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Guns And Country.

I have watched my television many times over the past decade and have wept.

I have seen the instances where people have been shot and killed repeated over, and over and over again. There have been so many instances of this type of thing happening that without looking them up in order to list them, I could not begin to remember them all. That’s a pity isn’t it? You live in a country where horrendous instances of murder happen so often, that you can’t remember them all. You go from one of these instances to the other, knowing that there will always be a next time. You and your family weren’t involved this time, “thank God”, but you may be the next time. Eventually, you or someone in your family, or someone in your extended family will be involved. It’s just a matter of time. They may have already been, and if that’s the case, I’m very sorry.

Now, the way our country’s mindset is fixed, and because there doesn’t seem to be any willingness to even explore the reasons why these murders are happening, or do any meaningful research into any solutions, we are living in the new normal for our country. Mass murders due to shootings are going to continue, as far as I can see, forever.

It’s to the point where I feel like many of us, who would like for something to change, have been dropped in the middle of a river with a very strong current. You swim against the current with all your might, for so long….trying and trying to keep that rush of water from sweeping you away…but finally, it’s too much for you and you give up and let the current take you. I’ve let it take me, for this will be the last time I ever take up “pen and paper” and say anything about this particular situation. I can promise you that. It’s very, very rare anymore that I even write anything at all having to do with current events.

Some say all of these murders are done by evil people. It’s a good versus evil thing. A religious or existential crisis. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that’s the case. Some say it’s mental illness, and that we need to do more to combat that situation. Well, that’s not going to happen either. My personal opinion is that we, our country, has been maneuvered by the greed and money which is being doled out by the NRA and other groups which are making a profit by selling so many guns and so much other stuff which goes with them….we have been maneuvered into a gun culture, in which guns have become a necessary and even desirable idol.

Evil people can get whatever they want, and mentally ill people can too. Even convicted felons can get whatever they want.

I know many, if not most will disagree, and that’s ok. I expect that. I accept that. You have your opinion, and I have mine, and this is my opinion.

I have nothing against guns. I grew up hunting and shooting guns. We had shotguns, some rifles. My Dad owned a couple of pistols later on in his life, after he was threatened by some people at the place where he worked. I understood that. I understand people wanting to own guns for personal protection.
I have absolutely no problems with that. I actually think that it is a person’s right, under our constitution to be able to own a gun if you want to own one. Own as many as you want. After all, this is America….or at least this is the America which we now have. I’m not sure why people would want to own weapons which were invented for the one and only purpose of killing people though. Maybe someone else knows the reason for that. I don’t.

My problem with the situation, is that our political system is so skewed, that we are unable to even have a conversation about changing something….something…..in order to keep half a church full of people from being murdered. An eighteen month old baby, being murdered, along with his entire family. Twenty six and seven year old children being murdered at Sandy Hook. Fifty seven people at a country music concert in Las Vegas. And on and on. I can’t list them all. Like I said, I can’t even remember them all.

We go along for a few weeks and move on from one of these events to the next just as soon as the next one happens. We file them away in the back of our minds and go on with our lives. I guess that’s really the only thing we can do.

But, it is always said: “It’s too soon to talk about it” When will the time be good to talk about it? Are we even willing to talk about it?

A lot of people out there in Facebook land hate and despise me for things I have written in the past. A lot of people will do that this time because I am touching on this very touchy and emotional subject. But, we need to talk about it. We need to talk about it in a calm and peaceful manner to see if there is anything which can be done. Are there any compromises?

Thoughts and prayers don’t seem to be working, and I’m so very tired of crying over the deaths of people when I see it on the news.

