Evidence

I see the gashes.

Some are deep and fresh; some are from earlier days.

I remember the fog last night.  I remember how beautiful it looked, way up there on the hills.  It all seemed so distant, so non-threatening. 

And then the deer leaped out; I braked, but the driver in front of me couldn’t stop fast enough.  Because he was pulling a heavy load. 

I was surprised at how sad I felt for the deer as it tumbled, rolled, and finally just slid down the icy incline.

I remember seeing a fresh set of tracks down into the ditch, in the snow and ice, and several trucks lined up, ready to pull the vehicle down there back up to the road, so I moved on.

I remember, later in the evening, how danger tasted; tart and bitter.  Because the black night was all around me by then.  And I knew there were icy spots on the dark, winding road that I couldn’t see.  And because civilization and cell service were imaginary, at best.  And my lovely sat beside me, and I feared for her safety.

*****

I know that the temperature is still below freezing, even though the sun is shining this morning.  I see icy spots here and there on bridges, so I take my time and am careful.

I continue to see the gashes.

There are lots of them.  Some still have broken vehicles parked in them.  Some of the guardrails have come undone. 

Finally, because there are so many of them, and since it’s not icy anymore, and because the day is warm, they slip by in a 79 miles per hour collage of blurred snap shots. 

They don’t affect me so much anymore.  The deer is an isolated event from the evening before; there is distance between me and it now.

I began to wonder why so many people were out on the roads when they were so icy. 

I shrug.  I don’t know the answer to that question. 

And, I’m afraid, there is a little bit of indifference in my shrug.

But then the truth slams home. 

Every one of those gashes tells a story. 

Every person who slipped off the icy road yesterday is looking at life totally different today, because of the gashes. 

Some may have been changed only enough to have had to call a tow truck and the rearrangement of their schedules.

Some may be changed in a way that leaves them physically impaired.

*****

I see the gashes.

They may not be visible, but I see them, nonetheless.

I see them as my life and yours intermingles.

On some, they are fresh, they are deep. 

Whether deep and fresh, or timeworn, the truth they tell has been etched with excoriating certainty. 

The pain they cause is definable; real.

Your wounds remind me of mine, and I’m surprised, at times, how deeply I feel about your life.

Sometimes your wounds cause a new round of pain in my own life that I need to take time to deal with. 

And that is how it is supposed to be.

The day should never wear on, like it did for me on the interstate, and I become complacent, even zoned out, to what you feel.

Because each wound, each scar, is evidence to me that your life has been irrevocably changed.

And I hope that for every person down in the ditch today, there are 3, maybe 4 folks stopped by the side of the road, ready to give assistance.

I may not know you.  For sure, I don’t know what you are going through at this exact moment. 

But because of the scars in my own life, I feel deeply for you.

Blood Payment

I sat there, in the family car, and fumed. 

I glared at the parking lot in front of me, willing it to say one word at me, and I’d argue it back to the street. 

Because the parking lot was guilty of being a conveyance of sorts to the feet of my boys. 

It had sent them straight from the car, directly to the store which sold jeans that I had no use for.

Jeans that had no place in the likes of my home, much less on the body of my boys.

I didn’t know how I was going to address this one when they came back out of that store, but I knew I’d have my guns spiked, one way or another, and I’d let them know exactly where I stood on the matter.

Time dragged.

My anger cooled down to a slow simmer.

And then, in the clearest of impressions, I got the message telling me what I needed to do.

It wasn’t right to expect my boys to navigate this time alone, much less, under the towering cloud of my anger.

They were living their most vulnerable moments right then; I couldn’t stand by, and expect everything to fall into place, could I?

But the choice of action that suggested itself was far from appealing.

“Pay it forward.”

For a moment, I thought I had been hoodwinked by some wild timelapse gap in the neuroplasticity of my gray matter.

But then I heard it again.

“Pay it forward. How do you expect them to feel about you someday when you need help, or are in a vulnerable situation yourself?”

I put the cap on the simmering pot of anger inside me and doused the fire out that was feeding it.

I got out of the car, and walked myself across the same parking lot, into the same store that the boys were in.

I eased around, as much off to the side as I could, just there, if they wanted.

They looked up, startled to see me in there, but I let them have their space.

It wasn’t long, and one of them came over with a shirt in his hand.  “See this?  See the deep maroon in just the right light?  You should get it,” one of them said.

We soon melded into a single group, tossing out opinions and ideas on what was a good product and what wasn’t.

I don’t remember if they got the jeans or not.  All I know is that what I felt in the store with them was a lot better than what I felt by myself out in the car.

*****

From that day on, you might could call us sharecroppers in this game called life.

I know it’s extremely important to be there for your boys, when they are in the toddler stage and all; probably the most important of any time of their life.

But I also know that later on, it seems about as important to put a little time down, being there for, and with them, in a sort of blood payment, if you will. Really, is it asking so much when you think about One who gave the ultimate example of such some years ago?

From what I gather, based on my own experience, paying it forward like that never is easy, but it accrues in immense percentages as time moves along.

