Wedding Blessings

Or, perhaps it could read, Things to be aware of if there is a wedding in the family.

Particularly if it involves someone’s sweet daughter.

I won’t go so far as to say it all went smoothly and with a fairytale ending, even if there was a frog involved.  (Isn’t there some fairytale that has a frog in it?)

But it did go considerably well, all things considered.

If, however, your sweet daughter decides to get married, allow me to share a few observations.

Your job, if you are the hubby, or crusty ole dad, is simple. 

Be completely agreeable to everything.

Plan on being totally on board for everything that is required from you.

Plan on being totally off board for anything remotely not required of you.  They will ask for your opinion of this want it, although when they do, remember all they really want is you to tell them their opinion is exactly what yours is.

Being on board means you cheerfully make a complete turnaround in the middle of the road, even if you are only a few hundred feet away from the place you just chauffeured your beloveds to.

Being on board means you willingly chug down fast food for whole days at a time, even though you had barbeque on your mind while doing the aforesaid chauffeuring.

Being off board means you sit idly, sometimes for whole hours, while your lady folk peruse material stores.

And even when they make it back to the vehicle, and perhaps your patience has thinned a bit, possibly because you suspicion that the main focus of buying dry goods for the wedding was lost somewhere along the way and the visit turned out to be, instead, one of interest in anything and everything, you say nothing.

Oh, and always say whatever they bought looks beautiful on them.

But you can’t say that without taking an interested look at whatever it is that they bought.

Be prepared to be inundated with shoes.

Because, you see, just because one pair looks just right doesn’t mean it will fit just right, and just because you know this brand fits just right doesn’t mean it will match just right.  So, several pairs need to be purchased, so the just right can be found.  This process stretches the wedding blessings long past the wedding itself as you cheerfully take many boxes of shoes to the place where they are shipped back to the vendor from whom they were purchased.

You will endure several crying jags.  In fact, after the first one, reassure your womenfolk that this probably won’t be the last one.  Say this in a tone that lends confidence you will be there for every jag that comes along, even if you aren’t sure at all what the jag is about.

Be prepared for several instances where the material that matched and they were so settled on suddenly takes on a different hue and the tone of it goes totally against their own coloring. 

A day will happen when you feel the sweet daughter’s allegiance shift subtly away from the blind trust and confidence she has had in you.  You’ll feel hollow on those days, but it’s okay.  Because you know life is this way, and, in a way, you are happy to let her go, just because she is so happy.

On such a day, it might not be all wrong to find a frog that is hopping along gaily.

That is, if your sweet daughter has a deathly fear of frogs.  (You may have to alter this to whatever criteria your daughter offers in this area.)

Now let’s be clear.  We aren’t doing this to be mean. 

Not at all.

We are doing it for a couple of reasons, although I’m not really sure what they are.

But let’s just imagine the sweet daughter is reclining in the recliner couch.  On one side is a straight up wall.  On the other side, sits her mother, who is also reclining, and, who it just so happens, has brough her daughter up and trained her thoroughly in the fear of frogs.

And both are screening.  (As in, looking at more pairs of shoes on their phones.) 

And both don’t see you have this happy frog in your hand, hiding behind the back of another couch. 

And both don’t see the frog until it lands square in the belly of the sweet daughter.

Two screams will pierce the dark night.

And two bodies will tremble violently.

Because what else can they do?  If the daughter sits up, there’s no telling where the frog will go.

And there is no telling if the frog will take it upon itself to jump somewhere, anywhere, maybe landing on Mama J. 

And so, the screams will pierce the dark night again, and wails of agony and desperation will be cast towards the crusty ole man with frantic entreaties that he remove the frog.

At which point it would be mean not to. 

There.  Maybe that is one reason for throwing the frog.  Just to show them you aren’t mean after all.

And then, a couple of evenings later, a banana peel tossed in the general direction of the two fair maidens who are occupying the two same seats does almost as well as a live frog. 

Because their overworked and overwrought nerves make it appear to be another frog to them.

And then, last of all, if the sweet daughter tells you one late evening, after she has spent hours with her beloved and you are already in bed, that her stool seems to have ran through and there seems to be a lot of water on her bathroom floor, it will behoove you to instantly jump out of bed and become industrious in the water removal business, even though the wedding is only a few scant hours away.

Maybe you knew about this problem a few days previous, and then again maybe not. 

But at this point, maybe all that matters is that you will survive even this, and in the end, you will survive the wedding as well.

Written in my new office on the corner of Main and 56.

Papa Don

Man, I enjoyed those days.

I asked one of my friends, who was a farmer, if I could help him during harvest.

I had just quit my job as a schoolteacher, and having had farm experience growing up, wanted my boys to have a bit of it also.

It worked pretty well because as fall came on, the sprinkler work slowed, and I could pretty much dedicate as much time as harvest needed.  My wife picked the boys up from school and brought them out to the field, or, if the route driver had room in their van they brought my boys out.

I guess I must have helped them with harvest about ten years.