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December 2010

I reflect upon this life of mine seven years ago. Daddy had died on May 22 of 2010. Momma was sick and was barely communicating. I was still working second shift in Calhoun. I felt fatigued, and had no energy. I attributed it to lack of sleep. After all, I’d had a heart test earlier in the summer which showed that my arteries were as they should be. I was OK….so I thought.
On my birthday in 2010, I turned 60 years old.  My Mom would pass away less than two months later on December 10th.  She had a very small and sparsely attended funeral.  I sang “Silent Night” at her funeral and felt completely out of breath at the end of it.  I thought it was simply the situation.  Grief….compounded grief.  Sadness left over from my Dad’s death only seven months earlier stacked up underneath the deep sadness from my Mother’s death.  2010 was not a banner year.  As a matter of fact, I remember very little from that year.  December 19, 2010 was the day when I found out I was not just “fatigued and had no energy” I had gone to the E.R. in Rome three days earlier with chest pains, and they checked me out and sent me back home.  Three days later, I was back with more chest pains.  This time, they decided to check closer, and eventually found out the main artery in my heart, along with three other arteries, were 99% blocked.
They scheduled me for surgery on December 21, 2010.  My oldest sons birthday.
I looked back at a couple of my Facebook posts from December and I had been complaining….as I always do, I suppose:
December 4, 2010-  I never thought my life would come down to a choice of sleep deprivation or heat exhaustion. I am not sure which one is worse, just like I am not sure which part of this old body is wearing out the quickest. I think it’s a tie between the ankles and the back!
December 3, 2010-  I’m so tired, my mind is on the blink,
I’m so tired, I think I’ll have another drink…..
November 30, 2010-  Have been feeling under the weather today, and it wasn’t the weather that was making me feel that way! Hoping tomorrow is better.
It’s my advice to always listen to what your body is telling you, not matter if the Doctors are telling you the same thing or not.  In any case, I went into the operating room the morning of December 21st with the feeling that I would just die in the operating room and not come back.  I’ve really never expressed that before.  I was trying to be as positive as possible for all my family, who incidentally were all there that morning.  But, I was wrong.  My gut feeling was incorrect.  My surgeons were good, my luck was good, my time wasn’t up.  I came back out of the operating room sometime that afternoon and went into the CCU.  I knew I was alive because it wasn’t possible to be in so much pain if you were dead.
And so…..the very second I realized I was still in the land of the living, I was glad.  I was so very glad.
My premonition had been that I would go to sleep and never wake up on that December day.  I’m glad my premonition was wrong, because so many wonderful things have happened since that day.
Three wonderful new grandchildren have come into our lives since that day, ones I would have never known about or been able to love.
I have been able to watch my “older” grandchildren graduate from High School and move on to college and their adult lives.
So many good things have happened to me, that I cannot count them all.  I won’t even try.  I will just accept that things happen the way they happen for a reason, and that reason is beyond me….is beyond all of us really.
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#2 Pencils and Blue Horse paper

 

book

Tonight the air has a bit of coolness to it. It’s the week before the first of September.

The first week of September. Traditionally, when I was a kid, this was the first week of school.

I know that nowadays the kids go back early. By now they have been back for a couple of weeks. They already are doing their homework, the band is practicing for the first football game. Humdrum has set in and they are already looking forward to Fall break. But, things weren’t always that way.

The week before school started back….in the fifties, and especially the sixties, was my second favorite time of the year, right behind Christmas week.

Baseball season was long over, and the dog days of summer with their ninety degree days were starting to subside. Boy, was I glad!

What started out on May 31 as enthusiasm for a long break from the regimen of learning, ended up as loneliness by the middle of August. I’d read all my comic books two or three times each. I’d listened to all my 45’s over and over, until I knew all the words to all the Elvis songs by heart. Even “Just Tell her Jim said Hello”.

I was stuck in the house listening to my Mother tell me all the things she needed me to do over and over and over….

So, when the last week of August rolled around and Daddy asked me if I wanted to go pick up some school supplies, I was ecstatic.  School was starting back!  It was for real and not a drill!  Soon, I’d get to see all my friends again, get into a comfortable daily routine, and get out of the house for 8 hours every day.  Don’t tell anybody, but I really loved school.  I know that’s weird, but I did

There were no Walmart’s back then, so it necessitated a trip to Sears and Roebucks in Rome.  Daddy always liked going there anyway to look at shotguns and such, and Mom liked it because they had a large inventory of clothing back in those days. Back then Sears and Roebuck was the equivalent to a shopping mall all rolled in to one store, and if they didn’t have it in the store, you could order anything, and I do mean anything, from their gigantic catalog.  That regular Sears catalog weighed about 12 pounds, and was 6 inches thick.  I never liked the regular catalogs, but oh the Christmas catalog!  When they sent that wonderful, gorgeous Wish book out sometime in late October, I could spend hours upon hours gazing lovingly and longingly at all the treasures it contained.  Somewhere, packed away now, I have a 1963 Sears Christmas catalog that I bought some years back at Trade day.  I sincerely wish I could find it and thumb through it again.  Ah…the memories.

But, back to school supplies.

When I first started to school back in the fifties, we were instructed that we need yellow #2 pencils and “wide rule” notebook paper.  My Daddy would buy several packs of the yellow pencils.  In the depths of my memory, I think the pencils were made by Dixon Ticonderoga.

The pencils we had in the first through the fourth grade were excellent pencils.  It seems like one of those fine deep canary yellow instruments would last a month, and the graphite was extremely hard to break.  This would have been 1955-1958. After thinking about it a little bit, I looked it up and found out that they hand made the pencils up until 1958, when they started “mass producing” them.  Well, there ya’ go.  After the fourth grade, I went through a pencil a week, sometimes one a day.  You could sharpen one of the mass produced pencils in one of those super sharp grinding sharpeners, which hung on the walls in all the rooms and sometimes you had to sharpen them three or four times to get down to some lead that wasn’t already broken.  I trace the decline in American education and the reputation of American made goods being superior to all others, back to those pencils!

I found a package of old Dixon-Ticonderoga pencils at Trade day a few months back, which came from the early 1950’s.  I’m saving them for the apocalypse…if and when it gets here.

pencils

Of course, being kids, we would eventually “push the envelope” in our later years in grammar school and use the frown upon #3 leaded pencils, and even….sin of sins…would sometimes use the #4’s if the teachers didn’t notice.  That graphite in those pencils was as hard as a rock, and the subsequent handwriting on the paper was very light!  I remember one of our seventh grade teachers swearing that we were trying to make her go blind straining to read our papers.  Most teachers simply outlawed the use of the lighter pencils for any school work.