Hole in the Ground

“Every young man should have the fun of digging a hole in the ground,” the 70-plus year old man told me, as he stood next to the hole I was digging to install a sprinkler system in the yard adjoining his.

“You think so?”

“Sure, I do.  I dug one when I was 6 or 8 years old.  I think each of my boys did.  Did you ever dig one?”

“Yeah, I did.  Only got about waist deep.”

“Your boys dug one yet?”

“No, but I bet they do.”

Incidentally, Austin was working with me that day, not much over seven years old himself, and heard our conversation.

It wasn’t long, and I saw the beginnings of a hole being dug on the north side of the tree row north of our place. 

The hole was still an infant, maybe a couple of feet deep, when we had a rainstorm of enormous proportions.  I saw a sheet of water rolling across our yard from the field to the south of us, perhaps 2 to 3 inches deep. 

The next morning, the seven-year-old boy was shocked to find his newly constructed hole filled to the brim with water and all the flotsam that the deluge from the day before carried with it.

Whereupon once the ground dried out and digging operations could recommence, the dirt being extracted from the hole was piled into a berm approximately 1-1 ½ feet high around the project.  This berm was continually modified, lengthening, and winding farther and farther away from the hole as the days and months came and went and more and more dirt was mined.

The hole was nearing the five-foot mark.  I happened to have a mini excavator rented for a job we were doing, and, unloading it from the trailer that evening, began the circuitous slow journey around the east and then to the north of the yard to the hole.  The family followed along, at first asking repeatedly where I was going, and then, as we got closer, what I was going to do.

I set up to the east of the hole, right on its edge, and took the depth down to the 9-foot mark.  Next, I backed up a little and cut a step out of the east wall about two feet up from the bottom, and then corresponding steps all the way up to ground level.

A new flurry of activity commenced north of the trees.  A hefty sized board was found that was long enough to bridge across the hole.  A rope and pully were bought.  A bucket was attached to the rope, and a tie off point down at the bottom of the hole was pegged into the wall.  This way, the lad could dig a bucket full of dirt, reef on the rope to lift the bucket to the top, run up the stairs, grab the bucket, and empty it onto the ever extending, neatly constructed berm.  Even the dirt pile I had piled to the side with the mini was carefully carried away to additional berm construction. 

Construction plans now included mining a few more feet down, which stopped at a depth of 14 feet, then tunnel construction towards the back door of the house, which was located some 75 to 100 feet away.  I got down there myself, then, and helped install a ceiling with supports in the four-foot hollowed out area to the left of the main shaft. 

Progress slowed and soon stopped, as the lad who had pioneered this epic effort morphed into a young man, although there were sporadic forays on days when the mood and frustration of the young man was such that the parents couldn’t be of much help.  There seemed to be a good amount of therapy gained down there, the young man armed with a pry bar and sledgehammer, gouging away at the side wall of the cave area.

The hole, with its 14-foot depth, seemed a bit of a safety hazard.  We learned this when we climbed down there a few months later and came face to face with your typical western Kansas prairie rattlesnake.  

We covered the construction site with several pieces of tin, and largely forgot about it for the next few years.

Until J. J., one of Austin’s friends, was over for the evening.  Turned out to be a rather tumultuous evening for him.  First, he was stepped on by the horse.  Later, when the boys were racing around the premises on foot, playing I don’t know what game, the boys circumvented the tin while J.J. elected to run right across it.  It didn’t hold, and after a muffled shout of surprise that ended in a thump far below, we looked down, panic stricken, to see what bones might be broken.  We were lucky.  None were broken, just a few sore spots and a scraped area where the edge of the tin had caught him as he traveled past it.

And then, after we covered it back up with the tin, we forgot about it, excepting the odd times we showed it as a tourist attraction on the place.

*****

Ten years slid by.  We had a wonderful rain one night and I was out, slowly walking down to the pens to see how sloppy they were, when I saw the gate to pen 4 leered jauntily ajar at me.  And, I saw five fresh trails of beef prints leaving there and heading west.

They were the hoof prints of 5 steers I had been fattening up to have butchered and sell parted out.  It wasn’t a problem at all to track them in the soft oozy mud.  I guessed their track to be less than an hour old, which would coincide with the sunrise spreading enough light around for them to see the gate had been left open, by none other than yours truly.

But when I found them, down at the bottom of a milo field a quarter mile away, there were only four of them. 

I got the boys, and we worked those four back up out of the waist high milo, back up to the home pens.  They herded easily enough, and it was soon they were back where they belonged.

But where was number 5?

We had four blacks in the pen; I knew the fifth was red and, I thought, would surely be easy to spot against the surrounding landscape. 

We looked for a couple of hours, though, and couldn’t find it anywhere.  I dismissed the boys and said I’d look for it on my own.  I started again, back down by pen 4, and followed the trail.  All five sets moved westerly towards the milo field. 

And then I saw it.  About halfway to the field, I saw the prints of one turn back towards the east.  They moved back into and were lost in the trail leaving pen 4.  I saw them emerge from the slop of the trail near the bottom fence of pen 4 and move in a northerly direction.  I followed them north and east, then saw them double back on themselves, before finally turning back to the east. 

