It is still not finished.

There are the lights to hang. The hardscape needs a new finish. The teak table needs to have all of the aircraft soot cleaned off and should be lightly sanded before adding a sealant. i need to figure out a better place to hang the hammock. Extra shades need to be constructed to hang on the south and west corners to keep the sun out of the eyes for folks sitting there in the late afternoon.

i figure these finishing touches, based on the primary project, will take about six months. i’m planning to get it done in two weeks. Optimism versus experience.

But the major renovation is done. It was not easy. It ain’t Tennessee August hot. It ain’t Texas four or five months out of the year hot, but seventy-five to eighty for a seventy-five year old man is hot. And it was really sort of silly. Really.

The original idea was mine. i wanted a trellis not connected to the house. i had a very stupid run-in with the city’s “construction development” department at our previous home. We envisioned the Carolina jasmine vine growing over the top. My father, looking for a project during my parent’s annual pilgrimage to the Southwest corner to escape Tennessee winters, took it on.

What he created was unique, simple but really a piece of art. i did not want to ruin the effect by adding slats to encourage vine growth. Consequently, the vines didn’t grow. We were okay with that. It looked nice the way it was.

That was about twenty-six years ago. Wood outside in the Southwest corner can take some hits over twenty-six years, like termites and wood rot. It was time to fix it or tear it down for something else.

i am a sentimental old fool. It was mine and my father’s project, although he did the largest part of the work. So i replaced two cross beams, sanded and gouged out significant chunks of other beams, became a believer in “Plastic Wood,” and figured we could get at least fifteen, maybe even twenty more years out of it, and by that time, i wouldn’t care.

And so it began. i shall not go into the twists and the turns, but a week-long project adhered to my modus operandi: unforeseen problems, forgetfulness, wrong tools, interruptions, and on and on and on. And then, it dawned on me it would be a much nicer area to sit with sun shade screens on the top. Voila! An addition to the original project. It would have been funny if it had not been me. But i stuck to my guns. i did not take short cuts. i did not go buy fancy or even un-fancy tools i would use only once or twice. i did, except for the electric sander, our gardener, Paul Shipley, loaned me and used only sparingly, not use power tools. My father would have chided me for that: he was a practical man.

As i was finishing nailing the last sections of battens onto the shade with sweat darkening my tee shirt, i stopped.

It was almost as if he were talking to me. Jimmy Jewell seemed to be there. He did not speak. But i could feel him. From the top rung of my ladder, i looked up at the cloudless sky. Out loud, i said, “Thank you, Daddy (i don’t think i ever called him “Dad”).

i stared upwards. i could feel her too. i added, “Thank you, Mother (and i never called her “Mom”).”

i didn’t cry, but it was close.

And i thought of the world as it is today and how the things they taught me aren’t the ways of today’s world.

And i am glad i am stuck in their world (and mine) where a good job, hard work, taking care of things without malice on your own is really the reward.

So again, Thank you, Mother and Daddy.

i was a month away from my first and short marriage. i was not smart enough to realize what a stressful situation i would be putting my bride-to-be through, taking her out of Atlanta debutant equine loving environment to a place she would be alone while i traveled from our apartment in Newport to my ship in overhaul in Boston. Dumb. But i didn’t know it. i was in love (she understandably gave it up after just over four months).

So on that New England late summer morning driving to my ship, the USS Hawkins (DD-873), this poem came into my mind. 

Tonight i walked out to give Billie Holiday, Sarah’s Catahoula mix, a relief break after her evening meal. It was another of those glorious sunsets in San Diego. Being sensitive to giving someone too many sunset photos ever since my father jokingly admonished me for sending them one thousand or so sunset phots in Vietnam, i did not include a photo.

But the scene took me back to that August morning fifty years ago.

