Put your hands in the air like you do care

Christmas Eve, 2016.  Vicksburg.

Kathe and I went to the candelight service at the church we have been attending.  It was a packed house, and we stood against the back wall.  Several people made moves to allow us to sit together, and we shoehorned our way between the end of the back pew and a lovely couple from Colorado Springs, who had just arrived on the steamboat between New Orleans and Vicksburg.

The service was lovely.  There were kids everywhere, and the joyous laughter rang out throughout the service.  There was no shushing, there was no embarrassment that the kids were not sitting silently.  And there certainly were no trips outside, with the stern promise of a more severe spanking when we get home.

But I digress.

There was lots of beautiful music - organ, violin, solo, piano.  The old, familiar carols.  The children's choir, singing one I did not know.  Then a  children's sermon, with fifty children all joined at the front of the sanctuary.

And then Sharon Penley got up to sing.

Sharon is our choir director, and she has a passion about music that is very nearly unrivaled.  When we first spoke, she told me that when she sings, it is like she gets transported to heaven.  And when she directs the choir, it is like bringing her best friends to go there with her.

I believe her.  She is amazing, and lets us be amazing with her.

She has a beautiful, powerful mezzo soprano voice.  And when she stood up, and the organist began the opening arpeggio of O Holy Night, I got excited.  This was going to be special.

It was.

I closed my eyes, savoring the beauty of the full sound, all the way back in the back of a church designed for acoustics.  And just after Sharon got to "Fall on your knees. Oh! Hear the angel voices" I got a nudge from Kathe.  I opened my eyes and looked at where she was indicating, and saw the most amazing scene.

About six rows up, there was a darling little girl - maybe 18 months.  We had admired her earlier during the children's message - how beautiful and well behaved she was.

When Sharon's voice reached its powerful crescendo, this tiny girl stood up in her mother's lap, and reached her hands to the sky, as if to make herself bigger so she could hear the notes better.  Her entire little body became an antenna for the sound Sharon was making, and this child was giving it back with every thing she had. Hands up in the air, then clasping them together as if to hold on to the sound, keeping it from escaping.

Oh night when Christ as born.  Oh, night divine.  Oh, holy night.

Without question, it was.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Paying your dues

When I was a boy of four, I would stop by my granddaddy's Sunday school class on my way to my own, and get a coin for the offering.  I already had mine - a shiny quarter to put in the offering plate when it was passed - but I also hit my granddaddy up for an extra.  (Also for the offering, I promise).

Granddaddy would make a big production out of reaching for his coin purse - one of those old-fashioned squeeze-the-edges-to-open-it coin purses, and pull out a nickel or a dime to add to my collection.  During Sunday dinner, knowing that I was fascinated with both the coin purse and the beauty of the money that was inside, he would let me go through his change, looking to see if there were any wheat pennies or silver nickels.

Granddaddy's coin purse was made of leather.  But it was the same principle as this.

One coin was in Granddaddy's change I never could identify.  It looked vaguely like a large English penny, but had worn down from years of being jumbled and tumbled with other coins in his pocket.

Fast forward a number of years, and dad has tasked me with splitting up some silver coins that he had in his collections - dividing up some old coins among the three siblings.  I ran across the worn blank, and asked Dad what it was.

The coin from Granddaddy's coin purse.
The copper one, that is.  The other is for scale.

"That coin?  Your granddaddy always carried that in his coin purse, but I never heard what it was".

Good internet sleuth that I pretend to be, I decided to find out what it was originally.  I looked up coin sites, used every search term I could think of.  I even decided that the faint outline on what I assume was the obverse looked something like a picture of Andrew Jackson, so I looked up coins with Andrew Jackson.







I mean, why not?  Grasping at straws was no less or more productive than guessing.   I found a number of coins, none of which seemed to fit what I was looking for.  They were either facing the wrong way, or had a different bearing, or were the wrong material..

I finally gave up.  But as I did, I put it out to the hive mind of facebook, and asked if anyone recognized the coin.

My cousin Roxana immediately chimed in, saying that she thought she knew.  Followed up with one of the best stories ever.

Granddaddy, just before he left for WWII, joined the Freemasons.  He was inducted to a guild (lodge?) in Boston, and when he did, he was presented with a coin, and left for Europe the day after his eldest son was born - the 12th of February, 1944.  Riding in the largest armada ever assembled by the US, he arrived in England and then went to France.  Once the trains were opened again, he was in the first group to go to Marseilles, and set up the supply depot north of Marseilles on a canal off of the Rhone.  As a sergeant, he was charged with organizing the freight from there to Patton and the rest of the army.

He used the coin to identify and connect with other Freemasons in the European theater, and used those connections to obtain goods and move supplies. As a fun fact, Roxana also added:

 I know the only French word granddaddy told me  he ever learned was when he was in the war. It was the word for "chicken" because he wanted to trade as they walked through towns. He said they were very underfed. 

When he got home - in late 1946 -  he began living married life, raising kids, working to build the moulding manufacturing business, serving in the church....

...and made a very early decision not to continue with the Freemasons.

He felt very strongly about one element, however.  Because he had benefited from his association with the Freemasons during the war, he felt it important to honor his commitment.  For the remainder of his life, he paid the dues.

So much of what we see in society revolves around the benefit side of the cost-benefit analysis.  What do I get out of it?  How much do I get?  What is my portion?  Is that all? When am I due a promotion?  When and how much is my raise?

And maybe it was just a generational thing.  But I look at the men and women of my granddaddy's generation, and I see a different approach.  Instead of looking at what they were owed, they focused on the debts that they owed.  And they were determined to pay that debt.  For as long as it took.  And recognized that some debts you go on paying, even past their due date.

A friend of mine from a previous life got into trouble when his business failed, and he filed for bankruptcy.  It was a rough time for him, and he struggled to have enough money to feed his family and keep a roof over their head. But the whole time, he continued to quietly pay the people he owed.  Every paycheck, he took the first cut - even when it was a small one - and gave it to the people who had trusted him, and who had taken a loss when his business failed.