Along with the good old yellow #2 pencil, there was “Blue Horse” notebook paper.

Being from Georgia, we were inundated by Blue Horse products, because the manufacturer, Montag was in Atlanta.  Blue Horse had one of the neatest marketing ploys ever!  There was a picture of the Blue horse on every package of paper you bought from Montag, worth a certain number of points.  You would cut the little blue horse out, and save it, until you got enough points to send them off and redeem them for a prize!  Back in early 50’s, Montag put out a price paper that had “over 50,000 prizes for all you girls and boys”  Those prizes ran the gambit from a tiny little beanie (which I finally saved enough points to get one year) all the way to the “horse head” blue horse bicycle for the top rewards gatherer.  Schools also would get money for students sending in premiums for prizes to Montag.  As you can imagine, the blue horse brand of paper was quite popular in the 50’s and 60’s with both student and school.  I remember kids going around and begging and bullying to get those blue horse heads!  I hid mine until I had enough to get that beanie.  It was a piece of junk that fell apart in a couple of weeks.  Quite a disappointment.  But it was good paper, and you could count on it to fit into almost any notebook, because of the way they punched the holes.  The paper sold for a nickel a pack and contained about 25 5-hole punched sheets, allowing it to be conveniently placed in either 2 or 3 ringed binders.

blue horse

Later on, they also sold wire ringed notebooks with some really hard colored cardboard on both sides of the paper.  Those things lasted practically forever!  I remember keeping a really thick one of those notebooks all the way from the 8th grade to my Senior year, in which to keep my personal notes and other things, such as doodles, drawings, poetry and genealogy notes.  I kept that notebook for many, many years….right on up until somewhere in the late 70’s to mid 1980’s before it fell to the wayside somewhere.  It might still be lurking around somewhere in a box in my storage building or somewhere else quite obscure.  I wish it would turn up, because I know there are some great memories hidden inside.

 

 

 

 

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2006 Insanity

I think I had an episode of near insanity today at work.  I think it was due to what I was doing at the time. Because it’s all so absurd!  I was standing there this afternoon in this clerk’s office talking about doing DCR’s on CAR’s, and all that kind of stuff (and if you know what I am talking about….poor you!) and then I thought, this is crazy!

What has humanity come to when we place such importance on doing documents on how to produce rugs at the optimum quality to go into people’s bathrooms?  Not only documents, but entire Manuals, thick manuals at that!   Heck, the first time somebody puts them down, they just gonna get pee’d on by their six-year-old.  It was so stupid, and hit me with such a weird feeling that I  had to physically grab hold of the desk where I was sitting to keep from jumping up and  running down the hallway howling and whooping at the top of my lungs.  (I restrained myself, however)  It was a surreal experience.  I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone almost and that I was not really real, but just living in a kind of strange and hideous netherworld.  I hope I never feel that way again, honestly!  It was disconcerting.

Back in my Grandparents time, people worked the land for their food.  They had cows and chickens and other animals to help provide what their family needed.  Grandma made most of the clothes, and a lot of other things that were used by the kids.  There may have been three or four other books in the house besides their old worn Bible.  Everyone was kind of left to their own imagination for entertainment.  Guess it was really kind of boring, honestly.  It was simple anyway.  Maybe simple is good!  Maybe simple is the setting for which a lot of us are pre-set.

I don’t know exactly when the change happened.   I tIMG_6966hink maybe right after World War II.   Things have surely changed though.  Technology keeps making giant strides forward like some kind of possessed behemoth running amok here on the Earth like something out of H.G. Wells, trying to take us over.  It’s like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only WE created the alien technology, it didn’t come in a pod from outer space!

We have gone from the agrarian age, that age of simplicity and “boredom” (which equals out to time to do things we can’t find time to do today) to the age of information ( which equals out to NEVER having time to do everything we think we NEED to do)  in a space of 60 years or so.  From my weird experience in the office I am almost positive that our brains (at least some of our brains, mine included) are unable to absorb the pace of technology that has run over us like a steamroller on hot tar.  It’s flattened a lot of us!  I use a computer; as a matter of fact I am using one to write this.  But if you put a gun to my head and said tell me how it works or I will shoot your brains out, I would have to say “Is pushing the Start button a good enough answer?”  I can’t tell you how MOST things work, I only just learn to use them out of the necessity of not being left behind in the dust by the scads of younger folks who want to climb over me on their way up the corporate ladder!

I am afraid I have bought into this unreality though.  I use DVD players and Nintendo’s, and Computers to play games, and to work and sell things on EBAY, which is a place for selling things in which the customer never gets to touch or feel the merchandise until AFTER they buy it!  I use Satellite Radio, my car diagnosis itself for problems and tells me when it needs to be fixed; my Mom has a pacemaker that the Dr. can adjust by holding the phone up to it.  And on and on and on we go!!  Woo-hoo what a crazy ride!