Back when I started, we still ran tandem axle trucks. 

Gutless as a gizard when loaded.  They were fun to drive though.  It was always a challenge to get the gears right against the hill we had to climb while traveling the 9 miles to the elevator. 

Thirty-seven miles per hour if you weren’t bucking the wind.  Thirty if you were.  Sometimes, after that hill, on a good run, you might see forty-two.  The only position for the foot feed was flat on the floor.  Coming back, downhill and with the south wind at your back, they screamed out at sixty.

Then one of the trucks got traded on a white Freightliner semi.  Now we were cooking with gas, although the poor guy who had to take his turn at the tandem suddenly had a rough day of it, underpowered, and no A/C.

Next year, a red Freightliner joined the line up, and then both of us truck drivers were equal. 

Sort of. 

The red truck had Jake brakes. 

The white didn’t. 

The red truck had deep bass sounding horns. 

The white had a femmy little honker. 

The red truck had cloth seats. 

The white had vinyl. 

The red truck had synchronized gears. 

The white didn’t as much. 

The red truck was underpowered and heated up easily. 

The white was overpowered and hardly heated. 

The red truck had power windows. 

The white had hand crank windows. 

The red truck had a power tarp. 

The white still had the old hand crank that sometimes made the person rolling it back tread air with it on a windy day.

The white quickly became my favorite.

Someday, maybe I’ll write about the adventures incurred at the elevator.  But today it’s about the feedlot we sometimes hauled to.

I liked that feedlot.  Almost better than the elevator.  I liked to watch the cowboys sorting out the calves and I liked that it was a one man show, which meant there often wasn’t more than two trucks there waiting to dump.  Three, was max.

I had long ago memories of this feedlot.  Back in the day when we hauled high moisture corn that we dumped over the side of the above ground silo to the floor below where a loader tractor scooped up huge scoopfuls and dumped it into the biggest grinder I had ever seen.  Everyone drove tandems back then.  Semis were still used only for serious over the road truckers. 

So, when it was your turn to dump.  You backed up an incline to the top and side of that silo.  The man there to help you dump was often one picked out of a dime a dozen who needed temporary work and who knew nothing of trucks nor of the extended time needed to get them stopped when loaded. 

It was more than once I thought I was going over backwards, down to the floor of that silo, some fourteen feet below.

But now, it was all semis, and we pulled straight off the scale to a small pit that measured approximately four feet across and two feet wide.  The pit wasn’t any deeper than two feet, and at the bottom, an eight-inch auger ran horizontally until it was about two feet out of the pit area, and then it angled up to dump into a transfer auger that could be switched to the various bins. 

You had two options when you were unloaded to get back to the scale.  Back up and crank your trailer to the right before driving forward in a large half circle to get back on the scale.  Or, if you were down for it, back up all the way from the pit to the scale and see how well you could center it.  If there was no other truck there, I usually tried backing it in. 

I hadn’t hauled more than two loads there when I pulled up to the pit and no one was around.  I waited for a few minutes before getting out and looking around for someone to start the auger.  I eyed the switches and thought about starting it myself, but I could envision the debacle if the second auger didn’t switch on and everything jammed up.

I didn’t find anyone on the main floor of the mill/flaker, so I climbed the ladder to the second floor.  While I was up there, I heard this urgent, high-pitched voice calling to me, “I’m over here, I’m over here.”

Here was to my left.  He soon joined me on the second floor and asked if I wanted to see the setup.  He said he had designed parts of it and poured the cement for all of it besides being the regular maintenance man for the whole feedlot. 

The first thing that struck me was his black plastic cowboy hat.  I had never seen an adult size plastic cowboy hat before.

The second thing that struck me, almost literally, was the longest string of linked together cuss words I had ever heard.  Most I recognized, but then he switched to Spanish, and I was spared momentarily.

The third and fourth thing that struck me was that his coloring, dark brown with jet black white hair, and his voice, urgent, higher pitched and commanding, both reminded me very much so of someone.  I just had to figure out who. 

Papa Don. 

The incongruity of it made me almost double over with laughter.

Because see, the Papa Don that I knew was a preacher, and quite a preacher at that.  He had also been a missionary, and once I asked him how many times he had been to Africa.  He didn’t want to say, but eventually he said quietly, twenty-seven.

And so here was this fast cussing, loud talking, very self-aware man that looked and sounded just like Papa Don.

Less the cuss words, of course.

The guys I worked for asked me, once I was on my way home, what I thought of the load out guy.

“Papa Don?” I asked.

And I guess from there on the name stuck.  And we always laughed when we thought about it.

Over at that feedlot, they didn’t probe your load for a moisture sample.  They gave you a red Folgers 1 gallon coffee can and when you were dumping your load, you were supposed to reach in under the truck and fill the can.

