Things He Did

I only knew my daddy for seventeen years. And of those years I only remember a dozen. Not a long time to get to know somebody.

What I most remember of him is his laughter. Daddy was a knee slapper. He When he laughed it was loud and hard. He put all himself into his laughter.

After he was gone I learned more things. Things that took place before I was born. Some of what I learned surprised me.

I knew Daddy had wanted to fly airplanes. For a short time he actually had a pilot's license. That was before I was born. By the time his second child was born he had lost it. To keep a license one must fly so many hours at month or something. That costs money. After he got married Daddy never had much of that.

All of that I knew. How Daddy had taken his mother, his step-father, and Ranlen up to fly. Ranlen was about two. He was sitting on grandma's lap, having a great time. And then grandma told him to look out the window. Up to that moment Ranlen had thought they were on the ground. Once he realized he was in the sky he threw up. All over grandma.

The piece of information I found most amazing I only learned last year. Daddy had wanted to go gold mining in Alaska. Mother didn't even try to stop him. "Go ahead. Go." That was her response. He was packed and ready to go. Then, the night before he was to leave, he changed his mind.

Now I know where I inherited my fear of trying something new comes from.

Simplicity is Not all it's Cracked Up to Be

Daddy didn't push us hard to get top grades. His attitude was that kids should be kids. We only get to be kids once without being put away for it. For that reason, none of us were advanced ahead of our grade and none of us were put into special schools for 'smart' kids.

At the same time Daddy did insist we get good grades. Failing grades - in anything - was not acceptable. "We didn't have any stupid kids," he used to say.

Well, I'm not so sure the jury is unanimous on that opinion, but as that is a different topic I will let it be for now.

Because (not supposed to begin a sentence with 'because') Daddy had this attitude, and for other reasons, he was usually fun to have around. When he was around. Most of my growing up years he was an over-the-road truck driver, meaning he would be gone for a day or two at a time. And when he wasn't over-the-road he was over-at-the-bar. Then he wasn't fun to have around. Especially in the later years. He became an angry drunk. He wasn't violent. Not physically. But he would get so - angry.

But even sober there were times when Daddy wasn't that much fun. These times usually began with the same question:

So, what do you think?

I got so I hated that question. On the surface it seemed fair and legitimate. What do you think? Gee, someone's interested in my opinion. But it wouldn't stop there. Once you said what you thought you were required to defend the position. And we learned early on it didn't help to say we thought what we already knew Daddy thought. Although just as guilty of making foolish mistakes as anyone else, Daddy wasn't stupid. Even if you agreed with his position he made you defend it. And he was a master at shooting down your arguments.

The only one who ever won out on one of these What Do You Think sessions was Lynahr. That was when Daddy woke up all of the eldest children (Helvie and I were spared) in the middle of the night to confront them about Mickey's having (several times) slept overnight at his girlfriend's apartment. Nobody dared say they thought it was 'good', but only Lynahr, the shyest member of the family, dared say what she thought.

I don't care!

I don't care is not really a position that needs defending. You don't need a reason. Your reason is in your answer. I don't care.

It can be quite a conversation stopper, and it stopped Daddy that night. He dismissed the family and everyone returned to bed.

What a pity I didn't learn about it until afterward, for Helvie's and my turns were the following morning. We were watching Saturday morning cartoons. Daddy came in and turned off the television. The older siblings (except for Mickey, who had left in the middle of the night) were all gathered around to witness Helvie's and my responses.

Helvie was never a good one for expressing herself in those days, so she wasn't always required to defend her position. Not only that, but Judayl had coached her. Nobody had coached me, so when Daddy asked me what I thought about it I responded honestly.

What are you talking about?

Daddy didn't like that answer. He knew we all knew what Mickey was doing at that apartment. Except, this time, Daddy was wrong. I vaguely remembered being told some time that Mickey had been sleeping over there, but so what? What was wrong with sleeping?

That was not acceptable to Daddy. He couldn't accept that I didn't understand when my younger sister understood completely. So he grilled me, using words which conveyed nothing to me. Daddy didn't use profanity. Even in extreme anger and drunkeness the worse word I ever heard him use was 'bunk'. "That's a lot of bunk." So, without being explicit, he tried to corner me into revealing my attitude on the whole thing. Only to discover through my sincere frustration that I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. He got up and drove to the bar.

Daddy was disappointed in me. He was often disappointed in me. He felt I should understand things that I just did not understand. Sexual things tended to top that list. But you know, he never volunteered any information, and God forbid that I should ask an adult anything about sex. And so I was left ignorant. In fact, to paraphrase M, who was jealous because L was getting all of the attention from D at our college lunch, "You could fill a library with what I didn't know." M was specifically referring to theatre, but it was really a sparring match between two girls hot for the same guy. By college, even I could recognize jealousy.

You know, I still think I'm fairly ignorant about things. That isn't necessarily bad, but it does leave me confused an awful lot.

Shut Down

So, it has come to what may be the final post for this blog. If you've been trying to keep track, officially this is the 282nd post since 10-21-2008. Didn't make it that long, did I? Only been online just over a year, and only been blogging just under a year. Not that this is my first time being online. I've tried the internet, off and on, for around twenty years or so. I remember being on Compuserve. I don't even know if that exists anymore. That was in the days of Prodigy, which I never used.

Yesterday I was offline because my current service provider crashed. Don't know if it was the storms which passed through or if they got hit with some cyber attack. When I called their technical support line I got a recorded message which simply stated that "High speed internet users in Minnesota may not have access to the internet today. We apologize for the inconvenience and our technicians are doing all they can to correct the problem."

High speed? I didn't know. Wow! How disappointing. I was hoping I could get high speed if/when I reconnect. Now it turns out I've been using it. I guess that's good. Else this round of internet access would have gone the way of the others: I get p*ssed off because everything takes so frikkin' long and I cancel the service.

When I started this blog last October I didn't know why. There were things I wanted to say, but not only was I not sure what they were, but I didn't even know to whom I wanted to say them. I guess I hinted at it in my fourth post, titled, "A Wound That Will Not Heal". That post was about Daddy, and how I had deliberately hurt him.

I have talked about Daddy a lot in this blog. It's been twenty-five years since he went away and I still miss him. How would my life be different had he stayed? He would not be happy with me, I think. I've lived life longer than he did when he was here, but I have achieved nothing and have nothing to show for it. What a waste.

Another of my favorite topics is Stephen. Dear Stephen. Taken even earlier than Daddy. Daddy made it to fifty. Stephen barely passed forty. It has been fun recapturing some of the good times (and bad) I shared with both Daddy and Stephen. On a couple of occasions we shared them together, but mostly Stephen and Daddy didn't meet up.

The third topic which dominated this blog was The Old House, and what it was like growing up there. As miserable as living there was, I find myself wistfully returning to it time and again in thought and heart. I guess that is where I want to be after all. I know I'm not all that keen on the present.

Daddy was a hurting and lonely man. Born a b*stard child in a time when such people were not viewed as people, he lived a tortured life. He married when he didn't want to marry because my mother was pregnant with Ranlen and Daddy felt an obligation about that. He had wanted to travel. Be an airplane pilot. He had a license for a time, but was forced to let it lapse due to money constraints. He eventually got his traveling in by virtue of his job, which was regional truck driving in the midwest.

Stephen was an artist who had trouble dealing with many of life's unpleasant realities. His hero was Vincent Van Gough, who he said killed himself. Stephen had a frightful interest in suicide, and I have more than once wondered about the accident which killed him. How accidental was it? Daddy once recorded a musical story in which he very strongly intimated that his drinking and smoking were deliberate efforts to leave this life early. His words, "There are many ways to kill oneself", still haunt me.

But Stephen was especially close to his mother, and when he learned the reason his family had moved to the country (where he met me) was because his mother had been having an affair it hit him hard. I suppose there are things children just don't need to know about their parents.

The Old House kind of suffered, too. By the time we moved in it was quite delapidated, both in structure and in other ways. Once it had been the proud center of a huge farm. Now it stood in the corner of a five-acre lot with two outbuildings. Everything else had been sectioned off and sold as part of other property. It's walls were buckling and it's roof was leaking. Perhaps the fire which brought it down was self-induced? It seems a shame that it's gone. What a waste.

