Adrift on strange waters.

 A great tragedy has befallen our state and it must trouble any thinking person. It occurs at a time when the powers that govern us believe less in progressive policy than at any time in my adult life. Education is scorned. Science lies abandoned. The belief that government can be a positive force for humankind is denigrated as a doctrine.

But the floodwaters keep rising. And the rain keeps coming. And government grows less able to meet the dangers each day. We now find that running from them isn’t the answer. Mother Nature can find us even in homogeneous communities where everyone thinks and looks like us. She follows a Biblical paradigm and spreads her waters on the just and unjust alike.

Things are changing. They will continue to change. Who knows how that will affect Americans? I know change scares us. Americans seem to spend a great deal of time and resources protecting themselves and their children from change, strangers, and the different. Sometimes it just doesn’t work.

There was a time when I thought I had it made. I was young, educated, healthy, and living in the most exciting city in America at the time, San Francisco, California. A mass exodus of the young and ambitious from my state resulted in quite a band of expatriates living there, so I lacked not for friends.

I was invincible, bulletproof, and untouchable. Each day was a new adventure and each night a new discovery. Nothing could spoil this blessed life.

The Draft Board though, was like Mother Nature. It followed the sage teachings of the country hymn, “There’s no hiding place down here.”

A year after finishing a long ordeal of working my way through college, and setting forth to reap the rewards in this wonderful place, things changed. I found myself sitting, instead of “on a dock of the Bay,” atop a bunker outside Da Nang, South Vietnam, cradling an M-16 assault rifle on loan from the United States Navy.

Stuff happens. Things change. Life veers from its course. We find ourselves facing a world so different from what we expected, that we don’t recognize it. We find ourselves adrift on a sea upon which we never expected to sail. We can be “helicopter parents,” or “bulldozer parents," neither nature nor fate cares. Trust me.

In one of the wisest decisions of my life, I made the situation into a blessing. One morning, I took a long walk around Monterey Bay and contemplated my current orders. Looking out on the Great Tide Pool, I decided that, from that moment on, I would not base my happiness upon where I lived, who my neighbors were, or how protected I was from life’s vicissitudes. I would strive, each day, to make the most of what “little postage stamp of native soil,” I happened to stand. (Apologies to William Faulkner.)

I survived the war, survived a storm at sea, and survived a tepid, sometimes chilly reception from my fellow Americans, best expressed by a personnel officer of the telephone company in my home town. He informed me that there were no jobs in his organization that fit my qualifications, but did offer the suggestion that, in future applications to other employers, I keep my military service to myself.

Many friends and fellow Arkansans now face a ship of life on which the anchor finds no bottom. To be adrift upon a cruel and heartless sea is a lonely life, one whose only solace lies not in the promise of a distant harbor, but upon peace within our own heart.

Sailing on. ... not always easy.

Friday Fiction

The Prayer List

By Jimmie von Tungeln

            Horace Lundsford was doing just fine until Gracie Rodgers reported his name on a prayer list. Shortly thereafter, things fell apart. The unfortunate thing was that he didn’t even know he was on it until the calls started. Prayer lists originate in church on Sunday morning and Horace didn’t spend Sunday mornings in church although his wife, Sarah, did. That had everything to do with it. He would understand it all much later. As for now, he was minding his own business and not bothering a soul, as his parents had taught him.

            The first to call—he was finishing a breakfast that he had cooked for himself—was the oldest Thorton girl, the nosey one.

            “It’s Carlota,” she said though it wasn’t necessary. She had this snorting sound that she made when she breathed. To him, when she really got excited, it sounded like a pig trying to read scriptures. He would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was one of the many reasons he didn’t attend church.

            “Sarah’s not home,” he said, hoping to head off even a short conversation.

            “It’s you I wanted,” she said. “I called to talk to you.”

            Horace remained perfectly quiet, the way a child who has broken something will, hoping in that instant that the disastrous thing didn’t happen, but knowing against that hope, that it did.

            “Did you hear me?” she said.

            “Sure I heard you. What’s up?” His mind inventoried his collection of tools, believing that must be why she called: to borrow something. He began to weed out the most precious of them—the ones he wouldn’t part with—from the ones he might let her use.

            “You tell me,” she said. Just like that, “You tell me.” What the hell was that supposed to mean?

            “Tell you what?”

            “Why I need to pray for you.”

