Yellowriter

Last night, we had a fight at our house.  No, there were no punches flying and nobody was taken out by a ninja throwing star, but there was plenty of drama.  Three of my five kids are home for the holiday and I had to clear the air with two of them, the two youngest ones.  It’s significant that it is the two youngest members of our family because I was way out of bounds and I didn’t realize it at the time.  I went to bed angry and that’s something that isn’t done in our house.  Typically, we stay up until four in the morning, if we have to, in order to settle an issue.  But last night it was an entirely different story.

Someone saved my life last week.  His name is Dr. Bain.  He is the man who scheduled me for my sleep apnea test in Seattle.  I was seen by him three weeks ago and when the lady making my appointment tried to push my appointment to 2012, he stood behind her and said, “No - get him in as soon as possible.”  The good doctor knew that I was dying.  I wasn’t dying in a dramatic way like someone suffering from cancer.  The truth is that I had not slept through the night in over 13 years and because of my apnea, I was dying a little at a time.  The first night I woke up 667 times and woke in the morning like always, exhausted.  The second night I was hooked up to a machine that blew filtered air into my nose.  I slept 9 hours uninterupted and woke feeling like a new man.  My path to becoming a grumpy old man had been sidetracked; I had forgotten what it felt like to feel good.  It has been 7 days and I feel like a new man.

I tell you this because I wasn’t expecting to loose my cool.  But I did.  I got mad because my two kids, aged 21 and 23, were basically telling me to mind my own business.  I was meddling and wasn’t aware of my level of annoyance.  The truth is that I was driving my kids nuts and couldn’t understand why my son and my daughter did not want me in the private part of their lives.

I have always been a meddler.  I routinely stick my nose into things I have no business in and I constantly have to police my mouth.  I used to work with a man named Damon who knicknamed me “Miracle Whip” because he claimed that whenever I heard something I sweetened it up and spread it around.  I realize that being a gossip is different than be a meddler, but the two are cousins in the scheme of character flaws, one inevitably leads to the other.  My problem is that I am very opinionated and feel the need to pontificate on every subject, or, at least, I used to.  Opinions are like garbage cans - almost everyone has one and some of them stink!  I was meddling in my kids’ lives.

So I was feeling steamed and disrespected when I tried to sleep.  The answer came to me just after 3 AM.  What I needed to do was place the two youngest members of the family in the same category as the other three.  I need to let them be adults.  It was a middle of the night epiphany - My days as a father were over.  It was time to become a friend.

So I set the adults down, apologized, and vowed to stay out of their beeswax until asked.  I explained that the sermons on the mount were over.  Dad is not giving advice unless asked.  I do this with my three oldest children and it works.  When my second oldest daughter told me how she and her husband were “medical marijuana” growers in Colorado and how she wanted to show me her six foot tall plants I said, “That’s interesting” and I took the tour.  There’s nothing else I can do.  She’s 26, a mother of two, and she can make her own calls.  I didn’t offer her my advice or my opinion.  Those days are over.  On the flip side, when Jenna, the third oldest at 24, called last month to ask my opinion on buying a home in Tennessee I did some research and gave her my spin.  The virtual tour and the comps bore out.  The interest rate was great so I told her it was a nice call.  Her and her husband, Rich, or Ricardo as I refer to him, closed escrow on Friday.  It’s all part of the process.

So maybe it will be a fun Christmas afterall.  The presents are wrapped and while I write this there are five young people around my kitchen table painting Christmas cookies for our yearly delivery to 18 of our neighbors.  Clay Aiken’s Christmas CD is playing and Natalie, my oldest at 28, is building a gingerbread house on the counter.  They are all laughing and having a good time, oblivious to the fact that the guy at the computer is checking out of the father business.

So what will I do?  There will be unused energy so maybe I’ll use my extra gumption to thank people like Dr. Bain for saving my physical life. My emotional life is up to me and God. In any case, I’ve got some decisions to make and I’ll have some extra time on my hands, so what’s a guy to do?  I haven’t finished the new Sue Grafton novel yet so there’s that.  Maybe I’ll send a couple more Christmas cards to those who may have slipped  through the cracks.  On second thought, maybe I’ll paint a cookie or two.  But I won’t be a dad policing his children while they work on an art project.  I’ll just be one of the gang.  I’m turning in my father badge and I’m ready for the change. Merry Christmas.

On Monday, I got ripped off at the carwash.  Days to wash a car in the Pacific Northwest are few and far between so when the paper forecasted four days of sun, I decided to take a chance.  Annie, my wife, is still recovering from surgery so she crocheted in the Rav4 while I operated the brush and the spray nozzle.  I was about halfway done when a couple of guys appeared from what I thought was the adjacent stall asking for change.  I was flush with quarters so I tapped on the glass and Annie opened the car.  She gave me the four quarters I asked for and started to say something but didn’t.  I handed the quarters to one of the men and asked if the change machine was broken.  He didn’t answer; he only stared.  I held out my hand for my dollar and he nodded, turned and he and his friend disappeared.  I did notice that both men had tattered clothing and looked (and smelled) like they needed a bath.  My wife just smiled.  She knew I’d been had.

Part of the problem is projects.  When I get started on something, I forget all of the facts on the periphery.  When I start on a book revision, I actually forget to eat.  I switch into mad scientist mode and can only see the task before me.  “Give my manuscript life!” I cry out in Frankensteinesque fury.  That’s the reason I didn’t notice the bums at the carwash.  Can we call them bums?  What is the new word, the disenfranchised?  Maybe the 99 percent?  To me, they were homeless and hungry and they both probably wanted to get high or drunk or both.

