Month: October 2015

ENEMA, SC

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Excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” available on Kindle at http://goo.gl/1afw3c
ENEMA, SC
“There’s a ‘For Sale’ sign on a big old rusty tractor.
You can’t miss it, it’s the first thing that you see.
Just up the road, a pale-blue water tower,
With ‘I Love Jenny’ painted in bright green”
“My Town” by Montgomery Gentry

Lockhart is a relationship that, fortunately, I did not get to foster. You see, Lockhart is a small town in Union County South Carolina and not a person. I have been there twice and intend not to go there again if possible. It was a mill village in the heyday of textiles in South Carolina named for either James Lockhart, a miller who established a grist mill, or because of two sets of deer antlers that had been found locked together after both animals had perished. Today there are many more deer than textiles left in South Carolina and even fewer people left in Lockhart. If Some Town, SC, were to be called the armpit of South Carolina, then as far as I am concerned, Lockhart is where you would give South Carolina an enema. I am sure there are many good people in Lockhart, it is just I never had the opportunity to meet but a few of them. In forty years of coaching, no team of mine was ever treated as badly as we were treated at Lockhart High School. We were not treated badly by the players or coaches, the fans though were another kettle of fish entirely.

In 2001 I was in year one of a seven year tenure at Tamassee-Salem. For the previous thirty-one years that Tamassee-Salem had baseball, it had been an endeavor in frustration. Tamassee-Salem had not one winning season or trip to the playoffs in their history. I was so cocksure of myself that I thought that I could turn it all around with nothing more than hard work. Try as I did, there was nothing I could do to change the losing climate that was in place in year one of my stay there. We were in the latter third of the season and had not taken one game past the fifth inning “mercy” rule. For those of you who are not baseball fans, the high school mercy rule states that a baseball game is over if one team is ahead by ten runs after at least four and one half innings. Instead of preaching about winning I was more concerned about getting us into the seventh inning. I cannot describe how bad we were those first couple of years but I can tell you that in my first off-season workout, I hit four fly balls to three kids and all four balls found human flesh instead of leather. In our first game we went down eleven runs before we had an opportunity to bat and I had broken two clipboards in frustration. Most of the teams we played tried to keep the score down but for the most part it was a futile effort. I had to ask one coach to stop trying to bunt the ball back to the pitcher in an attempt to make outs. We could not field the bunts.

In addition to being bad there was no way to get anywhere easily from Tamassee-Salem. We would travel south to play Dixie, Ware Shoals and McCormick. To the southeast there was Christ Church in Greenville and Thornwell in Clinton. As we traveled toward the rising sun, we went first to Landrum and then on to Blacksburg. Once past Spartanburg we turned again to the southeast to Jonesville and finally on to Lockhart. Landrum was the shortest at just under an hour away, followed by Christ Church at just over an hour. The rest were far, far away, with Lockhart being the farthest. Because of the way that we played, most of our road trips ended in the wee hours of the next morning.

Lockhart school was typical of what had been built in the nineteen-forties or fifties in South Carolina. The Lockhart architecture consisted of one long brick building with an entrance framed by high columns that reminded you of the Parthenon (except the Parthenon’s columns were in better shape). In the spring, the outdoor athletic facility was a football field that doubled as a baseball field. In dead centerfield was a press box with bleachers that extended into left and right fields. Both sets of goal posts were in play as were several light posts that ran behind the bleachers. The right field foul line actually split the goal post which made them in play. The infield was placed off of what would have been the actual football playing field but dimensions were going to be strange. Somewhere near four hundred feet down the left field line, nearer to five hundred down the right and a mere two hundred fifty feet to dead center if you hit a ball over the press box. What really bothered me was the water spigot with the bucket turned over it in center field and the hole filled with tires beyond the right field goal post. The coach had used more chalk to lay out the out of play areas than he had used to line the field. During the longest ground rules meeting in the annals of baseball, I was told that if a ball rolled into the hole filled with tires it was a ground rule double. I was more concerned with what happened if my right fielder fell into it. This game was a tort liability waiting to happen and I decided the best thing for me to do was to put the outfielder I could most afford to lose in right. Sorry, Casey.

As we waited to begin the game, it became apparent that we were the social event of the week. Our dugout consisted of a portable bench on the first base foul line. There were no bleachers so everyone in Lockhart sat behind us in lounge chairs. Before the game everyone was the amiable Dr. Jekyll but as soon as the umpire yelled “Play Ball!” they all became the very hostile Mr. Hyde. There was one particular gentleman directly behind me who rode me like a fine cutting horse. I usually don’t mind this as it usually keeps the cretins off of the kids. He was dressed to impress, wearing bib overalls over a discolored “wife beater” tee and tipped the scales at least one hundred pounds over what would be considered healthy. Graying brown hair stuck out of his mesh cap in every direction and it was hard to discern where his mullet ended and his back hair began. Every time he tried to get under my skin, I tried to wise crack back. I did take offense when he yelled across the diamond to the umpire: “Kain’t you keep that fat son of a bitch in the coach’s box?” When I came back over after our at bat I pointed out that there was no coach’s box and I really wasn’t that fat. After the fifth inning, I asked him what was going to give his life meaning after I left to go back to Salem. He must have gotten depressed contemplating our separation because I heard nothing from him for the rest of the game.