Will that be my legacy, too? "What a waste?" Sometimes I think so.

I have called this blog "A Voice in the Wind" because I tend to ramble. It's hard for me to keep focus because so many different ideas capture my attention. But I liked to tell myself I had important things to say. Turns out I was wrong. What a pity.

There have been several times when I thought about just shutting down the blogs. Now that it will happen I feel sad about it. Yes, if I want to spend the money I am sure I can be blogging again in no time. But there isn't a lot of money to spend. We are scheduled to reconnect to the internet some time this week, but as I wrote at the top of this post, the service provider is having their own set of problems.

We'll see. So, on the chance that I am unable or unwilling to come back, I will leave you with one of my favorite songs. I've posted it before. It's a friendship song. In fact, it's called "Friends". Do play it. And when you do, think of me.

Have a good one.

I hope the day will be a lighter highway
For friends are found on every road
Can you ever think of any better way
For the lost and weary travellers to go

Making friends for the world to see
Let the people know you got what you need
With a friend at hand you will see the light
If your friends are there then everything's all right

It seems to me a crime that we should age
These fragile times should never slip us by
A time you never can or shall erase
As friends together watch their childhood fly

Making friends for the world to see
Let the people know you got what you need
With a friend at hand you will see the light
If your friends are there then everything's all right

Making the Right Choices

I've never been keen on fishing. The only fishing I remember enjoying at all was when Stephen and I would fish for carp in the Rum River. That was fun simply because catching carp in the Rum was like snagging old boots. We would buy a mess of worms, or grubs, and head out to the river. We parked the car and slogged through the brush and muck to the river's edge.

We didn't bother with bobbers or anything. Just a lot of sinkers. Back then the sinkers were made out of lead. Now I think they're made from some non-toxic material. But carp are bottom feeders, and so we needed to get our bait to the bottom. Otherwise, the carp would never take it.

There were other fish in the river. Once we caught a bass, and a couple of times we caught perch. But those were accidental catches. Stephen knew virtually nothing about fishing. And I knew even less.

It's a shame, too, because Daddy liked to fish. He had a lot of fun fishing. This was especially true if he was up north and fishing with Alfred, his best friend in the whole world. Alfred knew a lot about nature, and not just fishing. He knew the animals and plants as though he were the one who made them. I was allowed to go hunting with them one year, and I remember Alfred stooping down and picking up some deer poop. He rubbed it through his fingers and gave us the deer's life history. Well, that is a bit of an exaggeration. But not much.

In the last years before Daddy died he finally was able to afford some real outdoor equipment. It wasn't the best, but it was good. He took me to Canada twice, just to go fishing. The first time was cool because we found native paintings on an island. They were faded and difficult to make out, but they were there. Afterward Daddy confessed the discovery had not been an accident. Alfred had told him which lake to find and which island. That explained why we had gone so far away from normal roads. Alfred generally didn't fish where everyone else did.

Unfortunately, I was then in my teen years and didn't like fishing at all. I liked being with Daddy (except at meal time - Daddy couldn't cook worth a dang, but I didn't dare tell him I was better at it than him), but I didn't like fishing. And I wasn't keen on how he kept taking the boat further and further away from our campsite, wrapping around island after island. I knew he was going to get us lost. He only did the one time, but he wasn't off by much. What was embarrassing was when he let me drive the boat back. I mucked up some place, and when I made the bend to camp I was shocked: camp wasn't there. Someone had stolen it! Actually, I was about a mile off from where I was supposed to be.

But more and more Daddy was giving me a choice of whether to go fishing or not, and more and more I chose not. I know he felt bad, but it never occurred to me that I only had two years left to be doing anything with him. He didn't play sports. Not anymore. His outdoor activities were hunting and fishing - the two activities I wasn't keen on much at all. He was proud of my achievements in baseball, I know. I caught him bragging about my grand slam home run. I had hit the ball farther than a lot of boys two or three years older than me could hope to hit it. But I squandered my chance to do something with Daddy. I was a selfish fool. And now there is nothing I can do about it.

What I do now is take advantage of the fact Son still wants to do things with me. The day is fast approaching when the ability to run off with friends and do things I can no longer do (or want to do) is going to reduce the amount of time he wants to spend with me. So when he wants to play computer, or go bicycling, or just watch a movie, most of the time I interrupt what I am doing in order to do it.

I mucked up once. Don't intend to make the same mistake twice.

Making and Recalling History

Today's topic is writing assignments. I came up with it because I used to write for the Evil Editor blog a lot more than I do now. There are weekly writing assignments, generally in the 200-300 word length category. These are good exercises for learning to say something in few words. I don't submit so often anymore because there's so much going on right now I don't have time to catch the inspiration and write . How I miss the days of youth when I seemingly had time for everything I enjoyed. They days were longer or something.

I remember we would occasionally get writing assignments in school. When the assignment was like a research paper I tended to wait until the last moment and toss together something to get a grade. When the assignments were creative in scope I would get all excited and rush to begin writing at every moment.

Mrs. SJ would announce to the class after story time: Okay. Now I want each of you to write a story about a little dog who gets separated from his family. Print. Use a whole sheet of paper. Turn it in tomorrow morning.

Most of the class would react with, "Oh, cr*p!" I would be excited.

The following morning papers would be handed forward to the front of the room. Some students wrote in extra large letters. Some didn't even try. They only used a half sheet. A few would continue to a second page. Mine were always five to ten pages.

I love to tell stories. I love make-believe. I love relating historical events. J.R.R.Tolkien wrote that he "much prefers history, true or feigned" over allegory. At my age I find I much agree with him. Allegory is a hammer beating upon a nail. It forces an idea into the thoughts of its readers. History is a park. There are paths leading to ponds, shrubs, wildlife, and a host of other things. Visitors are free to walk these paths and spend as much time admiring the beauty as they will. Nothing is forced. It is just there.

It's why, I suppose, I spend so much time relating my past on this blog. That is real history. Those things really did happen. And the people who were with me really existed. It seems a shame and even a waste to let those memories fade away without being shared. Those people who shared those experiences with me were important people. Many are no longer here. They shouldn't be forgotten. And often, I am the only one remaining who remembers what happened. And so I tell the stories. I try to keep them alive. Stephen. Daddy. Grandmother. These were people worth knowing.

The problem, of course, with my method of relating these stories is I follow no pattern. The timeline is not set. One day I may relate something from my early twenties, and the next I'm five years old again. Then it's back to junior high. The result - over time - of this wild and undisciplined approach is that I'm not always sure what I have, or have not, written about. And the history of this blog is now large enough that I don't always have the energy to search back to see. Between that and just being older I find myself repeating things. I expect in time I'll be some blabbering old fool who continues to relate stories despite not even having an audience. Saw a few of them at the place where Daddy's mother wound up. Old people sitting in wheelchairs mumbling to themselves.

Still recall the time I left work in the middle of the day and drove to see Grandma. It was on a whim. I had never been close to Daddy's mother. She was so prim and proper about her house. She wasn't a children's grandmother. She was an adult's grandmother, so I was only really getting to know her when she died.

I entered the place not even sure where I would find her. By chance she was sitting in a wheelchair in the main hall. Her head was down and her arms were folded across her lap. When I got her attention she perked her 6'0" frame up and was all animated. She made sure to tell every person who came by that her grandson had come to visit. This was after Daddy had died. Daddy had been her only child.

I didn't stay long. The place was so awful I felt uncomfortable. So we talked and then I left. Mother visited Grandma the next day. Grandma complained that no one had been to visit her in more than a week. She didn't remember that I had been there.

For a long time that bothered me. Then I realized something. When one is in a prison the days tend to meld together into one. Monday might just as well be Thursday. Spring is summer and fall is winter. Morning or evening. What does it matter? The food sucks. The atmosphere sucks. No place to go. Nothing to do. This wasn't a place to live. It was a place to die. No wonder she remembered it wrong. She probably remembered I had been there, but had since taken so many naps it felt like days had passed. Time had no meaning for that poor old lady in a nursing home prison. Except that it went on forever.