East, along the north side of pen 4, then farther east along the north side of the north tree row . . .

I remembered the hole, and was pretty sure I knew what I’d find before I got there.

Sure enough, the tracks went by the hole with the tin covering it, circled back, and for some odd reason, tromped right onto the tin. 

I looked down, down, and there he was, wedged in the bottom of the crevasse. 

I was amazed at how diminutive his 800 pounds looked, all bunched up and forlorn like.

I called the boys over and we brainstormed about how would be the best way to get him out.  One option was to dig him out with a mini excavator.  But that was soon ruled out as being costly and time intensive when other work and customers were waiting even as we stood and planned.

One of the boys suggested getting the tractor and scoop over there, getting some of our wide tie down straps, and hoisting the poor fellow out.

We all agreed that was the best idea so far, and set up accordingly.  But.  Who was getting down in there with that beast?  The hazards included broken legs, should they get squished on either side, or, worse case scenario, getting trampled. 

I said I’d get down there.  The fellow seemed fairly calm, if not very sweaty.  But I had no way of getting the straps under him, so I climbed back out, and we reconnoitered.  Bryce suggested bending a large sized wire (we seem to have numerous sizes on the place) and use it to fish under the guy to catch the strap and pull it to the other side.  I honestly didn’t see that working at all, not wishing to practically stand on my head while I tried to fish blindly to the other side and under a steer with blood in his eye.  And I for sure didn’t see it working when I saw the boys had rigged a fishing pole out of conduit with the wire, pre-bent, attached to it with the idea of doing it all from the rim. 

And it worked!  I scampered back down there and fastened the tie strap to the fishing wire.  It wasn’t long and we had two straps under, back up, and attached to the scoop. 

I leaped into the tractor, and going completely on the hand signals of the boys, began to lift the poor guy slowly out. 

And then we ran into an unforeseen problem.  When our adventurous steer was lifted to within eye level of the rim, he presumed he was ready to go and, grabbing the edge with his front feet, took off.

And back down. With a tremendous whomp sound that made me fainthearted thinking of how many legs he had broken. 

Up to that point, we were pretty sure he had faired the first fall in a decent manner. 

He was a lot more agitated on this go around, and it took longer to get the straps fished under and back up.

Ultimately, we did, and this time, the plan was to have the tractor in reverse, clutch in, while lifting our fellow out and, once close to the top, begin reversing for all we had, dragging him the rest of the way over the lip and out onto ground level.

Another small conundrum presented when the fellow took off towards the west, still tied up in the straps.  But that righted itself when he kicked a few times and came free on his own.

I jumped on the four-wheeler and ran some flank pressure on the fellow while the boys ran down to pen 4, opened the gate, and formed a human fence line for me to bring the bruiser along and he penned easily.

Oh.  No legs were broken, but I guess you caught on to that already.

Rumor Has It

He was one of those kids who failed most of his way through school. 

Although definitely not because he was lazy. 

I had watched him the last couple of years with interest as he neared my room and the grades I taught.

He seemed a bit shy for the first several weeks, even the first couple of months. 

His grades had been on a smooth slide downward ever since the first day in my class; Parent/teacher conferences were nearing, and I wondered what I was going to say about it to his parents. 

He seemed especially dejected one day, and, on a whim, I told him to run out to a room we normally used for visits; that I’d meet him there as soon as I was free.

I honestly didn’t have an agenda as I walked down the hall towards that room; but I knew my chest felt pretty tight.  I guess you could say I felt sad for the way his life was turning out.

I stepped into the room and his eyes fell as soon as they met mine. 

I sat down across from him, and we were quiet for a spell, just sitting there.

I asked him what bothered him the most.

He thought a little and said, “I guess it’s cause I fail all the time.  I never make good grades.  I wish I could.  I’m not very good at sports.  I’ve never been good enough for my other teachers, I doubt I’ll be good enough for you.”

Suddenly, inspiration struck me, probably from the upper stretches of the celestial range, more of the heavenly sort, as near as I could figure out. 

And before I could stop myself, I said, “Yes, you have failed, and your grades show you are failing in my classroom also.  But that’s not what I’m going to tell your parents when they come in for their visit about you.”

He looked up, fleetingly, with the barest glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell them.” (I had his full attention now) “You aren’t dumb, regardless of what others have made you think.  You have a completely different system of operation up there in the top of your head.  It’s like this for me and other normal people; we have 4, maybe 5 marbles up in our heads and each marble stands for an idea, concept, or theory of life.  It’s not hard to reach up and grab one, look at it for a while, then toss it back and get back to schoolwork or whatever is in front of us.  You have 30, maybe 50 marbles up there in your head, and each one is brightly colored.  Some are 3D; some are charged with extra energy.  So, when it comes time for schoolwork, it’s honestly a real job to try to focus on it, because you have all these ideas and things are vying for your attention, instead of just one or two like I have in my head.”

“YES!!”  He almost shouted it.  “That’s exactly what is going on!  All day long, I have all these things I’d like to try or do, and then I realize I have schoolwork and I can’t stop thinking about my other ideas.”