I wonder now, if we could go back 100 years, after having a taste of this “Brave New World” would we?  Before Jet planes and electric guitars, would we?  Before electric shavers and microwaves?  Before Atomic bombs?

I don’t know about you, but if the Big Red Button was sitting in front of me that said “Go Back”  I don’t think I would even hesitate a second before I pushed it.  Would you?  At least I think it would keep me from running down the hall someday at work, in a fit of insanity hooting and yelping like a hound dog!!

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Band days

We have one of those Amazon “Alexas” and from time to time I’ll holler “Alexa play songs from:  ”  and then just choose an artist I want to hear and she’ll start playing the songs.  I asked for songs by the group “Chicago” today while we were in the kitchen messing around.  I’ve always loved them.  In my list of favorite groups they would have to be #2 behind the Beatles.  I’ve always loved their songs…especially with the brass in the background.  It always makes me a little sad at the same time too, though.  Hearing that “band sound” always reminds me of a lost opportunity to do something I really wanted to do.

I always loved music when I was a kid.  I sang, and played guitar and I could “pick up” tunes and play the chords for them and sing just “by ear”  I never learned to read music though….still haven’t.

In the seventh grade in school, in the spring time was the time for band tryouts for the next year.  I always wanted to be in the band.  I’d looked forward to it for several years leading up to that time when I might be able to join.  I did all the sign up stuff and tryouts on the instruments and was told that my instrument would be…..a clarinet.  A clarinet?  That was a surprise, as I’d always supposed I’d be a trumpet guy, and I liked the fact that there were only three buttons on top of a trumpet.  The damn clarinet looked like something from outer space with all of those buttons and places to press down.

I gave it a try though, and I finally got some sound out of it.  So, we then went on to have some practices.  They put a sheet of simple music in front of me, and after going over what it meant a couple of times, we had to try and play.  I couldn’t discern heads or tails out of that sheet of music with all of it’s notes and squiggles and dots.  Other people didn’t seem to be having as much trouble as I was having, so I figured it was me.  I was such a dummy I couldn’t learn to read music.

I followed along for a couple of weeks by ear.  If I heard it once or twice through I could replicate the melody pretty closely.  I wanted to ask about the music though.  I wanted to get somebody to teach me how to understand it…how to “read” the music.  I was too embarrassed to ask the band director though.  I got increasingly frustrated as we got new music.  Finally, a few days before school was out, I went to the office and dropped out of the band.

In hindsight, I wish I had asked for help, and if not I wish I had stuck with it even without asking.  I think I could have “faked it” good enough to stay in the band, because once I learn a tune…I don’t forget it.  Maybe if I had stayed until band camp the next year, they would have stuck me on the bass drum…cause I was a big guy.  I supposed it wasn’t meant to be though.  At least I got to try.  My poor Paula wanted to play in the band at her school in Maryland, but didn’t know what to do to sign up.  They had nobody there to even ask them if they wanted to play…no adviser or teacher to guide them in how to sign up for band.

So as I listen to the brass play in the background on “Saturday in the Park” I wonder what might have been if I’d been a little more assertive and if someone had been there to tell my wife, “this is how you sign up for band”

We lived band careers vicariously through all of our children, I suppose…..but it would have been nice to have been a “part” of something during my High School years.

I guess there are advantages to being a “lone wolf” too…….

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Children of the Earth

We are all Children of the Earth, regardless of what you personally believe concerning creation, or evolution, or anything of the sort.

I often wonder why we humans set ourselves above nature, above other forms of life and consider ourselves to be the only spiritual form of life here on Earth.  After all, if you believe in the Bible, you will know that Genesis says: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”  Notice he just did that for man….not for woman.

The book of Common prayer says:  “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother “Any man”; and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace. Amen.

The same type of thing is mentioned in the Apocrypha, Sirach 10:9

If one is not of a religious bent, but purely scientific, I believe it would take even less convincing that the components of our body are transformed into some other form of matter once the spark of life leaves us.  Matter is not created or destroyed, it only changes form.  If you are buried, or if you are cremated…if you are given to the sea, you will eventually return “to the Earth”

Many times when I am standing in a natural setting, such as I was this morning, on a solitary, circular track, in a thick and hazy fog, with just the sound of the birds and crickets, I feel as if I am in just as sacred a spot as St. Peter’s Cathedral.

I’m in touch with creation, I am in touch with God….

I am a child of the Earth, just like every other creature who crawls, swims or walks on this globe.  And one day I will return to it.  No matter where the spirit within me goes, I feel like it will be at peace.

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War

I’m still a follower of Jesus.

I still read my Bible.  For the most part I concentrate on the gospels.  You know….Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  I’ve looked in them recently for any verse in which Jesus advocates war.

There are a lot of verses about swords.  That was the prime weapon of the day and age in which Jesus lived.

