Writing for Sanity's Sake

Reminiscing…

I have always loved music. Whether it be listening to music, playing my guitar, singing, writing songs, or just humming a tune. Music makes me happy, even when it makes me sad. I cry at the first few notes of some songs. One of them I heard on a rerun of AGT tonight was “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” written by Paul Simon. He gave an autistic young man who’s on the program permission to perform it, which is unusual, as he usually keeps performances of that song pretty limited.

I heard the song first on the radio early in early 1970, before I knew Paula was pregnant with our first child. It continued on to top the charts early that year, and while I liked it very much, it bore no major significance to me until much later on in the year.

We realized we were expecting a child sometime in February that year, while still living in Carrollton. It was a bleak, gray and cold, nasty Winter. We’d moved off campus into a little rental house, but we could never get our things totally straightened out, because Paula was beset with very bad morning sickness. It was the terrible, awful kind. I was so sorry for her, but I couldn’t help. The anti nausea pills would come back up whole. It was debilitating. I know she was upset. We knew without a doubt when it had happened. Unplanned, but not unwanted. I know being so sick was a miserable thing.

To make things worse, I could not find a part time job there to make money to pay a doctor, or to save any money for the coming expenses. Winter of 1970 in Carrollton, Georgia. Without our parents to help…I guess we’d have starved. I decided to transfer to UGA in the spring, because I’d heard part time jobs might be available there. I found a part time job at Sears in the Alps road shopping center almost as soon as we hit town. We found a little house to rent, Paula’s morning sickness improved, and things were looking better. Often, as I drove the car around Athens, Georgia I’d hear Simon and Garfunkel on the radio. The DJ there still liked “Bridge” and it began to take on a meaning to me. Sailing through those troubled waters was something we were doing. Maybe we’d hit some calm. I knew nothing.

We found a doctor for Paula, and although she had a really bad kidney infection that summer, which put her in the hospital, she gave birth to our daughter Karrie Lynn, on September 2nd. She was beautiful. Dark hair…dark brown eyes. The pediatrician checked her out and give her a clean bill of health the first day. I went home with Paula’s Mom to get some rest. I was a happy guy. I’d bought a box of cigars with pink bands to hand out.

When we came back the next day, the baby was sick. The pediatrician thought at first it was some kind of congenital heart defect. Then, she thought pneumonia. My Dad and Mom had gotten there, and we were all very concerned. Paula had held her once, the day before…but they hadn’t been able to bring her back again, because she was so sick. We were trying to get her transferred to Emory on September 4th, when the Doctors came out to tell us she had died.

Now at 19 years old…a little over a month away from being 20, I had become a father…my wife had become a mother..but we had lost that beautiful brown eyed baby in just two days. I never even got to touch her. Paula had to stay in the hospital still that night, and for several more nights. We were devastated, heart broken. I barely remember the next few days, with the funeral, the grieving. Paula’s Mom and I had to come to Trion to bury Karrie Lynn by ourselves while Paula was still in Athens. As we left Athens that day for Trion I had the radio on and I remember the DJ said someone had requested “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”. I don’t know who it was…it doesn’t matter, but I knew the song was for me. I wept bitterly…driving down the highway, wondering why, why this had happened to us. I got no answer to that question that day, and haven’t any day since then. Maybe there are no answers to such questions.

Paula and I recouped…slowly. We fostered a little boy named Ronnie for several months in 1971, after moving from the little house to a duplex on Edgewood drive. We built up the courage to try and have another child, and Kirsten was born in August 1972. (Sorry Kisi….revealed your age) Then after we moved to Trion, there was Ted and then Matt. We have been blessed beyond measure with them, with our grandchildren. Our love was deepened by our loss, but the loss was never forgotten.

But, as with all things which concern the heart….the hard wounds never heal, they just scar over and are opened by the memories which trigger the hurt. I would often go to the old Trion cemetery where my daughter is buried, and spend time alone there, talking and singing. Sometimes I would sing that Simon and Garfunkel song. Sometimes just think about things. So tonight, when I heard the first few notes, I had to suck in a deep breath, and start repairing that very old scar again. It’s hard to get the words out still, even after all these years. It’s just as fresh in that moment as it was almost half a century ago.

1619-1865 is 246 years. 1865-2019 is 154 years. We have almost a century left until this country has lived as many years without legal slavery as it did with it. That doesn’t even count another 100 years exactly from 1865-1965 when the voting rights act passed. So in reality that’s 346 years.

