GOOD ENOUGH

   

Retirement is not the same as losing you job. To retire means they don’t want you to come to work anymore but someone will put some money in your account just the same. So, I am retired with a modest retirement income. It is sufficient for my simple needs, allowing me to come and go as long as good health goes with me. But to work at a task for so many years, it does things to your mind. It can provide a sense of purpose. Some of us are fortunate enough, we got paid to do what made us feel complete. There are many who work at a job, just a job, so they can afford to spend their free time doing whatever it is that makes them feel complete. If you like and find purpose in what you do it’s hard to imagine anything else, as in ‘It’s just a job’. 

For me, I had to figure out what to do with myself when someone else had taken my place. After a year of rain and bad road I smoothed out the new, reinvented me. I miss the contact with students and camaraderie with peers but I was ready to move on to something else. I do my own evaluations now, every day. They used to come twice a year with a formal check list and detailed observations. My boss always found my work satisfactory but with the caveat, room for improvement; that’s how it works. We heard a lot of ‘Excellence’ hyperbole but in the end I have always been delighted to be ‘Good Enough.’  I know me well enough to recognize the difference between ‘Sucks’, ‘So-so’, ‘Not bad’ and ‘Good enough.’ If I can stay between the lines, right side up, with a great day now and then, that’s good enough for me. 

One of the things I do now is build houses, bird houses, wren houses to be precise. If you make the entrance hole one inch in diameter, all the other birds are too big to get in. So, if your wren house is occupied it must surly be by wrens. I have a couple hanging on low limbs in my back yard, unoccupied at the moment. But this morning there were sparrows, trying to get in through the quarter size hole. I suppose I should feel for the sparrows but I don’t. They will find a place to build without me and I’m partial to wrens. The wrens are a link that connects to my mother. They would sing call and response to each other through the kitchen window, all through spring and summer. I don’t have to see them; I know their song. My mom would like that I shelter wrens. The houses I build are crafted to some degree with overlapping seams on the roof boards. Putting them together has a different kind of feel-good than listening to the singing but good is good and that’s good enough.

SOME ANIMALS

I remember days when I would visit my dad at 99th & Blue Ridge. It’s where we moved when I was 5, a few months after my little brother Wes was born. The old farm house went away a decade later and our new, red roof, white stucco, ranch sat cater-corner on the corner with black locust and maple trees all around the house. He was 85, living alone for the past 5 years since Mom had passed. I would drive down from Michigan, sleep in my old bed in the east bedroom. We didn’t talk a lot but then when I lived there we didn’t talk at all. It was cool having him for a friend as well as a dad. When I turned the corner on 99th it was common to find him patrolling the yard, picking up twigs and small branches that had fallen from the trees; they dull mower blades and you don’t want that. 

Frank D. had an old fashioned, walk behind, Gravely mower with handlebars and a 42” mower deck hanging out in front. He built a seat with wheels, transforming the walk-behind garden tractor into a riding mower. Outside, in the heat of the day, he wore a pith helmet reminiscent of Englishmen in India, back in colonial days. The mail man called him ‘Jungle Man’. That’s what I looked forward to, coming home in 1996 and ’97. 

Up Blue Ridge a half mile or so was the ‘Mandarin’ restaurant; a  Chinese place we liked. Once we were there with my boys Pete and Jon, the 4 of us in a booth near the door. Across the isle in the front window was a young couple with two little kids. One in a high chair, the other was big enough to sit in the booth. We had finished our meal, taking our time enjoying crab Rangoon and fortune cookies while the couple across the isle were still waiting for their order. The 3-year old was acting out, not wanting to sit in the seat, not happy at all. His parents tried to keep him occupied but he wasn’t having any of that. He rolled around on the seat, tried to crawl up onto his dad’s shoulders, making a lot of noise. When they tried to calm him down he just turned up the volume and started throwing things. We were his captive audience. It reached a point where I thought the management would intervene but just when you thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre, it did. 