Everybody who batted got a good dose of fan ridicule. Some of it was the good natured, “You swing like a broken gate” ribbing but a lot of it was personal and most of it focused on body features or types. Todd Oliver became the focus of two young men standing near the concession stand and every time he came to the plate they began to chide him with comments about the Pillsbury Doughboy or the Michelin Man. Todd was somewhat rounded but I really never considered him terribly overweight. I wondered if these two fans actually owned or had ever looked in a mirror. To be honest, had they been a couple of inches taller they would have been round. Both boys would have dressed out at about two seventy five or three hundred pounds and they only stopped yelling when stuffing their faces with hotdogs. I thought about bribing them with food to shut them up but I realized I had not brought enough money for the food they might consume. With hands on hips, I fixed them with my steely glare from the third base coach’s box, in hopes it would draw their attention away from Todd. That simply got the woman who sat with them questioning what I might be looking at. I assured her that it was not her. Maybe if she shaved…her chin. I know…sometimes my mouth should have a locking brake.

At some point I asked their coach if it was always this bad. He studied me a moment and smiled, “This isn’t bad; you should be have been here when we played Jonesville.” I asked if he had ever tried to do a little “fan training” on the accepted methods of taunting and he laughed as if I had told the best joke he had ever heard. “What gives?” He calmly explained: “You did notice that I am black and that this is Lockhart, right?” He went on to say that the only reason he had the job was because no one else would take it and that he was riding out the season. This would be Lockhart’s last baseball season as they consolidated the following year with Union. The people of Lockhart were upset. I was not.

The game itself was the best we played all year. Not only did we get it past the fifth, we held a seven to six lead going into the bottom of the seventh. In my mind I knew that the baseball gods would not shine upon us that day. I could only hope that somehow, someway we would stumble into a win. Their best hitter tripled to right field. I tried to will it to land in the hole filled with tires but he actually hit it over the hole. He scored on a sharply hit ball that skipped through the infield in to right field. As the batter tried to stretch his hit into a double, Casey’s throw got by the five players who should have fielded it. It bounced over the third base foul line and rolled into out of play territory. The umpires deemed that the runner had made third and awarded him home and the game. I really don’t blame them. The umpires had absorbed a great deal of fan abuse and were ready to go home. As I left the field, everyone had turned back into Dr. Jekyll again. They were such gracious winners. One older gentleman came up to me as we left the field and apologized for the conduct of the fans. I started to say that it was okay but decided that it wasn’t. I simply thanked him for his concern.

Tamassee-Salem baseball survived the trip. I tried to build on the positives and soothe sore and bruised pride. I also tried to explain why I felt everything that went on at Lockhart was wrong and how we could not let the fans get under our skin nor would I allow us to stoop to that type of strategy. Getting into our heads was what the Lockhart supporters wanted to do, and by allowing them to distract us, had contributed to our loss. Nietzsche taught that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It must be true. We played every remaining game into the seventh inning and found ourselves ahead in the seventh inning of our final game of 2001. As we faced our opponent’s last batter I had a different feeling than the one I had in the Lockhart game. We were not going to have to try to stumble into a victory and find ourselves falling short. As we recorded the last out, I reacted to the victory but no one else did. As I jumped to my feet and pumped my hands over my head in jubilation my team looked at me as if I had lost my mind. It was their first victory in two seasons and the team was stunned into a silence reminiscent of funerals and libraries. Our kids had not won in so long that they did not know how to celebrate. It did not take long for them to figure it out. Players, parents and fans were soon chest bumping and high fiving. I am sure, had there been champagne; everyone would have been spraying it as if we had just won game seven of the World Series. I found it particularly satisfying to see the huge grins on the faces of Todd Oliver and Casey Wood. Both of them had played such prominent roles in the Lockhart game and the 2001 season as a whole. If either one of those smiles had been a power source, I am sure it would have lit up Oconee County. I was smiling pretty broadly myself as I thought, “If you could only win one game, the last one should be the one.”

WHAT ARE I?

