SAYETH THE LORD: DAY 198

  About the time I started school, we started monthly outings to south of Nevada, Missouri to check on my surrogate grandparents. Ida, Sally and Forrest Cole were siblings, children of an old farmer-Civil War veteran. The Cole’s raised my dad from when he was a toddler. In my time, Sally and Forrest lived off a dirt, county road in a tiny, no plumbing or electricity, 3 room house at the end of a long two-track. We stayed with them in warm weather. My brother and I slept with pillows on a folded, quilt mat on the floor while our parents slept on folding, canvas army cots. 

Ida had married Hiram Stockdale, an old, bachelor farmer a few miles up the road. A marriage of convenience, neither had ever been married but in their 70’s, they agreed, so to speak, to look after each other. Their’s was an explosive, volatile arrangement as both had short fuses and wicked tempers. She came over in a horse drawn spring wagon to visit and break bread. Sometimes we stopped Sunday morning at the Stockdale place on our way home. In cold weather we stayed there, with two wood stoves and beds for everyone. I remember poking my nose out from under a feather-down comforter to the smell of bacon and the wood stove in the kitchen. As harsh and unforgiving as she was with Hiram, Ida was an affectionate mother hen to my brothers and me. I remember the touch of her gnarled old hands on my head and shoulders, and on my face. 
Time drags and you think you will never grow up but then you do.  Seventy five years have slipped away, a day at a time. But time is cheap and plentiful when it lies in wait, spread out ahead like a magic carpet. One of life’s great ironies, how the body grows old but the child inside is trapped in a timeless place. 
With Covid-19 and all of the world’s other woes, putting the best foot forward can be a challenge. Finding fault with people and how they do their business is too easy, why go there? We are what we are, rational animals that dispute the merits of good and evil. Beyond that; Monkey see, monkey do. I want to believe in the human capacity for balance and good will. Still, I’m afraid that corruption (especially corruption) plus oppression and war, they will be with us until we find a more efficient, more effective way to self destruct. Until then, assuming the end doesn’t come on my watch, I would look for the good in people, try to nurture more and squabble less. I think maybe that’s what the Cole family legacy has left me with; greed is insatiable, don’t feed it. Life is difficult enough.
What can I say about the mental acuity of the voting public? Look who was elected to the highest office in the land; an extreme narcissist, bigot, demagogue with the emotional maturity of a 3 year-old. It bears out the truth of a quote attributed to Abe Lincoln, the one about fooling some of the people, all of the time. In this case, enough people to be elected President. He may very well win again. I understand group dynamics but really. . . If this is what makes Americans extraordinary, then ‘extraordinary’ is not the accolade I thought it was. 
The Cole family was extraordinary. Their legacy has been, and for as long aa I can tell their story, it will be about struggle and never giving up. Life seeks after itself and wherever it takes root, it will find a way. They lived in a barter economy along with their dirt poor neighbors. None of them could come up with the ante to get into the game. As long as government and big business (Banks) sleep together, poor people will be expendable, cannon fodder. The Coles all died penniless and spent with less accumulated than when they began. I think their tenacious struggle was extraordinary. 
The disappearing middle class is shrinking and those left behind blame the next ones below them on the status ladder, the have-nots. The taste of prosperity is losing its salt for working people and still they approve massive tax cuts for the 1%, aiming their anger at the next rung below, not the culprits who rob from the top down with deadly attorneys and ill-gotten gain. I guess it comes natural as fox and mice. It takes a lot of mice to sustain the fox. But fear not sayeth the Lord, there will always be enough mice. They reproduce like poor people. In the end, if you love someone who knows the touch of your gnarled old hands and they love you in return, you did well.