Wednesday, September 27, 2017

ALL ABOUT LOVE

                                                          

I talked with a dear old friend the other night whose husband is suffering with dementia. It’s progressed to the point that he’s in a memory care unit and she has to leave her home to go visit him and she does this every a day. She told me that in one of her visits he told her, “I want to get up out of this chair and come over and wrap my arms around you.” I want all of you who are living with your spouse or significant other, who still have minds and bodies that work, to think about this. Think about a time when your body no longer works because your mind no longer works and you are locked out of the simplest tasks. You have nothing to offer anyone but love and right now even that is complicated by your inability to even hold your partner.

My grandparents lived into their eighties and their dream was when they couldn’t take care of themselves anymore to move to a facility where they could live out the rest of their lives together and be cared for. They made all of the arrangements and the day came and they seemed so happy even though they knew-- and we knew-- that this was the last stop. That didn’t matter to them; just being together was all they really wanted. They really had little to offer the world anymore and every fiber of their being was now dedicated to just making each other happy. I have a picture of them I treasure, sitting side by side in their room contented.

Then Grandma had a massive stroke and she had to go somewhere else because she was now a complete invalid. My grandfather was devastated as he had no car and very little money and no way to get to Grandma. He begged rides from relatives and spent what little money he did have on cabs. Then one night when I was in my early twenties this old but seemingly otherwise healthy man gave it all up and passed away. My father, his son, came down from up north for his dad’s funeral. It was the only time I ever saw my dad cry. I asked him what happened, why did grandpa die? “It’s was his heart,” he said. “I didn’t know he had a bad heart,” I answered. Dad looked at me his eyes flowing with tears and said. “It wasn’t bad-- it was broken.”

There is no other organ in our bodies that is so in tune with our minds like our hearts. No other organ that can be so adversely affected by the lack of love, the absence of love. Love is truly what makes the world go around. It’s what makes our lives go on and gives us purpose in life. Love is an intricate part of our life’s experience because we are by nature, nurturing people and because we know from experience that to get love you have to give love. People not capable of love, live empty lives indeed.


 Love can be your undoing too as what happened to my grandpa. As people grow old together, all too often they just plain grow together and become one. Become one body and spirit that is totally dependent on being together. It’s a beautiful thing to witness, as mean as it can seem to be when someone is lost. People leave but memories live on and at least for most of us we will have those to nurture until our life is done.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

MALLS

                                                          

I just read an article on the demise of shopping malls, as we once knew them. It is estimated that one quarter of all malls will close, or be in the process of closing in the next year. The culprit is reported to be on-line shoping. It is far more lucrative for stores to sell out of a few distribution points then having buildings and staff to maintain all over the map. Just one more example of how our newfound cyber lives, are eliminating a lot of jobs in retail but its not the whole story.

I’m going back to the 1960’s and a Mall called Brookdale in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis. It had four anchor stores called Dayton’s, Donaldson’s, J.C. Penny’s and Sears. Three of them no longer exist and the fourth, Sears, is fading fast. It seems ironic that Sears first got in business, as a mail order catalog business. That’s snail male, not e-mail. There were maybe fifty other stores that filled out the Brookdale Mall back then. Book stores, specialty-clothing stores, sporting goods stores, drug stores etc. Weekends and holidays it was a busy place.

It wasn’t like you had to go out and shop for most things. You could still sit down with the Sears. Penny’s, Ward’s catalogue and do your shopping from the comfort of your home. Most people chose not to unless it was a hardship to get to the stores. The mall gave them a chance to compare merchandise from store to store. To try on and get properly fitting clothing and shoes. To ask questions about what you were buying. But for most people they just enjoyed shopping this way. So what changed?

When you think about it shopping on line is not that different then shopping from a catalogue was, so it’s not just the ease of shopping from home. Online, pricing seems to be better and the selection bigger so that’s a plus. But I think the real reason comes in taking the time to go shopping. Everybody is too busy now days. Keep in mind the word “Hockey Mom,” was nowhere to be found in those days. People were not working three jobs and overtime to make ends meet. Moms were more apt to stay home and be homemakers. People were just more social to each other. Back in those days, you did talk over the fence to your neighbors, maybe while you were hanging the clothes out on the line. You mowed your own lawn and shoveled your own driveway and didn’t go to the club because there wasn’t one.

Then life got easier in one sense and busier in another. You found ways to bet rid of those meaningless chores but someone had to pay for that. So more hours and more jobs and mom off to work. Now you needed another car, and sessions at the therapist’s office. The roads became more crowded and traveling anywhere was a nightmare. Another new word was coined and it was called “rush hour” and pretty soon you had a belly full of driving anywhere.


Brookdale was bulldozed a while back and Wall Mart moved in. Most of the other malls have had to resort to sideshows like theme parks and water attractions. But slowly and surely they too are losing the battle like Brookdale. My thought today is, what is going to replace Amazon someday?