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WHAT ARE I?
I have been involved in a Facebook argument of Biblical proportions…only because I am having such a flood of emotions. Just a small argument, not Biblical at all I guess, although one of my protagonists might wish that a Biblical flood would wash me away. He is so far right I can see left from where he is and it causes me to question my own political position. I no longer know what I am. I used to know. Now I am at a loss. Sixty-five and I don’t know what I are! I need a tag. NO! Not a skin tag. I need a political tag. I used to say that I was a moderate but I just don’t know. Just an average, middle of the road kind of Joe who voted with his heart and not a party. I have voted in eleven presidential elections, five times Republican, five times Democrat and once I threw my vote away and wrote in Alfred E. Newman. Now I feel I need a tag. Libtard, right wing storm trooper. I just don’t know. “They gotta name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose. They call Alabama the Crimson Tide. Call me Deacon Blues.” Naaa. It’s a good Steely Dan tune but it just doesn’t work BECAUSE I AM NOT A LOSER…maybe.
Okay, let’s try to figure it out. Y’all will help right? So let’s begin. Shall we? I believe that our borders should be defended. Both of them in fact, although not many Canucks seem to be headed south. Was that a derogatory term and should I care in this too PC world? We should not let illegals come in. Deport any immigrants who are criminals. Have a program that fine upstanding citizens-to-be can complete. According to the Facebook posts I’ve seen there may be two of them. When newly created legals complete a twenty-year citizenship program, give them the “brass ring” because they will have earned it…and that includes those anchor babies, too. “No speaky English, no gitty the brass ring!” That makes me a conservative, right? I will go further to say that we should limit the number of legal aliens entering the country. We just have too many people speaking with accents. Right wing storm trooper?
Okay the truth is I do believe we need to defend our borders but how do we fund it? How do we patrol it? Jobs for unemployed veterans? I want vets to have jobs. They deserve them and should be sent to the head of the employment line. How do we pay for an expanded border patrol and the cost of deporting twelve million illegal aliens? Oh, we save it on benefits that we are giving them I guess. Are we going to build Trump’s beautiful tall wall and use my Social Security check to pay for it? ENTITLEMENT? I HAVE SPENT FIFTY YEARS PAYING INTO IT. HOW IS IT AN ENTITLEMENT? No one seems to have an answer for how we are going to pay for the wall. Trump, the self-proclaimed front runner, has said he has a plan but I’m still waiting for him to get back to me on it. Better yet, won’t that wall ruin the view? Oh, Trump did say it would be beautiful. Geeez, what are I?
Guarding our borders includes protecting our shores, doesn’t it? Again I am all for protecting our shores from far, far away. A strong military is what we need. According to The Donald, we must have the most feared military in the world. Didn’t the Kaiser and then Hitler want that, too? “Over there, Over there” …wrong war. We really don’t have any cute Afghanistan ditties to sing. The songs about Afghanistan tend to be dark. According to South Carolina’s “setting son” Lindsay Graham, “We must put more boots on the ground if we want to win.” I agree…if Afghanistan can be won. That’s liberal isn’t it? But what about those twenty thousand boots that represent ten thousand troops? Are the American people going to allow an escalation in the war? I haven’t heard that term since Vietnam because it is a bad word. Libtard I are?
No problem. Pull all our troops out and NUKE THEM. They are just a bunch of “towel heads” and “goat f@#kers.” Turn the whole place into a shiny glass parking lot. While you are at it, take care of those two “I” places that no one can keep straight or find on a map. Sorry, my desire to have a right wing storm trooper tag just went away. I actually saw that sentiment in print. Aside from the lack of humanity, do you really think Putin and his minions are going to allow us to play with nukes in his backyard? Oh, now what are I? Smart I would think.
Another massacre has started the debate on gun control again. Can we not let the bodies cool before we have knee-jerk reactions? Can we not wait to spread rumor until the authorities have a chance to sort things out? Within two hours I heard from the right that the shooter was a Muslim and from the left that he had ties to the IRA. Personally, I think he was a green-skinned illegal alien from a planet in the Luhman binary star system. What he was, was a disturbed young man who killed nine innocent people and not a green-skinned, Muslim radical of Irish decent. My conservative side agrees with leaving the Second Amendment alone. My liberal side whispers that if he had only a knife or a rock we wouldn’t be talking about nine dead. My rational side believes that no one is coming for our guns. Is it too liberal to agree with the recent Winthrop Poll? I found it surprising that South Carolinians agreed with background checks and to extend, if necessary, the present three-day waiting period before taking the gun home. Most agreed with closing some of the gaps with gun shows. I guess my most liberal thought on gun control is that if you need to hunt with an assault rifle, you probably ought to spend that money buying meat rather than hunting for it. Else you will be picking bullets out of its hide all day long!
So, what are I? I don’t think I have figured it out yet. Maybe I should just be like the Popeye of old without the forearms. “I yam what I yam!” I don’t know what I yam either and don’t know how to write the cute little chuckle Popeye had after he said it. To be honest, after the nine deaths in Oregon, I don’t feel like chuckling at all. Maybe what I are is a realist.

A TRIBUTE TO TIM…A YEAR LATER

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A TRIBUTE TO TIM…A YEAR LATER
One year ago after attending former player Tim Bright’s funeral I found myself writing about the pain that I was feeling and my way of dealing with it. In the book “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” I wrote, “During a depressing early morning walk after my last visit with Tim. I came to a reality of sorts and found a bit of peace and comfort in a strange, cold and unlikely place…science. There is a scientific law that states “Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Energy can only be changed.” I have taught Conservation of Energy thousands of times, but that morning it became more of an anodyne than just a cold scientific law.

Tim possesses a tremendous positive energy that seems to grow stronger and inspire as his illness has grown stronger. I have no doubt that his energy will continue to live on as his physical existence dims. How can it grow if energy cannot be created? It grows from the love and care displayed by his wife, his family and his friends. It grows from everything that is good and just, and it grows despite his willingness to share it with everyone. I know that he shares it because I can feel it growing in me.

