Writing for Sanity's Sake

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…

When I was a young man my beliefs were different, mainly because my knowledge was self limited. Even a college if something an instructor said didn’t match what I had in my head as being “right” I just never let it sink in.

I was a know it all, who had ingrained dogma pumped into me. My values were shaped by the low number of years I’d lived. I was not “sticking up for what was right”. I was play acting life as I knew it.

I credit my wife for beginning my change. She taught me that women should be respected, and that their opinions counted. She quickly let me know that marriage is a shared endeavor, not a case of “this is the woman’s job, and this is the mans. By the time my first son arrived, we’d been through a good “practice run” with my daughter and were pretty much out of the bad fighting stage. Over the years I have taken on a big part of her love for animals, and have relied on her to tell me when I’m generally totally wrong about things.

I went on in my working career to be a supervisor in QA, which was pretty much populated by women….except of course by the supervisor. I always treated everyone of them with respect, and deferred to their knowledge in many cases. For over twenty years I had women working for me in various jobs and never, ever had a complaint of a harassing nature. There are a couple of FB friends on here who worked with me during that time, who can back me up on that point. I treated women thee same as I did the occasional man who worked for me. I very much regret not trying to go above and beyond to get a higher wage for them, but I just went with the flow of what the company paid. Wages weren’t bad, but the men were paid more per hour in the areas in which they worked. I always made sure that they each got good Christmas presents from me, and I always made them free copies of the song demos I recorded.

There was one lady who was an inspector for me, who really liked country music. I had given her a full CD of songs while we were working together. I got a call from a man about five years after that business had been sold out to a large carpet company. “I’m ——-‘s husband,” He said “She had a stroke two years ago and can’t speak well. She wore out the CD you gave her and desperately wants another copy. I tracked you down through another old worker from the plant”.

I made another copy, and took it too her house in Armuchee. I spoke with her as best I could for an hour while I was there, about good old times at the plant, how hard the work was. She was almost paralyzed totally, but she thanked me very much for the CD. “You were the best boss we ever had” she said.

I wept as I drove home. The truth is, she’d been one of my least favorite workers. Always griping, but getting her work done. But she had liked me more than I had liked her. I never knew. I had always treated her the same, so she never knew either.

I never had much use for gay people when I was young. I thought they were all just perverts. That’s because I had never known one. When Paula and I moved back home, I started buying plants for our yard from these two guys who owned a nursery. I thought they were just business partners, but over the months I found they were also partners. This was still back in the mid seventies, so their relationship was still very frowned upon as a general thing. They didn’t have any friends, so we started inviting them over to our house for meals and card games. They loved playing with our daughter and our dog. They were intelligent, well spoken and well educated. They were out to bother nobody else, they just wanted to live their lives. We had the over for quite a few years, and we always had good times. One year, I noticed their relationship starting to crumble. Pressure was being applied by one of the guys family to quit the relationship. He gave in to his family, and the other partner moved back to Chattanooga. The one who stayed behind is an “old bachelor”

I never considered gay people to be abnormal or abominations anymore after that. I purposely opened myself up to knowing more gay and lesbian people, and the more of them I knew, the more I understood that they were as they were because it’s the way they were made. Many people still won’t agree with me. I don’t really care though. I do not see how we cannot be a society which is compassionate enough to just “live and let live”

Now we come to today.

Over the past several years I have had a Facebook friend who is transgender. I know that for sure now, although I have long suspected it. Over the past several months I have witnessed the hell he is having to go through….yes he, now she has had to go through to do something that could not help but be done. It was not a choice, but an imperative that had to be done in order that this individual could be complete. In order that she could be who she was born to be. I read as relationships crumbled, as extreme loss was suffered in those relationships. I cried as I thought, how I had been born with a brain wired to match my body, but that’s not always the case. That’s not always the case.

There was a man on America’s Got Talent who sang today. He was born in a female body, but always identified as a boy. He was tormented, bullied, beaten and abused. But I watched as he sang beautifully today on that show as a fully transitioned man and I openly wept. Oh, the things he has had to go through that I never had to. The things that my gay friends have suffered from family and peers that I’ve never had to experience. The travails of being a woman in a man’s world I have gotten a pass on because of my luck in chromosome placement.

Some will read this long piece, and think I’m dead wrong and disagree. Some will read, and as usual just won’t comment. Some will give it a like, some will just scroll on by as soon as they realize the subject matter. I don’t care, this is my opinion and mine alone. This the chronicle of my needed change, which didn’t come as soon as it should have. My shame along with a tiny bit of retribution. Take it however you want, or not at all.

