MY DADS CARS

                                                       

My father never placed as much emphasis on his automobiles as I do-- or most of us do for that matter. They were a means to get you where you wanted to go and the more modern you got, the more it cost you to buy it and keep it running. As a young boy in the early 1950’s, my father drove a 1928 Model A Ford. I guess that would be akin today, to someone driving an early 1990’s car in 2017, although a lot of the early 90’s cars had most of the accessories you get in new cars today, minus the Bluetooth Technology.  In comparisons, there was a world of difference between a 1953 Ford back then and the Model A from 1928. The model A was the car that old Henry Ford built that revolutionized automobile manufacturing and made Henry a rich man. The one thing I do remember about them was the simplicity of the car. The gas tank sat high under the hood with a gravity feed system for fueling the car, negating a fuel pump. The engine was a four cylinder, which through the years in later model cars with Ford, changed to a six cylinder and then a flathead v eight and then even a ten-cylinder engine. Today on a lot of modern cars we are back to the four cylinder engines. Albeit a much peppier and more economical one.

 The car was pretty basic and if you were outside standing next to it while it was running or inside sitting in the drivers seat the noise level was about the same. In the winter heat was largely absent and before today’s driving-gloves-- we had driving-mittens. We had things called frost shields on the windows that kept your breath from freezing on the glass but visibility through them was still kind of like looking at someone through a fruit jar. The windshield wipers were vacuum operated, so when you stepped on the gas they quit working and then when you left off the gas, they went like crazy.

The Model A’s had no turn signals and if memory serves me right they had just one tail light on the left side. You used hand signals for signaling your turns, which necessitated rolling down the driver’s window to put your arm out, much to the chagrin of the kids in the back seat in the winter. By the way, that back seat and the front one were about 60% as wide as today’s car seats. At this time there were six kids in our family so you do the math.

The car rode very rough and being high and boxy the wind blew it around a lot, although 45 mph was pretty much the pedal to the metal. On longer trips, which thankfully weren’t many, things could occasionally boil over including the car radiator or the kids in the back seat. You usually carried extra water along for the car and a coffee can for the kids for whatever. My father was an avid cigar smoker so that added to the uncomforting level. The trip to grandpa and grandmas was about 200 miles, so roughly an eight-hour trip. About three and half hours today.

I sometimes talk about the good old days. I think when it comes to the way we treated people and how we acted back then, there is some merit for that kind of talk. But a long ride in a Model A Ford?---Good old days?—Ah not so much.

IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD

                                               

That say that when your passing away, your life and everything you accomplished during the trip flashes before your eyes.  I’m not sure who it was who died and came back to share that with us but I’ll take it for what its worth because I’ve been told, that’s there story and they’re sticking to it and who am I to refute it. I find it somewhat believable because even though I’m still on top of the grass I find myself having little flashbacks from time to time and I hope I’m not gearing up for something bigger and all of this ruminating is just that-- reminiscing that old people do. I do hope this however. That before that time comes, that somehow I will be able to edit this trip down memory lane because I do think it’s a brief one and there are a lot of things yours truly did in his life that he’s not really that proud of, so why bring that stuff back up. No sense getting to the pearly gates with a bad taste in your mouth. That is if the pearly gates are really where I’m heading but that’s a story for another column.

I always remember a song, by that old, beloved gravely voice singer Satchamo-- aka Louie Armstrong-- who sang, “It’s a wonderful world.” In it Louie sings about all of the things he see’s that makes this world such a wonderful world to live in.  He sees the trees of green, red roses, skies of blue and clouds of white. The colors of the rainbow and friends walking by.  Yes, friends shaking hands and saying, “I love you.” And that my friend is the point I’m getting to. That all of those things we witnessed and accomplished in this trip we call life, have little significance when we think about the friends we have made and the people we have loved.

Today as I write this two of my friends are seriously ill with cancer and both are in the fight of their lives’. It is for me another poignant moment in my life, knowing the fight they are in. I am at a point in my life where this happens a lot but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept. I have said before that I have a wonderful memory and I feel blessed to have it. I have found myself on occasion going back in time and thinking about all of the friends I have had, the places I have been and the things I have accomplished. Yes, you don’t need to be on the way out to take this trip through life. But I’m having second thoughts about maybe editing this trip, as I mentioned earlier as the right thing to do, for we need those wrongs for the bad example if nothing else and the resolve to not do them again.

As for the future I think Robert Frost said it best, in his poem, “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening” when he said,

“The woods are lovely dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

ME AND THE CRITTERS

                                               

I have a rather large Pileated Woodpecker that lives in the woods behind my house. Sometimes at night I can hear this big bird boring holes in an old dead tree. He has a rapid fire feature of about 100 hits per minute and Bushman Assault Rifles Company would do well to find a mechanism that works this fast. If the NFL could study this bird, maybe they could keep football players from scattering their brains. He’s been doing it all year and he still seems to have his wits about him. Talk about taking a hit. There is a rumor going around that the tree in California, which had a road bored through it, was really the work of two of these woodpeckers—although it did take them all winter. Keep in mind that this is no ordinary woodpecker, this is a flying jackhammer. All was well until he decided to ventilate my wood siding.

