Category: Uncategorized

Today is Friday. I think at least I know that much. I look at the date: November 8, 2019. I wonder sometimes how I got here.

Through hook and crook. Through sheer luck. Through determination. Through despair and sorrow. Through love and tenderness. Through letting myself be carried along in the center of the river of life. Never taking too many chances.

So here it is, this day.

I wonder about life. Have I done it the right way? Could I have done it better? I certainly could have done some things better. I was born with a certain set of genes, I grew up and lived in a certain environment. Both of these things have shaped me a certain way.

I wish they had shaped me into a kinder person. I’m lacking so much in that area. I wish I’d been shaped with a better temperament, instead of having one of those “fly off the handle” types. I wish I had learned to be less self centered, and more confident in myself. I have a tendency to get on people’s nerves.

Actually, I get on my own at times! Maybe it’s a little bit paranoia, and a little bit trying too hard to please. Hopefully the ability for self examination is a positive…,

I look at other people who seem to have gotten it “all together” and I wonder what that would be like. I wonder if they really DO have it all together, or if it is simply one of their talents to seem that way to other people? I’ve often said, that we cannot really tell about the reality of other people without being them. There’s a whole lot of people I know I wouldn’t want to be, even with all my shortcomings I’d feel better just staying me instead.

As I get older, I’m more at peace with what I am most days, although the past week hasn’t been my finest hour. I’m taking a deep breath this weekend, and I’m going to try and get back on track. As the rest of my time passes here, I’m sure I’ll have to do more and more “resets” in order to stay focused on what I need to do: live the balance of my time helping more than I hurt, and keeping my words and actions good. That’s a tall order for me.

When I’m gone from here, Id like to have left more good memories than not. I guess that’s really the only legacy I’ll have to offer.

Have a great weekend my friends.

I remember back to 1963. That was a great year. I started off at 12 years old, and stayed that way for 10 2/3 months. I had played baseball all that summer and it was great. I hit 5 Home runs, three of them grand slams. I made the all stars. I walked all over town, fished in the Chattooga, gone to the movies. The summer of 1963 was idyllic, and I loved it.

Then, suddenly I became a teenager.

Oh God, how awkward I was. What terrible luck I had too.

I go a bad case of Athletes foot late that summer, and it just ate my feet up something awful. I had to start school that fall wearing sandals with white socks. Nobody can imagine how embarrassing an ordeal that was. My old protagonist J. Suits kidded me mercilessly about it. It took a month or so to finally get healed up….just as the weather started to cool off.

I had fairly greasy hair, so the pimples came along shortly after the feet healed up. I washed my hair regularly, but it didn’t matter. I had one or two fairly bad eruptions a week. Another embarrassing issue, and so I kind of walked around with my head down and avoided direct eye contact, especially with girls…

I remember as Christmas approached, the glee club started rehearsing a Special program. One of the songs was “White Christmas” one of my favorites. I lined up in the back of the boys section and was belting it out, Bing Crosby style. My voice had already changed, and my tenor was clear and on key. I didn’t think I’d be noticed, I just loved the music, the song and the time of year. Mr. Carruth stoped in the middle of the song one day and said: “You…Bowers C’mere”.

I went up front. He proceeded to inform me that I was going to sing solo for the song, with the rest of the singers backing me up. I was floored, and scared crapless.

We rehearsed the song over and over the next few weeks, and when the day came for the program, I was ready. I started a little tentatively but forgot anyone else was in the assembly that morning, and did my best Bing. “Good job” said Mr. Carruth.

The year changed after that. I walked with my head up. I continued to sing every opportunity I got, and I still thank John Carruth to this day for believing in me, and helping to make my life better.

We had several good teachers, who were also decent people at our school that year, and in the ensuing four years. I was lucky to be there with a good group of teachers and some great classmates. It was a wonderful time.

The worst possible thing for someone who likes to sing is to lose their voice.

Since having vocal cord surgery in 1999, I face a “season” of hoarseness and loss of my voice on a regular basis, especially this time of year. You would think I would be used to it by now, but the inability to be able to even hum along with a song on the radio is frustrating. But yet…

I can see the beauty all around me. The huge moon…the glorious fall leaves.

I can touch my grandchildren gently. and pick them up and hug them.

I can smell the wonderful Brunswick stew I picked up last week when I warm it up.

