Writing for Sanity's Sake

COAL- My life story in a few paragraphs…..and in relationship to coal….

I have lived, up until this past year,…and for the short number of years I was away at college, I had lived in a little Cotton mill town all of my life. It was a great place to grow up, with regards to my own personal situation. A wonderful place really. But, things change. Things go unnoticed by most people if they don’t pay close attention to what goes on.

I know when Paula and I first moved back to Trion in 1974, we moved into a little house on Ninth street. The first 10 years or so after we moved back were “thin” years. We got by….we did get by, but on a lot less than most people would ever think or know. Our dinners were populated with a lot of fish sticks, creamed chipped beef, tuna casserole, spaghetti, and salmon patties. Now, don’t get me wrong. I still like most of those things. I still fix them from time to time. Brings back old, good memories.

One of the things about living in a cotton mill town is smoke. As I previously mentioned, we moved back to Trion to 9th street, which had always been know as “Smokey row” or smokey road. The reason it was given that title was because it was the street that led right to the mill, which was only a block away. Actually, the “back end” of the mill, where the boilers and power generators were located was only a few hundred yards from our house. When they were burning coal, hard and strong back in 1974, we couldn’t leave the windows open for a breath of fresh air at night. If we did, we would wake up the next morning with a coating of fine black dust and tiny black coal crystals covering the areas inside the house near the windows.

Of course this was nothing really new to me, having grown up near that mill. We had never lived out of sight of those gigantic tall smoke stacks at any point during my childhood. Simmons street and eighth street had been our homes and you could see the smoke stacks from both places. You could hear the “work whistle” as it blew at 20 minutes before the hour, and the hour itself at 8 a.m., 4 p.m., and 12 a.m., for all the shifts. Many times those smoke stacks would be belching out smoke. Sometimes white. Sometimes gray and sometimes black…especially when the stacks were being “blown out” As a child, I don’t remember it being as “nasty” as it was in the 70’s. Perhaps there was a reason for that. As I recall, we could go by the big coal stack as kids, and the coal was actually beautiful. Large, shiny, almost obsidian looking pieces lay all around the coal pile. I collected some of them as a kid, and took them home. You could rub your hands on this stuff and you would get very little, if any, black on them. It also burned very clean. It was what they called Anthracite coal.

You see, back in the fifties, a lot of things were still being made in America. Riegel Textile had a lot of high end goods. Baby blankets, and cloth being made into all kinds of wonderful products. Government contracts making cloth for the DOD. Riegel had one of the best dye houses in the country, with men dying cloth who could make it look like almost anything. None of these people had been betrayed…yet. And times were pretty good in that small town, at that time, for those people. Not so much for some people in other places, but for those people…at that time, the fifties, the early sixties…perhaps even into the late sixties, things were good.

Jobs hadn’t been farmed out to China and India, or Vietnam and Mexico yet by the owners of the businesses, the soon to be millionaire and billionaire traitors who traded American jobs for money in their pockets. Some of the people who are still around today, and who still have that money. Some of the people….

By the seventies, I believe they were using Bituminous coal. The dye house was gone, and Riegel Textile had turned into Mt. Vernon mills. The big thing that was keeping the mill going, and the jobs there was denim. Blue denim. My Daddy and some more hard working men at that mill had gotten the mill switched over from running the cloth of the fifties, and the owners had switched the business model around to suit the fashions of the times. Everybody needed blue jeans, and things made from denim, and they were making the best denim in the world at that mill, at that time. When I went to work for them, and they were burning that Bituminous coal, and all I had to do was walk down the street to the mill, they were running seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 364 days a year. We got Christmas day off. They were making BIG money on denim, and they were taking advantage of it while they could. I can’t blame them. But I didn’t fit in that environment, like my Daddy and his Daddy had for so many years. I left working there in 1978 after four years of that seven days a week stuff. I never went back…except for a ultra short stent in the 90’s. But that’s another story for another day. Denim rocked on for quite a few years after I had gone. I continued to live in Trion, and work out of town. But I paid attention to the smoke stacks, and the coal. If you’ve been following me for very long on Facebook, you have seen some of my photos of those stacks. I may just attach one to this post if I can find one.

