Writing for Sanity's Sake

I remember the days when “going out to eat” for us meant taking the 59 Chevy with the big fins and driving down to the local A&W drive in. It used to be situated somewhere close to where the Credit Union now sits. There wasn’t any “Longhorns” or “Red Lobster” and…we couldn’t have gone there even if there had been. Mill wages were low in those days…the late 50’s and very early 60’s. Luxuries were few. I got 50 cents a week for doing my part of the chores. I washed and dried dishes and raked leaves. I did various other “as per” tasks too. If Daddy thought of anything else that needed doing which I was capable of doing, then “per” Daddy…I’d better do it if I wanted my two quarters. I wanted them badly. Those two quarters bought me some cokes, some candy bars and three comics. Comics started out at a dime when I first started reading them. When they went up to 12 cents sometime in the sixties, I was so mad I coulda’ bit nails in two. I asked for a raise in my allowance, and much to my surprise my Dad starting giving me three quarters a week! I figure my Dad must have known about inflation and such.

Anyway, we went to the A&W once every couple of weeks. I loved those slaw dogs and a frosty mug of root beer. If I was on death row right now and they asked me what I wanted for my final meal I would tell them if they could find an old fashioned A&W, I would take two foot long slaw dogs with mustard and a large mug of root beer in a frosted mug. I would.

The little waitress (not a server back then) would come out with her brown paper pad, and ask for our order. She jotted it down, and within minutes would be toting that big old window tray with the hooks on the side back to the car with all the goodies on it. Of course we all had a mug of root beer. What in the world good would it have been to go to A&W and order a coke to drink? Their tater tots were delicious too, and I often had them to go along with the hot dog. I believe that once or twice Dad bought one of the mugs from them. I think a lot of people liked them…and probably quite a few drove off with them. The A&W people knew though…and when they came back again they’d get charged for those mugs! They finally got smart at some point in the future and started selling those little “souvenir” small mugs.

All of this from watching a football game being played in subzero weather and seeing a guy actually drinking an ice covered beverage of some kind….

All this walking I have been doing has taught me many things over the past almost 5 years or so:

1. It takes a lot more walking to burn off the food you eat than it does arm motion to put it in your mouth.
2. You have to work really, really hard to take a photo in a small rural Southern town, or near Chattanooga, without getting a power line or power pole in the frame.
3. The bird sitting on the power line WILL wait until you walk under him to poop.
4. If you walk over a block without without a dog barking at you, you have gone too far and are out “in the country”
5. People will stare at you like you are crazy, especially if you have your phone or camera out taking pictures.
6. Going up and down 45% hills is hard walking!!

Seriously though, the moments of serenity and peace which I have felt during these past years has been worth the effort. There’s always something to see!

On almost every day, there is something which will make you smile or laugh…like the squirrel I scared today who fell off the narrow guide wire he was trying to run up to get away from me, or the very strong odor of the skunk I scared when I quickly opened the back door this evening.

There was the robin who kept flying and walking in front of me, obviously thinking I either had food, or was food. There was the gigantic predator wingspan of the hawk I saw winging tonight.

The air is usually clean and fresh…and apparently later on this week will be really fresh, as in in below freezing temperature wise, even though it’ll be in the 60’s tomorrow. Georgia is one of those states where you can have 4 seasons in one week….but hey, I’m not complaining cause it ain’t raining!

I might start going to the gym on some of those really cold days…but then again, those low temperatures might provide some unique opportunities to photograph something new and unusual.

We will see….

When I was a kid, we had only record players on which to play our favorite music. For most of my early childhood, I played my records on my dad and Mom’s old Philco combination radio/phonograph. I think that old machine is still sitting in my son’s house. We only owned a few records when I was very little. Dean Martin, Sinatra, an Elvis album. All of them were 33 rpm records, or “albums” as we called them then. I wore the ones we had out playing them. I can still sing any of the songs on the ones we had word for word. The only time the radio was on was when my mother was listening to some radio preacher, or when my dad wanted to listen to a football game. Other than that, there wasn’t much “live” music being played. Maybe the “Grand Ol’ Opry” every now and then…. but not too often. My Mom had always wanted to be a “country singer” but never knew how to pursue it. She had a halfway decent voice but wouldn’t sing for anyone. Her childhood was challenged, to say the least. She had absolutely no self-confidence. None had ever been instilled in her. My Grandpa was not good to his daughters for some reason. My dad loved to sing though and would go around the house singing all the songs he had grown up with. I learned a lot of Al Jolson songs, and other various and sundry songs that a child of the depression would hear as he grew up.