I believe that the trials that Tim is going through are a test. A test that he has to pass to prepare him for something bigger and more important that he must accomplish. I believe he has passed the test with flying colors. I know that I will find comfort every time I walk out and view the heavens in the night sky. I will look for the brightest star in the sky and know that Tim is present. Whether it is in body or in soul, Tim will be with us in our darkest hours “to show us how to live, to teach us how to give and to guide us with the light of love.” (Respects to Alabama)”

It would be less than a week later that my nurse-daughter would call and tearfully let me know that Tim had left us. There has not been a clear star lit evening since that night that I haven’t thought about Tim when I have looked toward the night sky and seen bright stars twinkling. It won’t be long before Orion the Hunter dominates the sky. I remember so many early morning runs during the fall and winter days where I always felt safe as I chased Orion through the still dark skies. I felt protected from the horrors hidden in the dark knowing that Orion was above me. I feel the same now that Tim has joined him.

Tim’s death made me analyze my own beliefs. He made me inspect my religion, not my Christianity, because often Christianity and religion are not same. I had joked about my religion, after all my God is a humorous God, although over the last year it has not been much of a joke. Despite my “dunking” into the Baptist Church, I have tried to apply my beliefs to what I have called the Evolutionary, New Testament Church of Christ, membership of one…me. I am adding “loving” to the title because of Tim and his loving wife Jenny. “The Evolutionary, New Testament, LOVING Church of Christ. During his short life on Earth Jesus Christ both taught and lived his love and this has become a major tenet of my religious beliefs with help from Tim. Tim truly loved his fellow man…and was loved back in kind. Tim lived a life that was too short but it was a life filled with love, both given and received. That love is evident when anyone talks about him including me, his family, community and his friends. I can think of no better epitaph then that he “Loved His Fellow Man.” I pray I can live up to his ideal.

Inevitably when I think of Tim I think of others that have been lost. Two others have joined Tim from the same team, Jeff Gully and Heath Benedict, and recently former Landrum player Brian Kuykendall left us. It is impossible to forget my championship cut-up Michael Douty. There is also the quiet one from Mauldin, Tim Wilder. I know there are others and I don’t want to know who they are. It’s easier just to pretend that they are still out there, just out of touch, just out of reach. It is easy to feel sorrow losing them and I can only imagine the grief their families have gone and are going through. I hope they understand when I say, “I was lucky to have had them as a part of my life even if it was for a short time. I may, at times, cry for them but more than likely their memory will bring a smile to my face and a laugh to my heart as I look into the evening sky and see the brightest, twinkling stars.”

WHAT IT WAS WAS FOOTBALL

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WHAT IT WAS WAS FOOTBALL
Earlier in the week with equal parts understanding and trepidation, I viewed the story of a Missouri school district disbanding its football program. Danger and fear of head and neck injuries and, with the addition of less expensive and less dangerous sports, reduced participation in football is inevitable. When I say less dangerous, I believe that in any sport there is a potential for injury but with collisions on every play, football is high risk. My apprehension is that this is the drip that will turn into a flood if we don’t work to make football safer and more fun to play. Fun may be more of the issue than safety. In a national poll, the highest percentage of former players listed no longer enjoying playing as their reason for giving up football.

As both a player and a coach, football was a part of my life for over thirty years. It’s still a part of my life as I have become a spectator; however I have found that it is not nearly as enjoyable because I do not know the kids who are participating. I am a little jealous of my friends who are still coaching…but not enough to brave the August sun, the long hours and what has turned into a yearlong season.

I never thought I would be talking about fun and football in the same sentence. Making football more enjoyable has come a long way with the new pass-happy offenses…that is unless you are a defensive coordinator. I think if I were still a defensive coordinator I would wear a paper bag over my head if I had to try to stop these “fun and gun” offenses.

There are just some parts of football that are not fun. Bumps and bruises aside, August heat and humidity are hard to endure. Offensive linemen don’t have fun…unless there is a “pancake” block I guess. I was an offensive lineman in high school and I can assure you I never walked out on the playground and suggested that we work on our blocking. “Hey! Stand there and let me run into you and then you can run into me.” During our Thursday before practice tag football games I witnessed that even “Big Eaters” like to play with a football.

Rule changes and new technology have actually made football safer but not totally. New diets and new year-round strength and conditioning programs have made it both safer and more dangerous. Force equals mass times acceleration. With the increase in size and speed, players are able to hit each other a lot harder. Want to lessen head injuries? Take the face mask off the helmet. Dental bills and nose jobs will increase but I bet you traumatic head injuries will decrease.

Football is harder to play than other team sports. Before you attack me, I did not say better or more important. To the person playing “tiddlywinks,” it is more important. Tiddlywink players, I support and applaud you. Hitting a baseball may be the hardest athletic technique to master as even a good hitter has a seventy percent failure rate. I salute pitchers for their skill. But that is not what I mean by harder. What I mean is, physical pain aside, a football team has more “moving parts” that have to be in sync. A baseball or softball game can be controlled by one person, the pitcher, if that pitcher has someone who can catch the pitch. In basketball, a game can be controlled by a point guard, a post player and three people willing to get out of the way. In soccer, within the team concept, there is a great deal of individualism and individual creativity. None of these sports require the precision that is necessary in football…These are sports that I have coached or coached and played so I have some experience to go with my opinion. Just so you other folks are not mad at me, I also believe that there is an artistic beauty to those other sports that you just don’t have in football. Football is just brutal, even when occasionally played with a little finesse.

I have never believed that any athletic event is a war, no matter what pro-athletes or, cough, cough, coaches say. I believe we use this description too often and it devalues what our military and law enforcement personnel go through. Football has a foxhole kind of mentality that you don’t get in other sports or, at least, the sports that I have coached.

