more from the doofus looking at 50...

     "It's just a number."  That's what a lot of folks who will watch me turn 50 in a month or so are telling me.   "It's just a number."   And they're right - a number, by itself, doesn't make you old.  There's plenty of other symptoms  Consider:

     You hear "the guys"  (and "the guys" includes younger neanderthals on sports radio shows, the office, the other end of the bar, the gym etc...) talking up the attributes and assets of a female celebrity.  Because you've become illiterate in pop culture you have no idea who they're talking about.  Later, though,  you're glued to a documentary on the news channel ("Malaria or seasonal allergies?  How knowing the difference could save your life!")   During a commercial they tease their version of "Entertainment Tonight" and - after wondering if Mary Hart is still alive - you hear that they're going to run a story about the actor or singer or model "the guys" were discussing earlier.   You look up from the obituary page and instead of being taken with her attributes and assets you scream at the t.v. "HOLY CRAP!  EAT SOME CHEESECAKE!!"  Then you begin a rant that begins with "In my day..." and references such bastions of feminine pulchritude as Cheryl Tiegs, Lynda Carter and Angie Dickinson.  REAL women that, you know, ATE.  

     You now find it essential to check the weather channel before going to bed.  It's not safe to go to sleep without knowing whether or not a typhoon is going to hit Sugar Hill in the middle of the night.  When asked what your favorite television show is you often respond "Your Local On The 8's"

     "Sleeping late" on the weekends now means 7:00.  You can't lay in bed all day and let somebody else get all the good bales of pine straw at Home Depot!  Besides, the news is coming on...you need to see if there was a typhoon during the night.

     Sometimes you wake up your spouse with a loud grunt or a scream.  She panics "What did you do??"   "Uh, turned over..."   Then when the alarm goes off  her first words from under the covers - "Is it thundering?"  Sadly, what she actually heard was your knees taking their first few steps of the day (OR something far more serious related to the Mexican you had for dinner the night before.)  You lie and say "yeah, I think it's fixing to storm..." 

      Often when leaving the house she tells you your clothes look fine but suggests you get the weedeater out of the garage and do something about hair that's taking over someplace it shouldn't be.  You're not surprised.  While shaving in the morning, you've taken note of the forestation growing from your eyebrows and ears and felt compelled to call Abe Vigoda and apologize for all the jokes you made at his expense.

     Sitting at a red light, you're confused as to why you so want to drag the punk next to you out of his car and throat-punch him.  Is it because he's playing his music so loud?  Is it because his sunglasses probably cost more than your first car (which was held together by duct tape and bondo?)  You're reminded that you were well known for rolling your windows down and blasting the neighborhood with music.  There's a huge difference - the music you blasted was good music, by God!

     You hate it when a show you want to watch doesn't come on 'til 10:00.  You despise all politicians.  You subscribe to an email that lists all the people in your zip code that were booked into the county lockup during the night (in case one of your neighbors is on there and you need to keep an eye on their sorry selves!!)  You can waste 15 minutes of someone's life explaining to them how much better Orange Crush tasted in a brown bottle.  You think video games are going to be death of America.  You watch commercials and wonder "what in the hell were they just advertising?"  The point is I guess they're right - a number, by itself, can't make you old.  There's plenty of whims, quirks and goofiness to advertise that it's been happening for some time...now it's just going to be official because it'll be on your driver's license.

     
 

"A doofus looks at 50"

     "It feels like a finish line."  That's what I told her.  I'm not ashamed to say that I told her that with tears in my eyes.  I told her because she'd begun asking questions about what I wanted to do to celebrate my 50th birthday, about to rear its ugly head in December.  I knew she'd want to have this conversation and I'd been dreading it.   Dreading it, you see, because thinking about it had caused me more than one sleepless night and when she finds out something is troubling my already addle brain she gets nervous.  

     One loving glance from the sweetest eyes God ever put on this earth and I knew that - just like always - she knew why I was thinking what I'd been thinking before I even told her .  "Tomorrow's Monday," she said.  "A week from today is Sunday.   Those are just days.  Your 50th birthday is just another day that you've been given to live."  Still, she knows why I said it.  She knows that there's a world of things I want to accomplish.  An even bigger world of things I want to be for people I love.  She knows the way I see myself and what an ugly picture that is. 