Late in Summer

palsied pink fingers: looming autumn clouds
gently tap
the horizon awake;
an infinite gray ribbon of highway
slashes through
green phosphorescent hills

non-think
embraces the drive;
his mind wanders
to pines and someone
far away.

cool solitude,
impervious to the immediate objective
excite brute loneliness:
thoughts of someone
gather as a gray storm
tumbles like a cascading stream
in his mind.

palsied pink fingers
curl to a fist;
enlightening rain
spits on the windshield
while far away
sweltering rays silhouette the pines.

Boston, Massachusetts
August 1968

When i woke up early, even a bit earlier than usual, i was pleased. i had slept through the night, a rare treat for an old man.

i fed the cats and began my morning ablutions. As i brushed and flossed my teeth, i looked in the mirror and began to think about…stuff. All kinds of stuff.

i considered how stuff seems to have accumulated, surrounded me. i wondered if all this stuff made my life better. Hmm…

Hey, until i was about 40, i didn’t have a lot of stuff to deal with in the morning. My ablutions lasted maybe ten minutes, if that. i brushed my teeth, washed my face, combed my hair, and left for work. Sometimes, i had a quick bowl of cereal with orange juice or ate on my ship with lots and lots of coffee in the morning, but my morning routine was nothing compared to now. And now, the stuff under the sink and in the drawer is extensive to say the least. There are lotions; salves; sunscreen (now apparently another source of cancer); contacts, extra lenses, rinse for contacts; batteries and cleaning devices for the hearing aid; nasal spray and rinses; floss. About the only thing removed from this list over the past fifty years is hair cream (no longer needed), after shave, and cologne (apparently men can make people sick with these aromas, but women’s stuff is okay; go figure).

We have a lot of stuff. One of my major considerations whenever Maureen and i discuss the possibility of moving or buying down is what the hell are we going to do with all of this stuff. Then i think, why the hell are we keeping all of this stuff? i mean our children aren’t going to want much of it or perhaps none of it when we are gone. And i’m pretty sure posterity isn’t going to give a damn about it. And i know we are not going to use at least half of it and don’t need at least half of the other half.

But we like it, or at least most of it. There’s the high chair sitting in the garage. It needs some repair and begs to be refinished. It is not of the child safety variety that cost more than my first house. It is wood. The bottom of the tray has worn or rotted off. A wood bushing where a screw fits the tray onto the seat so the tray can be put down for use or lifted is missing. A wood slat has fallen off the back of the chair. It is painted brown and that paint is now of several colors. It was not painted when it was used from 1944 to somewhere in the early 1950’s. It was bought for me. My sister used it. My brother sat in it for several years. It was put in the  attic. My parents gave it to Kathie and i for Blythe to use. We painted it brown (earth tones were the thing in 1972. i have had this idea of refinishing it and giving it to Blythe to use as a plant stand or interest piece. But Blythe and Jason’s house is small, and all of this is really just a pipe dream of mine, and i’m pretty sure it will not make it to the top of my priority list. And it takes up space. But i know as i write this, i ain’t gonna toss it. Not yet.

And so it goes as i mentally go through all of the stuff we have. Finally, i decide i will have it arranged to get one of those junk removing outfits to go through the house and get rid of all of my stuff when i die, take it to the dump and dump it. Maureen can keep what she wants, which won’t be any of my stuff, which somehow has been designated as stuff to keep in the garage.

i make coffee and do the preliminaries for breakfast. i retrieve the newspaper and sort it so Maureen can read all the news and the “food” section which is in today’s edition, and put the sports section and the business section next to my table setting. Don’t laugh. The business section is not there for me to read that stuff. It also contains the comics. As i commented to Judy Gray recently, i don’t read any of that other stuff anymore. i check the headlines, but i simply don’t wish to get depressed in the morning when i read all the bad news, and it’s all bad news as far as i can tell.