After that song today, which my seven month old granddaughter stood and watched in rapt attention without so much as a twitch, it had to be written. It just had to.

Thanks….

It’s hard to fathom, impossible to describe, how much the world has changed in 50 years. I can’t begin to even try. I’ll save the detailed nostalgic posts I want to write for a little later.

I asked Paula, if she could go back to this day 50 years ago…would she? She answered just like I did. Yes, yes we’d go back again and do it all over, live it all over again, and not change a thing. Not one thing, for if even if one little thing was changed…everything would be changed, and there’s nothing I would want to be any different than it is now.

Oh, there have been hard times for sure, sorrows…pain. There’s been some days that I was a little bit like Jimmy Stewart in “Its a Wonderful Life”. But, things change. If you believe in life, and believe in those you love, things change.

Bad times pass, and the good times have far outweighed them many times over for me.

My life really has been a wonderful life. I couldn’t have asked for anything any better.

The world does not owe us anything. Life didn’t owe me anything, but it has given me so much. I’m grateful for every bit of what I’ve had , and I’ll take whatever I have left. Thanks to everyone who’s been a part of the last fifty years. I love you all.

Without a doubt, much of what we think we know if false. Even being as “smart” as we humans think we are we don’t even know everything about our own bodies! When we move out from there, into the world around us, and eventually into the Universe that surrounds us, our knowledge becomes exponentially less and less.

There are SO many theories on how the Universe started, where it’s headed and how it’s going to end. Some of them are theological in nature, and some are scientific. None of them are right, probably not even near right. I’m talking all the way from St. Stephen, to Stephen King, to Stephen Hawking here.

I shudder when I think about how little I know. I have to take most things I do every day on faith. I have faith when I plug in the coffee machine that it is going to make me a cup of coffee. If it didn’t, I don’t have the knowledge to tear it apart and remake it so that it would. If I put my key in the car, and turn the switch and it doesn’t start, most of the time I wouldn’t know what to do. When I had my heart attack, I couldn’t fix my arteries. Of course there are people who DO know how to fix these things, and it’s a good thing too! Otherwise, most of us would be in a heap of trouble.

But, even those people who are “technologically” smart, don’t have all the answers. Every few years or so, a new theory comes out about how the Universe began. Of course, all religions would acknowledge that it was ‘created’ if you will, by God. A thinking consciousness started the ball rolling and made us what we are today. Makes sense to us as humans, because WE are conscious thinking creatures. That’s what separates us from the rest of the creatures….at least so we “think” (I am not so sure sometimes, when my little dog plays me for a sucker that she is not “thinking” about what she is doing) I guess there is all different levels of thinking, and I am SURE that we are not in ANY way close to the “thinking” if that is what it is, of a consciousness so powerful it could create the Universe.

Now scientists also have a hard time trying to explain how something like the Universe started on it’s on. I read somewhere a few weeks back that they think all the “matter” that it took to get the Universe started, could be compressed down into a ball the size of a basketball, but that it would weigh some astronomically heavy weight. Some basketball! When this thing decided to explode and start the Universe, it continually spread from a central point and made us what we are today. The scientists can look at light coming in from outside our Galaxy that took billions of years to get here. That’s cool. When we look up in the sky at night, and see the stars, we are not really seeing what is happening at the moment we are looking, but what happened years and sometimes hundreds or thousands of years ago and is just now reaching us. For all we know, some of those stars could be, and probably are, gone. Mind boggling ain’t it?

Well, I just don’t believe that either group has ALL the right answers. I personally believe the Universe was created, and didn’t just happen, but I don’t even PRETEND to understand the type of intellect it would take to do it.

I know that we have had books and bibles, and documents from the beginning of the time that man learned how to write, with all the theories about how things happened. All of those came from the minds of man, and have been shaped by the mind of man down through the centuries. None of them are totally accurate. I don’t think that we know accurate.

Now, don’t go all funny on me, and think I am being sacrilegious. I’m not. I don’t go around telling people what to believe, OR that what they believe isn’t right. I don’t have the right to do that, and neither does anyone else. There are, however, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. who would disagree with me. All of those religions consider that they have been given the innate approval, by the being that created the Universe to tell everyone that their way of thinking is the only one that is correct. I happen to disagree with them. There may be some correctness in all of them. Being a type of Christian, I personally believe in that philosophy and some may think it is a conflict of teaching that I would state I don’t believe in telling OTHER people what to believe, but I don’t. Everyone has to decide for themselves, and I think on that particular point that the being that created us, God if you will, has been totally succinct. You choose for yourself whether to be good or bad, light or dark. This choice is yours no matter what your religion or philosophy.