The old man’s sense of humor was dry but he had one. He was known for his acerbic one-liners. The man across the way had a death grip on the boy’s hand as the younger squirmed, growling, trying to escape. In a clear, controlled voice my old dad, without looking up said, “You know, some animals eat their young.” All three of us boys did a short double-take and broke out laughing as if it were rehearsed. There we were, getting up from the table, laughing; really, really laughing. It surprised the little boy; his tirade went dead in the water and he sat staring at us. Dad didn’t crack a smile or even look up. We were still laughing when we got to the house on Blue Ridge. We are still laughing. I have a big cottonwood tree in my back yard. They are notorious for dropping twigs and small branches. After every windy, rainy day the yard is full of sticks to be picked up. The blades on my John Deere are sharp and I want to keep them that way. With sticks bunched under one arm, every time I bend over to pick up another I remember ‘Jungle Man’, I remember ‘Mandarin’ and I’ll never forget that some animals do in fact eat their young. 

WHAT TO LEAVE OUT

I have been in Kansas City way-way, way too long. I need a break out but the impulse just hasn’t jumped the gap yet. A friend suggested a baseball road trip, city to city, cities with major league teams where we could experience the different ball parks. I love baseball but haven’t followed MLB for decades. There are a few teams I sort of like but the part I love is 60’6" from the mound to the plate and 90’ between bases. It is truly a game of inches, maybe fractions of inches and tenths, hundredths of seconds. The better the players, the tighter the tolerances. From the pitcher’s hand to the plate, a 94 mph fast ball makes it in less than half a second. In that .4 seconds the batter has to determine where the ball is, where it will be when it arrives, make the decision to swing, begin the rotation of hips and transfer of weight from back foot to the front and move the bat from a stationary, vertical position through a horizontal plane across the plate, making contact with the ball; four tenths of a second. If the ball is hit on the ground, from the crack of the bat, the defense has only 4 seconds to get the ball to the first baseman’s glove or the runner will beat the throw. I love the game; not so much the team, not the players. Players come and go, make their fortunes and retire. They’re not my heroes. They are the best in the world at what they do but I love the double play in a high school game as much as in MLB. I’d love the road trip but we could watch college games and I’d be just as happy. Seeing power poles go by, seeing white lines on the pavement disappear under the hood; that makes me happy too. 

I do need a road trip. A lady in my coffee group said she loves to travel but after a few days she is ready to come home; she just loves her home and loves being there. I can appreciate that but I certainly do not share her fancy for one house, one place; anyplace. I wanted to go see the Sandhill Cranes last month, on the Platte River in Nebraska. You can do that on an overnight shot from Kansas City but I couldn’t find anyone to go along, got sidetracked, now the birds are gone and I’m still itching with wander lust. Maybe I’ll just throw my camera bag in the car and take off for a week. This time of year the weather can be challenging but the camera is versatile and if I work like I should, I can find good material. Taking photographs is work after all; you have to pay attention. If you don’t have something particular in mind, you have to be open to any and everything. How about the rivers and river towns  in southern Missouri! I’d have to do some research, what to leave in and what to leave out.  I don’t know; maybe I’m talking myself into something. 

ONCE THE PAGE IS READ

When we draw that first breath, pulling air in from the outside, when we need make an effort to suckle from the nipple; I believe that is the beginning, the moment we become who we are, literally. I’m not looking for an argument with conception-fundamentalists but that’s what I believe. From then on, like graphite from a pencil point onto the page, as long as we keep making our mark, we have a life. It takes both pencil and paper to record our story. When we lift the point to cross a ’t’ or dot an ‘i’ or skip word to word - we have to sleep sometime. 

When poets submit their verse to the math of music, it ascends from poetry to song. Besides a clever, compelling story, beyond the word-smithing; song has to fit in a small envelope. I know, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs can go on forever but still. Composers write symphonies to be rehearsed and premiered in grand music halls. Song writers scribble on napkins, flesh tunes out in someone’s basement, then test them on street-corner passer-byes. Poetry is wonderful word play and poetry tells us a story but not like a song. 