Was that my future I saw? Or, as I dearly hope, will I just go to sleep on my birthday one year - and wake up to see Daddy and Stephen waiting to usher me home?

What a tale that will be! Except I won't be able to tell it to you. You'll have to wait to get to heaven to hear it. Kind of worth living for. Don't you think? [smiles]

A Brilliant Teacher - Who Taught Foolishly

Daddy was a brilliant man. Probably one of the brightest I have ever personally known. However, his conscious efforts at instruction were far from inspirational. I think the problem was that things came so easily to him he had a difficult time understanding when those he sought to teach were having a difficult time.

He tried to teach me to play piano. The problem was, Daddy couldn't read music. He played 'by ear', sounding out the notes and using his experience to chord properly. How does one teach someone to play by ear? There were no finger exercise, or note reading, or anything like that. He just showed me what he did and expected me to repeat it. H*ll, I didn't even recognize most of the music he played. It was old country western and folk songs which were not played on any radio station I listened to. He gave up on me learning music. I'm sure he thought I was hopeless.

I still recall the day I was home sick from school and he told me he was leaving and would be back at a certain time. I asked him how I would know and he realized I didn't know how to read a clock. (This predated digital, folks.) So Daddy sat me down at the table and drew about a half dozen clock faces on a sheet of paper. Then he proceeded to tell me how to tell time.

You ever try to learn something when you're sick? It's hard to concentrate. Not only that, but Daddy was impatient to be leaving and so was rushing his 'lesson'. Finally, he gave up and stormed away. I remember he got drunk that night. When I returned to school I mentioned to my teacher what had happened and she sat down with me over lunch and taught me how to read a clock. I waited up for Daddy to come home. Thought he would be so happy that I learned how to tell time. It didn't go over well that I had learned from my teacher and not from him. Poor Daddy.

Daddy did teach me how to handle guns. That he taught well. And I learned it. Do ANYTHING with a gun that was not supposed to be done - and you get slapped. Hard. That might seem harsh, but the consequences for being stupid with a gun are permanent. The worst beating I ever saw Daddy give anyone was to Judayl, who thought to be funny by pointing a shotgun at me. She was hoping to scare me away, but I just looked at her and smiled. "I'm telling Daddy." It was all I needed to say. She turned white. No. I learned about guns. With the exception of the ground, NEVER point a gun at something you are not intending to shoot. They are not toys. Treat them like they will kill you: because if you don't they just might.

What was probably the funniest lesson Daddy ever tried to teach me was driving. I was sixteen. I had taken the classroom training. (Back in those days it was part of school.) I had passed my written exam and could now drive with a licensed driver. Mother started teaching me in the big Chevy, but Daddy wanted me to learn how to drive a manual transmission. That meant the pickup. The old pickup. The very old pickup. With the crappy transmission.

Shifting between most gears in the old pickup wasn't too bad. But second to third was a nuisance. It required a double-clutch. I didn't always remember. Daddy had me drive around the big block. This meant a mile to the north, three miles to the west, a mile to the south, and three miles to the east. We lived on the corner.

We hadn't even made it halfway when things went - awry. I was trying to be especially careful because the ditches here were about ten feet deep. Swamp lined both sides of the road and I was nervous about not staying on pavement. Daddy chose this place to have me experiment with downshifting and upshifting. I forgot about the double shift. I was also riding the clutch. He told me to watch my feet. I thought he was speaking metaphorically, for I knew I was supposed to watch the road. Then he started yelling and pointed at my feet. "Look where you have them!" So I bent over and looked.

Unfortunately, in the process of looking I also managed to turn the wheel. The next thing I hear is, "What are you doing? Look where you're going! Stop! Stop! Stop!" So I stopped.

We were almost off the road.

I don't remember the next five miles. I do remember Mother yelling at me a few days later and telling me Daddy had told her I was so incompetent he would never take me driving again. I doubt he used the word "incompetent" (Mother just liked to embellish in order to make us feel especially bad), but Daddy never rode in a car I drove again. Ever. Of course, he only lived another year-and-a-half.

Daddy was a brilliant man. But heaven help the person he tried to teach anything to.

Some Thoughts on My Daddy

Time for another Daddy story, I think.

While not tremendously huge, Daddy was a big man. He grew up from large stock. Every male in his mother's family was at least six feet tall. Don't know much about Daddy's daddy. He never married Daddy's mother. In 1924 that was a BIG deal. Daddy suffered for it all through his youth. But Daddy stood 6'2" tall, and by the time he was in his forties weighed around two hundred pounds. Only Daddy had been driving truck for a good many of those years. That was not two hundred pounds of fat. Daddy was solid.

As I have mentioned before, Daddy's relatives were cruel people. They tortured him - until he became large enough to put a stop to it. Once Daddy reached teenager size, the men left him alone. In that family that was saying something. They were mean, and they liked to fight.

They tried to break up Daddy's marriage. They didn't like my mother. This resulted in us not seeing them for more than eight years. Finally, Daddy's mother came to him and apologized. Something else that family was not noted for doing. But love will win out eventually. How long can a woman avoid her only child because she hates his wife? Grandma came to accept my mother - in her fashion. My mother reciprocated.

One of Daddy's strongest traits was his loyalty. He stood with people he knew were in the wrong for no other reason than that they had stood with him in the past when he was in need. He would never forget a favor. Eventually, he forgave wrongs. Something else his mother's family was not noted for doing.

For a while we lived next door to one of Daddy's aunts. It happened to be his favorite aunt: Julia. Julia had been the one person who had sought to protect Daddy from the torture inflicted on him by his uncles. She was the smallest of the nine children, and so it wasn't easy for her. Daddy never forgot it.

The family hated Julia's choice of husband.

Harold was just a little guy. Not much bigger than Julia herself. And he was nothing like his brothers-in-law. I remember Harold as being funny and fun.

The story is still told how one day one of Julia's brothers came to Harold's door in order to "rough him up". What my great-uncle (what a terrible use of the word "great") didn't know was that Daddy was at Harold's house that afternoon. When Harold opened the door, it blocked Daddy from view.

The brother-in-law became abuse and threatening. However, before he could exact any of his threats, Daddy had come around the door, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, lifted him off the ground, and told him there would be no fighting this day - unless it were between the two of them. When he set his uncle back on the ground the uncle ran to his car and did not come back.

Daddy was no-nonsense. He would have made a horrible diplomat. Arouse his anger at your own risk. He grew up in hard times with a hard life. I remember when the local drunk threatened to come to our place and kill our dogs (because they wouldn't let him out of the car to try and get at my mother) Daddy came home from the bar (yes, he spent more time there than was good for anyone) and stood in the yard with a deer rifle. When the police arrived they told him to make sure he threw the guy INto the house after killing him. Then shoot him again. That way he was legally protecting his family. But the man didn't return. Not when Daddy was around. Did come when it was just Mother and a few of us kids. Unfortunately for the drunk, Mother was no less inhibited about using firearms than Daddy. When he saw me rushing the shotgun to her, drunk man left and never came back.

Daddy also attended one parent-teacher meeting in his life. It was the meeting which took place shortly after a teacher had tortured me. Daddy went to the meeting and waited until it was time for parent questions. His hand went up first. He stood and announced why he was there and threatened to kill the teacher. I was never tortured again.

I suppose to modern sensibilities, these are horrible stories. But life was different forty, fifty, eighty years ago. People in the country were truly on their own. There was no police force to come and help. It could be two hours or more before they could arrive. (It took six hours for them to arrive the night of the drunk. And that was after they had been told about an incident involving a gun. There just wasn't enough police to cover such a huge area.) When our house caught fire it was already a loss before we even heard the sirens. There was no help in the country. None. Sometimes the nearest neighbor was miles away. We were on our own. And we learned to live that way.

I guess it's part of what made loyalty such a great prize. It was hard to be loyal. For anyone. So when anyone was, you knew you had a friend you could count on. Was it uncivilized? Absolutely. But there was no civilization to speak of.

For myself, I admire my Daddy more than any other man - or woman - I have ever known in my life. He was not a perfect man by any means. Not yours. Not mine. Not his own. But if I could even be like him I would know I would be twice the man I am. Just a little bigger. What I wouldn't give to know he was proud of me. I'll have to wait until I see him again.