I got my first personal record player of my very own when I was about 12 years old. I had to be that age, because it was after we had already moved over on 9th street…. which was in the fall of 1962 I believe. I remember having to get out in the yard and move the 12-inch-high brown grass in the cool of that Fall. It was probably my Christmas present that year. It was a two-tone brown boxy little outfit that the top part flipped open to reveal the inner workings. The best thing about it was that it had a 45-rpm converter which fit down over the top of the spindle. This meant I could play 45’s …. if I could get them. Luckily, I had an uncle whose job was filling up juke boxes with new records as they came out. Every time we went to my grandmother’s house, my uncle would have a big box of old 45’s that he had taken out of the juke boxes and replaced with more current songs. I brought home dozens of great records. There was one problem with those records though. All 45’s had an A and a B side, where the A side was the primary release song. It was the “popular” song on the record. Most of the time on those used records, the A side was about worn out, while the B side was rarely played. Therefore, I listened to a lot of “B” side music. One record I can recall more than others was Elvis Presley’s 1962 hit “She’s Not You” That song was totally worn out, but the B side was “Just Tell Her Jim said Hello” which I grew to love as probably my favorite Elvis song. (well, besides “Hound Dog” which was also the B side to “Don’t be Cruel”)

There were a lot of records where the A side was still very playable. I got to where I loved Billy Joe Royal, Tommy Roe, whose A side songs didn’t get played as much, as well as the B side songs of the Rolling Stones. (of which a couple I cannot even name here)

I did keep on playing the 33’s also. I began to love show tunes, mainly because Redfords 5&10 would put them on sale after they’d been sitting around for a while, and where I couldn’t afford the “popular” records of those days, I would pay 50 cents for the soundtrack of “My Fair Lady” “The King and I” and many others of that time period. I can still sing them word for word too, and in many senses, I love that music more than some of the Pop tunes of that era. I kept that little record player until I moved off to college in 1968. It was a little monaural wonder. The first time I head a stereo record player, believe me when I say, I was amazed.

I reckon the influence that music had on me during those days made me be satisfied with living life on the “B” side. I mean, I might have enjoyed being a rich man…..I might have liked being popular and well known for being a singer and a songwriter, but then again, I may not have cared for the consequences of being famous. I probably wouldn’t have. I’m entirely satisfied and happy with the way my life has turned out. Every time I think about it, I ask Alexa to play “Just Tell her Jim said Hello” or even “Hound Dog” like I did today. I also asked her to play “Dream” by the Everly brothers in honor of Phil Everly. Man, I love that song.

Obviously winter is hard upon us. They say later this week, the coldest temperatures in a decade. Not as cold as the winters of 80 and 81 though. Those were cold winters. The temperatures ran below zero for several days in a row. My pipes froze, and I had to crawl up under the house with only large wax candles to thaw them. I thought I would freeze solid as a board, but…I didn’t. I got it done.

Those same summers there were many days in a row over 100 degrees. I worked as a supervisor at a mattress company, and what didn’t get done during regular work hours I had to do by myself after hours…I was “on salary” you see. I loaded whole tractor trailer loads alone. I thought I was going to collapse, but I got it done.

Two extremes in weather, two extremely hard times. A microcosm of my life…of many of our lives. Despite the extremes, and at many times when we would have liked to remain more “in our comfort zones” we have gotten it done. For my family, to put food on the table, to have a few things…just a few..beyond the absolute necessities, I have done these things, and did not regret them.

I started out as a baby…like in the photo I found of me and my Daddy…but now I approach that other extreme. From birth to death, and all the beauty or ugliness I have seen and done, I do not regret…and one day they will say of me, he may not have been the best, but…he got it done.

Some things will never change, yet change is inevitable.

A paradox?

Perhaps not.

Time will keep on passing. Tomorrow night is proof of that as we see another new year ushered in with celebrations, parties, and merriment. That change, the one which the passage of time causes, is inevitable.

Yet still human beings continue to hate other human beings for a myriad of reasons. Wars are continually being fought, and innocent people continue to die.

The self righteous continue to congratulate themselves on always being right, and bristle with anger if challenged on their opinions.

Those things never change, and never will as long as humanity inhabits the earth.

A new year comes. It will be here soon, and there will be many, many changes before we see the earth circle the sun again.

In the meantime, let us at least try and mitigate and minimize those bad things which are going to stay the same. Those things which hurt and dehumanize all of us.

There has been very little light lately. Short days with gray filtered sunshine. Since we humans are creatures of light just like every other living thing, it gets a little rough on the spirit. I can understand why some mammals choose to hibernate. I wish I could do the same sometimes. Winter has always affected me this way.