Bob Baker is a guy who used to be a bum.  I met him at Central Christian Church in Lancaster, California in 1999.  He is a peach of a guy and he is very candid about how dim Christians and others are about handling street people.  “I always knew I was going to get high when I met a Christian,” he told me.  “They are a soft touch.  Some would try to give me food, but before I was done talking I ended up getting cash most of the time.  They’d go home thinking they did a good deed when the reality of the situation was that they financed my addiction.”  I still meet people who think that giving money to homeless people is a good idea.  A better idea would be to give them a jar of peanut butter.  It keeps and is loaded with protein.

So what is happening in America?  When will things return to the good old days?  Answer - never.  So why not?  Lots of reasons.  The Internet has shrunk the world and now the competion for a good job isn’t just the guy who sat next to you in economics class - it’s the whole world.  And that guy in China, Peru, Madagascar or Nigeria will do it for less - alot less.  The reality is that most of the high paying jobs that were the standard of the labor market are gone and we have to accept the fact that most of our children will not have as much as we do.  Another problem - we train people not to work.  The welfare system is mostly a big scam and people who use the system benefit.  The statistic about more than fifty percent of kids being born out of wedlock is as much a beancounter problem as it it a moral one.  When mommy is unwed, the taxpayers pick up the tab.  Then there’s welfare, WIC and food stamps.  A life time of living off of other people.  Sleep in, play video games and cash your check.  After all, you deserve it!  And what about unemployment benefits?  We’ve stretched them out so long that people actually forget what it’s like to put in a forty hour work week.  I know people who used to make six figure incomes who haven’t worked steady in years.  They are waiting for the $45 an hour job to make a comeback, but it’s gone baby - long gone.  When I ask them why they didn’t apply at fast food joints, to a person, the response was exactly and verbatim the same, “it’s beneath me.”

The apples in Washington were rotting on the trees.  The $22 an hour jobs went unfilled.  It is tough, back breaking work, but it pays.  The growers ended up hiring felons to pick apples.  Most of the jail birds owed money to victims so it was a win win.  The vics got the wages, the apples got picked and the convicts got to get out of their cells for awhile.  All of the screaming about immigration might be true.  Americans are too proud to do manual labor.  When our daughter, Lauren, decided to drop out of college and join the Air Force, we supported her decision, but she had to work.  Her friends told her that there “are no jobs” in Port Angeles, Washington.  She applied at five places and got all five jobs offered to her within forty-eight hours.  She took the one at Wendy’s because they could offer the most hours.  It was a great experience for her.  When I told a friend of ours, a local judge, that Lauren was going to work fast food until she went active duty, he laughed.  When I assured him it was the truth he quit laughing.  “I can tell you that none of my children will ever work in the fast food industry”………..(wait for it)….”it’s beneath them!”

 The truth of the matter is that with over seven billion hungry people on this planet, the pie will continue to get smaller.  It has to and until something is done about over population, that pie will keep getting smaller.  The problem for Americans is that the other tenants on this ball will work for less and business will exploit that.  They have to - it’s what they do and it isn’t evil.  Their job is to constantly make the bottom line better.  Look how our country has changed.  In 1970, the biggest employer in the US was General Motors.  That was the standard, high paying union jobs with benefits galore.  In 2010, the biggest employer was Wal-Mart which doles out minimum wages and limited benefits.  In our city the Super Wal-Mart moved in - the Death Star - and small businesses are going under.  Albertsons and Safeway are struggling to compete with Wal-Mart’s bottom line and in a matter of time, most of those union paid cashiers will be out of work.  Then they get to join in the five year cycle of unemployment that I talked about earlier and what a vicious cycle it is!  And in five years we will have another wave of people who have simply forgotten how to work!

The answer I have for my children is work.  Don’t be ashamed to get your hands dirty.  Out work the competition.  Never say the words “that job is beneath me.”  You may not be wealthy, but you’ll always have a place to sleep and food for your belly.  The alternative is to start that slow slide, that slow slide that ends with asking perfect strangers for money.  Yes, you are going to be asked to support the growing band of what my friend, Bob Baker, used to be, bums.  Most were probably once proud members of our work force, but the system has run its coarse and left them on the bottom of the food chain, asking for a buck in quarters at a self service carwash.  They’d work for the money, but they can’t seem to remember all that is required to trade labor for wages.  It is simply beyond them and even the most simpathethic of bleeding heart liberals weep at the trainwreck that started out as basic altruism.  The truth is that we have ruined the very people we wanted to help.  But they’re still hungry, dirty and desperate to get high, desperate to not feel the pain of existence, for that is what their once promising lives have become - existence.  They will continue to ask for that dollar in any form you can spare.  It is an unquenchable fire that will never be satisfied.  America, we’ve created a monster and that monster is us.  The request for cash will never stop.  It is what we’ve made it.  My advice to my readers is to hold on to that dollar - you’re probably going to need it!  

The World Series is getting ready to start and I made a bet.  Every year, I bet my father on the World Series (known to some as the Fall Classic) and the Super Bowl (known to some as a really good excuse to have a party).  The amount of the bet never changes.  The wager is a nickel.  Yep, five whole cents.  Last year he won the series and I held out until December to pay him his winnings.  We both like to joke about a fictitious man named Leon who works as an enforcer of sorts.  We both hire the spectral strongman in an attempt to make the other pay.  It is a running gag that I’m glad to say doesn’t get old.  It’s just another excuse to talk to my dad of 83 years.  I’m not sure how many bets we still have between us, but I pray it’s at least 30 or 40 more.

