Ira Wagler's Blog, page 12

Deep Freeze…

A little vacation

Ain’t asking very much.

I hate comin’ home to this old broken down apartment,

I wish I had a dime for every hole that’s in the carpet…

All I want is a life,

To drink from a glass from a well that ain’t dry,

I’m sick of the crumbs, I want a piece of that pie,

All I want is a life.

—Tim McGraw, lyrics

__________________

The SUV was sitting off to the side in the parking lot, just as I was leaving work one evening this week. A fancy one, looked like. It was almost dusk, right at five, and I couldn’t see if anyone was even sitting in it. Everyone had already left, except Mahlon, one of my yard guys. He pulled around and opened his window. “Do you want to check it out, what’s up over there?” He asked. Yeah, I better, I said. If you would, just stay back here, don’t leave, until I know what’s going on. So he stayed back while I pulled up to the vehicle. I rolled down my window. The other driver rolled his down, too. He was talking real fast on his phone.

It was a Range Rover. I don’t know much about them, but I know they’re expensive. And the guy told me. “The radiator hose broke. I can’t move. I’m talking to the tow truck people, trying to get them over here to haul us home.” He had people in there with him. They looked cold. After waving Mahlon on out, I told the guy, kind of chided him. It’s close to zero out here. Next time you break down in my parking lot and it’s that cold, come inside. No sense sitting out here and freezing. Come on over to my truck and warm up. All four doors opened, then. And five people stepped out. The driver, and what looked like his brother. And three teenagers in the back seat, a guy and two astonishingly beautiful girls. They were all shivering.

My back seat was a mess, of course. Well, my whole truck is a mess, usually. Because I got no one to nag me to keep it cleaned up. The back seat is especially cluttered. Boxes stacked and strewn about, with all kinds of gear. Flashlights, jumper cables, tow rope, and extra jackets and such. I reached back and tried to pile the stuff off to one side. The three teenagers packed themselves in. It was pretty tight. And the man and his brother sat up front with me. Well, if your tow truck’s on the way, I’ll open the office and just wait with you, I said. “They said it won’t be until eight, but she said she’d see if they can move us up to the front,” he said. So we sat there, while he made few calls to other people. I had the heat cranked up all the way. And they were still shivering, back there in the back seat. They kept chattering in a foreign language. I had no clue what it was, so I asked them. “Greek,” the teenage boy told me.

And then the man’s phone rang. It was the tow truck dispatcher lady. She couldn’t get anyone over before eight. They were just too overwhelmed. Tell her to pick you up at Aunt Jennie’s Diner, just down the road, I told him. So he did. She knew of the place and said the tow truck driver would meet them there. And they hung up.

I was going to try to get to the gym that evening, because it’s been tough lately, to get over there. What with snowstorms and early closings and all. I really had planned to make it. That was pretty much shot, now. Oh, well. I’d go home and shovel the walks from this last big storm we’d had the day before, I figured. And they got their purses and whatever from the Range Rover and piled back in. Six people up front in the cab. And six 80-lb. pole pills in the bed of the truck. My yard guys stack them in there, when the roads get bad, to give me some weight to work with. And off we trundled, my truck and me. It’s the biggest load I’ve ever hauled. I have no idea who these people were, except they lived in Wilmington. We never spoke our names. I dropped them off in front of Aunt Jennie’s and wished them well. Just go tell them what’s going on. They have good food. They’ll be fine with you hanging out here until you get a tow, I told them. The man shook my hand and thanked me. And so I left them.

And that’s the kind of winter it’s been. Where a hifalutin’ SUV like a Range Rover sits useless in my yard, because a hose busted because of the cold. The kind of thing that comes at you sometimes, when you’re least expecting it. It’s been a brutal, brutal winter so far. You try to take it as it comes. Maybe I’m just getting old and cranky. But right now, I’m just flat out tired of it all. I’m weary, just weary, of all of it. And the way it’s looking, there’s still a long way to go until spring. And the global warming wackos have come up with a brand new term for it, even, so they can claim the climate’s changing, and it’s all our fault. Polar Vortex. That term makes me weary, too. Why not just call it what it is? It’s a long, hard winter. It’s been this way before. It’ll be this way again. And it’s never any fun.

I don’t know how anyone can ever romanticize this season. I hear people fuss now and then, about how great it is, all the cold and wind and snow. And how cozy it is by a warm fire inside, all wrapped in a blanket with a book. And I think, blech. Nothing romantic about any of that. Sure, sometimes winter acts tame, by being tame. To get you to look the other way, to catch you off guard. But its true nature always shows itself, if you wait long enough. And its true nature is that of a freakin’ beast. Because winter, real winter, will always break in and break things. Whether it’s this guy’s fancy Range Rover, or my old house.

I think back, now and then, to what my brother Nathan claimed years ago. “We were always cold, in winter, growing up,” he said. “We didn’t even know it, but it was always cold. I have never been able to warm up from that cold.” I thought he was just saying wild things, from bad memories. But this winter, I think back and he was right. It was always cold, in Aylmer in winter. The Lake Erie winds swept in, ruthless and biting. And it always snowed and snowed and snowed. The plows rolled through, then, and the snow banks beside the road were higher than our heads, often, in many places. We didn’t think much of it, because that’s just the way it was.

The house was always warm, at least during the day. At night, after the fires lowered and died, that’s when the cold crept in. And every fall, Mom brought out her big feather blankets and put them on our beds. I’ve never seen any like that since. They were big, and fluffy. Filled with goose feathers. You could nest down in those, didn’t matter how cold the room was around you. And you could sleep in peace. But getting up was the problem. By the time Dad called upstairs that it was time to go do the chores, he had a fire roaring in his big contraption of a wood stove in the northwest corner of the living room. We shivered from our warm snug nests, to even think about stepping out into that cold air. But Dad’s hollering was pretty persistent, and you couldn’t just ignore it. By the second or third time, it was time to get out from under that big old warm comforter. Step onto the cold floor, on our bare feet. Dress, as quickly as possible. And then run down the stairs to the living room and huddle by the stove. It was all so cold, all of it. And then we put on our coats and headed out to the barn. That was a fairly warm place, what with all the animal heat going on. Warm, but odorous. We didn’t even think about the way the place smelled, though. Because we were raised around the barn. Warm was what we wanted, and were looking for.

We had running water in Aylmer. They’ve always had that, ever since the settlement was founded. And Dad’s water system was pretty simple. He installed a vast water tank in the hayloft of our big old barn. The windmill just south of the house filled the tank. And the water gravity-flowed to the house and the water tanks for livestock. That meant there were pipes going every which way, from the tank. And I can remember almost every winter, Dad slogging around out there with a bucket of hot water and some rags, trying to unthaw things. It always looked real messy to me.

I kind of felt it coming, early on, that it would be a tough winter. We haven’t had a real bad one in a while. Last year, the ground never even froze up. And you could just calculate what was coming. That, and the Farmer’s Almanac boldly claimed we were in for some big storms. I don’t know how those people do it, but they’re right more often than they’re wrong.

And the first snow came one Sunday in early December, while we were in church. I kind of noticed it coming down outside. Didn’t look that bad. So most of us stood around and visited for an hour or so, like usual. And by the time I walked out to leave, it was absolutely treacherous out there. I crept out to Rt. 41 in 4-wheel drive, and slowly edged down Gap Hill. PennDot was caught completely off guard. It’s been years since I’ve seen such horrendous driving conditions. Traffic was already at a full stop going uphill. And it was like a minefield, all the way home. I would have been fine, except for the other traffic out there. Cars stuck halfway up hills. Buggies clogging up things; you had to dodge around them. And of course, look out for the nuts coming up from behind and passing you. Forty-five minutes later, I finally got home. And I was very grateful to be there. No going to Vinola’s to watch football this afternoon, I thought to myself. I’m staying right here.

And that’s the way it went, pretty much ever since, for over a month now. A hard snow slashes in, and just shuts things down. And messes up all my schedules at work. Deliveries pile up on each other, and the builders try to fit in what they can, when they can. And you get it all shook out and straightened out. Then it all happens again.

And I thought about it a few times, as it got cold and stayed cold. My furnace downstairs. It’s an old heating system, in this house. But the furnace was relatively new, back when we moved in. The Amish man had bragged about it. “It’s less than ten years old, so it should last you a good many years, yet,” he said. And we looked at what he was pointing out to us. A little furnace, with a great tangle of all kinds of pipes strung about. The water heating system ran through it. If that furnace ever quit, there would be a world of hurt waiting. I didn’t think much about it. The house was real. And the heating system was real. We could see it. And that day, the old house could have been in way worse shape, all of it, and we would have taken it anyway.

And I kept the furnace serviced, pretty much every year. Usually in the summer, that’s when you get that stuff done. And I had it all checked out last summer. So hopefully, with any luck, it would get me through one more winter, even a bad one. Plus, I figured, I had a wild card. The tenant. He’s pretty capable, and he has lots of connections. If he can’t fix it, he’ll know someone who can. I felt pretty confident about all that. And as December passed on in to January, everything seemed to be hanging together pretty well, down in the basement.

And it all came loose about two weeks ago. Late one night, as I was getting ready for bed, I thought I heard a strange gurgling sound coming from the kitchen sink. This cannot possibly be a good thing, I thought. The water still came, though, when I turned on the tap. The pressure seemed good. I checked around all over, for any water coming from anywhere. Walked down to the basement. Nothing that I could see. It was late. Oh, well. Maybe nothing’s wrong. If there is, I’ll figure it out tomorrow.

The next morning, the water pressure was very low. And the water itself was murky. Gah. It had finally come. Trouble with my system. And right in the middle of the worst winter anyone’s seen in these parts for decades. The tenant was already gone. So I called him. He had showered last night, and the pressure was fine. Well, it’s not fine now, I told him. “I’ll check it out when I get home,” he said. I’ll leave the outside basement door unlocked, and the light on, I said.

I skipped the gym that evening and went straight home. He was puttering around down by the furnace, talking to a buddy on his cell phone. We could hear water running through the pipes. And when water’s running, it has to be going somewhere. That’s what he couldn’t figure out. The next day was a Saturday. And his buddy agreed to stop by in the morning.

I didn’t have a real good feeling about it all. I met them and let them in. And the two of them stood there, trying and trying to figure out where the water could be running to. It was a pretty classic redneck scene. They talked and talked and analyzed and fussed. I stood around, fretting. And then they decided that maybe some parts needed changing.

And over the next few days, his buddy came and went and came and went. He knew just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to actually get the thing fixed. He switched out a modulator. Changed the pressure overflow valve. Both were pretty much clogged up, he claimed. I have hard water. It eats things up. And he figured out that when you closed a certain line, the continuous water flow stopped. And I had decent pressure and clean water upstairs. But there was no heat. There was really nothing else he could do. He was stumped.

And then I did what I probably should have done to start with. Called on one of my own connections. A young guy, a real plumber. I’d become friends with him, because he serviced our system at work. I hadn’t wanted to bother him, because he was already working insane hours, fixing emergencies all over the county. But I finally called him, because I figured the situation I was in was an emergency. I left a message and he called right back. He’d stop by the next afternoon, Saturday. That’s great, I said. I won’t be here, because I’ll be at the Horse World Expo in Baltimore, manning the Graber booth. I told him how to get into the basement. If anyone could fix this problem, he could.

And that Friday evening, the furnace itself just stopped. Quit working completely. I punched the reset button, but it was just dead. That’s all I need, I thought. Now I’ll have to shell out money for a new furnace. I got things to do and places to go this year, travel plans. A new furnace is gonna take a serious bite out of all that. I called my buddy, and amazingly, he was very calm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will fix your furnace.” That settled me down a little bit. But still. How could he be so sure? He had never even seen my unit.

And the next day, I packed a bag and headed on down to the Horse Expo to join the other Graber guys already there. It’s kind of fun to get out, once in a while, just for a change of pace. I don’t know horses, I don’t understand horses, and no, I don’t particularly care for horses, as anyone who has read much of my stuff knows. Being Amish burned any potential for any of that out of me years ago. And a lot of “horse people” are just a little bit strange. They just are. But I can talk horses all day long, and I can sure sell you a real nice horse barn.

I fretted to my coworkers about my furnace. “Nah,” they said. “If anyone can fix it, Dwylin can.” And he didn’t even get over to my house until late afternoon. Right after he got there, he called. He had instantly figured out why water was flowing through the pipes. Two little pipes went out through the north basement wall, under the back porch and mud room. He’d shut them off, and it just stopped. As he was talking to me, he went outside and opened the little crawl space and shone his light in. “Yep,” he said. Those two little pipes are busted. They froze.” Don’t worry about fixing those, I said. We’ll get to them later sometime. I can put a little heater out there in that porch, over the winter. And right there he took care of that.

Look, I said. It’s late Saturday afternoon, and you’ve been running hard all day. Just get me patched up for now. Get me some pressure, and make that furnace run. We can fix it all as it should be fixed later, when things slow down for you. Like maybe next summer. “I’ll call you when I get the furnace running,” he said. And he did, less than an hour later.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your furnace,” he told me, as I sagged with relief. “It’s got perfect spray, perfect flame, and it’s in real good shape.” Man, I can’t tell you how relieved I am, I said. Look, when things slow down, I’m taking you to Vinola’s. We’ll have a few, and I’m buying. He laughed. “Yeah, I’ve heard lots of good things about that place. Never been there.” Well, I’m taking you, I said. And get that bill in the mail, too. And charge me your weekend rates. And I thought to myself, as we hung up. Next time use your own connections, when it comes to the big stuff.

And I got home in time on Sunday afternoon to watch part of the Denver-New England game. Settled in to watch the next one. And there was a little issue of water leaking from one of the tenant’s heaters upstairs, right down onto my kitchen counter. After frantic calls to both the tenant and my plumber, we got it all squared away without too much damage. Except I didn’t get to see the last half of what was one of the best championship games in NFL history.

But overall, everything kind of wrapped itself up in a good way, I thought. Except it’s still winter. And I’m still weary. I think now and then about how nice it would be to “go south for the winter,” and run with the racy set. I could look all writerly and wear a linen jacket and smoke a pipe. Hang out in quaint cafes and coffee shops, and maybe get a little writing done on a sequel, or some such thing. And I got nothing against any of all that. If that’s you, feel free within yourself, and make no excuses for who you are. I just can’t see it being me. Because here’s the problem with that little scenario. People who have jobs, people who get up and drive to work every day to make a living, people like that can’t do things like that.

And I am one of those people.

********************************************************

And how about the upcoming Super Bowl? It’ll be played outside, in New York. Here’s hoping for, oh, at least a semi-blizzard. There, I mean. Not where I am. I’d love to see a snow covered field, with more snow coming down hard, all game. The way the winter’s been going up in those parts, I think there might be a decent chance of that.

And my pick to win? I got nothing against either team, really. The vile Patriots were unceremoniously booted, that’s all I really cared about. And I wouldn’t mind seeing Peyton get another ring. But I’m going with the Seahawks. It’s time for a West Coast team to bring home a ring, I think. Plus I respect Pete Carroll a little more as a coach. If Denver wins, it won’t be because of John Fox’s coaching. Besides, I still feel bad for the Seahawks, the way they were robbed in their last Super Bowl. That game against the Steelers was just flat out the worst officiated Super Bowl in all of history. Maybe one of the worst officiated games, ever, anywhere. Sorry, Steelers fans. It really was that bad.

So I’m going with Seattle. Seahawks by three.

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The Gatekeeper’s Son…

And at night, he stiffened with shame in his dark bed, ripping the

sheets between his fingers…He wanted to blot out the shameful

moment, unweave the loom.

–Thomas Wolfe

_____________

He called the office one morning last week. Asked for someone in sales. And Rosita told me. “A guy has some questions about some horse stall doors.” OK, I said. She transferred the call, and I spoke like I always do. This is Ira. Can I help you?

It was an Amish guy, I could tell from his voice. Couldn’t place an age on it, though. He might have been in his twenties. Or he might have been sixty. He was wondering if I stocked a horse stall door. A slider. And did I have a stall door that had a yoke, where the horse could stick its head out, if it wanted to? Yeah, I have a few of those, I said. How many do you need? “Three,” he said. I have them here. They’re not the standard door. Let me look up what they cost, I said. And I told him the price. He seemed to recoil a bit. “Well, do you have any regular small grills, so I can just make my own doors?” He asked. I have some of those, too, I told him. Tell you what. Why don’t you stop by when you get a chance and see what we have? You can choose then, what works for you. And he allowed that he might do just that later that morning.

And in the bustle of things a few hours later, the door bells jingled. I was on the phone, but I looked. A middle-aged Amish man. And his wife. That’s a little unusual. The women usually stay outside, in the vehicle they came in. It’s pretty rare, to see an Amish couple walk in like that. I heard the man ask for me. About a minute later, I got off the phone. And I rose to greet them as they walked up to my counter. The man smiled and introduced himself and his wife. She just stood there, smiling.

And I took them out to the warehouse. Showed them the yoke doors he had asked for. Explained how they were made. Galvanized steel. Then powder coated. “What about the smaller grills?” He asked. I showed them those. And they conversed quietly, off the side a bit. In PA Dutch. And it didn’t take long. “We’ll take three of these, and just make our own doors. Do you sell the wood for me to do that?” Yep, I answered. I got samples up by my counter. I’ll show you what I have, and you tell me what you want.

And that’s what we did. They stood at the front of the counter, and I showed him the Northeastern White Pine I stock. And we figured it out, what he needed. I wrote the stuff up on an invoice, and he wrote out a check for the total. The wife glanced about, and suddenly her eyes focused on the little poster I have taped to the back of my computer screen. Of my book. She looked at it, then looked at me. She had mostly smiled politely up until now. She glanced back and forth a few times, at me, then at the poster, then at me again. And all at once she got real talkative.

“Is this you?” she asked, mildly astonished. Yep, that’s me. I was a little astounded that she’d even noticed the poster. Most people stand there, and look right past it. And I never mention anything, if they don’t see it. Her husband, too, looked to where she was looking. And it took only a few questions for her to figure out that I was David Wagler’s son. “Is Titus your brother?” she asked, all intrigued. Yes, I said. “I read your Dad’s book about his accident. Through Deep Waters. I was just thinking the other day that I’ll need to dig out that book and read it again,” she said. The husband seemed about as astonished as she was. And he got to talking, too.

“We met Titus once,” he announced. “Years ago, back in the early 1990s.” And I just leaned on the counter and we visited about it all. Yes, I told them, when he asked. I can speak PA Dutch. It’s a little different from yours. You people are the blue bloods, when it comes to the Amish. “Blue bloods?” They looked a bit puzzled. The oldest group around. You all were here first. And you have a lot of words and traditions that I didn’t grow up with, I explained. They grasped that.

The woman smiled as we talked. She seemed pretty excited that they were making a connection, here. “I think I was born the same year Titus was,” she said. And then a thought hit her. “Do you have a copy of your book here?” she asked. Oh, yes, I always keep a few around, I told her. I stepped back and got a copy from the box by my desk. Right here it is. I handed it to her, and told her the price. I’d sign it, of course, too, I said. She read the back cover, then started paging and paging through the book. I kept right on chatting with the husband, as his wife pretty much absorbed what she could from the book she was holding.

And I told her. You probably won’t agree with everything in it, but I think you’d enjoy the read. The husband got to asking some questions, then. “How old were you when you left?” he asked. Twenty-six, when I left for good, I said. And of course that opened up the usual can of worms. Yes, I had been a church member. And no, I’m not excommunicated. They do things a little different, out there in northern Indiana. He seemed a little dubious, but he still smiled at me.

It was time for them to head out to the yard to load up. And the wife still stood there, holding the book. I wondered if they’d take it. Then she looked at her husband. The two of them stood right there in front of me and communicated without saying a word. She kind of wanted it, she seemed to be saying. But we don’t really know anything about this man. Whatever you think is best. I’m good with that. He looked at her, and they discussed it some more without saying a word. And then he turned to me with a loopy little smile. “I guess we have enough books,” he said, as his wife handed me back my copy. That’s fine, I said. And it wasn’t awkward at all. You know where I am, if you ever change your mind. “Yes, yes,” they both nodded and smiled. And then they turned and walked out.