Spain, and then Mexico…after it won independence, owned much of the Southwestern US from 1521 after the conquest of the Aztecs, until 1848, when the Treaty of Hildalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War, which the US had instigated. The US got Texas, Southern California, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado in that treaty. That’s 327 years the SW United States belonged to the “Hispanics” and 171 years that the United States has owned it. All citizens of Mexico got to choose to stay in the new United States, or go back to Mexico. Most of them stayed, creating an instant cross culture between the United States and Mexico, which has persisted since then. That’s a total of 498 years that Spanish speaking people have been in this area, as opposed to only after 1848 that white Americans started to go into these areas to settle. (The Gadsden purchase of 1853 further enlarged New Mexico and Arizona)

It amazes me that in just a very few short years, history in this country has been forsaken for media make believe. The myth of white manifest destiny over the cultural patterns of this country, and the belief that somehow the stain of slavery and repression has been washed as white as snow in a few short years belies the facts which lie in the history of America, if any would take the time to read it. Perhaps it cannot be understood.

Perhaps the trend of purposeful ignorance has taken such deep root that it can never be reversed. It is a shame that we Americans of the last half of the 20th century have been either unwilling or unable to defend the hard won freedoms and openness that our Fathers fought and died for in World War II. We have given them up to Autocracy and Oligarchy with hardly a fight.

We are like a flash of lighting in the night sky. A shooting star on a cloudless night.

Our lives are written in damp letters on the back of a foggy door, only to disappear when the sun shines.

We are like one tiny fleck of gold in the bottom of the mining pan, sighted by the great prospector and allowed to swirl around and glint in the light before being poured back into the stream of time.

All too brief to really be knowledgeable about who or what we really are.

We are nothing but thought. Nothing but a vapor….disappearing even as it forms.

I have no real answers, other than try and be human, try to be humane.

Remember everyone else in the world is more like you, than they are different.

I dreamed about the old mill last night, and the smell of Linseed oil was strong.

I was thinking about the old Weave room, back before the air jets and sulzers…the days of the old X1′ s and X2′ s. The old clackety clack of the shuttle’s flying out and back, and the beat up slamming that filling yarn in so tight. That rhythmic beat you could hear before you even hit the front door. “Slamaty..Clamity..Slamity..Clamity” over and over and over again. Hundreds of them in time creating an almost unbearable noise and a vibration that shook deep inside your chest.

I remember no air conditioning, and the sweat falling off in salty rivulets…And the white t-shirts all the men wore being soaked with sweat and dirty and greasy from laying on the Weave room floor up under a loom, legs sticking out in the narrow alleys.

And all the women with their waste aprons shoving those round battreys on each loom full of wound double tight yarn spools fresh out of the spinning room, double checking that it’s the right gauge and thickness. “Can’t have no mixed yarn.” Says the floor boss. You’d get wrote up for that. “Hell with that thick yarn!” Momma says. “Can’t get a break without the battery running out.”

And them’s the good old days?

But when we cut ourselves the blood was red. And some fixer who was caught up would help fill the battries so you could take a break and go to the water house and eat a bite. And the paychecks came home, with one savings bond a week coming out of it. But…in the end the money ran out anyway. And the old looms gave way to the air jets. And things changed and changed and changed some more.

But is it better? I can still hear those old looms in my head. My hearings a little hard, but my eyes are a little misty.

Are things really better?

IT’S ALL in your MIND…..(or…What’s on your mind, as this blank space always asks when I come to it.)

What is the first thing that you can remember? That’s my question for now. What’s your first memory? Our mind is a funny thing and they say we only use about 10% of what we have. But just humor me and try and frame a mental picture of your first memory. If you can do it that will eventually lead me to my other question.

See, the reason it interests me is that I often wonder if everyone else’s brain functions about the same as mine. Most of my childhood memories are rather fuzzy around the edges. Do you know what I mean? It’s sort of like trying to look at something right after you have just woke up, and you still have a ton of “sleep” in your eyes. Either that, or maybe it’s like trying to remember a dream which you had the night before. The dream is really clear when you first wake up, but if you EVER want to remember it, you should take the advice of dream specialists and write it down right then. If not, it’s going to be fuzzy in the morning. Fuzzy around the edges, just like those really early childhood memories. Sometimes I wonder if some of my “memories’ are not really dreams. Is that possible? I think it might be. As we go through life, and we live through so many different things, it may just be that some of our more vivid dreams get mixed up in our brain with reality. That would be a hoot wouldn’t it? I really think this is a good exercise though, because the more I have consciously thought about the past, the more memories starting bubbling to the surface like bubbles on a pound full of snapping turtles. The more I try and separate reality from fantasy, the more sure I am that it’s not always possible to do so.