There are many proverbs about perspective.  The one that is the most popular is “I used to feel sad because I had no shoes, but then I met a man who had no feet.”  The moral of the story is to count your blessings.  Life has a way of throwing us curve balls and most of the time, we whiff.

Most everything we do is propelled by attitude.  I have to admit that I tend to look on the dark side of things.  When my dad was battling cancer, he labeled me “Doctor Death” and I hate to admit that the tag fit.  In many ways it still does, but I’ve taken the first step - I’m aware of my tendency to be negative.  I made a mental list of all of the negative thinkers in my life and concluded that these folks are not too much fun to be around.  I think we all gravitate to that joking person who is easy with a smile and generous with an encouraging word.  I know I do.  I used to work with a woman named Jolene who actually got prettier the more I looked at her.  I concluded that it was her countanance.  She smiled liberally and had an infectous laugh.  It was all about attitude.

I had to get a gut check last week in the attitude department and it challenged my attitude in a big way.  My wife, Annie, came home from the doctor and said that she had a lump in her breast and there was concern about a lymph node as well.  I gritted my teeth and tried to be supportive.  I failed.  I failed and Annie was the one who set me straight.  She told me that “If I have cancer, I have it for a reason.  It just means that God wants me to talk to somebody.”  I took it up with God and asked Him to please spare her life.  Most of my request was centered on me.  I was worried for her, but deep down inside I don’t know what I would do without her.  The bottom line is faith.  We either have it or we don’t.  We either live it or we don’t.  If we believe that God is good (and we do) then we must accept the difficult things that come our way. 

His name is Irv Sykes.  His son was killed by a drunk driver 8 days before he was to wed a lovely girl named Nancy.  His boy was only 22 years old.  The car that slammed into Irv’s son’s car hit it so hard that the engine flew out of the crushed coffin on wheels.  I stood near him as he wept at his boy’s funeral.  He said, “My boy should not be in that box!”  It was a terrible day.  It was a wicked curve ball.

Months later our church rented out a space at the local fair.  We gave out literature and New Testament Bibles.  I volunteered to work the late shift one night and it was near midnight when a grizzled man walked by and stared me down.  I said hello and he remained silent as he passed.  Ten more steps.  He turned and walked back to me. “Does Irv Sykes go to your church?  Do you know him?” he asked.  I told him yes to both questions and then asked him if he’d take a Bible and some pamphlets.

“I will, but not for the reasons you might think.” he replied.  “What is your reason?”

He smiled, showing his yellow, crooked teeth.  “I don’t believe in God and I’m not a religious man, but I work with Irv Sykes.  I’ve been watching him and he confuses me.”

“How?”

“He just keeps going.  He isn’t bitter or angry.  I don’t know what I’d do if someone killed my son.  Probably go crazy.  But Irv has……”

“Faith?” I interjected.  He smiled again.  “Yeah, so I’ll take what you’re handing out.  Irv has something that I just don’t understand,” he said as he turned to go.  I stuck out my hand, but he shook it quickly without telling me his name.  It didn’t matter.  God knows who he was.  Then I realized that Irv was actually one of the few people who could straighten out a curve ball and hit it into the bleachers.  His attitude was his bat.

The needle biopsy took place last Thursday.  I waited in the hospital waiting room as Annie was subjected to a needle the size of a super soaker water gun.  She told me that the doctor began spelling out her oncology sessions before he stuck the needle in.  He didn’t like the shape of the lump and he could see lines and shapes inside of the supposed mass.  The doctor’s face went white when the lump drained entirely into the needle.  “Cancer isn’t liquid,” he said over and over.  He shook her hand, still dumbfounded and scurried from the room.  Looks like he was wrong.  Or was he?  I believe that we got a miracle.  The lymph node turned out just to be irritated so all is well.  This curve ball was instead a balk.  Yes friends, God called a balk.

Anyone reading this may be facing some insurmountable problem or situation.  All I can tell you is that it’s all about attitude.  Sometimes we get the curveball and have to fight just to stay in the game.  When a curve ball doesn’t curve, smack it!  When it does curve and we miss, take heart.  You still have two strikes left and with a God as big and powerful as we all have (whether you aknowledge it or not) we can still go deep. 

I hit a golf ball off of a cow pie.  That’s a turd to most people and the beauty of the whole affair was that I lined up my shot from that dried out piece of excrement.  It was something that I always wanted to do.  Everyone stood clear while I belted that little white ball from atop my brown makeshift tee.  I hit it straight and got just enough elevation to clear the water trap, which was an irrigation ditch we used to swim in on hot summer days.  What would make a person play golf in a pasture?  It was nothing less than a family reunion.

The farm is 600 acres that sits on the border between Wyoming and Nebraska.  My Aunt Willie still has to cross the street (a dirt road) and go from Wyoming to Nebraska to fetch her mail.  It was a wonderous place for me as I was growing up and the trip back for a Labor Day weekend reunion of the Willadsen clan was worth it all.