In Matthew 26:52 Jesus said to Peter: “Put your sword back in it’s place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword”

Famously, in Matthew 10:34  Jesus said that: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  This certainly sounds ominous when cherry picked, but when read in the context of his exhortation to his disciples in the entire chapter, one can immediately see that Jesus is speaking of himself as a sword which will divide the world into faction of believer-vs- nonbeliever:

35 “For I have come to turn `a man against his father, a daughter
against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law –
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
37 Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me;
anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me
is not worthy of me;
38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me
is not worthy of me.
39 Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Thus not telling people to go to war, but telling them that the war they must fight is internal, a war of acceptance that a person must fight against himself and all others with the love for him winning out against all other loves.

But Jesus never advocated war:

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

So, when I see a pastor from a huge Southern Baptist church in Dallas saying that God has given the president of the United States “authority to take out Kim Jung Un”  I have to wonder where in the Bible he gets his information.  Perhaps God is speaking straight to him.  But, mostly I think he’s incorrect.

I’m not too sure a lot of the things that are being said are Christian in nature or intent.

I’ve come to the point where I have quit calling myself “Christian” and simply say I am a
Jesus follower.

I still believe.  I just believe differently than I have believed in the past.

I believe in love over hate.  I believe in treating other people like I would like to be treated.

I also believe that Christianity has been kidnapped by some people in an effort to either enrich or empower themselves during their human existence here on Earth.

That’s not what it’s all about.

 


	


	





		

		
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Would we or wouldn’t we give up what we have today??
	


	
	

		






A lot of times I still find myself picking up a pen and paper and write things down on them before I transcribe it to the cyber world.


To me, writing something down on a page, especially if you are trying to create something gives me a warmer more responsive feeling, as opposed to the cold, clinical, sterile feeling of creating something on a screen that sits up in front of you, like a monolithic all seeing eye, daring you to put your fingers against the keyboard and interact with it in some kind of weird pseudo sexual dance. A dance that it always seems to win. I still participate in that particular dance more often than I would like. In this day and age we have very little choice if we are to interact with the world at large. However, my deeper feelings are still recorded with pen and paper. Just an old habit that’s hard to break.


In my life time I have seen humans being gradually sucked into the black arms of technology, gradually a few steps at a time. I have gone along too, I will have to admit. Sometimes reluctantly, fighting against it tooth and nail, but more often like everyone else accepting the change as just another step to make life easier and more convenient for us.


Wood cook stoves have changed to electric and gas and then to microwaves. Dinner used to run around on two feet and your Grandmother would grab it, and it would be extremely fresh that night for supper. Now, we grab it out of the freezer from a box.


People used to walk places. Miles and miles to places. It wasn’t unusual for my Mother to walk 6 or 7 miles into “town” when she was a child, and then the same distance back after she had conducted whatever business she was doing. It took all day. You were tired after that and had no problems sleeping. Adults didn’t have any problems with sleep either. They worked all day in the fields, or in the barns or at the house. There was very little idle time. Maybe a little bit in the evenings before the sun went down to read a little in their tattered old Bibles before going to bed, exhausted. No problems sleeping. No sleeping pills needed due to having sat around all day and pecked on a computer keyboard and not gotten up and walked more than a few steps. No sleeping pills needed due to worrying about deadlines for unimportant things which seem critical. Just tired bones and muscles needing a full nights sleep before getting up at first light the next day to start over again.


Miles of walking. Now, I sometimes drive the single mile to the local Wal-Mart Superstore 5 or 6 times a day to pick something up. I am the one that worries about the critical things which are not critical and has to have the pill to sleep well. I don’t have to build a fire in a wood stove to stay warm, just turn up the gas or the electric heater. I wonder if I am better off.


Oh, and on those trips to Wal-Mart ( I really don’t particularly like Wally World, but…I would have to drive 20 miles to go to another store that has what they have, SO I conform…what’s a person to do?) most of the time I used to end up buying some pre-packaged stuff to fix for supper. I used to pop a Freshetta Pizza out of the box, and pop it into the oven. I used to NEVER look at the labels. I was afraid of reading them. I didn’t want to know what it took to preserve what I was eating. I’ve changed that by a long ways now…trying to pay attention to all the stuff that I have been consuming over the years which has been slowly killing me. Will it work or not…time will tell.


I know that Grandma used to cook stuff in Pure Lard. For a long time the Drs. said that was really bad for you, all that animal fat and stuff. I don’t know about that though. There is some contradictory report on the TV news every day now about what’s good for you and what isn’t. It’s enough to boggle your mind. If you try and keep up with it, and do what they say you have to change the way you eat and drink about every other week because some study shows this or that. I quit keeping up with that too, and just eat what I think is right for me. A lot of veggies and stuff. I guess if it’s bad for me one day, and good for me the next I figure things are balancing each other out over the long run. Right?