Well for starters, the very first thing I remember is having to go potty really, really bad. We lived in a house back in 1953, when I was three years old that was originally a duplex that had been turned into a regular house. I remember that it confused me, because both sides of the house seemed to be the same, except the living room furniture was in one side and the bedroom furniture in the other. I remember thinking that the rooms were the same and that when I blinked my eyes, or went to sleep (especially if I got carried from one side to the other during that time) that the furniture was rearranging itself! Strange, right? But, back to pottying. I had to go really, really bad, and nobody was around to “direct” me to the correct place, so down went the pants and…..well..you can guess the rest. The part I remember the most, was getting my rear end tanned by my Pop! I never, ever did that again!

I also remember having a pair of Easter bunnies that same year. Dad brought them home in a box, and we took them out back to eat grass and they got away from us and ran up under the car. It took Daddy forever to catch them, and I didn’t know what some of the words he was using meant, but I used one of them later on when I rode my tricycle down the front steps. My Dad was secretly tickled I said it to the Dr. who was sewing up my head, but he still blamed it on my Mom. I can’t remember what happened to those damn rabbits though. I think Dad probably got tired of them making a mess and got rid of them one night while the furniture was changing itself around.

Another vivid thing during that same year I believe was during the summer we would catch “lightning bugs” (fireflies to a lot of you) We would put them in a jar and I would take them to a dark place and try to use them like a flashlight! Usually, we would let them go before going in for the night, but once we forgot and I came out the next morning, and couldn’t figure out why the bugs wouldn’t light up. I didn’t realize that after being in a closed jar with no hole all night long, they were NEVER going to light up again! My Dad told me that they were not sleeping, that they were dead forever. That was my first realization that things sometimes really cease to live.

I know that I lived the first two years of my life at my Grandparent’s house. My Dad didn’t get out of the Navy until 1952, so my Mom and I stayed with them. I have seen pictures of myself at that age, but try as I might, try so very hard, I cannot bring up any memories of any of those times before 1953 when we moved back to Trion, where I still live today. I wish I could remember those times. What would really be neat would be to be able to remember anything and everything that ever happened to you. To just be able to sit down and say, “Now I am going to remember December of 1956 when I was six years old, and what happened at Christmas that year!” That would be a miracle wouldst it? Scientists say that everything is stored right up there in that little 3 pounds of gray jelly we call our brain. That wonderful, misunderstood and not fully understood organ that runs us. I have tried everything from meditation, to “commanding” my brain to remember, to closing my eyes and straining and squinting but I still can’t make it happen! Are all of you folks like that, or is it just me!!! I would like to know, so I can claim a deficiency if I am the only one.

Memory and the brain. They really are a strange thing. I remember one time when my Grandfather was in his last year of life. He didn’t know anybody, or anything much. He was afflicted with some type of memory loss which was permanent and very severe…as a result of a stroke perhaps, or of hardening of the arteries. When we went to visit him, he would just sit around and kind of “babble” like a tape recorder randomly playing back snippets of conversation recorded over years and years of time. Nothing made much sense. He always seemed like he was glad to see us, and sad to see us go…but…things were just not perking right. My Grandma was sitting there one day and talking about one of their relatives, and Grandpa spoke up all of the sudden and said: “Cleve’s dead” (I think it was Cleve….it might have been Pierce…my memories not so good….) My Grandma answered him back telling him how crazy he was, because she had just talked to Uncle Cleve that morning. That afternoon when we took Grandma back home, she found out that Cleve had died right around the time we were all at the Nursing home. So, the brain’s funny isn’t it. I would have bet you a million dollars that Grandpa couldn’t count to ten anymore, but somehow, someway he knew his old hunting buddy had died.