One of the best song writers of my lifetime is Don Mclean. Of course he wrote the classic, ‘American Pie’ - “. . . them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing, this’ll be the day that I die. . .” Most people know another Mclean song but come up blank on its title; “Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls, frameless heads on nameless walls, with eyes that watch the world and can’t forget.” The title is ‘Vincent’, a tribute to Vincent Van Gogh. All of a sudden the lyrics make sense. In 1970 Mclean wrote ‘And I Love You So’. It is always, always mentioned when artists and critics debate the best love songs of all time. The words tell a story that could fill volumes, still it only requires four short verses and a chorus. The last verse goes, “ The book of life is brief, and once the page is read, all but love is dead, this is my belief.” Leaves me speechless; what else can you say?

In this life, all you can do is sing your song, writing as you go. You put the pencil to the page every morning when you become self aware again, you have been blessed with another day. When I die, they will close the book on me but its pages will still be penciled full, loads of stories and even a few songs. I saw a cartoon the other day, of Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Your view is from behind as Charlie laments, “You know, a day will come and we will die, both of us.” You sense the long pause then Snoopy replies, “Yes, but all the other days, we won’t.”  - Once the page is read, all but love is dead, this is my belief.

ONE-ONE THOUSAND

I watched ‘In Harm’s Way’ last night from my movie collection. It’s a 1965 black & white, WW2 movie that feels older than it is. I’m not a big John Wayne fan but I like this movie. Today’s movies go to great lengths for authenticity and a feel for the real so I notice things that don’t add up. I have ridden in and jumped out of lots of airplanes and even though it’s been a long time, I haven’t lost that sensibility. A parachute drop is one of the important parts of the plot and I noticed flaws there that nobody else would. There was a shortage of aircraft and they schemed to get some R-4’s from another unit but in the scene the borrowed planes were C-47’s. The ‘Duke’ goes along for the ride, stands by the door as soldiers jump. In that real world scenario, the doorway is a turbulent place with prop-wash but nothing was flapping. The movie set looked alright but it was obvious they were not in the air. Big John sat in the back next to the open door and spoke to the pilot when in truth he wouldn’t have been able to hear himself, much less the pilot. Everybody knows something about something and can pick movies apart so I’m not criticizing, just saying. 

I was a parachute rigger in the peace-time army of the early 60’s, before Viet Nam. When I was in jump school we used a mock-up of a C-123 where we practiced. We would wear dummy parachutes, go through the protocol, line up, hook up then on command, “Stand in the door” the first guy in the stick put both hands outside so he could pull himself out and the toe of one boot across the threshold. Then the jump-master would shout “Go” and we launched ourselves out the door into the pit a foot below, hopping out of the way of the next jumper, counting the five count and looking up, reaching up to check the canopy which should have been open by then. Then we did it again, and again. There was always somebody telling you what you didn’t do or did wrong. On our first, ‘Cherry’ jump it was from a C-123, just like the mock-up. But in flight you realize with the noise and the motion, crowded together, the jump wouldn’t be like the practice. 

We flew arund for at least an hour before we got the command to check our equipment,  then to hook up. Hooked up, standing up, all I could see was the parachute of the guy in front of me. That was all I could see as the first jumper went out the door. You could feel the cold air rushing in and around, hear the sound of feet on the floor and the wind. You really can’t see anything until there are only two, maybe three guys between you and the door. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All the hype about freezing up in the door; you had to be conditioned to jump without thinking about it. We trained and trained until it was second nature and nobody was going to freeze. But as the 2nd guy in front of me moved to the jump position in the door, waiting for the “Go”, our drill sergeant jump-master pulled his static line out of the way. Instead of shouting the “Go” command he put a foot on the jumpers butt and kicked him out the door. I was shocked. They went to all the trouble to train me and I was going to be kicked out the door. When the guy in front of me got kicked out I knew that was BS. As the Man reached for my static line I moved up but I didn’t stop. I kept on going and like to believe I made it out before he could get his foot on my butt. Everything went like it was supposed to. On the ground I thought it was supposed to be more exciting and I just wasn’t feeling it. Four more jumps in two days and we were ready to graduate, sew new wings on all of our uniforms. 