Papa Don’s job was to run the augers or check how full the bins were by using his home made ‘Y’ shaped sling shot wrapped with innertube rubber to shoot rocks at the bin while listening to the sound they made.  He said it saved him a heap of blankedy blank climbing in a day.   We truck drivers were responsible for catching a moisture sample and to dump our trucks, while standing just behind us, the invective poured out.

I was so entranced, I guess you might say, by how explicitly the everyday sentences were peppered with those peppery words that on one of my loads I almost forgot to get my moisture sample.

I hurriedly reached under the truck, as the last bit of corn was about to pour out to get it. 

And just as hurriedly my phone flew out of my shirt pocket and immediately disappeared into the pit under a pile of corn.

I was too stunned to do anything, but not Papa Don, with a screech and several words, he had that whole shebang shut down in a second. 

“Let’s get your @#%!! phone,” he shouted.  The bars on the pit were just wide enough for me to reach the top of the auger, not the bottom. 

Papa Don took control of the situation right away, telling me to reach my hand in there while he would kick the auger on and off.  His theory was that the bleeping thing was at the bottom of the auger, and it would be carried up to the top with the spiral of the auger.  If we were lucky, I’d catch it on its way past.

Fortunately, no OSHA man was on site.

I had about given up on it, when I felt the slick cool surface of my phone.  I almost didn’t get it as I felt it sinking back down.  All I got was a corner, and then I had the same problem as the monkey with his hand caught in the tin can because he was holding the shiny thing in his hand. 

But, finally, with enough twisting and turning, I got it out.

What rejoicing. 

Papa Don in his language, me in mine. 

Sound

I heard something the other day that nearly dumbfounded me.

And then, upon reflection of what I heard, I realized it was very possible.

I heard that every sound that has ever been made never goes away. 

Just as water is still in the same amount as when the earth was created, and energy remains constant, so it seems sound could be.

Those sound waves carry on into the atmosphere, and probably on into the universe.

Obviously, we can’t hear them anymore, but they are still out there.  And I like to think there is a collective place where all those sounds find themselves and their counterparts. 

I slipped into a reverie and began to hear some of those sounds in my imagination.

The softest, the some of the most deafening.

I heard the soft invitation to a couple long ago.  I think that couple was so madly in love that the invitation given could have easily been disregarded as something invasive.  But they didn’t ignore it, and, in the cool of the day, they met the One who had made them. 

I heard the wailing death cry only a few short years later as one of their children died.

I heard the splash as an ax head fell into a stream and the gasp of those who saw it fly off its handle. 

Next, I heard the resonating tones of faith coming from one giving them instruction on how to retrieve it.

There was a quiet murmur of noise for a while, and then I heard the most terrifying sound of an approaching storm mixed with the shrieks of the damned. 

And then, after quite some time, all I heard was the gentle lapping of water upon water, silvery, almost.

Hope sounded when the waters receded, but not for long, and then, the most unnatural silence.  It was a silence that was so oppressive and yet it carried with it the despair and groaning of a whole creation waiting, most who knew not what for, and a few who did.

And after that horrible silence came absolute sound; visible and liquid in its purity, and as it quieted, I heard a quiet whimper of a newborn child and the soothing tones of his mother as she shushed him back to sleep.

Jubilant sound came forth, some thirty years later as mankind rejoiced in a new way and the complete liberty they felt within themselves.

I heard lightning split the air and immediately after came that frightening hiss right before the crash of thunder.   I heard men cry out in fear and I hear waves of immense height crash upon themselves.  And then, a shout, and all was still.  Such a stillness that was; holy in its quietude.

I heard as the miracles muted and, in their absence, harsh and unkind words, shouts of derision, and then, slamming down through all time came the sound of a whip, lashing against human flesh.

I heard the shout of victory three days later so entire that it reached to every rock on earth and every man.

I heard the martyrs weep, and the music given to them intertwined with their tears in a sound so reverent that I hesitated to listen, for all seemed so sacred.

Clanking and clanging of machinery soon gave way to horrible cries of men mixed with explosions and roaring that I feared for the escape of any caught in between the two forces pitted against each other.

Peacefulness followed those terrible explosions, and for some years, it seemed as though all was not lost until the strident noise of rebellion lifted itself again, both in the music of this world, and in picket lines strung across this nation.

I heard the gut-wrenching cry of the poor and innocent as man’s wicked schemes took those whom their vile desires settled upon from their safe places and trafficked them into the sex trade so that other men as wicked as themselves could consume themselves upon them in their own base desires. 

And I heard the most heartbreaking sound of all.  It was deafening in its silence. I heard the children whose parents didn’t love them.  They couldn’t cry out loud because they were old for their age, and they knew if they did it would only make things worse.  They have no home, either structurally, emotionally, or place of solitude where all is quiet.

But one sound kept me centered in the midst of all the sounds. 

It was that shout, with an outstretched hand that calmed the storm on a sea called Galilee.

And I think, somehow, that Voice that calmed everything in that dark night is enough.

Enough it seems, to bring to back to each of us, for our own benefit, whichever sound He chooses from all those that have been uttered.  