It was just a little bit strange, that whole experience. I can’t remember that exact thing ever happening before. And I made some random comment to the others in the office. My, she really wanted that book. The man wouldn’t let her buy it. But overall, I wasn’t at all upset. I come from these people. And they weren’t being disrespectful. They just made a choice, or at least the husband did. I don’t know if they’d ever heard of my book before. I think not. She had seemed pretty surprised. And maybe she’ll get to borrow a copy from someone, sometime. Maybe not, too. It’s none of my business what other people decide they will read, or won’t. And no, I don’t feel like I have a “ministry” to anyone. I’m fine with those who are in ministry. But to me, it’s always felt like you can’t talk to people eye to eye, if you’re consciously “ministering” to them. I’m just a guy who writes, now and then. If you want to read my stuff, great. If you don’t, that’s totally your business. It’s certainly none of mine.

I got to thinking about it all later, though, how the husband had turned down my book. Mulled it over, some. And I thought about it. I sure don’t blame him, because I came from where he is. And I think back, way back, to my preteen years, and how it was at home. Dad was pretty adamant about what he’d allow in his house. And he never would have let his sons read my book, not when they were young. Sure, he’s read it, and he has his own signed copy, because I gave him one when I went up to see him last June. But that’s now. Back then, he would surely have cast out that book as unfit for his children to read. He just would have. Not saying his sons wouldn’t have snuck around and got hold of it on their own. They surely would have done that, too.

And all that musing juggled loose a memory from way back when I was a child of twelve or so. A tough memory, in some ways. But still, it looks a lot different from here than it did when it all came down. It’s neither here nor there, I guess. No other reason to write it, except it happened.

We always had a lot of books around our house, growing up. Dad saw to that. We had no idea how unusual that was in the Amish world, especially back then. It was just our reality. His nonfiction stuff was generally pretty good. There was an old encyclopedia set. That’s always good stuff. But there were a lot of other real books, too. History books. Biographies. Reader’s Digest condensed books, there were plenty of those around. So many books that Dad built a bookshelf into the wall in the living room. A good-sized bookshelf, longer than half the room. And it was always chock full of books.

When it came to fiction, though, well, there he lacked a bit. Most of that was just mushy goo. Little didactic volumes he dragged home from the bookstore at the print shop, and presented to us with lots of good cheer. We generally didn’t act all that interested, though. Some of that stuff is fine, when you’re seven or eight. But not for much longer after that. And I saw my brothers, Stephen and Titus, sneak home contraband books they somehow had snuck through the school system, from the bookmobile. Freddy the Pig. Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew. Paddington Bear. Dad didn’t want books like that in the house. My brothers snuck them in and read them, anyway. I listened hungrily to their talk and couldn’t wait until I was old enough to read such books, too.

And soon enough, I did. Never got into Freddy the Pig, much. But the others I enjoyed. It’s all formulaic writing, but at least those stories had plots and twists and a little bit of violence and evil villains, unlike the preachy “Christian” books Dad brought home. I lost myself in a lot of real good children’s literature. And I loved it a lot, all of it.

You grow out of that stuff, though. And soon we did. I remember it as about the time Stephen was sixteen or seventeen. Titus was probably fifteen. And I was twelve or so. And this is just how I remember it. The westerns came around. Mostly Zane Gray stuff. I heard my brothers talking about the latest Zane Gray they’d read. And soon, I’d read my first one. These books were bought, and brought home. Right into the house. And there had to be some place to keep them safe.

Stephen came up with the idea, I think. He made a sturdy little wooden box. We called it a trunk, but it was a box. Not real big, so the box itself could be stuck away somewhere, out of sight. Maybe eighteen inches by eighteen inches, and maybe six or eight inches deep. He mounted the hinges and the hasp latch from the inside, so you couldn’t see the screws. And so no one could just back them out, and open the box that way. And he got a cheap padlock and locked it all up. And soon Titus had made his own “trunk” too. I think my brothers kept more than just books in their trunks, other contraband. But I never did. And I never made one out of wood, either. I settled instead for a little plastic box that had come with something, maybe a torch or some sort of tool. It had a handle built right in, and you could lock the handle. My trunk was the least secure of all. Because you could pry up the front corners and see what was inside. We stored our treasures in those trunks, and we kept them in the dark little closet upstairs in our room.

And I’m not sure of the exact sequence of events, but at some point in there, my brothers discovered Steen’s Cigar Store in Aylmer. On the north side of the street, toward the east end of the block. I suppose they sold cigars there, but we never paid that much mind. I know there was a pool room in the back. And we never paid that much mind, either. The thing that pulled us in was the vast, glorious magazine rack against the west wall. The place had hockey magazines. All sorts of magazines. And it had something else, too, a thing that always pulled us back like a magnet. A huge rack of comic books.

And it was just magical stuff, we discovered, those comic books. After Stephen got up the nerve to buy his first copy. Glossy covers in full color. And beautiful, full-colored pages. And all kinds of exciting, chilling, and hilarious plots. We got a bunch of them, eventually. And I can still see it clearly in my mind, some of the scenes and the dialogue. Mickey Mouse and Goofy. Archie. Some more sinister stuff, pulp fiction. (As he drifted toward the rapids to his death, Richard (Rob, Dave, any name fits here) realized that the wail of the Banshee was for him.) I absorbed it all, thought about it. There was so much life and color in those pages, such as I had never seen before in the world I was in.

And eventually I bought my most treasured comic book of all. Tarzan. It was full-sized, and so thick, the spine was square. I’m sure it cost more than I could afford. But I bought it, and snuck it home. And stored it in my little plastic trunk. I can still see and read scenes from that book, as clearly as if I were standing back there, holding it in my hands.

And we sailed along for a while, all smooth and happy in our lives. It could not last, of course. Because Dad knew more than we gave him credit for, I think. He knew we had our little trunks. And he knew we had stuff in there that we weren’t supposed to have. I don’t know what made him decide to do something about it. Maybe he held off until he figured he couldn’t anymore. Or maybe he finally took the time from his busy schedule to do what needed to be done. I don’t know. And from here, it’s hard to judge him, knowing the world he was in and what he represented in that world. He was standing at the gate of his own household, now. And he knew some bad stuff had slipped in. It was time to call an accounting.

It all came down one Sunday evening. Stephen was at the singing. Titus was not, so he couldn’t have been quite sixteen. And he was already upstairs in our room, reading. Not hanging out with the family that much. And around 8:30, I headed off to bed. As was a very brief habit in my childhood years, I walked past where Dad was sitting in his rocking chair. I said “good night” to him, for just a few years there. And that night, I said it. But he didn’t say it back, like usual. And he spoke, and it was a hard voice. I froze where I stood.

“Would you bring your trunk down and open it, so I can see what’s inside?” he asked. “And tell Titus to bring his down, too.” And just like that, a moment of sleepy peace turned into a dark nightmare of extraordinary turmoil. I’m sure he saw the fear and panic in my eyes. I gulped and nodded. And then I fled upstairs. Burst into our bedroom. And I told Titus. Dad wants to see what’s in our trunks. Right now. He’s waiting downstairs.

I don’t know what all Titus had in his trunk, and I can’t remember how it all went down with him, what he did. I know what I did with mine. Opened it. Took out those damning comic books. And replaced them with some books and little knick knacks. Acceptable books, of course. I couldn’t let Dad see I was reading comics. That would mean a whipping, for sure. And I traipsed downstairs slowly. To where Dad was waiting for me to open up my little blue plastic trunk.

I spun the lock and opened the trunk. And it was all just harmless stuff, in there. Dad pawed about a bit. “Is this all you kept in here?” he asked, frowning. I looked at him in fear. My choice had been made upstairs. And I just flat out lied. Yes, I told him. That’s all that ever was in this trunk.

He had me. And he told me. He’d pried open the front corners, earlier that day. He’d seen those comic books. I needed to go upstairs and get them all, right now. And so I did. I handed over that precious Tarzan copy. And a few others I can’t remember. But I remember Tarzan. Dad took them from me, and told me to go to bed. As if there was going to be any sleep for me that night.

My sister Rosemary and her husband Joe Gascho and their family were on a little trip to somewhere, right over that time. And Dad and I drove over the next morning, to do their chores. We milked the cows, and did what all else needed doing. Dad wasn’t himself, not like normal. And of course, I wasn’t either. Just as we were winding down and getting ready to leave, he brought it up. He stood there, with a sturdy little branch switch in his hand. “You lied to me last night,” he said. “And I need to give you a whipping.” Well, it wasn’t quite that blunt. There was a lot of admonishing mixed in there, too.

It’s brutal, when you’re twelve or thirteen, to be confronted with such a thing. And no, this is not a rant about how the Amish raise and beat their children. It’s just a story. And I got nothing against what’s called “corporal punishment” these days, anyway. A good old fashioned spanking. I’ve seen a lot of little kids who needed it, bad. Not applied in anger, but as a boundary. Society would be a lot more polite, if that happened more often. But not when you’re older, not when you’re approaching young adulthood. At that age, a whipping ain’t gonna do a bit of good. And it’s probably gonna do a whole lot of harm.

And in all honesty, I can’t remember more than a few at around that age. Maybe three or so. I just didn’t get whipped much. None of us did, not like some of our friends who got yelled at and smacked for every little mistake. Dad never had a habit of doing such a thing. But when he did, it was just downright humiliating. You had to lift up your arms, above your head. That way, it didn’t hurt so much. Actually, it barely hurt at all. No whipping I can remember ever did. But still, I remember the choking sobs I tried hard to hold back. I just couldn’t do it, not that time. I got my last ever whipping when I was thirteen. And that last time, I made it. I didn’t cry. And that was the most dangerous whipping of all.

We got it over with, right there in Joe Gascho’s barn that morning. And then we drove home, in total silence, in his horse and buggy. I wasn’t hungry for any breakfast. I brooded and seethed. I swore in my heart that one day I would run away from home. And yeah, even a twelve-year-old can make some pretty strong vows.

The thing is, it’s a lot harder to judge Dad now than it used to be, for the way things went sometimes. That’s from where I am today. It’s harder, because I have some small grasp of how flawed I am, myself. I got my own issues, my own idols. And they’re just as bad as his ever were or could have been, just in different ways. I did judge him quite harshly back then, of course. I nursed them in my heart for years, a lot of those wounds. And for the first time in a long time, I just now went back and saw it all again, what this particular scene was, and how vividly I felt it as a child. But from here, trying to understand what he saw from where he was, he was just doing what he thought was right. As a flawed man, disciplining a son who wasn’t walking exactly as he should be walking. And, yeah, a son who had lied to him, that too. He did what he did, so his son would learn to walk the right road.

It didn’t work, of course, the way he went about it. It never had a chance to work. Not saying he should have known that, because obviously he didn’t. And it’s neither here nor there, to focus on that point now. But it didn’t work, because it couldn’t. All it did was this. I never said “good night” to my father again, not while living at home.

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The “Witness”

And, lowering his voice to an ominous and foreboding whisper,

he said mysteriously, “Beware! Beware! Do not be deceived!”

—Thomas Wolfe

______________

I know it’s the end of the year, and I certainly meant to write about all that. I’d sure planned to start off about how great the year was, and how so many blessings rained down all around me. But then something happened at work last Saturday, where a lot of odd stuff keeps coming at me. And now that’s what wants to come out.

I don’t like to work on Saturdays, any more than I have to. We’re open until noon, and only lightly staffed. One guy in the office, one in the yard. It usually comes out to about one Saturday a month, for me. And last Saturday, the weekend before Christmas, it was my turn. I dragged myself out of bed, not really feeling sorry for myself, but just a bit grumpy. At least the weather had warmed up, and all that awful snow was sinking out of sight. And right at eight, we arrived, one of my yard guys and me. It would a be slow day, we figured. Couldn’t be much going on, not on a weekend like this. Christmas was too close. I fired up my computers and settled at my desk.

The phone rang, now and then. And there were a few walk-ins. But overall, it was very slow, just like I’d figured. I puttered around, caught up on some quotes that had piled up the week before. And then, around 9:30 or so, the bells on the front door jingled. And I looked up, from what I was doing. A man walked in. And he was dressed distinctly. Plain Mennonite. You can tell, pretty easily, those people. Normal dress, mostly, for the men. Except they tend to wear those funny little pointed hats with a real narrow brim all around. They’re clean shaven, at least the ones around here. In the Midwest, it might be different. Unlike the Amish, Mennonites never had any particular conviction about beards. Well, they do have convictions, just opposite from the Amish. A lot of them take a pretty hard stand against beards. And their hairstyle is always a certain way, too. The women wear cape dresses and usually a pretty good-sized covering. Overall, those groups are just a little too clean-cut to be real. But that’s just me, saying that.

I have some good friends among those people. They’re fine and upstanding and honest, mostly. My friends all are, of course, but I mean the Plain Mennonites as a group. They consider themselves a light to a dark world. But overall, it’s just a bit wearying, to think of them. They’re about as diverse as the Amish, all sorts of levels and factions. Nationwide. Fellowship. Eastern. Mid Atlantic. Charity. Pilgrim. And a whole lot of other groups I never heard of or can’t remember. All doing two things, mostly. Fiercely erecting walls to keep the evil “world” from encroaching too close to where they are. And fiercely judging each other. They don’t think of it that way, about judging each other. But that’s what it is, when you refuse to break bread and drink communion wine (Grape juice, of course, in those groups. The first miracle of Jesus is just explained away as if it never happened.) with each other. They make all kinds of nonjudgmental noises when I talk to them and ask them about the other groups out there similar to them. But there’s a bottom line. We’re just a little better than they are. Because we follow the law more closely, and we got it all figured out, how to work our way to heaven.

I have a little bit of an inside track to how it can be (Not saying it always is, so don’t get all defensive if you’re in that world.) because of what Ellen told me she saw and experienced, growing up like that. All kinds of ruthless power trips and all kinds of heavy, heartless ruling going on. I heard what she told me. And from what little I saw of the people she told me about, it was true, pretty much, what she said. And I’ve thought about it all a lot since. It’s a hard place, to come from. A real hard place to break out of. I’d rather have grown up in the world I grew up in, than that world.

The guy was real nice, last Saturday morning, the guy in the funny little short-brimmed hat. And I got up and greeted him. He was about my age, probably, maybe a few years older. And he was wondering about the cost of a pole building, a little garage his Dad wanted. It just depends on the size, I told him. And what all you want on it. Add stuff, it costs more. Get a basic building, that keeps the cost down. And he told me, “Dad is 80 years old, and he’s determined he wants this building for a shop. And of course he wants his boys to take care of all that for him.” And I kind of scolded him about that attitude. Good naturedly, of course. Be grateful your Dad is active when he’s 80 years old, I said. My Dad’s 92. He doesn’t have the energy anymore to even want such a thing. Be thankful your Dad does. And he made the appropriate noises, agreeing with all that.

And we just talked along. I helped him figure out what size building he wanted, and got to working on the quote. We got along real well. And I asked him, as I was finishing up. Where would it be shipped to? That makes some difference in the cost. I totally expected a local address. Lancaster County has all kinds of Plain Mennonites. I figured he came from over on the north side, somewhere. And I really didn’t figure I had much chance of actually selling it to him, anyway.

And he told me. A town down by the eastern shore in Maryland. About 150 miles away. I was startled, and told him so. I had no idea there were Mennonites like you down that far. What group are you with? And it was his turn to be a little startled. What in the world did this English man know about Plain Mennonites? Are you Nationwide? I asked him. “No,” he said. “We’re Bethel Fellowship. (I think that’s what he said. I didn’t write it down. It was “Bethel” something.) We’re not connected to the Nationwide groups, or any of the others.” That’s real strange, I said. Never heard of you people before.

And it could have all ended right there, and would have ended right there, in any kind of normal day. But this was the Saturday before Christmas. Things were slow. And I just got to visiting with the man. All while working up his quote. He asked for a printed copy, and I stayed busy getting that together for him. And I asked him. So what are all your rules? Do you listen to the radio?

“Oh, absolutely not,” he settled right in, too, to tell me. “We have no instrumental music, filtered internet only, and no TV. We’re not like those liberal Mennonite churches out there.” And I asked him a bit about the size of the community he’s in. “Twenty-five families,” he said. I asked how many youth they had, and at what age they usually joined the church. “We have about twenty youth,” he said. “And they usually join when they’re twelve or thirteen years old or so.” That’s a lot of pressure, there, to join at that age, I thought. That’s how they rope them in. I didn’t say that, though.

And we just kept chatting. I told him I had come from the Amish. By then, he’d figured that out, and wasn’t surprised. He kept going off about instrumental music, and how that was always the first step that leads churches right down the wrong road. What do you listen to when you’re driving down the road? I asked. “All a capella singing,” he said. I bet that gets pretty old, I told him. He claimed it didn’t. He got a little loud, saying all that. But he didn’t mean to, I don’t think. He just had an English guy listening and asking questions about what he believed. Nothing wrong with talking a little loud when that happens. But I kept asking all kinds of questions. And the next one came.

You don’t have radios, I said. How do you know your youth aren’t sneaking around listening to all that evil music when no one’s looking? He looked genuinely shocked. I don’t think he’d ever even considered that possibility before. “No, no,” he half sputtered. “We don’t feel that happens. And if one of them got caught doing that, strong discipline would follow.” And what if he’s still rebellious? I asked. What if the guy won’t put away his radio? “Then he would be excommunicated,” was the answer.

We were talking about his building quote right through all this. I showed him from our little model in the showroom. How a sliding door works. The components we sell. I figure our products are just about the best out there in the market, I allowed. He seemed impressed. And always, the talk drifted back to what his little group believes, because I kept nudging it there. And somehow we ended up over by the counter by the front door. No other customers came. The phone didn’t ring. And soon, an hour had whooshed right by. And we still stood there, talking about a lot of things. The people we came from, the Anabaptists, and how deeply our roots affect who we are. I respect my people a lot, I said. But I could never live like that. And off and on, he kept slamming all those liberal Mennonites out there, so worldly, all of them. Their women wear pants and cut their hair, pretty much an abomination in his book. And it just slipped out of me. That all sounds like a whole lot of judgment, what you’re saying there. Why is any of that stuff your business? And again, he looked a little dumbfounded. “We know them by their fruits,” he spoke as if talking to a child. And I asked him. Do you get many outsiders joining up? People that come from the English?

“A few,” he claimed. I bet there’s not many, I said. “No, because they have too much to clean up in their lives,” he said. And it was my turn to gape. And I grasped at last that the man was “witnessing” to me. He was telling me all the rules you needed to follow for salvation. I can’t remember that he ever even mentioned the name of Jesus at all. Just the things you had to do, to get to heaven. And how messy it was out there, in the world. “Take divorce,” he said, starting down another little trail. And I interrupted without even thinking. That’s where I am. I’m divorced. I figured I wouldn’t mention anything about going to bars and such, because that would just be too much. So I didn’t. He smiled at me benevolently and a little pityingly. I can’t remember his point about it all. But he kept going back to how it’s so much easier when people have their works all lined up, when they come to join his church. “That way, they have far fewer problems with the rules, because they’re already used to it. And there aren’t many from the outside who can ever get their lives in order,” he explained.

I smiled at him. There was nothing hostile in the air that I felt, not from him. He was just talking. I certainly wasn’t hostile at him. He was a nice, friendly man who was just telling me what he believed. He got a little loud, but that was OK. I was the one who made the conversation happen, because I wanted to visit. I did keep nudging him along, though, into ever more horrifying places for him, I suspect. I asked him. OK. Suppose you look at a woman and lust after her. That’s a sin, the Bible says. What if you do that, and then get killed right that instant? Are you lost forever? He leaned in instantly across the counter, and he actually shook his finger at me. And he spoke strongly, unhesitatingly, adamantly. “If you don’t repent, yes. You must repent from that sin.” We all do it, I shot back. You know we do. He didn’t deny that. And he went off again, into all his formulas about works. It all starts with that instrumental music, back there. He just couldn’t keep from going back to that foundational point about that evil music. “Read your Bible,” he told me. And again. “Read your Bible. You have to repent from every sin, or you are lost.”