“Right.  You are failing because you are rather intelligent.  From now on, don’t try so hard to suppress those ideas; come tell me about them, and then do your schoolwork.  It will all shake out okay.”

Let’s just say our young man turned into an all-out apprentice in the school of new ideas.  I was practically inundated with ideas for the next while, and a new zest for schoolwork also developed, because I had told him he would need at least a little bit of schoolwork to make those other ideas work out.

*****

I lost track of him for the next several years.  The first thing I heard was the rumor.

Supposedly, it was revival time at their church.  His dad was a preacher.  Revivals can be trying times to an early teenage boy who has lots of ideas, maybe not all of them exactly church material.

He had to wait every evening, after church, while his dad had visits with people. 

He got really tired of waiting.  So tired, that one evening, he fired up the family van and pulled it under the carport at church and left a neat set of blackies leading off the slab and out into the parking lot. 

The next evening, one of the evangelists, having heard of the minor debacle, approached him with concern for where his life was headed.  He mentioned that the direction it was going might get really warm in not too long.

It didn’t set well.

The next afternoon, while his dad was gone to church for more visits, he pulled the family van into the shop for a few modifications, that, to him had seemed long overdue.

He tied a heavy-duty fish line to the back of the accelerator pedal, fastened an eye hook of sorts directly behind it in the floor, and ran his fish line through that. 

Next, he fastened another eye hook of sorts to the far left, in the corner where the cab wall and floor meet.  He threaded his fish line through that, then directly back along the kick panel, running it through little loops along the way as he did so.  Eventually, he terminated it under the driver’s seat on the floor in front of where he normally sat.

All was ready.

Patience wasn’t a problem that evening.  Expectations almost trumped it a few times though. 

Finally, his dad and mom came out and they joined him in the van and started leaving the church yard.

It couldn’t have worked out better. 

One of the evangelists strode out for a last word with his dad about plans for the next day.

He started to reel in his line.  It felt like a big one on the other end.  As he reeled in the line, it took up slack until his fish line was taut all the way up to the back of the accelerator.  The strain of the line eased the accelerator forward.

His dad felt the van trying to move and secured the brake with substantial pressure from his foot. 

It was exactly what he needed.  He reeled in the line like his life depended on it.  The front van tires spun madly and dug twin potholes into the graveled yard.  His dad’s easy-going conversation changed into a frantic stutter as he desperately tried to arrest the screaming engine and all the extra commotion now in motion.

But he had no control over it.

Rumor has it that he got another visit from the evangelist.

And maybe most of it is rumor, but I have my doubts.

I think one of those gaily colored marbles happened to break loose in that fantastic mind of his, and he followed that glittering marble, much to his dad’s chagrin. 

And, I suppose, in a way, I am somewhat to blame.

Dear K1, K2 and K3

So, it’s me again.

I wonder if you were glad to see your teacher again after Christmas break?

I received my letter from you the end of last week.  Of course, like usual, I waited to open it for a while just so I could make it last a bit longer.  And, of course, I was very satisfied with the contents thereof once I had opened it.

I never heard, did you ever try my suggestion of getting the cats out on the ice and making them chase a string?  Or the peanut butter on the roof of your dogs’ mouth? 

I just got through petting Lexi’s cat for her.  Even though she has never asked me to pet it for her, I do, because the joke is actually on the cat and her.  The cat likes me better than her.  It’s totally true, even though neither of them want to admit it.  Tonight, when I was petting him, he kept taking little nips at my arm; I guess biting is his love language.

I had the stupidest thing happen to me this last week.  It’s rather embarrassing besides being stupid. 

Shall I stop now, or do you want to hear the rest of it?

Okay, I’ll tell you the rest of it then.

When Bryce got married, they got this swanky vacuum sweeper.  Since their house wasn’t ready for them yet, they stored it at our place.  Well, one day Bryce takes it out of the box to see how it worked. 

I was super impressed with it.  So much so, that the next time we needed to vacuum, I got his sweeper out of the box and was in the middle of vacuuming the house when he walked in.  I think he got a little mad at me, so I cleaned it all up, even washed it with water, and put it back in the box for him. 

But, I decided it was time to update our vacuum sweeper, and I ordered one just like his. 

Except when it came it wasn’t exactly the same, it was a cheaper, smaller model, so, I packaged it up and sent it back. 

Mama J ordered the right one the next day and, in a week or so we had it and started sweeping up all kinds of dirt and crud that we didn’t even know we were the parents of.

I really liked to vacuum with that sweeper, until the brush roll stopped working on it after we had it, maybe two or three months. 

I looked online for a fix, and found out that the brush roll on these sweepers had this exact problem. 

But it kind of worked and kind of didn’t and then we had a big relighting job at a church where a lot of insulation fell down from out of the attic when we cut the holes for the lights.

We worked the peewiddlin’s out of that sweeper on that job, and I told Mama J since it was kind of on the blink, I thought the business could buy her a new sweeper after we almost used that one up on that church job.

