Category Archives: Life stories

Why change?

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The old man told me he did not understand what was going on with young people these days. Right there in his town where he lived all his life, “There are over one-hundred of those queers living as couples, right out in the open! There is something wrong with people now days”, he said, “for this to be going on”. They did not act and carry on that way until recently, and they weren’t around when he was a younger man.

The old man went on to tell me about his antique and collectibles business. If he was living somewhere more mainstream he would be selling a thousand dollars a day of his wares he said. He told me he can not understand why young people do not collect old things anymore. They are still valuable and practical items he has for sale. “My kids will have fun with this stuff after I am gone”, he told me in a reassuring voice. It will keep them busy for a while, sorting and selling all this stuff.

He said he spends every extra dollar he has on buying collectibles and antiques. He is not selling much these days, and he has three buildings full of boxes and shelves of stuff. Some of the items he has have not had the price changed in thirty years, he has been too busy buying more items. He plans to keep on buying things he said, until he gets too old to drive. When he has to stop driving, he does not think his end will be too far away. Once he can longer drive he told me,”…there is not much point to living.”

I politely found an excuse to leave his insightful company and views on life as he knows it. He is a self admitted old man and what he talked of is life as he understands it. He is not able to change, but up until now he has found a way to endure.

I did not provide any meaningful response to his many observations and opinions for obvious reasons. The main reason was not having an argument with an old man. There is no gain in it. Old men have their opinions and they will never change. At least I managed to leave before he turned to politics. He was warming up to it, but never really got rolling on the subject of our new president elect.

He is set in his ways and his ways are right for him. As Ann Anne Rice mentions a few times in her vampire books, we either change or we die. It is not the exclusive realm of vampires to suffer this affliction. Our world no matter where we live is changing fast.

My Grandparents never believed that we put men on the moon. They believed in hard work, and saving for the future. Going on a cross country road trip, or sailing across the Atlantic Ocean was about the extent of possible travel in their world. I am sure each of us will find ourselves dated in our thinking and our ways at some point in our life. Hopefully those areas we find ourselves outdated in will not be not life limiters.

Maybe we will find we hold a timeless message for those coming behind us before we go the way of the old men and vampires that could not accept change.

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My secret pond

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I found this little pond when I was wandering through the woods as a child. That is I found it after I was old enough to go into the woods, and my parents not realizing how far into the woods I went. I was not very big, perhaps thirty feet across and three feet deep at the center. It was really a flooded hollow as it had a few trees in parts of it. I imagine the weather being wetter than normal and made the pond.

It was a fun little pond full of things in the water that were fun to watch. I found a little spot where I would lay down and look into about two feet of water. There were always things to watch in the water. I enjoyed these little jerky things that acted like sea horses, or at least how I imagined sea horses to act. Then there were these little caterpillar like things that lived in little stone tubes that they made. They would crawl along the bottom in this little tube made of grains of sand and rock.

Then there were those black fat fish like things. They would be really small at first and as time went on they would grow bigger and longer. Eventually they grew back legs. They were tadpoles I came to find out. I never saw any tadpoles make it to adult hood. There would be fewer and fewer each week. I never realized they too were lunch for something.

There were water striders that would skate across the pond surface. I thought they were really neat. I used to wish I could do that too. There were some spiders that lived at the water, but never actually went into the water. I also saw centipede like water bugs and bigger beetle like bugs that lived in the water. They were brownish and ugly, or so I thought, so I never paid much attention to them.

Then there were the big mean bugs. I called them water dragons because I did not know what they were. They would attack the tadpoles, and some of the other bugs. I tried to catch one once, but it bit me and hurt bad enough to make me cry. More from fear than pain, I imagine, but the bug made its point, and I left them alone, and I was careful where I placed my fingers in the water.