Especially so for the sweet daughter and her Josh as they begin their lives together next Sunday.   

Good Business

I’ve started this post at least ten times in my head. 

Maybe even more.

And the reason I never write it is because I’m scared.

I don’t feel like I have what it takes to give thoughtful advice on how to make a business work.

Mostly because I don’t have a lot of experience at it.

But I know some things I like, and some I dislike.

And an exchange I had this last week with the fellow in Staples made me smile enough that I thought maybe it was time to throw a few things out.

So, here’s what happened in Staples.

I walk in and quickly find the aisle with cables.  My son wants me to pick up a cable with HDMI male on one side, and USB female on the other. 

Okay, computer nerds, that’s a volatile combination.  Although I didn’t know it at the time.  Neither did I know that there is a nice little terminator that takes care of the volatility.

This guy walks up to me and asks if he can help me.  I say, “Yes, I’m quite sure you can.  All I need is a cord with HDMI male on one side and USB female on the other.  Just want to see if you have such or not.”

My confidence in his outward appearance is maybe a 1 out of 5 stars.  His eyes are bulging (He probably can’t help this) and they keep wanting to close on him as he walks towards me. 

As he gets closer, I see he has puffy welts here and there on his neck.  My mind wants to think drugs, but I settle on a lesser conclusion of allergies.

Our conversation goes like this—

Him-  Uh, well, you are in the wrong place to begin with.  The cables are over here. (showing me there)

Me-  Okay, yes I see.  Do you have the cable I am looking for?

Him-  What cable did you want?

Me- HDMI male to USB female.

Him- Uh well, I can see you don’t really know much about what you are asking for.

Me- Okay, tell me what I need.

Him- Well, you really don’t know much, or you wouldn’t be asking me what you are asking.

Me- Okay.  So, do you have the cord I’m talking about?

Him- Uh, well, what you want is impossible to do.  What was it you wanted to do again?

Me- HDMI male to USB female.

Him- Yeah.  I can see you really don’t know anything at all about this.

Me- Let me look again at the note my son sent me. (pulling out my phone, I read the note.)  Yeah, all he needs is HDMI male to USB female.

Him- Again, you clearly don’t know anything about this.  What is he trying to do? 

Me- Hook up another screen to his computer.

Him- What machine does he run?

Me- Mac.

Him- Oh, well then you are completely wrong on what cable you need.

Me- He just sent this to me.  He’s right in front of his compu—

Him- NO. No, you don’t want that at all.  You’ll need a (scramble of technical jargon)

Me- So, back to the cable I am looking for.  Do you have it or not?

Him- Look.  I have to tell you again.  This is electricity.  Clearly you don’t know anything about electricity either.  If you did, you wouldn’t even try this in the first place.  Cause, you know, if you do the wrong thing with electricity, it gets all balled up and blows up.  Yeah, you know you could have a real problem on your hands if you try this. 

Me- Okay, I’ll just see if I can find that cable here.

Him- No.  You won’t find it.  You’d be running electricity backwards and you just can’t do that.  You’ll end up with a short.  You know what a short is?  It’s when electricity goes backwards and blows things up. 

Me- (Thinking to myself but not saying anything out loud) Would you be pulling your info from the 2017 NEC or 2020 NEC (National Electrical Code)  Or, just so you know, electricity is how I make my living. 

Me- Okay, so you don’t have the cable then.

Him-  No, and I would really suggest you go home and try to learn more about this before you come back in.

Me- That’s rather blunt.

Him- I’m sorry man.  But it’s just what I got to say to folks like you.

I grab a cable, maybe or maybe not a bit out of spite, that is completely different than I came in for, thinking I’ll just make it work.

I go to Menards, and stand for long minutes in their cable aisle, hoping against hope I’ll find the cable.  Not that I would go back and show him or anything.

I call Austin while I’m there and tell him a bit of what Staples guy had to say.  He snorted and said, “I just ordered that cable online.”  And went on to tell me that the guy was partially right, that it wouldn’t work long without the terminator that the one he ordered had built in. 

So, I drove back to Staples, and ducked in while the cable/electricity guy was in the back and returned the cable I had so recently bought. 

I was really glad the clerks didn’t ask too many questions, and I kept my feelers out to my side and back in case cable/electricity guy came up and pounced on me with more helpful information.

I was sweating by the time I walked out. 

I guess I’ll save the other things I was going to throw out for another time.

Written in The Bake Shoppe

Anne Sullivan

If it was me reading that title, I would have no idea who she was.

But if the title had been Helen Keller, I would have known immediately who Helen Keller was.

And maybe, after giving my subconscious enough time, I might have been able to piece together who Anne Sullivan was.

Anne Sullivan was Helen Keller’s teacher.

And every time I think about Helen Keller’s teacher, regardless of whether I remember her name or not, my mind stops.  It stops with almost the same kind of incomprehension that some spiritual things make my mind stop.

I remember my school teaching days, and I remember those times when a student of mine didn’t get the concept I was trying to teach.

