Living With Lies

At my age, re-calibration of the brain requires effort. Take the weather for example. I recall the days when my late father-in-law was farming in the Arkansas Delta. When the crops lay parched and withering in the summer heat, a “weather-man” might predict an 80 percent chance of rain for the area next day.

Yay.

What it would mean, though, was there was an infinitesimal chance that a late afternoon shower might bring a fine mist over an adjoining farm, not enough to settle the dust by any stretch of the imagination, just a thin, teasing, cruel cloud that knew exactly where property lines lay.

Farmers like him learned to live with it.

Fast forward. The abuse of our planet by us homo sapiens changed things. We might call what we experience now the monsoons except for one thing, and I speak from experience. Monsoons end. They may seem to last forever, but they ultimately end. Our climate-induced "rainsoons" don’t end, though

No, what we are experiencing now requires recalibration. Now when the “weather-person” says there is a slight chance of “showers” producing less than and inch of rain, prepare for five to seven inches. Farmers lean on their tractors staring at the lake that used to be their best bean field wondering what the next "shower" will bring.

Do the weather-people lie with evil intent? Probably not. I think that prevarication has just become so popular among some politicians that a segment of the population takes it as the normal.

This doesn’t bode well if you ask me. It has all the earmarks of a national emergency.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 34

August neared and the wedding date loomed on the horizon. I was busy working during the day, trying to ignore the jokes and jibes. Was I the first person who had ever planned to marry?

Oh well, Brenda was busy sewing, in addition to her own wedding dress, those for her mother, her bridesmaid, and the bridesmaid’s sister.

Some evenings she would take a break and we would drive out old Highway 70 along Hill’s Lake, find a quiet spot, open a bottle of Boone’s Farm Wine, and talk about the future. We would lean our heads together and count our blessings until the sun went down or the mosquitoes overtook us. Here I was, fulfilling a dream. I had a sports car convertible and a lover with long flowing red hair to ride next to me in it. I had come a long way.

At the office, the partners had asked if I wanted something called “a bachelor’s party.” I had no idea what that was. They didn’t have those in the old United States Navy. They explained that it was a party for men only where they got the husband-to-be drunk, acted silly, and talked dirty.

“Talk dirty?”

“Yeah, you know … filthy jokes and all.”

“That’s all you do?”

“Well, we get you drunk. It’s like one last super-blast before you get married.”

“You just get drunk, talk dirty, and make insulting jokes about being married?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Sounds like fun to me.”

I didn’t mention it to Brenda on any of our evening rides. Once though, I parked at the edge of a large field of soybeans stretching far into the horizon, with a band of clouds and thunderheads at its end.

“Isn’t this land wonderful?” she said.

I studied the soft curve of her back contrasted against the long straight furrows. The silence unnerved me and I said, “It’s okay here.” She didn’t respond so I added. “I guess next to the sea, I like the mountains best.”

She turned and looked at me the way a teacher would look at a student who had failed to solve the easiest problem of the day. “That’s just it,” she announced as if announcing the solution.

“What?” I said.

She smiled and the smile completely unmanned me, a trick of hers I had learned to dread.

“You see, here you create your own mountains.”

“Your own mountains?”

“Yes,” she said and her eagerness and certitude kept me unbalanced. “That way, you don’t suffer constraint.”

“Constraint?”

“Yes, constraint. Your mountains can be as big as you want or as small. They can be covered with snow or even have a giant cherry on top like that one there.” She pointed to a thunderhead on the horizon, topped by a round black cloud that did indeed seem to radiate a red hue in the late afternoon sky.

I held her hand. We studied the field, spread out before us like a chart drawn to illustrate perspective.

“How do they plow them so straight, the rows?” I asked.

“They have a marker on an arm of the tractor that they use to measure from the last row plowed,” she said. “Like this land itself―each generation is built upon the values of the last.” She paused and then added, “Daddy’s been doing it so long, though, he really doesn’t need a marker.”

I looked back at the fields and felt a breeze that swept me forward for a fraction of a second—not really long enough to register fully— and I saw the tedium of, year after year, coaxing life from this fecund land. Her voice jerked me back the way a young calf is jerked as he comes to the end of the roper’s lariat.