Life lessons are learned when playing all sports; however, there is a uniqueness to lessons grasped in football. Just because of the sheer numbers in football, a very distinctive form of teamwork must be executed. Everyone has to learn a role, even second and third stringers. Outstanding football teams have good backups who understand their roles. Each player has to rely upon the guy next to him to do his job. The players absolutely must work together.

Football players must persist to achieve and to continue to work hard even when they are banged up or after a big loss or series of losses. It’s easy to come to practice after a win because you have an adrenaline high after the victory. I had one coach tell me that it was better than sex. Why? Because the high lasts all week. If you win a state championship, I guess the high lasts for a year. If this were a Viagra commercial we would need to seek medical help! What is grueling about the sport is having to get back up after a heartbreaking defeat or a whole series of them. I know it seems trite, but football is not about getting knocked down; it’s about getting back up.

I heard a young head coach speak this week. I felt for him. They are five games into the season and his team has scored just thirteen points…and given up over two hundred. That’s right. They have been outscored over forty to a little less than three. Talk about an exercise in futility! What impressed me first about him was his humor, even if it was a type of gallows humor. Secondly, he was optimistic that they were getting better… even if it was just picking up one first down.

I hope high school football doesn’t go the way of the dinosaurs or that we turn it into a flag football league. Had I had a son, I would have wanted him to play but would have supported him if he didn’t want to play. My daughter played futbol and was a tough knot. Had she wanted to play football, I would have supported her after I had tried to talk her out of it. I just believe it is worth the risk because of the life lessons that you learn and the friendships you cultivate. I hold this opinion because of the warm feelings that I have as I remember coaching and playing this awesome sport.