Now, the last time I looked at the railroad cars that were coming into the mill at Trion, the last time, before I moved out of town…before I stopped walking that little town and left for other places, that last time I looked they were using Lignite. The lowest grade of coal, the cheapest and the kind which burns the dirtiest. Denim was not king anymore and business was again changing. Some jobs had gone other places, outside the United States. But, some of them stayed, and they have stayed, and they still stay. And I admire them for that. One of the very few who could keep some jobs here, in the face of all the change, and all of the pressure of the years, and all of the temptations to put profit totally over location. They didn’t give raises, they hired the folks coming from down South, but they have kept the doors open. And they are still open, but things are not the same…and they will never be the same. From Anthracite to Bituminous to Lignite. The story of our country in coal. It’s just a story though, and I’m a poor story teller. I have not solutions. I offer no advice. It is what it is, and it will never be the same. And that’s the shame of it….that’s the shame..

We are the gatherers of our experiences, no matter if we initiate them or if they are initiated by others, and through us, I believe God is able to experience all of that sum of those experiences.

Many believe in a creator who is all knowing, all seeing and all powerful…but that is not to say that our creator has experienced all things.

If you are the author of a fictional novel, it is much different than if you are the author of a biography.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘

THE RESERVATION

by Larry Bowers

Children crying, smoke is rising,

Smell of whiskey in the air.

Relief check coming,

Widow thumbing,

Through her tickets for the fair.

Another day on the reservation,

Remnants of another nation,

American genocide,

That we don’t try to hide,

Is a scar on the face,

Of our creation.

Old dog growling, Coyote howling,

Pale moonlight shining down at night.

The once proud bands, Who roamed these land.

Now stuck in a terrible plight.

Another life on the reservation,

Constant pain and aggravation.

American genocide,

Slow death or suicide,

Is the only logical cure for the situation.

Today I wondered about the future. I heard them talking this morning on NPR about how the ocean will rise by about 2 meters ( six feet) by the year 2100. According to the scientists who were talking, that means that a storm worse than hurricane Sandy, with a storm surge 6 ft higher than it was in 2012. The storm surge that did so much damage in New Jersey and New York City was 13 feet. With the increased ocean level it would be 19 ft.

If one of these storms occur every three to four years, the damage caused by them would render repairs in New York city and surrounding areas untenable. You wouldn’t get everything repaired before another storm comes through and tears it up again. This means that many coastal cities along our East coast would be in big time hot water.

Now, I don’t know if the scientists are right, but I have a tendency to believe them. They have the facts and figures to back up their assumptions. I won’t be around in the year 2100, but I worry that our country won’t be prepared for what is going to take place.

I hope that my descendants will be able to figure out a way to slow things down, or a lot of the population of the United States is going to be living at the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. That won’t be good.

Perhaps tonight if I get more than 4 hours sleep and don’t feel out of sorts all day, I will be more optimistic tomorrow. I hope so.

Ocean front property in West Virginia anyone?

While my Guitar Gently Weeps

While my Guitar Gently Weeps

— Read on thegraymaniac.com/2019/04/09/while-my-guitar-gently-weeps/

While my Guitar Gently Weeps….

The guitar and I go back a long way. I think I was 11 when Dad and I first went to the pawn shop in Rome and looked at guitars. I wanted a Bass (wanted to be in the band y’know) but I came away with a Kay scroll side acoustical guitar, with strings that were about ½ inch above the fret.

Now anybody who has ever played a guitar knows that the “action” of the strings, i.e. the closer they are to the frets and the neck of the guitar, the easier they are to press down and get a sound out of, and thus the easier the instrument is to play. ½ inch is a LONG way for a beginner, especially with metal strings. I found out after I had owned the guitar for several weeks that the strings could be adjusted down. By that time, I had permanent calluses on ALL the fingers on my left hand…which have never, never gone away. This is the way you can tell a real guitarist though. Let somebody pick up a guitar and plunk away on it for a half hour and then they start looking at the tops of their fingers like “damn that hurts” NEWBIE! Either that, or they would wienie out and go to a Spanish guitar with nylon strings and say “I want to be like Segovia” Well, if you want to be like Andres Segovia, you better plan on practicing 12 to 14 hours a day and have natural talent to begin with to boot. There are NOT many Segovia’s, or even Chet Atkins for that matter. Some people have it, and some people don’t. You can teach yourself, or be taught to play a guitar, but you can’t be taught to be a Segovia or an Atkins. That kind of talent has to be in the genes. But…in any case…as I was saying, the metal makes the man when it comes to guitars, and if you ain’t got the calluses, don’t whine!

I had three guitar lessons before my Dad figured out it was too much of a pain to take me all the way 6 miles down the road to Summerville, especially since I wasn’t much interested in learning how to finger pick “Red River Valley” or any other country tune from the 1940’s.

