Sunday Scribblings - "I Carry" Friday 11/16/07

This week’s prompt of “I carry” came at exactly the right time. I knew in moments what I had to write about. Could we please have a prompt next week that I can go back to “writing with a smirk”? It is much less painful..

I carry with me a heavy sadness that manifests itself during the Holiday Season. At no time is the disparity between the haves and the have-nots more evident than as Christmas approaches. The first pangs arrived today as I stood in front of a Salvation Army Angel Tree. I am certain that most people know what that is but in the event that one of my readers is from Neptune where there are no trees, or Dubai where there is no poverty, I will explain. The first name of a needy child is placed on a placard and hung from a Christmas tree. Along with the name is a present request and clothing sizes for the child. I am not sure how the children are selected as needy. I guess it is arbitrarily determined that there is a breakpoint for those in need and those not. I feel sorry for that child who barely misses the cut for needy and does not qualify for an anonymous gift. Anyway, you just select a child at random and provide some hope for Christmas. It is a great program and I participate every year.



One of the main reasons I participate in the Angel Tree is that in 1960, had they had such a program, I would have qualified. The Bunker Hill Company, which my dad worked for, was on strike for 220 days in 1960, ending on December 10th. We were living in Wyoming, where dad could find work in uranium mines, though he longed for the relative safety of lead (not much of a choice there). So a few days before Christmas we left Wyoming in a blizzard for northern Idaho, on bald tires and an 8 cylinder, running on about 5. Somewhere along the journey my dad purchased a Lionel electric train that I had been clamoring for. He did not have money for the necessities of life, but felt I needed a Christmas Present. My memories of all my 55 Christmases blend together but I remember Christmas that year more than any other. I remember it with a great sadness, which I have carried with me all these years. I know that I should be happy that my dad loved me enough to sacrifice for me. But I am not. I have carried with me a certain amount of guilt that a Holiday put him in that situation. I have sorrow that the Christmas Holiday has such a potential for sadness and disappointment. Most of all, I have remorse that I probably never said thank you for that sacrifice.


As I selected a child to sponsor, the sadness came in torrents. It is not a child’s fault that they are born into a situation by which they are deemed needy. It is not their presence that caused a parent to be unemployed, uneducated, unreliable, unlucky, unacceptable, untrained, unambitious, unappealing, unbefitting, uncoachable, unclean, unadept, undatable, uncultured, unequipped, undesirable, uneducable, unethical, unhirable, unfavored, unpolished, unpaid, unpardoned, unpleasing, unpolished, unlikable, unlaundered, unloving, unmanageable, unmotivated, unneighborly, unnamable, unprivileged, unprized, unrealistic, unproven, unpurified, unreceptive, unrestrained, unrespectable, unrefined, unremarkable, unabsolved, unacademic, unacclaimed, unaccomplished, unacquitted, unappreciated, unaromatic, unwed, unworkable, unsterilized, unsuitable, unteachable, unthrifty, unutilized, unvalued, undignified, undiplomatic, undiagnosed, uninsured, or unendowed. But, it is not necessarily the parents’ fault that they are needy. My dad was certainly not culpable. He was many of the uns listed above, but none by his own doing. He was a victim of circumstances. Yes, sometimes it is by their own choices: Alcoholism, drug addiction, laziness, abusiveness, abandonment, etc., but not always.



There are no guarantees that Charli, a 12-year-old girl who likes Hannah Montana and the High School Musical will actually receive the gifts I purchase for her. In the back of my mind is the vision of her guardian selling the size 14 pants to buy drugs. But I have to try. Maybe Charli’s daddy is just a victim of circumstances. Charli deserves to feel special, at least at Christmas.

Sunday Scribblings - Driving Left - 11/11/07

I lived in England for six years and surprisingly had little problem adjusting to driving on the “wrong” side of the road. My initial arrival was on the ferry to Felixstowe from Zeebrugge Belgium. They make the transition very easy. You drive off the ferry and there you are on the left-hand side of the highway and on your way. I had a few minor setbacks particularly when I was very tired or was on unmarked, unlit country roads at night.