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING…

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THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING…
I was six months past my twelfth birthday and really wasn’t sure I would live to see thirteen. Oh there was so much I wanted to do someday. Drive a car, find a girlfriend, walk through those double doors as a high school freshman, find a girlfriend, see Mickey Mantle play at the “House that Ruth Built,” and finally find a girlfriend. But the Cold War was escalating. “Dad, why don’t we have a fallout shelter? Do you think we ought to start digging one?” As he looked up from his crossword puzzle and cocked an eyebrow he said, “Sure. Get started. I’ll tell you when you are deep enough.”
In October of 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis was at its height. Walter Cronkite showed me images of nukes found in Cuba; Kennedy sitting behind his desk in a special broadcast explaining why we were blockading Cuba; Castro and Khrushchev standing with arms raised above their heads holding hands…make that clasping hands. It sounds so much manlier. Uncle Olin and Cousin Hall were reservists and worried they were about to be called up. Some one used the propaganda catch phrase “I’d rather be dead than Red!” Wait just one dang minute! I want that car, that girlfriend and all the other stuff. I’m ten and I’d rather be any color other than dead.
Do you remember Khrushchev during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly banging his shoe on the podium and shouting in Russian, “We will bury you?” This was earlier in the fall of 1960 and on my black and white I could tell he was pissed. It was a reaction to England’s Harold McMillian…or to the Philippine’s Lorenzo Sumulong. Witnesses are unsure as to which. Short, with a close-cropped balding head, he had a large elevated mole around his nose. Despite these unflattering features, when he smiled and wore his reading glasses, he resembled someone’s grandfather. This day he resembled one of the devil’s minions. The scene was an iconic image of very angry person. His threatening statement sent chills through our collective hearts. It is a vivid memory but there are two problems. Problem one was that he might not have banged the shoe at all and his statement more closely translated to “We will outlast you.” The translator might have been a bit overworked at the time. The second problem? We bought into the iconic image and original translation because of our national propaganda machine. Consequently, most of the people from our generation remember it exactly that way. One of the first things I checked on my return to school the next day was the exact location of the yellow and black sign with the odd symbol designating the “Fallout Shelter.” I decided that I would be the first in line to enter.
I watched too much TV back then…still do! There was a short animated film shown on the Ed Sullivan Show called “A Short Vision?” Did you see it? If you have forgotten it or are too young, you still can see it on YouTube because I just did. In 1956 it traumatized an entire generation of children and kept their parents up at night wondering if this was going to be the night that the Soviets dropped the big one. I don’t know about my parents but one child it traumatized was me. Watching it today was almost as scary as it was sixty years ago. For months when a large airplane flew overhead I would shade my eyes and squint looking for red stars instead of white. At bedtime I prayed that “if I die before I wake please don’t let it be a nuclear bomb.” Shortly thereafter we had our first school “Emergency Drill.” That’s what we call them today, the old “duck and cover” drills. In my day it was “In Case of Nuclear Attack….” There were even posters, the kind you put on the wall of your school not the social media type, explaining what to do to insure your survival. I remember instruction one was to “Stand Clear OF Windows.” Two was to “Remove All Items From Your Pockets…” Somewhere down toward the bottom was Six: “Lean Forward and Place Your Head Between Your Legs.” When I got to college I saw a poster that some humorous someone had scrawled an addendum, “and kiss your ass goodbye.” Sound advice I should think.
In late October of 1962 we learned that I actually had a better chance of reaching the age of eleven than I did of finding a girlfriend…or being radioactive dust. The Russian Bear had blinked. They would remove their ICBM’s from Cuba. What our government didn’t tell us until later was that we would also remove our own weapons from Turkey. Oh life was good or, at least, it would go on for a while.
I should have picked better movies to watch. H-Man, The Blob, Godzilla and Rodan were all silly enough not to scare me even if they were made as statements against nuclear weapons. But then I had to watch On The Beach from a book by Nevil Shute. Later I even read the book. Characterized as a post-apocalyptic thriller, my question was “Don’t some people have to live for it to be a post-apocalyptic thriller?” No one survived the movie or the book. No one in the world. Not the stars, the costars, even the third grip died of radiation poisoning or took the easy way out. I would have taken the easy way…maybe. I had nightmares for months about the final scene of empty streets, sports stadiums and old newspapers blowing in the wind. I still have chills as I think about it.
Speaking of blowing in the wind. I wonder how the wind felt for Maj. T. J. “King” Kong as he rode his H- bomb down to its target in Dr. Strangelove. It would activate a Soviet Doomsday Machine causing nuclear explosions all over the world. That would be the actor Slim Pickens pretending to straddle the bomb as it fell to Earth. Little wonder the movie was described as a dark comedy. Yes, it was a real knee-slapper. As far as I know there were no Doomsday Machines but if they did exist, they are probably still around waiting for the North Koreans or Iranians to attack. Failsafe, in which we drop our own bomb on New York City, was another Cold War thriller that would come out the same year. It appears the whole country, or at least movie producers, were concerned about nuclear bombs being detonated. Apparently, no one “learned” from Dr. Strangelove’s sub-title “to stop worrying and love the bomb.”
Several years later I would find myself sitting in a freshman English class trying to translate the Old English of the Canterbury Tales into country redneck. I was having no success when the air raid siren in downtown Newberry began to blow. It was a test that was repeated every weekday at noon. My English professor, a sometimes not quite sober and always irreverent guy, looked out the window and stated to the class, “If the Rooskies have enough bombs to waste on Newberry, we are f@#$ed. Class is dismissed!”
As I think back I would have to agree and also admit that I miss the Soviets. We thought we knew who our enemies were back then, where they were, and how far we could push them. They wore certain uniforms and lived in certain countries. We knew that we were here and they were somewhere over there. It was our government against their government. Our ideologies versus their ideologies. We had theaters of war where an army would be on a particular side.
Then came Vietnam and the end of our “American Exceptionalism.” Even though the Russians were still involved and were our greatest enemy the environment began to change. Suddenly all uniforms were made of the same camouflage material that looked for the world like pajamas and camouflaged them to look like everyone else but us. We wore the same colors and hats we always had worn but in jungle camo. The fighting took place in a jungle where you could never be quite certain where or who Charlie was. Having said all that we started to sense a blur between the two sides and two sides became three…or more. It was harder to determine just who the enemy was and now the blur has become so exaggerated, it is extremely difficult to separate the “good” guys and the “bad” guys, even on our own side.
Today our governments set up factions to overturn other governments or groups of people in the name of democracy and for the pursuit of oil and other resources. Anyone remember the Shah of Iran? You might want to do a little research if you have asked why the Iranians hate us. Once we pull out, we leave a wealth of armaments which is scooped up by the likes of Al Qaeda or Issis. These arms are then used to destroy the very countries we tried to democratize. These people behead the Christian “infidels” and anyone else who does not submit to their sect of Islam. When you study how these radical jihadists were originally trained and funded by the US, you begin to understand the connection between us and them. And they are everywhere. They have no particular uniform or distinction or even a legitimate government. In a sense they are invisible unless they pick up an Islamist flag or yell “Death to America!” Or simply blow up a bomb somewhere. It would seem that the enemies that we made in the name of the Cold War and the Gulf Wars, and the people of the Middle East who we helped to militarize have very long memories of inequities that have taken place.
We cannot really look around and identify our enemies with any certainty with sleeper cells, pretenders, spies, and double agents. And we must not forget the US involvement in the formation and training of so many of these groups. There is possibly only one place where we can identify the real troublemakers…we can look in a mirror. To quote Pogo and his creator Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
At least back in the 60’s there were air raid sirens that let you know something might be getting ready to happen. If you were lucky enough to be near a bomb shelter, you has some small semblance of safety. You knew that the Russians were coming…and still might. Today, we do not know who, how, when, or what may happen. I think I liked the sirens better.
Picture is from https://anotherexistence.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/atom-piece/

MICKEY MOUSE WAS A JEW?

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MICKEY MOUSE WAS A JEW?

I don’t know why the above statement, not the question, interested me then, in the glow of a flashlight, or now, in the fog of forty-eight years of brain cell death due to certain excesses involving distilled or brewed spirits. At the age of seventeen, with most of my brain cells still intact, seeing it scrawled on the wall in red paint along with a crude swastika gave me pause to think…for a moment, at least. So many questions. I knew about Hitler’s Final Solution and the death camps but what was a Jew and why would Mickey Mouse be one? After forty-eight years I still have no answers to those questions but do understand their relationship to the swastika.

