Blessings

Sometimes when I think of Christmas back when I was a youth, I think of the first Beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It could be a cruel season when I was young, never worse than the day we each had to stand and tell our classmates in grade school what “Santa” brought us for Christmas.

There were lots of bikes. Some kids claimed roller skates, some electric trains. One kid got a new deer rifle.

There was a catch, though. I attended a school on the south of town where a bunch of rich kids lived. They also bussed kids there from out in the country. They didn’t get bicycles or deer rifles for Christmas.

The luckier one got clothes. Not fancy sweaters and such, but new blue jeans or socks.

Move down and notch they would start to mention fruit and nuts.

Then candy.

Once a kid just sat on his hands and cried.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I’d like to believe that is true. It’s not, or so the modern TV evangelists say. They preach that you are rich because you are blessed and chosen. They include those who earned their riches by having the doctor slap them on their butt. In fact, they don't put many limitations on how the riches got there. I think the Galilean may have been talking about the child in the Arkansas Delta sitting on a cold, filthy floor with a bloated stomach and dirty diapers. Franklin Graham, from a warm room on a full stomach, is talking about the Trump kids.

Sometimes a person just doesn’t know whom to believe.

Nah. Just kidding. Merry Christmas.

Gratitude

I had this red bicycle once, and I hated it. Yeah, it’s hard to believe I know.

It happened this way.

I was maybe six or seven, and Christmas was due in a few months. I desperately wanted a bike, come that wonderful day. My dad was a poor grocer. Well, he wasn’t exactly poor, like the families of my friends were poor, but he wasn’t wealthy, like the families of my classmates were wealthy. Besides, he had two other kids, and spending all his Christmas money on one of them didn’t seem fair. Besides, I was far from the favorite child.

In a quandary I suppose, he and my Sainted Mother came up with an idea. I guess it was mutual. I wasn’t in on the conversation.

But here was the deal. There was a cotton gin over near Grider Field, our local airport in Pine Bluff. I guess my dad knew the owner since he and SM had sharecropped a spot a few miles from the airport before they walked into an opportunity to buy the store.

Anyway, Daddy worked out a deal with the owner of the gin. I think maybe his name, the owner, was Chambliss. Maybe not. It was cotton-picking time, so the gin was operating full time. Daddy would leave the store after the last truckload of pickers had passed, then go to the gin. He’d put in a few hours and come home for a little sleep before the trucks hauling the pickers to the field came by early in the morning.

That’s how he made enough money to buy me that little red bicycle.

Can you imagine, Dear Reader, the joy with which I met that objet de désir on Christmas morning? It sparkled and cried, “Ride me. Ride me.” I just looked on it and wept.

Of course, I had no idea how to ride it. Daddy fixed that later in the day by holding me until I started and fell maybe 30 times before I decided that riding beat falling and sped out of sight. It was a love affair of cosmic proportions.

Then it all went to hell.

I guess the reader knows by now that my father was a good, good man, one of the best I ever knew. History never quite canonized him like it did Sainted Mother, but he was a fine American, an honest man, and a good provider.

He had this annoying habit, though, one he picked up from a stern old German, who picked it up from a stern old German, who picked it up from … you get the picture.

In the South we call it “throwing it up to you.” I don’t remember when I first heard it. I imagine I was with the Hester twins, Robert and Bobby Joe, and I must have laid the little red bicycle too irreverently against the porch of the store. That’s the first time I heard it.

“Be careful with that damned bicycle. I worked nights at the cotton gin to buy that for you.”

The luster wore off our love affair more each time I heard reference to working at the cotton gin nights to buy me the bicycle. At first, I just hated the cotton gin. Then the hate began to spread like a covering fog over the little red bicycle. I’m afraid that it eventually spread to bicycles in general. I still don’t care for them.

The sad thing was that Sainted Mother even, once or twice, threw it up for transgressions unrelated to the bicycle. “Now think about how hard your daddy worked at night over to the cotton gin to buy you a nice Christmas present.” It didn’t cost her Sainthood, but it did place a couple of notations on her heavenly “Hard Card.”