For decades, he continued to pay on that debt.  And eventually, he paid it all back. Every penny.

The law had told him that he was absolved from paying back the money: filing bankruptcy meant that he no longer owed those debts.  But my friend knew something about debt that the law does not recognize.  There is power in paying.

Stories like that make me suspicious and angry towards people who owe debts and do not pay.  A teacher of mine who decided he did not owe for services his contractor rendered.  The contractor lost everything.  A retirement fund manager who takes, and then watches as the retirees suffer.  The CEO who runs the company into the ground by cutting salaries and staff, then golden parachutes to safety.  the banks that issue predatory loans, and ruin people's lives.

And the businessman who defaults on debts, leaving others to try and pick up pieces of their lives.

But just as I feel that righteous indignation, I have to also look at the other end of that finger pointing outward.

I have been given so much.  I was reared in a family that had enough to provide, and to send me to college.  They bolstered me through the interminable lean years of grad school.  I grew up solidly middle class, with every benefit given to my class, race, and gender.  (Granted, I suffered mightily because I was not popular, a plight I was certain could easily be solved by the purchase of a cool Members Only jacket,)


But I don't know that I ever saw it that way - as a debt that I needed to pay.  That I had benefited from membership in a club, and that I needed to pay dues.

I ave wanted all of my life to be called to a ministry.  But I think just maybe that my calling is to look around me and see the membership that has benefited me all along.

And find an opportunity to pay my dues.  Serving the homeless.  Standing up for those who don't have a voice.  Giving my time, my money, my effort.

Paying the debt that I owe.

Fool's Gold Rush

I have always been a geology geek.  I have been reading geology books since shortly after I finished all of the Hardy Boys series.  As a kid, I talked about rocks with everyone who would listen.  And with many who fooled me into thinking they were listening.

I still fall into that trap from time to time.

So when I was in Brasil, in the middle of one of the largest deltas in the world (which means NO ROCKS), I had to get all of my .  And one day when we were visiting the metropolis of Belem, my dad introduced me to a geologist from the local university.

He did this to feed my curious soul, but also in some small measure, I suspect, to get a break from trying to bluff his way past an irritatingly insistent 9-year old.

The geologist was wonderful, and spoke English to me, answering questions and talking story about some research.  It was my first time talking with an academic, and I loved it.  At the end of the conversation, he gave me a small piece of translucent, red amber-like material.  He explained that it was volcanic glass, and told me a little about how it was formed.  (Now that I have worked with obsidian for about twenty years, I have my doubts that the piece he gave me was obsidian).

But a story that he told Dad fascinated me.  This was the late 70s, and a gold rush had started in the state of Brasil where we lived, Para.  There were stories of men who found large nuggets.  LARGE nuggets.  Like 40 pounds and more.  When a particularly large nugget was found, the government confiscated it for the Banco Central Museum. Without paying the miners for the find. After that point, all largish nuggets had shovel marks on four sides.

The geologist acknowledged the stories about the gold rush, but said that a colleague of his had actually been involved early on, and had been given a large nugget.  Thinking that it was a piece of fools gold, he used it as a doorstop for ears, until a member of the geology faculty asked if he could test it.

Once it was recognized as real gold, it triggered a gold rush as everyone went to cash in on the mine.

I have repeated the story through the years.  It is one of my favorites, and I love getting to try and re-capture the excitement and wonder of that little boy, thrilled to be talking to someone who knew everything about a subject.

So this morning, when I read an article from Blanchard on the Reed Gold Mine, located somewhat north of  some very notable locations in North Carolina: (Frog Pond and Locust), I smiled in memory of the first time I heard about a gold mine from someone who had some first hand experience with it.

And yet, as I read further, the story sounded awfully familiar.

The story is of the first gold rush in the United States, dating back to 1799.  A kid by the name of Conrad Reed skipped church to go fishing, and found a yellow rock.  He gave it to his dad, John, who didn't know what it was, and used the 17-pound hunk of metal as a doorstop.  He asked a local silversmith (note that his specialty was, well, SILVER) and the guy just didn't know whether it was gold or not.

Eventually, three years later, John showed it to a jeweler in Fayetteville who knew what it was, and melted it down to a gold bar 8" long.  And then offered to buy it.

Since spot gold prices were not available on the internet yet, Mr. Reed asked the princely sum of $3.50.

He got it.  That much gold was worth about $3600 at that time, so the jeweler made some money off the trade.

This discovery led to a frenzy of activity, as gold mines were quickly opened across NC, and the first gold rush was born, eventually leading to the opening of only the second US mint in existence in Charlotte (which kept the risks of theft during travel to Philadelphia to a minimum).

Gold $1 piece, minted in Charlotte.  (C is on the obverse, center bottom)

I read the story with great glee, realizing that what the geologist had told me almost 40 years ago, in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest in Brasil, was an urban legend that had been modified from a real story from Appalachian history.

I see a trip to Frog Pond in my future.  Anyone want to go with me?

Mom, I love you.

All of us have that guilty pleasure.  Whether it is watching Ellen or Maury, or reading bodice rippers, or fixing key lime fudge just to eat by ourselves, there is always something that we do that just gives us a little thrill - something that is not part of what we would willingly share with the world.

I have a number of guilty pleasures, but one of my regulars is reading the Postsecret blog.

For those five of you who don't know what Postsecret is, it is a website that updates every Sunday, providing anonymous secrets that people mailed in from around the world.  The idea is that nobody will know it is you, and that there is something quite liberating to give up the secret.  It also provides a voyeuristic thrill to read other people's secrets, and let you share a little bit with people you don't know. Somehow, it  seems to make the world just a little smaller, and more likeable.

Last night, I was working on some classwork, and midnight passed; to celebrate, I opened a window to the website.

It is Mother's Day.  And people share some of the most heart-rending, saddest, happiest, joyous postcards ever on Mother's Day.  Common themes: Mom, I forgive you; Mom, I miss you; Mom, you are my heroine; Mom, please get off of heroin.

And this one.

This one resonated with me.