I can hear amazing music at the touch of a button, and enjoy its depth and meaning.

I can walk, and move without pain.

Even with so many things which are wrong in this world, the ability to sift out enjoyment from the chaffe which is constantly being thrown at us is essential to maintaining our humanity. We can choose to give in to the frustration, or we can choose to turn in another direction towards the joys still available to us.

So I’m going to listen to some good music now and sleep. It doesn’t really matter if I can hum along or not. I will still cherish it.

I wished for peace on Earth, but I was naive and didn’t know it could never happen. I was 8 years old, and I wished for peace on Earth in 1958. A kids dream. I didn’t know then that because of the nature of man and men, it cannot happen. But still I wished.

I wished when I graduated from High School in 1968, that I could do something to change the world for the good.

I wished for health and happiness for my children when they were born.

I wished several times to win the lottery.

I wished and wished.

Some things happened, not simply because I wished, but because I cared enough to become involved in the things I wished for in order to make them happen.

“If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride….”

Finally, “Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it”.

A long time ago, I think it was 1961….yes I’m pretty sure that was it. 1961. It wasn’t the greatest year for my Dad. The mill where he worked was on short time. You see, for quite some time…ever since World War II, the cotton mill had been working on government contracts.

They’d made thousands of yards of twill for uniforms. Uniforms for the army, navy, and marines. Maybe for the Air Force too. I’m not sure. All I remember is that the contracts ran out, and my Dad was on three and four day weeks. We’d already been forced to move from the house that my Dad had built on Simmons street back in 1954. He couldn’t make the 112 dollar a month payments. So we moved to ninth street into a lower priced home with 55 dollar a month payments.

But, things were still hard. Money was in short supply. Beans and taters with cornbread was a staple, along with salmon patties made with canned salmon….the kind out of the red can.

My Dad was a determined man. He couldn’t stand not being able to pay his bills. A man came around the house one day selling World Book encyclopedias. The book of knowledge. My Dad told this man, who was the “district manager” that he couldn’t afford to buy a set of those books, although he’d have liked to in order to help my brother and me in school. But….did the district manager need a salesman. “I’ve got experience in sales” said my Dad who’d never sold anything to anybody in his life. As a matter of fact, said the district manager, they were looking for somebody. “When can you start training”? said the manager. “How about right now”? said my Dad.

So began my Daddy’s career as an encyclopedia salesman. A career that ended up lasting a couple of years, and keeping a struggling family afloat.  I believe he made 50 dollars commission off of every set he sold, and he sold a lot of them in two years in Chattooga and Walker counties.

He received a “salesman’s” copy of the World Books, to take along as demos to potential customers.  That set had all kinds of special “stuff” with it  There were extra “ pullouts” with tons of colorful illustrations.  There were extra graphs, and lots of those cool pages with the acetate layovers, like the “human body” which had a base photo of a skeleton, with each subsequent clear acetate page that laid on top, being composed of the rest of the body. Lay the first page down, and there’s the muscles, then the circulatory system, then the internal organs, and so on…until the last page you laid on top was the skin, and the body was complete.  Those things were so neat!

After a couple of years, the work at the mill picked back up.  It was running 5 and 6 days a week and kept on running…wide open to the 7 day weeks of the denim years.

We got to keep that set of World Books, and being as how I couldn’t buy enough new Marvel comics to read constantly, I started using those encyclopedias as my reading material.  I was a voracious reader, and started with the A volume and worked my way forward.  I read in those books for the next 6 years, until I went to college.  They were one of the most helpful and educational “teachers” I ever had.

My Dad kept that set of encyclopedias around until they moved out in 2009 to the assisted living place.  I kept them after that for several years.  Daddy always told me “don’t get rid of these, there’s a lot of good information in here”  I knew there was, but I don’t think he ever cracked a volume open at all.  He actually hated selling encyclopedias, and was glad when he could stop.  Selling just wasn’t in his blood like it is in mine.  He just did it because he needed the money, and wanted a free set of encyclopedias for his boys

After the onslaught of the internet, and years of hauling that set of books around, I ended up giving them to a family with a little girl who liked to read.  I felt a tear running down my eye as they drove away with them.  Part of my childhood went with them, part of my Dad’s hard work and love.  I thought he mighta’ been pissed that I gave them away, but then I thought he would probably would have told me that I’d gotten all the good out of them I was gonna get.  He would have understood.