Maybe not being able to recall everything that has ever happened to us is a blessing. We might NOT be able to be selective and just remember the good things. We might also HAVE to remember the bad things too. There are a LOT of those things that I would rather keep shoved back into the tiny recesses and crevasses of my mind. Yes, my mind. When all is said and done, our mind IS what we are isn’t it? Even when Grandpa’s was taken mostly away, he was given a gift of sorts to replace what had been taken from him. I guess our spirit sort of resides there. I suppose the part of us which is our personality and which makes us us resides there. It’s about the only part of us they can’t replace with a transplant still! Shoot, you can have a ticker transplant and go right on being yourself, but a diving accident can turn you into something you would rather not think about! It makes you wonder about all those people who do have that kind of damage. Have their souls, what made them who they were, already fled the premises and just left the empty shell behind? I suppose there are many who doubt there is a soul…but I still believe in it. I still believe that “spark” of creation is still there.

Well, there’s the challenge for those of you who want to think about it. Can you remember everything? What was your first memory? Would you like to be able to have total recall? When our old brain is gone, like Grandpa’s was, are we still us? I think so….what do you think? Most of all I would like to know…how are your memories…are they as clear as a wonderfully taken photograph, or as gray around the edges as an out of focus picture?

Oh by the way. Does anybody remember a Science Fiction thriller from the 50’s named “Donavan’s Brain?” It was about this guy whose brain was taken out of him while he was still alive, and put into this thing that looked all the world like a ten gallon fish aquarium! They had all kind of wires hooked up to it, and had it connected to a computer looking thing. Ol’ Donovan’s Brain could still “communicate” and eventually took over some folks, if I remember right, making ‘em do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. It was a hoot! I hope to heck they NEVER learn to do that. I personally hope they never learn to “store” our minds on computers either. Never able to “download” the electrical impulses from our brains onto some kind of infernal storage unit, to be put into a program so we can still communicate with the living. I don’t wanna’ be a machine.

I know for sure a lot of really rich people are planning on something happening. Walt Disney is on “ice” as is Ted Williams and quite a few other folks with the dollars who thing there’s a chance for a human resurrection one of these days.

When it’s time for me to go, I want to go. I wonder, what will my LAST thought will be? Whatever it is, I won’t be able to share it with any of you guys that are left behind, so I guess I better concentrate on sharing what I want to now, while I still can!! Love and Peace to you all.

Going down this winding road since October 1950, I’ve seen many things and done plenty more.

My opinions on life have stayed pretty much the same all along, at least in my deep down, secret heart of hearts.

I think on some days perhaps I should evolve, and try a different philosophy, but then after some additional thought I say the hell with that. I am who and what I am, and that’s pretty much it.

Where I used to be a gripey young man, now I’m a gripey old man.

Where I used to be a collector, now I’m a junker ( some say I’ve reached hoarder status, but I don’t think I’m there yet).

Where I used to barely scrape by, now I scrape lower.

Where I used to respect a lot of people, now I respect fewer. (A lot of good ones have died).

Where I used to be religious, I am now spiritually independent.

Things I used to be super afraid of, don’t scare me much anymore.

Where I used to love music, I now need it to survive.

Where I used to be insecure, I still am…..

I could go on, but I won’t. This self examination is over for now.

I think it’s worthwhile for everyone to look at themselves and be honest with themselves about their status as a human being. As you can see, I’m certainly no saint. Not even close to a Nobel peace prize. But, I do still love.

I love my family, my friends, those who used to call me friend but now don’t. I love life, nature, fresh air, good food, little kids, play dough, “The Secret Life of Pets” baking with my wife, going to the beach, ice cream….and so much more.

In spite of my failings and foibles, I love this life.

I hope all of you do too.

I sometimes think, I do not believe in a creator. Yet I feel I must. I cannot help myself. I must believe that each of us has a living spirit inside, which is uniquely ours and which was given to us and us alone. Nobody else possesses this tiny piece of creation.

It is ours.

I’m not sure of all the technicalities of this life we live. I feel like nobody truly knows the whole story. I don’t believe Creator wants us to know the whole story. We have our many religions and beliefs, and I won’t express any opinions about any of them. You believe what you want to, and I’ll do the same.

In the movie Forrest Gump, Forrest came to this conclusion:

“I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze. But I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both are happening at the same time.”

I wonder if that’s true? I wonder too about our time here in this physical world. I’m almost 74, and so far that is my time. It is my entire life up until now in this body. When my time is up, I wonder….where will that tiny piece of creation that keeps this body animated, moving and interacting go?

