Writing for Sanity's Sake

The exhibit by Mother Nature this morning, or…by God, whichever you choose, is glorious. The pollen is not quite stirring as strongly yet so I was able to take deep breaths of wonderfully fresh and cool air into my lungs. The dogwood tree in my front yard is in full bloom and so white that it nearly mirrors the snow from this past winter, the blooms are large and almost fluorescent.

The large red headed woodpecker which lives the Oak tree in the front of the house is slamming his head into a rotten branch and enjoying his breakfast. The other birds are singing a Sunday song of happiness to go along with Mr. Woodpeckers drumming and it becomes an orchestra of nature which no human band could ever replicate.

The sunrise is pink and purple, peeking up over Taylor’s ridge into our little valley saying “Howdy, how are ya?” I can almost hear my Dad’s voice from these same spring mornings years and years ago: “Rise and shine” he would shout. “Rise and shine.”

Well I have risen this morning, and as always I am optimistic as a new day is born that it will be better than the one before it. Who knows how I will feel about it, when Mr. Sun has made is entire journey across the sky tonight? I hope I am still optimistic. I hope all of my friends will find a sense of optimism today. I hope we will all find a renewed sense of giving today, and will act upon that sense of giving and help someone who needs helping. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful gift to give to go along with this wonderful gift of a day we have been given? I think so.

Sitting there watching Sergio Garcia finally win the Masters on Sunday, I like to remember back to my High School years and all of the times which I won that tournament. It was many times, as I remember….

I switched from baseball to golf after I had a knee injury while playing baseball. Old Doc Clemens wanted me to walk…even while I still had a cast on my injured left knee. My Dad liked golf, so he bought me a set of “Kroyden” golf clubs from one of the supervisors he knew at the mill. It was minus a 3 iron…which had gotten wrapped around a tree. Thinking back, I guess that’s why he got them so cheaply. The guy was giving up the sport. I still have the nine iron from that set. I used it for years and years around the greens. I chipped a lot of balls in the hole with that club. I won the Masters a couple of times with it.

I had a hole in one on number four at the Trion golf course once. It was, however, a two. I was playing with old friend of mine Steve Hammonds. I lined up that five iron and took a mighty first swing…..and…whiffed the ball. Totally missed it. I tried to play it off as a practice swing, but Hammond wouldn’t let me. I changed clubs to a four iron and swung a little more gently and the ball took one hop and bounced right into the hole. “Hole in one” I yelled. “No, said Steve…it’s a two” Ah well, at least it was a birdie. The only hole in one in all my years of playing and it would have to be a two!

Being a solitary soul, I played many rounds alone. Those were the “majors” for me. I can’t tell you all the amazing shots which I made, all of the commentary from the announcers. (I didn’t know who they were back then…but they later turned into the voices of Pat Summerall and Ken Venturi) I made up all the acceptance speeches, held all of the “loving” cups with my name engraved into them. I won the “grand slam” many times over.

The golf course was my home away from home. I worked at the “pro shop” for a couple of years and learned a lot of neat new words from all of the older golfers, as the shop was just off of the first tee at Trion…with the river running right next to the fairway on the right. My friend Michael Brown and I dove into that muddy mess after a lot of tournaments and felt in the “gunk” with our hands, often coming up with dozens of balls which had found their way into the “wet” I mowed around the roughs and sloughs. (Lamar would NEVER trust me to mow the fairways or the greens) I caddied for the guys from Ware Shoals S.C., when they came down for their yearly match with the Trion supervisors. They paid better, especially as a caddy AND a player, I knew the course well.

