Tuesday, November 26, 2013

THE WAYWARD WIND


                                               
As a young boy, I grew up sharing a bedroom with three brothers on the top floor of an old house in Staples, a block from the railroad tracks. That room—our bedroom--was the only finished off room on that floor, the rest was attic. In the floor was a small register that was supposed to heat the room in the winter. The heat was for all purposes non-existent because my parents heated with wood and at night the fire went out. Even when it was warm downstairs it was at best, tepid in our room. Most of the time we boys slept together in one bed to stay warm. I tell you this not for sympathy or shame because lots of people slept like that back then. I tell you it because it set the stage for me and my life to come.

 In 1956, when I was sixteen, Gogi Grant recorded a song called the “Wayward Wind.” The lyrics were emblematic of what was going on in my life at that time. “In a lonely shack by a railroad track, he spent his younger days. And I guess the sound of the outward bound made me a slave to its wandering ways.” Yes, at night I would lie there and listen to the sound of my brothers breathing, the trains rumbling through town and the winter wind whistling around the confines of that old house and wonder what life had in store for me when it came time to leave. All I knew for sure was, it had to be better then this but I also knew it was up to me to find a better way.

Last night as I laid snug in my bed, some sixty years after Staples, the wind was blowing strong and although it was a muffled wind owing to the sturdiness of my house today, verses that leaky old shack I was raised in, my thoughts went back to those days in Staples. The fears and apprehensive I had back then are probably no different then the fears our young people going out into the world have today We all want to be successful, we all want a better life, but we all have fears that hold us back sometimes. Were naturally somewhat restless-- but sometimes not restlessness enough. It’s that unsatisfaction with our life that makes us look beyond where we are and towards where we want to go. Sometimes we just have to quit listening to the cynics in our minds and believe in our gut.

I started out in life in a job I didn’t like. Why. Because success at the time-- at least for me-- was tied to making money. Fast cars and girls aren’t cheap. Then I got married, settled down and reality set in. I realized that to be happy, I needed to want to go to work each morning, not have to go to work and I took a lot of steps backwards, to go forward again. Fortunately, at that time, I had an understanding wife who believed in me. I ask today’s young people to do some soul searching and think about what you would really like to do with your life and dream big, but be realistic. Dream about what it is within your means and your abilities to do and be honest with yourself? Life is precious and wasting years doing things you hate for  all the wrong reasons is just the breeding ground for a lot of regrets later on There will be bad times in life but fit yourself to them. Don’t be afraid to hitch your sled to that wayward wind that blows in all of us. 

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

THA BEAUTY OF AGE



Have you ever been driving in the countryside and came across old abandoned buildings or farmsteads. I have done this many times and always something urged me to slow down or stop. The sight of those old weathered and dilapidated buildings begged me to know more about the lives that were lived there and if the buildings could talk-- the stories they would tell. There was a time long ago when the occupants, living and working there, were vibrant people with dreams and aspirations like all of us and I want to know if they were happy and if their lives were fulfilled.

Our own bodies are like that as we age. Like those old buildings we weather and turn all gray and lean a little bit. Our exteriors show the ravages and wear of time. The plumbing may leak and the roof covering get’s ragged and thin. Our eyes, the windows to our world, are not so translucent any more. Our frames get crooked and warped. But like those old buildings, it’s what lies inside of us, where the real beauty exists and the real story can be told. For within those often cluttered old minds, lives the genuine truth and the beauty of life.

I was once asked; if I could step into a time machine and was granted one trip, would I like to be eighteen again? My answer was “Only if I knew then, what I know now.”  It took me seventy some years to fill this meandering mind with memories and stories and they are the most precious thing I have right now because in a large part I earned each and every one of them. Were there things I’d just as soon not remember? Yes, many of them, so I have learned to push the delete button more and more as life goes on but sadly you can’t forget anything until, you first remember it. There are things we must forget if we want to go on with life. I learned in life that our hearts memory has a way of doing this itself and magnifying all the good things, if we let it.  Life can be a bit of a paradox for all of us but as we live it, we find out where all the pieces fit together and belong. It would be such a pity to unscramble it and start over again. Eleanor Roosevelt said and I quote. “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”

What would life be without our memories and does it take a lifetime for us to really appreciate what has been going on around us? If old people governed the world, I contend most of this animosity and hate we now see would go away. Are we just to old and tired to hate and fight and that is the reason for our passiveness? I think not. It’s just that we been there before and we know the utter futility of it all. Arthur Golden wrote in “Memories of a Geisha,” Sometimes the things we remember are more real than the things we see.” But my favorite was the ever-humorous Mark Twain who said, “My memory is so good that some times I remember things that never even happened.”

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

TAKE CARE OF OUR KIDS


                                                
When I was teenager and uptown with my dad getting groceries one day, we saw three small kids crying in the back seat of a car. It was terribly hot that day and my dad knew who the kid’s parents were and where they were. They were in the liquor store drinking. When we came out of the grocery store, the kids were still there and crying harder. My dad hesitated for a second and then told me to take the groceries to the car. He went into the liquor store and that was confusing for me because dad didn’t drink. A few minutes later dad came out with the couple and he had the man by the arm and he was shouting at him. They finally got in the car and drove away.

My dad was not a big bruising man; in fact he was anything but. However when it came to kids and his own kids, he was their champion and was not afraid to confront people who abused their children. When he died his estate barely covered his bills and expenses but that was fine with him. He had never lived to accumulate worldly things. His kids and grandkids fulfilled his life. Whenever we had a family get- together’s dad was always in his glory. With eight kids and twenty some grandkids he had, what he saw, as the greatest legacy any man could possibly have.

I think back over my life and the things I am most proud of and my family comes front and center. I have been privileged to know many good families and I sense their pride too. But yet day after day I get letters from originations that ask for help feeding and clothing starving children. These are people like my dad trying to do what they can do to help those abused kids. God bless all of them. But always the question that goes through my mind is why does this exist and how can people not feed and clothe their own kids? How many people today will sit on a bar stool and suck down a three dollar beer or a five dollar drink, feeding their own selfish whims while their kids go without.

No one wants to be the beginning and the end of an era in your family tree. No one wants to think that their influence in their family’s history will go to the grave with them. Rather we want to think that we served as a good example, while we here, to help form the lives of our kids and grandkids. There is no greater award in life then to be remembered as a good father, grandfather and husband. To be emulated and appreciated. All to soon our generation will pass away and a new one will take the reigns. We hope and pray they will have learned from our examples and our mistakes and that they will have the God given common sense to know the difference.

I wish I had a looking glass that would let me know how those little kids in that car, that hot day in my home town, turned out. Hopefully their parents had a change of heart and realized how precious those kids were to them and how wrong they were to do what they did. I pray that those kids grew up to be good people who would never do to their kids, what was done to them but I also hope my dads actions made a difference and they learned as they got older to love and respect their parents.