In September of 1970, my wife gave birth to our daughter Karrie Lynn. She only lived for two days. She was perfect when she was born, but got sick and died. The entirety of her life on the earth was two days, although my wife carried her inside for nine months. Her spirit was just the same in size and scope as mine, she just didn’t get as much time here. Does that fact decrease the importance of her life? Was it her destiny to only live for two days?

I think about it a lot, but I’m not sure of the answer.

If somehow after I die, I can interact with the spirit that was my daughter, I certainly want to do so. I don’t know how that interaction will manifest itself. It doesn’t much matter to me, as long as t does. I don’t think it will be as a father-daughter type meeting, but more of a spiritual reunification. I personally don’t think we will retain this “earthly” identity of what we were here. It would be kind of strange if we did. We won’t be human, and we won’t have a body.

Again, this is just my feelings on the subject. You can feel differently if you want to, it won’t hurt my feelings.

I also think that people who have lost children before they are born because of other things which may have happened, will have that same spiritual recognition. I think we will have that reunification with any and all people we have loved here, or have touched in some meaningful way.

A lot of people believe in heaven, but I’m not sure exactly the nature of that situation. Maybe it varies. I have no answer for that. I admire people who have the inscrutable and ironclad faith that there will actually be a physical residence somewhere where everyone who qualifies will gain entrance. I once believed it. But that’s not my belief anymore. Please don’t hate me, or pity me because of it. I’m not belittling your belief. I just don’t think that way anymore.

I do believe there will be more, but I think the total details will not be revealed until we breathe our last breath here.

I still cannot agree with Jean-Paul Sartre though, and his existentialist view of man:

“at first, he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also what he wills himself to be.”

I believe we are something. I believe we are all very much something special and unique. That we are given that tiny piece of creation, and we are given the time in which to live it, no matter if that time is great…like my Granny Stewart, who lived to be 100, and who told me that the years were like days to her as she aged….or like my daughter, whose two days may have seemed like a full lifetime….. because after all, it was.

I don’t know how many miles I have driven in an automobile over my working years. Starting back in 1978 up until 2011, a period of thirty three years, I have worked “out of town” from where I lived in good ol’ Trion, Georgia. I have worked and commuted to Rome, Calhoun, Dalton, LaFayette, and all over Northwest Georgia for five years during the 1980’s as a Sales Rep for a Medical/First Aid company. I have logged a lot of miles in a vehicle. I may try and figure out just how many one of these days when I have a lot more time to work it out.

During the 80’s while I was driving, I listened to WSB radio out of Atlanta most of the time. At least I had it on anyway. I laughed and cried at Ludlow Porch many days. I cussed Neal Boortz and agree with him…about 75-25…you can figure out in which direction. A lot of times I just rode with the radio turned off. I sang the lead to most of the Broadway musical records I had listened to so often as a kid. My “Impossible Dream” rendition from the “Man of La Mancha” is still ringing loudly somewhere in the hills near Jasper, Georgia. I went through every song I every knew and then started writing my own. Back then there was no way to record anything while you were driving, so if I got a good melody in my head I would have to hum it all day long until I got home to my guitar and cassette tape recorder. I know I lost a lot of hit songs due to the fact that I had to get out of the car and work in between bouts of creativity.

I preached many a great sermon back in those days…quoting from every bible verse I had every learned…which was a lot of them. None of them ever saw print or the light of day, but some of them were pretty good.

I taught classes on history and anthropology while I was driving. I had conversations with myself about the meaning of life. I never solved that one.

I imagined myself winning the World series with a last minute home run, or dropping a putt on the 18th of the Masters to win the tournament.

But many times I would just ride along looking at the mountain scenery and think. Just think about things.

I guess I was just a poor man’s Walter Mitty, really.