My best tournament I ever played (with the exceptions of those imaginary ones) was in my Senior year at Trion High. There was a Fall tournament…a “Jaycees” tournament for the youth of the community. It was divided by age and I was in the “fourteen and over” group. I played excellent and consistent during this 27 hole day long affair. I had three 37’s for 111. Three over par. Some of the best golf I have ever played. The air was crisp and leaves were already starting to turn. The sun was gorgeous and temperature just loomed in the 70’s. The golf course was in immaculate condition. As I walked up onto the old clubhouse steps after my last round I just knew that I was going to finally get that trophy I wanted do badly. It would make up for losing the Region tournament low medalist by hitting my ball inside a 55 gallon trash can. I knew I could beat all the kids around town with my score. I hadn’t counted on an outsider from Savannah coming up and playing and shooting a final round 33 to post a 108 and win our age group. His Daddy Tommy had been pro at the Trion golf course some years back. Kid’s name was Andy Bean. He did go on to win a lot of money on the PGA tour…but that wasn’t any consolation to me at the time.

I haven’t played a round of golf since about 2004 or 2005. I think about playing from time to time but just don’t get out there and do it. Perhaps I’ll go play a round by myself someday soon just to get back into the “swing” of it. I can hear Pat Summerall’s voice now….”and Bowers chips the ball into the hole on the 18th, winning the 1975 Masters” Ahh the memories..both real and imagined.

It’s been a few days since I have walked around town, but I hope to go in the morning.

I need the fresh air to fill my lungs and reinvigorate my blood. I need the sunrise to refresh my spirit as it’s first rays peep over the crest of the ridge.

I need the solitude in order for my brain to reset itself.

More and more time is a blur, similar to standing next to the road very closely while a huge long bus passes by so very close….you can feel the whoosh of the air and brace yourself against the vacuum it creates as it tries to pull you into the road, under it’s wheels.

You feel like you are at fate’s carnival, watching the grim reaper throw darts at the balloons on the big backboard of life, trying to hit somebody’s brightly coloured existence and end it. He broke one of my high school classmates earlier this week. It got my brain to spinning thinking about that loss.

He’s relentless and random, that Father time. Doesn’t care a whit for any of us, rich or poor, low or high.

So I hope to go walk tomorrow and feel the wind on my face, and smell the grass people were out cutting today. I hope to see a hawk or a woodpecker, and smell bacon cooking. I know I’ll hear the local dogs barking but I won’t care. I’ll be busy living life and loving it.

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We are the gatherers of our experiences, no matter if we initiate them or if they are initiated by others, and through us, I believe God is able to experience all of that sum of those experiences. We believe in a creator who is all knowing, all seeing and all powerful…but that is not to say that our creator has experienced all things. If you are the author of a fictional novel, it is much different than if you are the author of a biography.

Sometimes the most beautiful things in the world are never heard or seen by other humans. There are rare times, when you stumble across them accidentally and they are so fleeting and unique that they can never be replicated.

I have written many times about my Grandfather, and how as a child I used to sit on the porch of his old house and watch and listen as he played his banjo. It’s one of my best memories.

The other day, one day this week, I was walking my regular route through town. It takes me past one of the town’s unusual resident’s house. He’s a man a little older than me who lives up on the hill behind the ballpark. He’s different. I was rounding the curve in the hill when I heard it…the banjo playing. But it was not just ANY old banjo playing. This was the Flat and Scruggs kind of banjo playing. This was blue grass roots. This was great playing. This playing made the leaves swirl in little circles in the air, and the needles of the pines lean in closer to hear.

At first I thought it was a professional recording, but then realized it was coming from the little white house on the hill with the name “Earp” on the mailbox. It was somebody playing live. Probably…most probably it was V.W. Earp, that different little man who lives there alone. I stopped there and eavesdropped on this playing. I don’t know what song it was. It didn’t matter. It was heavenly. Complicated, fast. The type of playing you wish you could do if you were a pro. I moved on reluctantly after five minutes, finishing my walk. I shook my head in wonder at the savant like talent of this man.