I finally ended up doing it the way I have done almost everything else in my life…I learned it on my own. I looked at a book and got the chords down pat and then just started practicing them over and over again. I watch other people who knew how to play do their thing, and picked up some things from them. Mostly I did my own thing though.

I don’t pick up any of my guitars as often as I should. I have three or four of them sitting around. (And yes, one of them is a Spanish guitar that my wife got me for a Wedding present! Thing about it is, I HAD the calluses before I got this guitar so when I play it, I don’t feel like a wienie) This past week when I was feeling like crap, I picked my guitar up off the bed and just sat down and started to play. For me, at least right now, it’s still comes easy. My brain sends those long ago learned and practiced chords and notes down through the nerve endings in my fingers and the music starts to come out of the guitar. It’s like a small miracle really. I can’t remember what I had for supper last night, but I can still play “Down Yonder” or “Wildwood Flower” like it was 1963! Over forty years and my brain still remembers! I think the day I pick up the guitar and I can’t remember the chords or the notes that I learned so long ago is going to be a VERY sad day. I really hope it never happens. There is such a bond between a player and their instrument, that if that bond is broken, it would be almost like a death of dear friend. Oh how much you would mourn that loss! I know the look in my Grandfather’s eyes back years ago when he would pick up that banjo that he had played for years and couldn’t quite get the music to come out the way it did before. It was a sad and confused look. A pitiful look. It wasn’t too long after that when Grandpa had to go to the nursing home because he really couldn’t remember anything anymore. Or anybody. I pray to the creator that I don’t go that route. One of the first songs I wrote when I took up songwriting was about Grandpa and his banjo. It’s called “Blue Ridge Mountain Symphony.” I have a good demo of the song, maybe one of these days I will get it on the site so folks can listen to it.

I really think that the fact that man decided to pick up some pieces of wood and put cat guts on it, or thump on a hollow log and call it music, was one of the things that eventually differentiated us from all the other creatures that our creator made. I can’t recall seeing any animal but a human pick up a musical instrument and play it. (ok…they train chimps to do it…but that’s different, they don’t give a hoot….or perhaps that’s an ooh..ooh…ooh…about what they are doing! Man is the only creature who has made a connection with things musical, and I think that is one of the only real connections we have with divinity. I really think God enjoys music. He digs dancing too…remember when David danced before God, and he was pleased? We sell God short sometimes I think, imagining that ALL he is, is this stern and terrible judge sitting behind a judges bench with a big gavel, ready to convict us of all our sins and send us straight to blazes.

Anyway, I digress. So the other day when I continued to play, I also started humming some familiar tunes to the chords. Peter, Paul and Mary were remembered of course, with “Jet Plane,” and “Puff the Magic Dragon” I covered Peter and Gordon with “I Go to Pieces” I stepped forward with “The Ones the Wolfs Brought Down” a song that Garth Brooks recorded which never made to the singles chart, but in my opinion certainly should have. I went through “Stepping Stone” which Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Monkees covered. I did “Friends in Low Places” because that’s just how I felt! Then I just sat there for half an hour more making up little runs and tunes from the Blues to Rock and Roll. I found a couple of riffs I really liked and just played them over and over, hoping I might remember them if I ever get near a recorder again, and want to put down something new. I really wish I had the time. I feel like I have cheated something or somebody sometimes because I haven’t been as “creative” as I should have been. When do you have time to be creative? Seems like back in the 80’s I had a hell of a lot more time to write and create and try to do things that might be some kind of “legacy” Now I’m not so sure about legacies anyway. Who’s really going to care? Is it something my children and grandchildren would REALLY want to sit down and take time to listen to, or will they get into the same rut as I seem to be in now, which leaves you with no time to do anything but work, eat and sleep and a few minutes on the weekend to catch up with your chores. I swear to goodness, I can never remember the days being so crammed full of stuff that the only time I pick my guitar up and play it is when I am at home sick, and my chest is feeling funny and I have these strange little twinges, and I need some solace from somewhere.

How I do go on about a piece of wood with some string pulled across it, don’t I? But yet, there IS something mystical in our relationship with our instruments, just like there is in our relationships with other people. I know for a fact, I pick up guitars at stores and flea markets and stuff and strum them and they seem like “strangers” to me. The sounds that come out are not as comforting as they are from my familiar instruments, especially my 40 year old Classical guitar my wife gave me as a wedding present. The sounds I get from her are like recordings from years past of all the things, people and places which have I have experienced while I have owned her. (yes the guitar is feminine!) Those memories which are stored there could not come from some “newcomer” It’s like your family. I know we meet and enjoy new friends…especially those with common memories of things that we have experienced, but no one has the connections that your family has to you. That’s why my family is so special to me.