     "All those things in your mind - those are things that should keep you going.  NOT things you've failed at!"   She's talking about all sorts of things.  She's talking about places I want to see.  She's talking about skills I want to perfect.  She's talking about all the pictures that I want to show the world.  Pictures I've painted  with words instead of a brush.  She knows that sometimes I think these pictures are going to cause my brain to explode if I don't give them a canvas other than my imagination.  "You've got stories you want to tell and you're the only one keeping them from being told."  She tells me that all the time.  I wonder if she ever gets tired of being right.

     She says things like "If you could see yourself the way the rest of the world sees you!"  I tell her that's something that wives are supposed to say to husbands when they're down.  She says "You've accomplished so much and I'm so proud of you."  She tells me that because she knows my mind only keeps tabs on what I've not yet done and won't celebrate anything that I have done.  Check that - my mind won't let (what she views as) accomplishments be put in the positive ledger because the aforementioned addle brain spends way too much time comparing them to what other folks have accomplished.  "But the people that love you don't want you to be those people...they want you to keep being you..."  

     Seems like that someone damn near 50 years old ought to have a better idea of who this person is folks want me to keep on being.  In my mind, I'm a room full of furniture that doesn't match.  Maybe that's ok.  Maybe we don't ever quit finding out who we are while we walk through life on this planet.  I seem to remember the "old folks" that surrounded me in my youth all knew who they were.  Maybe they were just really good actors and wanted to jump the fence and play in as many yards as I want to romp in before the game clock reads all zero's.  Thankfully, if there's more game to be played, I've got a really good coach.

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Ain't nothing good about any of this...

     I'm generally not prone to discuss those things of a political, social or, well, important nature.  I live to wax poetic and stupid and make folks reminisce and laugh.  But sometimes something crawls in your brain like a fox into a chicken house and you can't get rid of it unless you put pen to paper...or fingers to keyboard.  See, there really is no good side to any of this.  A kid is dead.  A Barney Fife-wanna be that shouldn't have been out playing cop with a loaded gun - the one that rendered the kid dead -  walks free.  I'm not smart enough to dig into the nuances of legalese and it's lexicon of words like  manslaughter, murder 2 and statutes and standing one's ground.  I am smart enough to know that someone's dead implying that something happened.  For the guy with the gun to go free implies that nothing happened and I reckon therein lies the quandary of putting reality and our justice system on the same page.  That's why we have lawyers and there sometimes comes a day when they're not able to put reality and justice on the same page.  Such is the case with this debacle. 

     For all I don't know about this there are a couple of things I do know.  One is that the divide in our country between those of different colors now grows further.  Our founding fathers envisioned a country that could become a melting pot where human beings weren't divided by class and color.   That was a long time ago, though.  And too many instances of human stupidity since then put great distance between that ideal and our reality.   Slavery and the trail of nastiness it created, from battles in a civil war to battles for civil rights.  Then there was the little matter of the people that were already living on the real estate we needed to create this Utopia of freedom.  They had to be dealt with and not always in ways that were fair or kind (Manifest Destiny and all that...)   We've had many, many opportunities to narrow the gap between "me and you"  and we just can't seem to do it.  Reason being, it seems, that same stupidity - it  keeps getting in the way.  I reckon it's time to admit that human beings are, basically, stupid.  Seems the Good Lord would've seen that one coming and knew we couldn't handle free will well at all.

     The other thing I know about this is that people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton aren't going to help the situation.  There's that whole matter of hollerin' "WOLF!!"   You've done it so many times and made countless situations about race that, in fact, weren't.  So now we have a tragedy that probably is ALL about things like race and profiling.  But no one is going to listen to either of you - you killed your message a long time ago.  Especially Mr. Sharpton (I can't bring myself to insult some of my favorite preachers in the world by calling him "Reverend.")  Tawana Brawley ring a bell, anyone?  Someone during that debacle caught him on tape saying "If we can pull this off, we're gonna be the biggest (word that got Paula Deen in trouble)s in New York City."  His goals are all clear and none of them have anything to do with justice for anyone.  And NBC gave him a job?  I've got to admit, when that marathon in Boston was marred by the tragedy of a bomb (and more human stupidity) and I turned on MSNBC and they had him reporting the breaking news, I changed the channel to see if a bomb had actually gone off  in Boston. 

