Writing for Sanity's Sake

Banana Pudding Poke Cake

1 box yellow cake mix

2 sm. Boxes of banana pudding instant pudding

4 cups of milk

1 8oz tub of whipped topping thawed

2 bananas

20 vanilla wafers crushed

Prepare cake mix as directed on box for a 9×13 cake. Allow cake to cool for just a couple of minutes. Then, with a wooden spoon handle or some other similarly-sized object, begin poking holes in the cake.

You want the holes to be fairly big so the pudding has plenty of room to get down in the cake. Be sure

You poke right down to the bottom of the cake.

In a bowl whisk together instant pudding with 4 cups of milk. Stir until all lumps are gone. Let the pudding sit for just about 2 minutes, so it has just slightly begun to thicken but not fully set. It should still be easily pourable. Pour pudding over cake, taking care to get it into the holes as much as possible. Spread it all out and using the back of the spoon gently push pudding down into the holes.

Put it into the refrigerator to set and cool. Once the cake is completely cooled place sliced bananas on top of the pudding, then cover with whipped topping, last sprinkle on all your crushed wafers.

(I added the bananas to the recipe, you don’t have to use banana, I always have to do something to every recipe.)

“Make American Great Again” is a motto being used by a politician. But he’s not the only one who tries to intimate that previous times in the history of our country have been “greater” than now. My question is, when were those times?

I’ve read a lot of the history of this country. A lot of history that is hard to get, A lot of history books that are hard to get. A lot of different points of view. I minored in History in College (actually one of my two minors) I have had a more than passing interest in the history of our country. I can’t find a time in the history of America in which we were really “great” for every sector and factor of our country. For every race and creed. For every economic level of our country. So, I want to know, when they speak of making America “great again” what are they talking about?

Why not instead talk about making America great for everyone? Why not do it now? America is the best country in the world, even with all of it’s problems. Lets learn to work together for the good of every single person who is in this country regardless of what they believe. Let us solve the problems we have now, and not create more of them by building walls instead of bridges. We are better than this. We are better than what the politicians are telling us we are. How dare they insist that we are such bigots and haters!

Gravitate towards acceptance of everyone, the equality of everyone, the respect of everyone, the compassion towards everyone. Gravitate towards the opinion that everyone is entitled to HAVE an opinion, and even though it might be different than yours, don’t hate them for it. Negotiate, talk out problems in a calm and civil manner. No more of this bullshit yelling and calling people names and threatening to shoot them cause they are different from you.

I’m tired of it, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Bowers Family
— Read on korielizabethphotography.passgallery.com/-bowersfamily/gallery

Banjo Man

Sometimes the most beautiful things in the world are never heard or seen by other humans. There are rare times, when you stumble across them accidentally and they are so fleeting and unique that they can never be replicated.

I have written many times about my Grandfather, and how as a child I used to sit on the porch of his old house and watch and listen as he played his banjo. It’s one of my best memories.

The other day, one day this week, I was walking my regular route through town. It takes me past one of the town’s unusual resident’s house. He’s a man a little older than me who lives up on the hill behind the ballpark. He’s different. I was rounding the curve in the hill when I heard it…the banjo playing. But it was not just ANY old banjo playing. This was the Flat and Scruggs kind of banjo playing. This was blue grass roots. This was great playing. This playing made the leaves swirl in little circles in the air, and the needles of the pines lean in closer to hear.

At first I thought it was a professional recording, but then realized it was coming from the little white house on the hill with the name “Earp” on the mailbox. It was somebody playing live. Probably…most probably it was V.W. Earp, that different little man who lives there alone. I stopped there and eavesdropped on this playing. I don’t know what song it was. It didn’t matter. It was heavenly. Complicated, fast. The type of playing you wish you could do if you were a pro. I moved on reluctantly after five minutes, finishing my walk. I shook my head in wonder at the savant like talent of this man.

I had seen some of the other things he had done in the past. My good trade day friend, one of the Webb twins, (I can’t remember if it was Ronald or Donald) showed me a design that V.W. had drawn. It was a complicated and quite logical drawing of how to stop the flooding on the Chattooga River. I guess V.W. had given this to him some time back. It looked like something that Leonardo da Vinci might have done. It was a crude, but at the same time a simple and brilliant plan. Of course, nobody took it seriously. I wonder if it would have worked.

I think the Webb boys have a weekly “shack picking and playing” session somewhere, (don’t know for sure…never been invited to come!) I hope V.W. shows up there sometimes. It would be a shame for nobody else to ever hear that gorgeous music. I wonder if he has many friends. I see him out and about his house with his little white dog following him and I throw up my hand and say “hey” I’ve run into him at the local grocery store and talked with him for a few minutes at a time. Conversations which are strange and disjointed, but at the same time very interesting.