I can barely remember back before there was a TV in the house. Just vaguely. I remember listening to records and radio programs on the Philco combination Radio/Phonograph that my folks owned. There were some great singers. Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney. There some funny radio shows. All of those are fuzzy memories though. I don’t think we used that radio more than a few times after the first little Black and White TV came into the house. After that, it was ‘I Love Lucy’, ‘The Honeymooner’s” and Baseball games during the week. And then on Saturday mornings, it was the BEST of all. There were Western’s with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hoppalong Cassidy. You name them, they were there. The cartoons were great too. Bugs Bunny and Popeye the Sailor man. The “Officer Don” show, with the puppets and the cartoons and clowns, not to speak of “Howdy Doody” and old Buffalo Bob. Who could resist that over listening to the radio? We sure didn’t realize we were being suckered into a new life style though. It just seemed like entertainment back then, and not a shady plot to take over our lives. But boy we were wrong, weren’t we?


Now, there are 4 or 5 TV’s in more every house. Every resident usually has one of their own. There are 2 or 3 computers, there are enough Nintendo game systems, and Microsoft game systems out there now to fill up the Superdome if you could stand up at the top and chunk them all in, prior to setting them all on fire in order to save mankind. I am afraid it’s a little to late though. And I will even have to admit that at my house there are two TV’s, and three or four computers. I sigh while I am sitting here thinking about it, but there’s no use in trying to deny the fact that I also have been caught up in the technology trap.


I have seriously thought sometimes about trying to simplify things, but I don’t think I know how anymore. I watched that movie “Lost” with Tom Hanks a few weeks ago, and I don’t think I want to live like that. You know the one where he is trapped on a deserted Island for so long that he starts talking to a soccer ball? Ohh…the lack of a dentist would kill me, but ol’ Tom survived it.


I guess there’s no turning back the hands of time. I wonder how many of us would go back even if we had the chance. I probably wouldn’t.


I wonder if there is anybody out there who has a list of the technological items that have come along since 1950. I have thought about trying to come up with one, but it would take more time then I have now to even think about starting. If there is one out there on the web that anyone knows about, make sure and let me know. Surely there is somebody out there who had all the spare time that all this wonderful technology has created for us to do such a list. That was the point in starting to invent all of it wasn’t it? To make life less complicated and less hard for we humans, and to give less time toiling away at menial tasks, like growing our own food, and raising our families, and more time to do the IMPORTANT things we want to do, like watching more TV, playing more video games, text messaging our friends on our Cell phones, going to one of the 9 billion fast food places in the country to eat our supper, pay our bills online, order our Christmas presents online, read our newspapers online, go to war with people we don’t like with smart bombs, and laser guns, because we have found out we hate each other more because we know more about each other, and what we know we have found we don’t like, and to drive our mega trillion automobiles around 1 mile to Wal-Mart 10 times a day putting so much Carbon Monoxide in the air that our planet is starting to warm up (so they say on TV anyway)


We take out other people’s body parts and put them in people to save their lives. They can transplant just about anything nowadays. I heard a few years ago they are working on a head transplant, so that’s why they got Old Ted William’s head frozen away out there somewhere in California waiting til’ they perfect that surgery. There are pacemakers, and stints. There are Dialysis machines and heart lung machines, and Cat Scans, and MRI’s…….


….and so on and so forth. Whew…we have come a long way baby, to get to where we are today.


I could go on, but there’s no use. You get the point by now.


Of course there is good connected with all of these things. Certainly, there is. I’m still alive because of some of this technology. I would never have gotten to do some of the amazing things I have done because of it. I have friends I would have never “spoken” to without this technology. I can keep in touch with my family, and that’s the most important thing I have gotten out of it. I guess it’s best to live with it, take the good and try to change the bad if you can. We were all created with a built in conscious (at least

Most of us were) so we know good from bad, and it’s up to us to try and change the things about our ‘New’ society that are bad.


We can write our Congressmen and Senators about the things that are wrong with our government, and how we feel about the Economy, and such. (Those would be some very long letters, but…it’s what we should do) If you see a program you don’t like on T.V., turn the channel. That’s the fastest way to get something done there. Recommend to your friends that they do the same thing. Vote next time there’s an election. Even in a GOOD voting year, most of the time fewer than 50% of registered voters vote! If they are not listening to the cards and letters…vote them out!


Quit making so many trips to Wal-Mart (That will be a hard one around my house) Cut down on the computer time, cut off the lights when you are not using them, read some instead of watching TV all the time. Spend time with your family….real time in person, not time “on line”


Question anything you aren’t sure about when it comes to technology:


Just because some Dr. wants to do something to you, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right or correct thing to do. I don’t really want them doing too much to me to tell you the truth, but I haven’t gotten on the stick and even written a living will, or a real will yet. Yes, that’s something I need to do, how about you?


Just because some salesperson at the computer store wants to sell you the “latest and greatest” PC doesn’t mean you really need it.


Do you really need that flat screen or HDTV? ( I decided I did…arrghhh.)


When you get your next car can you make sure it’s not a gas guzzler, or maybe even try and get a hybrid.