The one glaring exception was in August of 1983. I drove a group of three friends to Castle Donington to attend the Monsters of Rock Concert. Whitesnake, Twisted Sister, ZZ Top, Ronnie Dio, Meat Loaf (one of my all-time favorite performers), Diamond Head, Ritchie Blackmore, and others took the stage while many thousands of us imbibed and ingested a multitude of mind-expanding, mind-altering, and mind-numbing substances.
When the concert ended well into the night, the throngs began to disperse. Intoxicated by the music, atmosphere, and whatever chemicals were flowing through our veins, it was decided that we were too far-gone to attempt the long drive back to Ipswich. England was way ahead of the states in penalties for driving impaired.


So we all crawled into the car and in minutes were in various states of sleep, stupor, and coma. I awoke about daylight and feeling renewed, though not necessarily so, I decided to let the others sleep as I piloted us home. I turned onto the M1 Motorway and had driven several miles when my copilot awoke, somewhat, and after observing our progress for a few minutes remarked how odd it was that all the road signs were turned around backwards. “Oh my God”, raced through my groggy brain. I was driving down one of Britain’s major highways on the wrong side of the road. The American equivalent would be driving down I-95 against traffic. Luckily, unlike I-95, at that time on a Sunday morning that section of the M1 motorway was deserted and unpatrolled. This saved not only our lives, but more important, the embarrassment that only extreme stupidity can afford. Though, now, immediately stone sober, sweating profusely, and ghostly white, I performed an incredible 180 degree maneuver, nearly on two wheels. Unfortunately I had to drive several miles back to the next exit before I could send us back in the right direction. The corpses in the back did not stir and later when we recounted the episode to them, they did not get the full effect of the horror we experienced. This writing is the first account of that experience ever documented. I am hoping the statute of limitations has expired and that England does not extradite for stupidity.

I would like to make one comment about driving in England. I much prefer the roundabout to American signal lights. The roundabouts keep the flow of traffic much smoother, even in the congestion of London.

Sunday Scribblings - "Money" 11/4/07

The subject this week of “money” brought to mind events in my life where legal tender was painfully hard to come by. I take you back to a simpler time:

When I was a child I could be very happy with a dime. It provided me with many options. Among other things, I could choose between ten pieces of penny candy, two cokes, two big assed Hershey bars (twice the size of the standard Hershey bar today), or a game of pinball. Any combination of which were very satisfying to me. With a quarter I could have a world-class sugar high (unknown in those days) and the beginnings of life-long dental issues.


In 1972, I purchased my first “new” car. My dad had instilled in me the importance of a warrantee, so I set out to find the cheapest car with a warrantee, meaning it had to be a new car. I checked out the Chevy Vega, Ford Pinto, and Volkswagen Beetle, but the cheapest I could find was an AMC Gremlin, $1, 400 bucks. Stop laughing. It was bright red with white stripes and so ugly it was cute. Kind of like a Pug breed of dog. The only car actually less attractive than the Gremlin was also made my American Motors some time later. It was the Pacer, which looked like some sort of perverted fish bowl. Thankfully, I never owned one of them. Early on, I loved that Gremlin. If you closed one eye and squinted, it actually looked sporty. However, you will notice the photo of the Gremlin I included in this blog pictures it with the hood up. That is an accurate depiction of my Gremlin. I actually had a Gremlin-X. I came to find out that the X stood for Xtremely Shitty Car. When I bought the Gremlin I was working for the Bunker Hill Company making well over $3.00 an hour (huge money for a nineteen year old in 1972. I was a carefree, single guy with a "hot" ride. Luckily, girls in Kellogg, Idaho in 1972 were a little like Amish girls, they would ride in anything that had a radio. All that came to a screeching halt when I received my induction notice and joined the Air Force, found out my girlfriend was pregnant, and got married, all in a matter of months. My payments were $38 a month and there were a few months that my dad made the payment for me. Plus, the day after the coveted warrantee expired the car self-destructed and I gave it to my dad for liquidation. I have owned and forgotten a lot of cars but even in my current state of dementia, will always remember that first new car. Plus, any time Hollywood wants to portray a character as a real dork, you can bet your ass he will be driving a Gremlin or Pacer. The international symbol for loser. Thanks a lot, Paramount.

