MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY

If you don’t like Christmas music, then you don’t want to listen to the radio. Every station is dialed in on Christmas. I’m more in the spirit this year than any time I can remember. My righteous friends want it to be all about the baby Jesus but it’s about a lot more than religion. People have been celebrating this time of year since they figured out moon cycles and the four seasons. I can hear Nat King Cole on the radio in the kitchen, “. . . and so I’m offering this simple phrase, for kids from 1 to 92, although it’s been said, many times, many ways; Merry Christmas, to you.” This is the Christmas I’ll celebrate and remember. 

Life is pretty good. Mine is long enough that I truly know the difference and young enough I still think about the future; the music is a gentle push in that direction. This holiday is for kids and people who remember what it was like. We haven’t changed that much, just a little tattered around the edges. I remember rushing home from work, packing the car with food and presents; with kids in pajamas who would sleep while I drove through the night. The next morning they were ready for breakfast at Granny’s, then play in the back yard while I caught up on sleep. Now it’s them on the road, coming to see me for the holidays. Music on my radio has turned to Chuck Berry and “. . . run, run Rudolph, tell Santa he can take the freeway down,” 

Winter in Missouri isn’t like it was when I was a kid; not like Michigan winters when my kids were kids. I gets wet and cold here and it may snow but you can’t count an anything but nasty. I spend as much time in Grand Haven, Michigan as I can; any season, any reason. I’ll drop in at “Coffee Grounds,” day or night and they know me, remember that I take a toasted “Everything Bagel” with butter, a large decaf and that I’ll set up shop at the table in the window. It snows there, you can count on it. People come and go and nobody talks about the weather; they eat a scone or a muffin and drink their coffee, talk about kids and pets; talk about detours on the highway and the economy. I sit at the window and write about whatever comes to mind. Summer will come in good time and people will dress for it. Sandals and shorts will be in order at Coffee Grounds and the tourists will return, the beach will be crowded and the river channel will be full of power boats, idling their way out to the big water. Elvis just called in and it’s still Christmas season with, “. . . Merry Christmas, Baby; you sure do treat me nice. . . . feelin’ good tonight, got music on the radio. . . want to kiss you, underneath the mistletoe.” I am in a sweet Christmas frame of mind. 

LAKE EFFECT

Last night I went to a pot-luck, family reunion with friends, honoring great grandparents who spend their winters now in Florida. They’d come back to Coopersville for Christmas. Great grandpa and I were the only old men there and we sat on the fringe while young moms passed their babies around and their men huddled around chips & dip, arguing football and politics. I’ve known GG Pa for a long time but haven’t seen him in a while. We’ve had good conversations but last night, all he wanted to talk about was how wonderful, warm Florida was and how awful, cold Michigan is. He was obligated to several generations of descendants, had to be there and couldn’t get his head around the idea that I was there by choice. It happens every year, somewhere; somebody condescends on snow and cold, in favor of January golf and sun tan lotion, somewhere else. I don’t try to defend winter any more. I spend a lot of time in the South and they shiver in the summer heat, just at the thought of winter up North. They think I’m nuts but southerners tend to think that of everyone who lives north of Atlanta anyway. I don’t love being cold or snow down my neck but I dress appropriately and it’s not an issue. I just listen and nod, shake my head now and then and look for a chance to change the subject. 

It had snowed all day and the temp never got out of the teens. I spent the day in Grand Haven, taking care of auto license and bank business. The wind was whipping in off the lake with more snow in the air than on the ground, close to a white-out. I holed up in my favorite coffee shop, waiting for the wind to lie down. Got back to the house just in time to strike out for the pot-luck. It was still snowing when we got back to the house but no wind. The forecast called for 4 to 6 inches of lake effect so I swept off the deck railing and figured to check in the morning to see how much actually fell. 