I tried to learn, but things learned from a stern old German prove hard to overcome. Still, I do cringe whenever I hear myself say something so odious as, “Think about all the nights I’ve come home off the road near midnight from being out making us a living?”

Fortunately, the object of my “stern old Germanisms” pays no more attention to what I say than a cat being scolded for resting on a kitchen table.

If you'll tell me what he said,
 I'll try to remember how I reacted.
It's doubtful, though.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Twelve (Cont._2)

Goodness gracious but 1971 was an exciting year. I had survived the challenges of entering a profession totally unprepared. I learned many of the basics that year and filed away some lessons not taught as formal curriculum in any university. To say that I had learned much that year was like saying a bear cub learns a lot his first year on earth.

And I hadn’t had to carry a weapon, other than a devious and calculating mind, one always “locked and loaded” on full-automatic. Even so, I had learned that, just as in my former line of work, it always proved advantageous to keep your head below the sandbags. I had sharpened the useful skill of not telling someone everything I knew on first meeting them. I retained a lesson learned in Boot Camp that, as someone said, “All thoughts do not need to be spoken.”

I had learned that a little paranoia can be a good friend if one listens and that, as the Apostle said, “The quality of mercy is not strained.” Conversely, one should always pay attention to the person with “scrambled-eggs” on the hat. I was beginning to be less certain each day that my four years in the military had been a total waste. Learning to live by one’s wits is a marvelous skill, no matter what profession one follows. Nothing teaches that better than the military and nothing rewards it more than life among the sharks and shoals of business.

I hadn’t found love in 1971, but I had found comfort on more than one occasion. I hadn’t found success, but I had avoided failure. I had found that age and an acquired sense of treachery were the allies of the ambitious. In short, I was no longer afraid.

As the holiday system settled in on our collective consciousness, I looked forward to being able to participate. In downtown Little Rock, there were still enough shops and mainline stores existing to create a pleasant and comforting atmosphere. Stores began staying open later and as I left work in the dark each day, the sharp and happy staccato greetings of shoppers filled the air beneath the bright holiday lights. Everyone seemed so pleasant to one another. Were such times here to stay? Time would tell.

Christmas Day came on a Saturday that year. I had a major deadline due for some project or other, so I put in half-a-day Friday morning. Then I left, walked into the MM Cohn store at Fifth and Main to buy a last-minute present, and drove to the old hometown for the weekend. It was the second straight Christmas I had spent with my family after missing four in a row. It was the first ever, at nearly 30 years of age, that I had money to buy presents for each of my family.

Life was good. That first year had gone well and 1972 was going to be even better. Wasn’t it?

Oh, hell yes.

The end of "Ripple Days?"

Thoughts on Christmas Day: December 25, 2017

I’m sure Christmas Day leaves mixed memories within some who are my age. They may not recall each one with the joy most of us attach to this "most wonderful time of the year.”

Their thoughts may drift back to the unhappy or uncomfortable. Who can truly know another's heart? How much to we know about what others have lived through in life?

It would begin days before the holidays, these specious events. Back in my time, we exchanged gifts in class. I’m not sure they do that anymore. We did, though. Our target price was 50 cents per gift. We had two “Five and Dimes” in my hometown, Kresses and Newberrys. Four-bits could buy a nice present at either.

This was a time in which many white men with families worked for less than 30 dollars per week where I grew up. Women worked for half that. African-Americans worked for whatever they could get.

Fifty cents could purchase a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, and enough bologna for several days. For a treat, you could buy a soft drink for a nickel. How some families scraped together the half-dollar for a present at their kid’s school remains a mystery. Many didn’t. A friend had her name drawn one year by the poorest girl in class, resulting in a gift consisting of a five-cent card of “Bobby Pins.”

Yes, this was in the days before individual cell phones. It was a time in which musically talented kids of limited means would “practice” the piano at home with a six-inch wide roll of paper with a piano keyboard printed on it and which could be taped to the kitchen table. It was a time when poor kids would carefully fold the wax paper and grocery sack that had held their lunch—for reuse, unless a bully tore them up.