Of course, being the teacher I aspired to be, I took time to reexplain the concept.  If my student still didn’t get it, I changed tactics, and started over again.  If, after that I still couldn’t get through to them, I sometimes asked one of their fellow students to explain it to them. 

I always felt frustrated with myself in those situations. 

Sometimes, I felt impatient with my student who wasn’t getting it. 

But if I did feel impatient, I was quickly reminded of those days I worked beside Mark at the local John Deere. 

He knew so much, and had so much experience, that sometimes I think he felt like the gap between what he knew and what I was trying to learn was insurmountable.  But he stood by me, and, if I have any mechanical abilities today, I credit him.

Anne Sullivan must have had similar qualities.  When I think of her patience, standing by the water pump for, how long?  And spelling the word ‘water’ into Helen’s palm over and over, well, this is where my mind stops.  Both in comprehending Anne’s patience, and the wall Helen had to scale to actually get to where those impressions in her palm made the smallest hint of sense. 

And, do you know what else?  A lot of the pictures of those two show Helen resting her head upon Anne.  She knew she wouldn’t be disappointed in any way, shape, or form by her mentor. 

Anne had developed an atmosphere of complete trust in which Helen could repose in.  She knew she could ask anything, and Anne would do her best to answer.  And if Anne didn’t know the answer, or if the school they were enrolled in together couldn’t find a way to get the answer, then they changed schools.

In essence, Anne spent her whole life pressing the word ‘water,’ into Helen’s hand.  Figuratively, of course, one it had been learned.

And her patience, care, and understanding love is what made her history’s best teacher. 

It’s August now. 

For many, school will be fully in motion by the end of this month.

There will be many new teachers stepping into their teacherhood for the first time. You will be scared.  You will be stressed out to the limit.  You will be continually tired.   

There will be seasoned teachers who may be tempted to take their job for granted; you may feel like it doesn’t take so much time and effort to be a good teacher.  You may be tempted to become impatient with the student who can’t seem to get it, forgetting the gulf of knowledge that separates you from them.

More than imparting the academics, more than getting better grades for your students, more than having the best polished flair among your sorority of teachers is this—

Patience.  Care.  Understanding love.

These. 

These will make you the best teacher, both for yourself and for your students.

School Daze #5

Let’s go back to my first day as a teacher in the classroom.

I am terribly nervous. 

I stand at the door like I think all good teachers should do, and say good morning to my students.

I extend my hand to each and try to call them by name, although, even though I only have 9 students, I stutter on a couple of them. 

Next, we go out to the main room for an initiation on school etiquette.  A lot of is new to me, but it’s all old hat to my students and they squirm and fidget.  I have a small anxiety attack, wondering if I’ll need to call them out for misbehavior on this first day of school.

But we slide through it and make it back to the classroom.

I notice, peripherally, that the other classes are going out to run a lap and then, they must be coming back in to study.

I feel a little somehow about this, because I don’t have any study planned for the next hour or so.  Mostly because I’m afraid; I don’t know how to get started.  (By now I know a bumbling start is better than two hours worth of nervous babbling.)

I babble.

For two hours.

I see interest, high at the start, devolve into laziness, knowing glances, and sleepiness.

I try to bump the interest up by speaking in exclamation marks.

It doesn’t work. 

I have my eye on one fellow.  He scares me more than the rest. 

He’s a tough customer, the way it looks. 

He is macho.  He has clout.  He has attitude.

I know he comes from a hard place, and that perplexes me.  Should I treat him with soft gloves?  Should I treat him with tough love?   

But now it’s time for recess, and everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief and they spin out the door, pent up energy at having sat through so much drivel that they fairly burst apart at the seams.

I hear them say to each other, “What do you think of our new teacher?” 

“I dunno,” another says, “Seems like he talks a lot.”

We are back in the classroom, and I began the lesson presentation.  I explain things simplistically.  Way too simplistically in fact. 

The nervy kid, the one I had my eye on before, raises his hand and says, “We know all this stuff already.”

Ooookay,  I think.

So, I turn them loose.  They do just fine with that, until we get into the deeper stuff later in the month.

By now, I know that I wasn’t mistaken about my reservations regarding the energy of the one guy I had my eye on at the start of school.

He and I have locked horns a couple of times already.  Nothing serious, just enough to rattle me.  I’m scared of him, scared of all of these folks after all.

I keep pondering how to break through to him.

My first impulse is to curb his actions, to make it known who is in control.

I try this for a couple of weeks, but it doesn’t work.  He knows how to fight; he learned that at home. 

And then it hits me.  Right during math class.  Right during a sentence leaving my mouth about, well, something about math, I hope. 

Let him be the leader; let him show you how it’s done.  Begin by complimenting him and generally buttering him up.

I go with it. 

And everything changes.  Responsibility isn’t something he is used to, but it is his forte, nonetheless.

When he tells me, “This is how our teacher did it last year,” I tell myself to listen, rather than perceive it as a threat.

