Today, after Jamie Jacobs posted some family photos, many taken at our old lake cabin in 1974 and another of her grandfather, my uncle Jesse Jewell, i shared and was going to include a link to a poem Uncle Jesse inspired by telling me the story.  He told me the story at Jay and Shirley Smith’s home in Lebanon a year or so before he passed away. It has been revised after my father corrected me on some of the facts. In my old brain, i somehow have moved the year to 1918 rather than the accurate 1913. So here it is, i think again:

Tennessee Steam Engine

Grandpa Cully and son Jesse
back in eighteen,
when my pap was four,
rode the train to Nashville
– a half day’s journey then,
fetching a steam engine,
the first portable saw mill in those parts.

Jesse was a strapping big man then,
a youth, not yet rounded with gut and jowls,
like when i knew him as Uncle;
when he told this story to me in eighty-four:
he wasn’t so strapping at 83,
shriveled into the baggy old man shapelessness,
pale cream complexion with wispy thin, pure white hair,
those eyes still sparking with mirth and caring
in the lazy boy rocker chair in his youngest daughter’s den
that November with the trees bare and grass
straw colored in the brisk sharp sunshine
of Middle Tennessee.
The trip was before Grandpa Cully
lost most of the fingers on his right hand
in that very same steam-driven saw mill on someone’s farm.
his hair had not turned white as it is
in the lone picture i have in the family book.
Uncle Jesse said Grandpa was wiry thin strong like my father
who sat at the other side of the den paying respect to the family,
while i listened to the tale.
Uncle Jesse said Grandpa Cully was more than
pulling his weight rousting the steam engine.

On the way back, driving that steam engine,
they couldn’t make it in one day:
Stopped the night
on a farm in Donelson Uncle Jesse related.
Pretty nice folks to put ’em up
without any idea who they might be.
had a good supper and pleasant conversation.
by my calculation the farm was
pretty close to where they built Opryland,
but the land was still country with
folks a lot more trusting than they are nowadays.

“When there’s static in the air and you can hardly hear
better turn on the radio of the Lord,”
A.P. and Mama Maybelle would intone.
Lonzo and Oscar, Lester and Earl, Foggy Mountain Boys,
even Minnie from Grinders Switch were real;
even Roy Acuff with his cave in Kentucky
would have made the show and held on till
the deep dark of three in the Nashville night
eating long after the opry closed for the night:
porkchopsandeggsandbiscuitsandgravy
with coffee in thick mugs at Linebaugh’s
on Church Street downtown,
just down the hill from the Ryman.

Long after that shiny new steam engine belched toward
Lebanon from the Donelson farm front yard
by Grandpa Cully and Uncle Jesse
did they start the Opry at the Ryman,
even longer before Opryland
sprouted in its full festival of plastic country glory
in that self-same place
where the farm once was, which was
just before the pale, grown soft baby skinned old man
with sagging jowls and kind countenance
would tell me this tale
the last time i saw him.

winds of darkness

oh lord,
i have seen them coming
heard them coming
with thundering hooves and fiendish screams
out of the gray storm clouds,
dark, cumulonimbus storm clouds
and
they sweep darkness over the land:
darkness of
hate, fear
and
me, me, me,
and
mine, mine, mine,
and
there was no sunshine,
just dark
until
the young boy
stood leaning into the wind of darkness’
thundering hooves and fiendish screams
quietly repeating
“i love you,”
and
the darkness did not dissipate
but
but there was certainty it would.

oh lord,
i have seen them coming
heard them coming
with thundering hooves and fiendish screams
out of the gray storm clouds,
dark, cumulonimbus storm clouds
and
they sweep darkness over the land:
darkness of
bigotry, greed, and zealotry
and
there was no sunshine,
just dark
until
the young man
stood tall against the wind of darkness’
thundering hooves and fiendish screams
quietly repeating
“i love you,”
and
the darkness did not dissipate
but
there was the expectancy it would.

oh lord,
i have seen them coming
heard them coming
with thundering hooves and fiendish screams
out of the gray storm clouds,
dark, cumulonimbus storm clouds
and
they sweep darkness over the land:
darkness of
the meaness, selfishness of man
and
there was no sunshine,
just dark
until
the old man
stumbled backward though still fighting against the wind of darkness’
thundering hooves and fiendish screams
quietly repeating
“i love you,”
and
the darkness did not dissipate
but
but there was hope.

and
in the scheme of things
perhaps, perhaps,
that is enough,
hope is enough.

i am in the midst of changing some things, here and in my life. Here, i am dropping the title “A Pocket of Resistance” from the post headline. This is a category on my website. i have long thought it redundant, especially when i began providing the link to The Lebanon Democrat’s website and my Tuesday columns.

These changes will take quite a while because i am old, slow, technically challenged, have fat fingers, and don’t retain how-to information like i used to do. But i am changing.