We got a new one, just like it, and everything was hunky-dory.

Except in two months it wasn’t.  The brush roll had quit on the second one. 

I read online how a person could rewire it so it worked, and I went to town and got some special tools to take it apart. 

But, I must be getting old or something, and I didn’t see a little spot that was still fastened when I took it apart, even though I was wearing my reading glasses, and it broke.

We threw that one away, and we said, “We’ll give these things one more try.  Maybe it was coincidence that those two had brush roll problems.”  Besides, if we got it from a store instead of off of Ebay, we could get a five-year warranty and be good, right?

You guessed it.  Vacuum sweeper number 3 developed brush roll problems after we had it about two months. 

“Okay buster,” I said, “It’s the warranty job for you.” 

I got on the phone to get permission from the company to send it back.  They said sure, but they wanted to change over to video to make sure I had a problem.

“Sure,” I said.  I knew we had a problem, because I had tried it right before I called and it still didn’t work. 

Ok.  Here’s the embarrassing part. 

It worked fine during the video call.

I heard the nice lady on the other end of the line try, not very successfully, to suppress her giggles.  I didn’t even try to suppress my stutters.  I was on the verge of mad and didn’t really care what she thought.

And then, I had a lightbulb moment. 

I realized that I was using a different receptacle than the one I had used every other time I vacuumed.

So, I went out to the receptacle we normally used, and tried it. 

No worky.

I went back to the receptacle I had used during the video call.

Worky, worky, worky.

I think maybe I should call an electrician to come look at our receptacles, don’t you think?

Anyways,

Till next time–

“Our” Country

I remember so many things about it.

First impressions, if you will.

Like the roads that left a skim of red film on my car.  Roads, that, fairly defined, really should be called one lane roads, although they often squeezed in two vehicles in passing.

I clearly recall turning down Longview road for the first time and encountering deep and numerous potholes.  I asked once how often the road maintainer ran over the roads to fix them.  “Maybe once a year,” was the reply.  “That’s about how often they gravel them, too.”  And I’m sure my face showed a bit of my concern when I looked at the ‘gravel’ that constituted itself in 1 inch to 1 ¼ inch size rock.  I wondered at length what they would call the stuff we put on our roads back in Kansas.  I found out later.  “Sand roads,” they called them.

Years later, I noticed the road didn’t go where it used to.  It wound around where before it had been a much straighter run.  And I remembered those potholes.  Evidently, after enough elbow clashing and stomach rattling, over time those potholes won out and the road moved over to the side of them.  The fact that the road now runs in what used to be the ditch really doesn’t matter, because you can’t much tell the difference anyway.

I remember the first time I saw Kudzu.  It made me think of some huge, mutated reptile yet to be catalogued, and was so violently green and smothering it took me years to get used to it as it slow crawled and destroyed everything in its path.  Supposedly, some guy fighting in a war on the other side of the pond brought it back home with the thought of curbing erosion with it.  I saw acres of that out-of-control stuff, with here and there in the middle of it, a mounded up long-gone shrub or maybe even a dwelling place, punctuated by here and there a half size pillar; some full-grown tree with its life slowly snuffed out as it got wrestled to the ground. I like to cried for those trees.  Because in Kansas, trees are sacred.

But that wasn’t all.  One day they told me they needed to go out and bushhog the back 40 to get rid of the weeds growing up out there.  I looked and looked for weeds in the grass and sapling trees and then I guessed it.  Those small trees were what they were calling weeds.

The first time I tried to do a little bit of manual labor in that still, southern heat still hangs heavy in my memory.  It wasn’t long and I was drenched, head to foot, in my own sweat.  I happened to go up to the door of a fine southern gentlewoman in my drenched state.  She looked me over and asked, with grave concern in her voice, what medical issue I was experiencing. “Nothing,” I said, “it’s just this heat that’s doing it to me.”  

“Son,” she said, “If you were going to live here full time, you’d learn how to glisten.  You can’t go sweating up like that and expect it to be good for your health.”

Well, I’ve tried to learn how to glisten, like she said, but about the only time I get close to that is when I hear my name called and I know something embarrassing is about to be said about me. 

I think one of the most disappointing things about that part of the country is when I go to bed.  I revert back to Kansas nights and somehow expect a weather reset like happens back at home come morning.  I get my reset all right, it’s clear to me I’m not in Kansas anymore when I step out into noon time heat and it’s not even 7 in the morning yet. 

On the flip side, though, I learned something else about their weather.  It was getting on close to wintertime and we were scheduled to make a trip down there.  I had heard, even seen and sneered privately at them, when some of them came up to my country in springtime and saw them shivering around and complaining vociferously about how cold it was.  And the thermometer read a nice balmy 60 degrees as they carried on and on.  So, I clothed myself with a bit of my foolish pride and a light jacket as I sped south to share Christmas and winter with them. 

Not anymore.  Their cold is horrible cold.  Their 40 degrees is way colder than our 10 degrees.  I mean business when I pack my coats to go spend Christmas with them these days.