 

I believe we need change in this country. I don’t think it’s political or religious change which is needed necessarily, but an actual change in the philosophy of our lives.
Perhaps instead of College degrees our young ones should go in a different direction in the future. I think we need courses or degrees in self reliance, self sufficiency, and how to live off the land? That used to called making a living, or gaining experience.
I believe we need more carpenters, plumbers, electricians, beekeepers, farmers, midwifes, loggers, lumberworkers, animal husbandry experts, surveyers, builders, masons, etc., etc., and fewer people in all aspects of technology. That used to be called being an apprentice.
I believe we are at a crossroads in our country…perhaps in our world. Seven+ billion human beings are a LOT of people for this world to support. Nature tends to notice when things are terribly out of balance and acts to correct the imbalance.
Nature could accomplish this in any manner you could dream up. Whatever way things happen, our world will one day….perhaps sooner than later, be a vastly different place than it is presently.

Love

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body,a but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs.6Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away.

11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways. 12Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.

An Excerpt from a Larger Writing…..

When it comes to jobs, I have run the gambit. I have worked as an hourly worker doing hard manual labor.

I made mattresses.

And when I say I made them, I mean just that. I threw the naked heavyweight springs onto a wooden table and added the “innards” of the mattress, the foam, the cotton batting and then thicker foam and the quilted cover. (Which I had already also made on the quilting machine…I was a one man department)

I took a “hog ringer” which is an air gun which bends large metal staples through the cover and attaches them to the spring. I got my thumb in the way several times and ended up with one of those things through my thumb. Most of the time, if I just shot them through the corner of my thumb I would just have someone else take a pair of plyers and unbend the ring. Once when I shot one straight through the middle of my thumbnail I had to let a Doctor get it out. He used a pair of plyers too.

The only difference was the tetanus shot.

After hog ringing the cover onto the spring and filling up a huge buggy with mattresses, I would take them to “tape edge machine” and sew the cover to the “boxing” which is the narrow strip which runs around the circumference of the mattress. You would pick the mattress up off the buggy, throw it on the sewing table and pull it up under the tape edge machine. You would then sew completely around the mattress, flip it over and while putting pressure on the mattress with your right arm to hold it down, you would use the knee lever which moved the machine to sew the second side. The king size mattresses were about 90 pounds each. If the “boxing” was a little narrow then it required a lot of pressure to sew the second side. It was like holding down a horse to give it a dose of castor oil.

I once did nearly 100 mattresses in one day, since we were on “incentive” meaning the more I did, the more it paid.

This company worked ten hours a day four days a week, with two ten minute breaks and a half hour for lunch. During the half hour lunch I usually slept.

For the first two weeks before my body got used to it, I would come home at night and just fall onto the bed and lay there. I didn’t even feel like eating, although I ended up finally doing so because I needed energy for the next day.

There were many weeks when our orders were not very good and they started cutting our work down to three days instead of four. I was in a lazy “funk” at that time, and I did this for two years,1980-82, before moving on to the world of medical supply sales, at my wife’s highly motivating suggestion that we needed more money to raise our growing family. We did, and I got out of my doldrums and got my butt to work.

Reverie

When I was a little kid, I found that I didn’t always have to have another person to play with in order to have fun. I guess you might say, I had a vivid imagination. I created my own worlds to play in, and stayed in them for hours and hours sometimes. Many times when I stayed at my Grandparent’s home I would go up behind their house into the hills alone, and stay there most of the day. I would hunt for arrowheads and many times would find one or two. I made myself bow and arrow and shot them at invisible enemies. I dug into the red clay dirt and made a cave in which me and my gang of outlaws hid. I climbed trees….not too high because I was afraid of heights, but high enough. I took sticks and limbs which had fallen from the great high oaks and hickories, and built little cabins. I cracked those hickory nuts, and ate persimmons and liked them. I lived many lives there. Only the way my Grandmother’s voice carried in the thin mountain air served to draw me back into the reality of the world of others.