And right there you have it. Talking to Christians, here. You can be saved and lost and saved and lost a hundred times in a single day, depending on how much you’re sinning and “repenting” in your heart. And in your mind. It’s whiplash. And there are all kinds of formulas out there, to minimize the impact of such beliefs. But it still always boils down to a whole lot of guilt. And a whole lot of fretting about losing your salvation, and trying to hang on to it by your works. It’s whiplash, to have to always be on mental alert like that. It’s torture, is what it is. That’s the same box I broke free from, except I think this guy’s box was even worse. There has to be some better way. Otherwise, all of life is drudgery, not worth living with any joy, but always with forced words and forced smiles. And lots of rules and lots of loud talking. There can be no joy in such teaching, in such beliefs, in such “faith.” There can be none. Not real joy.

And I had never planned to say such a thing, but it just popped right out. It’s like I couldn’t help myself. That’s bondage, right there, I said. And no, my voice wasn’t near as loud as his. I think it even shook a little. But I said it. You are in bondage. It’s impossible to walk in such righteousness, that we keep track of every sin, and make sure we repent. And all those rules won’t do a thing to make your heart one bit purer before God, either. It’s bondage, to believe that. You’re in bondage. Not exact words, there. But that’s what I hope he heard me saying, one way or the other.

I don’t think anyone had ever even suggested something like that to him before. And here stood an English guy, who came from the Amish, saying that. A guy who listened to all that detestable instrumental music, and had a TV. And worse still, a guy who was divorced. It was almost more than he could take. And he struggled. Still, he kept it polite all the way through. As did I. And he rattled off his long complicated formula one more time. You work, to clean up your life. Only then can the church accept you. I told him again. It’s bondage, what you’re saying. “I have to get going,” he said then. We’ve been talking for an hour. I enjoyed it, I said. And I meant that. Let me know if you want that building. “I will,” he answered. Then he walked out.

But not far. I returned to my desk behind my counter. And the door bells jingled again. The man stuck his head inside, and spoke in a pretty loud voice. I don’t think he was hollering, just talking loud so I could hear him from clear across the room. “Read your Bible.” And then he was gone.

At a little church house behind the clock tower in Gap, PA, Pastor Mark Potter keeps right on preaching, keeps right on insisting that the church is a hospital, not a country club. And it’s not a walled fortress, either, to keep the wounded out. It’s a place for broken people with messy lives. And I will say this. From what I’ve seen of country clubs and walled fortresses and such, I have found the hospital far more welcoming. And far more healing. But that’s just me, talking from where I am.

******************************************************

And that brings me to the season again. Christmas. Getting repetitious, here. It was different this year, but real good. On Christmas eve, it all went like I thought it would. Well, almost. Paul and Rhoda and Cody and Adrianna welcomed me into their home. Moments before, the electricity had inexplicably gone off. And their house was lit with candles and lamps. Some stupid drunk had probably hit a telephone pole somewhere close, Paul and I figured. It was a special evening, anyway. We’ll always remember that night. We ate, made merry, and exchanged gifts. And it was just simply a joy to be joyful with that family at such a time as this.

I wasn’t sure how the actual day would go, though. And that’s what was most different, this year. I wasn’t invited anywhere. My brother Steve and his family had other plans, which was fine. It just meant they weren’t serving food in their house that day. So I didn’t have anywhere to go. And no, I didn’t make it known, much. Only mentioned it to a few close friends I could trust not to give me a “sympathy invite.” I don’t want to get invited to Christmas dinner unless you think of it on your own. And besides, I’d probably turn down even such an invitation, anyway, if it’s a large gathering. I’m pretty shy around any large family that’s not my own.

But then something did turn up, something good. I got a message from my friend Allen Beiler. Our good friend from Missouri, Dave Beiler, had returned to see family. And he had some time to get together on Christmas Day, late afternoon into evening. Would I like to come? Of course I’d like to, and I’ll be there, I told him. Yours is the first invitation to anywhere I have that day. And the whole day was calm and joyful. I putzed around at home, fried up some real good natural organic meat I had just picked up the week before. And made a little party by myself. And around six o’clock, I went and hung out with Allen and Dave and a group of other friends. Allen even had some Glenlivet in stock just for me. It was a very merry Christmas.

A quick glance back over the past year. It simply was one of the most exciting and joyful years of my life. I saw so much. And I learned so much. About what it looks like, in other worlds than mine. This country boy ventured out, not only to the big cities, but to the big cities in Germany and Switzerland. I look back and remember all the people I met along that road. People I now treasure as good friends. I remember how they all stepped out and made me welcome. Took the time to show me around. And seemed honored that I was there. It was all pretty astonishing.

I remember, too, what it was to go see my Dad and tell him all about it. What it was to be invited home. What it was to sit and eat with him. That trip was probably the one that stands out above all the rest.

And the angel emerged, too, this past summer. That little event was a huge deal, looking back now. Things haven’t been quite the same since. It seems strange, how such a thing can be. But it’s true. I can measure a lot of things inside my heart in a different way, ever since that happened. I am grateful that it did.

Mom’s still with us, still clinging to life in the dark fog of a world we cannot ever know, unless we enter it. At which point we won’t be able to tell about it. And our prayer remains the same as it was last year at this time. Lord, call her home in the coming year. She is loved and cared for here, and she will always be, for as long as she remains. But You can love and care for her so much better than any of us ever can here. We accept what comes or doesn’t. But please call her home to You.

And this is where I am, in my own heart. Whatever 2014 brings, I think I’ll be fine. Even guardedly happy. I don’t think I’ve ever conceded to just being happy in my daily slog through life. And it’s not like I’ll ever quit grumbling about the small annoying things. I’ll keep doing that. Always have. And if the vile slime that is ObamaCare slithers in and cancels my health insurance, I’ll be more than grumpy, trust me. I’ll be livid. But way down deep, I can tell you that I’m good to go, whatever comes. And I’m looking forward to whatever it is that life may bring.

Happy New Year to all my readers.

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The Road to Perdition…

The other voice he had never heard. But as he listened to that voice

he began to tremble and grow white about the lips. For its very tone

was a foul insult to human life, an ugly sneer whipped across the face

of decent humanity…

—Thomas Wolfe

_____________

I’ve never had that many run-ins with corporations. And I’ve never thought ill of them, either, generally speaking. They bring me a lot of good useful products I like. Food, all kinds of goods, finance, and, well, pretty much anything out there. A corporation is involved somewhere, producing whatever it is, and getting it to the market. And sure, I got issues with a corporation teaming up with the state. Never had any use for that. But a lot of them are teamed up like that, these days, to one degree or the other. Because that’s the playing field they find. And if they don’t team up with the state to fight competition in a free market, someone else will, and they’ll be out. It’s a pretty vicious game, all around.

But I’ve never had a real beef with any of them, except maybe Monsanto and a few others like that. If I need their service or product, I’ll buy it. If I don’t, I won’t. Live and let live. And that was all well and good, right up until last week. Last week, I had a pretty serious run-in with the vast, vile, and absolutely corrupt corporate monster that calls itself Dish Network.

I thought I’d probably have too much rage in me to write it out this soon. So I tried to push it back. But nothing else came. So I think I’m good. A little over a week away. That was enough time to process some things. We’ll see, I guess, as it all comes out.

A quick sketch of my history with Dish Network. When Ellen and I bought the house back in March of 2000, that was the TV provider I chose. And they were real helpful and real friendly. Sent out a service guy to install a small dish on the southwest corner of the house. And he drilled holes through walls and pulled cables here and there. Brought the main one up in the corner of the living room, the best place for a TV, we figured. The guy showed me how things worked, and I was pretty impressed. A lot of channels, way more than I’d ever had before. And that’s the way it was, when we settled together in the house that August.

And Dish Network was a part of my life, from that day until just a little over a year ago. I was always pretty happy with their service, except the prices kept creeping up, for the package I had. I think that’s pretty much a universal rule, for all TV service providers. So I don’t hold that against them. And I always, always paid my bill on time. Always. Years back, I got tired of mailing the check in every month, so I called them and put my bill on my credit card. Autopay. It still showed up, and I still paid it with a check. Just with a whole lot of other things I’d bought that month.

Moving forward, then, to last year, when I decided to switch. It wasn’t Dish that made me want to. It was Frontier, with their pretty much useless internet service. And late one night, I’d had enough. I googled for Comcast’s number. Called. Some guy from India answered, from what I could tell. But he was quite well spoken. Oh, yes. They had a complete package. Phone, internet, and cable. He gave me the special two-year price. And it was way much less than what I was paying for those services from two other companies. So I bit. Yes. How soon can you come out and install it? And will you notify my other providers? So I don’t have to bother with it. “Yes, yes, we will do that,” he assured me. “It will all be no problem.”

And so it happened. I remember well the day the installer came out. I came home from work, and let him in. Nice guy. From the city, he said. I don’t like cities, I told him. And we just chatted right along as he worked, and set stuff up, pulled cables here and there, just like the Dish Network man had done more than twelve years before. I remember that I tipped him with a signed copy of my book. He seemed a little startled, and not all that interested. He took it, though, and thanked me. He figured his mom and sister would like it. And I asked him, as he was talking on his phone to his supervisor at the office. You guys will take care of shutting down my other suppliers, right? “Yes, they will take care of it all,” he told me.

And I was all too happy to let them do it, because I don’t like detailed stuff like that. It just wearied me, the thought of having to make those calls. Because they’ll try to keep you from switching, you just know they will. I didn’t want the hassle of any of it.

And it all went like it seemed it should. I look back now and realize how extremely naïve I was. The bills quit coming from Frontier. And the mailings of notice of a credit card withdrawal payment quit coming from Dish Network. I thought nothing of it at all. Several months later, a letter came from Dish, though. I think I remember seeing it. Probably trying to get me back, I thought. I threw it in the trash without even opening it.

And I know they have the trail all recorded, how they tried to contact me. I didn’t get access to the Comcast voicemail for a year, because I didn’t bother to find out it was even there. And when I finally accessed it, there were messages from Dish Network. Call us. They didn’t say why, though. They just wanted me back, I figured. So I didn’t.

And it’s all so maddening, because it was all just so small. Had I paid any attention, I never would be writing any of this. But I didn’t. And about three weeks ago, here comes another letter. Dish Network on the return address, but this envelope looked different. Kind of ominous. Like it wasn’t making any offers if I came back. Still, I kicked it around for a week before even bothering to open it. And I just read it and gaped. It was a collection letter, from an agency. For a Dish Network bill. This is insane, I thought. How in the world did such a thing ever get to collections?

And I called the number, right then, right there. When you call a collection agency, there’s not a whole lot of getting put on hold. Someone grabs the phone. Because some victim somewhere is calling in about what he owes them. And a real nice guy answered. I told him what was going on. I have no idea what this bill is for. “Let me check,” he told me. He put me on hold for a moment. “It’s for nonpayment,” he came back. Nonpayment of a bill. That’s impossible, I told him. I was a customer for twelve years. I never missed any payment to them. And he checked it out some more. Dish Network had billed me for an extra month after Comcast came in. This is just flat out wrong, I said.

And I just talked to the guy, and we got along real well. I don’t know if he believed me, but he made me believe he did. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’m authorized to deduct 25% from the total. That’s our fee. That’ll bring it down to just at $165.00.” It still ain’t right, I told him. Can’t you just make it go away? He chuckled. “You’ll have to talk to Dish Network about that,” he said. “I just work for a collection agency.” And his voice came through. He was telling the truth.

And we agreed, before we hung up. He’d send me a new bill. He hedged around about a credit card. And I told him. This whole claim is bogus. I’m not giving my credit card to anyone involved. Mail me that invoice, and just back that due date back to the 16th like you just promised. And thanks for what you did for me. This was about as good an experience you could have with any bill collector. He laughed. And his laugh was real. I wondered how often he laughed like that on his job.

A few weeks passed. I fretted a bit and looked for that bill. I figured I’d just pay it. It’s not the money I cared that much about, not that it’s peanuts or anything. I could spend that much in a very nice restaurant for a meal with a date, once in a while. Not that I’ve done such a thing for a long time. And I could spend that much in a bar in any given month, if I wanted to. (Just yankin’ your chain, if you’re all horrified about that.) It was the collection agency that made it all so crazy in my head. That’ll be on my record, that it went all that way. There’s never been such a thing on my record before, not that I can recall. And someone suggested that I should call the corporate office. That’s where the real power is. I’d wait until the bill came in, though. And I waited and waited. It just didn’t come. The guy was a liar, who promised me it would, I thought. I sure pegged him wrong. I thought his voice was real.

And I called again, as December closed in and came. The first week. The collections guy I had trusted told me he’d move the due date back. I didn’t trust anything in that world, right at that moment. So I called again, one evening. A pleasant lady answered. And I told her what was going on, asked for the guy who’d made all those promises. He told me he’d mail it right away, the new revised bill. And it never came. I went off on her, told her how frustrated I was. This is a jungle, this is a thicket. I have impeccable credit. I just want to make sure it stays that way. I’m not mad at you. I’m just frustrated. She punched around on her computer. “The letter was mailed out to you almost two weeks ago,” she told me. It never got here, I said. And I’m real frustrated. This is all a bunch of BS. I said the real word. And she was professional, just like the guy before her was. And she told me. “I can hear the frustration in your voice. I can take your credit card.”

Nothing against you personally, but I don’t trust you to give it to you, I said. Can’t you just email me the bill? And she agreed that she would, telling me pretty much what the first guy had told me. They’re limited, from where they’re coming from. Lots of restrictions. Just email me the bill, I said. Get it here, so I don’t pass the deadline. One to two days, that’s what she told me. That’s when the email would come in.

It never arrived as she had promised, but the letter finally did. Got here, just this week. And during that lull, I decided it couldn’t hurt. So one day last week I did it. Googled the number and called the corporate office. I don’t like details like that. But still, I figured, it couldn’t hurt to try. The bill they claimed I owed was a complete fraud. I’ll try to tell them in a nice way.

I had to call twice, because the first time I was placed into the purgatory of holding for the next level. And I got along real well, with the regular people I was directed to. But they had no power, to change anything. So I talked to them. Get me to someone who can make a decision. I know you can’t. Just get me to someone who can. And their voices hushed a bit, from all the clamor. “I’ll have to transfer you up to the presidential level.” That’s what they both said. And the second time I tried, the nice lady stayed right on with me, until someone picked up on the other end, at that level. It’s a thicket, to get through, I told her. And she laughed. Stayed on with me. And then the line was transferred over. I was at the presidential level. A woman answered and told me her name. She sounded young, and she seemed a bit uptight.

And I just told her what I’d told all the others. Told her what had happened. You got me in collections. I have impeccable credit. What could be done to make this all go away? I never even knew you were asking for anything, until you put me in collections. And it’s pointless, to describe this conversation in any detail, as to who said exactly what. Because it never was meant to go anywhere. And it never did.

It’s called a closer, that position, I found out later. A person who makes problems like me go away. And if you’re a closer like the one I talked to that day, if you’re a closer like that for any corporation or collection agency, I don’t want to know you. I want to stay far away from you. I don’t care if you don’t buy my book, I don’t care if you don’t read my blog. Just stay away from me and leave me alone. Because you’ve got some real serious crossed wires inside you. I don’t want to be anywhere close to the orbit of your personal or professional life. I don’t want you to even know my name. Not saying being a closer couldn’t be done right, or that the job itself is wrong. I’m talking about being a closer like the one I met right then on the phone.

She was confrontational and pretty rude from the first second. No pleasantries at all. She never swore. But you can get real savage without swearing. And she did. And she went way out there, into absolutely vicious and dark places I rarely see. I’ve pretty much wiped her specific words from my mind. And she never heard a word I said, because she never listened. It turned out that what the collection guy had said was true. She kept demanding the original full amount. And I told her. It’s one hundred and sixty five bucks. That’s what they’ll settle for. “That’s because they took their own fee off,” she snapped back. And right there it was. The people at the collection agency had set me free, to the extent they could. Dish Network would not. That’s a pretty brutal thing, right there.

She raged on and on at me. And I raged back at her, too, you bet I did. It was impossible not to. But she was just too much. She had worked her way up, I figure. Up the corporate grind, all the way to the president’s section of the place. And she followed the script her masters had taught her quite well. In that process, she destroyed any remnant of good feeling I’ve ever had about Dish Network as a relatively content twelve-year customer who always paid on time. Most importantly, though, she destroyed any chance of ever getting me back for another twelve years. All for one hundred and sixty five bucks, and a record on my name that it went to collections. They were totally ruthless and destructive, in what they did to get it. It’s just insane, that any corporation would do such a thing. And they won’t, unless they’re too corrupt to even grasp what I just said. Only if you’re that corrupt, only then could you not hear it and not see it. (And yeah, yeah, I know. A whole lot of you got your own horror tales about Comcast or Direct TV or any other major supplier out there. Your stories are just as valid as mine. My experience was with Dish, so that’s the only place I can write from.)

And I got real quiet, at the end. And I asked her one more time. Is there no way to work this out with you or anyone above you? There was no way. She’d told me that before. And she said it again, with a lot of venom. And then I told her, very quietly. I am going to lose your company a lot of business. I’ll tell you that. And then I thanked her. And hung up.

And it all was kind of strange, the mixture of feelings inside me. There was a whole lot of turmoil going on. I was enraged at the corporation that is Dish Network. Rightfully so. It’s an absolutely corrupt cesspool. It didn’t take long, though, before I was confronted with all that other stuff I claim to believe. And I thought, good grief. Does that apply even here? What about the mean, vicious woman? And what about how she treated you like you were less than nothing? Are you going to rage at her, too? Judge her? And I saw it, the path that I believe. I can judge what she did. It was wrong. It takes a real hard person to do such a thing. I can judge a whole lot of things like that about her.

But I can never judge her heart. Never. It’s not my job. And it’s not my business. I’ll keep repeating that, I hope, pretty much from wherever I am, whatever happens. Whether I get that done all the time or not, I’m saying it here.

I don’t know much about the corporate world, never been around it much. And I’m definitely not saying everyone in that world is like this woman was. But wherever you might be in that world, there is a really dark side to it, if it can make people act like that. And it’s kind of ironic, I think. Her name was the only one I didn’t write down as I went up the chain to get to where she was in the presidential section of the place. And now I’m glad I don’t remember it. I don’t have any idea of who she is, where she’s been, or what she’s seen. Or what she thinks she has to do, to survive in the world she’s in. I know she spoke to me as she was told and trained to speak. Maybe she was naturally inclined that way, anyway. I don’t know. But I do know this. Wherever she was coming from, it’s not a good place. It’s a road to perdition, to a place of inner torment, when you let any of the circumstances of your life do that to you. Or any corporation. She might not even recognize or accept that she’s in torment, but she is. I wish she weren’t where she is. And yeah, I still got some hard feelings at her, from how she treated me.

But I will not judge her heart. I will not do it. We judge ourselves by our best intentions. But we judge others by their worst actions. When it comes right down to it, my own heart is just as dark as hers could ever be, before the Lord. It is, if He judged me like I deserve. My heart is every bit as dark as hers could ever dream of being, or darker. Just in different ways. We all got our own idols out there that we manage to hide pretty well. And judging the hearts of others is one of those big hidden idols I try not to worship.

And I have repented from that little threat I made to her there at the end, about seeing to it that Dish will lose all the business I could make it lose. Not enough repentance to try to contact the mean, vicious woman and tell her that. But just in my heart. There’s not a whole lot I can do to damage any corporation like that, however much I might want to. Because they’re just too big. They’ll never notice a word I say. On top of that, I don’t call for boycotts and vendettas. It takes too much energy, such a thing. Creates too much dark tension in your heart. So I’m not calling for a boycott of any company. The market is what it is out there. Deal with who you want to. Just like I figure I’ll sure make my own choices as to who I’ll deal with, too.