Let me tell you about my mom.  Patty Lawton is a caretaker.  She is a facilitator.  She is an enabler. She is a cheerleader.  She is a lover, and a fighter, and is devoted beyond all imagination.  She gives of herself, and loves with a fierceness that I have never seen in anyone else.

When we were in Brasil, I fell off the boat.  Mom, hearing my screams (I couldn't swim) woke from a dead sleep and dove over a four-foot rail straight into the Amazon River to save me. I knew I was saved, and stopped yelling (which was unfortunate, because she could no longer see me because of the glare.)  The she-bear instincts were strong in my mom, and she rescued me.  (Little Bear got his bottom warmed after that incident, but it was done in love...)

Bee Stompin'

In the apocryphal tale, three-year-old Crorey was walking along in Granddaddy's yard, toddling along down the mountain.  Quite suddenly, my giggle turned to scream.  Everybody turned to look except Granddaddy, who knew where I was.  He was already in motion.

For those of my cousins who never knew Granddaddy as anything but an old man, what happened next is improbable.  But I am assured that it is true.  He sprinted down the side of the mountain, hurtling logs and dodging saplings and running over anything in his path.  And swooped me out of the yellow jacket nest that I had fallen into.

What bee could possibly sting that face?

He picked me up and started picking the yellow jackets off one by one, ignoring the stings that he was getting while doing so.

I ended up with a few stings.  He ended up with more than a hundred.

Seems as though I have spent an awful lot of my life being stung. 




Abelia Hedge was the plant that surrounded my house.

Four-year-old Crorey in the back yard, fascinated with the buzzing insects that seemed as attracted as he was to the sweet-smelling flowers.  And I was doing some serious bee stompin'.  Once I had successfully stomped bees one day, I did it again the next.  Eventually, I got stung.

Tearfully, I asked why the bee had stung me.  Mom explained to my bewildered four-year-old self that bees do not like being stomped.  And that they protect themselves by stinging. 

And if I am going to go bee stomping, that shoes are a must.

Episode 1 from abroad: Fast forward to a 9-year-old, bored out of his mind, stuck in French Guyana for an unexpected week. Not remembering his lesson taught earlier in that decade, my 9-year old self is chucking rocks at a small (tennis-ball sized) paper nest that was surrounded by increasingly agitated black flies.

Sweet success!  The fifth rock hit the hornets' nest squarely, and I watched with glee as the 'flies' flew away from the now-exploded nest.

Ow!

Eulogy for a Restaurant

I mourn my restaurants when they are gone.

For my whole childhood, December 23 was a celebration day for me, because that was when Granddaddy took us to Charlie's Steak House, to celebrate Grandmama's (and my dad's) birthday.  Charlie's was a dark, hushed tones place that served excellent steaks.  Sure, it was probably less than ideal for a small kid, because Chicken McNuggets never quite made it onto their kids' menu. 

For that matter, there was no kids' menu.

The salad was fresh iceberg lettuce with one sad quarter of a fresh tomato.  You had your choice of four dressings: blue cheese, thousand island, french and ranch. They were lovingly dumped into a serving tray, to be ladled out into your small bowl of lettuce.

You didn't go to Charlie's for the salad.

There were crackers and butter to eat while you waited for the entree to come out. 

You didn't go to Charlie's for the crackers.

The sides for your entree were a nice baked potato, with sour cream and butter, or limp french fries.  Neither of which were a draw.  There was both chicken and fish on the menu.  I am pretty sure that they kept one of each, in case some silly non-local came in with a desire to eat something else.  I never saw it happen.

You went to Charlie's for steaks.  Huge, juicy, tender steaks. 

Urban legend has it that during WWII, Charlie got the concession to feed some of the troops before they left for the European theatre.  The army provided the meat, and Charlie would prepare and serve the steaks.  His stipulation was that the steaks needed to be the right kind of beef.

The delivery was made, and Charlie refused it.  When the officer came by to see what the problem was, Charlie opened up the compartment, and started walking through the delivery.  "That one is a cow that has calved four times. This one a hiefer. This one, a cow that calved twice.  My instructions indicated that I would only serve steer meat.  Take it away and send me what I asked for.  I will not serve meat that is below my standards."

Charlie was also a skinflint.  A match seller came in and started in on his schpiel about how Charlie could buy this amount of promotional matches for his restaurant, but for just X amount more, he could get...

Charlie said, give me the best deal you can.  The cheapest per-matchbox price available.  And I'll sign the contract. 

Forty years later, the contract expired.  And Charlie had bought matches all of those years - the same matches - for a fraction of the cost

Nana

This is a piece I wrote up a few years ago when I went on a training session to the Corps of Engineers research facility in Duck, located in the Outer Banks of NC.

I am sitting in my hotel room on Corolla, the next town over from Duck, and I just came from the beach. It was an emotional visit that hit me in ways I did not expect.

My fondest memories from my childhood were from the beaches of South Carolina. There were nights when we would wade into the tidal creek on the back side of Fripp Island, swimming through iridescent waves, as the natural phosphorescence from the creek would light up our bodies with sparks, bright enough to play tag while submerged. Amazing setting, delightful fun.

I am a habitually early riser, and never was that more the case than when we were at the beach. I would go and help the turtle lady as she re-introduced recently hatched loggerhead turtles into the surf zone, shooing away the seagulls, giving them the maximum chance at making it.

But mostly I went shelling. I collected shells from before dawn until I couldn't see any more. Some were rarer than others; at times we would find sand dollars, cockle shells, periwinkles, lady slippers, moon snails, pen shells, fan shells, oysters, the periodic scallop and clam, and the occasional whelk. On a very rare occasion, I found sharks teeth or vertebrae, fragments of scotch bonnets, and once in a blue moon, a starfish. I have since learned the scientific names of most of the shells we found, but they fail to light the imaginative fire that the local nomenclature provided. We talked about habitat, we talked about specific density of shells, we explored nature and science through a fury of collecting.