I will, you know. Some day.

The Elusive Gift of Confidence

Got a bicycle yesterday. We can't afford the purchase, but there were extenuating reasons why we made it.

Rode with Son three times through the afternoon for a total of forty-five minutes and six miles. Not exactly booking down the road, but my legs feel it today. Put on more than 7,500-steps. Maybe with this bike I will achieve the goal of 10,000-steps much more quickly. Didn't do the treadmill yesterday for doing so much biking. Will try to combine the two. I expect each exercise provides its own benefit.

Got me to thinking about how I learned to ride a two-wheeler. I was five or six years old when I got the bike. As I recall it was too large for me. I was afraid, but Daddy said he would teach me. And he did. But he failed to teach me confidence. He expected that to just come, I guess. It didn't. Confidence and me have never been overly close. One or the other of us always seems to find a way to separate from the other.

Daddy's way of teaching was to hold onto the back of the seat to steady me and then run along as I peddled. I thought that was cool. But there was a problem. You ever try running alongside a bicycle in motion? Even one peddled by a six-year-old? Daddy would have been around thirty-nine or forty. He was strong, but he wasn't a runner. He couldn't keep up. Not his fault.

What I do think was his fault was that he didn't tell me that. In fact, he told me the opposite. He would hang on while I peddled. But he couldn't. Still, I believed he could. I was only six, and not that bright.

I wouldn't get far before I would hear my siblings laughing. By six I had learned that was never a good sign unless I was laughing with them. Turning, I would see Daddy being left behind. I was on my own.

Immediately I would cease to peddle, freeze up in a panic, and eventually fall in a heap with my bicycle. Daddy would come and bring me back and we would do it again. Again he would tell me he would hang on, and again I believed that meant until I was ready for him to let go. How silly of me. I just wasn't getting it. Crash.

I don't recall how many times I crashed. My siblings loved it. It was better than going to a movie. There was no joy like watching someone else be humiliated. Eventually, Daddy had to give up. While not old, he couldn't keep running down the driveway like that. (Dirt driveway.)

He was probably very disappointed in me. I'm sure in his mind he was thinking that I would instantly achieve confidence when I realized I had been biking alone for so long. But that never happened. I panicked every time and crashed. And after that day I never trusted anyone to hold onto the seat. (Daddy had made Mickey do it. Mickey went farther, but even he had to give up trying to keep pace with wheels.)

Reluctantly, Daddy agreed to get me training wheels. I think he felt shamed. He had never even known anyone who had needed training wheels before. Now, one of his children was too afraid to go near a bicycle anymore. So I got training wheels.

I didn't need them long. I remember the neighborhood kids teasing me about them. I didn't much care for the teasing, but it was better than crashing all the time. Then Tommy, Chris's younger brother, went biking with me. It was just the two of us. He kept looking at my wheels. Finally, he told me that he didn't think I needed the extra wheels. Said they never touched the ground until I stopped. (They made an excellent bike stand.) So he talked me into going home and asking Daddy to take them off. Daddy must have been happy in a way. On the one hand I was now daring to ride without the extra help. On the other, he hadn't been the one to bring me to that place.

I feel bad about that, but Daddy just didn't understand. While I was blessed with great physical strength, and a good amount of intelligence, I was crippled emotionally. It takes me ten, or twenty, times longer to develop confidence than others seem to need. There have been very few exceptions to this. I fell in love with the theatre right off. And baseball. And I believe I can tell a good story, even if I don't write so well. And I think I know what it's like to feel someone else's pain. But after that, no.

So yesterday Son and I arrive at the bike shop. Madonna, who sold us Son's bike was there, but busy with another customer. So we got Jason. A nice young guy who probably bikes a hundred miles a day or something. He brought out a nice Trek bike and we went outside so I could test drive it.

I got on, and immediately started to fall to my face. Jasan did an excellent job of trying not to laugh. Did a lousy job of succeeding. After taking a few trips around the parking lot we went back inside so Jason could find another model for me to try. I took the opportunity to ask Son, "So, did I look okay, or did I look really stupid?" I love Son's honesty. "Kind of both."

You know, I can live with that. I don't particularly care to be looking stupid in public (which is why I avoid being in public at every opportunity), but Son's honesty tells me I needn't wonder about it. It is. Knowing the truth somehow makes it easier to bear. I'm hoping I only look stupid because I'm fat. By the end of summer that may not be so true anymore. Then I'll just have other reasons for looking stupid.

Would Daddy be proud of me, I wonder? Or would he think I look stupid, too? Daddy hated stupid.

The Will of My Father

Daddy was a gentle man, and an understanding man. And, despite Mickey's belief to the contrary, Daddy was a forgiving man.

But he was hardly a pushover. In fact, a lot of times I was afraid of him. Not sure why. In my entire life I don't think he struck me more than five times. (Three times with his belt across my butt; once with a switch across my butt; and once with his fist in my face [he was drunk and I was stupid enough to insult him to his face - teenagers].) But years went by between these incidents, and during those years Daddy would laugh, sing, and play games. So why the fear? I guess it was because Daddy had such a commanding presence. Even when he acknowledged someone else's leadership or expertise, it was like Daddy was in charge.

He didn't flaunt this power. In fact, I'm not even sure he knew he had it. But everyone respected him, except Mother's mother, who thought he was a failure because he never went to college (her big failing in my opinion), and Daddy's own relatives, who treated him like he was dirt because he was a b*stard child. We seldom visited Daddy's relatives, and after he died we never did. Not many came to his funeral.

Anyway, when I was young one of my summertime tasks was mowing the yard. It was a big yard, with lots of trees, so mowing was a real pain in the a*s. Some days I didn't mind, but usually I hated it. It always seemed to need to be done when I wanting to be doing something else.

Well, one day I mowed the yard and finished up early. I was pleased with myself for having done it so quickly. But I had only been finished a half hour or so when Daddy called me. He didn't sound happy. I came and he took me to the porch to show me the lawn mower.

"Where is the cap?" he asked me.

I looked. Sure enough, I had forgotten to put the cap back on the mower's fuel tank after refilling it out on the yard. I looked helplessly out to the near acre of land I had mowed. It was somewhere out there.

"Find it."

That was all he said. Then he went back into the house.

I walked about the yard, hoping to see it, but I couldn't find it. So I went back and told him so. He was unmoved.

"It's there. Find it."

I was downcast. How'd he know it was still here? Maybe it had melted into the ground. Maybe a bird took it. Or some gas cap thief who had been waiting for just this chance to take ours. But there was no arguing with Daddy, so I went back out and stood at the yard's edge with tears in my eyes. I could be here for the rest of my life searching for some stupid cap now being sold on the Gas Cap Black Market. But I knew Daddy would not let me off until I had found it. So what to do?

Necessity sometimes makes one's brain actually work. Sometimes it simply creates panic and confusion. But this time I came upon a very methodical, and logical, solution to my problem. The lawn was freshly mowed. That meant the tire tracks were still there, circling the yard in an ever dwindling spiral. All I had to do was "follow the green grass road". So I began where I had begun mowing and started walking.

It was tempting to skip lanes I knew the cap wasn't in, but I didn't. I held my course. Then (very near the end, or course - it's always that way, isn't it) I came upon it, laying quietly in the grass. The gas cap thief must have dropped it while making his escape. I picked it up and brought it in to show Daddy. I was quite pleased with myself. What I found strange was not that he smiled at me, but that he wanted to know how I had found it. What was my method? When I told him he seemed pleased. Then he told me to put the cap back on the mower - and don't do it again!

I never did.

Daddy liked thinking. Intelligent thinking, anyway. Creative thinking. He liked to see his children's brains actually working. I don't think it happened that often, so when he smiled you knew he was really pleased. I liked making Daddy smile.

Chafing Over the Ironing

Remember starch? I don't know if it's even made anymore. Clothes are all permanent press now. Wash them, dry them, hang them up, and the wrinkles are gone. Back in the day when I was young that wasn't so. You wanted to get wrinkles out, you ironed.