And I will say this, with whatever voice I have, to however many people I can reach. If you’re connected to Dish Network in any way, just make real sure you cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s on your way out. A lot of poor (and I mean economically poor) people don’t have any idea how to do that. And the evil corporate blob that is Dish Network won’t hesitate for one second to ring up those two hundred bucks they’ve somehow conjured up with an incessant interest-bearing demand for payment. All the way to the public records, all the way to collections and judgments. There is no shred of integrity at the corporate presidential level of that company. None. The drones enslaved there are predators, and they will destroy a life for a few hundred dollars if they can. And never think twice about it. That’s a place of true perdition, for any corporation to be. A place of utter destruction and ruin.

And there you have it. I don’t know if it all came out right. But this much is true. Had I written it the day after it all happened, you would have read something far more harsh. But still, I got one final thing to say about how deeply I detest Dish Network. If they’re ever my only option for the services they provide, I figure I’ll finally heed my father’s voice from long ago and just get rid of my TV.

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All right. That was the rage, in this holiday season. And I’ll get to that season, maybe, at the end. But I have to say a few words about the last blog. I know it’s bubbling around, out there, amongst the Plain People. Look at that. Look at how far he’s drifted. He’s hanging out in bars, now. And it hit a lot more than just the Plain People, too. Real quick, right after it was posted, the first comment asked to unsubscribe. And I got a few emails, too. They just swooshed right in. Unsubscribe me, please. I’ve never seen such a thing before.

It never was my idea, to make a subscription link. That came from readers. All I ever wanted was a place to post my stuff. But I thought it sounded pretty cool. If people wanted to read what I wrote, they could, right soon after I posted it. So I asked my very capable webmaster to set it up. He did. I’ve never asked him for the numbers. I have no idea of how many subscribers are out there. I like to think there’s a lot, but I figure it’s not that many, in the big scheme of things. All that said, maybe I’m just too scared to check the numbers, because they’ll be so low. Whatever the reason, I haven’t done it.

But if you want to unsubscribe, you have to do it yourself. Why are you asking me to do it for you? You chose to sign up. Unsubscribe yourself. It’s real simple. Click on the link way up there on the top right of this blog. There’s a box there you can click on. Type in your email. And hit the unsubscribe button. You’ll get an email with a final link to click on, to unsubscribe. (The reason I know all this is that I went and unsubscribed myself.) And then you’ll never hear from me again, at least not by email. I want you to hear from me that way. But you can choose not to, if that’s what you’re wanting. It’s pretty simple, really. So I’d appreciate if you’d spare me the drama of asking me to do what you can do for yourself.

And that brings us to the season. Christmas. It’ll be over, when the next blog comes. It just seems unreal that it’s here already. On the worst possible day of the week, this year. Wednesday. From any other day, you can make a long weekend work. But not from Wednesday.

I’ve called myself a grinch, before. I guess I’ll take that back. I’m not. I just don’t get all that hyped up about Christmas. It stays pretty simple for me, when it comes to gifts. Give few and expect none. A few always come trickling in. And I give out a few. It stays about even, I think. And I’m pretty satisfied with that.

I don’t have a whole lot of special plans. On Christmas Eve afternoon, I’ll make my traditional loop through the mall. It’s the only time I go to the mall during Christmas shopping season. It’s usually about half empty, and almost eerily quiet. It’s fun, to just drift through and pick up a few things. Then early that evening I’ll probably head on over to the home of my friends Paul and Rhoda Zook. And Cody and Adrianna. If it’s anything like other years, we’ll eat from the many plates of “snack food” set out on the counter. Then we’ll exchange small gifts with great fanfare. And lots of laughing and hollering. And then, when it’s time for them to open their own gifts as a family, I’ll slip out and head home to a quiet evening of catching a few of my favorite scenes on the 24 hour loop of A Christmas Story on TBS. It’s all pretty comfortable and laid back. I’m looking forward to it.

Merry Christmas to all my readers.

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Tales from the Bar…

One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons–marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

—C. S. Lewis: Mere Christianity

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I’ve written about it pretty freely, here and there. Spoken it when it happened. I like to hang out in bars, when the setting’s right. And by that I mean, I’ve never hung out in a bar like they did in “Cheers.” Not that way, not as a daily thing on the way home from work. But still. I’ve always been pretty comfortable there. Restless, but still more comfortable than the world I came from, back when I was running around. I don’t know what it is, the thread that keeps those tense and desperate days connected to these good ones in such a generally accepted “sinful” place. I think it’s because when you’re in a bar, everyone around you just accepts the fact that you are there.

I’m not talking about biker bars and such, because I’ve never been comfortable in those. Strictly personal preference, though. I got nothing against those who are. And I’m not talking about the fights and confrontations and such, the tales you hear now and then. I’ve never been around that kind of stuff, much. That’s just the human element, and it can come at you in any setting out there. But no one has ever questioned my presence in any bar. I’ve always been accepted just as I was. And you always want to go back to a welcoming place like that.

It’s one of the most judged words in the modern “Christian” world, ever, I think, at least in this country. An evil word. Bar. He hangs out at the bar. What more needs to be said? That alone justifies judgment and condemnation. Jesus would never hang out in such a place. And He’d sure never hang out with such sinful people. And it wearies me, such moralistic chatter, about as much as it wearies me to wonder if an Amish man will follow up on his threat and stop by at work and scold me about my book. I get so tired, hearing all that talk. And all that scolding.

And I got no problem with anyone abstaining from anything because of personal convictions, or for any other reason. I got a problem with the moralizers, the ones who loudly proclaim that the thing they choose to abstain from is in and of itself is a sinful thing. It’s just silliness, such incessant braying. I’ve heard it all my life. They read and recite rote words, people who speak that way. It’s not real talk. Not face to face. And you reach a point where you try to talk face to face, wherever you are. And that’s why I can tell you I enjoy sitting at a bar. I enjoy it a lot, now and then. Judge me all you want, but that’s just the way it is.

It’s been so sporadic, though, for me to even get to one. I do, when I travel. Just to talk to people and of course drink a little scotch. But I’ve never been a regular in any local bar. Well, except for those days back in Florida, way back. We did it then, every week. And knew we would again the next. But not since then have I been much of a regular anywhere, except for maybe back in my law school days. We hung out at Blondie’s pretty often. But other than those two aberrations, never. Not anywhere I’ve lived. And it never was any conscious thing at all. It’s just the way it all went when it came.

And a little side note, here. If you’ve read the profile on this blog all the way to the end, you’ll know that one of my little dreams is to tend bar some day. Not because I have to. But because I want to. I want to serve drinks to people who are sitting there, hanging out and getting comfortable in one of the most honest places they know. You bet I want to do that. And I think I would like it, and I think I would be good at it. I’ll never get that itch scratched, unless I step out there a bit and talk to people. And keep an eye out for a place where it all could work. If it never happens, I’m totally fine with that. If it does, that’ll be fine, too. It’s not that big a deal, one way or the other. OK, side note over.

And all that, to say this. I got a call one Sunday afternoon, way back last summer, July, I think it was. From a couple of friends from church. Hey, we’re going to watch Nascar at Vinola’s, just down the road from you. Come on over and hang out. And I didn’t really want to go. Sure, hanging out would be fun. But I wanted to watch a little football, and maybe take a nap. And I made some sort of excuse of some kind. Thanks, but it just won’t work out today.

And they waited a little while. Never mentioned nothing, for a month or two. And then again, the invitation came. And again, I wanted to go. But not enough to get there. And they didn’t mention it again. Not until I brought it up to them, oh, probably about a month ago or so. At church. I was going to the home of some real good friends for lunch. And I’d be up and around, anyway, a little later. And I asked them. Will you be there watching the race this afternoon? “Oh, yes,” they said. And they told me the time. I calculated it would all work out, that little loop. And I told them. All right, I’ll plan on stopping by to hang out.

And I looked forward to it, even though it meant that I’d have to step out of my hole a bit. It meant that I had to make an effort to go somewhere, meet people, and interact. Thing is, I’m pretty comfortable right here at home. Just putzing around, doing a little writing, watching a little football, checking Facebook now and then. That’s the way it’s been, ever since I started writing. You’re just comfortable at home. Not that I don’t like to get together with friends. But going to a bar to get that done just never seemed worth it, much.

And I drove over when it was time. Late afternoon. Just a couple of miles down Rt. 23. It’s a real nice place, Vinola’s. A new owner completely gutted and remodeled it a few years back. It’s a full service restaurant, with a nice pub room off to one side. I’ve heard all kinds of good things about it. Just never bothered to stop in and check it out for myself. And I walked in through the double swinging doors, and looked around, my eyes adjusting to the dim lighting. It all looked real cozy. And there they sat, my friends, off to one end. The race was roaring on the big flat screen TV up behind the bar. It was a long bar, with a couple more TVs spread along. Small crowds huddled, nursing their drinks, mostly watching football. And yelling or groaning, now and then, as a group.

My friends welcomed me, and I took a seat. A tall, real bar stool. The barmaid approached. These folks dragged me in here, I told her. So I’m hanging out for a bit. She smiled and welcomed me. She was the owner of the place, I found out later. Get me a scotch on the rocks with a little water. Glenlivet, if you got it. She had it, and she went and poured me a good stiff one. A glass of water, too, when you get a chance, I told her. I always try to drink a lot of water, when I’m in a place like that. Keeps your system cleaned out a little better, I’ve heard. She brought that to me, and I just settled in with my friends.

And I instantly felt a sense of connectedness such as I’ve not felt in a long time. Not in a place like that, not outside church. It just came at me, and I walked right into it. We chatted. Talked about the race, who was leading. Nascar is a good thing to watch, but I’d rather watch football. It made no difference what we were watching, one way or the other. We were together, hanging out at the bar. And just talking like good friends do.

And this will seem strange, if you haven’t been there. But it all just flowed out on its own. We talked about a lot of things, sitting there at the bar and drinking our drinks. And we talked about the sermon we heard in church that day, too. I probably brought it up. Because it just seemed like a natural thing to do in that setting.

I attend Chestnut Street Chapel in Gap. It’s a tiny church group, but the most comfortable one I’ve ever found. And there’s some real heavy stuff being taught in there by Pastor Mark Potter. He could go wherever he wanted to, and preach at a mega church. But he doesn’t. He stays right where he is, feet planted firmly on the ground. And he preaches some pretty wild stuff. Stuff that has taught me so much about what it is to walk with a free heart. He’s not right where I am with everything, especially my views of the state. But it doesn’t matter. No pastor ever will be, I don’t think. And he preaches freedom from his pulpit, freedom in whatever world you’re walking through. And he claims they’re all connected. You walk free through one, you walk free through them all. Or something like that. The church is a hospital, not a country club, he keeps insisting. And when you really grasp what that means, it changes how you see things. The man’s preaching has deeply affected how I think and how I view the world around me. And it has deeply affected the writing that comes out of me.

And that’s what we talked about a good bit, while watching the race at the bar that first afternoon. We watched what we came to see, but we talked about what was inside us, how things were in life, the things we’d seen getting to where we are. And it all was a good place, a place I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. There’s always honest talk at any bar, don’t get me wrong. But not about what you just heard in church that day. That’s what made this whole thing seem a little freaky in my mind.

But it was real, and I embraced it. All of it. The setting. My friends, who had persisted in dragging me out of my hole at home. Persisted in telling me. “Come and join us here at the bar. Come out from where you are, and just live this moment with us.” That’s a powerful and moving thing, to have friends like that. It really is.

And from that day, I was all into going to watch the race at Vinola’s with my friends. Not because I pay that much attention to Nascar, not when I can watch football instead. But I wanted to go watch the race with them, because I wanted to hang out with them. It’s a pretty simple formula, when you think about it. And this whole thing just came at me, and all of a sudden, I was a regular again at a bar. Sunday afternoons. Such a place I have never seen before. And it was like it was before, when such a scene came at me. Walk into it, because it’s coming at you. Not a whole lot of anything else going on. Just walk forward, and enjoy it as it comes. And I have, pretty much every Sunday afternoon since. Right up until the racing was over, all of a sudden. And now I’m trying to figure out another reason for us to gather and hang out there, now and then. Somehow, I think that’ll work itself out. And I’m looking forward to all of it.

I guess things come at you in bunches, because just a few weeks ago I had another good experience at another bar. Actually, I just thought it was hilarious. No big lessons on anything in this little tale at all. And it happened at a real nice local place right in the city of Lancaster, a place I usually stay far away from. I don’t like cities. They’re evil. But Janice planned this little event, and there was no way I didn’t want to be part of it. She and Wilm had made the plans last summer, when Janice was around for a day. She found the place online. The Cork Factory Hotel and the Cork and Cap Restaurant. It’s one of those big old vacant factories that was sitting around all gutted and doing nothing. Some enterprising group got together and made it nice again. And alive again. It’s a beautiful four-story hotel, with a restaurant and bar attached. And a spa and coffee shop, too. It’s a full service place. We met there for Sunday brunch, back last summer. And we were all really impressed. The food was outstanding, the help was totally professional, all of it was good.

And Janice got to musing. How would it work sometime this fall to just meet here on a weekend and get rooms and stay? Wilm and I agreed instantly. Yes. That would be fun. A lot of fun. So we decided to do it, sometime when it would work for Janice, when she was stationed in Philly or Baltimore. And a few weekends back, it came together.

Janice took care of all the details, booked my room. And they were doing the spa, too, and I would take some sort of treatment there, too, I was told. I will concede that I did actually allow those girls to drag me to a spa. And I will admit to getting some sort of treatment there. I will never concede exactly what that treatment was, because my man card would surely be revoked. And that’s about all I got to say about that, except it was a little more enjoyable than I ever figured it could be. Probably because I went with such good friends.

And yeah, yeah, I’m getting to the bar part. Gotta lead up to it first. We ate dinner at the Cork and Cap Friday evening, and everything was absolutely perfect. The food, the drink, the setting, the company. And soon after seven, Janice was fading. She’d had a hard week, been up since 3 AM that morning, so they went back to their room and she crashed. I just putzed around in my room, surfing the web and such. And so the first evening passed.

And Saturday rolled in, and you could feel it was going to be a good day. We ate a late breakfast at The Baker’s Table, a rather upscale little coffee shop. Not sure if they’ll make it, with those prices. But we weren’t complaining. Around midday, the girls went shopping, and I just drifted around the place and hung out in my room. And later that afternoon, Janice rode with me as I came home, did a few things, ran some errands. We stopped by to see my good friends, David and Esther. They were rushing around, getting ready for the youth singing the next evening. Esther and Janice hit it right off, just like I knew they would. On the way back to town, I stopped off to pick up some Superfood from my good friends, Elmer and Anna Beiler Lapp. Anna had just baked fresh pumpkin pie, and insisted on giving us a warm/hot slice on a paper plate to take with us. I told Janice as we headed back to the hotel. These people I took you to meet, they are the people, they are some of my friends who keep me half sane. They know me from way back, and they are the ones who make sure I stay right who I am.

The girls had made reservations at Checkers Bistro, and very nice little upscale restaurant downtown, over toward Franklin and Marshall College. And we just had the front desk call a cab for us. Not because we were figuring on getting all smashed or anything, but because you just can’t be too careful these days. Especially not in evil cities. They’ll nail you for DUI when your driving’s as straight as an arrow. Most DUI stops and convictions are just a money racket. It’s all a MADD power play that destroys countless lives and makes the insurance companies and the state a lot of money. I got no respect for any of it. Except I make darn sure I don’t drive buzzed.

We got dressed and went down to the lobby to wait. And I’d told Janice. I don’t know how fancy this place is we’re going to. I’m wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. That’s about the only status I’ve claimed as a writer. I’ll dress how I feel like, when I feel like it. If anyone has a problem with that, well, then that’ll just have to be how it is. Janice had no problem with it.

The cabbie was a good seven minutes late. Just as I was about to march in and tell the nice lady at the front desk to call again, he pulled up. He seemed a mite confused. Turned out this was his fourth day on the job. He got us there OK. I didn’t think his driving was all that bad. But the girls fussed a good bit. Still he got a nice little tip. I made sure of that. And we walked in. It was all it claimed to be, looked like. The place was packed out. Tables and tables of diners. And the maitre de led us straight to the best table in the house, right by the only window in the place. Somehow, good things were coming at us. And we settled in, ordered our drinks, and then our food. And of course our order got lost. About an hour later, I waved the waitress over. We’re having a real good time, the drinks are really good, and all that, I said. But some food would sure be nice. Two minutes later a kitchen helper rushed out and gave us free salads we hadn’t ordered. Just to get us to eating something. That, and lots of apologies. And a few minutes after that, here came the food. And it was all good. Beyond good.

We had the Checkers people call us a cab, then, and they fell over themselves to do it. And we tipped the waitress extra well. I know how that is, when an order gets lost in the kitchen. I’ve danced that little dance with customers many times, back in my college days. And we got back to the hotel around nine, probably. Walked up to our rooms and hung out there for a while. The girls figured they’d settle in for the night. And I told them. I think I’m going downstairs to check out the bar in this place. “We might come down later,” they said politely. I pretty much knew they wouldn’t. So I wandered down alone. It’s a beautiful setting, the barroom. Walls of old stone and brick, just as they were when the place was a factory. The bar is rectangular, a box, kind of. The bartender works out of the middle on three sides. I sidled up and took a seat beside a man and woman sitting there. The place has no TVs blaring anywhere. So people will talk to each other, I figured.

The bartender approached and greeted me. A young kid in his twenties, probably working his way through college. Seemed like that kind of guy, maybe. And I told him what I wanted. The Executive Manhattan. A martini. I’d had one with dinner the night before when we ate at the restaurant. And it was just right tasty. Yes, sir. He went to where the bottles sat, and poured this and that into a shaker with ice. Shook it all around a good bit. Then he sat a martini glass on the bar in front of me, and strained it out, keeping the ice back. And it filled, right to the brim. This guy was real good at what he did. I sipped my drink, and the woman sitting next to me couldn’t help staring. She smiled and we said hi. Then she turned to her husband.

“Would you look at that?” she asked. Clearly I was meant to hear. “This guy sits there in a red flannel shirt and jeans and drinks a martini. He must be pretty comfortable with himself.” I laughed. The husband peered over and smiled. “That’s a foo-foo glass,” he announced. I laughed again. And he smiled at me. Look, I said. I usually drink scotch from a manly glass. I don’t know a thing about martinis. But I had this drink last night with dinner. So I knew it was good. It doesn’t matter to me at all what glass it’s served in. I could do without this orange slice and the cherry at the bottom. But hey, that’s how they serve it. Doesn’t bother me at all. The woman kept exclaiming. “He’s in a flannel shirt and drinking a martini.” As if that were somehow odd.

The bar wasn’t real full right then, and the three of us sat there and talked. Spoke our names, although I don’t remember theirs. It was just a good, fun thing. They were locals, had stopped by to see some of their friends who were in a wedding party upstairs. The Cork and Cap does a LOT of weddings. They told me a bit about themselves. What he worked. They had four children. And I told them what I do. General Manager of a building supply business. The woman got a little persistent, though, as we visited.

And soon my glass was empty, and the bartender hovered. He’d heard what I had said about scotch. And he told me. “We can mix that same drink, except with scotch. It’s called a Rob Roy.” Do it, I told him. And then he asked me, and I saw it in his eyes, how he was testing me. About whether or not I knew anything about scotch. “What brand would you like?” He might have been expecting me to say Dewars or some other awful blend. But I told him. Nothing less than Glenlivet. He smiled. “We have some fifteen year Glenfiddich here (as opposed to the standard twelve year stuff). Will that work?” I beamed. That would be just beautiful, I said. And he went off to the side and started pouring and mixing and shaking.

