OK, It's Me Again

The Old Man had a mixed bag of a day on the golf course today. The game itself was unremarkable....about my usual mishmash of good shots and bad. I had a putt today that ran by the hole faster than Rep. Charles Rangal runs by an IRS office. I also had an Amelia Earhart....didn't make it over the water. And I can't neglect to mention the Nancy Pelosi......thought it was going one way, hit a tree, and went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Perhaps my "shot of the day" though, was the David Blaine....I knocked the tee out from under the ball and the ball didn't move..just dropped straight down. Still, though, it was a jewel of a day; low humidity, temperature in the upper 70's, and hardly a cloud in the sky. There was no financial crisis out there today, and no votes were taken. There were only 3 good friends, cajoling, cat-calling, and whooping it up like the children we all are inside. I wouldn't have traded it for a $12,000 DOW.

Driving home, I thought of how thankful I am to have had a day like this. My thoughts turned to other items to be placed on my list. Of course, at the top of my list are all those current day things; my family and the love we share, seeing how my daughters have matured into such wonderful women, and how Miss Martha has somehow managed to put up with me for all those years. And yes, Jules, I well remember when MY baby turned two.

In keeping with the original mission of this blog exercise, there are things from my childhood that made the list as well:

• A mother who taught me to read before I started school. I knew all about Dick, Jane, and Spot well ahead of the curve. Thanks for her having cultivated and nurtured a voraciousness that exists to this day.
• A father who was a kind, gentle, and funny man with a heart as big as the moon. He gave me so much that I was unaware of receiving. Such things as, "Pride goes before a fall", "A fool and his money are soon parted", and "A Southern gentleman never takes his coat off when eating". To this day, if you can get me in a suit, it could be 200 degrees and I'll be at that table, coat and all.
• A town that imparted a wholesome atmosphere. In that day and time, there would be rumors of a girl who would, now, sadly, there are often rumors of a girl who wont. No doors had to be locked, and most of the time car keys were in the ignition or laying on the front seat. The only reason to close the car windows while you were in the movie was if rain was imminent.
• For having the opportunity to see Saturday westerns and Superman serials. To watch Walt Disney himself show in person on television the progress being made on Disney Land in California. To ride stick horses while firing cap pistols, to build huts and attempt to dig tunnels, to lie on my back under a tree and read on a hot summer afternoon, to pick early cherries from a neighbor's tree that overhung the sidewalk, and to help turn the crank on our old ice cream freezer until I had to give way to bigger muscles, all this and so much more "made the cut" on my list.

Who knows what the economic future is....or any future for that matter? But whatever is to come, it can never take away the past. So my unsolicited advice to you is, celebrate your past, dwell on all the good you have seen and been a part of, for it has been but prologue to what you have become thus far, and where you go tomorrow.

Margaritaville......Again

The Old Man is heading for the water. Back online in a few days. Meanwhile, be good to each other and laugh often.

Here She Is

The Old Man still can't let go of that train. She may not look like the Holy Grail, but she has been one of mine. Here she is.

Pocohontas and Powhatan; Old Friends of Mine

The Old Man loves his trains. I have loved trains since I was a little boy. Our house in Bedford was, as the crow flies, about 1-1/2 miles from the railroad tracks. The Norfolk & Western came through our town. During the war years, the trains ran almost constantly. We were on a main east/west route, and they were on the way to Norfolk, carrying war materials and men....hundreds of men. For many a one way trip.

Trains served more purposes than merely transportation. My mom and dad seemed to know the time of day by their passing. In winter, my dad would listen to a train whistle and announce, "I think it's going to snow". In that heavy, cold, moisture laden atmosphere, the whistle sounded different to his ears. He rarely missed. My mom would sometimes in summer, hear the whistle and say, "Someone must be sad tonight. The whistle sounds lonely". This was way above my 5 year old head. To me, the whistle always wrapped itself around me and seductively whispered, "Mystery, Excitement, Questions".

The trains brought moments of levity as well. My dad never ever went out of the house without his hat on. The coldest days of the year or the hottest, that hat was ever present. I remember Mom asking him one time, "Babe, how come you wear that hat all the time outside?" Dad said, "Well, I've been on a bunch of trains in my time, and when I went in the bathroom and flushed the toilet, you could see the tracks running by when you looked down through the hole." (In those days waste simply was dumped on the the track. That's why old passenger train rest rooms always had a sign posted saying 'Do Not Flush While In The Station') Dad continued, "You know, they are now flying people around in those big airplanes and they may flush. When it hits me, my head will be covered." Easy to argue with his facts.....hard to argue with his logic.