Back to Christmas: Perhaps a more forgetful ordeal for some was the annual post-holiday ritual of reciting what you received for Christmas. Mine was an unusual grade school. Of course, it was all-white. Additionally, it served the richest kids in town alongside the poorest from out in the county. What could possibly create discomfort about Christmas?

It was like this. The recitation of gifts received always met the same pattern.

The richest level spoke of hunting rifles, pianos, and such.

The next, bicycles and swing-sets.

Next: everyday clothes, practical but embarrassing.

Near the bottom: candy and nuts, which the whole family shared.

At the bottom: “Daddy is looking for a job, so we put Christmas off.”

Then there was the young girl who fled the class in tears once, rather than reveal her family’s shame.

I don’t mention all this in order to “bring us down” on Christmas Day. Quite the contrary, I’m motivated by the many posts on social media of acts of kindness and charity these days toward those who struggle and mourn. We should be proud of the numbers of Americans who share the good fortune so graciously with others. Although some politicians boast of governing with Ayn Rand's "philosophy of selfishness," charity clings below our national psyche like roots in a storm.

Goodness and mercy are traits that are sown into the soil of America, right alongside the seeds of our shortcomings. We can till and reap which harvest we choose to nurture. Despite how it appears these days, I’m optimistic that we will choose that which is most nutritious for the “better angels of our nature.”

And with that, peace and good will.

Blessed are those who show mercy.

Morning Thoughts: December 24, 2017

Not that I consider it any of Franklin Graham’s business, but I tend to say “Happy Holidays,” unless speaking a specific person. Here’s why.

Years ago, believe it or not. I exhibited the characteristics of a fitness freak. Yep. It wasn’t unusual for me to run eight to ten miles a day and attend morning exercise classes at the old Downtown YMCA at Sixth and Broadway in Little Rock, Arkansas.

There was a Businessmen’s Club there and its members formed a close-knit camaraderie, as males will do. Back in the day, men could even swim together in the nude or take in the sun buck-naked at noon on a little rooftop nook hidden from view. That all changed when they began to accept women members. The impacts of the change didn’t occur swiftly, but that’s fodder for some funny stories at another time.

Anyway. There was a member among us from a prominent Jewish family in Little Rock. I’ll call him Eli Frank, as I know he would be embarrassed to be identified for simply being a good person. And he was. My only criticism of him involved the reason we seldom jogged together. He knew two speeds—a trait that he involved in every aspect of his life. Those speeds were, “full,” and “a little more than full.” As I say, it marked his personal makeup and made him a success in his field, although a solitary jogger.

In addition to being friends at the “Y,” we occasionally had contacts through our respective businesses. We were, therefore, more than casual acquaintances.

There was another man associated with our YMCA at the time. He cleaned the dressing rooms. I really can’t remember his name, “Paul” maybe. Everyone just knew him as “Pappa Wa Chickee.”

You see, his experience in some war or other had left its impact. Although he was capable of performing limited tasks and living alone, he spent a great deal of his time, as Patrick Clancy the singer described it, “living among the Little People.” He was harmless and they let him stay at the YMCA.

His most frequent utterance was, yes, “Poppa Wa Chickee,” whether responding to a taunt, requesting you to move so he could clean, or threatening to “chisel the ‘C’ off the building’s cornerstone,” hence the nickname.

His appearance was what you might expect: unkempt, overweight, often unshaven, and smelly. I’m proud to say that I don’t ever recall having taunted him, but I would have been among the few. He was one of those best described in the Gospel of Matthew as “the least of those among us,” and thus fodder for being looked down upon and mistreated by the over-privileged.

Did I feel, in the least, proud that I tried to treat him with respect? Hardly, that was simply a minimum standard, as I saw it. That hit home with a punch one year, after I found that Eli Frank had picked the poor man up and taken him home with him for Thanksgiving dinner with Eli and his family.