And he stepped up a minute later with his shaker. Set a clean martini glass on the bar in front of me. And he poured it out. “I figured you wouldn’t want a cherry or any fruit in it,” he said. “So here it is, bare. What do you think?” he asked, watching me closely. You are the man, I told him. And I sipped at the drink he’d served me respectfully in a martini glass. A foo-foo glass. And it was better than the first one. Way better. The scotch did it. That, and no fruit. He must have overheard me talking about that. I gave him a big thumbs up. This is delicious, I said. This is real good. Thank you. You’ve outdone yourself. He smiled. No, beamed.

I chatted right along with my new friends. And like I said, the woman was persistent. And eventually she got to it, the question. “What’s your hobby?” And right there, she had me. What am I going to say now? And yeah, I had some whiskey in me right then. Maybe more than some. Because for the first time ever, I told the strangers sitting next to me at a bar. I’m a writer. That’s what I do, when I’m not working. The word “writer” has some kind of mythical ring to it, I think. It’s either boasting, or it’s real. And the woman’s face lit up. “A writer!” She exclaimed. “What do you write?”

And that right there is why I don’t like to tell strangers I wrote a book. Because it diverts the conversation from its natural flow, makes it go where it wouldn’t otherwise. (Not talking about a formal “book talk” here. I’m talking about sitting at a bar.) It gets all plastic and contrived, when it’s all about the book like that. But I’d come this far, and there was no shutting the barn door after the horse had already left. So I told her. I wrote a book. And I told her the title, and my name. And bragged a bit, about how far it’s gone, the book. All in humility, of course. She had to pry this far, so why not tell her? I never would have, if she hadn’t asked.

And they both made the proper astounded noises. She asked again, so I repeated it. My name, and the title of my book. And yeah, I had to brag a bit that it was a NY Times bestseller. I’m not sure if they believed me, but they claimed to. And thankfully, right that instant, a swarm of people suddenly swept into the room and surrounded us. Their wedding friends from upstairs. Thank goodness, I thought. I have been saved from having to talk about how I’m a writer.

And I just sat there on that barstool and drank my drink and talked to the husband sideways down the bar behind his wife’s back. She had turned away and was way busy talking to her friends. And the husband and me talked. About life, about things. He was a rum man, he told me. The Captain. That’s the only thing he liked. I can respect that, I told him. Our tastes are our own. Don’t care much for rum, myself. I like scotch. And he agreed. To each his own. And we just talked on about whatever you talk about at a bar. Just life, I guess.

There were lulls, though, in our conversation. He turned now and then to chat with the people in the wedding group. And suddenly, through all that noise, in a little pause, I heard him speak. Or start to speak. Fortunately, no one was listening to him. So no one heard him when he said, “This is our friend, Ira.” I heard it, though. And I leaned into the bar and looked over. Hollered. No. He heard me. I made a slicing motion across my throat. No. No. Let them talk. Just leave me out of it. He grinned a huge grin. “I only know two people in that whole crowd, anyway,” he admitted. I laughed hard. Just keep me out of it all, I said. And he laughed, too.

And it was time to get out of there, then. Head on up to my room. I waved for my check, and the bartender brought it over. It seemed real low, but I paid it. Tipped about double the amount on the bill. Not sure what’s going on here, I thought. But something ain’t quite right. And after the man took my money, the husband leaned in and looked over. Beamed. “I took care of one of those for you,” he said. Ah, you didn’t have to do that, I said. But thanks a lot. It was real fun, to hang out. I paid the guy what I would have paid him anyway. “And I’ll do the same thing, when I pay up,” he said. Maybe we shook hands sideways along the bar behind his wife’s back as she was talking to her friends. Maybe we didn’t. I don’t remember. But, either way, we understood each other. We’d probably never see each other again. But tonight, we had hung out in a real way.

I got up, waded my way through the swarming wedding crowd, and walked back to my room. And no, I wasn’t staggering or anything like that. I was just feeling good.

Take such a scene or leave it. Whatever works for you, or doesn’t. If you’re honest with yourself, there is no wrong choice, as far as I’m concerned. The way I see it, you’ll never walk into an experience like that unless you hang out at a bar. You can judge that any way you want, from where you are. From where I am, I figure it’s a good thing.

***************************************************

And the season rolled right on in again. Thanksgiving. It was a good day. I could go off, listing all those blessings I saw and felt this year. But I won’t. I pretty much wrote those out as they came at me right here on this blog. No sense in repeating all that. It was a good day, yesterday. I hung out and feasted with my brother Stephen and his extended family. They invited me, and it was a great time. Good food. Family. I generally stand off to the side a bit, try not to intrude too much. But they include me. And for that, I am grateful. It would be harder to celebrate such a day if they weren’t around. But they are. I’m grasping it more these days in my heart, I think, that all of life is a gift. I am thankful for all my blessings, and so grateful to be right where I am.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers.

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Judgment Day…

Walking free carries with it an inherent commitment to be open to

seeing areas one is not. Seeing such areas does not mean one is not

walking free to the fullest extent possible. It just means the level of

possibility has expanded.

Richard Miller (aka Ragpicker)

_________________________

It’s strange, how this all came at me. It came out of nowhere, like usual. And I’m just saying, it was strange, the whole thing. It happened at work, the place where so much of life does. And I wasn’t looking for it at all. I can’t tell you how much I wasn’t looking for it. I’ve been pretty comfortable all around, lately, telling you how free I am. And how free it all felt, what I’ve found.

And it came sliding in, like such things do. The other Sunday night, I got an email from local friend. Hey, I just got a message from (no name), an Amish guy from out of state. I guess he has my cell number. And he wants to talk to you. And I responded. No. I’ve heard that name before. The guy ain’t right. He’s not all there. I don’t want to talk to him. And we left it at that.

And the next morning at work, it was busy. Very. But still, he called, the guy I didn’t want to speak to. And I told Rosita, when she beeped me and told me who was calling. I’m not available. It’s not a lie, to tell him that. Because I’m not. Just tell him what I’m telling you. And she did. He wouldn’t give up, though. I heard it as it happened. He wanted the fax number to the place. He had some things he wanted to send me. And Rosita gave it to him. She had no other choice. They hung up then, and I thanked her for guarding the gate.

And soon enough, his message to me came spitting in on the fax. A letter. Looked about like a full, typed page. When you write words on paper, and send them to whoever it is you’re talking to, it’s hard to take them back, should you ever want to. I don’t think the Amish have quite learned how that is. Because some of them just keep doing it.

And it was pretty terse, what this letter said. It’s always abrupt, to read such feedback. First, a greeting in Jesus’ name. They do that a lot, the Amish. Open a letter with a greeting in the name of Jesus. They don’t speak that way, much, but they’ll write it. And it didn’t take him long to get right down to business. He’d read the book. And he felt like he had some things to say. “Like your dad, you are a good writer. While he spent a lifetime promoting the goodness of the Amish, you now seem to be intent on expounding on all the evil that is among them, using yourself as proof of that fact.”

Well, where’s a letter going to go from there, after such an opening? Downhill, most likely. A whole page of admonishing followed. Some of it was fair enough. Some of it was just silliness. At least he thought I could write. He just thought I was writing the wrong stuff. But it was the very end that jolted me the most. He was going to be in the area one day that week. “If time permits, I would like to hunt you up.” That’s what he said, there close to the end. And I just groaned inside. Why in the world would such a man want to stop by and see me? It wearied me, the very thought of seeing him walk through that door at work.

What he said about me and my book was fair enough, I suppose, from his perspective. Not that such a thing is ever fun to read or hear. But I have no problem with what anyone thinks or says about me or my writing, or what they write about what they think. You can send such stuff to me all day long. I don’t like it, but it’s just part of the terrain. If I ever get to thinking I got some real writing skills, I go check out some of those one-star and two-star reviews on Amazon. Some of those are pretty vicious. They used to bug me. But not anymore. Not everyone’s going to get your voice. Not everyone’s going to like anything you wrote. It just is what it is. And I’ve seen and heard enough such criticism that I don’t carry it around with me anymore.

The thing that jolted me was that he wanted to stop and see me. Whatever for? Why would you want to go talk to a person, after sending him such a letter? I mean, it’s idiocy. And I felt it rising inside me, like a wall. I knew what I’d do. If he walks in, I’ll just tell him we really have nothing to say to each other. And I’ll shoo him out the door. Try to stay polite, but just shush him right on out.

And I judged the man, big time. Judged every aspect of who he was. And not just in my heart, either. I spoke it out to my Facebook world. I speak a lot of things there, right when they come down. And I spoke this. Told how weary it makes me, to even think about meeting the man who wrote such a thing. I was looking for support, I guess. And it came, in the comments. What kind of bad man could ever accuse you of such evil? Oh, yeah. They saw it, too, what this thing was I was talking about. But then, suddenly, someone said something that didn’t quite fit the template.

It was a brief comment. And it came from a place that startled me. From my good friend, Richard Miller. He will write to the world one day, when he chooses to do so. And his is a singular voice you can’t help hearing. Because he’s seen a lot of hard things, been to a lot of hard places, slogged down some really tough roads. And he got through. And now he just speaks what he sees with a gentle, honest heart. I’ve seen him in discussions often on Facebook, and he has a knack of slicing right through to the core issue of things. And he’s been right where I was in that moment, many times. Many times. And he told me what he saw, and it was different from what I was seeing. And he just kind of slid it in, offhand like. “Thought hit me Ira… wonder why you are being given this opportunity… probably worth paying attention to what happens inside..”

I have to say, it was a bit like walking into a wall, his comment. And it brought me up short, made me stop and think. I claim to be free, almost to a point of pride. I try to walk as free as I can from every oppressive force. Free from the state. Free from any kind of burdens of resentment and rage against those who have wronged me. And free from other Christians who try to ensnare me with their elaborate tangled webs of law and guilt, all based on judgment. I won’t get bogged down with unnecessary baggage. I just won’t. You just throw it off and keep walking. And traveling light that way is a beautiful thing, from what I’ve seen so far. And I’ve not been shy, in speaking it. How beautiful it is to walk free, wherever you are.

And yeah, I know I went off about this in the last blog. But I don’t think I quite got it told, so bear with me here. (If I’m making too much like an Amish preacher who doesn’t know when it’s time to shut up and sit down, skip this paragraph and the next few.) I can’t even begin to describe how free it is, when you actually grasp what the state really is, and accept what you see in your mind. You live as undefiled from it as you can. I don’t participate at all. I don’t vote. I don’t cheer or even watch the state worship before any sporting event. I don’t “support the military.” I pledge no allegiance to any flag of any state. If that makes me a bad person in your book, well, that’s your book. This is my blog. You don’t have to read it, if you don’t want to.

I look at all those who actually fell for the vast abominable lie that is Obamacare, and just pity them. How naïve can you be, to have any shred of faith in such an obviously evil statist power grab? The whole thing was designed to do exactly what’s happening. Deprive people of choice and freedom, deny them health insurance, so they have no choice but to kneel and worship the beast that is the state. And cry out to it save them. It’s just like it was in Old Testament times, such praying to vile false gods, when the people were led into idol worship by evil kings. The Lord holds them all in derision, such idols and especially such desperately wicked kings. He always has, and always will. And He will always bring them down in His own time.

And don’t even get me started about the noise of all the incessant political drama that rages every day all around us like so much sound and fury. It’s so plastic and contrived. It’s all fake crap. Anyone who craves political office craves power. The lure of raw power will always tug at the hearts of even those with generally pure intentions. And it will snare most people. Ron Paul was pretty much the lone exception to that rule, at least in modern times. The lust for power drives most of those who want to get elected to anything. I can’t think of a place where that fact does not apply. And craving power is never a good thing, not in any setting I can think of. It’s a destructive thing, and corrosive. Why even acknowledge the state that craves power as remotely capable of even the slightest redemption? You can’t. It’s a beast that feeds on innocent blood and war and death.

And it’s not that all those oppressive laws pouring down won’t affect you. They will, but it’s just part of living in the terrain you’re in. You keep walking along as best you can, and do what you have to, to stay out of the clutches of the gangs of armed, lawless goons that roam the land and oppress and enslave the people. I always try to stay alert, stay aware of who those goons are, what the state is, and where I am. It’s all occupied territory around me, and I never forget that.

I call that walking free in my physical world. And I call it a beautiful thing.

There’s another world out there that’s a little tougher to walk free through. A world more important than the physical one. The spiritual world. And it affects me far more deeply, what I encounter in my heart, than anything I might see collapsing around me, right here, in this world. Because it affects how I choose to live in any world. If your heart is calm, at least in what you know (not always in how you react, because sometimes it’s hard to keep your reactions calm), nothing else matters. If it isn’t calm, it’s a roller coaster out there.

We all got dark places in our hearts. All of us. If you claim you don’t have, you are a liar and a false teacher. And if you are a “real” preacher spouting such stuff, you are a false shepherd. And this is how I see it. If all (or most, if you want to get technical about it) sins are weighed the same, what kind of voice can I have to point at other people and proclaim their sins? That’s what Jesus is here for. He covers those dark places for me, the dark places where I know how sinful I am. And He wants me to walk free out there, free to speak to people right where they are. To listen, really listen, to what they have to say. And to love them, in a flawed reflection of how He loves them. Because I am where right they are, just coming from a different place. And if I have to tell them where I’m coming from before they see it on their own, I’m not coming from the right place.

What kinds of sins do I engage in every day, that are just as abhorrent to the Lord as anything you see around you? There are many, if I’m honest with myself. As any person will admit, if there’s any kind of honesty about what all goes on in the human heart, what all goes on, often, when no one else is watching. And then there’s that tricky little thing of judgment. I abhor being judged. But I’m all too happy to judge those who judge me, especially Christians. And especially the Amish. How can you walk free, when you judge others in your heart? How can you walk free, if you refuse to speak to people right where they are? If you’re too good to stand right where they are with them? I don’t think you can.

Which doesn’t mean you have to accept the judgment that comes at you. It just means you try to listen to what is being said without judgment. I don’t quite know if that’s possible, but it seems like it ought to be. And it doesn’t mean you don’t recognize and stand up to the spiritual bullies, and smack them when you see them wounding the weaker among us. Hit them hard, right in the face. Stop that. Now. And you tend to those they’ve wounded, protect them. But even to the bullies, I think, you have to try to talk face to face. Maybe you can’t. I don’t know. I haven’t tried. I’ve pretty much cut them off, so far. And there are times you have to cut people off, if the situation degenerates to that point.

But you are no better than they are, not before God if He judged us like we deserved. And right there, that’s the core of it. That’s why you never can walk in judgment, I think. Not in judgment of someone’s heart. Because if He held us to our own standards, none of us could grasp even so much as a shred of hope for salvation. We’d all fall short. All of us. And no great proclamations being spoken, here. Just grappling my way through this, like a man who sees darkly, through a blurred glass. But a man who has a little bit of faith that he’ll get to where he wants to go.

I claim to walk free. But Richard’s gentle advice made me see how I have been judging them pretty harshly, a lot of people. He told me. Look to your own heart first. At least that’s what I heard him saying when he said it. Pay attention to what’s going on inside you. But I’ve been so busy judging their hearts, the people that come at me with hostile intent from the place I broke free from, a place where I’ve seen so many battles and taken a whole lot of real hard hits. And it startles me. I’m not as free as I thought I was. I got no right to judge anyone. No one. Not like that. Not ever. It’s not my job, to judge anyone’s heart. So I got no right. I just don’t. No one does.

I probably will react like I always have, though, the next time someone comes at me all scolding and judgmental. Because that’s just how it goes. It’ll be pretty tough, not to. It never did happen with this guy who wanted to stop by, because he never got there. We’re busy at work, and I didn’t fret about it much. When and if he walked in, I figured I’d just try it out, this new place of not judging his heart, and play it by ear. Listen to what he has to say, and let it go where it goes. But he never came. And now I’m wondering. How would it have gone, had he showed up? Not that I’m wanting anyone like that to ever show up. I want people like that to leave me alone. But I know they won’t, now and then. I know I’ll run into this guy or his twin sometime, somewhere, when I’m least expecting it. And least prepared. That’s just how it goes when life comes at you. But still. I’m thinking, mulling it over, the thing that Richard told me. And this is where I am right now in my own heart.

You can choose to stay right where you are in your judgment of anyone from anywhere in your past. Or anyone around you. I can’t blame you a bit. And I won’t judge you one bit if you do. Because I don’t know where you’ve been, I don’t know what you’ve seen. I don’t know how deeply you’ve been wounded, or when or how. But I think I’m going to step through this new door and check out what this new place looks like, how it works.

Because from where I am right now, it looks like a pretty free place to be.

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The Book of Tobit…

He had known all the grief, the peril and the labor such a man

could know; he had grown seamed and weathered in his loyal

service, and now, schooled by the qualities of faith and courage

and humbleness that attended his labor, he had grown old, and

had the grandeur and wisdom these men have.

—Thomas Wolfe

______________

Well, it’s that time of year again. I’ve grumbled about it before here on the blog. Or maybe muttered would be a better word. It’s wedding season around here again. I never knew of anything like a “wedding season” growing up. But this being Lancaster County, they have to be all blue blood and do it like no one else does. Like they’ve always done it. They have to cram the vast majority of their weddings into a short span of about eight weeks. And not just on any day during those weeks, either. Tuesdays and Thursdays are wedding days. And this place is so big that they have a few hundred every year. And things get all jammed up, everywhere you look.

It starts right after Big Church in early October. And stretches through to early December. And you can always tell in the morning, getting to work. You come flying over a hill, bleary-eyed and chugging coffee to wake up, and there in front of you is a blinking buggy. And in front of that one, another. They often travel in convoys for some reason. I don’t think it’s planned that way, the first buggy in line probably just has the slowest horse, which is still a wild and crazy beast compared to the ones I saw growing up. Whatever makes it happen, they bunch up. And they’re coming at you as well as going your way. You have to dodge around one, and dodge in behind another. And then do it all over again. And again. Take all the regular traffic that you see around here every morning anyway and mix it up with that, and it’s just one big mess.

I’m not grumbling. Just saying. And I do think about it sometimes, when I see all those buggies out there, going to all those weddings. Somewhere, there’s a young couple who will always remember this day. I got troubles, just getting to work. But this day is special and important to that couple, because the roads are so clogged. And that’s about as gracious as I’m gonna get, about all that. And even that little sliver can be balanced out a bit with what I’ve said before, a few times. Those buggies just flat out aren’t safe on those roads that early in the morning. Not in numbers like that. Not even when local drivers are looking out for them. Which we are.

And this season was different for me than most are. And that’s probably why this stuff is all just jumbling around in my head like it is. I got invited to an Amish wedding, here. Some good friends of mine, their youngest daughter was getting married. Not only was I told to come, I even got an official printed invitation. That’s a rare thing for me, to get invited to any local weddings. This was the third one, I think, in all the time I’ve lived here. Maybe the fourth. And I told my friends what I always say when I’m invited to a place where there will be crowds like that, people I mostly don’t know. I’ll come for supper. Not during the day. I can’t see sitting on those hard benches for three hours, and then mingling with a whole house full of strangers. I’ll come for supper. And I’ll take a little bit of that Roasht you had for the noon meal home, if there’s any left by that time. And I felt free to say that, that it wouldn’t be offensive. If you know me well enough to invite me to your daughter’s wedding, don’t be offended if I only come for supper.

And I saw firsthand how it all works around here, as a wedding approaches. Pretty much like it was where I grew up, except it’s just a little more intense. And there is a lot of work to do, for a long time. The Amish take weddings seriously. Things are cleaned up outside and in. Starting months ago. You could hear all the talk about the plans, the food, the eck, all the little details, and get a grasp of how much planning such a thing actually takes. And the big old barn was painted just a month or so back. A beautiful dark red on the sides. Shiny silver paint coated the old metal roof.