Not prone to shooting critters, to drive the varmint, who was lodged up in the highest eves of my house away, I had to resort to a high-pressure water hose. You don’t want to mess around with an old firefighter when it comes to accurately squirting water. This worked—however, this critter is an early riser so much of my water squirting took place in my P. J’s.,  and I was going on about four hours of sleep a night for the week of the conflict. I had nightmares, when I was asleep and he was hammering on the house, about being pinned down under a barbed wire fence somewhere on the western front of France, and that was not helpful. I think the bird is wearing on me because last night as he flew off, I swear he gave me the old Woody Woodpecker Song. Maybe this is where the phrase, “flipping you the bird” came from.

On another subject—I have apple trees, and being the benevolent person I am, I leave the lower apples for the deer when I pick them. They have been coming on a regular basis and you see them grazing in the morning. The other day I picked the apples, putting them in a few five-gallon pails, which I set on the back porch. Again, I left the lower apples on the tree for the deer. This morning, when I looked out the bedroom window at daybreak, there were no deer to be seen. That’s because they were all up at the house, eating the apples out of the pails. I think, somewhere along the line, they picked up on the mentality that you don’t have to work for your food if you don’t want to. Wonder where that came from?

A few years back I had a skunk under my porch. He didn’t stink, and he rarely bothered anyone, but with my dog Molly, who has been sprayed by skunks in the past—and I think enjoyed it—it was technically always an accident waiting to happen. The problem is, getting the skunk to leave is not always that easy. If you shoot it there, you might as well burn the house down, and being an old firefighter, I do know how to do that, but frown on it, and now having said that, hope I don’t have a fire because I will be in for a lengthy investigation. So instead, my neighbor who is an old Scandinavian, told me to put a bucket of Lutefisk under the porch and they will go away. It was hard to find Lutefisk out of season, but when it arrived I promptly got it under the porch, and sure enough, the skunk quickly moved out. But, I now have two Norwegians who have been casing the place the last few days.  I hope they stay away. Anybody want a bucket of Lutefisk?

VIETNAM

                                                          

I have been watching Burn’s & Novick”s documentary of the Vietnam War. Although there were very few “aha” moments in it for me, simply because I am well versed in the history of it, I did find it compelling and well done. I was not an active participant in that war, however what I want to write about, is how it impacted my family. Before I say that however, I just want to say how proud and yet in a way how sorry I am for all of those who did serve over there. Proud of you because you followed orders and did what was asked of you, by your country. Sorry for the way you were deceived by the politicians who were running our country at that time.

My two younger brothers served in Vietnam. The one who is still alive is a proud veteran, as well he should be but as proud as I am of him, it is the other one I want to talk about. I have seen a replica of the “Wall” that was built to honor those who died in Vietnam. There are names on that wall of people I knew but my brother’s name is not there, even though his life was ruined and indirectly his death was caused by that war. It was his nemesis until his death and in effect, he never left Vietnam.

My brother came home a far different person then when he left for Vietnam and for forty some years the demons that followed him back home, ruled and haunted his life. At first he fought back, married, had a family and started a successful business. But the demons were always there just under the surface. Slowly but surely they resurfaced and he fought back with the only way he knew how. With booze. He truly drank to forget. I was with him many times when those personal battles were being fought. I watched his business fail, his marriage fail and then him fail. He was a talented man and he fought back to redeem himself whenever he got knocked down. He worked hard to bounce back, but always came up short and went back to the bottle. Was there help for him available? Oh I’m sure the answer was yes, but he wanted no part of help from the same people who had deceived him in the first place. In the end when his death was inevitable he asked to be buried between his parents back home. No National Cemetery for him even though he deserved it.

People drink for many reasons. I’m sure I don’t have to tell any of you the heartbreak that accompanies a lifetime of drinking and alcoholism. How it has taken talented hardworking people and turned them into liars, beggars and sometimes thieves. There are a lot of victims when it comes to this disease, most of them powerless to do much about it unless they get the help they need.

Maybe I would have been happier if our country would have looked at what happened in Vietnam and said, never again. That, that war was the example we needed to see how wrong it was to get involved in other countries affairs. But we didn’t and in the ensuing years we repeated it several more times in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and there will be more. And so my brother’s death couldn’t somehow be justified as an example of what can happen, but was left to be just another part of the spoils of a politician’s war. I can’t change history and I can’t bring my brother back but I can write about it so people know the truth and don’t forget.