At home I also had my sanctuaries. The old river dam at Trion was a second home. I fished there with a cane pole pulling out many a tiny bream that my Dad would look at and judge and then say “throw ‘em back…too small” I went on my own many times to the jagged limestone rocks which jutted out into the river at many places and jumped from one to another, sometimes making it, sometimes not. I swam at the “boat dock” sometimes alone, sometimes with friends like my ol’ buddy “Barbeque” who lived on the same street as me. Countless times before I ever played organized baseball, I would play the entire World Series in my back yard. Throwing the baseball up against the rugged red bricks on the backside of our house, sometimes clipping the siding…much to my Mom’s dismay but drawing very little ire from my Dad, who seemed to understand where I was coming from. Playing with my dogs, especially my old buddy Lobo..who was a mix of just about every kind of dog a man could think of, and about as tough a fighter and survivor who ever lived. He was near death so many times, and brought back to life with Peroxide and love, you would think he had a cat’s nine lives. He taught me a lot about the will to live, and how strong it is in every living thing.

I also developed a knack of “inside the house” entertainment too. I would sit around and read comic books by the hour. Uncle Scrooge comics at first, and then graduating to Superman and Batman, and finally becoming excited about the “new” Marvel comic books which were coming out. Spiderman, and The Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, The Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man. I bought them all, just as soon as they came out and then followed them religiously. They were cheap, and it was what I spent my allowance on. If my Mom hadn’t thrown them all away when I went off to college, I might be rich today. I also loved books, and constantly had my nose stuck in one. If I was inside, I was reading. Listening to music and reading. I loved the big 33’s and bought the ones which were cheapest at the store. That means I listened to a lot of Broadway, since they were usually 99 cents versus 3.99 or more for the “Rock and roll” records. I can still sing most of the songs word for word. “Some enchanted evening…you may meet a stranger…” or “I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night and then have begged for more…I could have spread my wings…and done a thousand things, I’ve never done before” Yep…My Fair Lady, The King and I, Oklahoma, Camelot…and on…and on…I was a weird child.

I’ve done so much as a child, before my adult life started, even though much of it was on my on…inside my head, that I don’t feel like I was “cheated” during my childhood. I don’t feel deprived. I feel…normal. My adult life has been equally fulfilling. A lot of you have seen the pictures of my family. I love them as much as I appear to…believe me.

Now, I don’t know how other people feel…don’t know how they experience things. None of us do. We live our entire lives side by side with other human beings, but we have no earthly idea exactly what’s going on inside their head. We assume they process and navigate information the same way we do. That can’t be so, otherwise we would have a world full of people who are essentially alike. I think one of the things which has brought the human race to where we are today, is not our similarities but our differences. We need to celebrate that fact. We are all a universe inside the frail body of a human being, and even after that body fails us that Universe will go on. Together we will go on.

In the silent retrospective quiet of the night I lie here and wonder what it’s all been about. It’s strange when you think “I could go back half a century, and I’d still be 16 years old”

And I’d know it all.

This year, really the last few months in particular, have lent me both joy and melancholy. The have provided me a backdrop against which I must paint the last few chapters of my life. I really don’t know how long those chapters will be.

I found extreme joy in driving back to LaFayette from Henager Alabama last weekend. Me by myself in my son in law’s little car. I rolled down the window and immersed myself in the cool fall air. I saw the hawks in flight, and one Golden eagle. I looked at our mountain ranges…pigeon mt., lookout, Taylor’s ridge. Such awesome beauty. I know why our Native Americans loved this area so much. At one point, with the sun shining to the West of me…I thought I might just be able to take off and fly through these hills in spirit form forever….and be happy doing so. But, the buzz of the radio brought me back to earth.

Just yesterday I was driving along and got to thinking about Mom and Dad, and all of the people with whom I have shared time on this Earth, and how many are now gone. Family, classmates, friends. Heroes of mine from childhood, who I never knew or got to meet. Elvis…the first singer I admired. Paul Newman, Johnny Cash, Arnold Palmer, James Michener, and more recently John Lennon, Robin Williams, and so many others. All gone. A world constantly in change. I thought about those people, and wonder if they are at peace. Is there peace?

Yet I know In my heart that I have much left to do. I have those promises to keep that Robert Frost spoke of, and the truth is that I am a man who will try with his last ounce of strength to help my children and grandchildren, and my wife as much as I can.

I will crank the old dodge truck up, and putter up and down the road as long as I can safely do so. I love the life that I have, and I appreciate the chance to live it.

A lot of what I have seen and read on others “friends” pages and comments doesn’t seem to reflect any respect for other people, or for themselves. I really hope it’s just a temporary phenomenon.