Ah well, I have rambled on long enough.


By the way, I wrote this directly onto the screen, instead of using a pen and paper. It would have taken too long otherwise.


Dang me. Dang me….outta’ take a rope and hang me…






























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Posted on 
The Battle of the Leaky Roof
	


	
	

		






I look over at the clock radio/alarm, and the digital readout glares: “ 4:15 a.m,.” at me in bright yellow numbers, reminding me that I only have forty-five more minutes before the infernal buzzer that some sadist built into that machine jolts me into the reality of the day. It’s been raining poodles and Persians outside, and I subconsciously thought I heard the “drip, drip, drip,” of water into a container of some kind. I must have been dreaming of the old mill house we used to live in over on “smokey” road back when the kids were little. I lay there, and let my mind drift back to that place in time…..

The houses on Smokey road were built back in the 1880’s, and the builders used thin slate tiles which were joined together with metal hooks to cover the roof. We moved into one of these jewels back in 1974, when my little girl Kirsten was two years old. My Dad helped us with the down payment, as we had very little in the way of money, or anything else for that matter, back then. This house was a lot nicer than most of the old company houses, as there had been some

renovation done by the previous owners. There were some extra cabinets, a big walk-in closet, and a nice counter in the kitchen. Nobody had dared touched the roof, however.

You see, there is this hard and fast rule about the old slate tiles that they used in the construction of the mill houses. They will last practically forever, if you don’t mess with them. Not having thought about this kind of thing before, I climbed up on the roof one day, and walked my 190 pound frame all over those tiles while installing a T.V. antennae. I got that antennae up, and we had great reception. I was rather proud of myself until the next time it came a hard rain.

“Drip, drip, drip…” the three most dread words in the English language.

“Larry, I think the roof is leaking.” My wife nudged me and said.

“It’s just dripping out on the porch,” I mumbled sleepily, “go back to sleep.”

The next morning I swung my feet to the side of the bed to get up, and:

“Splat.” It was similar to the sound the baseball’s I had hit in the Chattooga river made.

“I told you it was the roof leaking.” I heard from behind me, as I waded toward the bathroom. Thus began a five year long battle with the ancient slate roof.


“How much to replace the roof?” I asked the roofer


“I’ll do the back for six-hundred bucks.” He speculated “But I ain’t doin’ that steep- pitched front roof for less than a thousand.” “It’s too dangerous!”

I felt sick to my stomach.

I ended up helping my Dad, and a couple of guys from the mattress company where I now worked, do the back roof one bright October Saturday. We replaced all of the decking, except on the porch area. I then took a five gallon bucket of black roofing tar up a tall ladder on the front, and covered the obvious cracks with this gooey pitch. I really laid it on thick. When I came back down about an hour later I looked like B’rer Rabbit’s friend the Tar Baby. Joel Chandler Harris would have been proud!

Everything I touched stuck to me. Pieces of paint off of the ladder, loose grass, gravel, pocket change; the garage door. I looked like a piece of walking flypaper. I was finally able to

splash enough gasoline on the gook to get it off me. It also took the top layer of my skin. Looking nice and pink, I went back into the house.

“We won’t have to worry about that anymore!” I stated confidently.


All through the Winter months things stayed dry. We had a great Christmas that year, with Kirsten, and little Larry Jr., who had arrived on a snowy December afternoon in 1975, getting lots of toys from old Santa! It appeared as though I had conquered my nemesis, the roof tiles, through hard work, determination, and a bucket of black goo. Then came the Spring rains in March:

“Drip, drip, drip…”

“Larry……..”

“I know, I know, I can hear it.” I replied catatonically.

I got up and put a pan underneath the leak so that I wouldn’t have to wade in the morning. The weather forecast was for a veritable monsoon over the next three days. I emptied that pan a hundred times, swearing all the while to find a way to stop the maddening problem as soon as the rain stopped. One sunny April Saturday, I hauled out the ladder, and tackled the problem again.

On this occasion I had spent more money, and had bought a gray gook from Ace hardware that was supposed to dry as hard as case steel. I ascended the tall wooden ladder carefully, and applied a five gallon bucket of this stuff to the afflicted area. The sun came out shining brightly the next day, and the gray gook dried as hard as side of a battleship. It appeared impervious. You could bounce rocks off of this stuff, and it wouldn’t even budge! Problem solved!

All through the Spring of 1979, stretching through the Summer and the Fall, nary a drip could be seen coming through the brown water circle which had dried on the white ceiling in our bedroom. I was confident I would never hear those three words again; so confident in fact, that I painted over the ceiling tiles to make them nice and white again. Christmas of 1979 came and went. We were expecting our third child in the Spring, it would be nice to bring him home to a warm, dry house.

In the Fall of 1980, after our son Matthew had been born in March, the remnants of some nameless tropical storm blew swiftly through our little town, bringing several inches of rain, and a corresponding amount of wind. Softly at first, and then with the resonance of a bass drum I awoke to the sound:

“Drip, drip, drip…”

“Don’t even say a word.” I cautioned as I got up to get the pan.