It has occurred to me lately anyone who reads this probably knows why i call my stuff  and me “A Pocket of Resistance.” Just to revisit, i will provide a long ago post on that later…if i can find it.

A significant reason for these changes is i have rededicated myself to writing some books. JD Waits and i wrote a fun and i think useful book on leadership and management in the early 90’s. We called it “The Pretty Good Management Book.”  Recently, JD called and asked if i still had an electronic copy.

“Of course i do,” i replied and then couldn’t find it.

So i begin recreating an electronic file from my hard copy. i realized the information was still extant and still funny (to me and JD at least). i am still in the process of recreating and trying to edit and update where needed. Once completed, JD and i will make it available at a price like the one we offered for some consulting services as “The Jewell-Waits Group” back in the 90’s. Back then, we decided to not charge the outrageous fees most OD consulting firms charged. Our flyer had a stick drawing of a bird with the lead-in “Just like a little birdie, we work ‘cheep, cheap, cheep.”

We didn’t get much business. JD moved to Houston, then Raleigh, then Bastrop, working in Austin. i did a lot of other things that also didn’t make much money.

i am now working leisurely on the book again.

i’m also working on a short booklet, i wrote for my grandson. It was the precursor to my autobiography i am writing for Sam. Due to the distance between our homes and other factors, i don’t spend as much time with him as i would like to spend (like all of the time). Also since both of my grandfathers died before i was born and my parents never talked about them that much, i really don’t know what they were like, and i don’t want Sam to not know about me. So i continue this project, which likely will never be finished. i have no intention of publishing this one. It’s purely for Sam.

But the booklet he has is about the rules i try to follow in living my life. Most are not new, but things i believe are most important. i borrowed many of my rules from others. The booklet gave a bit of explanation and history about each rule. i am thinking of making that available to other folks. My working title is Papa’s Pretty Good Rules for Living.

Then, there is there is my experience on an Indian Ocean deployment as executive officer of one of the first ships with women as part of the crew, and the first to spend extended periods at sea with those women officers and crew. My working title is Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings.

i continue to work on a children’s poetry book with illustrations by my daughter Sarah. Sam already has a copy of the manuscript. i call it Willie Nod and Some Such Things.

There is another poetry book out there. And if i ever really get motivated, i might turn several unpublished short stories into a novel.

So all of this green italic stuff started as a short introduction into a post about mopping the floors. i’ll save the bulk of that post for later. For now:

Yesterday afternoon, i mopped the tile floors in our house because of some goofy things i did yesterday morning. Our house flooring is about fifty percent tile. It’s a fairly big house. It took a long time. i thought a lot.

The sorting, scanning, throwing away, and organizing continues…endlessly. Then momentarily stopped as i ran into a pile of photographs from my last year in junior high. i longingly tried to remember every moment.

The below is a partner to the photo that will accompany my column tomorrow in The Lebanon Democrat.

1958 was one of the best, if not the best, year of my life — of course, i didn’t know then. Lebanon Junior High was simply fantastic. i was a football and basketball co-captain with Jimmy Gamble and Clinton Matthews respectively. i was a co-star in the eighth grade play with Sarah (Sassy) Ward, and was the male lead with  Martha Donnell as the female lead in the eighth grade operetta. i even made good grades, including a classic moment when Mrs. Purnell told me she could see by the look in my eye i finally understood the rudiments of algebra. Everyone was great friends. The teachers were kind and effective, and Mrs. Burton, a first-year principal was absolutely delightful. The beautiful Elaine Davis even wore my letter sweater.

And yes, i really didn’t understand it was to be my pinnacle. Mind you, i ‘m not complaining. Life has been good, and even if i could change a few critical points, which might have contributed to making a little less money, not becoming a successful writer, or whatever, i wouldn’t change a thing: i have an incredibly beautiful, talented and loving wife, two spectacularly talented and capable daughters, and a grandson who continues to make my buttons burst with pride. So no, i’m not complaining. i wouldn’t change a thing.

Back to the subject at hand, the  below picture is the cast of the eighth grade play that wonderful year. Mrs. Burton, who ran the whole thing is appropriately in the middle of the photo.

For all my old friends:

In today’s “Writer’s Almanac,” the lead item notes this day in 1796, George Washington’s farewell address was published. i think the old dog knew what he was talking about:

Now only eight years old, the Constitution was in danger, Washington feared, of falling prey to the whims of popular sentiment. In 6,086 words, his address seeks to encourage the nation to respect and maintain the Constitution, warning that a party system – not yet the governmental standard operating procedure – would reduce the nation to infighting. He urged Americans to relinquish their personal or geographical interests for the good of the national interest, warning that “designing men” would try to distract them from their larger common views by highlighting their smaller, local differences. “You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.”