I had seen some of the other things he had done in the past. My good trade day friend, one of the Webb twins, (I can’t remember if it was Ronald or Donald) showed me a design that V.W. had drawn. It was a complicated and quite logical drawing of how to stop the flooding on the Chattooga River. I guess V.W. had given this to him some time back. It looked like something that Leonardo da Vinci might have done. It was a crude, but at the same time a simple and brilliant plan. Of course, nobody took it seriously. I wonder if it would have worked.

I think the Webb boys have a weekly “shack picking and playing” session somewhere, (don’t know for sure…never been invited to come!) I hope V.W. shows up there sometimes. It would be a shame for nobody else to ever hear that gorgeous music. I wonder if he has many friends. I see him out and about his house with his little white dog following him and I throw up my hand and say “hey” I’ve run into him at the local grocery store and talked with him for a few minutes at a time. Conversations which are strange and disjointed, but at the same time very interesting.

I marvel at people like this. I knew Mr. Earp was an unusual man. I grew up around him and his brother and I knew his father, but I can’t begin to comprehend this person. This outlandish “character” who on the outside is so incomprehensible to “normal” people, but who on the inside is such a talent and has such a tremendous intellect. A person who because of his eccentricities has a problem finding outlets for his talents, which will fit nicely into our societal norms. If you act a little different no matter if you cannot help it, it’s hard for people to take you seriously sometimes. There’s no doubt about it. Nowadays in schools perhaps things would develop differently. Back in our day in school… There just weren’t things available.

I’m glad I know this man and I’m glad I took that five minutes to listen to his music. I will always remember it.

…suppose all of the women who were ever burned at the stake as witches, or for heresy, were to rise in anger from their graves and seek revenge on the descendants of those who murdered them or caused them to be killed?

…or all of the ghosts of the Shamans and Elders, and the Chiefs of all the first people who lived in the Americas were to magically become zombies, like the ones in “the Walking Dead” and seek retribution for the diseases which decimated them, or the soldiers who cut down their woman and children left alone in their villages.

…imagine the fear which would reign if the spirits of all the lynched Negros, all of the abused and tortured slaves, could haunt the dreams of the offspring of those who caused their terrible and awful abuse.

..what if the Earth itself is silently plotting our demise because of all that we have done to harm her? The scars we have permanently left upon the land, and the species which no longer exist…many simply because they got in our way, or because we could easily exploit and manipulate them. Many died due to our greed.

why are we like this? At what point in human history did we decide that treating other humans as animals was ok, and that treating animals like dirt was our “right”, and that treating our home like it is disposable is even remotely wise? Why do those of us who do not want these things to be so, give power to those who have no soul?

I believe that people who care about not letting the terrible things which have plagued our history happen again, should exercise our right to treat those who would do them as criminals and outcasts not as leaders. We don’t need destroyers as leaders, we need builders of consensus and cooperation. We need people of compassion and love.

Can we find them soon enough?

I look to the future generations and hope. I look to the babies who are crawling and toddling for wisdom. I dream of technology which is yet to come for assistance.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” This is our “season” If you wake up this morning and are still walking on the earth, then it’s your season. You can choose what to do with it. Will you gripe about something you can’t do anything about? Will you say something kind to someone you don’t know? Can we accomplish something worthwhile today, no matter how small it may seem? Can we be careful about what comes out of our mouth, and make sure we don’t “cut” somebody with words? Solomon was a wise man, and throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, he puzzles about the meaning of life and comes to some pretty sad conclusions about people. Let’s try and prove him wrong.

I’ve been going to Trade day for many, many years and have never personally witnessed the type of racially hateful talk which erupted there today between members of two different races.

The fact that it could get to the point where I was afraid that guns could be drawn over such ugliness as I personally witnessed, speaks volumes about the current atmosphere of our country, much of which I firmly believe has been instigated by the rhetoric of one man, and which was confirmed by what I overheard one of the parties involved telling another person later on.

This is America, and you can say what you want…ok. But if you loudly proclaim your hatred for ALL to hear, it cannot be construed as a “private” conversation, and you may reap the consequences of what you sew, for some people cannot close their ears and just walk on by ….because they consider it a challenge to their sensibilities.