I began doing laundry when I was in grade school. I may have been eight, nine, or perhaps ten. With older siblings it wasn't so necessary that I learn these things - except to my older siblings. They're the ones who taught me.

We had an old ringer washer. The image to the right is probably as close to what it looked like as anything. The black hose was used to drain the thing. Made for quite a mess. In the summer time we brought the washing machine outside and washed there. Then, when the laundry was done, we would drop the hose and let the water run into the ground. Yeah, not exactly ecologically sound.

The tubs were filled manually. We would run a short hose from the faucet to the tub and turn on the hot water. When the washing tub was full of soap and water the clothes would be added and the wash cycle engaged. There was no rinse cycle. That was where the wringer came into use.

Next to the washing machine there would be a wash tub. Couldn't find a good image of one that looked like what we used. The closest was what I have displayed. Only ours didn't have the cool scrubbing board. I think we may have had a scrubbing board, but it was as rusty as the tub.

Well, when the washing was done, you would take the clean clothes out of the water and begin running them through the wringer. If you let the next article of clothing rest on the previous, the conveyor would pull them through. The dirty water would fall back into the machine and the "clean" clothes would fall into the clear, hot water in the wash tub.

If you were good, you could actually send more than one article of clothing through at a time. But you had to be careful. The wringer sometimes would jam. Then you had to pop up the top (see the big handle?) pull the clothes back and do it again.

Feeding clothes into the ringer was a bit of a risk. If you weren't careful, you'd get your fingers pinched. And, if your name happened to be Judayl, before your pain sensors told you that you were in trouble, your entire hand and wrist would be pulled through. It wouldn't take your arm. That was too thick and the wringer would jam. Whenever Judayl helped with the laundry you could count on this happening. In fact, I believe it happened to all my siblings at least once, except for Ranlen (who was up north) and Helvie (who never had to do laundry like this). It never happened to me either, although I did get my fingers pinched a few times.

Once the clothes soaked in the hot clean water they would be sent through the wringer again. This time, instead of letting the clothes fall, you had to catch them and put them in the wicker baskets (not plastic) to be brought to the clotheslines.

Washing in the winter wasn't just a bother. It was a great bother. For one thing, there was draining the water. The washtub took two people to bring it to the bathroom where it was unceromoniously dumped into the bathtub. (Just made you feel like jumping in and taking a bath to see the brown water sloshing about.) The washing machine was either scooped out the top a little at a time, and then the dirty water poured into the sink. Or, the side hose was let down so the water could drain into the washtub, and then two people had to carry it to the bathroom. (If you thought dumping the rinse water was bad, you should have seen this.) This was done twice or more times.

Hanging out the clothes was another matter in winter. If it was a nice day we hung them outside. They didn't dry. They froze. Then we would bring them inside and beat the ice off them. They were still damp and had to be draped over furniture to finish drying. If the day was poor, we hung them around the house on wires stretched across rooms. This was highly inconvenient. You would walk through the room and either get slapped in the face by some dangling article of clothing (hopefully not Daddy's long johns), or at least get dripped on.

I remember when Daddy had sprung for a new sofa for Mother at Christmas. The rule was, no one could sit on the sofa. (People come up with the strangest rules. What's the point of having a sofa if no one sits on it?) Well, we had just brought in the clothes and they were frozen. This meant they could be positioned. So Daddy and Mickey set up their pants and shirts on the sofa. Then they went behind and kneeled down so only their heads showed. Mother came walking down the hall, saw them, and exploded in wrath. By the time she got into the living room she saw it was a joke and then everyone laughed at her. This only made her more angry. That was when Daddy told her that her rule was kind of stupid.

So, back to starch. That was using in ironing. I hated ironing. Some things really s*cked to iron. Remember pleated skirts? Things with ruffles. Stocking were easy. So were cotton t-shirts. Sheets would have been, except they were so big. But ironing was also a way to get revenge.

Remember how I wrote in an earlier post how my older sisters (and Helvie, too) would frequently beat on me? Well, I wasn't big enough to win back for a good many years. But once I was given the job of ironing, I found a way. You see, we washed all the clothes, of course. We also ironed all the clothes. Everything that could be ironed, was ironed. Shirts. Blouses. Dresses. Stockings. Pants. Shorts. Skirts. Underwear.

If you use the right amount of starch, clothes will stand up on their own even when they're not frozen. I found that out by accident one day. After that, I would do it on purpose - when one or more of my sisters had thrashed me soundly. Put those on and tell me how you like it. Of course, that usually resulted in another beating.

It was worth it.

Sometimes I Have Not Been Nice at All

Animal Day, huh? Well, this probably isn't what you had in mind when I wrote that, but here goes.

I grew up in rural Minnesota. No big deal. We had electricity and a telephone. For a while it was party line, but Daddy's job required he have access to a telephone and so my parents sprung the extra money and got a private line. I still recall the number: 5008. Didn't have to use the prefix if you called within the area.

There were various wildlife creatures about, but nothing exotic. Supposedly, a black bear took up residence near my house, but I think that was foolish child's talk. I never heard an adult say they saw one. I don't recall even seeing that many deer. Mostly, the wildlife consisted of birds, squirrels, and a few other miscellaneous rodents. Generally, if one were to see an animal larger than a squirrel it would be a pet or a farm creature.

We did not have much for farm creatures at The Old House, despite the place originally being a farm. We got rabbits once, for Easter. But the dogs broke into the shed where we kept them and killed them all. We had chickens, too. And ducks. The chickens were nice because they walked the yard and took out the wood tics, of which the area was well inundated. Before we got the chickens you couldn't walk across the yard without picking up a half dozen. The first thing you did when you got inside was use the bathroom to sift through your clothes. After the chickens, no wood tics.

When Daddy was diagnosed with cancer, my parents sold the place and moved into the city. Roseville. A suburb north of St Paul, near the State Fair Grounds. That fall I was to be a senior in high school. I wanted to graduate in the school where I had spent most of my growing up. (I was afraid to go anywhere else. "The H*ll That You Know.") So my parents arranged for me to board at a retired minister's placed about five miles from the high school. The man was a control maniac and I didn't particularly enjoy my stay. In fact, shortly before Daddy died, I left that place and went to Roseville to live. I drove the thirty or forty miles distance daily for the rest of the year.

So what has all of this to do with animals? Well, Mr Minister (not his real name) fancied himself a part-time farmer. He raised cattle and planted hay. Well, one day I come home from school to find Mr Minister had forgotten to close the pasture gate. As I drove up the lane I could see the monsters milling about on the yard. Now I had never had anything to do with cows. All I knew about them was: a) they gave milk; b) chopped up, they made excellent burgers; c) the smallest of them weighed twice what I did.

I drove my car as close to the house as possible and then dashed inside. Safe, I went upstairs to my room and proceeded to write.

About an hour later Mr Minister comes home and ushers the cows back into the pasture. Then he comes upstairs and proceeds to yell at me and tell me what an idiot I am for not noticing the cows were out. I told him I had noticed. He asked why I hadn't put them back in the pasture. I responded by saying there were thirty cows and one me. And since most of them weighed more than a thousand pounds and I weighed less than two hundred I didn't like the odds. He told me I was stupid. Everyone knew cows were slovenly creatures who wouldn't hurt anyone. Well I didn't know that, and I told him so.

He made me feed the cows in the pasture after that. You can make teenagers do things, you know? If he tried to do that today I'd tell him where he could put his feed. Well, he's probably long gone now. He was older than I am now when I was seventeen. But I drove the tractor (now that was a treat) into the fields, pulling a wagon filled with hay. The cows saw me coming and began to hurry to intercept me. I didn't like that. Tame or not, I didn't particularly relish getting squished between the cows and the wagon, or knocked to the ground under their feet. So I climbed across the hitch and tossed hay down for the bovines and then drove away.

Mr Minister wasn't really a bad man. He was just a control freak. He hated it that I had a car. He hated that I could drive to Stephen's house without having to ask him permission. He hated it that I never showed him my homework. (I never showed it to my parents, why should I show it to him? Ah, for the record, though. Spouse and I keep close tabs on Son's homework. He's straight 'A'. I was straight 'C', which pissed off teachers and counselors alike.)