Static line jumps are one thing while free fall is another. I joined the unit sport parachute club soon after and went through another training regime. This time you fall free for a while, for fun, five seconds at first and working your way up to higher altitudes and longer free falls. By then it was clear, no questions; a military career was not in my cards. I didn’t hate it but then I knew I would get out soon. When you get lemons you make lemonade. I jumped with a civilian parachute club after I got out and had two great years with them. You reach a point with anything where it’s either make a commitment or move on to something else. I had done all the fun stuff, competed in regional and national compititon with some medals and trophies and found myself on the bubble. To get better would require much more energy, time and money. To keep on doing the same old, same old; even sky diving, it just wasn't my nature. I loved jumping out of airplanes but I would come to love other things as well. No regrets. 

DECLINATION

Sometime around the 8th or 9th grade you took a writing class and learned about metaphors, a figure of speech using one thing to mean another, a clever comparison. I do that a lot. It’s how my mind works, on autopilot, it feeds me the words and I write them down. But my mind isn’t content just to feed me clever comparisons, it recognizes similarities between things, actions and reactions. I notice how one thing mirrors or parallels something else. If I could turn it off there are times I certainly would; times I don’t need the distraction, but there you are. By then the comparison has made the leap from a single word to a model of something more complicated.

Back about the same time you were learning about metaphors you took a science class as well where you learned about magnets and magnetism. You probably put a piece of paper on a bar magnet and sprinkled iron filings over it. Even though the filings were dropped randomly, fell in a random pattern, when they came to rest on the paper they arranged themselves along lines of force in the magnetic field. At both ends of the magnet there was an array of particles that looked like a frizzy, Afro hairdo - ( simile, a type of metaphor) and no matter how you turn the magnet or apply the filings, you get the same result: ‘Magnetism’. It creates a force that either attracts or repels iron. Iron has very cool properties and this magnetic thing is special. Iron molecules can be shocked into lining up parallel, side by side, all facing the same direction, causing the push-pull force. It can be done with electricity or rubbing two pieces of iron together or even a sharp impact. Those force lines arc out from each end of the magnet, swing around and meet each other is space, above the middle of the bar magnet. But you knew this. 

What is awesome is; the earth is a big bar magnet. Its core is iron, so hot its molecules line up just right and create a tremendous magnetic field that circles the earth. It’s not an accident we call the opposite ends of bar magnets the N and S poles. So what’s the point? The point is the way a compass works, or the way it doesn’t. It’s needle is a small magnet with a N & S pole. Balanced on a pin point it will turn under the push and the pull of earth’s magnetic field so the S end of the needle points to earth’s N pole. If you need to orient yourself to north, or any other direction a good compass can be be a life saver. But it’s not that simple. 

A good compass will always point in the direction of the magnetic push and pull. But the lines of force don’t always run is straight lines, from one pole to the other. Sometimes, some places in particular, those lines of force are deflected, bent at angles that screw up a compass reading. In general terms, the nearer the pole, the more screwed up the compass reading. So, good maps will not only show the magnetic lines of force but also include the number of degrees and direction of the error, at that location. It’s called ‘Declination’. So if you’re up around the Arctic Circle and your map indicates there is a 3.5 degree W declination, then you have to compensate on your compass to correct for the error. Otherwise you could miss your destination by miles. 

So, here comes the metaphor/model. For a very long time I have believed that human, social, civilized constructs such as government, religion, politics, economics, the arts; all parallel if you will, some natural, science based system as they unfold in the present. We are well into the crunch year of our 4-year election cycle and people are simply nuts. It’s like (another simile) the Crusades or the Civil War again. Follow the metaphor/model. In a game of winner-take-all, self righteous-self interest, powerful forces (Forces) with choreographed campaigns; they recruit contributing, voting supporters - Us against Them and we’re the good guys. They want your compass to optimize and exaggerate the upside of their reality. The forces are not magnetic but they can be (Polarizing). 

We, the objects of this marketing frenzy need a good (Metaphor) compass, one with good moral, logical calibration. It is understood that we won’t all agree on what is good and what is not but that’s not the problem. None of us have a really good map, one with (Declination) information. The (Forces) don’t want luke warm supporters, they would rather we be ‘on fire’. So the farther we move away from a reliable, moderate mentality to the more (Polarized), we lean on our compass but it gives us, more and more, a convoluted reading. The (Forces) want hegemony and are willing for us to pay for it. To hell with declination, trust our compass. 