I felt depressed and out of sorts the rest of the day, because usually the flea market is a place I enjoy. I will have to say that I will give the parties involved a wide berth, and a heavy dose of disdain from here forward.

When I was a little kid one of my worse worries was that I would “die young”.

I learned too much about death at too young an age, or at least I was conditioned to fear death. Death was bad. The ultimate separation from those you love, the final farewell to those things in this world with which we become familiar and comfortable.

My religious upbringing didn’t really lend much comfort in many ways either. I was taught about hell, and how I would be going there to burn for eternity if I didn’t repent of my sins. The problem was, this was imprinted on me so early in life. Eight, nine, ten years old. Happy potential childhood became scary times of ultimate decision making. In my opinion that kind of pressure, that kind of tactic…is unfair to young children, and I now reject scaring little kids with the visions of a ghastly hell in order to “bring them to Jesus”. If a person is going to follow that path, they will follow the light…not the dark. But…all that aside.

I think I missed my appointment with an “early” death at age 49, with heart attack number one, and again at 60 with heart attack number 2, and quad bypass surgery. Being sixty six and a half now, I am no longer young in years, although I feel better now than I did twenty years ago.

Age 46 was when nurse Betty Stone drew a vial of blood from my veins, and then called me to her office later on to show me the layer of fat…triglycerides..which were floating on top. My reading was over 1000. Genetics…my Dr. said, and gave me pills…which I still faithfully take. But, even so, I have lasted longer than I thought. Longer than a number of my classmates with whom I graduated. I think about them at times, and wonder why. I’m guessing it’s just the tide of life, which carries some of us further in its foamy wake than others. That’s all.

The other night I dreamed about my Grandpa Jervis. That doesn’t happen often. He and I were driving around hunting bargains at yards sales, and got lost. I was concerned, but he just said: “keep on driving and you’ll eventually come to somewhere you know”. And we did in the dream. We ended up on Rossville boulevard. (Who knows with dreams? You just gotta go with the flow).

All I know now is that every day I wake up is a good day. As the old song says: “Even the bad times are good”. I’ve had a good life, good family and mostly good friends. So, I’m just going to keep on driving, until I get to where I’m going, or at least come to somewhere I know. And when the tide of life deposits me there, I will know….many things, or perhaps none…what will matter will not be the date and time of that arrival, but the fun and quality of the trip.

Thanks old Grandpa, for the advice, and the cameo appearance in my dream.

When I was a very small child we made frequent trips to my Grandparents house in Blue Ridge, Ga. It was “out in the sticks” as people might now say. The road was dirt the last 10 miles or so, and you couldn’t ride too close behind another car during the dusty, hot days of Summer if you wanted to be able to see the curves in that narrow little path they called a road.

The chickens were running around in the yard to greet us when we arrived, and I knew from experience that we would be going to bed at the same time they did. Grandpa didn’t have a TV back then, and he did not like the thoughts of an electric bill of over 10 dollars. So, it was light’s out after sundown and straight to bed. I usually brought comic books to read by flashlight…after I learned to read.

The most common activities during the weekend, besides reading would be swinging in the front porch swing during rain showers, and playing in the creek if it was sunny. I’d hunt under rocks for crawdads and spring lizards. When I got a little older, we’d use the lizards for bass fishing.

We’d visit, be visited, and generally socialize with the Aunts and Uncles, and we first cousins would play with each other. The older ones would ignore the younger ones, and we younger ones would make up stuff to do. We had no electronic gadgets with which to pass the time. I used to think how boring it all was, and how..slow..time…passed.

Now that I’m 65, I’m glad my memory is good enough to remember some of it, and I wish time would make a turn around and seem to pass that slowly now. I guess people rarely appreciate anything which happens to them “in the moment” My advice to anyone would be to try.

There is only one Earth, and as far as I know we are all passengers on it…or in it.