I also don’t have any real answers as to why we were at Historic Brattonsville, outside of Rock Hill, late on a moonlit night. It was not “a dark and stormy” night, in fact, there was a “werewolf” full moon and no moors nearby. One might assume that it had something to do with girls and alcohol. Your assumption would only be partially correct because there was no alcohol. We didn’t need alcohol to be stupid because girls were usually all it took to cause a stupid reaction in teenage boys. I don’t know what excuse the girls had. In reality, in the spring of 1968, there was little that was historic about the dump that was Brattonsville. Brattonsville was a former plantation that came into existence in the 1760’s and grew to include some thirty buildings including a store and a three-story brick and wood manor house owned by the doctor who gave the ‘ville its name. A Revolutionary War battle fought nearby was a prequel to Kings Mountain and Camden. The buildings and store had fallen into disrepair and would not undergo renovations until the early Seventies. Since this was the late Sixties, we found ourselves in a rundown place on a “dark and scary” night.

I reiterate that there is no reason for teenagers to be stupid, we just were, and the group that I ran with was typical. For no other reason than being stupid, we somehow came to the conclusion that looking for ghosts in old abandoned structures would be an interesting thing to do. It began after a play practice but, for the life of me, I have no idea who suggested it or why. I do remember that we started a search for “alien lights” which turned out to be the distant Charlotte airport searchlight bouncing off thick, low-hanging clouds. Once we had scientifically proven there was no “intelligent life out there”, we decided to prove there was no “intelligent life” in our teenage world either. We were Successful!

One of the girls in our little group had mentioned Brattonsville which would explain how John and I, along with the two young ladies, had ended up there. My date knew a lot about the history of the area, including a story about a suspected Revolutionary War spy who had been hung from the pulley suspended outside of Doctor Bratton’s third story clinic in the manor house called “Fair Forest.” According to “her story” the spirit of the spy continued to haunt the place waiting for his soul to “cross-over” to the other side. Despite our fears, we took the late night tour of the original pre-Revolutionary War home place before finding our way into “Fair Forest” and seeing the scrawled message on the dining room wall.

Because I had the flashlight, I got to see the scrawling first, along with other graffiti, and because of that same flashlight became the de facto leader of the group. My date kept a running commentary going about the house and certain legends as we wandered through the building. A kitchen was connected to the main house by a covered causeway. It was not hard to visualize kitchen slaves, dressed in Aunt Jemima garb, the original not the modern, socially acceptable one, carrying platters of food from the huge fireplace to the dining room and served by old, dark men in black waistcoats. We visited all of the rooms, floor by floor, making note of the fireplaces and centuries-old mantels. On the second floor we found another narrow staircase and, leaving no stone unturned or in this case no ghost unfound, we made our way up to what I was told was “Doctor Bratton’s laboratory.” I had seen too many “monster movies.” On a dark night, in an old abandoned mansion, how could you not have thoughts about Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory with Boris Karloff waiting to get re-animated? You couldn’t.

As I entered the “laboratory,” actually just a large room that seemed to be part of an attic, I made room for everyone else and panned the room with the flashlight. Silhouetted against the opened floor-length double doors that led to the pulley was a body hung by the neck and swinging from the rafters. I was petrified! The hackles of my neck stood up and muscles tensed all the way down to my heels. I now understood the saying “scared stiff.” My brain said run but my body would not oblige. There was nothing wrong with my hearing and from the sounds of retreating feet in rapid motion, I knew that I was now all alone. Just enough breeze blew to cause the body to spin. As it slowly turned, I found myself staring into the blank face of a…hung…dead…department store mannequin. “Boy neat trick. A real knee slapper. Ha, you got me.” Suddenly I had the urge to pee…Glad that was frozen up, too or I might have been embarrassed. Let’s make sure that you understand that I was not being brave standing my ground. I might as well have been nailed to the spot. The only thing that smacked of being brave was that there was no puddle around my feet.
Since I had the keys to the car and it was locked, I decided to do a little more exploring before leaving and informing the rest of my little group about how badly we had gotten used. I found the “dummy” to have been dressed in blue jeans, a tattered plaid shirt and a Mickey Mouse Club hat with ears. Pinned to its chest was a sheet of paper that informed me that this was “Mickey Mouse.” When I got back to the car I did get one “Thank God.” For my return or for getting the car door open? Once inside, the next question was “What are we going to do?” I assured everyone that it was okay, “It’s just a Jewish guy named Mickey.” After a pause and some nervous laughter, I came clean and, of course, they wanted to go back and see for themselves.

This would be my last attempt at ghost hunting but not for the reason you might think. As we came back down the narrow stairs and into the main hallway I suddenly smelled cigarette smoke. Remember my hackles? They went up again because no one in our group had been smoking. As I hustled us out, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the glow of a cigarette in the crack made by a slightly opened door. No more ghost hunting for me!

I find myself intrigued that a badly written bit of graffiti and a hanging mannequin has been more thought-provoking than the possibility of having escaped death from a machete-wielding psycho or by secondhand cigarette smoke, at the very least. I still don’t know what it means to be Jewish. To my knowledge, I have met only three Jews in my entire life. All three were survivors of the Holocaust and had stories that they did not want to tell but told anyway. I thank them for sharing. All three are now gone, I hope, to join the families who they lost to the ovens. I am unsure about Jewish heaven and hell, although I guess, some had already experienced hell on earth. I wonder about that swastika and the mannequin… but for the life of me, “Why was Mickey Mouse a Jew?”