I still take every chance I get to swing by the courthouse in Carrolton.  I usually come in from the west, and since the street splits and goes around the courthouse on either side, it takes a bit to get turned around and headed back west so I can look up to my left at the face in the window.  I stopped there one time and went inside to ask about it.  Legend has it that Henry Wells, a former slave, had a grievance against the town and torched the original courthouse.  Supposedly he was getting run down by a lynch mob and, fearing for his life, ran up into the attic of the new courthouse (the current courthouse today) that was almost completed, to hide.  To his horror, as he was looking out from the dark attic at his pursuers below, lightning struck the very window he looked out from.  The negative of his face, etched in that window, still looks down at me today when I drive by.

I’ve never been to a place that sucks up light at night more than when I find myself traveling down those shadowy highways with 80-foot pines on either side.  I was convinced my headlights had problems for the first several years each time I entered the area, but by now I know it ain’t them.  It’s that black night, those stoic trees, and a smudged history from almost 200 years ago that America would just as soon forget that darks out the light and makes me begin to think I’m seeing things back in those hollows that maybe really aren’t there.

We were working on machinery one day, lacked a few parts, and I suggested we run into town to get them and finish the project up.  “No,” they said, “It’s Thursday afternoon.  Everything’s closed.” 

“What for?” I asked.

“Some holiday or something,” they said.  “Been this way for as long as we remember.”

I guess time must be a bit more flexible and rusts away a little easier in those hot, hazy afternoons.

Twenty odd years ago I didn’t know what the word gumbo meant, much less any image it might conjure up in my mind.  But give me a dollop of cheese grits in the bottom of my bowl, spoon me a thick, savory mixture of shrimp, conecuh sausage, mushrooms, celery, green pepper, onion, and roux on top of that.  Set me a wedge of cornbread that was made in a cast iron skillet to the side, or on top of that gumbo depending on my mood, and I tend to take up the cry of ‘From cornmeal we are, to cornmeal we shall return’ with the best of them.  Today, I know that whole mess and the family time that goes with it is called gumbo.  And I feel genuinely sorry for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

Nevertheless, I was a little surprised at something I said the other evening, and I guess I realized that something, somewhere must have changed.

One of my favorite nieces asked which book I was reading.

“My Southern Journey by Rick Bragg,” I replied.  “He’s one of the best authors I know of.  He won the Pulitzer prize once.  The way he describes stuff is amazing.  But I like him most because he comes from our country and writes about the places and things from there.”

“Wait a minute,” I thought to myself.  “Did I just say ‘our’ country?”

It was then I realized something must have changed.

Now, I know all you true southerners have already turned your nose way up at my feeble expressions of the south, beings as you might say, they are said from an outsider looking in.

But I say that little change in my speech calling it ‘our’ country, without a second thought, gives me some credit in spite of all that. 

It must have something to do with being married to one of those southern gentlewomen for over 26 years now that did it to me. 

Somehow, her country has become mine, just as, I hope, mine has become hers.  I claim the good and the bad of hers, and love it just as fiercely as I do her.

I even claim I could live there for a spell, and pretty much enjoy it at that.

Just don’t you go moving my sweet tea out of my reach while I’m there.

Musician

“You ever hear about those Levites?”

“You talking about the ones that lived in the temple?  I did a few years ago.”

“Yeah.  The ones that lived in the temple.  You know why they lived there?”

“Not totally.”

“They were musicians.  They were on duty at all times.”

“Really.”

“Yeah.  They were exempt from all other work so they could be on call, any time day or night, to sing.”

“They sang at night?”

“Yep.  Sometimes all night.  What do you think that would have been like to be fast asleep, and awake to the gentle swell of music wafting over the camp?”

“I can’t imagine.  It seems like you might have almost wondered if you were on the fringes of Heaven, listening in.”

“Night singing was very important.  But they were used for other reasons.  They once went out in front of our army to meet those who had come set up an attack against us.  We won that day.”

“Without armor?”

“With armor.  They were armed with song.”

“That took unimaginable courage.”

“Yes.  But songs give courage, so it wasn’t entirely up to them.”

“Wow.”

“Always, always, they were there, ready.  Always there in the temple.”

*****

“Do you get it?”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“I’m your Musician. 

I’m always in the temple.  Always on call.  I’ll sing to you in the night, or, I’ll be out in front of you, singing as we go to war.”

“Oh.” 

A Life Well Lived

I’ve heard that phrase off and on throughout my life.

I’ve heard it refer to a missionary, who braved meeting cannibalistic peoples on their home soil to share the gospel with them.

I’ve heard it refer to movie actors/actresses who played their part well.  It was said they touched many people through the silver screen.

I’ve heard it refer to successful businessmen, who, once they had made their millions, turned to philanthropy, and shared their wealth in very unselfish ways.

I’ve heard it used to describe the life of one who gave his life for another man back in the days of the wild west.  “He lived well, and died well,” was the general consensus of such a one.

I’ve heard it used, in retrospect, when groups were gathered here and there after the funeral of one taken suddenly, and mention was made of the unexpected crowds that showed up to pay their last respects.  “We didn’t know he touched so many people’s lives,” they said.