The brown spot came back in the ceiling, and it brought a cousin about three feet from it who hadn’t visited us before:

“Drop, drop, drop…” Another pan. Now every time my wife wanted to cook, she had to come to the bedroom to get a utensil. It was at this point I developed my “leaky-roof-Catch 22-philosophy.”

“Drip, drip, drip..” “Drop, drop, drop…”

“Larry, aren’t you ever going to fix those leaks?”

“I can’t fix them right now, Honey,” I smiled sweetly “It’s raining.”

When the sun came out, I quickly emptied out the pans and cleaned the bedroom floor of any signs of leakage. Most of the time, that worked well.

“Larry, are you going to work on the roof now that it’s nice out?” My dear wife would ask.

“ Darn!” I would say, “I WOULD do it today BUT,.. I (We) already have _________(You fill in the blank with anything you want) planned, I’ll do it ________.” (tomorrow, next week, next month)

“Besides, it’s not leaking today!” I would brainlessly state.


By using this simple but effective philosophy, I was able to procrastinate my way out of ever working on those stupid tiles again. I never mentioned that the source of this intelligence had been from watching Ernie and Bert do the same routine over and over on Sesame Street, which my daughter Kirsten seemed to watch at least five times a day. Never say that grownups can’t get anything out of watching children’s shows!

The man who bought the house from me in 1987, ended up having to have the front roof re-covered.













	


	





		

		
Posted on 
Writing to myself
	


	
	

		
Much of what I write is written to me.


I write of love and being positive and hopeful.  I am speaking to myself, because most days it is hard to be that type of person.  So, I preach to myself about the things I need to do and how I need to interact with other human beings.


But, it is so very hard.  It’s becoming harder every day.  It’s difficult to care.  But the sun will come up tomorrow and the sun will set.


We have all seen them.  Those beautiful Sunrises.  If you’ve been a friend of mine on  social media for any amount of time you’ve seen plenty of pictures of sunrises which I thought were beautiful.


Those mornings when the light turns dozens of colors behind a scant screen of clouds.  Everything from muted purples to magenta, to bright blood red.  How does a beautiful Sunrise make you feel?


For me the beginning of the day, which is signified by that marvelous sunrise, symbolizes a daily rebirth.  A new beginning, a time when everything is new again and all options for doing things wonderful, useful, loving, and kind are open.  It renews my soul.  It tells me in no uncertain terms that I am alive, and that I have been treated to the sight of some of the most beautiful colors on in nature.  I so appreciate life and the chance to live it.  To experience other people, people who I love and who love me.  To touch another person, even to simply shake hands, or to brush back the hair of my daughter or sons, my grandchildren, or my wife from their foreheads is an experience that I will only get to enjoy once.  Just once, that I will remember in any case.  The moments we have will never happen again, just like the moments in the pictures I take.  Those photos are a frozen moment in time which will never happen again.


I can taste food for another day and hear music.  I don’t really even care what kind most of the time…I generally like it all.   I get the privilege of talking and interacting with other people, most of the time in a positive manner.  All of this starts with the beautiful Sunrise that I saw when I drove down the road today.


Then there are the stupendous Sunsets.  I look out my back door at them often, and take photos that do not do any justice towards how beautiful they really look.


How does a gentle sunset make you feel?


The colors are a similar palette as was the Sunrise, but the feelings are different.  Day is leaving.  I feel peaceful.  I feel content.  My tasks for the day are done and I am heading towards the house to rest.  I hear the word to “taps” in my head frequently:


“Day is done, gone the sun,

From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;

All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.”

Many times in the past I was headed towards my home from work, to my familiar place, my territory.   I had accomplished all I could during the day and I was satisfied.  Maybe I should have tried to do more, I feel that way practically every day still.  But in the awesome light of the Sunset I felt happy…. tired but happy.  I knew I would be glad to get home, and see the ones that I love.  My tasks that others would have me do were over.  I would eventually lay down that night, and rest my weary body, happy to have seen another day on this Earth.


Life and Death are like the sunrise and sunset.  Both are beautiful in their own way, similar, yet vastly different.  It’s what happens in between, what we….make happen in between, that forms the legacy of our lives.   It’s the appreciation mixed with sorrow, of getting to see the sunrises and sunsets of other peoples lives that hopefully will make us appreciate our own and be less afraid of the final sunset that we all must come to one day.  Not melancholy, but happy to have shined and to have enjoyed being in the light.  I know I am.  I’m glad I have cared.


We all fear the unknown, and not knowing what’s on the other side of that last Sunset is scary.  Even to those who are secure in their beliefs and solid in their convictions.   I experience that fear, we all probably do when we think about it.  But I believe the spark within us that makes us what we are goes on and on, and we are meant to all be together again.  I’m not exactly sure how.  I’ll never know exactly how until it’s too late to write it down on a page, or take a photo of it.


So, here I have again, added to those many soliloquies I have written to myself but shared with others.