While Maureen is still sleeping, i enter my home office for many reasons, one of which is to write this, which came in mind this morning during the ablutions and calls me to this infernal machine, and i look at all of the stuff, especially the wires. For most of my life, i had an all-in-one machine with no wires, not one. It was called a typewriter. It did not have a scanner, but it printed what i wrote instantaneously. It did not have to be charged with anything other than my fingers and my brain. It clacked when i hit the keys. It made me think. i dug into the Webster’s Unabridged, Roget’s Thesaurus, occasionally a French to English translation book, and more rarely an Italian to English translation book. It often inspired me as i saw my words appearing after the keys passed and the clank of the return lever put on its own exclamation point. No wires. i think i have one of last ones somewhere up in the garage attic.

But with wires and magic signals in the air (of which has electrons and invisible charges i figure will eventually be discovered to cause some kind of disease or mental disease), there is so much more knowledge (and misinformation, perverted political messages, and oh so much more) available, and its easier and you can scan stuff and insert photos and it even checks my spelling and screws it up even more than i normally do. It’s easier. Bah, humbug.

i return to the kitchen, after several stretching exercises, for my morning medicines. i only have a few prescription pills, but man, i’ve got a pickup bed full of over the counter stuff, mostly extra elements for addressing old age proclivities.

Being old ain’t so bad yet. Oh, i have some aches, occasional pains, and am a great deal stiffer than i used to be. But i don’t have to comb my hair. And i can dress anyway i want to (as long as most of this old body is covered) and be considered quaint or old fashioned.

And old gives me the license to whine about how i miss the good old days. But i forget, and i forget a lot nowadays, that if there had not been change, i would most likely be dead. i bitch about all my doctor’s appointments, but had it not been for those doctors and the new detection devices and the medical advancements and treatments, something that killed a number of my relatives and friends from the older generation i am sure would have killed me.

i curse the current state of politics and the lines in the sand. Yet when i read about the history of our country and recall the political cronyism, backdoor deals, criminal acts, and philandering that allowed prejudice, bias, immoral behavior, and subjugated people based on gender, color, religion, etc. to a subservient or worse role, i think we are better off…with a long, long way to go.

i must interject here i still believe the ideas promulgated by our founding fathers created the best system of government yet possible, and it’s the people who have screwed it up, and the difference is all the other systems would not allow those who protest now to protest at all, and those other systems would allow those in charge to be worse than they are under our system, and we need to fix what we got, not come up with something new. That equality and independence go hand in hand with accountability and responsibility and caring for our fellow humans, not fear, hate, revenge, and retribution. ‘Nuff said.

Maureen comes out and begins to prepare breakfast. i have fresh fruit, eggs, juice, coffee, and occasionally when she so deems i need it, Tennessee Pride Country Sausage. Our breakfast routine, with newspaper reading, and exchange of ideas usually breakfast takes an hour or more.

When it’s over, i normally clean up. There is…yep, a lot of stuff to clean up. Maureen has a cupboard full of spices, and oils, and lord knows what. My mother had some spices in her cabinet, but i don’t recall her using much more than salt, pepper, butter, and bacon grease. Condiments of all sorts fill our refrigerator and another shelf in the cupboard. Growing up, i remember salt, pepper, mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup, with some rarely used hot sauce somewhere.

Stuff.

But you know what? i’m enjoying my stuff. i just won’t forget when i didn’t have so much.

Now you should know i am not a medical kind of guy. This was a realization i suffered when i thought i was capable of  doing anything in the world i wished to do.

It was my freshman year at Vanderbilt, the spring semester 1962. Engineering required me to take Chemistry 101 and then 102. i had made a “D” my first semester. i wasn’t doing much better that spring semester. Perhaps this might have been a product of not picking up my chemistry book for two weeks, then pulling an all night cramming session on Thursdays before the regular two-week test on Friday. You see, i really did think i could do anything, like not studying and passing an extremely tough college course in chemistry.