When I was a twenty-year-old enlisted man in the Air Force living in Denver with a wife and baby, money was nonexistent. I remember that the $100 a month rent on our small apartment took up the majority of my monthly pay leaving very little for such extravagances as food. We sometimes collected soda bottles (yes, they were worth money then) to return for deposit in order to purchase baby formula. We would often invite single friends from the barracks over for a home cooked meal, providing they brought the food. A special treat for us was to go to Arby’s for a roast beef sandwich. Boy, did that sandwich taste good. No fast food is nearly as satisfying these days. I have visited Arby’s later in life but could never duplicate the joy. I don’t think Arby’s has changed, I think I have. I have become so accustomed to having what I want, when I want it, that there is no sense of a “treat”.



I was once an avid and competitive bowler. When our financial back was against the wall it would be agreed, reluctantly, that I would take our last five dollars and enter a bowling tournament. You can’t imagine the pressure when my wife and baby were seated behind the lanes, their livelihood depending on my scant talent. Whether it was providence or not, each time that this occurred I placed high enough to generate income. Even though I look back on this as foolish and risky, it often allowed us to purchase some necessities of life. I have never experienced greater pride than holding out the $50 or $75 that I won to my wife. Then we were off on a shopping spree for milk, bread, Dinty Moore Beef Stew, and TV dinners.



If you are looking for where this is all going, you have obviously not read any of my previous blogs. I think what I am clumsily trying to say is that some of my most memorable times were when money was in scant supply but my austere life brought great joy and appreciation. For the current, jaded, me, true delight is the scarce commodity.

Happy Halloween

Here is an original poem for Halloween (ok, I am not Poe)


The night of moonless solitude
Crept in a foggy haze
Darkness amplifies lonely footsteps
Escaping from the maze

Killers lurk in concrete caves
Waiting for their prey
They tear the flesh from passersby
And disappear with the day

None will see and live to tell
Of the terrors of the night
And investigators find mangled bones
As evidence of their plight

Sunday, October 27, Sunday Scribblings - Hospital

I have been submitting to Sunday Scribblings sporadically for about seven months and it has occurred to me that most of my ramblings have been very superficial and reveal very little of myself. While most of the other writers in this community take themselves and their writing very seriously, I have often trivialized the prompts and made light of whatever topic was presented. As a result, those few that read my ramblings have probably formed an opinion that I never have a serious thought. My first instinct with the prompt “hospital” was to follow my modus operandi and provide humorous anecdotes about bedpans, nurses trying, unsuccessfully, to find a vein for an IV, paper gowns, and sharing a semi-private room with a corpse. But that would have been an untruth. The first thought invoked by the prompt “hospital” follows:


My mother died in November of 1986. I was not there. I was serving overseas in the Air Force and by the time the Red Cross contacted me it was too late to come home. My father did not know to contact the Red Cross to notify me and he did not know how to make an international call. We were not the kind of family that frequently kept in touch. Communication was primarily through letters, so there was no indication that anything was wrong in Idaho. She had already been cremated by the time I was notified. I spoke to my dad and he indicated that he was fine, though I knew he wasn’t. I was a single dad with three kids who had recently survived a divorce and an immediate uprooting to a foreign country. Dad knew that my place was with them and there was no point in returning home after the fact.


In March of 1989, I was still in Europe, and received notification that my Dad was in the hospital and that his life expectancy was in the hours, not days. He was in the final stages of cancer that was so far advanced by the time he sought medical treatment, that there was none available. I left my kids with friends and immediately flew home.