The day approached, then, and arrived. On Tuesday, I thought of it a few times. But we’re pretty hectic at work, and I really didn’t have time to take the whole day off. I left early, though. Supper would be at five, they’d told me. After getting home and changing into good clothes, I headed on over. Parked Big Blue in the field across the road, and wandered in. Small knots of men stood about, visiting. No one seemed in any particular hurry to head in to eat. I shook hands with a few friends, and told them. It’s almost five. I got here just in time, I guess. They looked at me as if I’d said something strange. “Five? Oh, weddings run on slow time. We’re eating at six, not five. Six is five, slow time.” I was pretty horrified. I’ve grumbled at my friends before, many times. Nobody ever tells me anything. I guess they had a lot going on. But still. You think you’re getting somewhere just in time to eat, and all of a sudden, a whole hour looms right up like a wall. You have to kill it, somehow. Ah, boy. Well, I said. I guess I know enough people that I can visit for that time.

And that’s what I did. Someone took me into the large shop where the service had been held. And now a long U table was set up to eat. Probably seated more than a hundred people. And my friend Esther sought me out. She had been assigned to get me some leftover Roasht from the noon meal. It was sitting out in the cooler in a large tub. We walked into where the women were preparing supper, and Esther found the stack of big Styrofoam takeout containers. She took the top one, but I stopped her. How much Roasht is left? “Well, there’s some on the bottom of the tub,” she said. I want two containers full, I said. “Now, now,” she chided. “Don’t be greedy.” Well, let’s see how much is there, but we’re taking two containers, just in case. And we walked out to the rented cooler trailer. Food was sitting there on the shelves. On the floor a large, and I mean large, tub. I gaped. It rippled with a good four inches of delicious Roasht at the bottom, looked like. All left over from the noon meal. I want to fill both these containers, I told her. And I mean, heap them full. She shook her head and scolded me good-naturedly. But she did it, and we set them on a shelf for me to pick up on my way out. And I didn’t feel one bit guilty. There is no shame at all in begging, not when it comes to Roasht. There is no greed, either.

Soon it was time to be seated for supper, and I was directed to the little table off to the side. Around here, they usually have a table off to the side somewhere, for the ones who had been members and left. And for the odd English guest. Mostly, though, the table is set up for the ones they can’t eat with, at least not in public. Except for down at the south end, maybe. There, they’d be more likely not to have such people at their weddings at all. But here, around me, they do invite such people.

I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years about how offensive that is, to be seated off to the side like that. Like common sinners not good enough to be seated as honored guests at the main table. But I’ve mulled it through, in my mind. And to me, it’s a long way from offensive. Hey, you were invited to come, invited to celebrate this important day. Sometimes by unspoken invitation, sure. I know all about how that is, too. But you were invited. Or they wouldn’t have set any table for you. Be grateful for that gift. Be grateful for that relationship, whatever it is. Why are you grasping to yourself more honor than that? Stop fussing about where you were seated to eat. Feast and be merry and eat. You can always choose to have a grateful heart in pretty much any situation like that, I figure.

It was less than a table full, that little group that night. I knew most of them quite well, as in old friends for a long time. I probably wouldn’t have been invited, had I been a stranger to that table. And we all had a really good time. Just chattering and talking. It’s kind of startling, when everything goes quiet, all at once in that setting. And you’re still talking. You look around and realize everyone is bowing their heads in silent prayer. And it’s the same way, when they’re done eating. All of a sudden, it’s just quiet. Anyway, we had a loud, large time, the little side table people. Feasting and laughing. Real chicken pie (NOT chicken pot pie, but real chicken baked into a real pie), salad, and noodles. Then cake and ice cream for dessert. And all of a sudden, the room just went quiet again. The married people had to eat fast and get done, so the next table could be seated. At our little table, there was no second seating. So after the people at the large table had prayed the second time and got up, we just went right back to finishing our meal. It was a good evening, and a pleasant one.

I stood around, just visiting, for a while then. Soon the big U table was reset, and the youth filed in, coupled up, boys and girls. I walked around to the back of the eck, where the bride and groom were seated. They smiled in welcome. We chatted, and I congratulated them. I’ll bring your gift once you’re settled in your home, I told them. I have no idea what it’ll be. Guess I’ll have to ask around, with the family, and get them something they actually need and can use. And shortly after eight, I took my leave. Slipped out to the cooler, and picked up my two precious containers of Roasht. I would feast well on that, for the next week or so. It really is one of the better Amish dishes I’ve ever tasted. And I didn’t even grow up with it. The blue bloods actually came up with a recipe that matches the Daivess food of my childhood.

And I got home, and just chilled. Got to chatting on Facebook with a few friends. I was invited to an Amish wedding today, but just went for the evening, I told them. And my friend Vern Herschberger asked incredulously. “What? You didn’t want to go for the service today, and hear the Tobias story again?” Nah, I wrote back. I’ve heard that story many times, way back. I didn’t feel like sitting there for as long as it takes to hear it again. But it got me to thinking about things, that little exchange we had right there.

It may or may not be a well-known fact out there that it’s an old Amish tradition to tell the Tobias story at their weddings. (Or Tobit, which I prefer, because it has better rhythm. Besides, that’s the name of his book.) It’s a book in the Apocrypha section of Catholic Bibles. I’ve never heard any real explanation as to where the practice comes from, that the Amish preach this tale at their weddings. One of my friends claims it’s because Tobit has the only written scene of someone actually getting married. Makes sense to me. And, of course, there’s lots of nice little moral lessons to be learned, too. It’s plain that the Tobit tradition is a direct link back to the Catholics. The Catholics hold high the Apocrypha books, as truths straight from God. And near as I can tell from what I’ve heard from those who came from there, Catholic guilt and Amish guilt are pretty much twin models. Couple of random thoughts there, but the connection works for me.

I remember well the Tobias story being preached at weddings. It was always a good thing when it came, because it meant the service was winding down. And soon there would be food. Depending on where you are, you’ll hear the whole story, down to the last excruciating little detail. Anymore, though, Tobias has fallen from favor a good deal in many communities. The plainer and more conservative the community, the more details you’ll hear about Tobias. In some of the more progressive settlements, the poor man hardly gets mentioned at all. I don’t feel particularly strongly about it, one way or the other. If you want to preach the story, if that’s the tradition where you are, preach it. If it isn’t, then don’t.

It’s a rambling little tale, almost assuredly made up at some point way back there. Parts of it actually happened, probably. Who knows? It really doesn’t matter that much to me, because some of it is good stuff. Old Tobit suffered misfortunes second in number only to Job, I think. Everything fell in on him. And he lost everything. And if that wasn’t bad enough, while he was resting outside the city walls one day, a bird flew over and pooped (or “spitzed,” as the Amish preachers said) into his eyes. Poor Tobit went blind, right there on the spot. And he turned into a pious old rambling man, spouting lots of platitudes. I seem to remember that his wife got irked at him a lot, just like Job’s wife got irked at him because of his steadfastness in the face of despair and doom.

It’s all kind of a mushed up memory in my mind, how they told what all went on with Tobit, except that he went blind and that his son, young Tobit, set out on a quest to reclaim his father’s fortune and good name. He traveled to a far country to call in a loan Tobit had made years before. Old Tobit gave him a handscript, or note, to make his claim. Young Tobit, a fine specimen of a man, I’m sure, met up with a stranger who offered to travel with him. The stranger turned out to be an angel. And the two of them set out with their staffs and young Tobit’s dog. And they walked forward, head on, into all kinds of wild adventures that came at them, as you’d expect. But the biggest one awaited them at their destination. The man who owed old Tobit money had a beautiful but deeply devastated daughter. Of course, there has to be a woman stuck in the plot, somewhere. And the most beautiful woman anyone ever saw in those parts, of course, too.

This poor girl, sadly, was cursed. She’d been married seven times, and every time on the wedding night, just as the marriage was about to be consummated, a vile demon swooped in and killed her husband. So she was pretty much freaked out. And she cried with her voice from her heart to God. Who could imagine that kind of grief? All that she’d lost, and now all the young men around her were too petrified to get anywhere close to her, however much they might have wanted to. And you can guess the rest. Young Tobit was enamored, and with the angel’s help and advice, he courted and asked for the hand of the beautiful wounded girl. And together, with magical potions concocted of fish guts and such, he and the angel defeated the demon. He married the lady, and survived the wedding night. Everyone was astounded and overjoyed, especially the girl, one would think. And everything wraps up all nicely at the end, as it always does in such stories. Old Tobit got his fortune back, his eyesight was restored by the angel’s magical potion, and his wife quit nagging him. At long last, peace reigned again in old Tobit’s home.

And that’s the Book of Tobit, pretty much, from what I remember. I didn’t just now go read it again, so I won’t claim to be accurate in every little detail. When I felt this blog coming on, I did chat about Tobit with some local friends who know the story. But mostly, I tried to reach back through the fog of years and listen to the voices of those old preachers from my childhood. It’s a little tough, for something as obscure as this story was. And their voices are a bit jumbled, now, from where I am. But I did draw out a few details from the cobwebs, from a long tale that wearied me a number of times, back when I heard it. Because I’d been sitting on a hard bench for three hours already, when it was told. But looking back at what was told and what I heard, there’s one part of the story that has stuck with me through all these years, a thing that stood out above all the rest. And it happened way early in the telling, a thing that triggered all the hardships that came after.

Old Tobit lived in Ninevah, an evil foreign city. I don’t know how he got there, whether or not he was born there. But he was in exile, either way. And he owned a good bit of property, gold and houses and such. The heathen king of Ninevah had a habit of murdering Tobit’s people and throwing them outside the city walls. It was forbidden that anyone should bury those corpses. They were to rot into the ground, on their own. It was absolutely forbidden to bury them, on pain of severe and arbitrary retribution.

Tobit buried those people anyway. Snuck around at night and dug holes in the ground. I mean, think about that. Not just the courage it took, but also the brutal physical work it was. You’re out there in the dark, digging holes, and burying your own people in them. There’s no way any of us, at least here in the West, could get anywhere close to imagining that.

He did it because it was the right thing to do. Didn’t matter who told him not to. Didn’t matter what the “law” was. Didn’t matter the penalty, if he got caught.

Which he eventually was, of course. Some sniveling little rat turned him in. Told the king, probably for a huge reward. That’s your man, right there, who’s making all those bodies disappear. That you had decreed would rot into the earth where they were thrown. Tobit’s the one.

And he went into hiding. And when that got too hot, he fled the city. All his property was seized by the state. But that’s not the main reason he’s talked about in any sermon, anywhere in the Amish world. The lessons are mostly about trusting God in extreme adversity. It all seems kind of plastic to a child who hears such a thing recited in a sermon. The thing I’ve realized since is, except for the angel, they were just people, all the characters in the story. Including the father of the possessed girl young Tobit courted and married. The night before the wedding, the father snuck out and dug a grave for his eighth son-in-law. Because of what he knew was coming. The demon would kill young Tobit, just like he’d killed all his daughter’s seven previous husbands on their wedding nights. So he dug the grave to get ready for the inevitable. Later, when it didn’t happen, he proclaimed a great feast and quickly sent his servants out to cover up the hole. He had dug it because his faith was just like ours is, often, when it came right down to it. He knew what he knew, because the angel had clearly told him. But he still had a little backup plan. I don’t judge his actions. I would have done the same thing. If you claim you wouldn’t have, you’re probably lying to yourself. He’d seen some wild stuff, and he just walked along, I think, like most of us do. They all did, in all those old stories. Slogged through the tough parts, not quite daring to believe, but still clinging to some small shred of faith, way down there in their hearts. And marveling when that little shred of faith was honored as God had promised.

Bottom line to me is this, though, because it made the greatest impression on me from the time I heard it told. Tobit was destitute, because he did the right thing and defied the evil that was the state. Very few of us have ever seen what it is to do the right thing at such horrendous cost. I sure never have. I do what I have to, to stay out of a cage. But I don’t respect the coercive force that makes me obey any law. I despise and detest it as the monstrous false god it is. We are created to walk free, not enslaved by the chains of any law. And some brave few among us have actually been pushed to the wall, like Tobit was, and lost everything, including their freedom. Because they did what was right. Insisted on doing it. Some few out there have stood tall and faced and endured all of that. If you are one of those few, I salute you. I never want to be where you are. But if such a thing ever comes at me, I hope I’ll have the strength that you had.

We are living in such times as Tobit lived in. In exile, like he was, that’s plain to those who have eyes to see. It’s a cycle of history. The state will always see to it that such a time comes again. And Tobit is a model of how to walk free when it does.

That’s the “nice little moral lesson” the Book of Tobit teaches me.

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When Old Men Speak…

It seemed to him that if he would only speak, the living past,

the voices of lost men, the pain, the pride, the madness and

despair, the million scenes and faces of the buried life…all

that the old man had seen, would be revealed to him, would be

delivered to him like a priceless treasure…

“It was so long ago,” the old man said.

—Thomas Wolfe

_____________

I didn’t think much of it, one way or the other, when my friend “David” called me one day a few weeks back. He was wondering, he said. Could I pick him up next Saturday and take him over to some friends that needed to sign and notarize some documents? Not unusual from him, such a request. David prepares tax returns, and I’ve taken him on many little trips like that over the years. Including my very first excursion to the deep south end of the county a few years ago. Besides being a licensed attorney, I’m a notary, too. So I come in pretty handy now and then, when such a thing is needed. Sure, I told him when he called. Next Saturday afternoon will work for me. I’ll stop in for coffee around 2:30 or so. And we’ll go from there.

And that’s what we did. I stopped by around my usual time, and we just sat around and talked about things. It’s a comfortable and welcoming place, David’s house. I’ve been going there for years. He got his papers around, then, the ones that needed signing. And off we went, down the road. It wasn’t that far, and soon we pulled into the little Amish farm that was our destination. An older couple lived there, along with one of their unmarried daughters. And today, another daughter would be there, too, a married daughter from out of the area. We stepped out and approached the house. Beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, is what it was. A gaggle of small children played in the front yard and on the porch. “Is your grandpa home?” David asked. The children turned and looked out across the road, to a rather dilapidated old barn sitting there. And I saw him coming, the patriarch of the place. Large straw hat, galluses, long beard, and gloriously barefoot. Totally comfortable with himself. And we stepped into the house, and were welcomed into the kitchen by the matriarch and her two daughters.

We were seated at the table, and we spread out the papers that needed signing. I got my notary stamps from my briefcase, and we waited. Where was the old man? “Well, maybe we should send someone out to find him,” the goodwife fussed. No, no, I said. I saw him walking in. He’ll be here shortly. And a minute or so later, he stepped into the kitchen. Hatless now, but still barefoot. He’d been around, looked like. Tough and hard nosed with a full head of unruly reddish gray hair and a long gray beard. You could see he’d been knocked around good a good deal, that he’d seen things. And you could see all that knocking around never fazed him one bit, too. He joined us at the table and took a chair. He hardly glanced at me, an English intruder. They signed the papers, then, and I got busy with my stamp and signature. The old man leaned back and he and David visited. Well, mostly David listened while the old man talked. I have no idea how the subject came up, but he just went off all of a sudden, talking about butchering. And the stories rolled right out of him.

“Yep, the most I ever got done was four steers in one afternoon,” he said. “I butchered them by myself. Skinned them out, dressed and cut them up. That was a lot to get done, in one afternoon like that.” Well, he didn’t exactly use those last words. But that’s what he was telling us. And I was impressed. Talk about a hard day’s work, in half a day.

“Well, didn’t you use to work in a butcher shop?” David prompted the man. “You probably learned some tricks about how to do it, there.”

“Yes, yes I did.” The old man replied. “Back in such and such a year (I can’t remember when, but it happened when he was young), I worked at (I forget the name) Butcher Shop.” And that set him off down another little trail. “You know, back then, we ate the whole hog. The best meat is in the head. We’d throw the whole head into a pot of hot water and let it cook. When it was done, we took it out, and knocked it on the counter, and all this good meat just fell out. It was all was ready to eat, right there. And it was all good eating. I always say, they throw the best parts of the hog away, these days, because they don’t want to take the time to get it out. It’s the best part of any hog, what’s in the head.”

And I couldn’t contain myself. He was talking to David, not me. But I interrupted. That all sounds absolutely delicious, I said. He glanced my way. “And the very best piece of meat in the head, it’s just a little chunk, stuck way up in there, in a little hollow place in the skull,” he said. “Most people don’t even know it’s there. You have to knock the skull just right, to get it loose. Sometimes you have to reach up in there and feel for it, to find it. And that little round piece (he held up his thumb and forefinger, a few inches apart), that little round piece of meat is the tastiest part of the whole hog.” When someone like that is telling you something like that, you don’t doubt it. You listen, and you hear. And maybe, just maybe, you speak. It sounds absolutely delicious, I said again.

We wrapped it up, then, and David and I took off for the next stop. And I got to thinking about what the old man had told us. We never ate the whole hog’s head, back when I was a child. But we ate a lot of parts of an animal that most people wouldn’t think were fit to eat today.

I remember way back, before I even started school, when I was three or four years old. And how we’d have a butchering day every fall, sometime in November, I think it was. Could have been late October, too, maybe. The neighbors came by early that morning, after the chores were done. And Dad had fetched the old scalding tank that everyone in the community used. A homemade scalding tank, half round, made of heavy galvanized steel. And both half round ends were made of wood. Dad set the tank up and filled it with water and lit the fire a long time before anyone came. And then after breakfast, the water was pretty much boiling. After breakfast was right at daybreak, cloudy, usually, at that time of year. And cold, too. I never remember this scene in any sunlight. The men all gathered around, outside. And then the victim, a fatted hog, was released from the barn and nudged over to the general area of the tank. Someone stood there with a .22 rifle. Stepped up right close, and took careful aim. A spiteful crack, and the pig just rolled over like it had been pole-axed. And then things got real busy, real quick. I stood off to the side and just watched.

The men dragged the carcass up to the tank, where the water was boiling. Two chains had been strung through the tank, down on the rounded floor and out both sides. They then grabbed the carcass by all four legs and heaved it in, careful not to splash too much. Two men then stood on each side of the tank and grabbed the chains the hog was now resting on. And back and forth they pulled, rolling the hog in the boiling water. Back and forth and back and forth. All the hair and bristle had to come off. After the hog’s skin was smooth and soft and clean as a baby’s, then they lifted it out. Then it was hung up and scraped with sharp knives. And only then was it gutted and dressed out. That’s how you scald a hog carcass. At least that’s how I saw them doing it.

Children will always play at what they see, and we did. I remember one day we devised the game of “Butchering” in the living room. I can’t remember who all was involved, my siblings or friends. Probably both. Anyway, one of us was the “pig,” down on all fours, grunting and snorting along, head to the floor. A few others hovered off to the side, tending to the boiling water in the imaginary scalding tank. And one person stood in front of the pig, pointing a little stick as a gun. The pig snuffled along, completely oblivious, until the person with the gun took careful aim, as we’d seen it done, then shouted, “Bang!” And the pig rolled over, instantly lifeless. Everyone swarmed in and dragged the “carcass” over to the spot where the “tank” was. They then rolled the pig around on the floor, as in scalding. It was all quite merry and exciting, until Mom happened to walk by and saw us playing. She seemed rather horrified.

“Oh, my. No, no. You can’t play that you’re shooting someone,” she chided. But it’s OK, Mom, I said. I’m a pig. Sadly, she did not seem to grasp the concept, and so the butchering game was shut down. And we didn’t play it again, because we were told not to.

It wasn’t until a few years later that I actually remember the tastes and smells of butchering day. After I started school. And things were bustling, when we left on such a morning. The neighbors came. But off we went, to school. That’s where we had to go that day, so we went. And all day, our thoughts drifted back to home, where we knew exciting things were going on. School let out at three. And we rushed home, to see what all had happened.