And the competitive urge is strong in this one, Obi Wan. It was a race, and I was bound and determined to win - the best shell, the most complete, the biggest, the smallest, the most fragile; whatever superlative there was, I was going to find it. And, for the most part, I did. I trained my eyes to see sharks' teeth, and was often the only one to find one. I would read every poster and book, seeing what was rare and what could be found, and set my sights on whatever was most infrequently found in the area. I always found cool loot, most of which was left behind when we went back to Greenville, leaving me with one or two shells I was allowed to take with me, and a flotilla of memories of collected wonder.

My Nana - my mother's mom - was there for every dogged step of the way. I would race ahead, afraid that the 'virgin territory' would be picked over if I didn't get there first. And she would walk more leisurely, picking up and holding the 'treasures' of all of the kids that went with her. She must have logged decades of time on the beach, walking with all of the grandkids, each arguing over who had found the coolest stuff. And she lugged tons of 'treasure' back to the house, making each of us feel as though our treasure, and by extension we, were special beyond measure. And it did not matter at all whether it was a ladyslipper identical to the four hundred thousand that we had picked up previously, she made the finding of 'this one' special.

Love. I think I learned to love at the beach. I just didn't know it.

One of the last times that I went out seashelling with Nana, I was on a quest for sharks' teeth. And I was going to find them, come sheol or high tide. My teenage body sprinted from one patch of shells to the next, using pattern recognition skills developed over years to identify any anomalous items quickly, before moving to the next.

And from somewhere behind me, Nana yelled "Ha, ha! Looky here at what I found!!!"

I did come by my competitive urges naturally, and she had won.

No contest.

I turned back to ground I had passed by, and with a sinking feeling looked back at what she had picked up. It was a devils' pocketbook. The Holy Grail of shelling. Technically simply an egg sac from a skate (a critter related to the sting ray), the black, leathery pouch the shape of a naugahyde devil was more rare than anything else we hunted. Every array of collected shells on coffee tables or behind glass in houses in SC had one insinuated in there, carelessly included as though the family could have kept more, if they had made the effort. But those of us who looked for them knew better. You simply didn't see them; finding one was the shelling equivalent of acing the hole in golf. You will play the rest of the holes, but none of the rest will be the one you talk about at the end of the day.

My Nana died of pancreatic cancer before I went to graduate school. And I don't think it was a conscious thing at all, but I have not been back to the beach on the Atlantic since then. I have been down to the Gulf (a poor excuse for a beach, if you ask me) and I went to Hawaii and Yucatan. But when I walked out onto that beach this afternoon, I felt the love that I had been missing since 1993. I felt a part of my soul get fed in a way that I did not expect. Just walking over the dune and smelling the salty air perked up my senses, and I walked straight into the chilly surf.

And I started shelling, thinking fondly of my Nana, and the wonderful way that she had with kids, letting them learn to love and love to learn. Bringing unbridled enthusiasm with every discovery.

And as I looked down the beach, I realized that there were hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of devils' pocketbooks. Littering the sand. Interspersed with the shells I loved - the cockles, the lady slippers, the pen shells, the fingernails. Devils' pocketbooks everywhere.

I am still overwhelmed with emotion. I competed to find the finest shells throughout my childhood, and never realized that I had already won the lottery. I was loved by the greatest woman who ever walked the planet.

I won. Hands down.

Fishing in the Agarope

No TV.  No radio.  No internet.  No telephone. No electronic babysitters.  So what does a 9-year-old boy do in the middle of Nowhere, Para, Brasil?

He learns to fish.

During the two years we were at Olaria, Dad chartered a boat a couple of times to go fishing.  We went back in some odd distributaries and even hooked a few plate-sized piranha.  But we also found that it was a lot harder to eat such a bony fish than we would like.  So we didn't do that too often. 

And there was one time that Dad caught a monster catfish.  After having the machinist make a huge hook, and loading it with a slab of bacon (it did not come pre-sliced...) he tied the line off to the dock.  A couple of weeks later, there was a 150-pound catfish on the line.

(That evening, sitting on the dock, Dad wove a nice tail he 'heard' from the workers that night about a full moon and the catfish feeding on the top of the water.... just before pushing me in.  Other than that moment, I have never in my life walked on water - before or since.  You can relate this little vignette to the reporters when they ask when it was that I started to turn bad)

But those trips were not the norm.  Mostly, the vignette included a boy with a closed face reel, hunting for crickets in the high grass, running to the dock to cast the hapless insect into the river, trying to catch silver-dollar fish.  For the most part, I was trying - unsuccessfully - to catch the small, flashy fish with a tiny hook.  For a hyperkinetic kid, the lessons necessary to successfully learn the art of fishing - especially the sitting still part - were far beyond my abilities. 

But after the schooling, the swimming, the canoeing and hunting were done for the day, I would often try my hand at fishing.  The end result was more reminiscent of a cane-pole-jerk-the-fish-out-of-the-water-and-onto-the-bank effort than the more traditional scene of fighting the fish to the dock, and carefully placing it on the stringer.  And I was never able to pull together enough of a 'mess' of fish to feed our family of four.  But Mom would pan fry the results of my efforts whenever they were successful enough to warrant it.  (The rules were clear, though - the 9-year old was still responsible for cleaning the fish). 

The most-productive fishing effort, however, was done one day with the neighbor.  Francisco had a long woven-reed fence, and during high tide one day, he asked for my help to stretch it across the agarope - a little tributary that ran through our property.  We then waited until low tide, and waded in to collect the fish that were left behind the makeshift seine net.  Flopping in the muddy crick were about twenty pounds of shrimp, a half a dozen flounders, and all sorts of small catfish (the fins were razor-sharp in both directions, so you had to be careful how you handled them) - enough for three families to eat for a week.

And for a family living at the margin of poverty, that was a gift.

Oddly enough, fishing for food was very much a famine-time effort.  For all of the teeming life that lived in the freshwater of the river - we saw porpoises, manatees, sawfish, and limitless other species - they were not available to the working man as a source of protein. 

Fish, it turns out, was poor-man's food.

One time, the captain of the boat that came to carry lumber to the US brought us a huge red snapper as a gift.  Dad and Mom both drooled, and immediately invited the company bookkeeper (who was native to the area) to share it with us at dinner that week.  Tilon looked up sharply at Dad, and then realized that the poor gringo was just clueless.