            “I don’t you to pray for me.”

            “Then why, tell me, is your name on a prayer list, big as the state capitol building, right there in the Armistead County Informer?”

            “The what?”

            “The paper. Gracie Rodgers put in the Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church news that you are on the prayer list,” she drew a breath and snorted. “And I need to know what kind of troubles you got.”

            “I don’t have any troubles.”

            “You got to have troubles or your name wouldn’t be on the prayer list.”

            “I’m tellin’ you I ain’t got no troubles and you can keep your prayers to yourself.”

            But like a tree planted by the waters, she stood firm. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

            “A what?” He could see his face in the large hall mirror and it was growing red like there was a fire lit somewhere deep within it—a volcanic fire that rested directly on top of an explosion.

            “Are you and Sarah having trouble?” She snorted again and sounded proud of her own nerve.

            “What?”

            “Trouble. Are you two having, you know, marital problems?”

            “Damn it, who told you that?”

            “If you are going to blaspheme, I shall refuse to pray for you.” Snort!

            “Well don’t then!” He crashed the phone’s receiver into its cradle so hard that a piece of plastic detached and shot from it.

            “Sarah!” he yelled, then remembered that she was visiting her mother in Dallas County.

            Before he could think, the phone rang again. It was Ida Covington.

            “Is it cancer, Horace?”

            “Is what cancer?” he said. Then he remembered.

            “My cousin had it and he didn’t live but six months. And he had two churches praying for him.”

            “Your cousin?”

            “Uncle Fred’s oldest son, Chester. But Horace, it was the most wonderful thing. He surrendered his soul to Jesus just before he died and he’s in heaven right now. Not a doubt in my mind but what he is praying for you.”

“Jesus,” Horace said aloud.

“Yes, Jesus. Oh Horace, if you coulda just seen that smile on his face layin’ there in that coffin. Why you…”

            “Ida,” he said and he said it loud so she would pay attention.

            “Yes Horace.”

            “Get off this telephone,” and he slammed the receiver again and another piece of plastic flew away and bounced across the floor. He looked at his hand. It was shaking. As soon as the fact settled upon him, the phone rang again.

            “Shit,” he said. Then “Hello.”

            “Horace, if you need money…” It was his brother.

            “I don’t need any money,” he said, this time quietly, like he was expecting the call.

            “Don’t let foolish pride keep you from seeking help from those who love you,” his brother said.

            “I don’t need money,” he said. “But I’m touched that you offered.”

            “Oh, I couldn’t help you,” his brother said. “No, no, not at all. I just wanted to remind you of what the scriptures say: ‘Pride goeth before the fall.’ Don’t be prideful, Horace.”

            He placed the receiver gently in its cradle this time. Before he could leave the room, three more people called. Mostly, they were just nosing around, except for a nephew asking what would become of his tools if he died. Pressure mounted in this head. Each call added to it as if someone was pumping air into his brain.

He reached for his coat and was going to go outside, away from the kitchen and the phone.

It beat him, though. The ring caught him just as he reached the door. He turned and stared at it, hoping it would stop. It rang louder.

            “It’ll just follow me outside,” he said to himself. He flung the coat across a chair so hard that it knocked the chair over and it slid into the kitchen cabinets. He snatched the receiver from the cradle and yelled a hello into it. It was Gracie Rodgers. She started to say something but he cut her off. The whole stupid, ridiculous, malevolent monster of a morning erupted deep within him.

            “Gracie, tell me one thing,” he said calmly but with the force of far away thunder.

            “What’s that, Horace?”

            “Why, tell me why, in,” he struggled for a second before expletives poured out in three languages, “ …  hell is my name on a moth… on a…,” he was having  difficulty breathing now, but he managed to yell, “On a [stinking] prayer list?”

            “Well Horace, if you must know—and I wish you could ask it a little nicer—Sarah said you have a problem with your temper.”

April 2009

Forget my birthday?
Take that!

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.

Perspectives

The film Easy Rider made quite an impression on the Baby Boomer crowd back in the late Sixties (1969). It resonated for a number of reasons, I suppose.

- It represented, for that “spoiled beyond redemption” group, freedom, freedom from what it never was quite clear, just freedom.

- It had perhaps one of the best music scores in cinema history.

- It had a couple of titillating scenes. The boys liked that.

