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I sometimes see the question “If you had the chance to live your life over again, would you do it?”

Of course none of us ever will….

And when I see this question, people usually qualify the answer: “Well, if I knew what I know now…” or “If I could make just a couple of changes…”

I tell you straight to the point, that I would. I’d do it again just exactly the same without changes anything one iota. I’d take the pain and heartache of burying a child, just to see her again through the nursery window.

I’d go through the agony of my parents death, just to hear their voices again. I’d let Mom hit me on the head with my bow again. I’d endure watching Porter Wagoner.

I’d wait til I was 16 again to see the Ocean for the first time. I’d rinse poop out of cloth diapers to have the chance for my baby girl to take a nap on my tummy.

I’d buy hot wheels for my boys to crush with rocks and bury under the Elm tree I planted on 9th street. I’d pick cherrys straight off the tree in the blazing Idaho summer sun for my Mother in law to can.

I’d chase lighting bugs all evening until I had a jar full, and take my turn at cranking the old ice cream machine.

I’d smell Grandpa’s pipe tobacco, and the wood smoke from the pot bellied stove. I’d listen to him cuss when I’d turn over his “spit can” I’d relish the taste of Grandma’s fried apples and homemade lard biscuits.

I’d take the two heart attacks a stent, and four bypasses and a year of recovery to see baby Eli and Rue come in the door the first time again.

I’d play countless games of hearts at the student center at West Georgia college to fall in love with my wife. I’d run off the road in a rain storm on our wedding night and double back to Dalton to a tiny little hotel room.

I would load tractor trailer loads of matresses by myself in 100+ degree weather, so I could have Saturday off to go to the baseball card show.

I would do all the stupid things again, just to do a few of the smart things. I’d take the ass chewings, and countless hours of driving out and back to work in Calhoun and Dalton just to have the hugs and the kisses from the ones I have loved, and do still love.

We will never have that chance…perhaps…depending on your philosophy, or depending on how the Universe works. Who knows really how it does work? All I can say is that the joy has vastly outshined the sadness.

Yes, I’d do it again. Unqualified and unquestioned if I could.

To the people who I have loved and who are now gone: I try and remember you as much as possible! I try and think of you each and every day! It’s not morbid to remember your loved ones and the happy memories you had with them. I think it’s theraputic. It keeps them alive in your memory. They exist there as they once existed physically here on Earth. I try not to think in a mournful way, but in honor.

And, as one song I have heard so succinctly puts it, “Even the bad times are good” We learn from the bad times how better to enjoy the good. We learn from the bad times that we are all human. There are no perfect people. Not now.

As I grow older, I am trying to leave better memories than I did when I was a younger man. I was so self absorbed, and trying always to “get ahead” and “make ends meet” How little I knew about life. How off the mark I was about what constitues happiness. I’m not sure if it’s the dwindling years, or the gathering of more tender memories with those around me. It really doesn’t matter now. What matters is that most days I remember to try and leave a memory with somebody.

I always thought the tiny house in which we used to live was a sign of not succeeding.

Now when I think back, I remember the times when everyone was packed in together. We were close. We grew closer. Three kids and their friends. Games played and meals eaten. Shows watched together in silence or in noisy celebration. Report cards reviewed, and papers written and assissted with. Research which benefited me as much as it did the primary party. Situations discussed and problems resolved…..or not. Life lived!

So, I guess it is not so bad. Not really a “sign of success or failure” My grandchildren ran and crawled the halls and drew on the walls. I don’t care. If you had looked around, you’d have seen crayon pictures hanging and momentos magnetized to the refrigerator. You’d see kids books partially filling the bookshelf’s and plastic crates full to the top with stuffed bears and letter blocks. My wife sat not eight feet away from me. I’m glad she’s that close.

So, in twenty or thirty years, or whenever, I hope I’ll have made enough memories in the heads of some of my favorite people that they might even think back and remember when I wrote a little page about it.

To the people who I have loved and who are now gone: I try and remember you as much as possible! I try and think of you each and every day! It’s not maudlin to remember your loved ones and the happy memories you had with them. I think it’s theraputic. It keeps them alive in your memory. They exist there as they once existed physically here on Earth. I try not to think in a mournful way, but in honor.

And, as one song I have heard so succinctly puts it, “Even the bad times are good” We learn from the bad times how better to enjoy the good. We learn from the bad times that we are all human. There are no perfect people. Not now.