I brought a jar along sometime. I would catch those little seahorse bugs and take them home. After a few days they would not be in my jar any more. My Dad found them one day and told me they were mosquitos. I didn’t like mosquitos, but I liked them in the water, so I would catch them every week to watch them grow. A few times I was lucky enough to see them climb out of their skin and turn into a real mosquito.

I never told anyone about my pond as I came to think about the pond I ‘found’. It was my secret, and being a normal selfish child I chose to share it.

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September 11 through a parent’s eyes

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I enjoyed the good fortune of spending a short time in Israel in the late nineties. A few days there gave me pause to consider a wider world view and the part of the United States in other countries.

As a tourist I spoke with Arab shopkeepers and business men who I imagined to be typical representatives of their peoples. They struck me as rational, reasonable, and conservative.

They politely told me how they feel, trying to raise their children to be good community citizens, God fearing, and family oriented, only to see their children imitating what they think life in the United States is. Wearing NFL and NBA jackets and jerseys, wearing Levi’s, Nike’s, showing disrespect for adults, and using speech that any parent would not want to hear from the mouths of their children.

I listened to these men from their different shops, and I could not understand what they were so concerned about. What was so terrible, about western values? I was there as a western tourist and I believed my value system on par with almost anyone. I thought they were overreacting to change.

Traveling by car on a highway close to the Jordan river which separates the Nations of Israel and Jordan, we were listening to local radio. We had recently drove up on some Bedouin peoples. A few of us sat on a man’s camel and had our pictures taken. Typical tourist stuff.

The radio station we were listening to was from somewhere in Jordan. The music coming out of the speaker sounded to me like Arabic, or some form of Arabic. The song completed and the DJ spoke for a few seconds in what I presumed to be Arabic.

I thought I heard the english words Motherf****ng Compton. I thought it must be a trick as the DJ was speaking in Arabic I thought, but it did sound like Motherf****ng Compton. there was a slight pause and a new song started.

I heard Motherf****ng Compton again, this time as part of an adult rap song made up of words and thoughts that should not be written, and phrases that should not be printed. I could not believe riding in a car between the nations of Israel and Jordan, I would hear something that would never make it on american radio in anywhere America.

Someone in the front seat changed the radio station, and I knew without a doubt what those Father’s of children had so politely and tastefully tried to convey to me about what was happening to their children, culture and country.

I wonder every 9/11 anniversary, if I were one of these men I spoke with, what would I feel, and what would I think about America and Americans?

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On the road day 2

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The start of day two is a good one except it it obvious that the warm days of New Mexico are behind. I find a restaurant that has a good breakfast deal. Sitting down at the table the cool breeze from the air conditioner is a little to cool for me. About ten minutes later, I ask if I can move to another location, one that does not seem to be under the refrigerator door. The waitress taking care of us tells me that is fine with her. It seems that refrigerated air is big at this place, and there is no place that is not cold to me, so I settle into the table I am at.

The weather did not look that good and looks were not deceiving. About forty minutes into the morning drive it started raining and did not stop for over three hours. At some points I was down to forty miles and hour, because the rain was so hard it was difficult to see the road. The rain stopped almost as fast as it started but the sky remained overcast for a big part of the day. The rest of the dirve was pretty uneventful, and I ended the days drive in some little town on mid Iowa after swerving to miss what was left of deer on the highway. Deer and vehicles travelling at high speeds do not mix well.

I enjoy watching the lanscape and the slowly change from sand, rock, and cactus to rich soft earth, rolling hills, fields of wheat and corn. When travelling from the southern end of the US north the people also change. The Hispanic and Indian peoples become fewer and fewer and the remaining people become taller. Once the halfway point is crossed some women are as tall or taller the the average male in New Mexico.

The food also changes, New Mexican cooking now becomes something that looks like Mexican cooking, but tastes like something not quite Mexican cooking. Not that it is bad, just different. The staple foods become more English looking in nature, spiced with an occasional dish from Germany, Poland, or a dish from the Nordic countries. I am guessing because the weather is colder in the winter and more humid, Mexican cooking is not as good a choice for meals as what is served. I know I am going to start wanting hot food and not be able to find it.