It’s my personal opinion that we will all find out one day, of course. I think that God would be totally unfair to just leaving us hanging about the answer to things. Of course, I could be wrong about that too. We may go to Heaven, or we may lay unconscious of the passing of time until we come back around in the endless cycle of the Universes coming and going. We MAY know nothing, and that’s that. At least there would be peace in that, wouldn’t there? I highly doubt this to be the case, but….

My memories of my Mother start very early. I remember when we lived on 6th Street in Trion. It had to be before 1956, because we moved to a new house on Simmons street that year. I remember in the hot summers, Mom would get the hose pipe and put the sprayer on the end of it, and turn it on “spray”….that fine setting where the water is almost a mist. She would spray that water for what seemed liked hours while I ran laughing out and back through it, imagining I was running through a giant waterfall, or a wall of water.

She would let me help her put the sheets in the old washing machine, and then make me move back when she put the bleach into the clothes. I remember that smell as being something pleasant even til this day. We’d hang them out on the clothes line to dry. I never realized how young Mom was. She was only 20 years old when I was born so she was really never much “older” than me. She would always get me a jar with a lid during the late summer evenings, and watch me as I ran around catching and filling that jar with lightning bugs.

Mom didn’t work back then so she would sit around with me during the day and watch “Howdy Doody” and “Captain Kangaroo” on the tiny little TV we had….the one I remember had a screen about the size of today’s computer screen. You had to get up close to see the picture, but boy was the volume loud! I had oatmeal for breakfast most days…with raisins in it. A sandwich for lunch….usually peanut butter or bologna…sometimes fried. Then Mom would fix a big supper in the evenings for when Dad came home from work. A lot of potatoes and beans, cornbread or biscuits, and some meatloaf or fried chicken. She was a good cook. She learned from my Grandma Stewart, who was the best cook ever. Mom wasn’t sick back then…not yet. She still smiled a lot, and laughed….things she didn’t do as much after the mental illness started creeping in on her and making her thoughts turn dark and turning the bright lights down to dim in her eyes. I’m surprised by those long ago things I can remember, because some days I can’t remember what I had for breakfast. I guess it’s just because Mom was happy…and I am fortunate to remember the days of her happiness.

Mother’s Day is tomorrow. My Mother is gone. She died December 10th of the same year my Dad died, which was 2010. Nine years this year. I miss them both and think about them pretty much every day. Recently, I even dreamed of them both.

It was actually a dream in which we were all sitting around a large table having a meal together. I can’t remember everyone who was there, but I know Mom and Dad were there, Grandma Stewart was there, my Granny Bowers, and my wife. Maybe it was because I had been thinking about Mother’s day, and about them and many other things in the past right before I went to sleep. Maybe it’s something else….I don’t know.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the past these days. I know we should live for the day and in the day, but when your my age, you have a lot more “past” then you do “future” so I suppose it’s natural to spend a little more time there.

I know tomorrow is a “holiday” which has been set aside to honor our Mothers…and our wives who are the Mother’s of our children, but really shouldn’t we do that every day?

I certainly love the Mother of my children every day. Paula Neurauter Bowers and I will have been married 50 years next month on June 14th, and for 49 of those years she has been a Mother….every day. Our first daughter only lived two days, but Paula held her and loved her, ever so briefly in her short life. There was a bond formed between Mother and daughter that did not die, and never can.

We’ve been very lucky since then. We’ve got three great children in Kirsten, Ted, and Matt, and all of their spouses. They have helped us and loved us a lot.

Paula’s been a Grandmother since 1990, and since 2011 has been constantly in care of our youngest grandchildren. First Eli and Rue, and now Evie and Ellie. Before that there was Jessy and Auttie, Tyler and Chelsea, and Olivia Lynn. We didn’t keep them full time, but we loved them full time and still do…..Paula has more love in her heart for her “little ones” then they could ever know. (Also her two “doggie” children Hoosi and Daisy) Today we spent some time with Ted and Mel and Eli and our great granddaughter Oakley. It was very nice.

I respect Paula more than I do anybody for being the Mother and Nana she has been. I think I have told her that on some other days besides just on Mother’s day. I haven’t told her enough…I never could if I tried.