I love lake effect snow. When dry, frigid, arctic air plunges down out of Canada, Wisconsin freezes. When the same air heads east, across Lake Michigan, it gathers up moisture and warms up just a little. Then, over Michigan’s land mass it cools off again, condensation and “Voila” Lake Effect snow. It comes down soft and slow, like teenagers sneaking in after curfew. I remember back in ’97, we woke up to a foot of lake effect. Snow was  walled up 6 or 8 inches, maybe half an inch thick on the power lines; looked like a curtain except it was on top of the wire. Once the sun hit it, it collapsed in seconds. This morning would be overcast but the sun was in no hurry to rise. I stepped out on the deck and there was a riff laid up on the rail, 4 to 6 inches, just like the forecast called for. Winter’s not so bad after all. It’s December and I’m ready for a change. Autumn was great with all the color and balmy afternoons. I’ll be ready for spring before it comes but for now, snow crunching under my feet and lake effect snow sounds just right. 

JUST WORDS

Nelson Mandela died on Thursday. He was sick for a long time and we knew it would come but you don’t feel the weight until it falls. I know how to play with words and sometimes I say something worth hearing but I’m a lightweight. There’s nothing I can say about Mandela that will not be said better by someone else. Maya Angelou; she is for real, today read a poem in tribute to him. Titled, “His Day Is Done.” she alluded to the sun and the fact that it can not avoid its own sunset. But she left the window open for someone, someday to rise up and usher in a new morning. Nelson Mandela was born into an ugly, unforgiving world and he helped change it. Somebody had to and it fell to him. 

I felt a sense of loss when Jacques Cousteau died, back in 1997. He helped change a world where the sea was our sewer and life there was only worth the assets we could strain out of it. I wondered, who will fill his shoes? No one could take his place but lots of someones picked up his cause and we moved on. I felt the same loss when Ray Charles died, in 2004; two days after Ronald Reagan. In a climate of political fervor and national pride, Reagan’s passing overshadowed Ray Charles. But a decade later, Ronald Reagan is just another dead president whose performance and ideals have lost their luster. Ray’s music still lends comfort and courage to those in hard times. I knew we would get another politician but who would give me something to believe in? Nobody took his place but the music is still lifting us up. 

I know that nobody can fill the void left by Nelson Mandela and I feel the weight. But there will be others to  champion the poor and disenfranchised, and their journeys are just beginning. Decades from now, you will be able to pull up Angelou’s poem and it will touch hearts as it did today. I identify with Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Noble Laureate who said, “I write as much to understand as to be understood.” So I write down my little words and I read them again, to myself, and it’s alright. I am ready to move on. 

THANKS

Last year, 2012, I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving twice. Canadian Thanksgiving comes in October; I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia for that and made it back to U.S. of A. the next month for the American version. People who know me know Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, it’s no secret We celebrate our heroes birthdays and anniversaries of famous battles and other conquests but TG isn’t about a hero or a great victory. I suppose there is a historical precedent, loosely timed with harvest time. Our tradition alludes to Pilgrims who were struggling to survive in the New World. It wasn’t new; there were millions of citizens  already residing there, in a culture that had been self sustaining for thousands of years. But they thought they had discovered something new and were migrating by the boat-loads. 

The story has been tweaked to make those European immigrants appear competent, self sufficient and independent but we all know better. They were in trouble and native people had to provide nurture and material support. You might say it was the first evolution of welfare in the USA. But story has it, they celebrated their good fortune with a great feast and thankfulness. Being of strong religious beliefs, they attributed their survival and freedom to their creator. In that tradition, hundreds of years later, we stop for a long weekend before the Christmas season to take stock of our good fortune, to share our blessings and be thankful. I understand the hyperbole that surrounds Pilgrims and their righteous destiny but the idea of universal gratitude flies on its own wings, above politics or religion. 

Yesterday we drove down to Iberia Parish, on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, known for its islands. Not typical islands with beaches and tides, they are dome shaped hills that cover thousands of acres, rising several hundred feet above seal level in a land formed from river sediment. A 200 ft. hill here is as noteworthy as as a 14,000 ft. mountain in Colorado. There are no hills in this flat land along the Gulf of Mexico except for the “Islands”. Over millions of years, primordial salt deposits have been squeezed into upwellings or domes. 