I marvel at people like this. I knew Mr. Earp was an unusual man. I grew up around him and his brother and I knew his father, but I can’t begin to comprehend this person. This outlandish “character” who on the outside is so incomprehensible to “normal” people, but who on the inside is such a talent and has such a tremendous intellect. A person who because of his eccentricities has a problem finding outlets for his talents, which will fit nicely into our societal norms. If you act a little different no matter if you cannot help it, it’s hard for people to take you seriously sometimes. There’s no doubt about it. Nowadays in schools perhaps things would develop differently. Back in our day in school… There just weren’t things available.

I’m glad I know this man and I’m glad I took that five minutes to listen to his music. I will always remember it.

I held up my hands today and looked at the back of them. My skin is thinning and parchment like, with blue veins and smaller red arteries running just under the surface. Looks all the world to me, like some odd and bizarre road map, minus the numbers. I guess I could consider these old hands a road map of my life for sure.

They have been with me on the road, as I have traveled at the very least over half a million miles in a car over the past thirty years.

They have been with me holding first three children and then nine grandchildren since 1972. For the most part they were comforting, with a few detours for some parenting corrections.

I hope and expect they will continue to be my own “living record” of more things to come over the next few years. The good and the not so good, whatever life brings.

My confession, my sorrow……

For me, this coming of the electronic age has been somewhat of a downfall. It’s been my fault, because I let myself succumb to it. It started in the mid to late 90’s and has sucked so many precious hours, days, month and years away from me that when I look back on it, it saddens me so much.

I looked at one online game that I have played quite a bit over the past decade. It keeps up with your time played. It said I had played 883 hours. That’s a total of 36 days. Over a month. Of course that’s not consecutively staying on, but an aggregate of time periods of from half an hour to 5 or 6 hours. That’s bad enough, but it’s not even the online game which I have played the most. I’ve played Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Skyrim, Diablo, and a few others. I conservatively estimate, I’ve wasted up to 16 months or more of my life playing these games. I could have been reading. I could have been writing music, or working outside in the sunshine, golfing, fishing, anything. I was sucked into these games, just like I found myself sucked into social media. There’s also no telling how much time I have spent on Facebook and other forms of “not so social media”

I thought it was really great at first, but the last two or three years have been difficult. What started out as a connecting with old friends has become a mess. It’s become politics, it’s become partisan, it’s become fake, it’s become people taking advantage of other people. It’s become, for the most part, with the exception of being able to see the connections with my family through this medium, useless to me as something positive in which to participate. The information they glean from us is sold to unscrupulous people who take and use it for nefarious reasons. Period. If it were not for the relationship aspect on social media with my family, I’d get off in a heartbeat.

I’m hoping to go back to some of my pre mid 90’s habits of reading books, and relaxing more at night before trying to sleep. I have no doubt that using these electronic devices for all things all hours of the day and night have not been beneficial healthwise…at least for me. I wish I could change what has been, but I can’t. I can’t get all that time back that I have wasted.

When I was a young man, in my twenties and I thought of long term things which needed to be accomplished I always thought “Well, I have plenty of time to get that done…” Turns out, I didn’t. I didn’t take the time to do the things I needed to do to get some of those things done. I could sit here and regret it….and in a way I do. I’m sad about it in some ways. But…if wishes were horses…

We human beings have become captivated during my lifetime by technology. We have, in a sense, become captive by it. All of our lives have become structured around the computer driven world around us. Much of it was good, but now much of it brings danger and sorrow for us. Not a day goes by that you don’t hear of “hackings” of large companies, stealing the private information of people. Chances are if you have a credit card, or credit cards then you have been compromised. If you have been on Equifax, you have been compromised. We have probably been compromised in so many ways that we have no idea how bad it really is. It’s pandemic. It’s probably unstoppable at this point.

Another thing technology has brought us that we did not need is 24 hour “news” Ted Turner brought that to us even before the computer age with CNN, and things have gone down hill from there. Now there is channel after channel of 24 hour news “indoctrination” coming to us with a “slant” courtesy of whoever owns the stations, or whoever has influence over them. We are being constantly bombarded by propaganda to the point where we do not know right from wrong, or up from down. We are being manipulated by these 24 hour a day “talking heads” to the point where our world is much worse than the program Max Headroom ever imagined it to be.

Can we go back and fix any of this. No. Can we do things going forward to mitigate the damage which has been done to us? Perhaps. It won’t be me doing it though, because I’m 67 1/2 years old. It’ll take a lot longer than the years I have left to change humanity to a more enlightened state.