I tolerated his meddling until Daddy began to get worse. Then Mr Minister's meddling became an interference and I left shortly after Thanksgiving. That Christmas I took all of my money (I had a job at a pizza shop) and spent it all on Christmas presents. Stephen was with me and kept insisting I buy Mr Minister a gift. I didn't want to. I thought he was a horse's a*s, and I told Stephen so. But Stephen kept pestering me, so I finally relented. And here is where my sense of humor took over.

Against Stephen's wishes, I found a little plastic statuette. They were popular back in the 1970s. They were about six inches tall, made of hard plastic, and completely tan. The figures were of all sorts of things, and on the bases were inscriptions. You know the kind? "I Love You." "You're My Friend." "All The Best." Fun stuff. And some of it quite silly.

I chose a little man with an incredibly fat belly. He stood with his arms spread wide. And stuck - right in the middle of his belly-button - was a giant screw. The inscription? "Thanks For Everything!"

I bought that.

Stephen was beside himself with distress. At first he thought I was only joking. But then I paid for it and put it in a little brown paper bag. He fussed and worried as I drove out to where Mr Minister lived. He kept begging me not to give that to the old man. By chance, Mr Minister was at the end of the lane, clearing snow, as I drove up. He smiled and said, "Hello, Bevie." I smiled and said, "Hello." He asked what I was up to. I said I had bought him a Christmas present, and then I handed him the bag. He thanked me and I drove away, never to see him again.

Every so often I think about that and wonder: how did he react when he saw the gift? Did he understand what I was trying to tell him? Or was I just another teenage punk?

A Joy I Never Knew

It's spring. The snow is all gone. The ground is mostly dry. It's windy and cool. Do you know what that means? Kites.

Kites used to be a big thing when I was young. Not every year, but on years when people were interested it seemed like everyone was interested. I remember Old Man Smith's young adult son, who helped him manage the farm (crops, no animals), flew a giant box kite. He had it staked out in their hay field with about a quarter mile of string. The kite flew over our back field for days and days and days. It amazed me how it could stay up there without any help.

Eventually, it did come down. The wind made a small tear which got increasingly larger until the kite came crashing down. I found it in our field by means of following the string trail. I brought it back to Bob, who took one look at it and declared it done. I could have it. Cool! Of course, I never got it to fly again. But that was not unusual for me. You see, I couldn't get kites to fly.

Unlike Charlie Brown, who's kites always seemed to find the nearest tree, my kites were not so magnetically attracted to wood. Dirt seemed to be their fascination. They would nose dive right down and lay flat, a humiliating monument to my ineptitude.

I remember holding onto a stick at one end of a string when I was five. Nearly a mile away a kite flew. It wasn't there because of me, though. Mickey had got it into the air and then had me told onto it while he went and got more string. He kept getting more and more and more. It got harder and harder and harder to hold, and I had this magical sense that I was about to go flying myself. (It never happened. Pity. It might have been fun. After I wet my pants for fear.)

The string eventually broke and that kite wound up destroyed in a tree. But I could never make my own fly. Not once.

I could make them. The little pieces of balsa wood acting as a frame. Looping the string through the holes in the paper. Tying on the tail. I got all of that done. But the kites would never fly for me. Not unless someone else got them going first.

One year Daddy purchased plastic kites. They were new that year, and guaranteed to fly. Everyone was out that day, standing in one of Old Man Smith's fields. He hadn't planted yet, so he didn't care. There must have been a dozen kites flying when Helvie and I arrived with Daddy, Mickey, and I think Judayl and Lynahr. Daddy helped Helvie get her kite up and she joined in the fun. I was supposed to be old enough to do it on my own. But I couldn't . It just wouldn't work. It didn't take long for the other kids to see my trouble, and soon I was being laughed at. But no one would help. Eventually, I was crying. That only made people laugh the more. So I took my kite and went home.

Two days later I was standing on the roof of The Old House, trying to get my kite to fly from there. It's pretty sad when the kite you're flying is lower than you are, but that's the way it went.

Kites are fun, though, aren't they?

Cassanova Rides Again

This is probably overplay, but my mind is stuck back in the early 1960s right now, so please forgive me. The picture at the right is of Mickey and me in the spring of 1957. I'm in red coveralls. More pictures at the bottom of this post.

Yesterday I wrote about Cheryl, and how we were married at a very young age only to be separated and divorced by virtue of lunch. Reconciliation was not possible because I move away and we never saw each other again.


That fall I began first grade. For whatever reason I did not attend the grade school just a mile down the road. Instead, I rode the bus ten miles to go to school. It was the only year I did this and I have never learned why. But it resulted in another love affair gone bad.

I must have been cute or something when I was young. There aren't many pictures of me from then left now. Most of my parents' photographs were destroyed in the fire, and whoever inherited my grandmothers' and Aunt Cile's pictures tossed them. But there are a couple. Personally, I think I look like a dork. But Cheryl must have thought differently. So did Vicki. And Debbie.

Vicki and Debbie were two girls who shared first grade with me. They both liked me. I was fine with that. (Having been married I was now an experienced gentleman.) Unfortunately, Vicki and Debbie were not fine with each other, and they had a bit of a war going on about me. Lacking the wisdom of Solomon I was not able to successfully deal with this. Case in point.

I finished my lunch and went outside, as was required when the weather permitted. Before I could find my good friend, Terry, Debbie found me. She wanted to push me on the swing. (Yes, you read correctly. The girls would push me on the swing. It was their idea. Honest!) I said, "Okay."

Well, we had only been doing this for a little while when Vicki arrives. Vicki wanted me to leave Debbie and go play with her. Now the truth was, I liked Vicki a little more than Debbie. You see, Vicki didn't just fawn all over me like Debbie did (not that I minded that), but she would actually talk and play with me (six-year-old play). However, that being said, Debbie had asked first and to leave her to go play with someone else would hurt her feelings. (I know. People did that to me all the time. Right through my adult years.) So, taking the risk I told Vicki that Debbie had asked me first and I felt I should stay with her.

Vicki did not find the answer acceptable. She stepped forward and insisted. Debbie told her to "buzz off" using whatever language six-year-olds used back then. (I confess that I have forgotten. It may have been, "Beat it!") The two girls began to argue over me, and as they did, Vicki kept stepping closer and Debbie kept pushing me on the swing. (Do you see where this is going?) Suddenly, I realized that Vicki had placed herself directly in my path, and that when I came forward I was going to knock her down. Lacking imagination, it never occurred to me to just drop my feet and stop. Instead, I did the most stupid thing I could: I held out my hand like a traffic cop and told her, "No!"

My palm caught her square in the chest, and the force of my thirty or forty pounds knocked her off her feet and to her backside. I was off the swing in a moment and trying to help her up, but the damage was done. Vicki was crying. She got up and ran away from me. Then Debbie walked up and said it served Vicki right so I got mad at Debbie and Debbie left. But my real trouble had yet to begin.

It turns out Vicki had her own version of what had happened, and she had gone to Judayl and gave it to her. Judayl, thinking it was funny, came home and reported it to the family - including Daddy. And this is what Judayl told everyone.

"Bevie's little girlfriend came up to me today and said, 'Your brother hit me.'"

That's it. No details. Just, "Bevie hit me."

The first, and foremost, lesson Daddy ever taught me was: Don't hit girls! Ever. I was granted four exceptions: Lynahr, Judayl, Gayanne, and Helvie. (The reason for these exceptions was that all four of them used to beat the snot out of me and I never fought back. Well, maybe not Lynahr. But the other three certainly did.) So, why had I violated the Prime Directive?

I tried to explain, but unfortunately the first words I spoke were, "I didn't!" That made me a liar. Now I was doubly in trouble.

No supper. Not only that, but I had to stand next to Daddy's chair all night until I explained why I had taken it upon myself to hit a girl. (My second statement that it had been an accident fell on deaf ears. I was guilty, and there was no getting out of that. What I had to do was come up with a reason for doing it. Since I hadn't done it on purpuse I didn't have a reason. So I stood.)

Daddy had my siblings bring out a new blocks toy I had. The idea was to stack oddly shaped blocks. The one who stacked the most was the winner. I had to watch while they did this.