We went to Avery Island, where the McIlhenny family has been mining salt and making Tabasco Sauce for the last 150 years. We walked through the factory and visited the Company Store. The farm itself tills only about 400 acres and the peppers they raise are all used for seed. Peppers for the sauce are grown in Mexico and Latin America. They are blended into a pepper mash, aged in oak barrels for three years before they can be turned into Tabasco Sauce. They use exactly the same ingredients and process they did in the 1860’s. I’m sure the McIlhenny family, who still operate the business, hands on, are thankful today for not only their good fortune and the rewards for their industry but also the nature of salt domes and the chemistry of capsaicin. Yesterday, in the gift shop, if your purchase was over $25, you got a free, one gallon bottle of the original, $41 per gallon Tabasco Sauce. So, we have two gallons of sauce that we didn’t have to pay for and a t-shirt, hot pad and wine bottle stopper that cost enough but I think we came out ahead.

Farther down the coast is Weeks Island. It also had salt mining but is better associated with the Weeks family and, “Shadows-on-the-Teche.” Shadows is a Greek Revival home that was built in the early 1830‘s by planter David Weeks, for his wife Mary. They had a 2000 acre, sugar cane plantation on Weeks Island. She was so isolated and depressed there that he built a townhouse for her, closer to civilization on Bayou Teche. The village, then city of New Iberia grew up around the smaller, Bayou Teche plantation of David & Mary Weeks. For over a hundred years and four generations of Weeks, the residence was archived with family furniture and belongings, and over 17,000 documents that chronicled the history of that family and the region. It is now owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is designated a National Historic Landmark. 

Our tour was not only interesting but unusual in that all of the rooms and grounds were furnished with the actual possessions owned and used by the Weeks family. They were the most affluent family, with the biggest and best of Antebellum, New Iberia. But even the high and mighty have troubles. Mosquito netting on all the beds bore witness to inconvenience and health issues. If you chose the nets you gave up any relief from the heat as a breeze would not make it through the netting. Shortly after the mansion was completed, David died of tuberculosis and his son, age 19, took over operation of the sugar plantation. Only five of eight children survived childhood. After seven years, Mary remarried a wealthy judge but kept control of the Weeks interests. After the Civil War, she negotiated a working agreement with former slaves and the plantation continued to prosper. 

No photographs inside the house but outside, around the grounds you can take all the photos you like. There were little kids on the tour and they gravitated immediately to an ancient Live Oak tree in the back yard, just up from the bayou. I stood patiently for what seemed a very long time, waiting for parents to snap their own photos and for kids to figure out how to get down, off the giant tree trunk. I had plenty of time to think about being grateful. First, there is some money in the bank to back up my credit card. I was thankful for a great education, a curious, unquenched imagination and an appetite for new information and understanding; and where would I be without hot sauce? Everything would taste like white bread. I was thankful that all the people working for the McIlhenny’s had jobs and that the sun was shining. 

They were still milling around and climbing on the tree. Live Oaks hold green leaves all winter, dropping their leaves gradually all through out the year so there is no significant leaf fall in autumn. I thought about how thankful the Weeks mush have been. They enjoyed the greatest privileges that wealth could provide. I was thankful that our economy doesn’t depend on slave labor any more. There was evidence in the archives that the Weeks treated their slaves better than most, with some degree of respect and mercy but then, how do you paint a smile on slavery? Then I thought about hot, running water and tooth paste. I thought about not knowing anybody who had suffered tuberculosis, or typhus, or the pox and I felt grateful all over again and it spilled over, right into the photograph I finally got to take.