My mother and I would often ride the train from Bedford to Roanoke to visit her sister. The N&W had two "stars" in their passenger train stable; The Pocohontas and the "big daddy" The Powhatan Arrow. Just the names added to the aura of mystery and excitement. I can still smell the essence of train car; an intoxicating mixture of fabric weathered by a thousand bodies, coal smoke, tobacco, and a delicious staleness. The conductor's cry of, "Boooooord", the bell on the engine, and then that wondrous sound of the Powhatan Arrow stirring, then achieving her full gait. Oh what a time.

The Arrow disappeared along with the other passenger trains. She would never have been herself without the big J-type steam engine, anyway. I grew up without her, the railroad industry morphed entirely into corporate-land, and I just assumed that was it.

Yesterday, we went with some friends to the NC Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. A great place to see some old restored engines and train "stuff". As I exited the exhibit area, there was a string of old passenger cars they use for short, two-mile rides on weekends. There proudly standing in front of me was a Norfolk & Western passenger car. On her side in gold script were the words, "Powhatan Arrow".

I couldn't believe my eyes. My hands shook as I tried to aim the camera and the view finder suddenly grew bleary. I did get the picture taken, though, and as I walked away, in my mind I said to that old car, "Powhatan Arrow, I'll be back". I'm going to ride her one more time.

Dirt Says "Yes Sir" To Me

The Old Man, some days, feels one day older than dirt. When I tire of the TV people and political candidates screaming at each other, I retreat into a nicer world. A world where being genteel was the rule rather than the exception. A world where courtesy governed a lady or gentleman's life....where insults were rare and when they did occur, were met with honor and dignity.

Part of this retrospective position opens the door to memories of the things of this world I have witnessed. So many events that are relegated to history books are fresh thoughts in my mind. I remember them clearly.

The list could be almost endless;

• The assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I watched it play out on television, and remember every detail clearly. The pink, blood-spattered dress on Jackie, the oath of office given Lyndon Johnson on board Air Force One, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, are all imprinted deeply.
• The day man first set foot on the moon. Bleary pictures beamed back to earth was the stuff of Disney....of Jules Verne, but it was real....man...it was real.
• President Harry Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur, and the subsequent comment in a speech to Congress that MacArthur made, "Old soldiers never die. They just fade away."
• The Korean "conflict". "Conflict, hell....it was a war.
• "I Like Ike" buttons. Certainly not popular in the context of recent events in Texas, but in that day, promoted the candidacy of Dwight Eisenhower for President, a pleasant, somewhat soft-spoken man who commanded so brilliantly the invasion of Europe.
• Little boys made crystal radios to listen to "The Shadow, Gunsmoke, and Inner Sanctum.
• Trains belched smoke and had whistles.
• Cars were good for about 50,000 miles and then "burned oil".
• Ration books during World War II for things like sugar, gasoline, and other commodities we take for granted.

I could keep going, but I think you get the picture. We are all, to some extent, chroniclers of history. What we live today is the history of tomorrow. At any point in time, people somewhere will be reading about the things we have lived.

My advice to the young......seek out those who can provide eye-witness accounts of those event you've read about. Listen to them. Enjoy the fact that they have much to tell that fills in the blanks between the lines of the history books. And take kindly the council of your own years, for you are becoming the living history book of the future.

The Magic Trees

The Old Man went to Bedford yesterday. I took some fellow church members to visit the National D-Day Memorial there. Much, much, more about that in a future post. We had a nice lunch and tooled around the big city for a bit. I pointed out many of the points of interest; where my home church once stood, the house where I lived from birth until I was 19, the school I attended, and the plant where my dad worked for all those years.

When we rode by my old "home place", I missed the mimosa trees. There were two. They were (at least to a small boy) gigantic. Giant redwoods had nothing on those mimosas. They fired a little boy's imagination until the magic was at it's peak. In one of the trees, there was a forked branch. I could nestle myself in that fork, lean back against the main trunk and read my comic books. When I tired of that, I became John Wayne in "Flying Leathernecks".....downing Japanese planes and making the world right again. I would sit for hours in summer, assuming the posture of a pilot in a Hellcat or a Corsair, making airplane noises, interspersed with machine gun noises. I'm sure people walking down the street wondered, "What's wrong with that boy? He just sits up in that tree and hums or goes ack,ack,ack,ack over and over." What did they know? Had they no appreciation for a real flying leatherneck? My friend, Bob, said that he used to take an old shipping carton, draw instruments on one of the flaps, and sit in it on the front porch for half a day making these airplane noises. He said his neighbors always whispered about "what's wrong with that little Tucker boy?" Adults.....phooey.
Sometimes, a "Jap" would get in a lucky shot and I'd have to bail out. Since this fork was about 8 feet off the ground, I could hang from the branches, mimicking a pilot drifting down from his crippled and doomed plane. I'd hang there for a bit and the subsequent drop to the ground was every bit as realistic to me as a true parachute landing. I suppose these same neighbors might have thought, "Oh Lordy, they've finally hung him."