Mother’s day seems to be getting more and more commercial every year like a lot of other holidays. They shame you if you don’t go to Jared’s or Kays and buy her a diamond. I think a lot of Mother’s would as soon to have something their kids made them, than something bought. A crudely colored card with a scribbled “I love you”

My Mom, Evia Bowers.. kept a cutting board I made for her in Vacation bible school when I was eight. It said “Mother” I think I still have it somewhere around the house. She never used it, just kept it propped up in the kitchen. Guess it’s sort of like the little squiggly drawings I keep that the kids and grandchildren did when they were tiny and gave them to us as presents. We still get them. Mom got a cutting board, but she never lost it.

My Mom was a person who had many problems and privations during her lifetime. She was beset by mental illness in 1960, and battled it off and on for the rest of her life. She was thirty years old that year, and she lived to be almost 81. That’s a long battle. It’s one most people would have given up on, and I witnessed the days that Mom would have given up if she had not had that spark of love in her for her family. That tiny spark which we could nurture and eventually bring her back to us for a period of time….many times for years and years.

She was a sweet, loving lady during the “good” times. She loved to cook, took up crocheting, and watched her soaps every day with Daddy. She was terribly sick the last few years of her life, with diabetes and a detiorating nervous system. She had to have a pacemaker. There were some very bad days. Wearing and wearying days. Days in which I wish I could have done more, would have done more. My regrets are many.

Yet, when I think of her now, I think of her as a young woman. I think of the smell of clean bleached sheets hanging on the clothes line when I was four. I think of the backbreaking work she did filling battreys in the mill on the second shift for years, because we needed the money, and so she could save some money.

I think of the trips with her and Daddy to Myrtle beach, and the “frozen yoga” I think of the Italian Cream cake for my birthday. I think of the deep love she had for her own Mother, and the twice a month trips to the Blue Ridge nursing home that she and Daddy took, to take Granny out to eat. I think of how much she really did love my brother Mike and me, and also all her precious grandchildren, the five of them. Yes, I indeed have all of those, and many more, good memories to sustain me, and to which I cling on many days, especially on Mother’s Day.

So, on this Mother’s Day tommorow, show your Mother some love if she’s still with you. Hugs, kisses, and thank you’s…and oh some flowers too if you just gotta! Tell someone who is not a physical Mother, but who has been significant in your life, you love them and you are taking time on this Mother’s day to let them know how much you appreciate them.

I’ll be thinking of my Mom, and I’ll be with my wife.

And lastly Dad…I miss you every day old buddy!

May is almost here, and on the 10 day weather forecast I see 80’s starting to show up. Hot weather. Where I’m not much of a fan of it now, I certainly once was.

May meant school was almost over, and a three month vacation was just around the corner.

The fishing rods and cane poles could be dusted off, and new nylon fishing line would replace the previous summers scum encrusted old stringy line. We’d cut the old rusty hooks that had been holding the line to the top of the rod off, and tie on a shiny new barbed hook and lead sinkers, or a snap leader, so we could use a shyster or a plastic black worm to entice a bass.

The Chattooga river was barely a rock throw away, and I could hear that water pouring over the dam, and feel the spray hitting me as I stood on one of those limestone rocks, casting out towards the middle…looking for a sweet spot. I can still smell it even now.

We’d get our baseball gloves out of the closet and rub a tiny bit of Vaseline into the dry leather, and then just put the glove up to our nose, and smell the scent of baseball. Visions of games with new clean uniforms, and wooden bats contacting those brand new white baseballs, perhaps even shattering the bat if you hit it too high up on the handle, well…those visions danced in the heads of us Trion boys more so than any candy cane at Christmas time ever did.

I can see Jess Emory chewing on a cigar, and hear J.W. Greenwood or Cherry Crisp calling: “strike three, you’re out” more often than I wanted to!

I took a Brillo pad and shined up my golf irons. I took a Phillips head screw driver and made sure the metal plates on all my woods were tight. Me and Dad, and Tommy and Mike Brown would go golf ball hunting to stock up for the summer. We boys would spend hours a week playing and practicing so we could be as good as Darrell Broome, or Faye Brown. We’d caddie during the times we couldn’t play for Otis Tanner, or Mr. Florence. We would get real good tips during the Trion/Ware Shoals match. I’d always try and get Donnie Davis or Mr. Munns from Ware Shoals. They paid good.

It’s funny the things you remember when the weather starts to turn. I’m glad I grew up where I did, when I did. I could write more, but the sandman calls.

Once, I was a kid, a boy, a teenager, a young man.