My mom grew up on that farm and it was only a sod house when she was young in the 1930’s.  My mother always had a fear of snakes and the reason she said was that snakes would come through that wall of the sod house and frighten her in the middle of the night.  Most of the snakes were bull snakes, which are harmless, but there were some encounters with rattlesnakes that she refused to even discuss.  A farm house replaced the sod walls and in the late 1960’s, indoor plumbing was installed.  I remember having my seventh birthday at the farm and all that week I went to bed thirsty.  I didn’t want to have to venture to the outhouse in the middle of the night so I quit taking liquids after dinner.  I had thought I made only one trip to the farm in 1965, but my cousin, Steven, who was born in that year remembers an incident about the time he was five, circa 1970.  I was twelve and I stepped on a chopped off root from a sunflower plant.  The thing was jagged and stuck in the bottom of my foot.  I flashed back and remembered the pain, but Steven remembered something else.  He told me over lunch in Seattle last year that his mother took him aside and told him, “you are never to say any of the words that just came out of Cousin Wade’s mouth!”

The previously mentioned water trap is an irrigation ditch used to water cattle.  We swam for hours in that muddy water.  We sometimes were more refined and used the horse trough.  All of these memories filled my mind and senses as we spent the part of three days with up to sixty people.  I met people I was related to that I had no idea existed.  My cousins played live music, we ate outside and a tad bit of beer was consumed.  I took my video camera and logged parts of the three day event.  There were horseshoes, bonfires and relatives camped out all over the property.  The only downside was the kick Aunt Willie received from the wild Bay mare that needs to be broken.  She went on like a trooper because she simply knows no other way.

The people of that generation truly are made of stronger stuff.  We’ve gotten comfortable, as Americans, and that makes us soft.  Comfort is not at the top of the list for those people who still remember World War II.  They were and are pioneers and I thank God that I have their hard-working blood flowing through my veins.  My name is Powers, but I am a Willadsen.  I resemble my uncles and even have the same body type.  We are all roughly the same height.  My grandfather was Viggo Valdimar Willadsen and he was born in Copenhagen, Denmark.  My mother never cared for her father and he died when I was just a baby so I had no chance to form my own opinion.  Sometimes I think I’m more like him than I would like to be.  I need to be fair to the man for two reasons.  One is not knowing him, thus going on heresay, and the second reason is that I would not be here without him.  He sired five sons and two daughters.  Only Uncle Pete (his real name is Charles Deloss) and Uncle Smokey (real name of Stanley) are left.  I saw both of them on this trip and it was a joy just to sit around and visit over a coffee (or eight)!

The point is that this life is nothing short of crazy and the only thing that really counts is family.  The ones you are related to are truly a person’s foundation.  So what does it matter?  It matters because people are often cruelest to the ones who love them best.  People let loose in these types of relationships because of the safety involved.  Teenagers sometimes are mean to their parents because in their hearts they know that there is always unconditional love.  The action this should spur is for those reading this that are on the outs with family.  Send an e-mail, write a letter, send a text, ask to be a friend on Facebook or pick up a phone.  In this life, family is all we have.  Test that unconditional love and try to make things right.  You’ll be surprised how easy it all is because these are people who love you period with no strings attached, except heartstrings.  There was a song in the seventies called “Reunited.”   One of the phrases says, “and it feels so good.”  Ah, the wisdom of the generation of 8 track players and leisure suits - get reunited.  I can vouch for the fact that it indeed feels so good.    

It’s that time of year for most of us, fair time.  Last night Annie and I went over to the Clallam County Fair in Port Angeles, Washington.  The fairgrounds are only about five miles from our house and the parking is free.  Free is a beautiful word.  We paid $16 for admission (that’s less than going to a movie these days) and spent hours wandering around looking at exhibits.  We saw a lady we know from the Chamber of Commerce and spent some time catching up on all the latest news.  While Annie and woman talked, I listened to recorded music and watched an old woman dance with her dog.  I kid you not.  The local kennel club puts on a program where dogs and their owners compete by doing routines with their canines.  I watched her circle and saw her pup leap and turn at the appropriate times thus giving the crowd of fifty spectators a show for the ages.  Thunderous applause was heard as the song ended.  I thought to myself, how corny! 

The food is another spectacle.  Deep fried twinkies, oreos and alas, pickles.  We actually ordered deep fried dill pickles!  It tasted pretty good too.  There was Thai food, Mexican food and even Indian tacos, which kind of look like a sloppy joe on steroids!  I had a shaved ice, always a treat, and then we listened to a band of three guitars.  They were accomplished and the crowd of forty people loved them.  I then got some teriaki on a stick and decided that that was enough fair food.  I thought about all of the unhealthy deep fried cuisine and thought about a comic strip I had recently seen.  The people were at the county fair looking at all of the deep fried vendors.  The last sign read “deep fried lard” and the man in the cartoon admitted that he didn’t see that one coming!  I did have one last morsel; I ate sweet corn on the cob.  I had it, sans butter, with a little salt and a lot of pepper.  It was the best food of the night.  Keep your deep fried whatever - God’s food is always the most delicious.  I pondered all of the choices and concluded, fair food is corny.

We saw many folks we’ve been missing and drank coffee as we strolled around the ten or so rides that happy teenagers were standing in lines for.  There was even a baby roller coaster for the little ones.  There was a monkey maze house and a ride we used to call the scrambler.  I remember throwing up after that one when I was about eleven.  Now I just watch and keep my fair food.  All in all it could be summed up in one word, corny.