"Senior Macque, let me explain.  I know you didn't mean any insult, because you just don't know the customs here in Brasil.  But you can't - EVER - invite someone to your house to eat fish.  If you can't afford to put meat on the table, you just don't invite them." Tilon eventually accepted the invitation, and was delighted with the meal, even saying afterwards, "Senior Macque, any time you have that red fish, don't worry about customs.  you can invite me any time."

So when I helped Francisco gather the fish, he was perplexed that I would be willing to take a couple of the flounders as payment for my 'help'. 

But who can figure out gringos, anyway?

None of my practice on the Rio Jabiru helped me become a fisherman as an adult.  I enjoy the occasional fishing excursion, but it is more like the specialty trip - for recreations - than a regular source of protein. 

But I still remember the delight in the catch from all those years ago.   And the joy in taking home my share, to be prepared for dinner.
 

Riding the Bus

The year is 1976.  I have kinda gotten settled into my new school.  It is still a little scary, but my Aunt Beth teaches in the next room over.  That provides some comfort, although I was adamant that I did NOT want her as my teacher.  Even then, I understood the problems of nepotism.

And today, I am going to ride the bus home.

A teacher shepherds me onto the right bus, and I find a seat.  IT is kinda scary, and the bus smells funny - an odd mix of masking tape and motor oil - , but I’m all right.  The biggest thing is that I don’t know the rules.

So far in my life, the easiest thing to do is to trust authority.  Mom is right.  Dad is right.  Mrs. Sheffield is right.  They won’t let anything happen that goes wrong.  And if they do, they are grown-ups.  They can fix it.

So I trust Mike to know what to do.  I know the area we are going, and we drive pretty close to my house.  I get a little worried when we go on down E. North Street beyond where the turn off to my house is.  But Mike must know what he is doing.  Kids are stopping and getting off at street corners.  Maybe he’s just coming back for mine.

Ten minutes later and I no longer know where I am.  We have now gone out of my realm of knowledge of the city of Greenville.  We are out in suburbia, and Mike has just dropped off his last kid.  Or so he thinks.

His girlfriend walks back to the back of the bus, and finds me, timid and lost. 

“Oh, shit.  Who are you?”

"I’m Crorey"

"Where was your stop?"

"I don’t know.  I’ve never ridden the bus before."  Tears threaten.

"Where is your house?"

"107 Lockwood Avenue."

"Where is that from here?"

“I don’t know.”  At this point, I probably start crying. 

“Don’t worry, buddy.  We’ll find your house.”

No map, no GPS, just a terrified little kid in the backseat.

And so they start retracing their steps.  Eventually, I recognize a landmark and guide them in.  The girlfriend keeps saying, “Are you sure?”  But once I see my landmarks, I am golden.  And I navigate them successfully to my house, where my mom is out of her mind with worry.  I am three hours late.

 Sometimes, as an adult, I remember this little scene and worry.  I have a lot of people in my life that are responsible for keeping things moving, keeping projects going, and making sure stuff gets where it is supposed to.  I assume, like the kid in the bus, that the adults know what is going on. Supervisors. Politicians. Administrators. Program managers. Directors.  And I assume that these adults will take me - and us - where we need to go. 

And when they do, the levees get built.  The marsh gets restored.  The houses get raised, and the buildings relocated. 

But then I hear someone in authority ask me the burrocratic equivalent of "Where was your stop?" And I can feel, again, the terror of that little boy on the bus.  And I start looking for any landmark I recognize.   

 

Crying over Paper Edges

After two years in Brasil, I came back to the US and was enrolled in Mitchell Road Christian Academy.  The transition was pretty tough. 

It was January, so I was joining a class in the middle of a school year.  I knew nobody.  The rules were unfamiliar (stand up when an adult enters the room, ask permission to go to the bathroom, etc.)  It had been two years of being the only student in a correspondence course  And now I was interacting with students in a classroom setting.

Yeah.  That's right.  When I left in the middle of second grade, kids would bring in stuff for show-and-tell.  In fourth grade, not so much.  As the new kid, I already was a little out of the social center.  With two years missing from my social development, I was immediately pegged as the weird one.  The weird one who brought in cool stuff for show-and-tell, but strange nonetheless.

There were many differences that I was facing.  My class in Brasil included a banana supershake break, a feature that was strangely absent in regular 4th grade.  As the only student in class, I was able to fit in all of the day's lessons in 2-3 hours.  That was not the way that MRCA worked.  PE in Brasil was done outside of class, with bb gun in hand, or swimming in the river, or canoeing down the agarope.  

If it happened today, my parents would be arrested.

My poor teacher - Mrs O'Connell - had her hands full - even more so than she realized.  One day, she took a show-and-tell item away from me, and sent me to the principal's office.  Apparently 4th-grade teachers get a little nervous when you bring a huge Buck knife to class - even in 1980. I cried the whole way to the principal's office.  And I cried again, at the end of the day, when I picked it back up.  And then for good measure, I cried again, when I showed Mom.

On the playground, I understood none of the social rules.  Flying solo in the classroom didn't prepare me for changes in social cues and interactions there.  More tears, nearly every day (which did nothing to help my social standing.)  And kids are always kind to the new, strange, weepy boy, right?

Right.

Mrs O'Connell's class also had a rule that all assignments had to be turned in on paper with no torn edges.  No ripping the page out of the spiral-bound notebook and handing it in.  If it was torn out, you had to cut the edges.

Her handing my homework assignment back and telling me to cut the edges off, that was just another straw on an already overloaded camel.  I broke down in sobs.  Again.  Mrs. O'Connell reached for the box of kleenex.  Again.

Unsurprisingly, for that six weeks my report card had decent grades, except...

Give a Little Whistle

When was the last time you whistled?

When I was a little kid, one of the doctors in my doctor's office was a world class whistler.  I mean, he had grace notes, he had warbles, he had vibrato, and his laser whistle pierced the entire office.  And as much as I hated going to the doctor (I had strep throat about four times a year), I loved hearing the other doctor whistle. 