We can only imagine how the Galilean must have smiled.

A few days after learning that, I dropped into a downtown store to buy greeting cards for the season. That’s when I first, as a result of thinking what a good person this Jewish club-mate of mine was, opted for “Happy Holidays.”

So:

Bill O’Reilly,

Franklin Graham,

Sean Hannity,

Donald Trump:

“Poppa Wa Chickee.” (Translation: “Bite me”).

Oh, and to everyone else: Happy Holidays.

The fitness club is gone, but
the "C" still in the cornerstone.

Morning Thoughts: December 12, 2017

While in college, I worked as a janitor and busboy at a popular sorority house on campus. I made ten dollars a week plus meals. I hate to tell my Millennial friends this, but I pretty well got by on that. Those were different times, many years ago in a paradigm far away. Our leaders believed in education back then. Young students don’t believe me when I tell them that tuition was free at the University of Arkansas at the time.

It makes one wonder, doesn’t it, why so many Baby Boomers have become selfish and ultra-conservative in their old age.

Now believe it or not, I didn’t have a lot left over on that compensation package. There were cigarettes and other essentials, you know. I didn’t have any surplus. But, as I say, I got by.

The first year I worked there, a bit before Christmas break, I went to the house-mother for my weekly pay and to assure her that things were “battened down” for the break. To my utter astonishment, she gave me an extra twenty dollars. ???

They paid me, she said, for each week despite the fact that I would be off for the next two.

Twenty dollars! Was I rich, or what? It was the first year ever that I was able to buy Christmas presents for my family.

I always think about that when I get ready to go pay my annual visit to the Reverend Hezekiah Stewart at the Watershed Human and Community Development Agency. He's a lot different from the evangelists you see on TV. He's devoted his life to helping the disadvantaged, the poor in spirit, and those who mourn, not himself. He's no Kenneth Copeland type.

Last year I told him that the first time I ever saw him, he had a basket strapped in front of him strolling around Little Rock’s RiverFest festival seeking money for the poor. He laughed, “You’re going back to the old days now,” he said.

Yes, they seem like old days now, the very old days.

I don't think he has any
mansions or private jets.

Christmas

I pretty much worked my way through college, something that is nigh on to impossible to do these days. It was hard then, particularly on the grade-point average, but I “gradjated” debt free and headed out of the state as fast as I could, eventually ending up in the Haight-Ashbury. That’s a story for another day, though.

My next to the last year of college, I think it was, I worked as janitor at the Chi Omega house on the Fayetteville campus of the University of Arkansas. My princely emolument was ten dollars a week plus meals. That sufficed to live on and in addition to the pay, I was privileged, each day, to greet some of the most beautiful girls on campus. A few of them even returned my greeting. All in all, I was a fairly lucky guy.

Lucky yes, wealthy no, those were years in which discretionary income was a distant dream. I got by. That was all.

Then, that year, the mid-term break came and we all prepared to leave for the holidays. I gave the sorority house a final dusting, emptied the trash, swept up, and reported to the house mother. I seem to remember her name was “Mother Mann,” a nice lady but strict. I suppose she had to be. Anyway, she handed me my wages in a white envelope and we prepared to say our goodbyes. “You might check what’s in the envelope,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to think we had made a mistake.

I did, and my mouth must have dropped, for she smiled. “Yes,” she said, “thirty dollars. We pay you each week whether school is in session or not.”

And there they were: three crisp new ten-dollar bills, a fortune those days. It was the first time in my life, at nearly 21-years of age, that I was able to buy Christmas presents for my family with my own money, a privilege I’ve never forgotten and a Christmas I’ll always remember. It was just one of the miracles that the holiday season can generate.

The next year, I held a more respectable job, albeit sans the bonus of attendant female pulchritude. I did drafting for the campus Editorial Service and wound up, at $1.50 an hour, the highest paid student help on campus. I did it in the afternoons and tended a local bar at night, living “pretty high on the hog,” as they say. I’ve always had Christmas money for the years since.