We stayed to watch a tribute band to the Eagles called “Desperado” and they were quite talented.  Our fair is too small and too short (4 days) to snag any headliner acts so most of the bands are retro or tribute groups.  We saw a group that mimicked Creedance Clearwater Revival two years ago and they really put on a show.  We did get Johnny Cash’s nephew last year, but that’s about as big name as it gets in a town of just over nineteen thousand people.  As the band was wrapping up, the night air was cooling us down.  Annie snuggled against me as I watched people dance in front of the tiny stage.  I could hear the delightful screams of kids riding the rides and the sky was lit up brightly with the neon designs and signs.  Yes, it’s corny, but that’s how we roll up here.

Pick up the newspaper or turn on the news.  They’re burning luxury cars in Germany, protesting in Israel and England just finished their riots of socialism.  There’s fear of a new recession and the jobs in America are nowhere to be found.  Libya is in civil war and thousands are starving in Africa.  The world is a big scary place.  My advice is to take a holiday from the stress.  Turn off the TV, put down the paper and go and find some fun and not just any kind of fun, corny fun.  Sometimes we just need corny.   

Okay, so I’ve been gone for a bit.  What motivated me this go around were phone calls from people wondering why it had been so long since I blogged.  Blog is a strange word and I’m afraid that it will go the way of the Beta Max, the pager and the short-lived Laser Disc.  It’s all about instant communication and that means a lack of privacy.  When our daughter is with us I have to get used to the continual grinding noise her phone makes telling her that she has a new text message.  Now with Skype, we can look at each other while we talk on said cell phones.  The cartoon summed it up best when the lad asked his wise uncle what Skype meant.  He replied that it “is an old Latin word that means don’t answer the phone naked.”

So why the hiatus?  Part of it is that fact that blogging is severely old school, but mostly it’s just me.  My sister died last summer and she has been on my mind a lot this past ten months.  One of my daughters is having marriage problems.  I don’t get to see my grandkids enough.  You can see how a blog can morph into a “woe is me” tune rather quickly.  But the real reason is a combination of busyness and laziness.

With Annie’s editing prowess, I have finished my latest novel.  It is called The Resurrection Factor and represents my first attempt at a classic spy novel.  It is remarkably different from my first two novels, Specter of an Accident and Skinware, in that it involves a joint mission of the American CIA and the British Foreign Service.  The characters are well developed and memorable.  It is set against a possible limited nuclear war between Pakistan and India and is intense, to say the least.  Most readers will pull for India after we found out that those Pakistani weasels were using the billions in American aid to house and protect Bin Laden.  That son of a biscuit eater is worm bait in hell and I say it’s about time.  Also, a shout out to President Obama for using unconventional means to nab this murderer. 

So I started thinking that instead of self publishing, I would try to get an agent.  Selling a book is not unlike selling a house and a trained professional seems to be the answer.  Of course I have high hopes that the books will sell, but it is no longer an obsession.  I saved all of my rejection letters in the past and have enough to cover a billboard, but those are just reminders of my tenacity.  I refuse to give up and I plan on rejection in some things because that is life.  At one time I wanted to have a bonfire for all of my rejection letters, but I can’t seem to light the match.  In the grander scheme of things, our failures contribute mightily to who we are as people.  No, there won’t be a fire; I’ll continue to collect them.  They have something to say about me.

Most people collect things.  One lady I know collects Coca Cola merchandise.  Another friend has a rare collection of baseball cards (including a complete 1952 set!) - that Mickey Mantle rookie card cost a lot of bubble gum.  I like old science fiction movies.  I suppose that they remind me of a time when life was simpler and it was fun to lay on the living room floor and be scared of movie monsters.  Sure, you could see the strings on the giant spider puppet, but it was still fun.  I saw “Missile to the Moon” when I was ten and the rock monsters in that film kept me up at night.  I watched it again (I’m 52) and I could see the actor’s noses trying to poke through the rubber masks.  Will I watch it again?  You bet.  I have almost 500 movies mostly from the fifties and sixties, but some of the movies go way back.  I have the silent “Nosferatu” and that is just creepy.  I’m actually somewhat of an expert on old sci fi and monster flicks.  Maybe someday I’ll host a late night TV show with commentary on cheesy old monster movies.

My point is that we all collect something.  I used to collect baseball stadiums in my mind.  I have been to 48 different Major League Baseball venues.  I only have Minnesota’s Target Field on my radar now.  I don’t buy souvenirs from these places because it is the experience that I am after.  I guess you could label them as memories and they are indeed precious.  There’s a picture of my mom above my desk and all I have left are memories and they are treasures.  My dear departed sister left me some gifts as well.  Someday, I too will be just a memory.  How I live and love today will determine how many will want to join in.  Collectors in the thing called my life. 

Yesterday was one of those days filled with surprises.  I started out on a five mile walk under overcast skies and a developing gloom over the nearby Olympic Mountains.  My wife reminded me to take my cell phone so she could fetch me in the car in the event of a sudden downpour.  By the time I was at the end of our street, the clouds lifted and there was brilliant sunshine.  I wished that I had remembered my sunglasses.  I stopped to feast on wild blackberries and took a different route downtown.

I noticed an old house on Lopez Street that I had not seen before.  It was a small dwelling with a sprawling yard and an old wooden fence.  As I passed the fence, I peered between the slats and saw a delightful sight.  There was an ornate waterfall flowing into a huge pool filled with goldfish.  I hesitated, to enjoy the view, and then went on my way.  After getting some things at the local Rite-Aid, I headed back up the hill.