I once won an all expense paid trip to Athens Greece for Paula and I on a radio contest based on one of the many “question and answer” games that were going around in the early 80’s. I heard the question while I was driving down the road: “Who was Ms. Hungary in 1957” We had just played the game the night before, and I knew the answer was Zsa-Zsa Gabor, so I hurriedly pulled into a service station which had a pay phone (yes there were pay phones back then) and called into WSB. I got through, was the correct caller, and they put my name in the “pot” for the grand prize drawing the next week. As I was driving home the day of the drawing, I had WSB tuned in and when they actually called my name, I just about ran off the road. I had been kidding Paula about where we should go when we won (it was one of ten cities in Europe) so when I pulled into ANOTHER pay phone and called her, she thought I was being goofy. It took a lot of convincing, but she finally believed me. We chose Greece. It was our second choice to Vienna, Austria…but we couldn’t go there because the only time we had to go was in October, and everything there was booked up for Octoberfest. We had a great time in Greece though…

And so I drove on……through the 80’s and into the 90’s. Paula and I got a job at the same place, and for almost ten years we rode out and back together to Calhoun. It was a great era. We took our lunch breaks at the same hour and ate out in Calhoun at all the fast food joints there, many multiple times. We worked with a lot of cool, friendly and iconic people…and a few asses. We got paid decent, and the benefits were super.

We had an hour’s drive home in the afternoons to “cool down” from the day’s work. We did a lot of talking, and it kept us close. Thinking back now, the place we were working was a great place.

They were bought out by a bigger company in 1999, and I had to start commuting to a different place again. So, there was 12 more years of driving out and back. First to Rome again….then to Dalton, Lafayette and Calhoun in that order.

The last couple of years, the drives were late at night, ending at home after midnight most of the time. Mom and Dad were sick in those two years…dying. I remember the night before Daddy died I was at work in Calhoun and he called me. He was bad sick. I couldn’t get off early because the third shift supervisor wouldn’t come in to let me go. He was an ass. When I did get off, I drove the back road from Calhoun to LaFayette at 80 to 90 miles an hour. Dad was resting by then, and weak. He knew I was tired, so he told me to go home and rest. I stayed there until nearly 2 a.m., but then I relented and went home. My Dad was a tough old man. Many times in his life he had stared death down and come through it still breathing, all the way from World War II, through two heart attacks, heart bypass surgery, botched appendix surgery which left an infection which would have killed many people. So many times he had toughed it out. But I got a call about 7 a.m. the next morning from my Dad. He told me his chest was hurting and to come quickly. Then the phone fell out of his hand and hit the floor.

Of all the miles I had driven over the years, all the many thousands of mundane miles, the near miss days, the three coffee afternoons to stay awake…out of all of these miles, the twelve miles from my house to Lafayette were the longest I had ever driven. I went fast…but even then, I didn’t make it in time. My tough old man had left sometime while I was in transit. The top of his head was still warm when I touched him and said goodbye.

No matter how many times I go back over that drive…the hurried one the night before and the more hurried one the next morning, I can find no solace in anything I did. Guilt haunts and haunts, and keeps on haunting some more. People can tell you that you couldn’t have done anything more, but you’ll never believe them. I never do and never will.

Shoulda, coulda and woulda….you put them in the furnace just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego…and they just won’t burn….they’ll always come out right back at ya’.

I drove more miles after that. Seven more month’s worth of thirty miles over and thirty miles back, after midnight. My Mom faded away early in December that same year, but we were all at least there and surrounding her at the last. The anxiety, and the years of bad eating, and no exercise, and bad genetics caught up with me near Christmas of 2010 and my years of rolling up mileage came to a halt for a while. They cut me from Adam’s apple to belly button and put four new vessels in while a machine was pumping my blood. At one point in the first few days, I hurt so badly I thought about just letting go. But…my youngest son was in the room with me right then, and I didn’t want him to be a witness to it, so I decided I’d live.

I have made a come back over the past few years though. With Eli and Rue to care for, I moved back into the main stream of life a few steps at a time. Those babies and Paula brought me through the next year after my heart surgery, although my memory is sure spotty. They helped keep me busy and moving. It was a really good thing.

Now, for the last year or so, I’ve been riding up to Woodstation and picking up baby Evie and bringing her back down. I started to listen to NPR again, and many times playing tunes that Evie likes. And I think. I think a lot. Sort of like Forrest Gump did when he was running. But, unlike Forrest, I’ve started walking and doing a lot of thinking, instead of running. While I’m walking…and driving I notice the beauty around me.

The sunrises and sunsets, the animals, the kids and grandchildren, all sorts of buildings, and beaches, clouds and rocks….pretty much everything.

If you’ve seen my posts, you have seen the pictures! I take them to freeze that one moment in time for eternity. For others to see the things I consider beautiful and worthwhile. I write of things I hope will inspire, and I am trying oh so hard to steer clear of turmoil….although nobody’s perfect.