My legs would hurt and I would sneak a rest by sitting the arm of Daddy's chair. Then he would see me and make me stand again. Daddy got home around five. My last sibling went to bed around eight or nine. Shortly after that, when it was just Daddy and me. I started crying and said I had hit her because I didn't want her to push me on the swing. It was a lie. But I was allowed to go to bed.

That wasn't quite the end of it. Vicki wouldn't play with me anymore because I had hit her. Debbie wouldn't play with me anymore because I had stood up for Vicki. So, in trying to be pleasing to everyone, I wound up with nothing.

Told you I was a dork.

Okay. So I kind of dared myself (in an email to a good friend) to post pictures of myself on my blog. You'll have to settle for old pictures, because I'm old.

Six siblings: Helvie (4), Lynahr (13), Mickey (15), Judayl (10), Gayanne (7), Bevie baggypants(5). Ranlen was up north. I believe this was an Easter picture, the year of my wedding. I didn't wear that suit.

Gayanne and me at grandma's goldfish pond. This was how I usually looked. No shoes. Unbuttoned shirt (because the buttons had all been lost). I was around six. The year Vicki and Debbie fought over me. Oh, and the goldfish were only in the pond that day. The following evening the cat discovered the goldfish pond. When we got up the next morning the goldfish had all disappeared.

Me around age six or seven. This was another common summertime pose for us at Grandma's House. It was cool up there. (Literally) The wind through the pines made it sound like there was a constant crowd watching everything we did.

Mr. Tough. It was raining, which is probably why I'm wearing a nice winter coat. I was five, and this was the first day with my new coat. I'm on my way to kindergarten. I'm wearing my name tag. However, on the way home that day I was laughing on the bus and the driver stopped, came back and beat the snot out of me, tearing my coat in the process. When Mother saw my coat had been torn I got slapped for it. When I told her the bus driver did it I got slapped for torking him off. Life was hard for a little boy in the 60s. Married. Divorced. Dumped by three different girls in the span of less than a year. Talk about not having what it takes. Whew!

.

Fire: Servant or Master

The Old House was in rural Minnesota. It's not quite so rural now as it was then, but even then there were a fair number of new houses.

Several built by the same family. The people who sold The Old House to us kept the barn because the man used it as a cabinet shop. He provided cabinets for new construction. They built next door. The man's brother built next to him. Then, when one of the daughters got married, she built next to her uncle.

Going the other way, the family which built next to us moved: about 1,000 feet to the south. Then another of their children got married and built between them and us. So they built five out of six houses, and owned the sixth at one time. All of those houses are still there - except for The Old House. And I noted that someone built another house in the midst.

But it was still rural. We all had septic systems and well water instead of city provided sewer and water. The little town had no water tower.

In its heyday The Old House encompassed at least a mile of property going north to south. Not sure about east to west. When we lived there a road went by on the east side of the house, and a railroad track on the west side. The railroad was considerably further away from the house than the road, but you could count on being awakened at least twice every night as trains thundered through the crossing, which was also next to our property. The entire house would shake until the last car was gone. For those long freights that could take as much as five or ten minutes.

When we lived there The Old House's property had been reduced to five acres. Most of it field. I remember a couple of years Old Farmer Smith, who lived across the street, rented the field from us and planted field corn. Not only did my folks get paid for his planting, but he agreed that we could harvest some of the corn for our suppers. It was field corn as opposed to sweet corn, but with the right amount of butter and salt it tasted just fine.

Eventually, Farmer Smith got too old to farm as much as he used to and he quit renting the field. Then it just grew up with weeds and tall grass. A nice fire hazard.

Daddy had the solution. A controlled burn.

For us kids this was an exciting time. We got to play with fire.

There was no burning permit. Not back then. Not out in the sticks. But Daddy was no fool. He knew better than to burn on a windy day, or in the day, for that matter. The burn would take place as the sun set. Generally, this meant lighter winds. He would step outside and smoke a cigarette, walking around and letting whatever wind there was blow against him. After gauging the danger he would either declare the burn canceled until another day, or that it was on.

I'm guessing the area to be burned was about three acres. We would generally start at the northeast corner of the field. Before lighting any fires we would haul out several large tubs. Then hoses would be connected and the tubs filled with water. Then burlap bags would be produced (potatoes came in burlap bags in those days - if one bought them by the hundred-weight) and soaked. Once that was done Daddy would light another cigarette and let the match fall to his feet.

He would stand back and watch as the fire spread, stamping out all its efforts to go east or north. One of his children would follow the fire's path south, and one would follow it west. Daddy would then walk to the southeast corner and repeat the ignition sequence. Again, one would follow the fire north, to meet the southward bound flames, and one would follow the fire west. Daddy would move to the southwest corner.

Eventually, fires would be started at each of the field's corners, and between Daddy, Mother, and six of their seven children (Ranlen was up north) the fires would be contained in a large rectangle. Eventually a complete border would be formed and then all the fire herdsmen would gather on the leeward side of the field to catch any sparks that thought to escape. I remember how thrilling and exciting it was to watch all the flames coming together. It looked like a terrible disaster, and I remember one of the neighbors actually panicking once and thinking it was out of control. But just as the flames reached their pinacle, they went out. Nothing more to burn.

The fires would go out and Daddy would instruct us to stick around and make sure all embers were out. Then he and Mother would return to the house to watch television. We stayed out until it wasn't fun anymore to run through the smoking ashes. At that point we would take our wet burlaps sacks and smack anything that hinted of fire. Satisfied, we went into the house, too.

I was reminded of this because recently there was a grass fire not too far from where The Old House used to stand. Nearly every year there is a grass fire in that same area, and every time it is caused by the same thing: some idiot doing a burn on a windy day.

People just don't understand. You don't burn during the day when the sun is hot and the wind is strong. You burn during the evening, when dew fills the grass and the winds take a respite until dawn.

People just don't understand. If the wind decides to stay up late, you don't burn. Wind and fire are a horrible combination. Do you smoke at the gas pump? Well, actually, I have seen idiots do that, too.

Common sense, people. Pick your evening (not day) to burn. Have plenty of help. Have plenty of water and burlap bags. And if it's windy, reschedule. It aint worth it, people. Those idiots who cause hundreds and thousands of acres of land to burn wind up paying for it. Big time. It isn't cheap to be forced to hire professionals to come and put your fire out. Sometimes, people just don't think. That was always Daddy's big peeve with people. He hated stupid. Whenever he came down on me it was generally because I had been stupid.

Of course, it was Daddy who burned down the house. He found an old air filter holder in the weeds and wanted to clean it up. How did he do this? By using gasoline and a wire drill. The wire against metal caused a spark, igniting the fumes which ignited the dish of gasoline. Startled, Daddy jumped away, knocking the gasoline cup over and spilling it onto the lawn mower - which I had just filled with gas in preparation for mowing the lawn. The lawn mower's tires caught fire and burned slowly, heating up the mower's fuel tank. Daddy and I were shoveling dirt into the port, trying to smother the fire into submission. Daddy has just turned away from the door, and I was just heading back to it when I heard the explosion and saw the liquid fire spray the entire room. I don't think the house lasted twenty minutes after that.

No one yelled at Daddy for being stupid. But he punished himself to death. He only lived a year-and-a-half himself.

An Expression From the Past

Stephen receives a lot of exposure on this blog. He gets honorable mentions on a couple of other blogs, too. Daddy is another. It is entirely right and proper that I should do so, I think. They are both gone and I love them both dearly.

I have referenced my new friends more than once here, too, confessing my love for them.

Today, despite it being Animals and Nature Day on A Voice in the Wind, I will confess my love for Spouse. Included with that is Son, for he came from us, at least in part. His spirit comes from God, but the shell it lives in came from us, as well as a few personality quirks, good and bad.

Spouse isn't too keen on frequent mentions on-line. Not keen about Son being mentioned, either. Anything to hide their identity. But I can hardly post without referencing one and/or the other at least sometimes. And because this blogging thing has turned from a selfish display of words to myself into a selfish interactive with others, things slip, and I find myself compelled to reveal more to friends than I did to an empty and impersonal cyberspace. (Hence the addition of gender on my profile.) Spouse is mostly fine with this. I have friends again. It's been a few years.