By then, things were winding down. The meat had been cut up in the washhouse. And Mom and my sisters and the neighbor women had stuffed much of it in glass jars. The pressure cooker sat humming on the kitchen stove, sealing glass jars packed with meat. The guts of the hog had been scraped and cleaned, and they were stuffing sausages and coiling them in large stainless steel mixing bowls. Dad would smoke those with hickory wood, later. There never was any better smoked sausage anywhere than that. And Mom’s large cast iron skillet sat on the hot stove, too, fresh sausage patties simmering in their own juices. I can still see it, and I can still smell it. I can taste it, too. We made sandwiches with slabs of homemade bread and wolfed them down. The best after-school snack there ever was. Then we headed out to the barn to do our chores. And after those chores were done, we went right back in and feasted on more of that fresh meat for supper. It was a beautiful thing, butchering day.

Mom never did cook up a whole hog’s head, though. Somehow that little practice got lost along the way, if it ever was there in the lineage of my ancestors. Which I’m sure it was somewhere back there, because it was food that you could eat. Here, now, we never saw or heard of such a thing. But I look back on it now, too, and see that Mom came pretty close to doing that. Hog’s head or cow’s head, it didn’t matter. She got some good stuff from it. Brains, is what I remember, mostly. Fried up nice and brown. You put a little mayonnaise on bread, load it with fried brains, and that there is just flat out delicious. I’d eat that any day. My friend Dave Hurst at work gets cow brains from a local organic farmer. And once a year or so, he’ll invite me to stop in on the way home from the gym. And I always do. His wife, Ruth, fries them up, just exactly like Mom did. It always takes me back to those days at home, the taste of that.

And Mom fixed other things, too, things that are mostly thrown out today. Mostly from cows. Heart, liver, and tongue. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten pickled cow tongue. Served cold, it was bitter and salty and just delicious. And we all ate it. I still would, if I could find someone to make some for me. I’ve never been much of a liver eater, though. Except for chicken liver. From a chicken, the liver is the very best part. Mom always saved the liver for me when she fried up a batch. “This is for Ira,” she’d say. No one else seemed to mind, much. And once in a while, I still get to eat liver over at Steve and Wilma’s house. Wilma fixes chicken liver just like Mom did. I’m always astounded, when I see it there in the pot. And I always load up quite greedily.

We never did cook up a whole hog’s head, back home. A whole hog’s head. I’m fascinated by such an idea, such a lost custom. And I’d sure try it, if someone invited me to, someone who knew what it was to do that. Because from the gleam in that old Amish man’s eyes, it sure would be worth checking out, I think. And see if what he said is true. “They throw out the best parts of the hog, these days. The best parts are in the head.”

The other evening, I got a call from my brother, Titus. He checks in now and then, just to chat. That day, though, we talked a little longer than usual. He had some stories to tell me.

They had attended a wedding in Daviess a few weeks before that, him and Ruth. They didn’t really know the couple that well, but somehow they got an invitation anyway. So they went. Daviess. The land my parents come from. “The food was Daviess food,” Titus said. “It tasted just like Mom’s cooking, like the stuff we grew up on. And they only had spoons to eat with, and no knives on the table,” he chuckled. “When the pie came around, I asked the man next to me to cut me a small piece. He just took the spoon he was eating with and lopped off a chunk and put it on my plate.” I howled. I hope you ate it, I said. “Yes, yes, I ate it,” Titus said. And he told me more. That afternoon, an old man walked up and talked to him. Titus didn’t know him, but the man had a few things to tell my brother.

“Way back, when your parents lived on their farm just north of Montgomery, I was their neighbor,” the man said. “I’m eighty years old, now. I was a teenager then. And when your father got a notion to go check out the new settlement in Piketon, Ohio, me and another neighbor boy did their chores while they were gone. That was the first trip they took to Piketon, just to see if it was what your Dad was looking for.”

Titus locked in. A firsthand account we never knew was out there. “How long were they gone? Was Dad excited when they got back? How many cows were they milking then? What all did he have around the place?”

“They were gone for four days. Oh, yes, he was excited when they got back,” the old man said. “They had seven or eight cows to milk. And a few hogs and a few chickens. Yes, he was excited. I’ll tell you something else that happened, too. Soon after they got back, he came over one day and asked if I had borrowed his bolt cutter. He couldn’t find it. I told him I hadn’t. Then he went over and asked the other neighbor boy who had helped with the chores. Had he borrowed the bolt cutter? And the other boy hadn’t either. And you know what?” The old man leaned in. “The next spring when the snow went off the ground, he found that bolt cutter out by a fence post, right where he’d used it last.”

We laughed together over that, me and my brother. That’s good stuff, I told Titus. That’s real good stuff. I have got to get out there and spend a week sometime. Track down those old people and talk to them. I have got to get that done. I don’t know when, though. I have to work. It’s hard, to take a week off to do something like that.

“Well, if you’re going, you’d better get out there soon,” Titus replied. “Those old people, the ones who remember firsthand, those people aren’t going to be around long anymore.” That’s true, I told him. But that’s the way it’s always been, I think.

And I didn’t think to say this to Titus, right that moment. But I thought about it later. And it makes sense to me. If you can’t go to where you want to go to hear all those old stories told firsthand, you just listen for the stories you can hear right where you are.

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Finding Bukowski…

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don’t do it…

if you’re trying to write like somebody

else,

forget about it…

if you first have to read it to your wife

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend

or your parents or to anybody at all,

you’re not ready…

__________________

They trickled in right along for quite a while after the book came out. You could always pretty much tell when they walked through the door at work. Looking a little self-conscious, smiling shyly, usually. Definitely not here looking for a pole building or metal roofing or any such thing. Often it was a couple, and usually it was the woman who clutched a copy of Growing Up Amish in her hands. And Rosita or I always greeted them kindly. Can I help you? “Is Ira here?” Almost always asked just a shade of disbelief, that they’d actually find the author they were looking for here, working at a building supply business.

And I have always received them cheerfully. Thanked them for taking the time, for driving the extra miles and making the effort to actually stop in. And I stood there, leaning on my side of the counter, and we’d talk. Chat about this and that, the book, mostly. I always asked them where they came from, and they came from all over. From the south. The west. Canada. All over. So far, a guy from Ireland holds the record for the greatest distance traveled. And I always gave them what time I had, at least five minutes, sometimes more if things were slow. And then I’d sign their copy and maybe sell them another one from my box right by my desk, the latest edition with “New York Times Bestseller” across the top. You need this one, I’d tell them, pointing that out. Sometimes they fell for it, sometimes not. And soon, off they’d go, on down the road. I hope I created some memories for some of them. I couldn’t imagine driving much out of the way and stopping in somewhere to see me, but that’s just me. I try to be accessible. I mean, it always was astonishing to me, to see someone walk in to see me just because of the book. It still is.

Lately, though, that little flow of fan traffic has slowed to almost nothing. Sure, maybe once every couple of weeks, someone will still pop in. But I think there were a few stretches of at least a month or so. All right, it’s getting close to over, I told Rosita. People have pretty much stopped stopping in. And that’s the way it was, the last while.

Until last week. I sold a few books over the counter, all of a sudden. To customers, standing there. Most of them never even notice my little book sign stuck to the back of the computer screen with tape. And I never mention anything, if they don’t. Now, all of a sudden, they seemed to be seeing that sign. And asking about it, then looking real astonished, then buying a copy right on the spot. This is pretty wild, I thought, selling books over the counter like that. And it was, until the door opened, oh, fairly early in the week, and a couple walked in. You could see they weren’t there to buy a pole barn. And they asked for me. Rosita smiled and pointed to my desk behind the counter. They walked up, and it was like it always was. I stood, and we talked across the counter. I thanked them for stopping by. And we chatted about what they wanted to talk about, mostly the book and my writing. And then they left. I didn’t think much of it. A sporadic thing, that kind of thing was these days. But it wasn’t, last week. Another couple walked in the next day. And another the day after that. I took time with them all. And the talk always turned one way, eventually. When am I coming out with the next book?

Well, I told them, some in more detail than others. It was all one big blessing, what the book has been so far. And whatever it is in the future will be, too. And I’m sure there would be a market for sequel. But right now, I’m just writing and posting on my blog. That’s the only place it’s coming out. The only place I can speak, so that’s where I’m speaking. What you see there is where I am. A second book will come when it does. And if it doesn’t, it just won’t. I’ll write where I can write. And I won’t, where I can’t. And they all seemed to hear what I was saying. Not sure if it made much sense to them, but they heard me saying it.

The week slipped by toward the weekend. I was looking forward to it. My brother Jesse and his wife Lynda and two of their younger daughters were stopping in at Steve’s on Friday night. They’d be around a day or two. We’d all hang out, mostly at Steve’s place. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen Jesse. After work, I headed over and we waited until they pulled in around seven in a very cool little rented SUV. A long day of fighting traffic, that’s what they’d been through. We greeted each other boisterously and milled about, talking. Then inside, where Wilma had fixed a delicious supper. Afterward, I asked about their plans for the next day. “Oh,” Steve said. “We’re just taking them around.” Well, stop by my place when you can, I said. I don’t know if I’ll invite you in, but I want to show Jesse what I did to my place outside. And we figured it would be sometime in the early afternoon, when they’d stop by. I’ll look for you, I said, and left for home.

And Saturday morning came. Beautiful and cloudless. My cell phone rang right at eight, which is an unearthly hour for me on Saturdays, unless I’m working. I sleep in, usually. But not this morning. Comcast was stopping by. My land line didn’t work. Quit cold about two months ago. I ignored it, because I don’t use it much. But still, if it’s there, and included in the package I’m paying for, I might as well get it fixed. I had called tech support earlier. A guy from India, clearly, by his accent. Friendly enough, though. He guided me through his little list of quick fixes. Nope. The line’s still dead, I told him. And he got me scheduled for that Saturday, to have a tech stop by. The guy arrived in a van, and I let him in. He scanned things with his iPhone and found the problem in about two seconds. And he handed me my cordless land line phone, dial tone buzzing. Well, that was simple, I said. “Yep,” he answered. “Do you have your voicemail set up?” Voicemail? What’s that? “Well, this is how you set it up,” he said, and showed me. I was pretty astounded.

After he left, I dug into the voicemail instructions, and set it up with my password. And dialed it in. A very nice lady’s voice then cheerfully informed me that there were exactly fifty messages waiting, from all the way back to last October. Good grief, I thought. I hope it was nothing important. Couldn’t have been, because you can find me if you’re looking for me. But still. Good grief. Fifty messages.

And I went through all fifty of them. Some were sales calls, but a good many were messages from friends and acquaintances, too. Hey, Ira, can you give me a call? From all the way back to last fall, some of them. Oh, well. No sense calling back now, and trying to explain. They’ll just have to think I’m rude, I figured. And I deleted every one. If by any chance you were one of those who left me a message, that’s what happened. And that’s why I never got back to you. I never knew you called. It is what it is, I guess.

Awake now, early because of the Comcast man, I stirred about. Got my coffee, ran some errands here and there. And sometime that morning, I saw the email coming in. From my friend, Patrick Miller. I checked the message on my phone, on the road. It was pretty short, with a link. “Poem about whiskey and writing – thought of you.” Patrick doesn’t send me a lot of links. Actually, he rarely sends me any. So if he sends one, I always check it out. It would have to wait, though, until I got back home.

And I got back home, and it was close to midday. Company was coming soon. Steves and Jesses. The outside looked fine. I quickly stacked stuff around, to make the inside at least half presentable. And around one, my cell phone rang. Steve. They were on the way over, they’d be here soon. Come on, I said. I’m home. And soon enough, his van pulled in. I walked out. Steve and Wilma and Jesse and Lynda stepped out to greet me. Welcome, I said. This is my home. And I showed them the angel first, standing under the shrub tree. Told them, here it is. And we walked around the house, as I pointed out all the improvements. Jesse seemed impressed. A real nice job of repointing those bricks, he thought. I invited them inside then, and the women didn’t seem too horrified. We made room on the couch and on the easy chair, and I sat by my desk. It all fit. I showed Jesse some of the book paraphernalia, the honorary doctorate and framed posters and such. Each with its own embellished tale, of course. It was a good time, and a comfortable one.

And they left, then. “Come on over for sausages tonight,” Wilma told me. Around five. We’re grilling them over the fire ring, and we want to get it done before it gets dark.” I’ll be there, I said. The van pulled out. I went back to my desk. Time to check out that link Patrick sent me. A poem about whiskey and writing. I like scotch, as Patrick knows. I wondered if the poem was about that, drinking scotch while writing. I’ve certainly been known to do that.

I clicked on the link. It was an ad for Dewar’s scotch whiskey. Some poem, professionally narrated. The theme of the ad was about getting up each day, and doing what you do. But the poem was about writing. They tried to make it about just going to work every day, and did a pretty good job. But the author’s voice came through. Clear as a bell on a foggy morning. He was writing about writing. And I just sat there, almost mesmerized, and listened. It was truth, pouring out of those speakers. Raw, real truth. Not since the first time I picked up and read Thomas Wolfe has something so real hit me so hard in a way that only great writing can hit you.

And Wolfe had told what it was, to write. In pages and pages of soaring, sweeping prose. This guy, who wrote this poem, got it all told in a few hundred words. I’ve never been much of a poetry fan. It’s a condensed play on words, poetry. And most of the stuff out there is hardly worth glancing at, or hearing. “Fudge and taffy, slop and goo,” as Wolfe wrote. But this, this poem was gold. Just solid and brutal truth, told in a raspy narrator’s voice. I sat back and drank it in, absorbed it. And then again. And again. It was so raw, so real, and so true that I felt it all the way down, deep inside. This, this is how it is. How it always was. I just never could find the words to describe it. This guy, this Charles Bukowski, could and did.

The ad was about getting up and going to work, though, not about writing. And I googled the poem. “So You Want to be a Writer.” Pulled it right up. And read what the narrator had left out. It all fit. It all made so much sense. Because that’s where I’ve always been, the place Bukowski speaks of.

You write when it comes, and you write from where you are. It makes no difference where that might be. I remember telling the Tyndale people. It seems strange, to get paid to do this. Seems almost wrong, somehow. Not that I don’t like the money. I do. And I’ll take what the market gives me, and I’ll be grateful for every penny. And enjoy it. But still, I’d throw it all out on the blog, too, for free. Just like I would have thrown out the story of Growing Up Amish. It wouldn’t have been so concise, so connected, and definitely not edited by a true editor who got my voice, like it is in the book. But the essence of the story would have been written, anyway. You would have had to wade through a lot more words, sure. But it would have been told. Because I would have told it.

And that’s why I always talk about the journey of the book like I do. I’m grateful for everything it was and is. It was a wild adventure that came out of nowhere. And took me to some wild places. And it all went the way it did, because I wasn’t looking for it. How many writers and academics would give their left arm to have “New York Times Bestseller” on the cover of their book? A lot, I think. Most of them will never see it because they want it so badly. And don’t get me wrong, I am very proud of that distinction. It’s an honor I will always treasure. But it’s not why I wrote the book. Or anything else I write. It never was a reason to write, to reach bestseller status. And it never will be.

don’t be like so many writers,

don’t be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don’t be dull and boring and

pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

don’t add to that.

don’t do it.

You write because you have to, you write when it comes out. It really doesn’t matter where that is. In your diary, in your journal, and in today’s wired world, on your blog, if you have the nerve to throw your stuff out there. The whole wide world is open to what you have to say, if you want to speak it. And if you have to speak it, you will. Doesn’t matter if you have half a dozen readers. Or thousands. Writing is not a formula. It comes as it will, as the winds that sweep the earth. You speak it, when it comes. And you respect the silence, when it doesn’t.

And why didn’t I know who this Bukowski guy was? One might ask. You might indeed. I do remember the name, and I’m sure I read some of his short stuff in college. But I don’t remember this poem. Never heard of it. Maybe that’s because I don’t hang around people who talk about writers much, I don’t know. I don’t subscribe to any writer’s blog. Except one. Fred Reed, the Curmudgeon. I want to know what he says when he says it. Otherwise, I just go to the sites I want to read. And most of those are about freedom.

And I wonder. Do they tell of this poem at Writer’s Conferences? Which I abhor, because they try to tell you how to write. If those conferences don’t teach this stuff, (and how can you ever teach such a thing?), I think I’d ask for my money back. You can’t “teach” anyone how to write. It either comes on its own, or it doesn’t.

And yeah, yeah, I know how it is, often, when Christians are confronted with truth that great writers speak. I remember talking to Dad back when I was in college. Somehow Ernest Hemingway came up. I’m not a big fan, but the man was a literary giant. Dad wasn’t impressed at all. “Didn’t he commit suicide?” he asked. Well, yeah, I said. What does that have to do with whether or not he could write? “Well, I don’t know that I’d want to read anything from a man who did that,” Dad replied. And I could only shake my head. There wasn’t a whole lot more to say, in that conversation. But I’ve thought about it since, now and then. Who can speak truth? Only people in your social or religious circles? Only people you agree with? Only people that supposedly aren’t flawed, somehow? And it’s the same thing, with Bukowski. He lived a hard life, much of it. And many “Christians” will recoil from the details. It doesn’t matter to me at all. Who and what he was is between him and God. Why should I get bogged down in judging that? What matters to me today is what he wrote.

And what he wrote is truth, when it comes to what writing is. It’s that simple. I will take and absorb what he said for a long time. Because you can be flawed to the core and speak truth all day long, when you speak it like that.

Had I known this poem and its message, I never would have tried to write anything for a sequel, back when that happened and it all went like it did. Because I would have known better. But I didn’t know better. And I was a little intimidated by it all, anyway. That was pretty much the accepted formula of going about it, so I certainly can’t fault anyone for suggesting it. You wrote a book that sold decently. Now write another before everyone forgets you. So you can slip in a few more sales, quick. I shiver now, just thinking about it. And I recoil from that mindset. But I wasn’t strong enough to say what I really felt back then. Plus, I was too freaked out to really know what I felt, anyway. And that’s just the way it went. Part of walking through this crazy world of writing and publishing. And there was something powerful, something cleansing, something freeing, about writing and crashing like that. If you try to go where you can’t force yourself to go, you’ll never get there. You’ll never see the place that is impossible to enter until it comes on its own and opens the door and invites you in. And tells you to speak.

There is no other way than to let it come when it does. And if it never does come, I’ll do something else. Because there is no other way. And there never was. But I’m just repeating what a wise man and master writer once said.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.



—Charles Bukowski

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The Art of Surf Fishing…

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too

greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open,

choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh

______________________

It’s not that we didn’t see it coming. We did. It’s just that it all seemed to roll around so fast. I don’t even know where the spring went, let alone the summer. I’ve heard that’s how it goes as you get older. I think I heard it right. And we talked about it, discussed our plans now and then, Janice and me.

“You know,” she said a few months ago as we were talking on the phone. “It’s your turn to drive down for Beach Week, right?” Yep, I said. We brought Wilm’s car last year. So this year we’re bringing my truck. “Great,” she said. “I’m working in Philly the week after and need to pick up my rental car at the airport that Sunday when you all drive back. I was wondering. Would it be too much trouble to drop me off there? It’s just a little detour, forty-five minutes or so.” Gaaaah, I thought. And I saw the vast and beautiful expanse of ocean and skies that is Beach Week. Obscured a bit, now, way up there in one corner, by a tiny, tiny little cloud. But a cloud nonetheless. Come on, Janice. You know how I hate cities and big airports. She talked on, quite blithely. “If you drop me off, I won’t have to take the flight from Norfolk to Philly. It’s such a pain, a short flight like that.” Uh, yeah, I can see that, I said, probably over-cheerfully. Of course it’s no problem. We’ll drop you off on the way back up home. And so it was settled. The thing is, I detest cities. And I detest their airports and traffic jams. But still. This was Janice. I’d drive her wherever she asked me to in my truck. We both knew that. So it really wasn’t a problem. But we also knew there would be a little grumping and grouching along the way, to get me to drive my truck into a big old evil city. And that’s how Beach Week came at me this year.