I’ve tried to decide, through the years, what my definition of that phrase might be. 

I’ve thought of the opposite of its meaning, in an effort to understand it.  I’ve thought of men whose personality is so abrasive that they leave a trail of broken pieces from the people they have come in contact with along life’s way.

They say it takes three generations, more or less, for a good name to be completely forgotten in a community. 

And I think I’ve lived long enough now, to see the proof of that.  I’ve seen massive farmsteads rise and flourish.  As long as the one who started the whole game is alive, we all know the farm and property by his name, and the property itself seems to take on a sort of half-life of its own.  But let the one who started it die, and I don’t see the farmstead flourish or have nearly as much life as it used to.  Give it 30 or 40 years, and as my boys and I drive by it on our way to some job, they ask, “Whose place is that?”  And I tell them.  The name still means something to me, because I knew the owner.  But they didn’t, and so it means nothing to them.

So, it doesn’t seem that a life well lived is substantiated by acreage or holdings.

I’ve asked myself if a life well lived has to do with how thoughtful a person is of others, or how many good deeds they do along the way.  I think all that possibly plays a part.

I recently became acquainted with an individual that I think unlocked most of the mystery for me. 

It became clear to me that a life well lived is one that points towards Christ.  And while such a life may do a nice amount of good deeds such as Christ may have done, they aren’t the defining factor. 

The mystery was further unveiled to me in this that no life is placed here on earth without that purpose in mind, that is, to represent its Creator. 

No life, however conceived, is a mistake.

And every life, however short or long, has the potential to point back from whence it came. 

Today, I am a better person because of a young lad named Cyrus.

He lived here for four weeks with us.  He didn’t have time to do some mighty deeds of valor or unselfishness.  In fact, he wasn’t capable of such.

But he had just enough time to point me, and I believe, a few others, to a life that transcends everything here, and in so doing, urge me to make that Place.

You might say his life made the way look attractive, so to speak. 

Choice

“You don’t like choices do you.”

“No.  It’s like somedays I’d rather not make any choices at all and then those are the days they come pummeling in.

“Yeah, you can be a bit petulant on those days.”

“And then there are the days when I really do want to make a choice, but the choice most obvious is the least attractive. Is it wrong to want what I want?  To wish for certain things that are unique only to me?”

“A bit imperious, are you?  No.  It’s not wrong.  Not wrong to wish about it anyway.

You remind me of a little girl I saw once.  She found a pile of books and couldn’t stop picking out which ones she wanted until she had more than an armful.  Then when she tried to carry them across the room, they fell out of her arms one by one.”

“So, I can choose what I want as long as I don’t go haywire about it?”

“Sort of, but not really.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that choice is really about what matters most.  When you choose ten books out of the book pile, do you really want them all?”

“Well, probably not really.  I mean, there are maybe three in that stack that I really like, so I could go with three instead of ten.”

“Can you read all three at once?”

“Obviously not.”

“So, trim it down to one then.”

“Okay, maybe.  But what about everything else I’d miss out on?”

“Can you do that and read your book at the same time?”

“No.”

“Can you read your book and talk to me at the same time?”

“No.”

“Right.  And I don’t want you reading a book when you talk to me.  That is why I made choice, so that when it’s all said and done, it’s just you and me, nothing else you have chosen to bring along.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.  I’m jealous that way.  And you know what?  If you choose me above all else, I will never waste our time together with someone or something else.

Because you are that much to me. ”

Flaming Revenge

There are several unique spots that invite a person’s imagination to roam when looking over a 9000 series John Deere combine.

One spot is situated towards the front, directly below the cab, below the feederhouse, closed in on either side by the front wheels and lift assist cylinders for the feederhouse itself.

You have to duck double to get under there at the front of the feederhouse, and once under, the bottom of the feederhouse slopes back up towards the rear of the combine.  By the time you have rolled on your rollaway chair to the back, you can sit comfortably with your head just grazing the feederhouse floor,  elbows nudging the lift assist cylinders on either side, and knees bumping right up against the sharp angle iron brace for the transmission. 

In front of you are the seven shoe auger supply bearings that so commonly wear out and need to be replaced.  If you are lucky, you can slam the roll pin through the keyed gear, loosen the locking collar on the bearing, grab a really big punch and a minimum of a two-pound sledge to drive the shaft back up and through the gear, bearing, and locking collar. 

You’ll be under there for a number of hours.  It’s a nice place to think and get away from all the incessant clamor of country music that your coworker kicks on as his second move in the morning and which same button gets pressed as his second to last move each evening.

Obviously, if you have eaten Taco Bell recently, the place can get extremely constrictive in a very short amount of time as you strain away at your work under there.

It’s always hot under there, unless, of course, you are doing a farm call and are doing your work outside on a winter day towards the tail end of harvest.

And, should the shaft refuse the two pound sledge hammer’s instructions, then the torch becomes necessary, and the acrid smoke from melting grease and plastic seals becomes nigh well intolerable. 