I’ve made a physical, and mostly emotional return to living.

I appreciate my life. Do you appreciate yours?

I know one day my walking….and driving days will be over, and while I have some regrets, the joys I have, and have had far outweigh the sorrows. The people I share my life with, who I call my family, give me purpose and love.

I am one of the lucky ones. Very lucky.

Call me blessed if you wish….I don’t care.

Reminiscing…

I have always loved music. Whether it be listening to music, playing my guitar, singing, writing songs, or just humming a tune. Music makes me happy, even when it makes me sad. I cry at the first few notes of some songs. One of them I heard on a rerun of AGT tonight was “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” written by Paul Simon. He gave an autistic young man who’s on the program permission to perform it, which is unusual, as he usually keeps performances of that song pretty limited.

I heard the song first on the radio early in early 1970, before I knew Paula was pregnant with our first child. It continued on to top the charts early that year, and while I liked it very much, it bore no major significance to me until much later on in the year.

We realized we were expecting a child sometime in February that year, while still living in Carrollton. It was a bleak, gray and cold, nasty Winter. We’d moved off campus into a little rental house, but we could never get our things totally straightened out, because Paula was beset with very bad morning sickness. It was the terrible, awful kind. I was so sorry for her, but I couldn’t help. The anti nausea pills would come back up whole. It was debilitating. I know she was upset. We knew without a doubt when it had happened. Unplanned, but not unwanted. I know being so sick was a miserable thing.

To make things worse, I could not find a part time job there to make money to pay a doctor, or to save any money for the coming expenses. Winter of 1970 in Carrollton, Georgia. Without our parents to help…I guess we’d have starved. I decided to transfer to UGA in the spring, because I’d heard part time jobs might be available there. I found a part time job at Sears in the Alps road shopping center almost as soon as we hit town. We found a little house to rent, Paula’s morning sickness improved, and things were looking better. Often, as I drove the car around Athens, Georgia I’d hear Simon and Garfunkel on the radio. The DJ there still liked “Bridge” and it began to take on a meaning to me. Sailing through those troubled waters was something we were doing. Maybe we’d hit some calm. I knew nothing.

We found a doctor for Paula, and although she had a really bad kidney infection that summer, which put her in the hospital, she gave birth to our daughter Karrie Lynn, on September 2nd. She was beautiful. Dark hair…dark brown eyes. The pediatrician checked her out and give her a clean bill of health the first day. I went home with Paula’s Mom to get some rest. I was a happy guy. I’d bought a box of cigars with pink bands to hand out.

When we came back the next day, the baby was sick. The pediatrician thought at first it was some kind of congenital heart defect. Then, she thought pneumonia. My Dad and Mom had gotten there, and we were all very concerned. Paula had held her once, the day before…but they hadn’t been able to bring her back again, because she was so sick. We were trying to get her transferred to Emory on September 4th, when the Doctors came out to tell us she had died.

Now at 19 years old…a little over a month away from being 20, I had become a father…my wife had become a mother..but we had lost that beautiful brown eyed baby in just two days. I never even got to touch her. Paula had to stay in the hospital still that night, and for several more nights. We were devastated, heart broken. I barely remember the next few days, with the funeral, the grieving. Paula’s Mom and I had to come to Trion to bury Karrie Lynn by ourselves while Paula was still in Athens. As we left Athens that day for Trion I had the radio on and I remember the DJ said someone had requested “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”. I don’t know who it was…it doesn’t matter, but I knew the song was for me. I wept bitterly…driving down the highway, wondering why, why this had happened to us. I got no answer to that question that day, and haven’t any day since then. Maybe there are no answers to such questions.

Paula and I recouped…slowly. We fostered a little boy named Ronnie for several months in 1971, after moving from the little house to a duplex on Edgewood drive. We built up the courage to try and have another child, and Kirsten was born in August 1972. (Sorry Kisi….revealed your age) Then after we moved to Trion, there was Ted and then Matt. We have been blessed beyond measure with them, with our grandchildren. Our love was deepened by our loss, but the loss was never forgotten.

But, as with all things which concern the heart….the hard wounds never heal, they just scar over and are opened by the memories which trigger the hurt. I would often go to the old Trion cemetery where my daughter is buried, and spend time alone there, talking and singing. Sometimes I would sing that Simon and Garfunkel song. Sometimes just think about things. So tonight, when I heard the first few notes, I had to suck in a deep breath, and start repairing that very old scar again. It’s hard to get the words out still, even after all these years. It’s just as fresh in that moment as it was almost half a century ago.