That’s the metaphor/model that comes to mind. I wish I had a better story today but this is where I’m at. I resist moving too far away from the median. I don’t trust anybody who is that sure of anything. It smells of marketing and sales and I don’t get the feeling there is any customer service. Free college education; get serious. This is not Denmark. Regulate banking into oblivion; something to do with baby and bathwater. But deregulate banking? That goes along with a feudal system, trial by fire and royal decree. The current freedom of religion is a joke, sounding more like Sharia Law. My inclination is to lean left but I don’t run to the boundary and beg for more. It’s not about your compass, it’s your map. 

SUN

1957 was a very good year; I graduated from high school, turned 18 and Sun Records released Jerry Lee Lewis’, ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ My diploma is still good, I’ll be another year older this summer and radio stations still play ‘Great Balls of Fire'. I recognized the yellow, SUN label on 45-rpm records but all I cared about was the music coming from the dashboard of my 1946 Ford coupe: oh my, miles and miles of water under that bridge. 

A couple of summers ago, I visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, the SUN Records Museum and the Gibson Guitar factory in Memphis, Tennessee and later, Martin Guitars in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. I don’t know when I started the turn away from being a sports guy, going to concerts rather than ball games but it was a good turn. If I had my pick between Super Bowl and a James Taylor or Bonnie Raitt concert; no contest. I bought a guitar in 2004 and started making noise, then a discovery. When the noise you’re making suggests a familiar song, it comes naturally to frame the words and follow the sound. I have a friend who has made a career of both vocal and instrumental music. When I began, he told me, "You don't need a good voice to sing. All you need is courage." I  know exactly, exactly the range of my skills and they are both thin and few. I can’t play guitar, but I can play with it. I can’t sing either but I scraped up some courage, framed the words and followed the noise.

I have perfect recall when it comes to the pleasure of throwing a baseball up on the barn roof, moving left or right, tracking its trajectory and catching it, again and again. The joy of making contact, tossing green apples up and batting them into imaginary doubles and triples; it’s very much like making a smooth transition from the D chord to the B minor on my guitar. Nobody need hear it, I don’t do it for someone else. When I put the words, the chords and the notes together, and it works; it’s like the juggler, 7 hoops on a moving bicycle. He’s in the spot light, in front of a crowd and he’s gets the applause but the bottom line is, it's about him, he's the one doing it. In comparison, I would be sitting on a stool, juggling 3 tennis ball in an empty room. But it would still be me, doing it. If you can keep 7 hoops in the air while riding a bike, you are awesome. If you can sing while playing an instrument, there's a place for you in heaven. Being focoused and competent in the same breath on two different skills is quite a trick.

Sun Records on Union Avenue in Memphis is in the same building it occupied when Sam Phillips ran the business in the 1950’s. The studio where Elvis and Johnny Cash made their first recordings is still there, still functional. After hours, you can rent it by the hour and record your own music, just like they did back when. An audio engineer/producer will do the set up, guide the process and give timely tips on how you are doing. At the end of the session you get your music on a CD and a zip file. That’s what we did two days ago, my guitar amigo Adam and I drove to Memphis. It took 2 hours for me to get 3 songs in the can. Adam did one. You can’t escape for a moment where you are; hallowed ground, beneath the photo of the Million Dollar Quartet - Presley, Cash, Lewis & Perkins. Acoustic tiles on the ceiling were new when Jerry Lee cut, ‘Whole Lot Of Shaking Going On’ and they still show up for work every day. Smoke from Johnny Cash’s cigarettes still yellows the paint. I sat on a stool and sang into a 60-year old microphone. Who knows who else has occupied that space? We did 11 takes on ‘Sweet Baby James’ but we got it and it works. I love listening to music and I love making my noise. I’d like to come back and do it again someday but if I don’t or can’t, I’ll dream it again; like hitting green apples and catching baseballs off the barn roof.