I once heard my dad quote to Caroline, "A Whistling Girl and a Crowing Hen, Seldom Come to a Very Good End." (What?!)

In youth choir, we sang a Disney medley, which included one of the numbers from Pinnocchio:

When you get in trouble and you don't know right from wrong,
give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
When you meet temptation and the urge is very strong,
give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!

So why do we not whistle?  What is the prohibition against whistling? 

I have posted before about the move towards professionalizing any performance art, and how it is probably the reason why we don't sing as a group.  It is actually something that makes me pretty sad.  But if you think that getting a job as a professional singer is tough, imagine your chances of getting a contract as a professional whistler?

It simply doesn't happen.

Whistling, in our culture, is a happy, frivolous activity.  It is the sound of the carefree.  The kid, fishing rod on shoulder, whistling while headed to the local pond.  The hobo, complete with bindlestiff over the shoulder, whistling, with not a care in the world.   

It is not the image of the serious corporate man.  The intense professional lawyer, whistling on her way to court?  Nah.  In fact, intensity of any kind seems to have zero overlap with whistling.

But why?

There are languages that use whistling to communicate detailed information, like La Gomera. But anthropologists are not even sure whether to include whistling in as a category of music. (My friends Louis Towles, Bruce Baker, David Finley and I tested this theory by trying out as walk-on whistlers for the award-winning Easley Marching Band.  We were summarily dismissed.)

And I have zero idea why it was not permitted for girls to whistle (the incomparable Lauren Bacall line notwithstanding).  That makes no sense to me.

Truth is, I love whistling, and realized how long it had been since the last time I had seriously engaged in a good whistle when I heard a co-worker whistling yesterday AS HE CAME IN TO WORK.  It was a tuneless whistle, but it might as well have been McFerrin's masterpiece, for the effect that it had on me. 

It made me smile.  And within a few minutes, I found myself singing the Pinnocchio tune in my head, whistling the refrain.  Almost immediately, the Andy Griffeth tune replaced it.  With some work, I forced that tune out with the unfortunate Scorpions tune Wind of Change. Then the Bridge on the River Quai tune.

And I smiled the whole time.  After all, who can avoid being happy while whistling?  And if it is true that our facial muscles control our mood, rather than the reverse, maybe - just maybe - we can become more happy by whistling.

I am certainly willing to give it a try. Maybe while sitting on the dock of the bay.  Wasting time.

 

Conflicted

Within the coming months, the church that I grew up attending will be torn down.  Developers are paying top dollar for high-priced real estate. They are building apartments - nice apartments by the sound of it. And the church is retaining a small lot on the back end of the property to use as a chapel.

I am finding myself feeling very conflicted about it.

The building is old. The ceilings are too high, and heating costs have got to be through the roof. (See what I did there?) There are unending repairs and additional needs and a diminishing population of people to provide the funds for those repairs.   

But in that church, I heard some of the most amazing music in my life, and developed a love of acoustics and pipe organ music and the raw power of a full chorus. 

I worshipped in that church with my family, sitting in the pew where my grandfather had sat for 80 years.  I heard thundering sermons by Elmer Piper (and discovered that I am not near as much of a hell-and-brimstone Baptist as I had thought I might be) and gentle sermons about a loving God delivered by Jack Causey.  I was baptised there, and played basketball in the recreation building.  I was at church for Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night meetings.  I sang in incredible choirs, taught a three-year-old choir, and even led an evening service during my senior year in high school.

I was also bullied there mercilessly by mean teenagers.  I was condescended to by pinched-faced middle-aged spinsters who disapproved of any evidence of youthful exhuberence.  I was even kicked out of one high school Sunday School class, because I got angry at a teacher for singling me out for a group infraction. (I never went back.  Later that week, I was invited to my granddaddy's SS class, where I stayed for the rest of my time there.)

I fell in love with the old people in the church.  My Sunday school class was co-taught by Harry Lee Thomas and my Granddaddy, Stick Lawton.  And every week, I learned something different about the context and the history of the scriptures from men who lived their faith. I sang with them, I shared times of prayer with them, and attended a number of their funerals.

At PSBC, I met mentors in my faith.  I learned about the Bible.  I developed a relationship with my Creator.  I felt safe and was loved.

And at PSBC, I was betrayed by a pastor, who failed to keep a confidence.

Church will always be a complicated place.  In it, there are people.  Real people. Saints and sinners.  Sweet people and mean.  Some like kids.  Some do not.  Some appreciate the difficulty of fitting in, and will hold a 13-year-old boy's hand while he cries in frustration.  And others ridicule him for not conforming.

So I have a host of mixed emotions and memories about the tearing down of my church building.  The stained glass was nothing intricate, but every time the sermon got long, I would count the number of blue panes, yellow panes, green panes. Those glass panes will be taken down, counted, and sold.  The enormous cathedral ceilings, reverberating sound, will be silenced. The halls through which I ran, the rooms where I crossed arm over arm and said with ten other boys, "As a Royal Ambassador, I will do my best...", those places will be gone. The sanctuary where my sister and I re-created the Pieta for a Good Friday service (getting white grease paint removed from the entire body is tough, in case you were wondering) will be demolished.  The place where I stole kisses from my first girlfriend in dark corners where youth leaders might not have been watching... torn down. The location of my first solo, the place where I attended weddings and funerals and lock-ins and cook-outs and Easter Sunrise services.... Gone.

But the church is not.  Whenever I see an online post of love from Kay Perry or Marty Price,  I see the church, alive and well.  When I read about Kimberly Graham's children or Candace Williamson, or the music that they teach, I know that my church - the one made up of the people who loved and served my Creator - is continuing on.

Nevertheless, I am still sad about losing the building.

Such things happen.  People have moved to other churches, and are doing God's will where they are.  I have been taught all my life that the church (like Soylent Green) is made of people. Even the church history (available on Amazon here) has on the cover "More than a Building - A Family of Faith".  But there is still a location, right there in West Greenville, that holds a sacred place in my memory.  And all those memories - both the highs and the lows - will forever be associated with 'Church' in my mind.