As for me, I’m going to do my utmost best to stop being a victim of my own obsessions. I’m really going to try. I’m going to fail some, but I’m damn sure going to try. How about any of you, my friends? Am I wrong? Am I crazy? Mayhaps I am.

To all of you, Godspeed, and God bless. Don’t expect a whole lot out of me….but I’ll be around with photos and such.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” This is our “season” If you wake up this morning and are still walking on the earth, then it’s your season. You can choose what to do with it. Will you gripe about something you can’t do anything about? Will you say something kind to someone you don’t know? Can we accomplish something worthwhile today, no matter how small it may seem? Can we be careful about what comes out of our mouth, and make sure we don’t “cut” somebody with words? Solomon was a wise man, and throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, he puzzles about the meaning of life and comes to some pretty sad conclusions about people. Let’s try and prove him wrong.

When I was a little kid one of my worse worries was that I would “die young”.

I learned too much about death at too young an age, or at least I was conditioned to fear death. Death was bad. The ultimate separation from those you love, the final farewell to those things in this world with which we become familiar and comfortable.

My religious upbringing didn’t really lend much comfort in many ways either. I was taught about hell, and how I would be going there to burn for eternity if I didn’t repent of my sins. The problem was, this was imprinted on me so early in life. Eight, nine, ten years old. Happy potential childhood became scary times of ultimate decision making. In my opinion that kind of pressure, that kind of tactic…is unfair to young children, and I now reject scaring little kids with the visions of a ghastly hell in order to “bring them to Jesus”. If a person is going to follow that path, they will follow the light…not the dark. But…all that aside.

I think I missed my appointment with an “early” death at age 49, with heart attack number one, and again at 60 with heart attack number 2, and quad bypass surgery. Being sixty six and a half now, I am no longer young in years, although I feel better now than I did twenty years ago.

Age 46 was when nurse Betty Stone drew a vial of blood from my veins, and then called me to her office later on to show me the layer of fat…triglycerides..which were floating on top. My reading was over 1000. Genetics…my Dr. said, and gave me pills…which I still faithfully take. But, even so, I have lasted longer than I thought. Longer than a number of my classmates with whom I graduated. I think about them at times, and wonder why. I’m guessing it’s just the tide of life, which carries some of us further in its foamy wake than others. That’s all.

The other night I dreamed about my Grandpa Jervis. That doesn’t happen often. He and I were driving around hunting bargains at yards sales, and got lost. I was concerned, but he just said: “keep on driving and you’ll eventually come to somewhere you know”. And we did in the dream. We ended up on Rossville boulevard. (Who knows with dreams? You just gotta go with the flow).

All I know now is that every day I wake up is a good day. As the old song says: “Even the bad times are good”. I’ve had a good life, good family and mostly good friends. So, I’m just going to keep on driving, until I get to where I’m going, or at least come to somewhere I know. And when the tide of life deposits me there, I will know….many things, or perhaps none…what will matter will not be the date and time of that arrival, but the fun and quality of the trip.

Thanks old Grandpa, for the advice, and the cameo appearance in my dream.

Being really tired after driving ten hours today (my choice…as Paula offered) but being that tired and then eating a quick bite, I went out to walk. I don’t know why, but I had a quick and fleeting thought that I should call my Dad and let them know we got back ok……

Why did I think that?? It’s will be five years in May since Daddy died, and I thought I should call? I shook it off, and continued to walk around this old mill town. “Why did I ever stay here?” I wondered

My Dad called me, back in the summer of 1974. He knew I wasn’t liking my new job fresh out of school, and liked living in Toccoa even less. Kirsten was two and the apartments we were living in were terrible. Our cat “Hector” had gotten run over and killed. The security was awful. I couldn’t envision raising our little girl there.

Dad had talked to some people, and I had a job as a “management trainee” if I wanted it. I thought about it.

Could I make a good life in a cotton mill town for my little family? The schools were good. I knew people. I called my Dad back: “I’ll take the job” I said. So we moved back “home”

I am not sure it was a perfect decision. We have ridden the roller coaster. I know my wife has had a difficult time in some ways. I know many people here. I grew up here. She knew nobody, and in a small town that’s a problem. I am so sorry that many times she was “Larry’s wife” That’s not much of a description for the clever and caring person who keeps me straight.

I had my problems over the years with jobs, with finances, with so many things. So, I called Dad a lot for advice and help. He never once…not once…refused to help me. He chewed my ass out, yes even as a young adult, if he thought it was necessary. It was. Certainly at times it was. Whenever we went off for a vacation or a long stay he’d tell me to call when we got back. “Just for peace of mind”

So I guess that’s where that flashback came from this afternoon. Either that, or part of his spirit still inhabits this one horse town we call home. I’m not so certain that’s not so, as Rue and Eli seem to “know” him…having both looked at his picture and called him “Papa” or “Tarpy” without having been told who he was. Who knows. Not me for sure…

My Easter Story….

