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Another October is fixing to come around. My favorite month of the year. My birth month. The “season changing” month, as we usually have our first frost here in the South during October. It’s a month of beautiful colors, courtesy of Mother Nature and her leaf filled trees. All the russet reds, and every shade of gold imaginable. I can’t count the times I’ve simple just stood at the foot of some large hill, or short mountain and gazed up in awe at the beauty.

I love the smell of burning leaves, and of the sweet wood firing up in people’s fireplaces and wood stoves. It’s a lot of work to do it on a regular basis as your only source of heating though. I tried it for a couple of cold winters back in the eighties, and gained a very healthy respect for our ancestors who used to have to roll out of bed early on those frosty mornings, and stoke up a warming fire! I went back to gas!

I love the bright orange pumpkins laying out in the fields, and the fresh rolled and bailed hay all stacked up neatly. The corn stalks gathered up in big circles, looking like giant teepees.

I thrill at the flights of birds overhead. The Canadian geese, and the blackbirds which still fill the tall trees. I remember as a child, laying in the brown October grass and watching millions of those blackbirds headed South overhead. I couldn’t believe there were so many. Now, there aren’t that many.

There’s Halloween at the end of the month, the day we always used to look forward to most as children. I mean, what kid wouldn’t? Free candy! Tricky tricks! All in good fun for the most part. No store bought costumes for me though. Usually it was some variation of one of Mom’s old bed sheets a’la’ Charlie Brown. (Who by the way, shares the same birthday as me) I suppose I’m more than a little bit like that boy!

October is the gateway to Thanksgiving and then to the Christmas season, which makes me love it even more. My family used to visit my Grandparents more during this time of the year, and I will always remember those days of fun and enjoyment of my youth. Those long ago days, which started in October. My favorite month. My favorite times…

I think it’s time to start nuclear drills in schools again. It’s time to start designating church basements, and public buildings which are well built with the signs “fallout” shelters.

You see, back when my generation was in elementary school, we had to do those drills. The teachers would make us get down under our desks, after taking everything off the top, and cover our heads. This was to minimize damage to our bodies from any shocks from nuclear explosions that might occur in our tri-state area.

All of us kids were well aware of the dangers of nuclear fallout, because we were given handouts published by the government on what to do in case of nuclear war breaking out between the United States and Russia. We were frightened by the drills, by the handouts, by the Civil Defense designation or shelters, by the nightly news given to us by Huntley and Brinkley, or Cronkite. Nuclear war was a real possibility then.

Since those days, it has become an abstract idea…until recently.

Now, our country is in deep conflict with several others over nuclear weapons. The rhetoric is extreme, and I believe we may be at the “1961” level of danger for a nuclear holocaust.

So, I believe we should start those programs again from the 60’s. Let’s have the children come home afraid, and suffer the same trauma we had to. Let’s have the parents see the fallout shelter signs go up again. Let’s have the TV stations run more emergency broadcast tests, once a day like they used to. Let’s do all of this and more, to make the possibility and the outcomes of nuclear war very specific, so that today’s generation gets a dose of what the “1961” generation got.

Maybe then we wouldn’t want our leaders promoting wiping other countries from the face of the earth. Maybe we could learn the value of negotiation again. Maybe if people realize that nuclear war is not just an abstract idea, but instead a blatant reality, the whole world might be wise enough to go another 56 years before we have to go through this kind of trauma again. Maybe our people can become wise enough to elect wiser leaders.

Everything you know and love changes if the bombs start to fall. There will never be another “normal” day.

We must find another way to solve the problems of nuclear weapons if we wish to continue to exist, but I’m afraid people just aren’t that afraid of it occurring as we used to be. Either that, or they’re just a lot better at ignoring it.

I still think about how I felt up under that school desk back in the sixth grade. I really don’t want that kind of feeling for my grandchildren. I want them to have a normal, wonderful life….like the one I have had. I’m not at all concerned about what happens to me now. It’s the little ones I’m worried about. With the rhetoric that goes on on “social” media, many days I have to what I did today and just stay away from it, and the “news” too. But, in the back of your mind, you know it’s still going on, and you are just not hearing it. So, you go back to listening and reading.

Perhaps tomorrow things will be brighter. Today has been just a little dark though.