History of PSBC available online here.

I will miss the beautiful building that housed my church during my childhood.

 

Granddaddy's Fig Preserves

Thirty seconds ago, I heard the lid pop into place on a jelly jar filled with warm fig preserves. Looking over to the backlit jars, I can just barely make out the thin slices of pale lemon rind, candied through the process, interspersed throughout the jar.  Nostalgia that hits so hard, I can, literally, taste it.

Thirty five years ago I helped my Grandaddy Lawton for a week during the early summer.  I dug up beds for his jonquils and built gravel 'thank-you-ma'am's' along his driveway.  And I helped him with his canning.  Summer canning on Lawton Mountain was a magical thing. Grandaddy took bushels of green beans and made pyramids of quarts of canned beans.  Bushels of sweet corn yielded mason jars filled with corn for all seven families.  Tomatoes became canned tomato juice - the basis of many a Bloody Mary - although that was NEVER their intent.  Baptists, after all, never intend to make their mixers. And they made jelly and preserves.

Grandaddy and Grandmama both had lived through the Depression, and it marked them.  They were frugal, and they used things until they needed fixing, and then they fixed them.  They did not buy extra stuff just because it was available; it was a way of life that didn't dispose of things just because they got old. 

Canning was a big part of their frugality, and their way of life.  The House in the Mountains (that was the only name I ever heard it called - never abbreviated or shortened) was the site of monumental canning efforts that extended from late spring throughout the summer, and the results were labeled and set in OCD-compliant rows in the pantry.

But the two jewels of the canning crown were the muscadine jelly and fig preserves.  Each teaspoon that was ever scooped from one of those jelly jars was liquid gold - and it was rationed out as such by the miserly jelly-bean counters in my household.  Because once it was gone, it was gone forever.  Until next season.

And one year, thirty five years ago, I got to help Grandaddy make the fig preserves.

The cutting of the stems from thee figs.  The slicing of the lemon.  The cooking of huge vats of figs, sugar, lemon and water, until all that was left was the citrus aroma, and the liquid gold of reduced figs.  Ladling the syrup into jars, licking fingers sticky with sap. A little nibble of the lemon rind in between efforts.  Into the pressure cooker, watching carefully to finish the canning process without blowing it all up.

And all throughout the process, the overwhelming smell of fig.

This weekend I took Kathe over to the grounds of my work, where a colleague of mine planted fig trees a decade or so ago.  They are now enormous trees, and in fifteen minutes we had collected a couple of gallons of figs. 

And I found a recipe that seemed very much like what my Granddaddy made (appended below, from this website).  And all afternoon, I got lost in the memory of working side by side with Granddaddy.

There are moments in life that speak to you.  For me, this was one. There is nothing like the flavor of goods canned in the home. Nothing that brings the memories back like leaning over the hot stove, stirring the pot to release the aroma-heavy steam. Even roadside stand canned goods, with all of their Mom&Pop labels and support-your-local-organic-farm caché cannot compare.

All afternoon, I labored over five pots of fig-related items.  Habanero-fig chutney, jalapeno-fig chutney, cardomom-fig jam, and a fig jam that ended up as a filling for fig newtons. (For the record, the newtons could have been submitted as a 'nailed it' pinterest fail, but they were SCRUMPTIOUS.)

And a few jars of the most glorious fig preserves ever.  Just like Granddaddy and I once made.

Bayou Woman's recipe.  See her online description here.

  

Family Heirlooms - Cut and Light

Last night Kathe and I sat with family members at the dinner table in my mother's house and 'talked story' about family for hours.  One of the most delightful stories concerned the enormous table that had been the setting for Thanksgiving dinners at my great grandmother's home back when my mom was a little girl. 

There were a hundred people who sat at the table.  It was enormous.  You could walk underneath this magical table, standing upright, and it took forty people on each corner to lift it.

Such is the nature of magical tables at your grandmother's house.

The table now sits in my mother's kitchen in Bluffton, SC.  It is a beautiful table with claw feet and spiral turned legs.  It is roughly four feet by six feet, and there are a couple of additional leaves to extend it. 

It is a fine piece of furniture.  But it is no Arthurian table of legend. 

While we were talking, I looked down and admired the table.  The antiquarian in me always finds it fun to see pieces that have an old connection to me and my family, and this one was cool.  The wood was quarter sawn oak - a beautiful way of cutting red and white oak (well, mostly those two species are used) that shows off an interesting pattern.

I have always been attracted to quarter sawn oak.  I grew up with wood all around me - from the molding manufacturing business to the building supply business - and I love the fact that there is a 'revealed pattern' if the piece is cut a certain way.  The medullary rays and the growth rings combine to show off a fingerprint - unique to each tree. (For those who are curious to see how you make quarter-sawn lumber, there is a neat video here).

Each quarter sawn pattern is unique to the tree, and is only revealed by alternating the cuts the way the video shows.
 
The color difference increases with age - the light bands stay light, and the dark color deepens, and the beauty of the wood just intensifies over time.  Add to that the patina of old wood, and I can hardly tear my eyes away.

Even if it doesn't seat a hundred people.

After looking up the quarter sawn video, I was talking about the process with my mom, and mentioned a similar lapidary process that I still don't fully understand.  Iris agates are very thinly sliced agates, and when they are lit from behind, display a stunning rainbow.  Not every agate will do it, but some will, when subjected to the hand of a master cutter.



Iris Agate.  http://www.lhconklin.com/Gallery_II/QuartzIris.htm

As with the oak plank, it requires a specific cut and a specific play of light to bring out beauty that is already there. 

Isn't that the way it is with people, too?  If you get the right light, make the right cut, and show people off at their best angle, they shine in a unique way.  I look around and see people who are really spectacular at one thing or another.  The most amazing biologists, engineering wunderkinds, woodworkers, public speakers....

And then ones that impress me the most.  Parents.  These guys are ones who are cutting, and buffing, and adding patina to their kids, and like the master cutters, shine the light on their kids to make them shine. 