When I arrived at the hospital I did not recognize the figure that they told me was my dad. He had not been a large man, but he worked in the mines for 35 years and was very strong with powerful arms and a grip that could put me on my knees. He now weighed less than 100 pounds and consisted of skin stretched across a skeleton. I am not even certain that he knew I was there. All I could do was hold his hand, put ice chips to his parched lips, a cool washrag on his forehead, and talk to him. I probably said more to him in those few hours than I had in my life. Let me explain. When I was young my mom did most of the communicating. When I reached my teens, I didn’t communicate at all with my parents. I thought I knew so much more than them, what was the point? Then I left home, went to college, got married, joined the Air Force, and never came back, other than for short visits. So my dad and I never got to know each other as adults. The man that I was trying to comfort during his last breaths was a stranger to me.


That hospital room, silent but for dad’s labored breath and my soft words to him, became a time machine. I was transported back to my youth, to our youth. The times we went fishing, watching the Friday Night Fights, the times there were presents under the tree that dad could ill afford, our late night raids on the kitchen after mom had retired to bed, going bowling, playing catch. It all came back to me in a flood. This was both my first first-hand experience with death and my first realization of who this man really was. For my entire life, I had taken both him and life for granted.


The doctor came in, said dad seemed stable, and told me that I might as well go home and get some rest and come back in the morning. I tried to insist that I would stay but he convinced me to go since I had been up for who knew how many hours, including a flight from Germany to Spokane. I had been at home for about an hour when the hospital called and said dad was gone. The nurse said that it seemed he was just waiting for me to get home.


Back at the house I grew up in, I sat in the recliner that dad had spent the best part of the time since mom died. There was a stack of papers on the end table. I picked them up and looked through them. There were newspaper clippings, both from my baseball days and from my military career. But the one thing that caught my eye was a Christmas card that I had given my parents when I was a teen. I had written a little poem entitled to my parents:
There’s a lot of things I should do, that I don’t
And a lot of things I could do that I won’t
There’s a lot of things I shouldn’t that I do
And a lot more things I should, than I do for you

Those four lines capsulize my life about as accurately as anything I could say here. Those of you who expected my usual “writing with a smirk” will be disappointed greatly, particularly Lucy. I should be back on form next Sunday.


Postscript: I carried my parent’s ashes with me for about ten years, not really knowing what to do with them. The containers began to leak so I had to make a decision. I was living in Wyoming at the time and carried them to a beautiful and unique place where I dumped them into a river that disappears underground (see website). Neither of them had ever been there and we had no connection with the area. It just seemed like a nice place. I had actually inquired about spreading dad’s ashes on the mound at our beloved Yankee Stadium, but found it was against city ordinance.

http://www.windrivercountry.com/lander/sinkscanyonstatepark.html
S

It Is Good To Be King - Sunday Scribblings 10/21/07

I don’t aspire to be King of the World, just the USA. I would initiate the following laws for my Kingdom:


All Education And Commerce Will Be Conducted In English. Failure to Speak English: Immediate Deportation To Country That Speaks Your Language.
Tax Structure Will Guarantee That Educators, Military, and Police Will Be Paid More Than Any Professional Athlete or Entertainer.
All Employment Includes Child Care and Medical Care. Supplemented By Taxes Raised From Entertainers and Athletes.
Winning The Lottery And Keeping Janitor Job: Money Will Be Redistributed.
Littering/Graffiti: Death Penalty





You Can Bury Loved Ones On Your Own Property In Whatever Container You Wish.
You Can Sell Body Parts On Ebay.



If You Come In Contact With a Military Man/Woman In Uniform It is Mandatory To Shake Their Hand And Thank Them For Their Service. Failure To Do So Will Result In The Offender Immediately Trading Jobs With The Soldier..
There Will Be No Welfare Until There Are No Help Wanted Signs in the Kingdom. Failure Of Able-Bodied Citizen To Work (Unless Self-Sufficient): Deportation To Socialist Country Such As England Or Canada


Not Signaling for Any Maneuver That Causes Your Auto To Leave Your Lane: Death Penalty
Driving 20 MPH Under The Speed Limit: Death Penalty
Talking on Cell Phone While Driving (Not Hands Free): Death Penalty
Talking on Cell Phone While Serving Customers: Death Penalty
Talking on Cell Phone While Being Served: Death Penalty
Text Messaging While Driving: Death Penalty
Sending me a Text Message: Ass-kicking followed by Death Penalty