Being in the center of Iowa the damage from the flooding is not as apparent as it is on CNN, but there are still signs of too much rain. Some of the fields are soggy and lay barren, other fields have wide shallow ponds in them that will eventually become muddy spots. I do not think we in the rest of the country will notice the effects of the flooding until this fall, but even from a roadside tour in the middle of the state it is obvious the harvest will not be what it normally is. We won’t notice the shortage too much because the increased cost will probably be blended with increasing gas prices, but third world countries will certainly notice there is less food to go around.

I always appreciate just how big our country is when I travel. Even though most of us are homoginized by chain stores, we all have a unique perspective on what we need for our country depending on where we live. I live in a large city in the south and my views are a lot different than a farmer living two miles from his neighbor in the midwest. I am sure their views are split up again depending on what they are growing and what price the crop is bringing. On the coastal cities the views are flavored by the ocean industries. Somehow we manage to pass laws and do things that either make us all unhappy together or marginally satisfied.

Lunch and dinner were prety uneventful, but filling. I spent the night in one non-descript hotel that had seen it best days in the sixties. The room was spotless and the price was right. Once the lights are out, I sleep as well as I would in a three hundred dollar a night suite. In the morning, the showers are always hot and and the towels soft and clean. I didn not see a continental breakfast, but for the price difference I can live without it.

Day two ended on a tired note. After the second day of driving, I am tired but not sleepy. It is times like these I really appreciate long haul truck drivers. I have had a few friends who used to drive for a living and said they loved it. I find the thought of knowing how many minutes to a destination hundreds of miles away from whatever bush is in view a little on the boring side. To each his own, although I always have a fondess for truck drivers, as they are the lifeline of our country.

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On the road day one…

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I was on the road today, travelling from Albuquerque en-route to Minnesota. I am on a vacation of sorts, and going to Minnesota to visit family. The weather was good today and the drive has been enjoyable. There are four of us going, and one of us is a four year old. I find the idea of long trip, four year old in a car, and enjoyable in one thought very interesting. I had some concerns that having a four year old strapped into a car seat in a car, travelling down the highway for many hours was not going to be one of the best of times.

Fortunately as I said today has been very enjoyable. We stopped for a lunch of sorts in a small town, Hooker, Kansas. They have a very pretty park with picnic tables, shrubbery, and trees. We found one table bathed in shade. Lunch was nothing special, just some lunch meat, cheese, and bread, and a glass of water. But the little park was comfortable, perfect for a travellers lunch, and a few minutes of sitting still. I have enjoyed many little parks in many towns, but Hooker has an especially nice park, and they must be very proud of it.

We are spending the night in Pratt Kansas, as Pratt is where we ended up when everyone was getting both hungry and tired. After eating, a shower, and a cup of coffee, I wanted to go out for a walk. Pratt being a small town has not invested a lot of money in side walks. At least on the Highway 54 portion of town, but never the less, there was grass going freely along the road, and it has been a long time since I have had the luxury of actually walking more than a few feet on a thick carpet of soft grass.

I walked to the local Walmart, which was my third trip of the evening…. Such is life on the road. When you stop for the first night, you discover those things that did not get packed which are needed. Of course it would be much to easy to discover them all at once. It is more exciting when you are tired and just want to relax for a bit. So I decided to walk to the Walmart, as I needed some exercise after sitting in a truck all day, and the evening weather was pleasant.

I walked back to the room from Walmart, dropped off the final purchases, and walked the other direction for about a half mile. I came across an interesting memorial park alongside the road. It had nine flags in a row, and a tenth flag facing the nine. There was also a small replica of the Statue Of Liberty, placed there by a Boy Scout Troop many years ago, and a park bench dedicated to a couple, which provided a nice spot to sit and enjoy the quiet for a few minutes.