- It had excellent acting save for some ultra-corny lines uttered stiffly by Peter Fonda.

- The cast enhanced verisimilitude, they say, by actually getting stoned for some scenes.

- It introduced a relatively unknown actor, someday to be a mega-star, named Jack Nicholson.

- It was anti-social enough to appeal to the young and disillusioned.

It became a phenomenon. I think I went to see it three nights in a row, each time with a different bunch from our ship moored up the Cooper River beyond Charleston.

That was many years ago. A lot of water has flowed from the Cooper River into Charleston Harbor since then. I’ve encountered a trophy wife and more than a few changes, including a career as a piddling fish in a small pond. Now I spend a few minutes each morning thinking. I don’t like to do that—think that is—so I do it early and quickly to get it over with.

What I’m thinking is that my perspective changes over the years, hard as I try not to let it. Here are some thoughts.

After all the communities, neighborhoods, small towns, and families I’ve seen destroyed by drugs, I’m a little put off by the concept of freedom purchased by wicked or nefarious means.

Of course, even back in 1969, I considered it ludicrous to think about a bunch of hippies planting seeds in the desert and expecting something to grow. Why do films never picture “back to the Earth” groups settling in the Arkansas Delta where one could buy (cheaply) some of the richest soil on the planet and really live off the land?

Back to the film. Even then, if I were to go “looking for America,” I don’t think I would start in east Texas or south Louisiana. And … now this is going to aggravate my neo-hippie friends, but … I might even try to blend in a bit.

And, the last national election in our county proved that, even 50 years later, bigotry and blind prejudice lie waiting in most areas of our country, not just the deep South. It’s a national curse, brought on, as William Faulkner suggested, by the practice and allowance of slavery.

So there. I still like the film, to a large degree for the music. Speaking of which, isn’t it amazing how music can ease the rough edges of what later proves a troubling film? Oh yes, it can for me. In 1967, I watched the film The Graduate at some lonely Navy base somewhere. At the end, I said, probably aloud, “Far out, man.”

A few weeks ago, I watched it again after a long hiatus. This time, at the end, I turns to my wife and says, “I think she just ran off with the sorriest summich in the state of California. That ain’t gonna end well.” Even Simon and Garfunkel couldn’t save me. Nor could Creedence Clearwater or Percy Sledge redeem that narcissistic group of "navel-gazers" in The Big Chill.

Why are people
staring at us?

Day Off

Off today earning. Why do that? Since you asked, I don't know. I just can't say no. I enjoy the challenges. It gets me away from farm work. I get to hang with old friends. It makes me stay up with things. It exercises my mind.

Oh hell, I'm trumping you. I like the money. Guitars and cigars ain't free, you know. Trophy wives ain't neither. Neither is St. Jude, as they keep reminding me.

Tune in tomorrow. I'm working on a piece about the anniversary release of Easy Rider and how our perspectives change. It's guaranteed to make some of you mad, some of you tickled, and some of you say "What is an easy rider?"

Has your perspective ever changed? Mine has. Stay tuned. Be prepared to share.

Medical News

It’s been nearly seven months since my knee replacement surgery. Scores of fans are seeking a progress report. Things are okay, I guess. I never had one before (a knee operation) so I can’t compare.

Would I do it again? Sure. I’ll share a few thoughts.

I now do about anything I please. I still have trouble putting my sock on the foot attached to the humiliated knee. But, at my age, I have trouble putting my clothes on, period. The knee is a little stiff in the morning.

I’ll neither make nor allow any jokes about that.

Those who’ve had the full knee replacement, as I have, all agree that the first three weeks suck. Most all daily functions of living are impaired. Moving the impacted leg is more painful, I imagine, than bone spurs.

Thank goodness for physical therapists. Let me set the record straight. I never called, or compared any of them to, Nazis. I simply said that I would like to turn a group of them onto some of these new Nazis that are following the president around. Talk about your “goose-stepping.”

Anyway, back to the knee. After Week Three, things improved. I could get around with a walker and do my normal housework. Just kidding. The only positive at first was being waited upon. I had a great deal of trouble getting into a car until I realized it was much easier to do it exactly opposite from the way my initial therapist had demanded. I found, as a general rule, it was always easier to place the knee in position and move the rest of the body to it. It was my knee, after all, and I suppose it shared my propensity for self-centeredness and attention-getting.