After Christmas and New Years are over and done, I’m ready for spring and longer days. I’m ready for green grass that smells as sweet as honey. I’m ready for some different birds than the little sparrows who camp out in the woods behind our house. I like them too, and the cardinals. But spring brings so many different species to the bird feeder.

I know I shouldn’t wish away time. There is precious little of it accorded to us as residents of the Earth. Mine grows short. We should use it all wisely, no matter the season.

As we go into New Year’s Eve tomorrow night, I know there will be a lot of “resolutions” being made. The only one I’m going to make is to resolve to seek the light, no matter where it may be, no matter if it be physical or spiritual.

Seek the light, and I believe that only good can result.

I told one of my friends tonight that a lot of things are passing away, and it’s not just people.

Common decency has become archaic. It almost seems like it was left behind somewhere in the late twentieth century. Honor too. How many people do you know that you’d trust to honor their word, based on a handshake. (Or an elbow bump)

Humility…it has almost perished from malnourishment, and sympathy has taken a big hit. People are becoming numb to death and sickness and their “prayers for you” and praying hand emogees ring hollow.

Every night in my mind, I walk across a long barren landscape towards an oasis of love and light. I have not reached it yet, because I fall to sleep still walking, with salvation off in the distance. Still trudging along with atonement on the horizon.

Maybe one night I’ll make it there.

I was just listening to Frank Sinatra the other night. That man could really sing.I never really listened to Sinatra a lot before September of 1968. Before that time, I was an Elvis fan first. I like some other rockers too. Jerry Lee Lewis was another. I liked a lot of the other crooners besides Sinatra earlier on in my life too. Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Andy Williams. I sang “White Christmas” every year at school from 1964 through 1967. I could do “Everybody Loves Somebody” and sound just like Dean Martin, I’ll guarantee it. Paula and I went on our one and only cruise back in 2011, and I went to nightly Karaoke on the ship and sang that song. The rest of the cruise, I had people coming up to me in the dining room and saying….”There’s ol’ Dino” Yep, I do a pretty good imitation of him. But Sinatra? I could never imitate him very well. I didn’t do it in High School because I had never listened to one of his albums before. Oh, I had heard him on the radio of course. “Strangers in the Night” was a hit song during 1966. It hit number 1 on the pop charts that year. His daughter also had a hit with “These Boots Were Made for Walking” in 1966. It seems that that was a good year for the Sinatra family. But Sinatra’s album “Watertown” which came out in 1970, only sold 30,000 copies. He just sort of retired from recording new stuff after that. He got dissatisfied with the way his voice sounded and although he performed in Vegas, things were never the same.I only discovered how much I loved his earlier music in that early fall of 1968. That’s the month I started to college at West Georgia College in Carrollton. West Georgia still had a real “small college” feel back in 1968, and I’m glad I went there. Another reason I’m glad I went to was because that’s where I met my future wife. But…back to Sinatra. My “assigned” roommate in Strozier Hall at West Georgia College, whose name was also Larry, was a real record collector. He brought his record collection, and his record player to college with him. I didn’t have squat besides the clothes in my closet, so I asked Larry if I could listen to his record player while he was gone to class. He told me it was ok, but “You might not like my taste in music” At first, I had to agree. There were no rock and roll records in his collection. No Elvis, no Beatles, no Rolling Stones. There was Sinatra, Nancy Wilson and Deon Warwick. There were about 6 Sinatra records, and his record player held five albums at a time, so I took Sinatra. It was a good choice. The albums were all from the fifties and early sixties…up to that 1966 album from which “Strangers in the Night” came. There was Cole Porter songs like “I’ve Got You Under my Skin” and there were songs from movies like “Three Coins in the Fountain” There were the greats: “Come Fly with Me”, “The Days of Wine and Roses”, “Fly Me to the Moon”, “The Lady is a Tramp”, “That’s Life”, and my favorite of all of his songs “It Was a Very Good Year”. My next to favorite was the oft recorded Paul Anka song “My Way” I think he is best remembered for that song, but I liked “very good year” the best. It hit me the first time I heard it, and it still does the same to me after all of these years. He had a great hit song in the seventies with “New York, New York,” too. That was in 1979, and Sinatra is remembered best for that song, even though it came from a Liza Minelli movie. All of those records that my roommate brought with him to college changed my tastes in music. I went on to listen to just about every album he had brought. I got to like Patti Page and Doris Day. I listened to Rosemary Clooney and Eartha Kitt. I took the measure of Billy Vaughn and Burt Bacharach. If not for those albums, I’d have never loved music as completely as I do and would have missed a lot of good moments in the history of music. Larry and I were roommates for that entire year, and after that year I married my permanent roommate! I do still love Sinatra though, and I’m glad for YouTube so I can dial up the old hits from time to time. I grew to even like Nancy Wilson too. Larry said I would…..