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

A LETTER TO WILLY NELSON

                                    
So a while back, I planed a little motor trip to the cities to see some friends and family. As always my car radio was tuned to music and namely country western classics. Then I heard this. Willy Nelson, that old pony tailed, weed smoker we all have learned to love, singing his latest song, “I Woke Up Not Yet Dead Again Today.” I had to chuckle at the lyrics because maybe it was his answer to the rumors of his death that floated around for a while. And maybe Willy just ran out of topics for new country music songs to write. Maybe the last woman, who stole her lover’s pickup truck with his dog in it while he was in prison and got hit by a train, is finally history and there is no more to write about.

Willy, I ask you “whatever happened to having more of “Spanish Eyes” or that song I wanted to sing at my Granddaughters wedding but she wouldn’t let me, called,” Here’s To All The Girls I’ve loved Before.” How about “Blue Eyes crying in The Rain” or “Seven Spanish Angels.” But wait maybe its not just your songs Willy. I seem to remember Roger Miller singing about, “Roller Skating in a Buffalo Herd” and that no good “Lucille” leaving him with seven lonely kids and a Crop in the Field, and right after he just became the “King of the Road.” Talk about a let down. Maybe if he would have stayed home once in a while, huh?

Yes Willy, I have often wondered if Marty Robbins ever got out of “El Paso” in his White Sports Coat with that Pink Carnation, Or whatever happened to wicked Felina the girl that he loved, or if Rosa’s Cantina is even still in business? I knew things were getting bad when Ray Price started crooning “Burning Memories” and Jack Scott started singing “Burning Bridges” and the Platters, who aren’t country by the way, got all upset because “The Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” But like Ronnie Milsap said, it was just “Too Late to worry” and “He was Just Too Blue to Cry.”

Maybe Willy as long as you’re still writing music and still on the right side of the grass you could write a new song for all of us country fans. How about a song that takes us back home again, down those country roads like John Denver used to sing about back there in West Virginia along those Blue Ridge Mountains. Maybe we could stop by Butcher Holler, its not that far away. Sit on that that hill where Loretta grew up and watch the coal trains going through. Maybe if we have time we could go see where Patsy grew up and where she “Fell to Pieces” so many times until it drove her “Crazy.”

Somewhere up in heaven there has to be a country music hall of fame. Jimmy Reeves, Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, and oh my how the list goes on. I’m betting there is no closing time up there and the encores go on forever. I can see Minnie Pearl opening the door and hollering “Howdy” to all who go there. Buck Owens with that big smile just standing there “Acting Naturally.” I’m betting there’s going to be a chair with your name on it too Willy but they are just going to have to wait a while--- because this morning you woke up ”Not Yet Dead Again Today.”


Wednesday, September 6, 2017

THE SINKING OF THE QUEEN MARY

                                  

My neighbors had an old rowboat that sat chained to a tree for years and was never used. At one time I actually thought it was holding up the tree. Then they sold the place and the old boat went with it. The new family promptly put it in the lake and put an equally old motor on it and christened it the “Queen Mary.” She sat there tied to the dock with the big boys, proud once more to be part of the fleet. When the family came up for the weekend you would see their teenage son Jack, take his fishing pole and fire up that smoky old Johnson and set a course for the prime fishing grounds. The queen never looked prouder.

Then a few weeks ago they took a vacation to California and the shoreline and dock were deserted, all except for the Queen tied to her moorings. On Thursday of that week we got three inches of rain and the Queen now filled to the gunnels with rainwater had a slight list to port but her bow still stood proud and beckoning to the fishing flats of Big Pine. An area rivaled only by the grand banks of the western Atlantic. I noticed all of this from my house high above the boat but felt the Queen had weathered worse things, so I paid scant attention to the predicament she was in. That put me somewhere in the company of those two guys that were in the crows-nest telling jokes and smoking English tobacco that fateful night when the Titanic kissed that iceberg with such tragic results. Never the less it was late, so I went to bed.

The next morning dawned damp and foggy with a mist that hung over the lake and you could scant see the shoreline. But as the sun came up and the mist burned off, the horror of it all came home. Sometime during the night, the Queen Mary had quietly sunk into the depths of Big Pine Lake. I walked to the dock with a heavy heart. She didn’t deserve this. The fog was still hugging the lake and somehow in the back of my mind, and coming out of the mist I could hear Celine Dion singing, “My heart will go on.” There was an image of a man standing on the end of that ghostly dock, shrouded in the mist that I swear looked just like Leonardo DiCaprio. Kate Winslet must have gone down with the boat I reasoned. I was horror struck.

The next morning the salvage crew-- namely me-- came and raised the queen once more. With a gurgling she came up, bow first. The debris field bubbling up out of the depths, with her once proud bow. Unlike the Titanic she had been found right away and the depths allowed for rapid recovery. Her fuel tank came first, upside down and a snicker wrapper followed. Then a wooden oar and a Styrofoam cup with the words, “night crawlers” written on the side of it. I could only think, “Oh if that old gal could talk, the stories she would tell.” Thankfully no Kate Winslet showed up.


Winched to shore and salvaged the Queen went to dry dock and was re -outfitted. Her holds and bilges were drained. Her fuel tank put back in place and her three horse Johnson dried out. Today she sits snuggly back in her berth, not a casualty like the Titanic but a proud survivor of a near tragedy in the notorious depths of Big Pine Lake. Ah yes my friends. May we all utter together-“ God save the Queen Mary.”