As I grow older, I am trying to leave better memories than I did when I was a younger man. I was so self absorbed, and trying always to “get ahead” and “make ends meet” How little I knew about life. How off the mark I was about what constitues happiness. I’m not sure if it’s the dwindling years, or the gathering of more tender memories with those around me. It really doesn’t matter now. What matters is that most days I remember to try and leave a memory with somebody.

I always thought this tiny house in which we live to be a sign of not succeeding.

Now when I think back, I remember the times when everyone was packed in together. We were close. We grew closer. Three kids and their friends. Games played and meals eaten. Shows watched together in silence or in noisy celebration. Report cards reviewed, and papers written and assissted with. Research which benefited me as much as it did the primary party. Situations discussed and problems resolved…..or not. Life lived!

So, I guess it is not so bad. Not really a “sign of success or failure” My grandchildren run and crawly the halls and draw on the walls now. I don’t care. If you looked around now, you’d see crayon pictures hanging and momentos magnetized to the refrigerator. You’d see kids books partially filling the bookshelfs and plastic crates full to the top with stuffed bears and letter blocks. My wife sits not eight feet away from me. I’m glad she’s that close.

So, in twenty or thirty years, or whenever, I hope I’ll have made enough memories in the heads of some of my favorite people that they might even think back and remember when I wrote a little post about it.

I’m a gray leafless tree on an icy winters day,

Branches held out to the heavens in supplication and worship

of the light which does not shine. Which will not be found,

Expectedly.

In 1993, when I was 43 years old, my Dad was 65. Mom turned 65 in 1995 when I was 45. I was a little kid of 8 when my Grandpa S. was 65, and 14 years old when Granny S. turned 65. Daddy lived 17 more years and Mom lived 15. Grandpa lived 35 more years and Grandma lived 35 more years. Grandma Bowers/Knox lived to be 94, and Grandpa Bowers died at age 80 or 82 (unclear) in 1952….I never got to know him, and cannot even find a photo of me with him. If I make it until October I will turn 65 this year. Nothing to this post, except sitting around trying to gain a little perspective.

A false prophet can be recognized by the fact that he or she yields bad fruit — distrust, discord, confusion, wrangling, gossip, useless disputes, and divisions within the church, Jesus was very concerned about false prophets:

Mt 7:15 Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,but underneath are ravenous wolves.

Matthew 24: 4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ, and will deceive many. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

How do we tell who is a false prophet? Jesus tells us to look at the fruit:

Matthew 7: 16-20 By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.”

I Had a Dream…back in 1968

Growing up in a small town of only about 2000 people, you pretty much get to know everyone. The population of the town I live in has hovered around that number for most of the 61 years I have been alive, and I have been associated with it. The people change of course, old people die and are replaced by new babies. The babies grow up and either work at the mill, or some of them break free and go off to college and end up in other parts of the world. But still the population is about the same.

I started off in grammar school in 1956, and there were about 50 of us in the first grade. We had three classes with about 17 or 18 each in the classes. We graduated 52 people in 1968. An ultra small Senior class for sure. And 1968 doesn’t seem all that long ago to me. It’s a relatively long time ago though. I was watching the golf tournament last week and Phil Michelson won. I thought, to myself that he is getting on up there in age to win a tournament. Then, when they said he was born in 1970, I did a double take. I had a daughter born in 1970.…so I am old enough to be Phil Michelson’s Dad…ouch.

Today, I feel really old. I have done a little painting the last couple of days and it has worn me out. I thought I felt pretty well this morning, so I went about my usual things…walking around trade day etc. I thought I was pretty energetic, but I was wrong. This evening I feel like I have been dragged behind a car for a couple of miles. I used to shake these kinds of things off a few years ago like a Water Spaniel shaking off some pond water. Now, I think I am like an OLD Spaniel. Ahh, but I know 61 is not too late to get back into decent physical shape, so I am REALLY trying, losing some weight and such.

But, in any case, I was thinking about my Senior class again. We usually try to meet a couple of times a year for a meal and to rehash old times. The only thing is, the last few times we have met, we have discussed members of our graduating class who have died in between our meetings. We were, and are a close knit class. Most all of us went all the way through those twelve years together, and it’s troubling when these people who you picture as youngsters start falling by the wayside. Heart attacks, cancer, car wrecks. This can’t be happening can it?