Once was,… quite some time. 68 years ago I was a kid. 56 years ago I was 17, and looking to graduate from High School.

I was surrounded by people who grew up during the Great Depression, many of whom then went off to World War II to fight against some of the worst evil ever perpetrated against humanity….up until that time. People who then came home and became our parents, our aunts and uncles, our mentors, our neighbors, our preachers and teachers, our coaches, our city councilmen, our mayors, and many, many other roles in our lives. I knew hundreds of these people, perhaps thousands. They were good people, no…many of them were more than good, many of them were great people. While I am sure there were a few who were “bad” I can certainly, personally vouch for the fact that most of those people were good. All of them had one quality which I remember them carrying visibly in their hearts at almost all times for other people to see.

That quality was integrity.

These were people who did things they did not have to do, just because those things were right. Because they knew they were right. Because they knew right from wrong. Because they didn’t blur the lines between right and wrong. Because they did not fool themselves into thinking that they could do wrong and call it right. Because they did not try to bend the facts.They knew nothing about “spin”. To them, right and left meant in which hand you held your pencil.

Because they had seen starvation as children, and unjustified death as young adults, and they had fought against those things, and because they had overcome those things. They had gone to War and seen and suffered unthinkable things. They had freed Jewish people from the death camps of the Nazis. They had freed prisoners of war from the death camps of the Japanese.

These were people who would give you back a quarter in change if you made a mistake and gave it to them accidentally. These were the people who would give you the extra food they grew in their garden. They were the people who would change your flat tire in order to get you off the road. These were the people who would literally give you the “shirt off of their back”

They were people who would arrive fifteen minutes early for an appointment, or to a meeting, or to church, or to take their kids to school. These were the people who tried to instill all of these values into their children.

Did they fail? How did they fail?

Integrity. They had integrity.

Somewhere, somehow over the last sixty years integrity has, for the most part, been misplaced. It’s been relocated. It’s in the closet. Up on the top shelf, where the old hats are kept. It’s hard to reach. Some people get their flashlights out and find it still. But it’s not easy to come by. It’s not convenient to use. It’s difficult to have integrity. More difficult still to maintain. I know some people who have it. I have some family and friends who have it. I’ve tried my best to have it, perhaps I’ve failed or simply have too high expectations for that old quality.

I saw integrity in action this morning over a dollar that didn’t have to be given to someone, but was because a man had integrity. A single dollar. It might never have been missed, but the old man who gave it back had that integrity. Shorten that word down and you get “grit” This man had grit. Our parents generation had true grit. Integrity.

It’s a small thing, but a big thing. I knew at that point, I had not failed totally. When I stop and think about it, I feel perhaps I have not failed. Integrity lives on perhaps. I see other examples of it in other places in which I live my life on a daily basis. I am very grateful that I see it. It is something which needs to continue to be passed on. Our politicians and leaders certainly need to find it. To many of them integrity is a dirty word.

The people in the generations who were alive when I was a kid, a little boy, a young man….they knew integrity. They held themselves accountable for doing the right thing. They didn’t have to have anyone else, or any other thing besides their conscious to guide them. They were not perfect, but their spines were straighter than many in this day and age, including our leaders in many areas. Perhaps especially those.

I’d like to simply just thank those people of the greatest generation for what they all meant to me. I’ve fallen short of their example, but I swear I’ve tried….and I will continue to do so until my last breath.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.

In this world, in this day and age…how many peacemakers do you suppose there are as opposed to “agitators”

In the sixties we would make the peace sign, and we meant it. We wore the peace symbol and we meant it. We pictured the dove of peace in a world of war. We pictured an end to nuclear weapons. We decried the warlike status of our country.

Now we are called “old hippies” or worse. We are scoffed at as irrelevant. We are blamed for the way the returning vets from Nam were treated. Nothing could be further from the truth. I know, because I was there…then..and now. The same entity, the American government was responsible for forgetting our vets then, and they are responsible for “creeping” us back into war again now…

I for one want no more wars. They do not solve any problems. They only always perpetuate them. I see a new presidential election on the horizon and I see myself voting for someone who is against starting new wars. We need a peacemaker, after all they shall be called the children of God, and that’s not a bad endorsement.