There is a flower shop on 8th Street and it is owned by a man who moved here three years ago after his retirement from the Washington D.C. Police Department.  Mike is a jolly man and he loves flowers.  He worked with flowers as a youth and returned to the task with his wife, Gail, after his law enforcement days came to an end.  Annie, my wife, noticed last week that his shop seemed to be closed.  We talked about his health and the trip we had taken to the hospital the year before to visit him after a medication reaction.  We found that he had just checked out moments before we arrived and we were glad that it wasn’t more serious.  But a closed business means something.

I changed my course and walked by the empty flower shop.  There is a lock smith shop next door and my plan was to ask about Mike.  To my surprise, Gail was in the flower shop, cleaning up.  She told me that Mike had died and I felt terrible not only for her loss, but also for the fact that I missed the funeral announcement in the local paper.  I tried to encourage her, but on my way back up the hill, the sunshine was not nearly so dazzling.

I thought back to the last conversation I had with Mike.  Lauren, my daughter, was just off to the Air Force, and he asked about her permanant assignment.  I told him that she wanted to go to Europe and he actually became distressed.  He stressed over and over that she should not go to Europe and I was starting to get irritated.  We were coming to the point where I was going to tell him to mind his own beeswax and thankfully, an interuption of some sort stalled the confrontation.  I think God made sure neither one of us lost his cool.  On the way home I told my wife about it and wondered, “what concern it was to him if Lauren got stationed in Europe” when Annie set me straight.  “You know that his daughter was in the Peace Corps in Europe?” she asked.  “No, so what?” I asked back.  “She was raped and murdered in Europe; that’s why he’s afraid for our daughter!”  Now, I felt like a heel.  I had no idea of the suffering this man and his wife endured.

So then the thinking begins.  The experiences of our lives change us.  We like to beleive that we all stay the same, but it is a lie, my friend.  I know that the death of my mother altered me at a gut level.  In July, my fifty-three-year-old sister was found dead in her apartment.  Sometimes I just hold the cross stitch book marker she made for me in 2007 in my hands and think of her.  I know that all of the tragedies in my life have changed who and what I am.  Mike was altered by the death of his little girl.  It doesn’t matter if she was twenty or fifty-three - they are always someone’s little girl.  As I write this I’m looking at my favorite picture of my parents.  My mom in her Nebraska Cornhusker sweatshirt hugging my dad, both with electric smiles caught unaware to the subjects of the photograph.  The conclusions leads me to some humble and logical observations.

First, to be human means pain and loss.  It’s all a part of the package and we must accept this fact or go mad.  Second, everyone gets their turn - death and devastation levels the playing field.  Third, and most important, you have to develop an understanding of just who is in control.  Folks, God is calling the shots and He isn’t sleeping on the job.  Life is how it is meant to be, but all of that means nothing if it fails to direct us toward the Director.  Yes, you will be changed, but I pray it is for the better.  The next time a confrontation looms consider the path you’re would-be opponent may have walked.  Look for opportunities to extend compassion.  That’s a change we all can live with…and one I intend to make for myself.  

He started the sermon by asking, “What is it that makes you happy?”  That’s a good question and it can be rather thought provoking.  One of the things he said, that made him happy, was his mother’s homemade bread on Tuesdays.  He graphically described the end piece of the crust, hot and dripping with butter.  It makes me hungry even now, although I just had a meal.  For myself, there are a multitude of things that bring a smile to my face.  My relationship with Annie, my wife, is at the top of the list.  She is currently on a road trip to Texas with our youngest daughter, Lauren, who serves in the U.S. Air Force.  Five days in a car from Washington State to San Antonio - that’s a Radio Flyer memory!

I should explain by going back to the sermon.  The pastor was on vacation so the layman was at the helm and he did a marvelous job.  I suppose that is the goal of any worthy message, to get you to think.  The story that stuck in my brain was when he told of being a hardened seven-year-old orphan who had switched from one foster family to the next.  The child showed no emotion and was convinced that the county people would one day soon whisk him away to a new family.  But this particular family had other ideas; adoption was on their radar screen.  He talked of how his new Radio Flyer wagon was the joy of his life and he even washed alongside his soon-to-be-father on the driveway.  One day he was “flying” down the driveway when he took a nasty spill into the gravel.  The rocks cut his limbs and even embedded themselves into his skin for extra pain and insult.  But the hardened foster child did not cry; he simply did not cry for any reason, even when the county people came to take him away.  Eventually he ended up in a rocking chair in his mother’s lap.  She whispered into his ear, I love you.  You are mine and nobody is ever going to take you away from me.  A flood of tears started to flow.  That, my friend, is a Radio Flyer moment!

I am often given books and sermons by people I know and I invariably promise to listen or read the material.  A lady in my Thursday night Bible study gave me a sermon from a church in Sequim, Washington.  I listened to it yesterday.  The pastor spoke from Romans chapter seven and the bulk of his comments were focused on what he believed to be a fallacy, the eternal security of the believer.  What that means in non-theological egghead terms is that once a person trusts in Jesus Christ for salvation, can that person lose their position in heaven?  Most Bible believing churches, thankfully, can answer in the negative.  Also, a majority of the great theological minds, including Luther, Calvin, Hodge, Spurgeon, Lewis, Swindoll, MacArthur and Laurie, do not believe that a person who was truly saved can ever be lost again.  But should we confess something simply based on the majority?  No, but it isn’t my point to debate the man.  The sermon was delivered well and was interesting.  He started  with a business analogy and referred to what would be a sound procedure for business in the later part of his sermon.  I have a business degree so these metaphors made me curious.