I was a pretty good baseball player. I led the Pony league in batting average for two of the three years I played. Hit some good home runs although if my memory is correct, Tom Brewster, Junior as we knew him then, had more home runs(we were both lefties, and he could pull the ball into the tennis courts better than me. Mine were mostly to center field and had to be “run out” since there were no fences. Several of mine ended up in the Elementary School yard though) Thing is, as good as we were, we didn’t get any trophies. They didn’t give them out back then just for participation. You had to win the league, or the All stars, so….no baseball trophies on my shelf. I didn’t have anything from those wonderful days…at least I didn’t think I did.

I had been cleaning up in my folks house last year before we sold it. I thought I had everything and was making a last sweep of the place. I looked back in the far corner of the closet in the “dark room” and saw the outline of a ball bat. I retrieved it and was taken aback. It was my #34 Orlando Cepeda bat! A bat I had used in many games to hit those low screaming line drives down the first base line. The bat I used to hit a scorching line drive to center field that rolled all the way to that old black pipe water fountain at the Grammar school. I took it outside and swung it for 10 minutes, feeling the balance, and heft of that old bat.

I hadn’t known Dad had saved it. Maybe it was his weapon of last resort for intruders. But, it hadn’t been under the bed…it had been in the corner of the closet. Dad had carried that bat through three moves and had kept it. I wandered back in my mind, remembering how he had been at all my games cheering me on, just as he had later attended all my brother’s football games. Could it be that he had actually been that proud of his crazy acting lefty son? Maybe so, I thought as I took my trophy out and laid it in the seat of my car.

Today I was able to see and speak with each of my children. I was able to kiss my three youngest grandchildren, and tell them I loved them. I had supper with my wife of 46 years, and took the dogs out for a walk. I then took a 40 minute walk around town myself.

Sometimes I gripe about the way things are going in this country, and in this world, but I am so…so very lucky. If I make it one more day, or 30 more years, I am so very lucky.

I am not rich in terms of dollars and cents. As a matter of fact I live from month to month. But I have plenty to eat, and my barky dog located home is paid for. And if that’s all I have to endure, I am so very lucky.

I am not a refugee from war. I don’t live in a terribly repressive country, though some would make it that way if they could. I do my best to not let them because I am lucky enough to live where I am able to do so. I can still get in my car and drive pretty much anywhere I want without being bothered, unless I break a law.

I could, if I wanted to, go to any house of worship in this country and I would not be kept out.

I am so lucky to have been born where I was born. Yes, sometimes I gripe about the way things are going, because I want my grandchildren to feel lucky too when they grow up.

Now, I don’t have all the answers, but neither do any of you other people out there. Together we might be able to put something out there that’s gonna last. Together. With compromise, and compassion, and conversation….other than all this name calling stuff. It serves no purpose.

I am so lucky, and if you are reading this now, so are most of you.

Let’s try a little love. Start with your family tomorrow like I did with mine today. Work your way out from there and mean it!

If you are a Christian, remember Jesus said to love your neighbor….but he also said to love your enemy. The common word is love.

The power of diathetical (irregular)warfare increases as the means of mass communication expand. It is not limited to countries fighting each other, or to enemies of one another using it against each other.

This type of warfare indeed lends itself easily to the theatre of politics. T.E.Lawrence was one of the first commanders to realize: that “[t]he printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander.” This was in 1918. Lawrence of Arabia famously defeated the much stronger Turkish army by convincing them through non traditional means, that they HAD lost.

Lawrence realIzed that he really didn’t need to actually win the war, but instead: “He just needed to decide he had won and convince the world. The struggle was to change the definition of victory, to change the meaning of the events rather than the events themselves.”

Jump ahead almost 100 years to New York City in 2001. Another person…this time named Osama bin Laden used Diathetical warfare, when he attacked the World Trade Center. Using the vastly expanded technology of the internet, he staged an attack on the most powerful country in the world which resonated across the entire world, because of the media coverage of the event. He lost his men, eventually lost his organization and then his life. But he won the battle. The first battle of the technological era of communications warfare.

One person in New York City that day looked at the flames, at the coverage they got, at the fame gained by that event. He decided he could adopt the developing technology of the internet, and then had social media fall into his hands as one of the most powerful weapons ever invented. His name is Donald Trump, and he is a master of diathetical political warfare. He started a long time ago in terms of the life span of social media.

Don’t underestimate him. The Turks underestimated T.E. Lawrence and lost a war. America underestimated Osama bin Laden and lost 3000 lives. We cannot underestimate our current leader, because the freedom of our country hangs in the balance.