But even after the first semester grade and carrying a high “D” at the end of the semester, i went into the final exam with great expectations (i have always been and remain an optimist).

i scored in  the 50’s. Bad. But Chemistry 101 and 102 were weed-out courses for all of the folks who matriculated to Vandy with the goal of scoring well in the pre-med regimen with aspirations of being accepted for Vandy’s medical school, one of the best in the country . It was tough. It was doubly tough for my class of 100 or so who got the professor from Russia whom i could not understand and consequently slept through his dramatic lectures filling about thirty feet of black board behind him with chemical notations i also did not understand, perhaps abetted by previously mentioned time, or lack thereof, with my nose in the chemistry books and not yet mentioned proclivity to nap during the lectures because of drinking beer the night before.

Regardless, i scored in the 50’s. But looking at all of the other scores and knowing the professor graded on the curve, i actually believed i might pull out a “C” on the exam. i was on cloud nine, an optimistic cloud nine, but still cloud nine.

But then there was Andy Berry. Andy was in my graduating class in Lebanon. He graduated from Lebanon High School and i graduated from Castle Heights. He is a good guy. i like Andy a lot except for that semester in chemistry. Andy scored 97 on the final exam. His grade completely screwed up the curve. Consequently, i got a “D” on the exam and a “D”in the course on my way to an infamous exit from Vandy the next year.

So you are correct: i’m not a medical or science expert.

But i am a good observer, and i have been observing a lot of stuff for a lot of years, three-quarters of a century actually.

Through those observations, i recently stumbled upon a medical science phenomenon overlooked by the most brilliant medical and science experts.

i have discovered, through blurry observation, the primary, never-to-be-argued, undeniable reason for dying.

Are you ready for this?

Everyone, and i mean everyone, dies because of…

living.

Simply put: If you live you die; if you don’t live, you don’t die.

i think there is an important aspect in that revelation. But i also know each of you will  have your own idea about what that aspect is for you. For me, it means i should live, if it is the reason i’m gonna die, to the fullest everyday…and not sweat the small stuff.

Medical science: eat your heart out.

i am sitting here in my non-reclining chair because recliners do not match our decor…according to Maureen. It’s a comfortable chair. But it’s not a recliner.

It is the evening after a nice meal at a new Japanese restaurant. i had gyoza, fried of course, octopus fritters with a long Japanese word beginning in with “T” i cannot pronounce nor spell but means pickled ginger, and with it, i enjoyed a glass of Chardonnay.

Our younger daughter is off to Orange County to spend time with friends from Austin. We are alone except for Maureen’s two cats and Sarah’s Catahoula hound. The pets have eaten and are quiet, lying in the family room in funny poses. Maureen is taking her bath. i have sworn off television for the evening.

i am drinking a pleasant red wine. i’m not going to get up and read the label just to record it here. i am eating my final dessert, a good hard cheese, something my son-in-law, Jason Gander taught me to appreciate. i miss him. We don’t see each other enough.

i am at peace…almost. There is a nagging sense of guilt that creeps in almost every evening about this time because i didn’t come close to doing all the things i planned to do during the day.

You see, i am writing this post instead of taking another chunk out of reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s tome, The Bully Pulpit. i blew off writing more on my book today so i could take care of some immediate business and continue my honey-do task of prepping, painting, and putting a sunshade on top of the trellis outside our bedroom. So i got a lot done, but never enough, never enough. But i did take my nap.

The trellis is really not a honey-do. It’s my priority. Daddy built this thing in the mid-1990’s with a few ideas and a bit of assistance from me. He was 80 and hadn’t slowed down a bit. It was more a nice piece of artwork than really functional, but we liked it and kept it as is. Termites and wood rot have taken their toll. i’ve replaced a couple of beams and the sun shade screen will allow us to sit out there more than we have. So that feels good.

While painting and thinking of Daddy, i wondered why. Why?

It seems looking back, recalling what i can, i was one lucky man.

i grew up, protected from the bad things in this world, even the bad things in my backyard. My parents, my friends’ parents, my teachers, and my church taught me good things. They even taught me, sometimes i wonder if it was unknowingly, that people are people, created equal. Notice there was not caveat on skin tone, origins, race, religion.

They taught me ends do not justify the means. To do things right. The Golden Rule.