Lauren just called from New Mexico.  Her description was “boring and hot.”  They should make it to El Paso tonight if all goes as planned.  Then my daughter will have a safe, reliable car to transport her to work, the chow hall and church.  She plans to go to Max Lucado’s church on Sunday.  That makes me happy.  Better than homemade bread is the fact that my little girl wants to worship.  That is a Radio Flyer moment for a dad.

Another Radio Flyer moment will be when I meet my darling bride at the airport.  It is a sad and lonely place without her at home.  Sure, I have the two toy poodles, but belly rubbing doesn’t make me happy.  Kiki and Jett enjoy it, but can’t a guy just watch the baseball channel in peace?  The reunion will be grand and that makes me happy.

I suppose writing makes me happy too.  Add it to the list of old science fiction movies and dishes that Annie cooks up from my mom’s recipes.  When I get to missing my mother (gone over seven years now) some creamed salmon over crackers makes me feel just fine.  Her sloppy joes are another pick-me-up.  But the thing that makes me happiest are the memories.  Call me a momma’s boy if you like, but there is nothing like the love a man has for his mom.  Sometimes I look at her picture hung in my office and smile.  Lots of Radio Flyer moments.

So that takes me back to the sermon on CD.  Some people would get upset over the pastor’s view of losing salvation.  From a business angle, it makes perfect sense and makes me want to label the man a genius.  These days, when church attendance is down and people are leaving churches in droves, his approach is masterful.  If people are AFRAID that they may lose their salvation, how could they ever leave the church?  Or what about differing with pastor?  That may be grounds to lose one’s place in glory eternally?  Fear motivates.  This pastor has more job security than most federal workers.  He will never lose his job as pastor.  Why not?  The people would be too afraid of possible future ramifications.  From a worldly perspective, this guy has it made in the shade.  I only hope that he is a man of integrity because he is clearly in the driver’s seat in this church for the rest of his life.   Or until he gets a bigger, better deal and leaves.

But all of that is window dressing.  What is the real point?  The real point is a tragedy.  No one in that church, the brilliant pastor included, can ever hear the voice of God saying, I love you.  You are mine and nobody is ever going to take you away from me.  Business and theological arguments aside, those people can never experience the most important Radio Flyer moment of all and when you think about it, it doesn’t make anyone happy.  Instead, it breaks your heart.         

At first, my state of mind made it difficult to concentrate on the ceremony.  The color guard snapped me out of my day dream and I covered my heart while the Star Spangled Banner played.  It was a Coast Guard changing of command ceremony in Port Angeles, Washington.  A cutter was being transfered and the boys did a fine job.  We (Annie and myself) had been invited by the wife of the man giving up the reigns of power; he was on to another assignment based in Seattle.  I was lost in thought.  It was a marvelously warm day.  The waters of the marina served as a gray backdrop to my equally gray mood.  It had been a long night.

Phone calls from my father come at reasonable hours.  The night before he called at a late hour to inform me that my sister was dead.  At first I thought I must be having a nightmare, but in my subconscious mind I had expected this call for many years.  The saga was finally over.

Most parents have to talk and talk about drugs to their kids - we never did.  Aunt Marvie was a walking metaphor.  Casual drug use turned into a way of life and in the end, a way of death.  Dad told me that she had died in her bed, most likely in her sleep.  That comforted me in an odd way.  Marva, the sister just sixteen months older than me, passed with dignity.

There were years when there was no contact and certainly no bed or apartment.  She lived in the desert and spent cold nights sleeping in drain pipes.  There were many terribly cold nights that I prayed for her, shedding tears as I thought about the rain and freezing temperatures.  Once I saw her walking down the street stoned out of her mind.  She was so pale and gaunt that I didn’t recognize my own sibling at first.  She was just one of the many all of us turn away from, the wretched poor.  But this was my sister.  We grew up together, fought a great deal and loved one another.  I bought some hamburgers and drove until I found her.  I had not seen her in years.  I didn’t speak and neither did she.  Marva accepted the hamburgers and began to shuffle away in a pair of worn bedroom slippers.  I turned down a side street and cried all the way home.  I knew she was in a bad place, but seeing her in this horrid condition shook me to the core.

My father got her out of the desert and moved her onto his property.  She lived in the motor home and slowly began to become human again.  He got her to go to the doctor and soon she had sworn off drugs and was on her way back.  She got Social Security benefits and secured a small apartment in Rosamond, California.  I went to see her in May and we had a grand time.  Jenna, my daughter, was able to come up from Valencia and spend some time with her aunt.  Our sister, Vicky, was there and dad and his girlfriend, Mary, fixed a nice dinner of a Russian soup (borscht) we are all fond of.  I kissed her at the door, never thinking I would not see her again.

There is something about hard, menial labor.  For me it is therapy - it clears my head.  I had spent the morning writing my sister’s obituary and it was much harder than I thought.  Her’s was a difficult and complex life.  She endured the death of her husband, the total disrespect of her two step-children, drug and alcohol abuse and a tattered work history.  After I condensed and rewrote, I printed the final draft.  I thought to myself, I’m getting pretty good at writing obituaries.  That made me break down.  So I began hauling wheel barrow loads of rock up the back forty of my property.  I mindlessly tossed pebbles, stones and boulders until I could barely lift the thing.  My arms ached and my back throbbed - the pain was a reminder that I still have my life and I want it to count. 