I was thinking today about a Christmas Cantata we did quite a few years back entitled “Old Fashioned Christmas”. It was back when I was still a member in good standing at the TFBC in Trion. I can’t remember the year…maybe 1999 or so? I know someone would remember, but it’s not that important. The important thing was the people involved.

You see, I wasn’t always such a pariah. At some points in my past I was an acceptable member.

But ahh, the wonderful people.

We’d begin to rehearse musicals like these at some point in October most of the time. Wednesday nights after prayer service we’d gather and pass out the booklet of Music. This one musical always sticks in my mind. I think maybe it’s because we did it twice in the space of five or six years.

An “Old Fashioned Christmas” about a young lady disenchanted with the way a Christmas is conducted nowadays wants to go back to the good old days of the 1890’s, and the wonderful Christmases they had back then.

But, it was the people who were there at that time, in that place, who made the event special. They were all people I loved, and almost all are gone now.

Mr. Tip sang the deepest bass you ever heard and beside him was Eldred Barrett. Rev. Richardson filled out that low side. Then there was my brother Mike, me and…the first time we did it, I think Johnny Brimer was there, and by the second time my son Ted. It’s tough remembering everyone.

Mrs Yvonne Barrett, and Eldred’s two sisters. Ruth Locklear, and Ruth Collette. Marilyn, Carol, Myra, and some of us other “younger” ones. Myra was one I always had to keep in line (ha) It was always so much fun giving her a hard time because she gave me just as hard a time as I did her! All in good fun.

Norman’s wife Carolyn was on the organ, Ann McCollum as always was there to play piano….ever faithful, always willing to go over and over a part that we just couldn’t quite get. I winged it most of the time anyway, alternating between the tenor part, and harmonizing with the sopranos in some weird harmonies that sounded good, but definitely weren’t in the music. I couldn’t read a note, but you’d have never have known.

Jim Sprayberry ran the sound system. Ted helped him for a lot of years.

There were others I can’t remember right now. Wonderful people with good hearts. That’s what made it fun. It made it seasonal. It made it Christmas for me. The big night of the performance (or day sometimes) we would all sing our hearts out, and “leave it on the stage”

I loved that musical. I wish we’d had film back then as convenient as now to record those musicals. I miss them.

I miss Mom and Dad out in the audience, along with many others from their generation who would come by afterwards and pat you on the shoulder and say “nice job”. Few are left and they are passing on so quickly.

For many, many years that was the highlight of the Christmas season. From about 1975 until 2009.

The people. It’s always the people. Your family. Your friends. The times that you have that you think will go on and on. But they don’t and that’s just the rub, isn’t it.

In any case, all of you folks out there who are singing in a Christmas musical, or caroling, or just humming a song to yourself, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