And, doing it like their teacher did last year, at least in some things, seems to enamor me to them. 

Soon, the whole class is pulling together, helping me to make this school system work.

Today, I really don’t know if that first class of mine got an education or not.  I think not.  I have to hope a higher power stepped in and was the teacher who knew what they needed and imparted it to them. 

But, neither could it have been done without each one of them, and their help.

Including the guy I had my eye on, and who has turned out remarkably well. 

Thank you, Jason. 

Written in Patrick Dugan’s

The Joke’s on Me #4

They say keep an eye on the sky . . .

And I say you better keep an eye on it and not just your peach pizza.

Because if you keep an eye only on your peach pizza, the ramifications of what could happen next can be devastating.

It all went down something like this.

Back in March of this year, the sweet daughter seemed in the throes of decision making.  She really, really liked it where she was teaching school in South Dakota.  She had good friends, she had good co-teachers, and, of course, she had good wood fired pizza.

But, she had been involved in the school system for long enough that it felt like it was time for a break.  She said what she would really like was a secretarial job at one of the local businesses just outside of town.  She implored of the crusty old man to check it out for her.

As luck would have it, they had a position exactly like she wanted, that they had just filled.  Now she was on the fence.  Come home with no bird in the bush or stay there with a bird in hand.

The crusty old man said come home, possibly for selfish reasons, that something was bound to happen that would be exactly what she wanted.

She came home. 

And nothing turned up. 

She started taking the corral down.  It was hot, back breaking work, and the telehandler kept dying on her.

The crusty old man suddenly had inspiration. 

Maybe the drugstore would have a position. 

So, he stopped in there one day, and, of all things, they were in the process of interviewing for a position. 

The sweet daughter quickly filled out her application and submitted it. 

They said they would let her know the next morning. 

The next morning, they called her to say, “Sorry, but you just missed it.  The one before you decided to take the job.”

Wearisome days followed.

For the crusty old man, that is.

Many doleful comments were heard that indicated there would never be a job.

Of course, experience spoke reassuringly and calmly in the midst of these minor tantrums, saying that what will be will be, and that all things would work out in the end.

And then, the crusty old man had another inspiration.

He messaged the fertilizer store just a half mile south of his place and explained his daughter’s wishes.

And, as luck would have it, they were interviewing that very day for a position that involved secretarial work.

Except this time, the sweet daughter was afraid.  Because there were lots of men there, and she didn’t think she would know how to do the job.

She sat still at the dinner table, wasting long minutes when she could have been at the neighbors, showing a good character by arriving early for her interview.

She really did look scared.

But, she eventually did the right thing and got herself over there.

And, they said they had just interviewed someone that morning for the job.  They said they would let her know the next morning.  She figured all bets were off.

The next morning brought tidings of joy; she had been hired.

At first, she thought it was just like she feared, that it would be a daunting job.

But a few days and weeks later, she came home with smiles and chuckles about the day’s happenings and mentioned how she really liked this job.

Until we had a beautiful 70 some degree day with the bluest sky and the greenest, softest grass.

And then we heard complaints about going back to work after her time at the dinner table was finished.

Whereupon, the crusty old man began to enumerate in, perhaps, the tenderest of mocking tones, the journey thus traveled to where she was. 

All this done while he was serving himself one of Mama J’s dulcetly good pieces of peach pizza.

And then it all went down. 

Literally.

From a long way away, or so it seemed, the crusty old man heard himself gasp and sputter with a sharp intake of air.   

He heard himself trying to speak a word, any word for that matter to maintain his sobriety and position of leadership among the females in his house.

From that same distant place he heard himself stutter, “It’s in my shorts!  It’s running down my legs!”

And as he began to come back to, and as discernment made its way back into his addled mind, he realized the sweet daughter had aimed her full glass of ice cubes and water directly into the gaping v of the crusty old man’s shirt, made larger and an easier target since he had failed to button the top button that morning. 

This was no spring chicken of a shower.  No.  It was a stormy, wind laced deluge.

It was a sad, soaking trail he left as he tried to ease out from the table to change his clothes, hoping not many more icy spots would come in contact with his already hypothermic skin and state of being lest it render him senseless and paralyzed at the feet of the women folk who were laughing so hard that no sound whatsoever came from their parted lips.

Who Are You?

Psalms 55:13

“Who are you, really?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, one place it says I need to fear you, and do everything you tell me to do.  Are you a dictator?”

“Go on.”

Okay, I will.  Another place it says I should honor you.  Like you are a President or King or something.”

“And?”

“Well, to my way of thinking you could be a dictator and exact both fear and honor, or you could be a King and exact the same.  It makes a huge difference how I think about you, if you are a dictator or King.”

“Like?”

“If you are a dictator, then I’m going to be scared of you the whole time.  I’ll be afraid you’ll be out spying on me to make sure I’m doing things like you want them done.  It’d be a lot the same if you were a King, but then I think I’d dare to hope you might give good things to those under you once in a while.  That is, unless you turned into a dictator from being a King.  It happens.”