     So there's nothing good going to come of this.  It becomes just another strand in a complicated web.  It makes me sad.  Someone may tell me to keep my trap shut because being a middle-aged white guy affords me "fairness" in all situations.  I'm confused though - a considerable chunk of Cherokee Indian DNA flows in my bloodstream (thanks to my maternal grandmother's side of the family.)  So where does that put me in this melting pot?  I mean I really need to know where I fit in the ongoing battle?!    "I SCREAM JUSTICE FOR.........WHATEVER THE HELL I AM!!!"  Or I could just deem myself a human that needs to love and support my fellow human beings regardless of their appearance, their language, what God they follow, what meats they consider unclean  and on which side of the railroad tracks they live. That's an ideal we've worked on for over two hundred years now.  We sure ain't there yet...and we just took a step backwards.        

Sir Charles

     I reckon the Good Lord knew I was going to be a pill so he found fit to weave 3 fathers into the fabric of my life.  My biological father, my Uncle Ralph and my father-in-law Charles.  My own father left before I had the chance to know him adult to adult - he was the parent and I was the kid and that kind of relationship has its parameters.  I knew my Uncle Ralph a lot better than I did my own dad.  Perhaps because he was the kind of person who would let you get to know him.  He was always there when I needed him and taught me that work ethic, honesty and laughter could take you a long way in this world.  It was the year after I'd married Charles Fowler's daughter that my Uncle Ralph left us.  I didn't think I'd have the kind of relationship  I had with Uncle Ralph with any other man.  I was wrong.

     From the day I stood in a towel outlet (yes, a towel outlet) in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and asked permission to marry his only child Charles has been, himself, teaching me...and teaching me and teaching me. It's what he did for a living you see.  First in a classroom and then as a principal who worried a lot more about his students than any of the principals I had in grade school.  I know this because I run into many of the students that walked the halls he guarded and each of them has a story about the impression he made on their life - and not just as the disciplinarian who occupied the office that haunts children's dreams.  Rather, as a constant teacher always giving them the "thumbs up."  He gave me the "thumbs up"  in that towel outlet, but only after he'd taken the time to remind me that he wanted the best for, not just his daughter, but also for me.  And if I thought marrying his daughter was the best thing for the both of us then he had my blessing..........as long as I realized that marriage was a very permanent situation.  "Don't go into this thinking 'well, if it doesn't work out we can always get a divorce' because then you've already lost."  I assured him this wasn't the case and that I'd never been more sure of anything in my life.  He said "go ahead, then...I'm happy for you."  I told him that I wasn't sure people did that sort of thing anymore, asking daddies for their daughters hands in marriage.  He said "it shows that you were taught character by someone...don't ever be afraid of having CHARACTER."  I took it as his approving nod to the other two souls who had served the role of father in my life - they'd done their job well.

     The whole "Sir Charles" title came around as a joke.  Charles went to graduate school, you see, at Auburn University, the same institution that gave Charles Barkley to the world (the original "Sir Charles")  I tried many times to tell him that if the OTHER Sir Charles had played basketball for any other school he'd see him as 98% mouth like the rest of us do.  Apparently, though, even the devil himself would get a pass if he'd attended Auburn.   But I like calling him Sir Charles because it's one of the first things we had between me and him (I mean, you know, other than the time I put a ring on his only child's finger!)   It was our first running joke and I smile anytime I get the opportunity to use it.  I heard someone else calling him that one time and I thought "whoa, whoa, whoa...that's OUR thing!"  I realized I was being a bit selfish, per chance.  Everyone that knows him has immediate respect that would warrant calling him "Sir."

     Since the day in February, 1997 when we exchanged our vows there at the Methodist Church in Stone Mountain he's gone to great lengths so that I'd never, ever forget that I'm family.  There have been bad times that were beyond our control, as there always are.  I was having a heart to heart discussion with him about one of these hard times and I got quite emotional, even started crying.  He said "what's wrong????"  I said "I don't want you to ever be disappointed that your daughter married me..."    He WHIPPED off his glasses and looked me dead in the eye and said (in elevated tone)  "SON!  What in the world are you talking about??????  Bad things happen!  I'm glad you felt like you could talk to me and I don't want you to ever, EVER be afraid to talk to me!  You're mine now and I'm glad to have you!!  Put those thoughts out of your head NOW."   I felt at once scolded and loved and it was pretty perfect.  I realized, then, I still had a daddy.