The most disappointing thing was the pain of just sitting in a chair and not moving. This is my favorite pastime, and over the years I have perfected it into an art form. I had looked forward to adding a few embellishments to some licks, like my “stare away mournfully” routine. And speaking of “licks,” I had mentally assigned guitar-picking and banjo-paying prominent roles in my recovery. Sadly, it hurt me to play as much is it hurts others to hear me play. There was much rejoicing during the worst of my infirmity.

It all goes away. Now I climb ladders and cut tree branches. I weed flower beds on my knees with the help of one of those little green kneel-masters they advertise on TV. I can tote a 55-pound bag of dog food. I can even run the extent of the house, hit the recliner, and assume my “stare away mournfully” pose if I hear Brenda’s car enter the premises.

Only thing that still aggravates me is standing up from a booth at a restaurant. Those are the darnedest things. I may start carrying a cane for assistance in that one area. That might even help, along with my “service” hat, in promoting “pity-pay” contributions from strangers. I doubt that, though, still not much regard for my generation of veterans.

All in all, it was a successful ordeal with little fanfare and complications. It wasn’t as simple as the time I walked into the base infirmary at Camp Tien Sha for some “itch-cream” and a Second-Class Hospital Corpsman with time on his hands noticed a cyst on my cheek. “Want me to get rid of that for you?” Thirty minutes later I left, sans-cyst but with four stitches on my cheek, ready for the mid-watch. There was no Purple Heart ensuing, but I think about it when I hear of folks today going through weeks of preparation and multiple “specialist pass-arounds,” ere having the same procedure followed by a hospital stay, … about the same ordeal as I went through six months ago.

I don’t think medical corpsman do knee replacements, though.

And the sexy little scar
on my cheek doesn't
even show.

Better Get Ready

I regret that it’s ending, this study I’ve enjoyed making of the eight Beatitudes as reported by the Gospel writer of The Book of Matthew. They fascinated me on a number of levels. First, they express, no matter how we might choose to interpret them, the fact that salvation is not a gift reserved for the rich and mighty, as so many in modern America believe. Nor, it seems, is it reserved for those whose biological makeup might be different from ours or our skin color different. Sorry.

No, the words of the Galilean, as expressed by “Matthew” open a vision of glory and happiness for “the least of those among us.”

That brings me to the second, and main point. I think the Sermon on the Mount, as reported in Matthew, as coming from the lips of this simple preacher, are epochal in these times for another reason. That is that they are so eschewed by the modern fundamental evangelicals who have kidnapped Christianity for their own selfish and nefarious purposes. They couldn’t carry the transcendental power they do if Franklin Graham and his heroes didn’t hold them in such disdain, even threatening to punish those who would form their lives by these simple sayings. (See: the parable of the Samaritan who was punished for giving a drink of life-giving water to a dying immigrant).

Last week, I visited the eighth of the Beatitudes. Some scholars claim it doesn’t belong with the others, since it attaches the blessing to an outward condition and not to a disposition of the heart, i.e. “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (RSV) This seems to be supported by the next verses (5:11-12 RSV), "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

I’m not a scholar of the Bible, just a confused wanderer trying to understand how so many people could use the document to foment hate. Anyway, we could argue all day about the number of Beatitudes or the cause for the difference between the version in Matthew and the version in Luke. For the latter point, I’ve read many explanations, such as the claim that the shorter version must be the most accurate. What strikes me is that the explanations seem to flow more from the personal beliefs of the explainers than from empirical evidence.

For example, who do you reckon might adhere to

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” (Matthew), as opposed to

“Blessed are the poor,” (Luke)?

Yep, someone who became a billionaire when the physician slapped them on their bottom may indeed grow up to feel they are “poor in spirit,” because they are unable to decide which public school to close next or which voting group to disenfranchise. Or someone who made a fortune the hard way, selling chicken sandwiches for example, may suffer the pangs of the damned trying to decide which sexual orientation to hate most.

And I now come to my final observation on the Beatitudes as stated by the Galilean according to the writer of Matthew. It is said that, “Some writers have endeavored to trace in the group as a whole the steadily ascending stages in the development of the Christian character.” (https://www.bible-history.com/isbe/b/beatitudes/).

I drift toward this view. If I’m right, there are a hell of a lot of so-called “Christians” who are in a heap of trouble.

It's in there, I promise, and
you don't have to look that hard.