I look at friends like Allie Griffeth, and I see the shine.  I look at Sarah and Craig Williams and find myself loving the display of the pattern that was carefully buffed and polished to a striking beauty.  I see Joshua Adams and the light shining through him is just amazing.  All around me are kids who have been loved and lovingly molded by their parents.

To me, that is what a family heirloom really is. It is something that is passed down from one generation to another, deepening with time, and becoming more beautiful with each passing year. 

Recital

Kathe and I have been taking music lessons for a month.  I have my banjo; she has a keyboard (although what she really wants is a piano.)

We are adult music students, a bit of a rarity.  And we both are convinced that we can do it, and we devote the time to practice, like we never could (or did) when we were kids. We set aside time, and are very protective of that time, because we have a goal in mind. We want to play.

What we are doing is very different from what kids do when they are given lessons. 

The typical child lesson (I have made some assumptions here) goes something like this: MomnDad decide child progeny (CP) is going to learn an instrument.  They give CP a choice: oboe or saxophone; CP chooses the one CP think is best/coolest/least dorky/easiest-to-hide-in-the-locker-at-school.  (Or, if you have a piano in the house, you get to learn piano).  M&D buy the instrument, and go about finding a suitable tutor.

And when I say ‘suitable’, what I really mean is ‘affordable’.

CP is encouraged to practice, and at the end of the semester/year, is rewarded with an opportunity to dress up and give a concert, that M&D attend.

From CP’s perspective, here is what happens:

M&D: “Do you want to give up the last remaining shred of video game time to practice the tuba, or to practice the piccolo?”

And just like that, CP is suddenly forced to give up a half-hour to an hour of every day to practice an instrument that he does not love, and then spends an additional hour with an adult who gets to be a

Flashback to Brasil

This week I served on a review panel in Mobile, Alabama, discussing the plan for a Corps investigation. It has been a fascinating look into the planning process, and I have learned a lot.

The project is to investigate the feasibility of deepening Mobile Harbor.  The intent is to import and export goods for the nation more efficiently and safely. How deep does the channel need to be to maximize passage for the new kinds of ships coming in? How wide does it need to be for safety? What environmental impacts will result? And for heaven's sake, where are we going to put the material we dig up?

There are engineering factors to be considered. There are environmental factors being considered. There are economic forecasts at play (complicated games with lots of 'if/then' statements).

And to understand what we were talking about, I pulled up Mobile Bay on Google Earth. A couple of minutes later, I had seen what I wanted, and digitally wandered down to Brazil.

Brotherly Love

We don't talk much about brotherly love.  Not really. 

We use brotherly love as a metaphor for the love we share with close friends.  But it is rare to read anything that actually speaks of love between brothers. Our literary canon is filled with brotherly strife, because that is a more compelling read. Cain and Abel.  The Jacksons.  The Bowdens.  There is even an anime series called BroCon based on the tension that sibling rivalries bring to the fore.

Why, then, is the love of a brother considered to be the apogee of love among friends?

My brother Parker and I are separated by 12 years.  That means that we both started school at the same time: me - college; him - first grade. We have always been close, and have rooted for each other during the tough times.

Parker with Pokey Dot. Photo by Katherine Lawton.

One of the odd things, though, is to watch him as he has grown into a man.  Parker now has three little girls (can't manage that Y chromosome, but, then again, neither have I), which he adores and cares for in an amazing manner.  He has a lovely home in Easley.  He is a leader in the church, and organizes weekly meetings between a group of troubled teens in town and their mentors.  He is an innovator and a inventor, an entrepreneur.... an idea guy with an eye towards profit.  He has the best natural comedic timing of anyone I have ever met (a serious source of envy for me) and combines both his incredible intelligence and his hard work ethic, with a kindness that I find rare in my day-to-day life.

I love this man. 

Scope Creep

"And while you're over there...."

Scope creep is an unfortunate fact of life.  It is a common enough word in business and project management, but not something I had run into as a concept before I got into the business of protecting my projects against it.

Scope creep happens when you start to do one thing, and it just changes a little to include one more thing.  And then another.  And another.  And eventually you realize that the project has cost more time, money and effort than you had ever wanted. It happens everywhere; a friend of mine was bankrupted when a high school teacher of mine asked for change after change after change, and then refused to pay for the changes.  John was a victim of scope creep, but that AP English teacher who bankrupted him was just a creep.

Member of the Pack

I was bitten by a pit bull this morning. 

I am fine.  Not even broken skin.  And to be fair, he had no desire to hurt me.  I just got in the way, and he reacted to my arm being where it was definitely not supposed to be....

...which was between his mouth and the throat of my neighbor's dog.

Let me back up. Adam and I walk the same 2-1/2 mile route every morning at 6am.  It provides a little bit of exercise for us, gets the blood flowing, lets his dog - Oreo - get some fresh air, and we discuss stuff. Married guy stuff sometimes, working stiff stuff sometimes, philosophical discussions sometimes, and sometimes we talk about Taylor Swift or Katherine McFee.  Not infrequently, those discussions lead to ideas for blog entries (well, maybe less frequently for the McFee conversations...).

One of the things we talk about is the fact that Oreo reacts to us as members of his pack.  One week, Adam's aunt (insert 80's musical joke here) walked with us, and Oreo got confused and anxious if two of us walked ahead, because we had split the pack.  If only one goes ahead, or another stays behind, it is not a concern. That is just normal recon - any member of the pack will rejoin after their scouting mission is complete.

But splitting the pack is not allowed.  And is met with serious anxiety. For in Oreo's mind, we are a pack.  We even walk like one, with Oreo on Adam's left side (my position varies...). 

Breadbags and Sneakers

Some of you, especially those of you who grew up in South Carolina, will recognize the significance of this image instantly. 

For those of you who don't, let me explain:

We'd get snow about once a year in SC, and it usually didn't stick around.  A lucky schoolchild would get a single snow day every other year.  And even with the snow days that they get, the main activity for the day would be wishing that there was enough snow to go sledding.  The warm blacktop just didn't often allow the snow to stick, except in the higher altitudes in the county (where the buses simply couldn't safely go if there was ice).

So approximately every three or four years, there would be enough snow for sledding.