     So on this occasion of another Father's Day, I'll consider myself grateful that at every important stage of my life there's been someone filling that role for me.  And were he not a tee-totaling Southern Baptist (there's been occasion to celebrate holidays with my family when he asked "which one is the Methodist punch bowl and which one is the Baptist punch bowl?")   I'd raise a glass to Sir Charles and thank him.  But since he does refrain from consumption I'll simply give him a "thumbs up."   Were his predecessors here, they'd do the same and thank him profusely for keeping this knucklehead in line.
   

Open windows and gardenia bushes...

     In conversation the other day, someone brought up my mother's gardenia bushes that grew by the side of my childhood home.  Even though this person didn't live in that house, she said that anytime she smells a gardenia bush in full bloom she thinks about those bushes growing on Pine Shadows Lane back many years ago.  Funny she should mention them because every year when the weather turns warm I think about those gardenia bushes and their heavenly fragrance filling my bedroom every night.  It did that, you see, because my bedroom window was open and an attic fan was drawing in the night air.   Summertime sure did smell good.  Whether it was the gardenia bushes, the neighbor's freshly cut grass, honeysuckle on the fence or a still-smoldering grill where someone had cooked that night's supper it was hard for a child to dread whatever our imagination convinced us lived out there in the dark night.  You know you're not alone in the world if you can hear the neighbors chatting on their porch swing or smell the cigar you're father's smoking  in the driveway (because Mama won't let him smoke it in the house.)   If one of those summer thunderstorms blew in, the rolling thunder and the fresh wet smell of rain would rock you on to sleep where you'd dream of yet another of those endless summer days waiting on you in the morning, with its creeks to navigate and salamanders to catch and bikes to ride.

     During the summer, if I wasn't sleeping in my own bed I was more than likely sleeping in one of the two beds in my cousin Alan's bedroom.  I spent many weeks at Uncle Ralph and Aunt Nell's house during the summer you see.  They lived "wayyyyyyyyyyy off" in the country in Dawson County (Dawson County has now become another suburb having been swallowed by Atlanta's growth.)   In those dark, country nights, there was a whole 'nother world of sounds and smells wafting in those open windows.  Critters and crickets we didn't have at home had their own concert and I was mesmerized by life in what I thought then was the middle of nowhere.  Even the stink of a cat dining on a fish head  (from the catch we'd just cleaned) up on the porch wasn't a bad thing because well, it just smelled like summer.  Alan and I would lie there on those nights and listen to the radio station out of Gainesville  and argue about which song was the best.  If the Braves were playing on the west coast, we'd sit and listen to a baseball game 'til the wee hours and it would inspire us to dig out his old baseball gloves when we got up in the morning and play some catch.  Even some mysterious growling and wailing and gnashing of teeth out in those dark nights would be explained away at breakfast the next morning when Uncle Ralph bellowed - "Did y'all hear that damn dog get mixed up with another beaver down the hill?  I'm gonna have to take him to get MORE stitches in his face!"

     I fear we live in a really stuffy world these days.  Every place we go is sealed up tight as a drum lest we get the least bit uncomfortable.  I often find myself in a climate-controlled room still feeling like I need to go outside (even in the heat) just so I can feel air moving around.  I really do miss open windows, especially on summer evenings.  I reckon that's why my bride and I spend so much time on the patio at night, trying to literally and figuratively breathe.  The sounds and smells of summer are now cleansing us of the adult crap endured during the day and giving us something to put our minds on rather than the next day's ration of the same. Just for kicks I Googled "open windows" and the very first and most popular link tells me that "open windows is a desktop environment for Sun Microsystems workstations."   Well dang.

   

"Stories was everything and everything was stories..."

    " No More Stories Are Told Today, I'm Sorry They Washed Away // No More Stories, The World Is Grey, I'm Tired, Let's Wash Away."   (the complete title of an album by the Danish band "Mew") 

     
     God knows I love stories.  I love stories spoken  in song, in film in writing..doesn't matter.  But I worry a lot about whether it's a dearth of creativity or an abundance of laziness and greed that's causing the re-re-re-retelling of a lot of familiar stories.  Sometimes it's easier to put a spin on an old one rather than telling a new one.  Maybe there's more money to be made in putting your touch on a story already told than there is putting originality out there and hoping someone bites.  I make mention of this to the lady of the house whenever we see advertising for a "new" something that's really an "old" something.  I tell her it bothers me.  She says "well then, I guess you just need to get busy telling your stories."
   