Today is the day which is really the central core of Christianity. I know that tomorrow is the day on which Christ came back to life. But on this day, he lay dead in the grave and like any other human being he experienced “death” itself. Jesus did not rise in his same body, or form. He arose from the dead in a new body, a transfigured body. He showed us that although we die it is possible through him to do the same thing which he did. He told us, that whosoever believed in him, should not perish but have eternal life. It took some time for the people who knew him the best to recognize him, just as it takes time for us to recognize what really being a follower of Christ is all about. When the dawn breaks in the morning, I hope to see it. I hope to smile and say thank you to our Creator for another day. I will want to tell everyone,…everyone that I love them and that God loves them, no matter where they are or what they are doing. Tell everyone to forgive me for anything I have ever done to cause them sorrow. Give forgiveness which is not asked for nor sought after. Christ’s love is unconditional, and it does transfigure a person to something which they cannot be on their own. How can my love be less unconditional? If we followed Christ’s guidelines which he laid out for us during his last three years of life, we would have peace on Earth and love for each other. Jesus loved us, and he proved it. He loved ALL of humanity, and he proved it. Can we do any less and still call ourselves Christians?

The Cotton Mill-2015

I know my Daddy was a hard working man. I remember being very young, back when we lived over on Simmons street and Daddy would come home from the mill. I rushed to meet him, and most of the days he would grab me up and give me a hug. Some days though, when he had been working right up until the last minute before the whistle blew, he would still have the grease and oil from working on looms on his hands and he had to go clean up before I got my hug.

Mom didn’t like all that mess in her bathroom sink, so Daddy had a little container of kerosine and some soap he kept out next to the back steps, along with some rags with which to wipe his hands. He’d get most of it off his hands, then finish up in the bathroom. I know he was tired, especially on the days he worked over. Still, he always had a little time to play, whether it was throwing a ball around or going out to where the beagles were penned up and letting me play with them a little.

Loom fixers were essential back in the cotton mill in the 1950’s. Good loom fixers, like my Dad were sought after. They moved around from “upkeep to upkeep” inside the weave room, getting the better set of looms to look after as they became more proficient. New fixers got the worst running looms and had to ask for help from the older more experienced fixers sometimes.

I never realized how hard working in that cotton mill could be until after I was sixteen years old. That was the age in which a student could get a summer job in the mill and make themselves some “good” money. A lot better money than caddying up at the golf course, or working bagging groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. So, in the summer of 1967 I got myself a summer job in the mill.

By that time, my Dad had worked his way up to being an Overseer in the mill. He was the “boss” over the second/third shifts in the weave room. My Dad didn’t believe in doing family any favors though. I ended up doing a job called “taking up quills” We’d take a little buggy and go around to every loom and fetch the empty wooden quills on which the filling yarn had been wound. We’d dump the container into which they fell, in our big rolling buggy, and when that buggy was full we’d take it to the “quill machine” It was there that the quills were reprocessed to be sent back up to the spinning room. It was the location of one of the strangest sights I can ever remember.

Me and Kelley ( a teacher at our High School who also had a summer job in the mill) had filled our buggies up to almost overflowing and were bringing them to the machine. The dumping station was a circulating belt which eventually fed into a smaller belt which took the quills upstairs. A lot of times there was a little yarn left on them and the quill machine operator was responsible for getting that yarn off before the quills got to the smaller belt. There had been a large influx of quills and the operator was standing in between the large cirulating belt and the smaller belt buried chest deep in slowly moving wooden quills. With his arms outstreched and pulling the remnants of yarn off of the quills he looked like some strange multicolored ghost with stringlets of light hanging in all directions off on him. He was covered in sweat and it dripped from his face and neck onto the remnant yarn. “Damn” Kelly whispered, “I hope he doesn’t get buried” He didn’t.

There was no air conditioning in that mill back in 1967, just humidity. The more the humidity, the better, because the looms ran better when the humidity was high. They even had “humidity heads” built into the ceiling spewing out moisture into the air. It has hot that summer. Over 100 degrees inside that weave room most days and with that humidity, it was brutal.

I came home most days and just went to bed and slept for 10 hours or so. I didn’t feel much like doing anything else.

I developed a very healthy respect for my Dad, and all of the other men from our community who had been working in that place for most of their lives. They were tough men. Most of them were good men. Many of them, they just don’t make ’em like anymore. My Daddy was one of them, as was many of yours my friends. I met and worked with a lot of them that year and in the subsequent years in which I worked in that cotton mill. I will have to admit that the next summer I asked ol’ Henry Rider about a job before I did my Dad, and he put me to repainting the walls. It was a lot better than collecting quills!

I don’t know what it’s like in there today. I haven’t been in a weave room in a score or more of years. I do know how hard of work it used to be though. Hard..hard work.