During those years, I dined atop one of the World Trade Center towers when they still stood, and during a long-ago scuba dive, I floated out over the Grand Cayman wall and stared at where it dropped for three miles before hitting the ocean floor. I remember the awe of walking to the crest of Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg and looking across the field to where, as William Faulkner said, “For every Southern boy … there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863.”

Yep, I’ve been blessed to see many wonderful things over the years, but nothing ever filled me with more amazement and pride as a long-ago Christmas when Mother Mann handed me that little white envelope.

Doesn't take much sometimes.

Simple Gifts

My folks owned and ran a country grocery store just south of Pine Bluff, Arkansas for 40 years. There wasn’t much separation of life and work for us. You walked through a door in our kitchen into the back of the grocery. We knew all the customers, save for the occasional stranger stopping for gas. The regulars consisted mostly of the elderly and working poor. They ran monthly credit accounts and settled on payday or “old-age pension day," as it was known back then. My sister and I perfected our skills in driving by transporting many of them to and from our little store.

Each year about this time, my daddy would order Christmas presents for our customers. One year it might be a bag of assorted nuts, another a box of chocolate covered cherries. When the customers came to the store in December, they would hang around waiting for their present. Sometimes Daddy would pretend to forget and keep them waiting. I thought that was a bit uncalled for, even as a young child. My mother would often chide him for it. He always came through with a smile, though.

Don’t get me wrong, Daddy wasn’t a mean person, just a tad mischievous at times, probably as a result of boredom more than any trace of unkindness. No, he was a generous man. Many is the  time I’ve seen him load a sack with groceries for a family stopping in dire need of food but with no money. When a tornado ravaged our community in 1947, killing 32 people, he gave away the contents of our store to the surviving victims and went bankrupt for a spell.

Now, I think back on it and wonder for how many of those customers, it was the only Christmas present they received. I wonder if they kept it displayed with pride until the 25^th arrived. I wonder how many rationed the contents well into the new year, how many may have passed them on to families poorer, even, than they.

Those were different times back then, times when the simplest of gifts might seem a miracle to some family ... times when businesses existed for more than just profits and power.

Trifle, treasure, or
 just the thought?

Holiday Giving

Looking back at my grade-school years, I remember that Christmas was probably a happier time for some than for others. The school I attended was what we might call today “socially bi-polar.” Kids from the wealthiest neighborhood in the city attended, as did so-called “bus-kids” who were the country kids of whom some (not all, for I was one) represented families ranging from the poor to the destitute. Of course, we mingled with no African-American kids. That’s not what they called them in those days, and besides, they had their own school, separate but equal. After all, they had excellent teaching materials, the best … forwarded to them after our schools had finished with them, having received new and updated ones.

Anyway. Christmas could be cruel in ways. In class each year, we drew names and exchanged presents. The maximum amount to be spent was fifty cents. It doesn’t sound like much now but back then one could buy a nifty little present at the five-and-dime for that amount. I seem to remember that a loaf of bread cost around fifteen cents then and a pound of baloney ten, so the four-bit max was a struggle for some families. One year, a close friend of mine’s name was drawn by the poorest girl in class. On the “exchange day,” she proudly presented to my friend a five-cent card of bobby pins, wrapped up in colored paper.

After Christmas, there was the “present report.” The richest kids reported receiving expensive toys. My group reported normal toys. The next down the social ladder reported receiving everyday clothes. Next came apples, nuts, and/or candy. The poorest just stared at their hands and prayed to whatever god would listen that they wouldn’t be called on.

The memories stuck with me and fortune gave me a wife who shared my thoughts on holiday gift-giving. Shortly after we were married, she was teaching elementary school for $4,800 a year, and chose, that year, to spend part of her salary to buy one of her students, who had been the recipient of ridicule about her ragged shoes, a new pair quietly delivered during a recess. She said the look on the girl’s face was better than any Christmas present she had ever received.

That’s why, this year, we’ll continue to give to charity instead of to ourselves.

Bless us all.
Remember,
the value is in
the thought.