Well…I guess I may go pick up the guitar and plunk on it a while. I hope I haven’t bored everyone to death with my ramblings. I’ll leave you with this from the late George Harrison:

look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping

Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know why nobody told you how to unfold your love

I don’t know how someone controlled you

They bought and sold you.

I look at the world and I notice it’s turning

While my guitar gently weeps

With every mistake we must surely be learning

Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know how you were diverted

You were perverted too

I don’t know how you were inverted

No one alerted you.

I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

Look at you all…

Still my guitar gently weeps

Although Facebook was originally billed as being a “social” network and a “way to reconnect with friends”, it was always meant as a data mining system for it’s advertisers. The only problem is that many of the recipients of our data have been using it for nefarious and underhanded purposes.

It would have been better to have set Facebook up as a subscription service, which closely guarded its subscriber’s information. Of course, that wouldn’t have been a formula which would have made Zuckerberg and company billionaires in so quick a time.

For the most part, those of us who have used Facebook for any number of years are now already compromised. The genie is already out of the bottle, Pandora’s box already opened.

It hasn’t only been Facebook either. Equifax is another, along with who knows how many companies whose credit card information has been compromised.

The best we can do now is to try and protect what we have left, if anything. I’m still not sure if to totally wipe Facebook would do much good. I’ve gone through and erased all app connections, and tightened privacy. I’d suggest everyone else do the same.

This brave new world of information sharing and social networking has made things more difficult and easier all at the same time. Only time will tell if we can keep the vampires out though. After all, we invited them right in.

Sitting here and watching the Masters golf tourney this Sunday afternoon, and thinking about how much my Dad used to like to watch this tournament. My Daddy was a sports fan, and golf was probably his favorite sport in which to participate.

He bought my first set of clubs for me when I was 13, an old set of second handed, left handed Kroydons. I got to where I loved that old set of clubs. It’s the only set of clubs I owned all the way through High School. No telling how many rounds of golf I got out of that 30 dollar set of clubs. I can’t count the good memories that came out of that old set of clubs. Great memories. I guess I probably played more rounds of golf with my Dad than with anybody else I know. Walked many a mile with those clubs slung over my shoulder at the golf course in Trion.

I can’t remember if I told him “thank you” for those old clubs, but he knew I was grateful. He couldn’t help but know, every time I hit a good shot, or made a putt…I could hear those “attaboys”

Tomorrow the “old man” would have been ninety, and even though it’s been almost eight years since he passed, I can still hear the echoes of those “attaboys” when I think about those rounds of golf we played.

My fear for our species is that we have come so far, so quickly, while taking so little caution to understand what we are becoming, that we no longer really know what we are. What do you think we are? Do you give yourself a label? What do you call yourself. There’s tons of adjectives out there in the English language. Which one do you use to describe yourself?

Sometimes we rely on our labels to identify our emotions for us. If we are religious, we’re supposed to be kind. If we’re an atheist and do not believe in any Gods, then that somehow makes us “less” as a person. If we are “liberal” if we are “conservative” what emotions are we supposed to carry? (No answer required, it’s a rhetorical question).

If we forget the basic emotions that make us human, or freely give them up, then we are lost. If we tie our emotions to a label, we are equally lost.

One of the biggest problems is that lying is an almost innate human trait…at least in our society. Kids learn to lie before they can learn to read or write. A lot of it is “our” fault. Our being the caregiver or raiser of any child. You are alone at the house with a three year old, and you walk into the kitchen and there’s spilled milk on the floor. “did you spill that milk’? you ask the 3 year old. In their mind they weigh out the options to your “yes or no” question. “No” they say. “well if you didn’t do it, who did”? you ask. “The dog” they say. Well…there’s a million to one chance that it could of been the dog, so…you let it go. The child just learned something. It’s sorta’ like: “have you been eating chalk”? “No…not me.” “Well….then why do you have it all around your mouth”?

Today is a day for change, and only WE can decide to make a change in ourselves. Nobody else is going to, or has the ability to change you unless you want it. Other people can affect you, but NOT change you. Nobody else has to know you have pledged yourself to change. They will know by your actions. We cannot remain the same and expect the world to get better!

Forget your label and just become a member of the human race. Live and let live. Don’t hate something or someone simply for who or what they are.

Start getting rid of politicians who do nothing but lie and foment hatred. Vote the out. Reject their rhetoric. Don’t let them decide who you are.