I had at least three ancestors serving in this battle. My Great Grandfather Bowers was in the North Carolina 39th Regiment which helped drive Rosecrans from the field on the 19th of September during the battle. My Great-great Grandfather Garner Davenport was in the 65th Georgia Volunteers from Fannin County Georgia. My Great Grandfather Jeptha Locklear was in the Georgia 47th Infantry at this battle and was later taken Prisoner of war at the Battle of Atlanta. My other Great Grandfather Hulan Berg Davenport was in the 11th Georgia regiment which was part of Longstreet’s Division. He fought at Gettysburg, but I am not sure if the 11th was part of the Battle of Chickamauga. Can’t find anywhere where it says they were. Longstreet was at Chickamauga and had troops with him, however. My Great great Uncle Lt. Larkin German was also in the Georgia 65th, and had an article where he killed a sniper who had shot one of his Davenport cousins who was standing next to him at the Battle of Chattanooga. I knew as I child, whenever I went through this park, which was hundreds of times I had a feeling of awe I could not shake. The number of men who fought and died here….staggering in it’s scope and yet never knew that some of my ancestors were here, and thank God…survived the madness and death.

The baby whisper wind that blew through the early morning air at Trade day this morning reminded me that fall is coming. One more time, fall is coming. Change is in the air.

People were bringing in Halloween doodads to sell. Pumpkins and scarecrows, fall leaves and the horn of plenty. Everything had a hue of orange and yellow mixed with a little brown. Fall colors. It’s not too early to use them, because those holidays get here and pass by as fast as a New York subway headed to Harlem in a New York minute.

Halloween screams by you, then Thanksgiving flies through like a Turkey, almost ignored in the anticipation of “Black Friday” and what I now call “the spending season” known to some as Christmas. (And Hanukah, and Kwanza too!) Then slipping right on in behind those quickly passing holidays, on tip toes in new cotton socks comes New Years. 2015 this go round.

The birthday fairy comes for me in October, and I will be seeing my 64th fall. Although I can’t remember the first few, since I have been able to remember, I have found it’s my favorite season and the most beautiful time of the year. I’ve had the privilege of living through some amazing autumns. I’ve had the luck of living in the best of times.

The first frosts will probably fall in October. That’s usually the case here in Georgia. I can’t wait for that first heavy one, and to be able to go outside and take deep breaths of that apple crispy air. Can’t wait for someone to fire up their fireplace somewhere nearby so I can smell the wood fire burning. The mosquitoes and ants will go bye-bye, the snakes will hibernate, and I can take a walk out in the woods somewhere without slathering myself in bug gunk and being scared of stepping on a rattlesnake. I’d really like to walk a little on that Pinhoti trail this year.

A person never knows when one of these glorious Autumn days will roll around and others will be enjoying it, but you won’t. The uncertainty of life being ever present, tempers our anticipation of seasons to come. So, the best thing we do is to enjoy the baby whisper breezes as they come. And so I’ll leave you with the lyrics to my favorite Fall song by the great Johnny Mercer:

The falling leaves

Drift by my window

The autumn leaves

Of red and gold

I see your lips

The summer kisses

The sunburned hands

I used to hold

Since you went away

The days grow long

And soon I’ll hear

Old winter’s song

But I miss you most of all

My darling

When autumn leaves

Start to fall

My Grandmother Laura (Locklear) Bowers, never had a sunburn in all of her life. At least that is what she told me. I have no reason to doubt her word either. I remember as a child seeing Granny in the summertime turn a dark, dark brown. “It’s the Indian blood” she would say.

She told me of her childhood, and how she had been put out into the cotton fields as a child with a burlap sack and told to pick cotton. And so she did, all the day long. It was not something which was out of the ordinary in the early 1900’s for a child to work those long days in the sun. In the aftermath of the Civil war, “The Reconstruction” had left the South broken and divided. Families had to “do the best they could do” said Granny, in order to get by.

So from that childhood of hard work in the field, and “never getting a sunburn” she went to an early marriage to a man who was old enough to be her Father. A man who was actually a friend of her Father’s. There was only three years difference in my Grandfather Bowers and my Great Grandfather Locklear. My Grandmother was 23 years younger.

She married young and had a lot of children.

My Grandfather had lost most of his first family and obviously was a man who believed in having children. Granny had 19 children. Many of them died in childbirth or as infants. Eight of them lived to see adulthood. Those years were in the deep center of the Great Depression. My Dad was born in 1928. Dirt poor in a mill town. All the kids started to work as children in the mill. All the money was needed to buy food and a few clothes. “Living hand to mouth” I remember Granny saying.