They taught me i had to earn my living with them. There was not an allowance, but they gave me what they thought i earned. i vividly remember when i was around ten, we went out to dinner to Maple Hill Court, home of some of the best hamburgers and malted milks known to man. In the back corner, there was a pinball machine, not the payoff variety with no flickers like the ones i paid nickels to and played at Rotier’s, Linebaugh’s at Fourth and Broadway, and Mac’s, the working man’s restaurant on Broadway near Division while i was at Vandy. No, Maple Hill Court sported a pin  ball machine with flashing lights and bumpers and flickers and a scoreboard, and my father sternly said “no” to my request for a dime. A waste of money he explained.

And it seemed, er, happy. i remember it being happy for all of us. My parents worked their tales off. Daddy worked from around seven until five unless something needed fixing that day or someone came in late and he was the backup wrecker man if there was a wreck in the middle of the night, and later he opened up the business in the morning and closed it down at night. He filled the coke machine, the old glass bottle coke machine, red, where you put your dime in and slid the bottle down the row to the release point, pulled it out, and popped the top on the opener designed to let the metal top fall into the basket. And until i and then Joe were old enough to mow (that happened around nine years old), Daddy would come home and mow the yard in his blue working outfit, sleeves rolled up, smoking his Lucky Strike, as the sun set. Then, we would eat supper (What the hell? Dinner was the noonday meal, even if it was sandwiches; old habits die hard). He usually worked a half day or more Saturdays.

My mother? Well, while she was the mother at home, she was taking jobs at various businesses like the credit union, the hardware stores, and others to keep their books or get their taxes ready. When Joe started school, she went back to full time work as the secretary of the city school’s superintendent. But she was more than that. She kept all the records. She kept all of the financial records. She paid the bills. She submitted the taxes and prepared the budget reports and financial planning reports. While that was going on, she took care of the children who somehow ended up in her office like they were her own children.  And her pay was piddling.

Then she would come home and fix supper, wash and iron the clothes, do what cleaning was necessary, see the kids to bed, wake us up, fix breakfast, make sure we all got off to school. She went to all of our special functions, ball games, plays, recitals, and for eight years, she washed and ironed Castle Heights uniforms, mine and then Joe’s, every night.

On Saturdays, she and her children would do deep cleaning. Sundays, she got us all ready for church, ensured we got to Sunday School, monitored all three of us during the morning service and made sure we got back for the evening youth fellowship.  On a regular basis, which seemed like every Sunday night, she and other ladies would cook and serve the men’s choir before their practice, and, of course, we all went to the evening service and mostly sang gospel songs.

In retrospect, it seems we lived in damn close to a perfect world. We were isolated. If John Cameron Swayze, Walter Cronkite, or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley didn’t report it; or the afternoon newspaper, the Nashville Banner; or the local weekly, the Lebanon Democrat didn’t print it, it didn’t happen in our world.

We grew up thinking there were heroes. We wished to follow in those footsteps and become heroes. The cowboys wore white hats. The bad guys wore black hats. Good guys would fight fair, not pull any punches or use dirty tricks, and beat the bad guys who tried all sorts of chicanery, including lying, to win, but always, always lost to the good guys. The good guys would shoot the guns out of the bad guys hands. The bad guys shot good, innocent folks in the back.  The good guys would win the girl’s heart, say “Thank you, ma’am,” doff their caps and ride off into the sunset. Not once would they take advantage of any woman. A kiss was about as far as those cowboys got, if that.

We dressed up for any occasion other than playing. We played outside until they invented television, but even then, we watched the Sealtest Big Top, and the Buster Brown Show on Saturday morning; the Howdy Doody Show and “Ruffin’ Ready’s oater on weekday afternoons.  We weren’t exposed to violence, real violence. Even in the gunfights in the oaters, there was a shot and a guy falls down, only a little blood where the bullet supposedly entered, and they closed their eyes and rolled their heads over when they died, like going to sleep.

We thought if we didn’t lie, didn’t cheat, did what was right, treated others well, and combed our hair and brushed our teeth, we would succeed.