“It would be truly sad, wouldn’t it?”

I focused on her and processed what I thought I heard her say.

“Sad?” I said.

“It would be so sad to know that you had actually to be where the mountains were in order to have them. That you couldn’t just do it whenever or wherever you chose.”

I failed to find a response. Instead, I looked at the distant clouds as they transformed themselves into snow-clad mountains of heart-piercing peace and beauty.

Was I about to marry a sorceress?

Maybe Keats had it right.

Sunrise With Schubert March 10, 2018

I once read a short story about a man who wanted to find the place where jokes originated. He finally found it in a remote site somewhere in mid-America.

I don’t remember how it turned out. I think maybe he was executed as a spy, sort of a counter-humorous ending. He probably died laughing, though.

There are places I’ve always wanted to find, the exact source of “They say,” for example. This was my late father-in-law’s favorite source of everyday enlightenment. I picture it as somewhere between a large factory building straight out of Modern Times and the work spaces described in 1984.

One wonders if there is a quota system. Can’t you just picture the blank forms flowing by with some poor worker busy dashing off a “They Say” on each one?

“They say we’re in for some rough weather.”

“They say the market is going to crash.”

“They say kids these days don’t know how to sign their own names.”

“They say gas may hit five dollars a gallon before long.”

“They say that you won’t gain weight if you eat standing up.”

“They say that not knowing what you are doing makes you better at it.”

Get the picture? Do you reckon the workers ever get behind? Can’t you see a Lucy and Ethyl scene where the line speeds up and some poor soul starts poking blank sheets down her blouse in order to keep up?

Would such a job affect your speech outside the workplace?

“They say that some couples only have sex once a year.”

“They say that husbands who don’t talk a lot tend to live longer.”

They say that kids are even getting into the spirit of things at an earlier age now, so there must be a separate wing at the factory for youthful aphorisms.

“They say that the new I-Phone increases grade-point averages by an entire letter grade.”

“They say that letting a child stay out later builds trust in a family.”

“They say that there is more wisdom in a cell phone than in all the libraries combined.”

"They say that football players have character and can be trusted."

“They say it won’t happen if you do it standing up.”

I’ll keep looking for the source of such wisdom. After I find it, I may have the energy to tackle “Sources say.” They say the two factories are located near one another.

They say we create our own reality.

Growing Up Southern: October 1, 2017

As I’ve said before, a grown man in America is a miracle, considering the potentially devastating temptations presented to the young.

Consider the reason why I don’t eat marshmallows today despite once having loved them. Actually, love doesn’t rise to the proper level of description. I worshipped them as a boy. I loved them. I dreamt of them. I never got enough of them. Then one day I did.

It happened this way.

After the third grade, they allowed us a range of choices for lunch at school. One could bring lunch in a brown paper bag and enjoy it in a designated lunchroom, a choice generally reserved for the poor and the untrustworthy. One could take a quarter and walk four blocks north to the Pine Bluff High School cafeteria. One could walk the same distance due west on 15th Street until one reached a diner or, one block farther, to a corner drug store lunch bar. Those meeting two requirements qualified to dine. One had to have money and one had to be white. That’s all.

When not on probation and sentenced to the lunchroom, I opted for the western sites. This way, if I skipped a drink with a meal, I could purchase a five-cent bag of marshmallows at the corner drug store for desert.

Neither drugs for the dope fiend nor solitude for the poet had a greater pull than the thought of a bag of marshmallows had on me. Therein sprang the plot

You see, they didn’t just sell nickel bags at the drug store. They sold ten-cent bags as well. These were tempting, but the piece de resistance, the holy of holies, was a 25-cent bag of marshmallows the size of a small pillow. They perched on a tall display counter, screaming temptations like the sirens on the rocks of Scylla. As I concocted my plan, the image of those bags grew until I thought of little else except the day I would buy one and devour its entire contents—in one sitting.

But how? I only received a quarter a day for lunch, knotted in a lady’s handkerchief and placed in my left pocket each morning by my mother, who knew too well that to advance a boy of my age funds for more than a single day’s food was to telegraph an open invitation to Satan to make room for another soul.