One of my dad's work buddies gave him an old wooden propeller from a real Piper Cub. My buddy Kenny and I stuck it on the end of a broomstick. We would reach out, give it a spin, and for a few moments, the mimosa worked its spell and we were "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo".

The other mimosa lent itself particularly well to a long rope tied to its upper branches. I could stand in a lower branch and get a really good "swing out" and back. Some days, I was Superman. I would tie one of my dad's old shirts around my neck and presto....ready-made cape. Some days I was Captain Marvel....I'd actually yell "Shazam" and fly, fly, fly.

In the truly hot, dog days of summer, when all we wore was a pair of shorts, mimosa #2 became Tarzan's tree house. I had a rubber knife and could amuse myself for hours swinging on that rope and dropping to the ground to dispatch Simba the lion.

I got a little quiet for a moment yesterday. As warm as visiting familiarity can be, there is a bittersweetness to it as well. We realize that, like those mimosas, we are temporary and will one day be but a memory. The truly important thing, I believe, is to live our lives so that like those mimosas, we will be a link to the past and lovingly missed.

Not Forgotten......Not Forgiven

God Bless America

Odd Practices and Cult Favorites

The Old Man played golf today. I had my normal game....a mixed bag of shots:

• A "Saddam Hussein"....From one bunker to another.
• A "James Joyce"...A putt that's impossible to read.
• A couple of "Barbara Streisand"s....Ugly but still working.

My golfing pals, Dennis, Jay, and Phil all carry cell-phones. I was tied to one when I worked and when I retired, handed it over to Miss Martha and said, "You are now the keeper of the flame." I've noticed that these phones do some interesting and strange things now. In addition to calls, Jay has, at times, gotten weather radar, checked forecasts, made videos of one of our golf swings, and occasionally, actually spoken on it. All this brought to mind how far we have come. I began to think of the products, habits, and culture of my childhood.

Let's start with phones. Ours had a 4 digit number. It weighed a ton and you actually dialed someone else's 4 digit number. At first it was a party line. You'd pick up the receiver to make a call and there would be the party who shared the line with you chatting away. I recall many "huff-n-puffs" and "eye-rolls" when my folks wanted to make a call. There was an actual Operator sitting somewhere. You could dial "O" and she (always a she) would answer. She would then perform whatever service you needed; connect you with a party whose number you didn't know, look up a phone number for you, or break into a "busy" line to tell them someone needed to talk to them. By far the most often used service was to place long distance calls for you. That was the only way you could make them.

We had some of what I call "cult favorites".....those products that my folks swore by and that might not have been used by many other people.

• Lifebouy Soap....This was supposed to ward off that problem no one talked about; BO. For you less sensitive types, that's Body Odor. It was a pinkish color and smelled like a doctor's office that had been contaminated with kerosene.
• Octogon Soap....This was a very strong soap for "tough dirt" on one's hands. I think my folks used it because it reminded them of the lye soap their parents made when they were young. Octogon had an aroma reminiscent of old meat.
• Packer's Pine Tar Soap....My dad introduced this one into the house. I think it had creosote or something in it. It was supposed to be good for dandruff. I don't think it worked really well because my dad's head was a cue ball by the time he was 30.
• Snow Drift.....This was a brand of shortening my mom used in baking. Pseudo lard.
• Terpin Hydrate and Codeine....The best cough medicine you could buy. I don't know what terpin hydrate is but I think it was the codeine that carried the mail. You simply walked into a drug store, asked for a bottle, signed a note book and that was it. It had an orange flavor as I recall.
• Sloan's Liniment....My dad used this on all of his achy muscles. It was a greenish brown liquid that smelled a little like wintergreen. It could heat tender skin up to match the surface of the sun. I tried it once and had to sit in a tub of ice water for an hour.
• Castoria....Branded as a "gentle laxative for children" this stuff would rival Colonoscopy prep. My mother, for some reason, firmly believed that little boys, like houses, needed a "spring cleaning". When April approached, I would hide under the porch for hours. But she always won out, and I would catch up on my comic book reading.

So, there you have it. Just a sampling of the products of my youth; the "cult favorites" and a couple of the "odd practices". I got a little catalog in the mail the other day from an outfit called the Vermont Country Store. As I thumbed through it, "Lifebouy" jumped out at me. Hmmmm....they may get a call.

A Weekend Chuckle

The Old Man if anything, will laugh at himself first. I invite you to join me. You may recall my gardening failure that I discussed in an earlier post. I am pretty much convinced that I have a long way to go to top this year's meager success.

So here, for your viewing pleasure, is the sole product of my vegitibble gahdun. You will note that I have included a couple of items so that you can more accurately gauge is immense size.


I'm hoping to save this for Christmas dinner.

But like General MacArthur, I shall return.