TRADE DAYS

Back in the early 70’s I moved back to Trion. It was 1974 to be exact. Kirsten was only two years old. Ted was still a couple of years on down the line and Matt wasn’t even thought about yet. I worked in the mill as a supervisor back then and those were the high water days of denim. We were working 7 days a week with only Christmas day off. It was grueling.

One of the things the denizens of the mill liked to do back then was trade knives. Yep, you heard me right. While we were watching the denim run through the sanforizers we would dicker and argue over knives, whose was the best, and if we would get a dollar or two boot for the one we wanted. Case was the big name maker, and the bone handled ones were the most sought after. I collected quite a few knives in my four years there.

Somewhere along about the late 70’s some guys got the idea to start congregating down at the Triangle shopping center to trade knives and some other stuff, and Trade Day in Chattooga country was born. It lasted there for a year or two and then when they didn’t want it there anymore, it moved down to it’s current spot halfway between Trion and Summerville. Jane owned it and then later on it was Jane and Larry.

Since those humble beginnings of “knife swapping” Trade Days and Flea markets have proliferated throughout America for the last nearly forty years. People in this country buy lots of stuff and then they end up having a lot of stuff they don’t need. You could also find some good bargains back in the “day” A lot of folks starting “specializing” in different kinds of things: knives, coins, jewelry, military, clothes, books, china, pottery, etc. and would have the “best of the best” in those areas of collection. You would learn who would have what, and would make a trip to see them every week on Tuesdays and Saturdays (around here, other places had/have theirs on different days) There was some good collectibles back then. I collected everything I think. Starting with the knives which I held onto for many years, then to baseball cards, and comic books, and hot wheels, marbles, and jewelry. I did a lot of trading and buying and some selling. I have met so many wonderful people over the years at Trade Day and other flea markets. I’ve become good friends with so many of them. It’s been a great hobby and pastime. I’ve had a very patient and wonderful wife, who has put up with a lot of “junk” coming and going over the years.

Over the past 5 years or so, the Trade Day and other flea markets have changed. The atmosphere is just not the same anymore….at least for me.

What you used to see years ago were local people coming down in their cars with their excess stuff in the trunk with maybe one table and just being there to get rid of things they didn’t want, or maybe the stuff that belonged to their folks or grandfolks that they didn’t need or want anymore. Nowadays pretty much all you see are the “pros” These are the dealers who come there every week, week after week, with pretty much either the same items, or the same items with a few new things thrown in. They have their five or six tables, their trucks and trailers. They have banners and flyers. Some of them travel the country, or at least regionally selling the same items.

Then you have the “storage wars” folks. These are the people who buy out storage buildings that the people who bought too much stuff back in the seventies and eighties have put it in, and then couldn’t pay their rent, or didn’t want to pay their rent. They bring big truckloads of everything imaginable in cardboard boxes, and lay it out on the ground and people go through it, hold something up and say “how much is this?” The guy who owns it shouts out a price and you either buy it, or put it back. Most of time I totally skip these guys as most of the “good” stuff has been pulled out by them before they come to the market and they sell “the good stuff” to high dollar collectors or scrap the gold and silver jewelry for cash. I just don’t like digging through those boxes. I’ve seen people’s entire lives, including their personal belongings, their family photos, their clothes and possessions, including their i.d., sold out down at Trade day. It’s sad.

Also, now there are the new “grocery wars” guys who buy the slightly out of date, or nearly out of date stuff, the excess stuff, and the returned stuff and bring huge truckloads of it to the market to sell out. I’ll admit, I get my coffee and some other stuff from these guys. Whey pay full retail, when you can get the stuff for pennies on the dollar? This is the place where I see a lot of retirees and people who work for minimum wage at the local burger joints or for Walmart. One of the ways these folks live is by “shopping” at the flea markets and Trade days…as they have evolved into something of a “super variety” store for the poor. (Along with the big Salvation Army Stores, and the Goodwill stores…which is where I buy most of my clothes and other things I really need for daily use)

All that being said, I still go on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I’ve picked up so much junk over the years that I need to get rid of that I got to! I’ll probably keep going until I can’t go anymore because it just sort of gets in the blood. It’s not the same as it used to be, but….what is?