I once had a dream back in the 60’s that I would be the LAST member of my class to be left alive. Really, I did! I can’t remember too many details about it other then the vaguest memory that I was some kind of ancient decrepit man. And I was alone. That’s the thing I remember the most about the dream, was the being alone. Now I know, dream interpreters would say I was having a dream about the teenage feelings of isolation I was going through, but I don’t know about that. How many dreams do you remember from when you were a teenager?? That’s what I thought!! I am pulling for the rest of my Senior class to live long and happy lives, with many grandchildren. That way, if the dream was true, then I am going to get over this fatigue!

Speaking of changing things, what things about your life would you change, if you could go back and change something? If you had the power to change ONE thing that happened in the past to you or to someone else because of you, what would it be?

That would be the most powerful ability any of us were ever given, if by some magic we had it bestowed upon us. I can think of several. But, the thing about the ability to change that ONE thing would be the ramifications of changing it.

I know we ALL have heard about the ripple effect. Where you throw the tiny pebble out in the middle of the still waters of a little pond, and watch the ripples spread out from where the pebble has hit. They eventually go out to the very edge of the pond itself albeit by that time they are very negligible and barely visible. But, near where the pebble has hit, they are much stronger.

I have though about things that I could have done which would have changed my life. I am not going to name them though. The fact is that what I did is what I did and it caused pain sometimes and happiness sometimes. Sometimes just to me, and sometimes to others. I would be petrified with fear to change any of these things in the past, even if I could, because I might come back to future and find that I didn’t like what I had done.

The best thing for me to do then is to make sure I make better choices in the years I have left. I would advise everyone to try and do that. You know that we can make better choices. It’s all a matter of thinking about things logically, taking the time to sort them out and not jumping into them without a lot of careful thought. Now, I am not talking about deciding what to have for supper! I don’t think that will affect us that much, unless we decide to eat Peanut butter and Banana sandwiches with Mayo, or something. What I am talking about are the decisions that have that ripple effect. The ones that can cause other people or our self’s that pain or happiness I was just talking about.

I have to be very careful, because I often open my mouth and speak before my brain has a chance to process what I am going to say. I act hastily sometimes. I act impulsively and irrationally sometimes. Why do I do all of that? Why do any of us do that? I wish I had a dollar for every time I should have kept my mouth shut, don’t you?

Along with trying to get back in to physical condition, I think I am going to try my best to treat other people the way I would want to be treated. That’s how we should do it, regardless of what anyone else might tell you. Now…if I can JUST get a good night’s sleep tonight…..

1988 was a good year for me. I went to work in February of that year for a company in Calhoun, Georgia as Quality Control Supervisor for their Dalton, Ga. plant. I was thirty eight years old that year. My kids were still all living at home, and all in school here in Trion. There was a lot going on. Paula went to work at the same company a few months later, and for the next 10 years we commuted out and back from Trion to Calhoun to work. We went out to lunch with each other pretty much every day, and saw each other quite a bit during the course of the work day. It was a really good situation for us, and a really good time, in my life.

Because we were working out of town, there was a lot of pressure on our three children to take care of themselves until we got home in the evening. Kirsten being the oldest, was designated pretty much as the “range boss” There were epic battles, but they were survived. On weekends I always tried my best to do something with the boys. We went to a lot of baseball card shows, comic book shows, and hot wheels shows. Back then, that’s how you got collectible stuff. There was no internet yet, believe it or not.

We had a lot of spaghetti and meat sauce, salmon patties, and fish sticks during those days. We eventually graduated to some different types of meals, but those three things were staples of our existence.

We started out the year with Reagan as President and ended it up with Bush Sr. It wasn’t too contentious of an election as I remember…with one of the most memorable moments being when Sen. Loyd Bentsen of Texas, who was running as V.P. told Dan Quayle that he “knew John Kennedy, and you aren’t any John Kennedy” …and he wasn’t

There was a lot of stress which came along with my job, but looking back now with 20-20 hindsight it was a great year, and led to a great decade.

I could go on and on…but maybe another day. Suffice it to say, that my mind has drifted back just a bit today and I wanted to share. Hope everyone else can remember what they were doing in 1988! (if you were around and kicking)

The Music of the If Game

If…the biggest, most awesome word ever invented.

My Dad always told me when I used “if” that “if a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt when he jumped” I guess he wouldn’t.