We didn’t know about the dark side. And where i come from, there was a dark side. Prejudice. Jim Crow. Even lynchings. Segregation everywhere. The movie theater had a balcony, the only place the other group could sit and i remember wondering why. But that bigotry, that hatred did not invade my world. Oh, i wondered about it. Seemed strange. But it was far away, even though the other side of my town, the dark side, was only about two miles east of my home.

There was no”women’s lib.” There was no special effort to include other sexual preferences outside of heterosexual. There was no real effort to accommodate people with special needs. But i don’t think we ever treated anyone different because they had special needs.

And we went to our doctor without  any kind of “insurance” or health program. We had operations, the women gave birth, we had wrecks and other accidents. The docs were paid well, and we didn’t gripe about it. Sometimes, Dr. Lowe would come to our home to tend to me, most often to give me a penicillin shot in my rear. Other times, we would go to his house on West Spring Street for that dreaded moment when i would pull down my pants, lean over his knee, and receive the buttock pain.

And the boys wore jeans and collared shirts at school. Shorts were worn in the summer outside. That was all. Girls wore shorts and halter tops in the summer and one piece swimming suits. The rest of the time, they wore skirts and dresses — There is still nothing prettier than a young woman in a sun dress.

We got chicken pox; measles; mumps. Some got polio. It was bad. Otherwise, they put us in the guest bedroom downstairs, fed us soup, let us ride it out listening to the Lone Ranger, Tom Mix, Boston Blackie, and Gangbusters on the radio at night, and the Sons of the Pioneers during the day. We were miserable, but we were mollified because we were missing school.

We suffered mosquito bites. bee and wasp stings, cuts, bruises, burns, sunburn and the other kind, and poison ivy and poison oak. They gave us iodine, mercurochrome, and  calamine lotion. Butter was one application for burns. Daddy blew his cigarette smoke in my ear when i had an earache. It helped.

Then we went right back outside and played.

We rode one-speed bicycles with a basket on the front. At breakneck speeds, with no special gear, no helmet. But not to school. In fact, the only helmet i remember being around was the football helmet, a badge of honor with no face-guard until my sophomore year. We played pickup basketball everywhere we could; football, touch and tackle, sometimes in graveled lots. And we played baseball, inventing games when there wasn’t enough yard. There was stickball, where a small hard rubber ball was the ball and a broomstick was the bat; and used a whiffle ball to learn to hit curves and knuckleballs.

And we grew up with those principles, those morals, those ethics we learned and believed.

And then we met the world, the big cities, news, inventions, and we found our beliefs, our morals, our ethics was not the way it really was. Some of us adapted and became smaller, bitter, fearful of differences, hateful for anything not our own, protective, insular.

Some didn’t. i believe those that didn’t are happier, maybe not as successful financially, or politically, or in business pursuits, or as famous, but happier because they answer to themselves, they try to consider all sides of an arguments without bias, they try to listen.

i do not knock this new world with its technology. i keep trying to keep up with all of the sophisticated change, and the new way of doing things like no repairing stuff that breaks but go get a new one.

Not only did the Navy give me the opportunity to see a lot of this world i would have never seen. My career also allowed me to be with all sorts of people of different backgrounds, different religions, different ethnicity. It seems to me, each group is similar in many ways.

There are good people. In fact, there are mostly good people. There are bad people, even evil, who wish to dominate and hurt others for their own gain. The bad ones like to motivate folks to do their bidding, and surprisingly, there are a lot of lemming-like folks who will buy in to what the bad guys are selling. They become converts who refuse to listen to anyone else. They buy stuff, protest, do all sorts of strange things to abet the manipulators.

It’s been that way for a long, long time, way longer than my time around here.

But i grew up in a little slice of heaven. Oh yeh, we were isolated from the real world. We didn’t know a lot of things.

And i am glad. i wish others could have had that time of blissful ignorance growing up. Oh, it wasn’t perfect, not by any means.

But i think it taught me the right things.