I would have to operate within the perimeters set for me. I had to skip the normal meal. It was that simple. Besides, a meal of marshmallows had to be at least as healthy, probably more so, than a chili dog. Tastier too.

So, one fine fall day, about this time of year, I put my plan into action. I purchased my quarter-bag of marshmallows and set off to find a quiet spot, clutching my prize the way a wino might cradle a gallon of wine, and with as much anticipation.

I settled for a nearby alley, found a clean spot, sat against a wall, and proceeded to fulfilling the dream of a lifetime. I popped the first batch of the creamy white dream-things in, only barely chewing. The next few, I enjoyed the experience more slowly, the next slower still.

Then the power of mathematics interceded, for it was at that moment that I discovered a scientific fact that haunts me yet: the mathematical difference between having all the marshmallows one wants, and a nausea so intense that death would be a blessing and relief, is about three marshmallows.

In total, that represents about a third of a 25-cent bag of marshmallows purchased in 1951. The rest of that bag may yet rest in the base of a hollow tree where I left it. I don't know and I don't care. Further, the entire amount of marshmallows that I have eaten since that fateful day, in that fateful year, is—thanks to the Arabs who invented the concept of zero—none, nada, Keiner, aucun.

Some of life’s lessons prove easy. Some of life’s lessons prove difficult. Some of life’s lessons require what seems to be divide intervention. All contribute to the miracle of a young boy reaching manhood. If giving up marshmallows is the price one pays, so be it.

See what a quarter-bag costs today?
If inflation had only set in earlier.

Reconciliation: 15

We Arkansans who remember the assault of Kenneth Starr and his army upon our state are amused at the current party leader who’s whining about being “mistreated.” The tragic trail of families disrupted, reputations defamed, and lives destroyed by this man and his legions, will remain in collective memories for years to come. They include those of a dear lady who witnessed her personal library subpoenaed because some books “contained coded messages,” according to a Starr operative. These consisted of dates with suspicious lettering beside them, such as “tg, pc, mp, ml, and fc.” The worst James Bond villain couldn’t have posed a greater threat to our national security. The only thing missing was crime-scene tape.

Not a soul offered an apology after discovering that the cryptic offenses referred to the daily menu at our state capitol’s cafeteria.

I’ve only eaten breakfast there and then only a couple of times, but I’ve heard the meatloaf was delicious back in the day.

So, I ask all my friends, those on both sides of the political spectrum, to claim the right to elect politicians who understand that there will always be “heat in the political kitchen.” It’s best to withstand it or get out.

When we hear a sitting president say, “No politician in history — and I say this

with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly,” simple astonishment isn’t enough. Starr and his clan spent $70,000,000 attempting to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. Trey Gowdy spent another $20,000,000 on Hillary alone, we are told. Only Roger Ailes knew how much he spent. And the Koch brothers? They are still at it. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, to mention only two, had daily editorial fodder for more than a decade. Fair? Who’s to say? It just happens, that’s all.

Mistreatment? Were theirs the worst? Ask Abe Lincoln who, on his best day, was only compared to a gorilla.

When I was but a youth, Harry Truman suffered greatly for, among other things, his sin of integrating the military. I well remember attending a rodeo on my home town at which the clown presented the following ditty, repeated over the speakers by the announcer:

Mary had a little Lamb,
Its face was almost human,
and every time you raised its tail.
You'd look at Harry Truman.

It’s too late to ask President Eisenhower how many adoring editorials he received from the Southern news media, with the notable exception of the late Arkansas Gazette.

It might help us heal as a nation to moderate our language. It is no more proper to paint Donald Trump as Adolph Hitler than it was Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, or Hillary.

I’ll even start by toning down my resentment of the Starr episode. I’ll just refer to it as that "that late unpleasantness." Original enough, eh?

Let us also strive to deal in facts and not internet-inspired “truths.” Facts such as: the sun came up this morning. And, though predictions are difficult, especially when they involve the future (a phrase I coined myself although some folks wrongly attribute it to Yogi Berra), the sun will probably come up tomorrow morning, barring one of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swans.” (Recommended reading).

It is up to us to determine what kind of world that sun will shine upon.

Old Harry came out all right.
Will we?