A few hours later, we were at the Blue Dog Cafe in Lafayette, feeling thankful over stuffed mushrooms and shrimp au gratin. Still, if the high and mighty have troubles you know the down and low have even more. I’m so lucky and grateful not to be so down or low. The world is not as harsh with us as it used to be but we still exploit each other in the name of ambition and liberty. We don’t like to admit that we are as wicked sometimes as we are generous others. We don’t look in the mirror until we look just like what we want to see. The pursuit of personal wealth and a collective responsibility for each other both stem from the same freedom. We talk about it all the time and I’m thankful that conversation is going on. 

MORE SAWDUST

I spend enough time on the road or away from Kansas City that while I’m here, I want to do something that I can’t do on the road. My wood shop in the basement is as good and important kind of therapy for the psyche as my early morning swim routine. I have been in Missouri now for about two months and it’s almost time to leave again. I need to wrap up the table I’ve been working on. I have critics who needle me, “Aren’t you finished yet?” I have to remind them that the wood for the project had been waiting patiently in the rack in the basement for over five years. I’ve only been sawing, sanding and waiting for glue to dry for a couple of months so it feels like Mach 2 to me.

My (in progress) kitchen table is starting to look like a table. But since there are no plans other than in my mind, when a problem reveals itself that wasn’t anticipated I have to let it cook on a back burner until I have a flash of insight or a slow cooked solution emerges. I had a flash yesterday and there are a couple of wrinkles, slow cooking on the back burner but I’ll be in Louisiana for Thanksgiving and I need to spend some serious time on the table before I go. 

I have a source for quality Cypress lumber in a little town southeast of Jackson, Mississippi and I’ll be stopping there on the way back. Buying Cypress has become sort of addictive and it’s hard to drive by without loading up the back of the truck. The toughness and durability of the wood is matched by ease of working it and its sheer beauty. 

It will be several months before I get back to my wood shop so I need to get this sawdust appetite abated. I should be in the basement now instead of typing away upstairs. But that’s an addiction too and they all need to be fed. 

DOE-RAY-ME

My mother played the piano and she was a mainstay in the church choir. Both of my brothers played in the school band, one was a professional musician all of his life. I started horn lessons the summer before seventh grade but a car accident changed that; hit my face on the dashboard, broke teeth and cut up my mouth. So much for horn lessons. After I healed, it was too late for that year and the next year I would be a year behind my classmates. So I’m not a musician, not even close. Music is very mathematical, disciplined and my aspirations ran in the opposite direction.

I started paying attention to popular music when Chuck Berry gave us, “Johnny B. Good” and  Buddy Holly, “That’ll Be The Day.” But that was teenage pushback, and adults just wanted it to go away. But it didn’t go away and we didn’t go back to Guy Lombardo or Benny Goodman and it’s been rockin’ ever since.

My listening habits have moved through stages. First it was rock & roll, then I discovered jazz. Country came and went. When the Nashville sound took over I was already moving on to the blues. I’m a StoryTeller. I used to be a teacher but to spend a career doing that, you need to be a story teller. Naturally, I like music, songs that tell a story. Who’d-a-thought, a decade ago, that I’d pick up a guitar and try to figure it out. Now days I make the disclaimer; still not a musician. I don’t play the guitar, I play with it. I don’t sing, I just tell my songs over simple chords to suggest a melody. My mother would think it a miracle. My big brother would have been proud. I search the internet for lyrics and chord progressions I can handle. There are hook lines and clever phrases out there we all recognize, even if we can’t name the song, like “. . . nothin’ ain’t worth nothin but it’s free.”  I plug them into the stories when there’s a fit and it works. 