I wonder if Spring is around the corner. As the calendar starts to near the end of March, I always start to look for it, start to feel it in my bones. Maybe it’s because the days start getting a little longer and maybe a little warmer. Maybe it’s because they start talking about the Baseball trades that are happening on the sports reports. Spring training’s just a few weeks away!

I tell you, spring and summer were the best back in the 50’s and 60s’. None of that year round school for us old timers! May 31 rolled around, and it’s see ya’ later to the teachers until the first week of September….Yahooo!!

I would go to the old wooden toy box back in my room, and starting digging down to the bottom, looking for my old worn out, smelly leather baseball glove with “Pee Wee” Reece’s name engraved in it. I don’t know how I ended up with Pee Wee, as I never played a lick of ball in the infield. I was always an outfielder.

I tried out for third base once, but after I had stopped the first four hard bouncer’s that came my way with my face instead of my glove, the coach thought it might be safer to put me in left field. I agree with his decision.

I liked left field. It was one of those positions where you could kind of day dream a little. Most everything that came out that way was either an easy pop fly, or a one bouncer. I was a cinch at catching those. None of that “hot corner” stuff for me.

I once was standing out in left field during a game and looking down at the ground trying to spot any four leaf clovers that might be growing there. I heard the loud crack of the bat, and looked up to see the baseball headed over my head. Way over my head. I didn’t want to look completely stupid, so I turned around and stuck my old glove out and ran as fast as I could towards the fence. The ball dropped right into the webbing of my glove. I never saw it until it did. I heard a cheer go up from the stands, and when we came in, I got more pats on the back, and attaboys then I had ever gotten before. I just said “I had it all the way” I could never bring myself to disappoint all those people by telling them it was just pure luck.

The other great thing about warm weather was spring lizard and craw dad hunting at Grandpa’s and Grandma’s house. When warm weather hit, we would go up there a lot more often. It was difficult during the winter time, because there were only two bedrooms downstairs at their house, which meant the remainder of the guests, had to sleep upstairs. During the winter time, sleeping upstairs was just like sleeping outside. There was NO heat. I spent many a winter night with 10 quilts piled on top of me, unable to turn over, but desperately trying to conserve what little body heat was emanating from me in order to be alive the next morning. I always managed to do it somehow.

So, besides at Christmas, I didn’t like Winter time visiting at the old folk’s house!

But with spring and warm weather coming, there was the promise of fishing, and in order to fish there had to be bait. This meant my favorite activities of digging in the dirt for worms, and turning over the rocks down in the little fast running creek in front of the folk’s house for Spring lizards and Crawdads.

The only draw back to trying to catch a bucket full of these water dwelling creatures was that they were also favorites of the snakes that prowled the banks of that same creek. I was never really too afraid of snakes when I was a kid until after my Grandpa’s Uncle “Lark” Davenport killed a rattlesnake one day that he stretched across the old dirt road leading up to Grandpa’s house. He stuck its head end in the bank on one side, and its tail end in the dirt bank on the other side. Now, that little old road was narrow, but I estimate it was at least 7 feet across, so my respect for the snakes in those parts increased tremendously after that. I asked Uncle “Lark” how he killed it, and told me he cut its head off with a hoe while he was out in his corn crib. Apparently the rattler was stocking up on some of the rats that always frequented that place. “If he hadn’t been a rattler I’d have let him be,” said Uncle Lark. I’d have let him be anyway, I think. He would have owned the corn crib after that. Rats and all.

Some of those spring lizards that we used to catch back then were as big as small snakes. Imagine turning over a big old rock, and seeing something black wiggling around that’s about a foot long. Would you stick your hand down in there and grab it? I sure did, and laughed about it the whole time. “If the bass don’t bite that,” I thought “then it might bite the bass!” Either way, we get the fish.

The crawdads were harder to catch then the spring lizards. Have you ever seen one of those little boogers take off? They are like a backwards rocket! I don’t know how they do it, but when they get scared they shoot water out their rear ends, start flapping their tails and away they go. You had to be good at estimating where they were GOING to be, not where they had been, in order to catch them. I never had the least idea that humans ate those things when I was a kid. The first time I went to Louisiana as an adult, and someone tried to serve me a dish made with Crawdads, I got kind of nauseated. After I tasted it though, it wasn’t half bad. I kind of like Etouffe’ now.

Yep, that’s how I felt today since there was a little warmth in the air. That little old creek is still there, but I don’t know what the new owners of the land would think about an old man tromping down the middle of their creek with a Styrofoam bucket and yelling yahoo every time he came up with a lizard. I wonder if there are even any left.