Anyway, I have been listening to this particular song several times a day for the past five days. It's one of about a dozen I'm replaying over and over again. All take me back at least two decades in time. Some as far back as 1969. Some make me cry. Some make me feel hopeful. Others remind me of Stephen, being young, foolish, and without any cares. This song, also linked at the bottom of the blog, brings me back to the early 1980s. We (Spouse and I) were still in our twenties. We were both thin then (now it's just Spouse). And healthy. And hopeful. And poor. We both worked at the same place (which is how we met). As I drove us to and from work we would listen to radio stations (I'm a station turner). When this song would come on I would sing it. It's been more than twenty years since I remember hearing it last. Stumbled across it the other day. I can still sing it. Just not as well.

The song is important to me because I have watched what has happened to many other families - just in this neighborhood - in which the husband has lost work and can't get/keep another job to replace the one lost. In nearly every other case the wife has taken the children and left. Spouse did not do that. Not even when we lost the house.

It's no fun being undeserving. But it is comforting to be loved. And so my friends, not to take anything away from the love I bear for you, and you know I love you, this expression of love is for Spouse, though she will not read it. If you wish to listen to it, I have a YouTube link at the bottom of the blog. (Today, anyway. That will change at some point in the future.)

Longer, by Dan Fogelberg

Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
I've been in love with you.

Stronger than any mountain cathedral
Truer than any tree ever grew
Deeper than any forest primeval
I am in love with you.

I'll bring fires in the winters
You'll send showers in the springs
We'll fly through the falls and summers
With love on our wings.

Through the years as the fire starts to mellow
Burning lines in the book of our lives
Though the binding cracks and the pages start to yellow
I'll be in love with you.
I'll be in love with you.

Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
Ive been in love with you
I am in love with you..

For better and for worse. In sickness and in health. Wasn't sure I believed it at the time. Now, coming up on 30 years later, time has shown the truth.

Remembering My Sister

So, I took a day off in order to let everyone catch up. I'll try to keep myself in check and avoid multiple post days in the future. Can't promise anything. Sometimes I just get carried away.

It's Saturday, which means I'm scheduled to writer either about Daddy or Stephen. But I found something I want to post instead. It's something I wrote shortly after Lynahr passed away. My siblings asked me to write something about her to be read at the service. I had thought to read it myself, but instead we had the pastor read it. That worked out best. He wasn't crying.

Lynahr

My first recollections of my sister begin when I was around five and she thirteen. Being younger I missed a lot of her life.

Helvie and I were the youngest, and often we were looked after by our older siblings, Mickey, Lynahr, and Judayl. Each did a fine job in their own right.

But there was one thing in particular about Lynahr’s approach which I have never forgotten: it was her instinctive knowledge of how to talk and deal with toddler age children. I saw this again when she lived with Spouse, Son, and me for several months when Son was two. Lynahr knows how to make toddlers feel happy again when things go wrong.

When I was a young toddler, I fell at least as often as anyone. Some say more. None say less. I don’t recall. Too many landings on my head, I guess.

But when I fell and was hurt and came looking for comfort and care, Lynahr was quick to help. And she had a special way of doing it. Lynahr had the “magic button.”

Actually, I wore the “magic button” on my little polo shirt. But I remember crying, and then watching in wondrous awe as Lynahr informed me that the “magic button” would make me feel better.

“And there it is!” she cried. “On your shirt!”

She reached out with her finger and rubbed the button on my shirt. And as I watched, she very carefully touched the elbow, or knee, or whatever had been bumped, and gently rubbed the magic in to make it feel better.

And amazing as it may sound, it worked! Nearly every time.

She told me the magic was with me always in that button. But I knew better. I knew it was the combination of Lynahr and that button which brought healing. No one else could do it. I remember trying it. I remember others trying it. But only when Lynahr was there could it work.

I have another recollection of Lynahr. This time the years have passed and I am now the thirteen-year-old. Lynahr is twenty-one and going through some tough times of her own. Tough times seemed to hunt Lynahr. But they can’t get her now. She’s safe.

But this was the summer when our house burned down. We lost virtually everything. The Red Cross helped us (added later: No, they didn’t. They gave us two boxes of chips and some water. I didn't realize this at the time and only found out at the funeral service when my family jumped all over my case for complimenting them for doing nothing. My family has never had good luck with "offiicial" organizations. It was the neighbors who gave us all the food and things.) And local residents made a collection and gave us some money to help buy clothing and things. And dad’s work made a collection of over a thousand dollars. I remember he was so proud of that.

Well, we went shopping. All of us. Even dad. We got new clothes. We got blankets and sheets for the bed. We got other things. We even got a few groceries to make supper. Then we went to the house which our builder rented to us while we rebuilt.

We were just settling in when a knock came at the door. I was coming up from the basement and saw it was Lynahr. She was carrying a box of groceries. She said she had more in the car. You see, Lynahr had the gift of helps. It was a treasure God gave her and she used it to bless the rest of us.

As Helvie went out and I took the box from Lynahr, Daddy reached into the box and pulled out some toilet paper and cried out, “Lynahr! Lynahr! Lynahr! You are a lifesaver. We completely forgot to buy toilet paper.”

I have no doubt we would have thought about that in time, but Lynahr took care of the need before it was too late.

These are things which I shall never forget about Lynahr. I think they speak volumes about who she is, and why when we think of her we think of a wonderful and caring woman.

But Lynahr wants us to remember her for her faith. I know this because she and I talked several times about what kind of “legacy” we would wish to leave. Lynahr’s was, and is, Christ. And I think that those of us who knew her even slightly would agree that her faith is very much something we think of when we think of Lynahr – before, and now, and later.

At the hospital, after she had left, we stood about her bed with a hospital chaplain. He asked if Lynahr had a favorite passage and we really weren’t sure what it would be. But there was a passage I wanted read for her, and I gave him this:

“For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” 2 Timothy 4:6-8

I know it isn't always nice to push my faith on this blog - especially now that I created one expressly to do just that. (Faith in Forgiveness, if you're interested.) But it was part of what I wrote back in 2001, and it was what Lynahr wanted most to be rememberd for. Even people who had no regard for God remarked with appreciation how she held her faith to the last. I'll try to be better about this, too.

Lynahr died on September 11, 2001, from complications of a necrotized pancreas, two hours after the first tower fell in New York City. I comforted myself by saying all of those people needed a "Magic Button", and only Lynahr could make it work. She suffered for nine months before going home at last.

Daddy's Car

While waiting for Mother to come out of surgery I spoke with Judayl about The Old House, Daddy, and a bunch of other things. I told her my favorite Daddy story and she told me hers. This is her story.

(I also told her I write about him and call him Daddy. She looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Maybe I have.)

After Judayl got her driver's license she asked to use Daddy's car at every opportunity. He usually handed her the keys.

One day he gave her the keys but told her she had to be home by five. She promised she would and left. Well, Judayl being Judayl, she didn't even think about going home until five. So, also in line with her personality, she not only speeded, she really speeded. Unfortunately, as she came into the town of Osseo she got behind some old woman who insisted on driving the speed limit. They got caught at a stop light and Judayl waited impatiently for the light to change. When it did she floored the accelerator and shot around the old woman before the old woman was halfway through the intersection.

Less than a mile out of town Judayl is caught by an Osseo policeman. He informs her that not only was she speeding, but she made an illegal maneuver in passing through an intersection. On top of that, the muffler needed to be replaced.

Judayl put on her cry face and explained that the car belonged to her father and that she was late in getting it home to him. The officer smiled and felt sorry for her. He didn't even give her a warning for her traffic offenses. But he did ticket her for the muffler. She left with the promise she would drive safely. (Not likely.)

When she got home she apologized to Daddy for being late. Daddy wasn't upset. His work had not called and so he hadn't needed the car after all. Then Judayl confessed to being stopped by the police. Only she didn't mention her traffic violations. Instead, she handed him the fix-it ticket for his muffler.

She said he grinned at her like he knew exactly what happened. She's convinced he did. I'm inclined to think so, too.

Daddy appreciated cleverness.