     I grew up with a lot of people that if asked what they do well, none of them would've answered "well, I'm a really good story-teller."  But they were.  Uncle Hank was a prisoner of war and had scores of terrifying, heartbreaking tales to tell.  But the stories he loved telling were of a much, MUCH  less serious nature.  He told us at dinner one night he'd sent away for a license to be a preacher.  Apparently the opportunity to do so was found in the back of a magazine.  He said he was going to call his congregation "The Church of The Militant Saints." (he was an attorney and, to my knowledge, never got this flock of believers off the ground.)  

     Uncle Ralph used to take me to visit an old man named Harry.  Harry lived way off in the woods, couldn't read a word and grew or killed every bite of food that hit his mouth.  And he could keep this child wide-eyed for an entire evening telling me story after story (most of which needed to be taken with a grain of salt, as my uncle would later explain.)  Here I am this many years later still mesmerized by the cow that lost her long tongue when Harry cut it slap off.  Seems the cow had stuck that long tongue through an overgrowth of honeysuckle and it found Harry's posterior standing on the other side.  He said he thought it was a snake and took out his knife and rendered the poor bovine mute.

     Speaking of Uncle Ralph some of the most memorable hours of my childhood were spent in his truck.  He never turned on a radio in his truck. If he was alone he'd light a Winston and roll down his window and see what folks all over Dawson County were growing in their gardens, parking in their yard or building a fence around. If he had someone riding with him he'd tell the rider all about the crazy person in that house, the fish someone caught in that cove over there or the chicken truck that wrecked coming down that hill.  Simple recounting of very simple things came across more like folklore than just talk.  

     And Daddy, well he  rarely talked around the house, but when he did it was about things that fascinated us...things like the Winecoff Hotel fire or Lucky Teter busting up cars at the old Lakewood Speedway.  His first job was at a funeral home and in those days funeral homes picked up bodies from disasters like the Winecoff fire, not a medical examiner or such.  There was usually a humorous slant to his recounting of that cold night in December, 1946. Maybe that's the way he dealt with some of the awful things he saw and heard.  When telling us about Lucky Teter he would always do a perfect imitation of the grandstand announcer at the Lakewood Speedway describing the antics of Lucky (one of the original "hell drivers." read more about him in this blog http://johnstraub.blogspot.com/2011/11/hell-drivers-lucky-teter.html    )    

     My very first paying job was doing yard work on Saturday mornings at the Methodist church in East Atlanta they had named after Martha Brown.  They now call East Atlanta "East Atlanta Village" and it's a real bohemian kind of place with trendy restaurants and shops and people a lot cooler and younger than myself hang out there.  But for us it was home and a small town in a big town. And Charlie Smith had his finger on its pulse.  When I was cutting that grass or raking those leaves Charlie Smith would always stop by on his morning strolls and chat.  Before he retired Charlie ran a burger joint called "Charlie's Place" on Glenwood Avenue (I THINK it was on Glenwood?)   One of the earliest recollections of my childhood is of those burgers and wondering why anybody was eating burgers from underneath those arches - no matter how many millions they served - when they could get one from Charlie (actually, it was probably "thousands served daily" when I was a child....maybe even "hundreds.")    Anyway,  during those Saturday morning visits Charlie would tell me stories that found a permanent home in my brain.  Pick out an intersection, a house, a business - hell,  a TREE -  there in East Atlanta and he could tell you something fascinating about it.   If it was football season we always talked about who Georgia Tech was playing that day.  On one chilly morning in November, 1978 I remember telling him that I was worried because the morning paper had said that  Eddie Lee Ivery was sick with the flu and Tech was about to play Air Force in the snow in Colorado.  Charlie grinned and said "don't fret.  Sometimes when you're hurtin' or sickly is when you do your best because you're trying harder."   Daddy drove me home after finishing my chores that morning and we listened  along on the radio while Eddie Lee ran for 356 yards on those poor Air Force boys.  Charlie could tell a good story AND handicap a football game.

