Category: Life

S*** happens

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A Good Time at Uncle Mike’s House

Robin and I have a very fond memory of a night and a morning that we spent at Joe Mike’s House.  It was after Sue had passed away and he was staying in the house while her kids figured out what to do with it.  Robin and had taken our first extended trip together.  We had been down to Mississippi and across to Florida during the week of 4th of July.  As they say, we had and were having an excellent time.

We wanted to stop and visit in Owensboro.  We arrived there late, never thinking about it being hard to find a motel room.  What we did not know was that the large hotel on the river had closed down, and all the other baseball_bat_kid_by_sir_smoke_alotmotels were full.

We decided to venture over to Uncle Mike’s even though it was close to one in the morning. Before I went and knocked on the door I got a bottle of rum out of trunk (remember we were on vacation) as a peace offering.  I knocked on the door several times, each time progressively louder.  I could not rouse anyone in the house.  Remembering that the bedroom was at the side of the house I went to   that window.  I called Mike’s name a few times and finally heard a commotion in the bedroom.  I went back onto the porch expecting a friendly greeting by my Uncle.  Instead there was a wild man at the door with a baseball bat.

After our initial shocks, we greeted.  We then sat on that sweet porch drinking rum and cokes until 2 or 3 in the morning.  I am not sure what we talked about, probably our travels.

What makes this story special for us, besides the good time on the porch is what happened the next morning.  Not having any other bed, Robin and I slept on a twin bed in the back bedroom.  Even though we had been dating a few months I had never told her that I loved her.  In telling someone that, it is a huge commitment and carries with it a tremendous responsibility.  At least it should.  I hugged her that next morning and said, “I’ve loved you for a while now, but I was afraid of the responsibility of that.”  Or something to that effect.

I’ve been loving her quite a while now.

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A Southern, Jewish Tradition

My Yankee wife has cooked me another traditional Southern meal to bring in the New Year.  We had black-eye peas, turnip greens, rice and corn bread.  It took a while to get her to cook cornbread the “right” way.  First time she served me cornbread I thought it was cake. Now she makes it in a cast iron skillet with yellow cornmeal, and it is not sugary sweet.blackeyed_peas

Traditionally, black-eye peas are for good luck and greens are to bring wealth.  There are more than a few theories about why this combination.  The one I like best is “Eat poor on New Year’s, and eat fat the rest of the year.”

One I  did not know about is the tradition of black-eye peas dates back 500 years to the Talmud:

“According to a portion of the Talmud written around 500 A.D., it was Jewish custom at the time to eat black-eyed peas in celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It’s possible that the tradition arrived in America with Sephardic Jews, who first arrived in Georgia in the 1730s.”

And as Tevye would say, “Tradition.”  Southern, Jewish or otherwise, tradition makes the world go round and helps to keep us grounded.

New Year’s Day Tradition – Black-Eyed Peas and Greens

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Rev. Joe Loses His Tonsils

I’ve been telling this story off and on for years.  I told it again today then I started thinking about a deeper meaning to the story.  I decided it was really a story about trust.

At whatever time you are learning your multiplication table, I needed to get my tonsils taken out.  This was the T&A operation, tonsils and adenoids, which used to be so common to us children of the 50s. I do not remember a whole lot of explanation as why I was going to the hospital except it was to make me better.  I was checked in, and placed in a room with 4 other boys.  The young man across from me had some sort of condition that made him spasm frequently.  I did not know this, but what I did know was that he had just had his tonsils out.  In my child’s mind I made the intuitive leap that after my tonsil operation I would be like that spastic, little boy.

I have always told the story in regards to the silliness of kids and irrational fears.  Reflecting on it today I decided it was really a story about trust.  I trusted my mother, and I suppose I trusted the doctor to some extent that if I needed to be like the spastic young man to be better, so be it.  Of course, children have extraordinary trust in people in positions of authority. They have even more trust in those that love them.   Without it the human child would have a hard time getting to adulthood.  But still…

I do not remember when I told my mother of the fear that I had, a few days or few weeks afterwards.  Best I remember, she said something along the lines of, “I’m sorry you were scared.”   She then went on to pooh-pooh my fears.

So it goes.

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Rewinding Life

From time to time I will hear or read an interview of some famous person.  One of the common questions asked is, “If you had your life to live over would you do anything differently?”  Almost invariably the answer is, “No, I would not change a thing.”   On hearing this, in my mind, I am screaming, “Bullshit.”

I look back on my life and there are so many things that I would have changed had I had the opportunity.  Maybe it is the programmer in me, but I see life as a imagesseries of decision points.  Like the traveler in Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, go one direction and the other path is usually lost.  I do not know a human alive, if they are being honest, that would not own up to bad decisions, to decisions they regret, or wonder what would have happened if they had taken the other branch.  I think it is part of the tragedy that is the quiet desperation of human existence.  The Buddha gave a way out, living in the moment.  However, that is much easier said than done.

One of my fantasies is to wonder what would happen if I could go back and change x to y.  What would have my path have been?  Continue reading “Rewinding Life”

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No wine for you, Cat

100_0380Robin’s cat, Booty Wang, is your typical finicky cat.  He is especially finicky about his water.  He prefers that it be from a running source.  A time or two or ten I have found Robin running the water at the bathroom sink and Booty lapping it up from the stream.

Given my attitude about the subservient nature of companions not of the Homo sapiens food group, I am not going to do this.  However, I do feel a responsibility for animals partially in my care.  We did start keeping a water bowl in the upstairs master bathroom as well as one in the laundry room.  He would not drink from the original bowl that I had purchased.  After a few weeks I wondered if it was because it was plastic.  So I changed it out for a glass bowl.  Voila, he would drink from that, BUT only if the water was fresh.  If the water had sat for more than a few hours he ignores it.   He will walk into the bathroom sit down in front of the bowl, and wait for a human to magically change it into fresh water.   Did I call him the subservient species earlier?

This morning that routine transacted, and he still just sat there looking at the fresh water in the bowl.  In exasperation I said, “Cat, I cannot change it into wine, deal with it.”  That is when I remembered I had not taken my meds.

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There is no turning away from the memory

I don’t remember her name.  I don’t even remember her face.  I was 12 or 13 and there were a group of us in the back of an old pick-em-up truck headed for the swimming hole.  I remember she was very brown from the Oklahoma sun , dressed in a bikini and I thought her to be an amazing beauty.

I must have gotten a whiff of her pheromones. That along with the sight of her bikini clad body awoke something in me I had never felt before.  It was the first time I felt desire, a need to touch the flesh of another human.  I did not really know what it was.  In all actuality, it scared me straight into puberty.  This emotion, this urge that felt like it wanted to consume me.  In confusion and fright I turned away to watch the country side passing by.  There is no turning away from the memory.  It has stayed with me all these years.