English Is My Second Language

The Old Man is on hurricane watch today. As I write, the clouds are beginning to thicken and its sprinkling rain. We're due several inches of rain tonight and tomorrow courtesy of Hannah. Like Jimmy Buffet sang, "Its time to go inside".

In Bedford, hurricanes were merely curiosities that happened to people in Florida. Without 24/7 news and weather coverage, we didn't know much about them. In thinking back, I remember what the Bedford accent did to the word "hurricane". It was pronounced "hurrikun" with the emphasis on "hurri". You see, the Bedford area was sort of the dividing line between the Appalachian accent found in the mountains of SW Virginia, and the Old English accent of the eastern part of the state. Our accent was much like the Canadian accent of today.

For example, "house" is pronounced "hoose", "out" becomes "oot", and "about" turns up as "aboot".

My mom added her own special styling, calling vegetables "vegi-tibbles" and the word seven came out as "sebm". A typical conversation in our house might go like this:

Mom: "Sonny, run oot to the vegi-tibble gahden and bring in aboot sebm ears of cawn."
Me: "Yes um".
Mom: "And you wipe yo feet befo you come in the hoose."
Me: "Yes um".
Mom: "How 'boot you bring in a couple cuKUMbuhs?"
Me: "Yes um". When I get back, can I have a CoCola?"
Mom: "We-a oot of Cocola, but I got some Sebm-up".
Me: "Yes um"

Many nights in the summer, we had a supper of all vegitibbles and no meat. They were fresh, home grown, and Sonny had followed instructions. Perhaps we were trend-setters and didn't know it.

I spent a couple of years after college as a radio announcer. Needless to say, the Bedford accent had to go, I spent hours practicing my new 'cosmopolitan' sound. So-called proper English became my second language.

Years later, I enjoyed watching Peter Jennings broadcast the news. As a Canadian, he still said "oot" and "aboot", and it was somehow comforting.

Now, after all this time, I often hear the old accent creeping back into my speech. Where once I might have been on guard against that, now it's a source of some degree of pride. It's the real me.

"These Proceedings are Closed"

The Old Man watched a video clip of General Douglas MacArthur's comments today. Those were the words he used when representatives of the Japanese government had completed signing the official surrender that brought World War II to a close. It was 63 years ago today, September 2, 1945. I was four years old, and while I sometimes have to think about why I came into the kitchen, I remember that time clearly.

The more poignant memory of those days was from a couple of weeks earlier, August 14, 1945. That's the day the Japanese said, "That's it, we quit."

There were a couple of huge mimosa trees in our yard in Bedford. They served many valuable purposes. One became the tree where Tarzan lived, and from which Superman flew. The other was the B-17 that I "flew" on glorious missions. But I'm ahead of myself. More about the mimosas in future posts. On this sultry August evening, mimosa #1 was busy fulfilling its prime purpose; shade for the family to sit in these great old wooden Adirondack chairs and catch the wisps of breeze. My dad was smoking his cigar and talking about the events of the day with my mom. I was generally messing about.

There were several factories in our town. At least one had a loud whistle that blew to signal each shift change; 7:00 A.M., 3:00 P.M., and 11:00 P.M. The town kept routines on track by the whistles. Bedford also had a siren that sounded to call all of the volunteer firemen to duty when the need arose. Suddenly, all the whistles erupted and the siren blasted the evening stillness.

My dad said, "Well the war's over." I remember saying to him, "Now will Uncle Doc and Uncle Tom come home?" Tom was my dad's brother, and "Doc" was dad's brother-in-law. Both very special giants to a four year old. My answer was a simple "Yes, son. Thank goodness". I hear it in my mind to this day.

We all loaded into the car and drove over to the courthouse area. In those days there was a traffic circle (Bedford folks called it a "turn-around" as I recall) in front of the courthouse. The street was full of cars honking, people cheering, folks dancing, and all sorts of celebrations. While I didn't know about it then, I'm quite sure some glass containers with aromas that hinted at corn were in attendance as well.

I'm told I fell asleep on my dad's shoulder somewhat later after asking him, "Why was that man kissing momma?" Later Mom and I shared a laugh about that because it seems it was "open season" on celebratory kissing. Sorry I missed that.

Doc and Tom did finally come home, and life resumed. But there were sad stories as well; the Bedford boy who survived the Bataan Death March and suffered from bad health for the rest of his life, the many families who suffered the ultimate loss, and all of those who awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. They didn't have many fancy names for it then, but we all knew. We all knew why this one or that one jumped and shook when a car backfired. We all knew the ones who didn't have much to say and certainly were never asked about their experiences. The Old Man and all the rest of us owe a debt to the "Docs and Toms" of the world without whom we would not have the opportunity to enjoy our lives.

Both of those old mimosas are gone now, as well as Doc and Tom. But I was there.....and I remember.