As I have said before, we spent a half of a school year in 1960 at my Grandparent’s house in Blue Ridge because Mom was sick. I was enrolled in school there for almost half the year, which including the Christmas vacation for that year.
My Grandparent’s residence was a desolate place back then. It was the very last occupied house on Snake nation road at that time. A rough, ragged, rocky, muddy when it rained, and creek crossed road which took about 30 minutes to traverse from the turn off at the cemetery, to their modest gray wooded little two story house. Grandpa’s eight to ten bee hives stood like the sentinels of Stonehenge out in front of their house on top of huge flat rocks Grandpa had dragged up there on a wood sledge. I can imagine that their construction probably resembled in miniature that wonder of the English countryside, because the hill leading from the road to Grandpa’s house was extremely steep. A lot of times when it was wet and muddy my Dad had to get a strong running start from Snake nation road before he turned into Grandpa’s driveway and then as soon as he turned left, he had to gun the gas as hard as possible to try and make the curve up the hill to the tiny parking space in front of the house. Sometimes we just didn’t make it. The tires might have been a little too worn, or the mud a little too thick. We would end up having to park down below the beehives out in the high grass and grab our suitcases and trek up the hill, trying our best not to slip and fall flat on our faces.
But, this year my Mom, my brother and I were already there, and it was for Daddy alone we waited on the day before Christmas Eve. I heard his car first and went and stood out front, next to the porch. He came around the curve which was just in eyesight across the road from “Uncle Lark’s driveway. Lark Davenport’s was my Grandpa’s Uncle…his Mother’s brother and his farm sat across Long Branch creek from Grandpa’s house. The only way to get over there in a hurry was to walk the narrow little half log bridges that the two men had laid down across the fast running little creek in order to access each other’s house if the need arose. It rarely ever arose, but the logs were there just in case.
Daddy drove up the driveway and into Grandpa’s little parking space without any problems that day since it was dry…cold, but dry. It seemed like it was always cold in Blue Ridge that time of the year not matter what was happening elsewhere. We were in the “mountains” of Georgia…..the foothills of the Smokey Mountains which lay not too many miles away across the border into North Carolina.
I hugged my Dad, and my brother ran up to him and Daddy picked him up. Mom didn’t have much to say…things still very unsettled between them.
Grandma and I had been the ones to get the little Christmas tree a few days earlier. We had gone out into the woods and hiked around for quite a while, and found just a little old pine tree that looked nice. Grandma cut it down with the hatchet she had brought with her, and we took it back and Mike and I helped her decorate it. It was about the size of Charlie Brown’s little tree and Grandma had put it up on a table so that the lights could be seen…that one string of lights that she owned. There were maybe a dozen ornaments on it. It looked wonderful to me…as beautiful as any Christmas tree before or since. Grandma also hung our stocking from their mantle, on the far ends away from where the vent from the stove was. There were candy canes hanging around also, giving the old house a festive and fabulous look.
We always slept upstairs in the old house. Since the only source of heat in the house was a potbellied wood stove in the “living room” downstairs. During the cold Christmas weather we slept under 5 or six quilts upstairs. It was one of those situations where when you got warm, you didn’t move out of your “spot” If you moved over a foot, you would have to warm up that spot all over again. Most of the time you could see the fog from your breath, if you had your head out from under the covers. This was how we bedded down on Christmas Eve that year.
I never slept well on Christmas Eve. I always listened for Santa, but never quite heard him. Grandpa would always go “ho, ho ho” a couple of times, but I always knew it was him. He wasn’t fooling me. I heard the trunk of a car slam shut after we had been in bed an hour or so….then drifted off into a light sleep.
I heard Grandpa stoking up the potbelly stove about 5 am, and I waited the required 30 minutes or so until I knew the downstairs would be warm before I woke my brother up and we went running downstairs. All the grownups were already up and having coffee. Grandma already had biscuits in the oven, and we know that a delicious breakfast would soon be coming. Under the tree there were presents! In our stockings there was a plethora of oranges, apples, nuts, peppermint and other great hard candies. We could have our stockings but had to wait until after breakfast to tear into our presents.
We had three presents a piece from Santa, and one from Grandma and Grandpa. Four presents. In this day and age that would seem skimpy, but back then it seemed like more than enough. We place so much emphasis now on the number of gifts given, instead of the number of gifts given in love. There’s a big difference. I despise the TV commercial they have on nowadays with a woman called the “Gifter” whose only goal is to out give everyone else. That tells you where our society has gone.
This was the year I got a telescope, and Mike and I both got a “friction” stagecoach which shot sparks out the back when you revved it up. I also got a plastic “pinball machine” where you shot the balls up into the machine and see whether you get them to land in the highest number “slots”. I think I played that thing pretty much all day long that day. Grandma and Grandpa gave us some clothes of some kind, and I got a couple of new comic books. It was good…no, it was great.
Later on that day, the Uncles and Aunts, and numerous cousins came for dinner. Grandma’s little house was crowded to the gills. A lot of us ate dinner sitting out in the living room or even on the front porch. My cousins and I would find something to play or do after dinner. The food was nothing grand. I don’t remember if we had Turkey or roast beef. It really didn’t matter because Grandma could make anything taste good. I think later on that winter, we got iced and snowed in for over a week or so out there at the end of that old road. Grandpa had to shoot Robins for us to eat. They were delicious. When you’re hungry, I guess anything tastes good!
The air seemed to be filled with good will, good feelings and love that year. Later on, early in the spring we moved back home to Trion. Mom had gotten better, and our lives went back to normal…as normal as it could be in our family anyway. We continued to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house pretty much every Christmas after that. Even after my wife and I married in 1969, we continued to make an annual Christmas trek to “the mountains” Certainly, even now when Christmas rolls around, I think of those days. The camaraderie, the food, the love that we all had for one another. Those were great Christmases, as are the ones we have now with all of our children and grandchildren. The common factor is family…and love, and remembering what Christmas is all about, not the presents, not the food or the games. It’s all about the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas everyone.