of my ancestors are more mundane, however. Farmers, mill workers, lumberjacks and jacks of all trades. I was working on some clues for one of my ancestors who was born in 1840 and died in 1907, when it hit me. That’s the same exact number of years I have been on this earth. Then the rush of time hit me hard in the face, like a tractor trailer going seventy five. The lifetime of that particular ancestor of mine is my lifetime. My years. My current number.

I wondered what their dreams were when they were 12, or 15 or 18. I wondered what their goals for their life had been. I wondered if they had achieved them. I cried in my coffee because all this time I have been looking at these ancestors, it has been from a cold, impersonal and technical way. It’s been purely from an informational standpoint, and never from a human relations one. They were not, and are not just a name and some numbers on a page. They were people. People who lived and died, loved and cried, built and tore down, sang and danced, worked and played. People who did everything I have done, and will do. Just in a different setting and a different format.

I wonder if someday there will be a man or a woman sitting around and looking at the research which I have done on this site and thinking: “What the hell was he thinking?”

I hope perhaps instead, that the memories I have tried to instill in those loved ones around me will be remembered, as my Grandma used to say, “until I pass out of memory” Once that happens, I’ll be just like my dear relative who lived 67 years, during the Civil War and much strife and pain in this country…..I’ll be just a name and a number on a page somewhere, or on a stone perhaps.

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At the end of a barrel of a gun

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If you have never been in any particular situation, it’s hard to imagine how you would react.

Back in the early 70’s when my wife and I were living in Athens, Georgia I worked for a chain convenience store there on a part time basis. The store was located just across the street from the public housing area on Baxter Street, and we had a lot of African American customers. Some of them gave me a hard time, some were very friendly.
I worked mostly at night and on the weekends. I had never thought much about being held up at gun point…until it happened one night.
There was a friendly, young African American boy inside the store browsing the comic books. I had just pulled the register down…that is, if you are unfamiliar with the way those things work, pulling all of the big bills out of the cash register drawer and putting them in under the drawer. Then in just a heartbeat, a white guy with long hair and a hunting rifle walked calmly into the store. He pointed the rifle at me, and said “give me all the money in a bag, or I’m going to blow your brains out” He noticed the boy over at the comic rack and told him to get behind the counter with me. “I’m not going to say it again,” he said “all your money, or I’ll kill both of you”

I tried to notice details, but my heart was pounding in my chest. Here I was, a twenty year old guy with very little “worldly” training, no military training, and I had a gun right in my face, and the guy had his finger right on the trigger. I honestly never thought about pulling a heroic act. Maybe I could have knocked the gun away and jumped over the counter and beat the crap out of his skinny ass. Maybe…

I put all the money out of the register drawer into a paper bag and gave it to him. He never asked to look under the drawer where I had just put most of the big money. He told me and the young black guy to get down on the floor. Now….was this the time to jump on him? No. It was down on the floor for us.
Then he was out the door and gone. I picked up the phone and dialed the police. They were there in five minutes or less. I had a good description of the guy, the direction he had gone, his rifle…pretty much everything they might need to get him. The boy in the store with me gave them about the same information as I did, not quite as detailed since he had been very scared. He never came back in anymore to browse the comic books. They never caught the guy.

About six months later, I was in another one of the same companies stores a little further up the hill about the same time of the day. A very well built black man walked in the store with a pistol already out in his hand, and a bandana on his face. “I want to kill you, but I won’t if you give me all the money in the register” Again, the same pounding heart and sweating palms. The same paper bag. “Under the register too!” he said knowing that little trick. I pulled the register up and put that money into the bag. He was out the door and gone before I could blink. I hadn’t had any time whatsoever to think about heroics, or trying to stop the perpetrator. It was so quick. This one could have just as easily shot me and ran if he had wanted.
Again, I called the police and gave them a much less detailed description. I hadn’t been as scared as the first time, but there had been no time to BE scared. They never caught this guy either.

A couple of weeks later the store manager came in one evening and fired me for “not pulling the drinks up in the cooler” which I had done only about an hour before he came into the store. That last robbery had been too much for the company I guess. I think they suspected I had taken the money and made up the story about being robbed. The police  had checked me in both cases. They had checked my car too. There was nothing to find, because I was as honest then as I am now.

I went to work for Sears and Roebuck after that, selling shoes. I figured nobody would come in there with a gun and as far as I know, I was right.
I’ve never had guns pointed at my head since that early point in my life, but I remember it very well. I can still see the face of that first guy, etched in my memory. I could still pick him out of a line up. I hope he and the other guy straightened up and got their lives together after nearly scaring me to death.
When you are born, your brain is an empty slate.

As your grow, you soak up those things which you come in contact with like a dry sponge dropped into the ocean. Your parents and your immediate family are your first line of learning. You are affected for the rest of your life by the environment in which you are immersed during those first few formative years of your life. You are cast in a mold out of which it is hard to break.
As we age and begin to try and exert a modicum of indolence, our little “rebellions” are either quelled severely or tolerated and channeled, depending on the type of “raisings” to which we are exposed. At some point, an individual must decide which cultural, societal, political, religious and overall philosophical ways they are going to follow. Many choose to continue to follow the philosophical bent of those around them, some do not. Sometimes it takes longer to “break the mold” of what you have deemed to be “right”

John Stuart Mills said: “Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.”

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If we sacrifice our own individuality on the altar of conformity for the sake of the lack of conflict, then we do everyone a disservice. I’ve been a non-conformist since I was 18 years old. My philosophical bent does not suite many. It really doesn’t suite much of anything that I was raised to believe for that matter. But, I’m more at peace with it now than I have ever been. I’ll remain who I am, and I will continue to attempt to “live and let live” be my creed.