I don’t remember my Grandpa Bowers, as he died in 1952 and I was only two years old. I had been living with my Mother’s family for those first two years in Blue Ridge and probably didn’t have much time with my Grandfather. I have never seen a photo of my Grandfather and me at the same time. I don’t know if one exists or not. I have a number of them with my Granny and me in the same photo. In a lot of them, there was some kind of work going on. Cooking, washing clothes, hanging clothes, gardening. Work to be done, and not much time for play.

Granny married again sometime in the late 50’s. A Kansas man named Arthur Knox. I remember much more of him than I can go into right now. He was good to Grandma. He died in 1964 and she was alone again. Much of her life after that revolved around where she was going to stay, which child she was going to live with, where to go. She went from place to place, staying for the longest time with my oldest Aunt, Addie.

She always seemed to be there for all the important things. High School graduations, weddings, funerals. She lived a hard life and died at age 92 back in 1988. I had been married for almost 20 years by then and had three children. My wife and I were busy raising our little ones.

I know I speak often and tenderly of my other Grandparents. My Mom’s folks. But Granny Bowers played a big part in my childhood. I was out at the old Trion cemetery the other day and thought about her, and her favorite meal of pinto beans, taters and cornbread. I think I must have inherited her tastes because it’s also my favorite. You can’t beat simplicity. I believe Granny lived that philosophy.

The newscaster made the comment this week about a “world in crisis” with all the wars, disease, killings and just generally depressing things going on around the earth. Some are looking for the second coming, while others are stockpiling for the coming breakdown of society, and the anarchy which will follow.

The things which are happening on a global scale, I have no power to change. The only change I can accomplish is on a one to one basis. I do what I can for those whom I can do for. I don’t post it on Facebook, unless it involves having to use that medium to accomplish what needs to be done. I have given more this year than any year in my life. I hope to do more next year. In most cases the things are small in and of themselves, but bring hope to another human being. That is, in my opinion, the only way we can change the world.

Politicians can’t do it. They all lie like dogs. They put on political ads with other people’s money trying to see which one can top the other for the biggest misleading spot of the campaign. We can’t depend on hardly any of them.

The super rich people, the billionaires, they aren’t going to do it. Most of them want to keep every red cent they can get their hands on, and even the ones who do give away a lot of money have their own “pet” causes they support. If a hungry man wrote them a letter asking for money for groceries, chances are they’d never see it. Some aide, or assistant would waylay it.

Most Churches ain’t going to do it. Got a letter today saying as to how a church needed a LARGE amount of money to renovate the building. It was an amount that’s big enough to buy many a homeless person a meal, or an old person their medicine. I’ll send these folks some money though.

Most of this stuff doesn’t give people hope. Seeing that another person cares about you as a human being is what will do it. Treating the least of your fellow humans as equals will do it. Ask them to do the same when they are able, and most will.

I’ve got to believe that the coming generation of humans are going to be able to find a way to live together in peace. One day in the not too distant future they will figure out that killing each other for the petty, insignificant things we are doing it for now is not productive. They are going to wonder why their forefathers ever argued over if they should care for the old and sick, or whether or not to feed and house needy people. It’s a no brainer really. The coming generation is going to be a lot smarter than we are now.

That’s my hope, and if you are at all human, it should be your hope too.

I read where Armstrong’s Barbecue restaurant had closed, and was sad.

As a young man returning to Trion in 1974, and trying to make ends meet on a very tight budget, Armstrong’s was one of the few places that Paula and I, and our little family, could afford to occasionally visit. They served a great meal for a very reasonable price.

As our family grew, on through the eighties and into the nineties, we continued to go regularly, once a week and either eat in, or get take out…depending on how things were shaping up. I stood at that outside “take out” window for many a night, and with ten or twelve dollars I could feed my family. I remember Mr. J.D., but mostly Johnny and Linda running the place. They put long hours and a lot of sweat and blood into that business.

I never got tired of that wonderful Barbecue sauce…never.

As the nineties came to an end, and our family grew up and became different family units, we kind of just quit going to Armstrong’s, except very occasionally. Their food was still good, but we seemed to always be going in different directions, finding it hard to all come together at one time in one place for a meal.

I think the last time I ate there was sometime around 2003 or so, and I think it was me and Dad and Ted. I can’t remember for sure, but I have this mental image of us sitting back in their “new” room together. I could be wrong.

Wish I’d had a way to take some photos back in those old days there. Things come and go…and even good things slip away with time. I guess that goes for people, memories and Barbecue restaurants too.