“Okay, what else?”

“It says I should love you.”

“What’s so hard about that?”

“I don’t know what kind of love you want.  Love that follows you around like a lost puppy?  Love like I feel for my wife?  Tough love?  Permissive love?  I don’t think you could be a wicked King and get me to love you, nor a dictator.  It begs the question, again, who are you?”

“Anything else?”

“Well, I read that you got angry once.  Not sure I can understand that one, because in other places it says you are kind and compassionate.  I’m afraid if you got angry at me, it would cancel out any love and kindness you had shown previously.

What about the place where it says you chasten those who follow you?  Am I given to understand that I’m always going to be jumpy around you?  Not knowing what side of you I’ll see next?”

“Anything more, or are you done?”

“Well, there might be more, but I’ll let that suffice for now.”

“Okay.  I must say you have made it complicated for yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s so simple.  I wish you wouldn’t muddle it up so.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are fine.  That’s to be expected with the limitations of your humanness. 

How about we take a little ride in your truck together.”

“Sure.  You want to drive?”

“No, I’ll ride.”

“Well, it’s been several miles.  Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“I’m enjoying the beautiful day.  I’m enjoying you.”

“You seem so relaxed.”

“Sure.  If you keep it simple, you will be also.”

“So . . .?”

“This is who I am.  I am just like you.  Sometimes people fear you.  Sometimes they really love you for what you do.  Sometimes you get angry.  Sometimes they honor you.  But really, it’s more than that. 

I am your equal. 

I am your best friend, your companion. 

And maybe that’s why it hurts me just as badly as it hurts you when we need to talk things out and make amends.”

“So, what about all the other titles?”

“You were the one who coined those, not me.”

“Oh.”

The Joke’s on Me #3

I’ve enjoyed singing, both the listening and participation thereof, for the better part of my life.

Well, there was a time there when I didn’t quite so much.

People got a little quiet when they sang with me and then when the truth was out, they said I was a little ‘off tune.’

Which seemed weird to me, because I thought I sounded okay.  At least to myself.

So, I asked them which way I was off, and they told me I was down just a little bit.

I worked with myself and couldn’t seem to fix the problem.

Until one day I decided I’d try singing a half step up from what sounded right.

And then they were all smiles.

Me, not so much.

Because it was hard singing a half step off, but if that’s what they wanted, I could do it for them I figured.

And eventually, I didn’t notice so much when I was singing a half step up from where I thought it should be.

And, just as eventually, they stopped saying I was off.  Whether they stopped out of kindness or despair, I guess I’ll never know.

I started really enjoying singing, learning new songs, and trying, in a redneck sort of way, to improve on what the author had done originally. 

Which was stupid.  The improving part of it, that is.

Anyway, I’ve done enough singing both to myself and with groups through the years, that I began to think I had finally mastered the art, at least somewhat.

I was fairly confident when asked to sing in a group, rarely suffering from nerves.

I new my limits. 

Absolutely no duets of any kind. 

Those didn’t work. 

I could hear myself too much I guess, and it became a vicious cycle where I toggled between okay, not okay, nerves, no nerves.

I enjoyed leading congregational singing, and I enjoyed quartets.  I probably enjoyed singing with my children the most.

So, not to appear self-righteous or anything, it did seem like it was working for me.

Until one day.  My nephew from down south called me up and asked if I could lead one of the congregational songs on his wedding. It’s true, I hadn’t done this one yet, but it didn’t seem like it would be so very different from the hundred or so other congregational songs I had led.

Except it was different.

I really don’t know what was so different, but I had a near meltdown because of nerves during that song. 

I couldn’t figure it out.  Not at all.

I decided to wait, and if I was asked to lead another congregational song at a wedding again, I’d see if I could pinpoint what was going on. 

The only thing I pinpointed was that I had the same reaction again.

I had pretty much decided to decline all future wedding engagements when a close family friend called to say she was getting married, and, could I lead the opening song at her wedding?

Of course, my pride got in the way, and I told her I’d be honored to lead that song for her.

I had a special seat near the front. 

I practically knew the song I was to lead by heart.

I had a case of nerves.

And that

And even more so when I sat down and realized I had failed to pick up a card telling me after what part I was to lead this song.

But there was a card on the bench beside me that the guy sitting by me had grabbed and I quickly memorized where I was at before he picked it up and put it in the songbook rack.

My turn soon came, and I got myself up and over to the pulpit.

Of course I shook.

Of course my vision blurred.

Of course, of course.

Karma was alive and well that morning, reminding me of my shortsighted vision when I accepted this position.

But I got through the song okay, and as I sat back down, I thought maybe I was gaining on this thing and might soon have it in the bag, nerves and all.

None of us noticed much for a little, until the preacher got up and welcomed everyone and made a few announcements.

And then we all noticed something. 

And it got really quiet as we noticed it.

Because right then was where I was supposed to lead that opening song.