“If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?”

“If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway and would you have my baby?”

“If I listened long enough to you, I find a way to believe that it’s all true, knowing that you lied straight faced while I cried. Still I look to find a reason to believe”

Hundreds of songs, I’m sure….

Hundreds of quotes….. All beginning with “If”

We are all going to have hundreds of “if” moments in our lives. Those moments of choice that make a difference going forward in how we will live our lives. Moments we look back on and say: “if I had only done _____, then ______. When we make those decisions, they are made.

I’m pretty tired of playing the “if “ game in my life. I’ve done what I’ve done…sometimes until I’ve become undone! It’s a game that’s a waste of time to play.

As that intellectual group of the 60’s “The Grass Roots” once said: Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today, and don’t worry ‘bout tomorrow….

It’s a good philosophy.

Common people badly need a place, a niche in today’s America. We little people, which includes not only those who work for hourly wages, but also the retired, the disabled, and the veteran’s who fall in any of the aforementioned categories…we need a spot in America. Unfortunately it’s been being taken away for the last thirty years or so, and I see little movement on the part of our constipated government to ressurect it.

I’m not sure the “powers that be” realize that you cannot have a “body” without a middle. They may want to have an America with just a head and an ass, but without the guts and especially the heart, you have a country which will soon be DOA in a world full of sharks which have been circling us since World War II. They smell our blood in the water and they want a piece.

We haven’t had leadership in this country since the fifties or very early sixties who have had the welfare of our middle class, and so by default the welfare of our actual country at heart. They all have either been under the control of the billionaires, or trying to become billionaires themselves. I’m tired of hearing all the patriotic hogwash about some of them, and about the fake progressiveness of others. You know what I’m talking about. They all have sucked when it has come down to the brass tacks of making America work for Americans.

There are SO many balls in play in the court of mistakes made, or purposeful acts committed in order to hurt common Americans, that the Williams sisters couldn’t keep them in play. It’s time we realize, we little people, that they.. the rich and super rich, and the Wall street minions intend to enslave us. If you think I’m wrong or I’m kidding, just sit quietly somewhere for a while if you are over fifty, and think where you are now as opposed to where you used to be. Then think about how the media feeds you milktoast in the form of the Kardashians, Deflategate, the Oscars, House of Cards, HDTV, the Cooking channel, the Today show, Fox news, the Weather channel, ESPN, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Think of how they seek to divide you by keeping issues such as gay marriage, guns, religion, abortion, and wars always in the forefront while never mentioning how 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth. As long as they have that power they don’t give a crap about anything else…period. Listen to Robert Reich, that inequality gap really is the issue.

I for one hate being manipulated and even sometimes falling for the manipulation.

America is lagging behind the rest of the world in so many important areas that it is shameful. Other countries take care and revere their elderly. We put them away, and allow the system to bleed them dry to the point of poverty before they die. We produce High School and College graduates who have NO practical knowledge about what it takes to really function.

So, I guess I’m just fed up with being fed up tonight. I’m touching on unpopular areas which people would rather not think about. Unfriend me if you can’t stand to hear it because I’m probably just getting started. Somebody, somewhere has to piss people off in order to get them to pay attention and perhaps…just maybe begin to participate in taking our country, the little people’s country, the hourly worker’s country, the disenfranchised veteran’s country, the honest teacher’s country, the former manufacturing worker’s country, the small three bedroom house owner’s country, the hunter and fisherman’s country, the small farmer’s country. Maybe if we work together and forget about some of this manure they are trying to use to divide us…maybe we middle class Americans can make a come back.

I swear I hope so…and my apologies in advance for rambling, preaching and blowing off steam.

COAL- My life story in a few paragraphs…..and in relationship to coal….

I have lived, up until this past year,…and for the short number of years I was away at college, I had lived in a little Cotton mill town all of my life. It was a great place to grow up, with regards to my own personal situation. A wonderful place really. But, things change. Things go unnoticed by most people if they don’t pay close attention to what goes on.

I know when Paula and I first moved back to Trion in 1974, we moved into a little house on Ninth street. The first 10 years or so after we moved back were “thin” years. We got by….we did get by, but on a lot less than most people would ever think or know. Our dinners were populated with a lot of fish sticks, creamed chipped beef, tuna casserole, spaghetti, and salmon patties. Now, don’t get me wrong. I still like most of those things. I still fix them from time to time. Brings back old, good memories.

