Category: Uncategorized

The Baby Boomers

I think that my generation, our so called “baby boomer” generation has been awarded the privilege and had the luck to grow up during the last, best America which will ever exist.

I don’t say this as a matter of contention with other generations either before or after the boomer generation, but it’s just my considered opinion.

We were the first television generation. Except instead of CSA and Bones, we had Ed Sullivan and Bonanza. We played outside in the sun and rain. We ran and ran, playing hide and seek, freedom, pick up baseball with paper tape balls and broomsticks, tackle football with no pads, and any other active game we could conjure up, including a lot of “cowboy and Indians” (please pardon me my native American friends)

Our Moms and Dads wore us out for lying, bad homework, cussing and back talking. Most of us don’t resent it, or feel like we were abused. There was rarely a parent who didn’t know when to stop. Some abuse existed, but I don’t believe it was as bad as today’s society. We had a lot more newspapers and a lot fewer news channels. A lot more reporters, and a whole lot fewer pundits.

Elvis was alive and singing, and you got his music on something you could hold, and not something you “download” Rock and roll was born, and songs had lyrics you could understand and melodies that stuck in your head. Think about “Unchained Melody” right now and then see how long it takes you to get it out of your head. There’s a reason they still use those songs in movies.

You could go off for a day and not lock your doors. You helped your neighbor with his garden and he helped you with yours, and people shared the excess with others. You could pull your car up on the curb and do most of the work on it yourself, but if you needed a mechanic you got somebody with a pouch of tools and not a computer.

People were not afraid of sweating during the Summer, or wearing a few more clothes to keep warm during the Winter. The clothes we had also had to last us an entire school year. There were no “designer” clothes unless you considered “Levi-Strauss” to be one.

Our parents didn’t like us to waste food because “children in India” were starving. They would have been welcome to a lot of the stuff that Mom tried to make me eat, mainly the foods that fell into the “green” food group.

Most of all, we were all primarily happy. We weren’t afraid to walk to the movies or to school by ourselves. We were embarrassed to think about even kissing or holding hands with a member of the opposite sex. We knew all the cops and postmen by their first name. We weren’t afraid to roll in the dirt and get filthy, dirty and sweaty.

We dreamed of doing big things, and some of those things got done. Some of the impetus to do them got lost in the late 60’s and never got reclaimed. Its still not too late through. There is still time left for we fifties babies to do a lot of good if we will just remember that it was our purpose in life to make the world a better place for children, dogs and all other living things. Peace.

Seven years have passed and nothing has changed…….

Every time I scroll Facebook now I see another photo of one of the poor little children who were so senselessly murdered. It doesn’t get any easier not to cry..not to care.

I can’t imagine those parents, those families…. what they are being forced to endure through no fault of their own. No words exist which could ever fully comfort them. No amount of money or wordly goods will bring back their lost joy.

Don’t we owe it to them to at least try…at the very least try as a country to do better? To be better? It is time for us as a country to quit pointing fingers…but instead to join hands and dream some solutions into reality..so that as we continue to look at the photos of those babies over the coming years we don’t get a whispered question from them….”why haven’t you done something yet?”

Is the blood of children not enough to move us to act? If it’s not…then perhaps we really are beyond help.

I’ve walked over 5000 miles, probably closer to 6000, according to this “Fitbit “ I wear since I started this daily ritual over three and a half years ago. I don’t know if it’ll extend my years any though.

I can’t remember back far enough in my childhood to remember when my Grandpa Jervis was any active man of any sorts. I remember having to live with my Grandparents for half a year when I was 10 years old, and Grandpa mostly just sat around in his chair and listened to his radio, and sang songs out of his songbooks, and smoked his pipe. Occasionally during that long snowy winter, he would drag himself, bad knees and all, out of his chair and go down to the woodshed and haul a wheelbarrow of wood or two up in front of the porch and toss it piece by piece over the porch rail onto the porch right next to the door. Bad knees, but nothing wrong with those strong arms.

That was 1960, and Grandpa was born in 1893, so…that woulda made him…67. Just like I am today.

I don’t smoke a pipe, and the radio is long gone. I love music, but don’t have any song books except Grandpa’s old ones that I salvaged. I don’t sit around all day anymore though. I hope I never have to.

Seven years ago on this day, I didn’t know it fully quite yet, but I was entering into the hardest two weeks, and then the hardest year of my life. Four bypasses are a tough haul. It’s certainly something my Grandpa never had to go through, and he lived to be 98, albeit the last several years, he was not “himself”. I don’t expect my body will carry me that far, but I’m certainly going to keep on walking, and hope I can get there.

I’ve still got a lot I want to do, grandchildren to watch grow, and junk I’ve collected that will take at least 20 years to get rid of. I have love I want to give, and stars in the sky which I haven’t yet seen.

I want to better understand this Universe in which we live, so that perhaps when I leave this little speck on which I live, I can enter into whatever comes afterwards in joy and not sadness.

The three richest men in America are worth more than the bottom 50 % of the rest of the country. That’s approximately 165 million people who’s combined wealth does not equal the approximate 2.67 trillion combined worth of Gates, Bezos, and Buffet.

Mr Buffet says his secretary pays more in taxes then he does. Bezos famously paid no taxes last year. Gates says he’s paid 10 billion in taxes over “the years,” but should have paid more.

Certainly Gates and his wife have engaged in philanthropic acts, as has Buffett. They get to pick and choose who and where to put their money. Bezos is inquiring on Twitter about good places to “be philanthropic”

The middle class in America is almost gone. It started going on the early 80’s with Reaganomics, which reduced the tax rate on the super rich from 70% to 28%. He assured us that the resulting “trickle down” affect from the wealth which pooled at the top, would benefit all Americans. Reagan’s Vice President George H.W. Bush, derisively called it “voodoo” economics. Trickle down economics obviously hadn’t work. If you think it has, go back and read the first paragraph. Go listen to Joe Burrow’s Heisman Trophy speech. What a guy he is!

As long as our leaders continue to cater to the rich and super rich in this country, we will never see a strong middle class again. I don’t like taxes. I paid 28% most of my working career though. I paid the same percentage of income taxes as people making millions and millions of dollars more than me. I never got those nice deductions they go either. I did what most people in my position did back in those days…..bought on credit. And that, my friends, is how they keep us in check. That’s how they keep us enslaved. Who’s not paying back money on cars, houses, student loans, credit cards, etc.? How many people take their paychecks directly to those “payday” loan companies every week and get back about 50% of what they earned, pay 50% in interest, and then renew their loans for the next week, because otherwise they don’t have enough to live.

The super rich effectively has bought the country since the 1980’s with political contributions, and even exponentially increased their hold after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision in 2010. The Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelman, George Soros….and yes, the three men mentioned in the first paragraph, can pretty much buy politicians…and have. We even know now here in Georgia how much it costs to buy yourself a seat in the Senate.

Will Americans look at things one day with clear eyes, unfettered from the propaganda of one side or the other, and choose to select people to represent and govern us who will act in our self interests? I doubt very seriously I’ll ever live to see it.

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!