     There were always stories.  We latched on to them because we didn't have a device in our pocket that connected us to the world and spoon fed us our favorite t.v. shows, or let the world know we're having a totally awesome tuna salad for lunch or show us videos of cats doing funny things.  We actually talked to other human beings and told them about our day, the characters we knew or something strange we'd seen that morning.  Harry Crews - in "Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus" said it better than I can (what a shock....Harry Crews said most things better than I can, that's why he's a legend)  Hang on through the rather macabre banjo picking and listen to everything he has to say.

     God knows we still live in a world full of characters.  And we're definitely living in interesting, scary and exciting times.  So why are we "covering" old songs,  publishing new releases of old novels with different endings and making the same movie over and over and over?? (seriously, there's only so many angles from which we can approach Batman, Superman, Robin Hood and the crew of The Enterprise.) A friend from my high school days (who has done a lot of writing) and I had a similar discussion recently, about the written word in our world.  She told me she's certain there's lots of good writers out there but "they write for the heart and not for the market and sometimes those two are diametrically opposed."  That's too bad.  We're probably missing some classics.
   
   

A Wednesday rant...

     A gaggle of children singing the national anthem at a minor league baseball game on a hot summer night.  Old men wearing their VFW hats and carrying flags and leading the Fourth of July parade on Main Street, Somewhere.  A man with the lines of hard, honest work cut deep into his face and hands, standing up in the town hall meeting of a Rockwell painting exercising freedom of speech.  Sunday dinner.  Law enforcement folks pulled to the side of the road and saluting a passing funeral procession.  Boy Scouts putting flags on military graves, Memorial Day weekend.  Grainy, dark photographs of souls taking their first steps on Ellis Island.  Fireworks and cold watermelon on the Fourth of July.  "Blue Suede Shoes."  Nashville.  Motown. America and Americana used to be quite a tapestry.  It took many different forms, but we knew it when we saw it, heard it or tasted it.    But I fear what used to be a tapestry is now becoming  a  Picasso with three ears.  We now work way too hard at turning our pieces of the puzzle into islands.

     When the need arose we used to be able to put differences aside and bow up and fight a good fight.  Now good fights seem to serve only to divide us further.  "WE" are no longer an "US."   There's no need to draw battle lines with other countries - we're too damn busy drawing them amongst ourselves.  You're a liberal or conservative, a republican or a democrat or a tea-partier.  You're white or black, your Hispanic, you're Asian.  In short, you're ME or you're everyone else!  We can't help ourselves, though.  We're only following the example set by our leaders, the ones WE elected.  They're no longer problem-solving.  They're no longer governing.  They're no longer engaged in our best interests.  They're only working on re-election.  "YOUR guy got elected?  Well then it's time for THIS side of the aisle to denigrate, destroy and belittle.   There's GOT to be a scandal somewhere and, by God, we'll find it!"   One day we (or our children or our grandchildren) will wish that we had approached issues like global warming, the economy and human rights from something other than a political perspective.

     I asked a good friend who is not American and lives in another country to be truthful with me and describe the reputation we have among folks in her part of the world.  I wasn't surprised to hear her say that she loves Americans but that we can be (in her words) "cold."  I'm quite sure that the "cold" she hears when doing her job (which brings her into contact with co-workers in the States) was born in the mindset that the rest of planet earth should busy themselves stepping and fetching for us.  I wasn't surprised because we certainly allow this same sense of entitlement to affect interaction with each other.  In things as simple driving habits (I'M GOING TO CUT YOU OFF BECAUSE MY TIME IS MORE VALUABLE THAN YOURS!")  to the more complex issues of equality and freedoms and rights.  Along those lines, I've decided to put any and all other career aspirations aside and become a "community activist."  There seems to be great money in protecting the interests of those like yourself.  Only the key is to make sure that every single circumstance that befalls those just like you is an injustice intentionally perpetrated by everyone that's not just like you...NOT random happenstance!  So get ready fat middle-aged white guys who like beer and football - you're about to have a spokesman!!

     There's strength in numbers AND diversity.  Only we're no longer diversity working for a common good.  Now we're a bunch of spoiled children crammed into the same playground fighting over time on the monkey bars.  It's sad.