A little farther away from the street was a fountain splashing away. I walked over to the fountain planning on sitting down and watching and listening to the splashing, but there was no bench. So I stood there in the dark for a few minutes and listened to the water hitting the cobble stone bricks. I walked back along the row of flags, and headed back down to the room for the night.

In the mean time, the weather was changing quite quickly. It had been windy all day with clear skies, but when I looked up, most of the sky was black and there were rumbles of thunder some miles away. It is now about three hours later and the storm never made it here, at least not yet. I hope a storm of some type arrives tonight as it has been a long time since I have lain in bed and listened to a thunder storm. I find it enjoyable, perhaps others do not.

It is back on the road in the morning at a yet undetermined time. I know we can not make it to Minnesota tomorrow, so there is no need to be on the road at the crack of dawn. Plus because there are four of us, and not just myself, getting started in the morning takes a little longer than if it were just myself. It is now about eleven at night and I am starting to feel the weight of the day, so it is a good time to say goodnight.

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Church celebration and a three year olds wisdom

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I went to an organized church function on Saturday. It was disconcerting attending a function that they has changed little over the years. I imagine it is the same with all organized religious services, but maybe not, as I have not experienced that many different religious services. This particular one was only different in the level of the priest(s) conducting the event.

They spent many minutes telling us – the audience – how great they were, and what they had been doing the last month or so. One of the two shared that he had been in the Pope’s presence earlier in the week celebrating a mass. While it is all good and wonderful that they were having such wonderful things happening in their lives, I thought the news could have been saved for a different time. For some of the people attending the event, I am sure the only vacations they have ever enjoyed were the summer break of their school years when they were too young to work.

The bragging portion of the event finished reminding everyone that the event was not a formal service and they were not excused from their obligation of attending service on Sunday, such as they are directed by the Church. I found it interesting that they did not feel the same restraint when it came to passing the hat for collecting money during the initiation. It also was not a substitute for the Sunday collection. As the basket came by me, I wondered, if I were a member of the church, would the leaders be hurt if I just donated an amount twice as large today and skipped showing up tomorrow? It always seemed that money is the main point of some church services.

The people for whom the service was being held ranged in age from teenagers to gray haired adults. While these people were being celebrated, they were also being admonished. They were reminded many of the do nots that every parent tries to ingrain into their children as they grow up. I thought the chastising was a little late in time, not to mention the months worth of classes they went through to get to that point.

The high point for me was listening to a three year old girl talking to her best friend a few seats away. She had a lot more important ideas to share than the droning coming over the speaker system. She informed her friend that when she was a baby she lived inside her mother’s body. Now that she is not a baby any longer she lives with her mother but not by choice. That in itself I thought was quite a revelation for a three year old, but there was more important information she needed to share still coming.

The little girl prattled on as an self proclaimed expert in many subjects that most three year olds have little awareness of. At one point she notified her friend that she lived with her mother for reasons other than she was birthed by her. She told her friend that she was born by her mother because that was the only way she could be with her sister who arrived before her. She loved her sister and did not like being separated. She then said that if it was not for her sister she did not know if she would have been born by her mother. I am sure that comment made Mom feel a little dejected.

For my part I suppose I did not add much to the service, as I spent the better part of an hour with one ear listing to the droning, and a more attentive ear listening to a three year old talk about love, and life both here and before. I thought it was a sad state for the celebration, or perhaps a sad state for myself when a three year old captured my attention over the service. I doubt my absence was noticed by anyone as they were trying hard to pretend the droning litany was a new revelation which they never contemplated before.

I always find young children’s thoughts fascinating. They talk about things when asked the right questions with such authority that sometimes I wonder how little water they drank at the river Plato wrote about. Of course just like the rest of us, a few years later if they were to be asked the same questions they would look up with a clueless expression and say they don’t know anything about that.

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