The preachers looked at me, and I looked at them.

We looked down a little and then looked back at each other.

We smiled uneasily at one another, but the smiles did nothing to mitigate the silence.

I seriously considered getting back up and leading another song.  One flashed in my mind that I could lead, but I seemed paralyzed and couldn’t for the life of me get myself up there.

Eventually the preacher figured he would need to have his opening, despite the fact that he didn’t have his usual time to finalize the details of it during the opening song.

The temperature went soaring up in the area I sat, and I couldn’t seem to make myself comfortable for the rest of the service, neither did I know where to rest my eyes. 

Even the benches seemed to smirk at me, and the floor heaved with laughter, so much so that I didn’t know if I was levitating or not.

The bride to be looked over at me and offered a sweet smile, which seemed way more than I deserved.

Not sure how many years ago that’s been, but that was the last opening song at a wedding I have led, and I intend to make sure it stays that way.

I sure wouldn’t want to inconvenience the preachers again.

Written at The Bake Shoppe

Five Dollar Bill

Every now and again, I get some royalty money.

Sometimes it’s more, sometimes less.

Regardless of the amount, I take fifty dollars out of it in cash.

And, I make sure to ask the bank cashier to make it in five dollar bills.

Because I have a little rule about my billfold.

Of course, all rules about my billfold are subject to my good wife’s need to reach into it once in a while.

My little rule is simple.

If it’s a five-dollar bill, whether from the royalty or from change out of a larger bill, it goes to anybody holding a cardboard sign.

I guess you could say it has become a highlight for me.

By now, I recognize some of the folks in our local shopping town.

There’s one guy who always seems a little discouraged with life.  I never talk to him much because where he stands is often a busy intersection and there are usually some waiting behind me to get on their way.  He holds a sign that says he is homeless, and he looks it.  His voice is about as thin as he is.  He moves slowly, and sometimes I wonder if he moves slowly because he is too discouraged to move any faster.

There is a Spanish lady who looks so sad.  Her sign says she needs money for her children.  She can hardly make eye contact when we have our two second meeting.  I don’t believe she has a husband anymore.  I wonder how hard it must be for her; she barely speaks English.  I probably would have had a different attitude towards immigrants before I went to Germany.  It was while there I realized I had a whole lot more to learn than the language if I was going to live there.  The culture looked like it could take years to learn, and, just because you learned it, didn’t mean you would like it.  I felt especially bad for her one day, when I saw the man I’m going to write about next giving her a real chewing out for where she was standing.  Seems he thought she was too close to where he was, and it was robbing him of some proceeds.  I saw her submissively and quietly move farther up the street. 

I went out of my way that day to give her my five-dollar bill.

This next man is quite the codger.  He always looks sharp and used to look fairly buff too, with bulging biceps and ripped abs.  He used to, and still does, wear a tight t shirt and fedora hat, clothes clean and neat.  Although lately his t shirt has changed places where it is tight.  And his hound dog is always nicely groomed, and well mannered.  Really, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see a stogie angled sideways out of his mouth.  The man that is, but it wouldn’t look bad in the dogs mouth either.

I kept being intrigued by him, and suddenly one day the light bulb that is slow to light in my mind clicked on. 

He was the guy I picked up about three years ago on my way to the cattle sale at Pratt.  I stopped by and asked where he wanted a lift to.  He said as far as I could take him.  I said I could drop him off at the intersection by Walmart in Pratt if he wanted.  He said sure, but I asked him if he was certain, since he was walking west, and my journey took me east.  He said it was fine, he had just come from Medicine Lodge, and there were nice people there, he could go back before making his way on to California. 

He made a little place for his dog in the footwell of my truck and then, it was time to convert me to the seven principles of Christianity. 

I wish I had taken notes.  His thesis was interesting, if anything but very disjointed.

I should ask him sometime if he ever made it to California.

There’s the ancient man who sits in front of an Asian/Spanish market that is quiet until I get close.  Then he lifts his harmonica with trembling hands and plays a quiet, lilting tune.  I don’t think his hands tremble from substance abuse.  I see a hard-working immigrant gentleman who probably doesn’t have connections anymore in this world, and who, I hope, when the time comes, will have a home in a nice place for senior living. 

He definitely deserves it.

There’s an unkempt and dirty fellow once in a while that seems a little too gruff and grabby, but one never knows what his life is.  I suspicion if he had a nice woman like those of my household, he would be a very different person.

Then there’s the Vietnam war veteran.  After reading some of the atrocities this good country put those men through, my mind almost stops, and I wonder how much terror he still lives with today.

One thing though, is common among them all.  Even the gruff and grabby fellow.

They all say, “God Bless You.”

And I never can figure that out. 

Because it seems like it should be the other way around.

God has already blessed me, far beyond what I deserve.

And it seems like their lives could use the enrichment of his blessings so much more than mine.

So, I say “God Bless You” back to them, and I try my very best to say it in a way that I hope takes a little bit of that ache that each of them lives with away.