So now I am at the end of a difficult day.  I have come to the conclusion that my sister did have a life that counted and made a difference.  I remembered how kind she could be and how she took in misfits like stray kittens.  When I told her on Father’s Day (the last time I spoke to her on the phone) that I planned to dedicate my next book of poetry to her she was ecstatic.  I’m glad I didn’t save it for a surprise she would never see.  On the phone with my friends last night they all had warm things to say about my sister.  One buddy reminded me what a good dancer she was.  I had forgotten that.

The old boss walked up to review his troops, ten men who served under his command on the cutter.  The military is a place where people come and go.  I was seated closest to the men standing at parade rest as their leader shook each of their hands and gave them encouragement.  Eight of the men smiled and bobbed their heads.  It was obvious that they were fond of their leader.  Two of the men’s eyes burned as he spoke to them.  There was an unspoken love for the man they served and they probably knew that their paths would not cross again.  There were no tears, but I felt their pain as I watched them hang on his every word.  In the bright sunshine, with the fog laden Olympic Mountains in the distance, these shipmates said the goodbye that lasts forever.  I turned away, in respect, and looked at the magnificient beauty before me.  The only thought I had during this moment was it is so good to be alive.

I found out that Mary had taken some photos of our little dinner party and she vowed to make some copies for me.  I can sit here at my computer and think of all the ways my sister contributed to my life.  But life goes on.  There is no guarantee of tomorrow so make it count today.  I’m anxious to see those pictures.  In that moment I’ll thank God that I’m alive - alive to experience the goodbye that lasts forever. 

It was the writer, Thomas Wolfe, who said “you can never go home again” and I recently had that play out during an excursion to California.  David, our twenty-two year old son in the Navy is in Spain and his car, a Mazda 3, was parked in the garage of my dad’s girlfriend.  Mary, that’s my father’s young chick (she’s seventy-five) has recently put her house up for sale so the car needed to be moved.  David’s solution was for dad to fly down to Burbank and drive the phantom blue blur up the coast.  I can tell you that twelve hundred plus miles driving alone on mostly interstate is dull at best.  The good news is that the car is safe and sound in our garage in Port Angeles, Washington.  The bad news is that I found that Thomas Wolfe was a prophet indeed.

I was born and raised in the small town of Lancaster, California.  It is in Los Angeles County, but barely.  The landscape begins to shift as one travels north out of Valencia and Santa Clarita.  The desert starts to take over.  That would be the Mojave Desert and she can be one mean momma!  Hot as Hades in the summer and sub-zero in the winter, the area known as the Antelope Valley can be a tough place.  Growing up there was great though.  No video games for me and my pals.  We spent our days playing Over-the-Line, which is a scaled down baseball game, for hours on end.  We played in three digit heat and no one carried a water bottle.  Don’t ask - there wasn’t bottled water for sale yet, the stone age.  Actually it was about 1970.  I remember because we were all still pretty sore at the Baltimore Orioles for getting beat by the lowly, yet amazing, Mets.  We named a stenchy mud hole after Baltimore, dubbing it “the Oriole Hole.”  The kangeroo court could dole out a penalty and make a person get on all fours and thus have to smell the hole for five minutes.  Martin Stewart was the only guy with a watch so we all wanted to be on his good side.  He could add a couple of minutes to the sentence and nobody would be the wiser.

Junior High was painful, but High School was fun.  Antelope Valley Highs’ class of 1976 was awesome to say the least.  Jim Wagner was our Senior Class President and all of our reunuions to date have been exceptional.  Collen Hall helped out with the thirty-year and she could still shake and bake at age forty-eight!  Let’s face it - we just got old!  But the alternative isn’t so super.  You either get older or you get deader!  Friends I’ve lost include Donald King, Robert Louis Brown, Judith Pipkin and Dale Snyder (who died in a mountain climbing accident).  I thought about these people as I drove down Avenue I in Lancaster last week.

It is disheartening to me that when Hollywood makes a Mad Max end-of-the -world movie it is almost always filmed in the Antelope Valley.  Resident Evil and the Book of Eli show the desolate land for what it is.  Avenue I is a b-grade apocalypse film set, with about forty percent of the buildings from my youth, not only condemned, but demolished and removed.  If that part of Lan-scatter (affectionate term) were a mouth, most of the teeth would be missing.  So I came to the sad conclusion that the town of my childhood had contracted metaphorical meth-mouth.

My dad stills lives in the same house I grew up in.  I was nine months old in March, 1959 when we moved in.  I slept on the floor of my old bedroom.  It was humbling as I stared at the curtains my mom put up in 1972.  Dad needs a decorator or a new house.  The wind howled as I lay on my blow-up-mattress bed and remembered all of the nonsense I got into.  But they were good times.  I saw two of my sisters and we laughed for hours so it wasn’t all doom and gloom.  Time had simply moved on and I have yet to accept that fact.  I tried to go home again, but all I have is memories.

As I write this in my office, I glance up at the picture of my mom, taken when she was just sixteen years old.  She was so fresh and pretty and now she has been gone lo these seven years, just like Marley in “A Christmas Carol.”  But my mother does not haunt me like Scrooge’s old partner did him.  Instead, she comforts me.  You see, my time, and yours, is coming.  Nothing stays the same, but is in constant flux.  Accept it for your own peace of mind.  Thomas told me I couldn’t go home again and he was right.  I thought that in my old town I would be a fish out of water, but that analogy is not drastic enough for what I feel tearing at my heart and soul.  I’m not a fish out of water, but instead I feel like a fish in outer space.