I am sure that our ancestors thought the resources of the Earth were everlasting. I am sure that our ancestors thought that there was nothing which they…tiny inhabitants of this giant world…could do to affect the Earth. In 1700 there was only 600 million people inhabiting the Earth. We didn’t hit 1 billion people on the Earth until sometime around the American Civil War era.

Now we have somewhere around 7.5 billion people as passengers on this planet.

Every piece of plastic which was ever made still exists somewhere on the Earth. A lot of it resides in the Oceans of the world. If you go down to the beach, you will see some of it…I guarantee you. As large as the oceans our world are, they are becoming gigantic trash receptacles for human waste of all manner and description.

Six years ago in March, a huge earthquake hit Japan. It damaged a nuclear power plant near Fukishima, which had a partial meltdown. Since then 80% of the nuclear material which spilled from that plant has gone into the Pacific ocean. Forget about the hundreds of thousands of tons of “junk” which has washed up on the shores of Alaska. That’s going to be minor compared to the damage to the ecosystem which that radiation, which continues to spill into the Pacific ocean, is going to do to our ecosystem. Try to comprehend that there are 450 or so nuclear plants spread around the world. The majority of them are very near water….the ocean…major rivers, inland seas. Let that sink in.

Did you know that the majority of the Earth’s atmosphere is only ten miles thick? Did you know that extreme changes have taken place in that 10 miles of atmosphere which is absolutely essential to the life of every creature on this planet since the “Industrial revolution” back in the 1700’s. Our climate is changing, and quickly, due to the amounts of carbon dioxide which is flowing into our atmosphere. Global warming is caused primarily from putting too much carbon into the atmosphere when coal, gas, and oil are burned to generate electricity or to run our cars. These gases spread around the planet like a blanket, capturing the solar heat that would otherwise be radiated out into space. It’s really just that simple. It’s science. Lot’s of people deny this is happening, but the numbers say it is. The Earth doesn’t like it.

I could go on..and on…and on..but you get the point by now, hopefully.

Last year when we moved to our new home, the area out behind our house was a jungle! There were vines, briers, honeysuckle, scrub bushes, etc., so thick that you couldn’t even get through it. During this winter, I have cut almost all of that jungle out. I have slashed it, and raked it, and cut it and piled it up. There’s no jungle there anymore, and over the past week I have seen rabbits, squirrels, birds and other animals out in that area eating. There are “wild carrots” coming up, with their tender shoots and the rabbits love them. There are earthworms crawling out and the robins love them.

The Earth didn’t mind me doing that little “rearranging” of her surface. The fact that new and wonderful things are already beginning to peep out into the world shows gratitude. The Earth says: “thank you” if you do the right thing.

I wish people would do the right thing. I wish there was no such thing as “fracking” which is quite simply, only a money making scheme for people who are in that industry. Read this comment from a recent post from Senator Bernie Sanders concerning the recent changes in climate policy by our government. It comes from a lady who made a comment on Senator Sander’s post. She’s talking about why they are still fracking: ”

I don’t think they actually don’t believe it. I think they don’t care. And a majority of the people in Texas and Louisiana I know that are “deniers” are just afraid that all the oil field guys will lose their jobs if fracking is shut down. It’s not that they don’t believe it’s bad for our environment. My husband was a line boss for Halliburton and he even says it’s horrible. People can’t even imagine the money made from fracking. It’s uncountable. And that’s what matters to most Republicans. Money. I’m not even a Democrat but I do believe that. Whatever will keep all their business money safe is what wins. Screw anyone else and the Earth for our descendants.”

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? It’s all about the money for the current passengers on “Spaceship Earth” and screw our descendants. I hate to think about it, but that’s pretty much it.

There is only one Earth, and as far as I know we are all passengers on it…or in it. And when it’s gone, we are gone…all of us, all of our descendants, all of life which exists on this planet. All gone.

Mull it over for a while, and decide if some of the things which we think are absolutely necessary for life, really are.