Yesterday, I helped a friend move a bookcase. She bought it from another friend who is moving and we had to take it apart, bring it down on the elevator, cross the street and load it in the back of my pickup. Then it was a ride across town, do the elevator thing again up to her condo and put it back together. On the way, she took a CD from the sleeve on my sun visor and slipped it in the player. I have several CD’s that I’ve put together from my I-Tunes collection. After four or five songs, she said, “This is great stuff; where did you get it?” I told her and the song changed to Helen Reddy doing Don McLean’s, “And I Love You So.” She hummed along through the first verse and we were stopped at a red light when the chorus began to unfold. When it went to the last line, somehow I knew she was going to sing along so I accompanied her. “But I don’t let the evening get me down, now that you’re around . . . me.” The light changed and I started up the street. She poked me and called me an “Old Devil”. “I didn’t know you  can sing.” Helen was in the right key for me and I was able to carry it. I told her, “Don’t judge a book . . . right?” Now she’s going to want me to sing again but I’ll tell a story instead, maybe one with a melody.

SAWDUST

My dad was a Tool & Die maker. Tool & Die would be to Machinist as Doctor is to Nurse. It was back in the old days when a machinist-apprentice was assigned to a seasoned, journeyman tradesman, a mentor. After several years of learning the trade, demonstrating skills and knowledge, the apprentice could be elevated to Journeyman. He could do almost anything with metal. They used mills, drills, lathes, grinders and polishers, not to mention trigonometry and physics to make steel or aluminum parts to a tolerance within .0001 in. He was very good at what he did. But his passion was for working with wood. Around the walls of our garage were wood working tools and the space was multi purposed. When he was making sawdust, the car lived outside. It was a clever way of saying, “I’m making something out of wood.” without going into detail. I’m sure he had his reasons: the thought of turning me loose with power tools would have been scary. But he ran me off when he was busy and never offered to show or teach me how to work with wood. I got the message. In high school I skipped over wood shop after all, I had no business making saw dust. 

Fast forward to the day when my own sons brought home bread boxes and step stools they made is their shop classes as school. They made me proud but also aware that it was something I missed out on. Anticipating a time when I’d invest in tools of my own, I knew there would come a day for me to make sawdust. Fast forward a bunch more years, my basement is full of woodworking tools and the floor is covered with sawdust. Over a decade, I started with a table saw and a chop saw, then had to build a work bench. I got a sander and a drill press, several cabinets for supplies and hand tools. Then came a jointer and a planer. I had my dad’s old router and router table; still worked fine but was small and under powered by today’s standards so I got a bigger, stronger router. I needed another work bench, several more sanders, a biscuit cutter, (for gluing pieces together.) I have more clamps than I can keep track of, built a couple of racks to stack lumber in and I’m in business, for now. I’m sure there will come along a project that requires another, new tool and I’ll have to go get one. 

Now days, I swim early, then do breakfast, then time to write. Sometimes I need a nap before lunch. With three wood projects underway in the basement I’ll have to get after the “sawdust” soon. The cypress, kitchen table is about half finished and I’m experimenting with making Lincoln Log toys, for holiday and birthday presents. A friend is using my tools and space to make some shadow boxes for his fiancé and it’s a crowded place. 

My learning curve for woodworking has followed about the same trajectory as with my guitar. I keep good company and pay attention, then I go home and either make noise or sawdust, depending on the venue. I’ll take a class now and then, inching my way along, getting better but not in great leaps or without mistakes and sometimes blunders. Bad noise from the guitar is one thing but sawdust is another. By now, sawdust talk is really about sawdust, not clever conversation. The more you shape wood, the more you leave on the floor and I’ve been shaping a lot of wood lately. Never one to make Neat & Tidy a priority, I have to go there in self defense. Dust and chips literally get in the way, make the floor slippery and create a fire hazard. You can buy expensive, sawdust extraction systems; high powered vacuum with ducts to route all the dust into a collection bin. I don’t have one yet so I spend as much time sweeping and running my shop vac as I do anything else. 

A friend of mine who had been retired for a few years told me, “If you have any big plans, do it right away. Don’t take time for granted.” We were both teachers and he knew I’d understand, “Find something that is challenging, something with room to learn and grow.” The stuff that comes out of my shop lacks the precision my dad would have required but between wanderlust, my guitar and what to do with all my sawdust, I am forever challenged and I am not taking anything for granted.