It’s a thing that’s approaching the status of tradition, I think. Beach Week. The core group has done it for years. Four years ago, Janice cajoled me into going. And it was fantastic. So I’m a regular now. It’s just assumed I’ll show up, even though I’m not the most sociable guy to have around. It works, because what Janice promised me was true from the start. You can do what you want, when you want. Which is nothing, if that’s what you want. And no one bothers you or nags you. And there’s still only one rule. No drama, from anyone. Not about anything. It’s a pretty good formula, is what it is.

The departure date arrived, and I headed over in my truck at the unearthly Sunday morning hour of seven o’clock to pick Wilm up. She was smiling and excited and packed to go. We piled all her stuff into the back with mine, jammed it full. Luggage, boxes of baked stuff, bags of tomatoes. Wow, I said. We’ll have Janice and her luggage on the way home, yet. Guess we’ll have to strap some of this luggage in the back of the truck. We’ll worry about that then, we agreed. This morning we’ll think only of the beach, not about coming back from it. And off we went, heading south into a warm and beautiful day. Light Sunday traffic, compared to Saturdays. It’s a scenic drive and all, you just can’t get up to speed much before stopping at the next light. But still, the miles flowed along. We crossed the bridge tunnel around one, and pulled into Kill Devil Hills a little after two o’clock. Janice and her friends Brian and Melanie were waiting for us at The Black Pelican, a local establishment of some repute. We got out and stretched and greeted each other, relaxed and ready for the week. After our traditional pre-arrival feast and a few drinks, we drove on south to Nag’s Head and the Beach House. Still the same old place, looked like. A little more battered, though. A lot of people had passed through and stayed here since last year. But it was still a fine spot to settle in for a week. After unloading and unpacking in our rooms, we assembled upstairs in the main living room. And we pulled open the great sliding doors and walked out on the deck and drank in the sounds and smells of the sea. It’s a beautiful thing, a place like that in a moment like that.

They trickled in a little later, the rest of the crowd. Familiar faces, and a few new ones, too. My nephew Steven and his girlfriend Evonda. Fred. Greg and Courtney. Blake (BJ) and Candace. We greeted each other boisterously. It’s pretty amazing, when you think of it. Most of these people would never cross my path, in the ordinary course of things. They live in other states, in other worlds. We know each other because we come here. And here is where we connect. All of us are just out there living our own lives, plugging along, doing what we do, going to work every day. Carefully scrimping and saving for this week. And setting aside precious time, too. It takes effort and it takes commitment, to take off for Beach Week every year. It just does.

And it was casual and relaxed, as always, that first evening. We had a whole week ahead. We loafed about, claiming our spots on the long dining table to set up our laptops. I seized the one end, like I always do. I didn’t figure to do much writing. But still, you set up, just in case. We talked of the things we had seen and done since last year. And watched the waves come crashing in. Looked a bit rough, for fishing. And we plotted our course for the next day. We’ll need to head out in the morning, to buy some tackle, we decided. I told them, Steven and Greg and BJ. I’ve never seen anyone catching a fish from shore. Not since we’ve been coming down here. Our goal this week is to make sure we don’t get skunked. Someone, at some point, will have to catch at least one fish. That’s just all there is to it. They all agreed. Hey, we were total beginners, when it came to surf fishing. None of us had ever done it before. It seemed a little intimidating, I thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it on my last blog, And I told Steven. It’ll be pretty embarrassing, if I have to admit we didn’t catch a single fish.

And the next day, around late morning, we set out in my truck, Steven and me. It’s always a production, a mission like that. First, you have to figure out where you need to go. You have to check out at least two places. And make the best buy the market offers. First stop: Chahoon’s Market, a few blocks out. It’s been a staple for our Beach Week supplies, Cahoon’s. A dumpy little place that has just about anything you might need. Food, groceries, beer, bait, and yes, fishing tackle. We’d checked it out some last year. And we knew right where the rods were hanging on the low ceiling. Looks like cheap junk, I said. I only need it to last this week, though, so cheap is OK. Steven seemed horrified at such a comment. “No, no,” he said. “I’ll take the rods and reels home and clean them of all the salt water. We’ll use them again next year.” His father, Ray, is a builder and a master craftsman who loves and takes care of his tools. And Steven is most definitely his father’s son in that sense. Great, I said, backtracking. Of course we’ll need them next year. Let’s go check out the next place. The Cahoon’s people glanced at us a little suspiciously as we walked out without purchasing anything. They are friendly enough every year, but the place has all kinds of stern little signs hanging around. Want a free ride in a police car? That’s what’ll happen if you shoplift. Which I can’t blame them for. I’m sure they have many incidents of theft during the busy summer months. But still, I don’t like my senses assaulted like that. Not when I’m relaxing at the beach. I like a friendly place, not an uptight one.

We got back into Big Blue, and headed on up north on the main road. I’d seen the place the day before, coming in. And Steven had seen it, too. TJ’s Tackle Shop. It’s a chain down here, they tell me. We got there, and it was real busy for a Monday morning. Other “weekers” like us were stocking up. The parking lot was about filled out. I pulled off to the left into a little mall lot, and we parked and walked in. Nice place. A fishing place. They had everything you could ever imagine you’d need, for fishing the Outer Banks. And we looked around and poked around. Seemed like an expensive place until we found the discount rack. Rods and reels stocked with fishing line, dozens of them. Great prices, too. We hefted and held about a dozen different setups. I picked out a longer, sturdy rod. Bright blue, like my truck. Steven chose two shorter ones. All stocked with reels and line.

I picked up a few pointed PVC pipes. We’d seen it done on the beach, and figured we’d do it, too. Stick the pipe in the sand, straight up. Throw your bait into the water, then set your rod into the pipe. Then lean back in a lawn chair and sip beer and watch the fish catch themselves. In theory, that’s how it happens, anyway. We joined the short line at the counter with our gear. And there they sold us all we needed to go fishing, including our licenses. Except the bait. We stopped in at Cahoon’s on the way back and bought a small box of frozen squid and dozen bloodworms. And we drove back to the beach house with our treasures. Everyone seemed very excited. We felt very brave. We’d venture out at five, that was the plan.

And we walked out, loaded with our stuff. Four of us. Me. Steven. BJ. And Greg. The tide was creeping in with every crashing wave. We set up a bit back, just inside the edge of the wet sand. Baited our hooks. We had dual hook setups, with heavy sinkers. And for the first time in my life, I cast my fishing line into the ocean from the shore. Surf fishing. That’s what they call it. I wouldn’t have known, except for friends mentioning it in conversation. It was kind of surreal, really. Make an offer to the sea. You have food that we can eat. Show me some of it. I’ve never seen any, not from a place like this.

And we nudged our lines along the bottom as the waves dragged them back in. Now and then we reeled in and recast. And we talked, right along. About ten minutes in, I felt the little tug on my line. I pulled back hard, then cranked the line in. And it came, up out of the sea water like a small ghost. A little flopping fish. I had caught a fish. Yo! I hollered to the others. And they all gathered around in wonder. The first fish from the sea, an ugly little thing of eight or nine inches. Looks like a sucker fish, I said. But still, everyone was excited and congratulated me. It was a big thing. We had done it. Done what we came for.

And we settled down. I think we concentrated a little, but not too much. This was Beach Week. Sure, they had looked it up online, what we needed to do. And we talked to the locals about what bait was best. And you did what you had read to do, and used the bait they told you to use. It was about half serious, I guess. Do what you know, with no expectations. And anything that comes from the sea is just a blessing. Take that blessing when it comes. And don’t stress, if it doesn’t. That’s the mindset we had. Well, after that first fish, it was my mindset, anyway.

And that first afternoon was magical in a way I had not seen before at the beach. It was my most glorious day as a fisherman. I caught three more fish. Small ones, all of them. And the others caught one or two, here and there. Around seven, we gathered our gear, and the stringer with all those fish, and headed triumphantly back to the house. Food. We had brought back food to eat. Steven gutted and scaled our little catch. What meat was left was packed into a plastic bag and carefully placed into a freezer.

At the beach, we eat one formal meal a day. Dinner, or supper, if you’re from the Amish. The evening meal. That first night, we cleaned up and sat around swapping tales as the girls scurried about in the kitchen. Delicious smells drifted about. They were making breakfast for dinner. French toast, taters, maple syrup, coffee, orange juice, the whole works. It was a good and solid feast. Afterward, the men cleaned the table, and we settled in to watch Monday Night Football. The first day was closing down fast.

We joke about it sometimes, down there. After the first day, you might as well wave the week good-bye, because it’s just as good as gone. That’s how fast the time goes. But I didn’t feel that this year, so much. Maybe because I was more relaxed than I’ve ever been down there. Let each day come, I told the others. When it’s gone, it’s gone. And we did all the stuff we usually do. Hung out at the pool in the late morning sun, sipping large glasses of “pool drinks,” delicious light concoctions Janice and Wilm came up with. We putzed around, made a run here and there to the Wings outlets to stock up on half-price T shirts. On impulse, I bought a shark tooth necklace and wore it all week. It’ll be part of my beachwear from here on out. We made quick trips to the grocery store and to Cahoon’s for supplies. Early on, Janice and I made a run to find a place that sold suitable fudge. You have to have good fudge at Beach Week, which is the only place I even eat it all year. And everything was the same as it always was, except for two things.

Late every afternoon, around four or five, we headed out to fish the surf. And every day, I didn’t write. Didn’t worry about it at all. Other years, I was sitting, all stressed at my laptop, right through late afternoon into the evening. This year, instead of sitting there all stressed, I gathered my gear with the others, and we went to the beach instead. There, we fished in the sun. We fished under the clouds. We fished in the wind. It was a beautiful and calming thing. There’s simply no other way to put it.

Just because we’re in a dream world down there doesn’t mean I don’t keep up with what’s going on in the big bad world out there. Nah. I had my laptop, and I checked my favorite sites every day. Posted a pic or two on Facebook, now and then, too. The first fish made it. But back to the outside world. I was hugely gratified to see our Dear Leader, president Obama, get beaten back from starting his own little war in Syria. Not that I was watching, but his lame little excuse of a speech on Tuesday night was just delicious. It’s high time this country wakes up to the murderous scam that is war. No more. Not in Syria. Not in Iran. Not anywhere. Bring all troops home from everywhere, and beat their swords into plowshares. Smash the blood merchants instead. Send them back empty-handed to their evil lairs. I liked it a lot, the way it all went. And Putin, the Russian tyrant and thug, I actually respect him more and more these days. He gave asylum to one of the few true heroes of modern times, the whistleblower Edward Snowden. And now he stymied Obama’s dream of launching his very own little bloodthirsty war. If I believed in the state, I’d be embarrassed for my country, that it’s represented to the world by such an incompetent man-child with a messiah complex. But I don’t, so I’m not. It’s the natural progression of any state, to be led by corrupt, glib-tongued demagogues. If you think there’s a dime’s worth of difference between Bush and Obama, pull your head out of the sand and drop your strident partisanship for two seconds and listen. They’re both warmongers, beholden to the merchants of death. They both represent the evil that is the state. And the state will always devour innocent blood until it implodes on itself like the rotten bloated monstrosity it is. As this state is fixing to do, coming up right soon.

That’s a bit of a rant, to come from Beach Week. Can’t help it, because that’s what I was thinking down there as this stuff unfolded. There’s one more, then I’ll let it go. Our Wednesday at the beach was 9/11. And it was spread all over the world, the great mawkish tributes, the sap and tears. I’m not knocking anyone who does that, if they actually knew someone or lost someone on that day. It would be tough. But most of us didn’t. It’s time to move on, and not make that day one more tribute to the glory of the state. We are far less safe now than when those planes hit those towers. 9-11 was a tyrant’s dream, and Bush wasted no time in gobbling up most of the basic rights any human should have. The state now plays us against each other, as was clear on that day this year. The Million Muslim March got a permit to march in Washington. The two million bikers were refused a permit to march. And they converged anyway, which I supported. Not to stand against the Muslims. I’m sad about that conflict, how Muslims are demonized into farce, almost. It’s so overdone in this country, so craftily fed, but so clear to see. I have no problem with any group marching in Washington at any time. The problem is, these groups spat with each other, instead of recognizing the real enemy, Washington, D.C., and the vast tyrannical state apparatus it operates and controls. It just sickens me, the whole thing. We are far less safe than we were twelve years ago. And far, far less free.

And that’s it, for the rants. The days blended into each other, as they always do. On Tuesday night, Fred and Greg unlimbered their guitars, and we sang. Well, they sang, and we helped along a bit here and there. Good old country tunes. A few hymns. And a ballad or two. And we feasted every evening. The meals just got better and better. Steaks one night. Shrimp boil the next Then came grilled chicken. And hand rolled corn tacos. All washed down with draughts of wine and beer and whiskey. After dinner, people played card games or board games, or just sat around, talking.

And we refined our fishing methods, too, as the week passed. Tried the synthetic bloodworm bait, which actually worked better than the real worms. We rigged new hooks, added a heavy sinker on windy days. It’s like we were connected to our fishing rods, like they were an extension of ourselves. We stood, half mesmerized by the waves, but not. Tense, to feel the slightest tug on the hook from the smallest fish. And yet, relaxed at the same time. It’s a strange thing, to feel that. I’ve never felt those opposing emotions quite like I’ve felt them by the sea.

After that glorious first day, my luck took a dive. Didn’t catch a thing for a day or two, except for one large Blue Crab. He caught himself, as he latched his claw on my bait and refused to let go as I hauled him in. We gathered around and admired him. Angry little sucker, is what he was. After discussing the various pros and cons of adding the crab to our supper pot, I released him back into his home. I caught a few more really small fish on Thursday, I think it was. Might have been Friday. Fish so small we should have cut them up for bait. But we kept them all, and we cleaned them all. Big fish fry coming up on the last day, we figured. The others fared far better than I did. Greg and Steven hauled the fish in by the half-dozen, seemed like. But they were all pretty small, none more than nine or ten inches long.

And then Saturday came. The last day is always a mopey day. Everyone just kind of walks around like zombies, because it’s the last day. The end is near. It didn’t bug me much this time, though. It had been a good week. I was ready to head back home and back to regular life. After that long drive back up on Sunday. Which is one reason I hope we never do Sunday to Sunday again. Well, we will if we have to. But still, Saturdays are so much better, even though the roads are clogged. Because if you get back home on a Saturday, you got one day to rest up and get ready for the week. Get home all tired out on a Sunday evening, and there’s not a whole lot of time between you and Monday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, Greg and Steven decided to give it one more go at fishing. I passed. It was Saturday afternoon, which means there’s some great college football on TV. I’ll just stay here, I told them. Vedge out and watch me some good football. OK. They shrugged. And off they went. And they were gone for hours. I glanced out over the deck a few times, and they both stood there in the waves. Solid, fishing rods on high alert. And I thought, good luck with all that. Around four, someone hollered from down by the pool. Excitedly. I dragged myself from the couch and walked out to the deck. Looked down. And there stood Greg, beaming, holding up the biggest fish I’ve seen anywhere in a long time. A monster, compared to what we’d been catching. I rushed down. What in the world? The thing must have weighed at least five pounds, but that’s just a guess. We measured the fish from head to tail fins. More than twenty-four inches. Greg told me all about how he caught the fish. Good grief, I said. Now that’s worth catching, right there. Later, he and Steven butchered the thing, and found a little fish inside the big one, a little fish about the size of those we’d been catching. That night, for dinner, we ate the monster fish, and a bunch of the small ones, too. The girls whipped up some sort of breading from corn meal, and fried them right up. All of it was just delicious.

And the next morning we all packed up. Cleaned what we were obligated to, which wasn’t much. Throw the towels into the wash room. And bag all the trash. The rental company takes care of all the rest. By shortly after nine, it was done. We gathered in the kitchen for a few quick group pics. Hugged good-bye and headed out. My truck was the last vehicle to leave. We strapped much of our luggage on the back behind the cab, in the open. And then we headed out, Janice riding shotgun and Wilm in the back seat. By now, they were claiming the litle detour to the Philly airport would take a mere thirty-seven minutes, according to MapQuest. I smiled, and didn’t buy it for a second. And we rolled out of the Outer Banks into a clear and beautiful Sunday morning.

We headed north, but things went south pretty much from the start. I needed gas, so after we’d crossed the bridge and meandered down the four-lane highway toward Virginia Beach, I looked for a station. And there, in a small town, was a sign. Gas. I pulled in before looking. The place was packed out, not a pump was free. We escaped as fast as I could maneuver out of there, which wasn’t very fast. Hmm. A few minutes lost. The second station came up ten miles or so down the road. It wasn’t crowded, but it was a dump. The gas pump wouldn’t take my credit card. Janice and Wilm disappeared inside to get coffee, but rushed right back out. The coffee pot had mold on it, they claimed. We left. Strike two. The third one was charm, sort of. The gas pumps worked beautifully, and one was open. The girls went inside and got coffee and breakfast sandwiches for all. Ahh. Much better. We hit the road and settled in.

It was a long day, and a long drive. All I wanted to do was get back to my home. We skirted around Dover, through a hundred clogging lights. Then on through, finally, out on Rt. 13, a free, four-lane bypass. The road was absolutely stacked with trucks and horse trailers and cars and Harleys. Right out in the middle of nowhere, the traffic slowed to a crawl several times for no reason that we could see. Every man and his woman and his dog and his horse were out on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, looked like. We fought our way north and finally connected to I-95. Now, a hop and skip over to the airport, and we’d be home free. Along that stretch, Janice pulled out her cell phone to check the NFL scores. And she glanced at me in mild panic. There’s a game in Philly. They’re playing the Chargers. It’s almost four. The game will be over before we get to the airport. There will be traffic, lots and lots of traffic. I didn’t even sigh. There was nothing to sigh about. It was all just par for the course, when I approach any big city.

Shortly before five, we pulled into the National car rental lot, where Janice had her reservation. The place was jammed with people, of course, but somehow I nudged my truck through to the back where her car was. We all got out, I unloaded her luggage, we hugged quick good-byes, and then Wilm and I took off on I-95 South. The traffic was heavy, but fairly benign. That is, until we pulled off onto Rt. 322 West. Right there, we ran into a football game traffic jam. Two miles long. I didn’t even sigh, at least not much. After creeping along and finally breaking free, we made good time. I walked into my own home shortly before 6:30. Unloaded my stuff. Unpacked what I needed right then. And then, completely strung out, I sat down to watch me some football. I had made it home from Beach Week, evil big city airport and all. And it felt pretty good.

And what wisdom did I gain from standing out there by the sea for hours on end for five days straight? Last year, a grizzled old fisherman stood on that sand, leaning into the winds. He spoke words that I heard, words that made sense to me. This year, I was that guy, a few times. Standing, facing the winds, nursing my line and bait along in the waters, when there was pretty much no chance that I would catch a thing. And I mulled things over a lot, standing there. Just thought of stuff, how it is in life. And somehow, I latched onto one tiny little sliver of new truth. One small new revelation.

It felt incredibly free, down at the beach, to not have any writing deadline to meet. Even a self-imposed deadline like the one for this blog. I’ve been posting pretty steadily right at every two weeks for a few years now. And I realized I want that freedom in my life, the freedom not to post on any schedule. A lot of writers, I think, stretch themselves too thin and burn out, trying to meet the expectations of their readers. And trying to stay consciously relevant, somehow. I don’t want to be such a writer. And I won’t be such a writer. I will be silent when I feel like being silent. And I will speak when I have something to say.

I don’t figure it’s that big a deal, one way or the other. I’ll still write. Just on my own terms, my own schedule. I’ll probably post about every two weeks, because that’s how I’m used to producing. And I’ll always post on a Friday evening, because that’s my time to speak when I choose to do so. But now and then, when I don’t feel like it, or if it doesn’t come, I won’t. If I lose some of you, that’s just how it’ll have to be. Check back every once in a while, if you feel so led. Or subscribe and get notified when I post. Or don’t. Do whatever works for you. Which is exactly what I intend to do for me, when it comes to writing. Whatever works.

Such is the insight that came from the sea this year.

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