One of the things about living in a cotton mill town is smoke. As I previously mentioned, we moved back to Trion to 9th street, which had always been know as “Smokey row” or smokey road. The reason it was given that title was because it was the street that led right to the mill, which was only a block away. Actually, the “back end” of the mill, where the boilers and power generators were located was only a few hundred yards from our house. When they were burning coal, hard and strong back in 1974, we couldn’t leave the windows open for a breath of fresh air at night. If we did, we would wake up the next morning with a coating of fine black dust and tiny black coal crystals covering the areas inside the house near the windows.

Of course this was nothing really new to me, having grown up near that mill. We had never lived out of sight of those gigantic tall smoke stacks at any point during my childhood. Simmons street and eighth street had been our homes and you could see the smoke stacks from both places. You could hear the “work whistle” as it blew at 20 minutes before the hour, and the hour itself at 8 a.m., 4 p.m., and 12 a.m., for all the shifts. Many times those smoke stacks would be belching out smoke. Sometimes white. Sometimes gray and sometimes black…especially when the stacks were being “blown out” As a child, I don’t remember it being as “nasty” as it was in the 70’s. Perhaps there was a reason for that. As I recall, we could go by the big coal stack as kids, and the coal was actually beautiful. Large, shiny, almost obsidian looking pieces lay all around the coal pile. I collected some of them as a kid, and took them home. You could rub your hands on this stuff and you would get very little, if any, black on them. It also burned very clean. It was what they called Anthracite coal.

You see, back in the fifties, a lot of things were still being made in America. Riegel Textile had a lot of high end goods. Baby blankets, and cloth being made into all kinds of wonderful products. Government contracts making cloth for the DOD. Riegel had one of the best dye houses in the country, with men dying cloth who could make it look like almost anything. None of these people had been betrayed…yet. And times were pretty good in that small town, at that time, for those people. Not so much for some people in other places, but for those people…at that time, the fifties, the early sixties…perhaps even into the late sixties, things were good.

Jobs hadn’t been farmed out to China and India, or Vietnam and Mexico yet by the owners of the businesses, the soon to be millionaire and billionaire traitors who traded American jobs for money in their pockets. Some of the people who are still around today, and who still have that money. Some of the people….

By the seventies, I believe they were using Bituminous coal. The dye house was gone, and Riegel Textile had turned into Mt. Vernon mills. The big thing that was keeping the mill going, and the jobs there was denim. Blue denim. My Daddy and some more hard working men at that mill had gotten the mill switched over from running the cloth of the fifties, and the owners had switched the business model around to suit the fashions of the times. Everybody needed blue jeans, and things made from denim, and they were making the best denim in the world at that mill, at that time. When I went to work for them, and they were burning that Bituminous coal, and all I had to do was walk down the street to the mill, they were running seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 364 days a year. We got Christmas day off. They were making BIG money on denim, and they were taking advantage of it while they could. I can’t blame them. But I didn’t fit in that environment, like my Daddy and his Daddy had for so many years. I left working there in 1978 after four years of that seven days a week stuff. I never went back…except for a ultra short stent in the 90’s. But that’s another story for another day. Denim rocked on for quite a few years after I had gone. I continued to live in Trion, and work out of town. But I paid attention to the smoke stacks, and the coal. If you’ve been following me for very long on Facebook, you have seen some of my photos of those stacks. I may just attach one to this post if I can find one.

Now, the last time I looked at the railroad cars that were coming into the mill at Trion, the last time, before I moved out of town…before I stopped walking that little town and left for other places, that last time I looked they were using Lignite. The lowest grade of coal, the cheapest and the kind which burns the dirtiest. Denim was not king anymore and business was again changing. Some jobs had gone other places, outside the United States. But, some of them stayed, and they have stayed, and they still stay. And I admire them for that. One of the very few who could keep some jobs here, in the face of all the change, and all of the pressure of the years, and all of the temptations to put profit totally over location. They didn’t give raises, they hired the folks coming from down South, but they have kept the doors open. And they are still open, but things are not the same…and they will never be the same. From Anthracite to Bituminous to Lignite. The story of our country in coal. It’s just a story though, and I’m a poor story teller. I have not solutions. I offer no advice. It is what it is, and it will never be the same. And that’s the shame of it….that’s the shame..