National Anthem Will Be Changed To “God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood”
Failure to Stand During National Anthem: Deportation To Country Of Your Choice
All Indian Reservations Will Be Closed and Native Americans Given Same Advantages and Requirements As Other Americans (I don’t care what happened prior to my reign)
Citizenship Is Not Automatic By Birth. All Prospective Citizens (Including Immigrants)
Must Perform 2 Years Community Service Prior To Being Awarded Citizenship. Can Be Military Service, Planting Trees, Picking Up Litter On Highway, Building Roads, etc.
All Citizens Will Be Referred To As Americans. Any Reference to Native American, African American, Italian American, etc Will Result In Citizenship Being Revoked and Deportation To Country Person Identifies With (Native Americans Will Return To Reservation Without Casinos)



Uttering The Phrases “That’s How I Roll”, “Keeping It Real”, “Slippery Slope” Or “Whatever”: Death Penalty
Blaming Anyone Other Than Yourself For Any Transgression: Death Penalty
Drinking And Driving Will Not Be An Offense But Anyone Causing Harm To Person Or Property While Intoxicated: Death Penalty (Do You Want To Take A Chance?)
All Children Will Wear Uniforms To School. Social Class Will Not Be An Obstacle To Learning.
Televising WNBA, Major League Soccer, or Billiards: Network Taken Over By State. Programming Changed To “All Seinfeld, All The Time”
Smoking In Restaurant: Death Penalty




Parent Yelling Criticism From Stands At Any Youth Sporting Event: Public Flogging
Middle Aged Man With a Comb-Over Or Pony Tail: Immediate Government Imposed Head Shave
Initiating Frivolous Lawsuit: Death Penalty
Currency Will Feature Likeness of Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Elvis, and Walt Disney.
Shoplifting/Stealing: Death Penalty
Selling or Distributing Drugs To Children: Death Penalty
Abusing a Domestic Animal (Cat or Dog): Death Penalty Abusing Any Animal: Depends on the Species of the Animal


Wearing a Thong or Speedo in Public (body fat over 20%): Death Penalty
Wearing Low-Rider Jeans with stomach showing (body fat over 20%): Death Penalty
Keeping Your Seat on Public Transportation When Senior Citizen is Standing: Death Penalty Parents Who Raised You Can Be Prosecuted Too.
Total Religious Freedom Will Exist, However If You Harm Another Citizen or Destroy Property In the Name of Your Religion It Will Immediately Be Abolished.
Trying to Convert Someone to Your Religion: Must Attend Diversity Seminar
White Men Dancing: Death Penalty
Performing Karaoke of any song from the “Grease” Soundtrack or “Paradise By The Dashboard Lights:” Death Penalty



Any Television Program Broadcasting An Image of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, or Rosie O’Donnell (List to Be Modified At My Discretion) Will Be Immediately Replaced With Seinfeld Re-Runs.
Living In America and Continually Talking About How Wonderful Your Home Country Is: Immediate Deportation To That Wonderful Country
Living On A Golf Course and Not Playing Golf: Death Penalty
Deadbeat Dads or Moms: Death Penalty
All Law Schools Will Be Closed Until It is Determined That We Need More Lawyers
Taking an Unapproved Photograph Of Any Other Citizen Regardless Of Level Of Celebrity: Death Penalty



Kidnap, Rape, Armed Robbery, Crimes Against Children: Death Penalty
Celebrity Expressing Political Opinion: Bad Review Followed By Death Penalty
Allowing Children To Scream and Misbehave in Restaurant, Movie Theater, Wal-Mart, or any Public Place: Children Put Up For Adoption, Parents Sterilized
A Training Program and License Is Required To Be a Parent. Violation: Children Put Up For Adoption, Parents Sterilized.
We Will Discontinue Trade With Canada As They Have Nothing We Want.


Legalization, Regulation, and Taxation of: Prostitution and Marijuana.

Abolishing Of All Seatbelt, Helmet, and any other laws written to protect us from ourselves.

Writing - Sunday Scribblings 9/9/07

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