I would torch as long as I could, holding my breath until my vision started to blear off and I wasn’t sure if I was torching shaft or bearing, click off my torch in a sequence that always left the oxygen on just a wee bit longer than the acetylene, resulting in a nice loud crack as it snuffed itself out even as I skittered myself out from under and gulped huge lungful’s of fresh air.

*****

Coming from the farm as I did, with nary a lick of mechanical experience, I was learning on the fly.  There wasn’t a day went by that I didn’t feel extremely threatened by those longtime mechanics on either side of me.  And they sort of held to their side of things by helping me feel threatened also, as sort of a senior dog/underdog play.

You fought to survive, to gain ground, to be accepted.  And, whether I gained ground or was accepted in their eyes, I’m not sure.  But I did survive, made a decent living for my family those seven years in fact.  And it seems I made a few friends along the way. 

However, the journey wasn’t without price.  To be fair, I probably exacted just as high of a price on my colleagues as they did on me.

*****

I had been there a couple of years and felt a little entitled to a snooty face when he walked in on his first day of work.

He was huge.

Probably 6’ 6” in his socks and all of that fairly well shaped up.  They said he was going to start in setup, work on general combine repair and if he proved good, they’d move him on into the main combine shop. 

I liked him, but I was just as scared of him.

He came into our shop one day and said he was supposed to R and R feederhouse wearstrips.  He said he had looked at them and it looked like they just snapped out with a prybar and a few taps with a hammer had the new ones in.  My coworker put on his best poker face and replied, “Yep, just snap ‘em out, snap ‘em in.  You’ll have them done in a jiffy.”

We didn’t tell him there were two hidden locknuts on each strip that required a specialized wrench, removal of the whole feederhouse, and hours of labor.  We watched, instead, through the door window between our two shop for several hours as he fretted this way and that, trying to conform his huge frame either to the top of the feederhouse, or twisted double underneath as he tried, in vain, to change those wearstrips. 

He came back to our shop a while later and told us in a rather beaten tone of voice that he guessed he just didn’t have what it took. 

That’s when we took a flashlight and showed him the hidden locknuts and the specialized wrench.

Evidently we failed to see the marks of revenge twitching around the corners of his nose and the edges of his eyes. 

Because from that day on, we had a more or less friendly war going on in various stages of intensity. 

*****

Months had gone by since that first day, and Buck and I were good friends.  There was always payback needed to be exacted, though, depending on whose turn it was to get who.

Apparently I had lost track of who was who, and was tucked neatly away under my feederhouse, changing the above described bearings when I saw the door to the setup shop open.

From my hunched over position, I saw two number 14 boots and a pair of clean blue denim jeans up to about the knees striding my way.  The floor of the feederhouse blocked my view of everything else off. 

I didn’t pay the boots too much mind because those in setup often traversed through our shop to get to the front of the store and the parts counter.  I figured there was every chance those boots were headed there.

But then my peripheral picked up on a gait change.  The walk changed to stealthy, circumventing like.  The feet were laid down gingerly as if to make as little noise as possible.

It was a winter day, and the shop was a little cool, like normal.  I was wearing my winter coat, which was probably the best to the wear, all things considering, as I realized later. 

“Kinda warm under there?”  His question seemed odd to me; actually, I was a little on the warm side, having been in a fight with those bearings for some time already.  However, I didn’t know how he could have seen it.

I opened my mouth to reply, but no reply made it out as I saw two hands drop into my range of vision below the feederhouse floor.  In one hand was a can of aerosol penetrating oil.  In the other, a cigarette lighter.  Those hands were still four feet or so away but were approaching fast.  Even as they did so, I saw the hand with the cigarette lighter move towards the can of penetrating oil. 

Several sketchy thoughts blitzed through my mind, mostly involving escape ideas, that I didn’t have much room to flinch or I’d hit any part of me lovely body on the sharp objects close at hand, and, lastly, that it must have been his turn at pay back, something that still remains a question to this day.

I had no time to react before the thumb on the hand holding the lighter gave it a flick, and I saw a long yellow flame dancing its way towards me.  Then just as quickly, I saw the thumb on the other hand depress the spray nozzle on the penetrating oil and in one fluid motion both hands intersected with the hand holding the lighter directly in front of the oil spewing nozzle. 

A sheet of flame advanced from a foot outside my little sanctuary to well within.

The temperature rose exorbitantly. 

I recoiled against the far side and I heard, from somewhere near the confluence of the flames, “Kinda warm under there?”  And it seemed to sound like it came from a mouth that was smiling, maybe even laughing. 

By that time, I had ducked past double and shot out of the far side, under the lift assist cylinders, gulped in a massive breath of air since I had been holding mine for some time, and made a fast attack in the general direction of the flames.

But they had gone out already, since the thumb depressing the nozzle no longer depressed it, and all I saw was a huge retreating figure and heard distant sounds of cackling laughter.

The flames and heat were one thing, (nothing was burned actually) but more maddening was the oil that hadn’t burned and now covered everything in its path, including all of me.

It was still early in the afternoon, and I knew I’d wear that oil for the rest of the day. 

I still like Buck and stop in to chat with him whenever I am in his area.