When Will the Madness End?

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My heart is breaking for the victims of the Oregon Shootings and their families and friends. Something must be done. It is insane to continue on this course.
REMEMBER ME by Margaret Mead
To the living, I am gone.
To the sorrowful, I will never return.
To the angry, I was cheated,
But to the happy, I am at peace,
And to the faithful, I have never left.
I cannot be seen, but I can be heard.
So as you stand upon a shore, gazing at a beautiful sea – remember me.
As you look in awe at a mighty forest and its grand majesty – remember me.
As you look upon a flower and admire its simplicity – remember me.
Remember me in your heart, your thoughts, your memories of the times we loved,
the times we cried, the times we fought, the times we laughed.
For if you always think of me, I will never be gone.
Picture from: http://www.wdsu.com/image/view/-/35608434/medRes/4/-/maxh/460/maxw/620/-/tjpo76z/-/Oregon-shooting-students-emotional-JPG.jpg

THE GAME OF POLITICS

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I have seen right and left wing posts maligning each other. I have watched the circus they call debates. We haven’t even gotten to the campaign ad season and I am already gagging. It is Trump versus Carson…hell Trump versus everyone, the fiasco that is Hillary, Huckabee, Cruz…oh just pick and plug in a name. Part soap opera, part demolition derby. It would be hilarious if they weren’t playing with my life. It reminds me of a really bad athletic event, especially since each party and their supporters are trying to outscore the other without saying anything of substance. It’s awful because there are no rules it would seem. I have a great idea. Let’s make the election process like an athletic event…no, WE WILL make it an athletic event!

First, we need to pick an event that all of the politicians are good at. Lying or talking all day without saying anything is not a spectator sport. Maybe we should pick an event that they are equally bad at. Something like Australian Rules football…no, we need a game that is or was played closer to home…say …ULLAMALIZTLI! Never heard of it? Can’t pronounce it? Perfect! I would say none of our politicians have heard of it either.

Ullamaliztli is the ancient Aztec game that combined basketball,soccer, football, religion, politics and human sacrifice. I LIKE IT! One would really have to believe in his or her party’s platform to risk having their heart, still beating, ripped from their chest and presented for inspection to the gods. I am liking it even more and I am not usually this bloodthirsty. Wait, there may be a problem. Does Donald Trump even have a heart? Maybe we can get Dr. Carson to try to detect one…WITH AN OBSIDIAN KNIFE! Team members could be picked from the most ardent party members in the Senate or House. The winning team would have the right to put their president into office. There should also be a lobbyist or two on each team, picked at random. Since there is human sacrifice involved, we should get rid of that pesky log jam that both parties hold against the other.

Played on a sunken court with a one-hundred to two-hundred foot rock floor, it had eight to eleven-foot high walls that sloped down to the court floor. Walls…I’m having a vision of prison walls, but while Republicans think Hillary should be in prison for her emails, it’s not that kind of wall. Surrounding the court was a seating area where spectators gambled on the outcome. Skulls of sacrificed coaches and teams surrounded the spectator area and looked down on the contestants. Nice motivational tool and right down Hillary’s alley, I would think.

The goal of the game was to put a nine-pound rubber ball through a stone ring hung vertically and located at mid-court. Sounds easy except for the part about not touching the ball with your hands or letting it hit the ground. The game ended when the ball was put through the stone ring – a feat that sometimes took a day or two of continuous play to accomplish. The game was violent, leaving the contestants bruised and bloodied. I can’t help but visualize The Donald running down the court, the wind blowing through his comb-over, getting cross-body blocked by Hilary Clinton or vice versa. Bernie and Ben are way too soft-spoken to get into each other’s grill. That would not work, I guess, because as front runners, they would have to be the coaches. Okay, Pelosi and Boehner, or his replacement, could body block each other. The upside is that somebody is going to lose their heart…if, in fact, they have one to begin with.

The original game was both political and religious in nature. Wars between Aztec cities were known to occur over outcomes. In one instance a winning king was presented a victory garland with a choking cord inside. He was assassinated on the spot.

Again I feel a bit bloodthirsty but the best part of the closing ceremonies would be the religious sacrifice of the losing presidential candidate… I mean the losing coach and possibly the entire team. If incompetence is not a virtue, it would be the entire team. Stewed to the gills on drugs, the losing coach would be held down, chest split open and his still beating heart would be cut from his chest and shown to the gods. The Aztecs believed that if a sacrifice was not made the Sun would not rise the following morning. In today’s political climate, the “Sun” shines very darkly. Could the sacrifices take the place of term limits? In some accounts it might have even been the winning coach who was sacrificed, but who cares as long as “elbows to the teeth” replace the campaign process. Broadcasted live and in living color “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” would have new meanings as the Supreme Court Judges, dressed in black robes and masks, carried out the sacrifice.

Okay, I don’t want Homeland Security or the Secret Service to come calling. I am really just a harmless old coot who is fed up with our political process that is being played out like a cock fight between old moth-eaten hens with no brains…I mean heads. Or if it were football, the game that is our present political system would take twenty-five plays to score…against air. WAIT…BEER SOFTBALL OR BETTER YET, LIQUER SOFTBALL. That might be as funny as the candidates themselves….