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TOTALLY ILL EQUIPPED

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BELIEVE IT! Our forefathers were built of sterner stuff!
Our power is off and I am writing this by virtue of the wonderful modern technology we possess, a battery powered laptop. I am also freezing despite the roaring fire I have going and the worry I feel that my lower than normal wood reserves will dwindle to nothing before Blue Ridge Coop gets the power back on. It can’t be much above freezing in here. I also wonder how previous generations survived. You see, here in the “Dark Corner” of upstate South Carolina, we are having a major winter event. I live in the South where most of our “snow storms” would be classified as a mist if it were rain and an inch of snow can bring everything to a screeching halt…except the dairy and bread baking industry. Ours was a doomsday forecast with copious amounts of predicted snow falling followed by freezing rain and sleet followed by more snow. We are on the thin line separating more freezing rain from more snow. I pray we are on the snow side of that line and as dawn breaks I see we probably were. It looks to be some six to eight inches of compacted snow and ice. So let’s get the power back on okay?

Nearly thirty years ago, my wife and I decided to purchase a farmhouse built in 1888. Built on top of oak timbers milled from the land, it had bead board walls and ceilings, pine flooring, wavy lead glass windows, all covered by tin shingles. Thirty years ago we were big on “ambience,” today we are big on “KEEPING WARM!”

The old house sat empty from the Forties until 1956. It also sat bathroom-less with no plumbing or electricity and no heating system other than the five fire places and the wood “cook stove” sitting in the kitchen. It is my guess most of the winter functions “back in the day” took place in the small kitchen due to the heat produced by that the cook stove…and the kitchen’s close proximity to the path that lead to the distant outhouse. The old house also had no insulation until 1956 when shredded paper insulation was blown into the walls. Sixty years later my guess is the insulation has compressed just a wee bit. Thankfully we added a modern “edition” that is well insulated but still the temperature just can’t be much above freezing in here…can it?

Can you imagine keeping five fireplaces and a wood stove fed during the winter months? We found a broken cross cut saw, forgotten in a closet, which I am sure is a tribute to the “stuff” the original owner’s had. I have a top of the line, modern chainsaw and since my last bout of sciatica from splitting wood with an axe and maul, a yearning for a hydraulic splitter. I can’t imagine keeping those fireplaces fed with modern technology much less with just an axe and crosscut saw. Did they just freeze if someone comes down with sciatica? I hear people “yearning for the good old days.” Really? Maybe simpler, less stressed out days. More time to spend with family instead of trekking to and from the office maybe…. Just remember “more family time” might be sitting around the kitchen stove for the heat or family wood cutting and splitting expeditions.

YEAAAAAAA! THE POWER’S BACK ON! Quick turn up the heat! Wait, the furnace thermostat says it’s a balmy sixty degrees. Sure seemed colder. Yes, they were built of sterner stuff…or thicker blood.

LIBERATION

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I read that the Buffalo Bills have hired a new assistant coach. Ordinarily news like this would not find its way out of the city of Buffalo but today it is nationally news worthy. And why would that be? Their new, full-time, specialty teams, quality control coach is a female and the first of her kind. Kathryn Smith is the first full-time NFL assistant coach. This comes on the heels of Jill Welter’s internship as she served as an Arizona Cardinal linebacker coach during the summer. Back in April of 2015, Sarah Thomas became the first female NFL official. I guess these would be major steps in women’s rights. It doesn’t seem that long ago women newscasters were arguing with the league for access to the side lines and, GASP, the locker room. My guess is, once the furor and the abusive and stereotypical comments die down, they will be successful in this bastion of testosterone. I do find it interesting many men still believe that “A woman’s place….”

I have been involved with many firsts when relates to Women’s Rights. I taught for the first female principal in Greenville County, South Carolina, coached the first female to be allowed to play high school soccer and the first coed to play football at the varsity level. I was looking for none of these firsts and had the media not made an issue of it I would not have known. Title IX now that’s another story.

I wrote the story “Liberation” for the book FLOPPY PARTS and with the news of the day decided to dust it off. I hope you enjoy.

LIBERATION
Even though Charlotte, NC was close by, we were sheltered from the rapidly changing outside world. It was a long twenty miles to the Queen City on a two-lane blacktop and, by the way we grew up, possibly a decade in time removed. We had gone through the duck and cover drills that assured us that any textbook would protect us from a nuclear attack provided we took all sharp objects from our pockets. We were raised to be stoic and to be seen and not heard. In some ways we were raised to be “un-included.” Words like duty, reverence and respect were a part of our vocabularies. We still believed in the “American Exceptionalism” of the post-World War Two United States despite the warts we tended to ignore. We were decidedly Republican and my grandmother openly worried more about having a Roman Catholic in the White House than a democrat.

Still, being typically male, I was more aware of my floppy parts than world affairs, and, beginning in the late Sixties, they both got tied in knots.
Even though any available female was fair game and a target for our raging hormones, we had been taught to respect women. It was okay to pursue, but you didn’t lay a hand on a woman. You gave up your seat to women and you opened doors for women. As males, we did this not because we viewed women as weaker but as a sign of respect, the same way we were taught to say “Yes, Ma’am” or “No, Ma’am.” Most importantly No Meant No and not maybe. It was easier in those waning days of the Sixties because the girls had been taught the same way… and they didn’t have The Pill. I admit I may be looking through “rose-colored” glasses because I had been surrounded by such STRONG female role models. I believe with all my heart that women who grew up in rural settings during the depression and World War Two were taught to be stronger than their urban counter parts. I remember asking my grandmother to describe the changes she experienced during the Great Depression. She laughed and said, “We were farming on the lien and it was so hard already we never noticed.” That would be that she was out in the fields with my grandfather doing hard “man’s work.”

Regardless of my beliefs, all of them began to change as I welcomed the new decade and my address changed to Newberry. There were many movements spawned by the period. Native American Rights, Gay Rights and environmentalism were a few that joined Civil Rights during the “Age of Love”. Also, there was my favorite – Women’s Rights. There was one positive about the Women’s Liberation Movement – bra burning. Whether they were wearing a bra or not, women deserved to have the same rights as men despite the chauvinist argument “I don’t know why they want to climb down off of their pedestals?” After watching MAD MEN I wonder how high that pedestal actually was and who really had the power. I am sure this portrayal was “exactly” the way it was in the Sixties.
Liberation was a battle ground where if you picked sides you were either labeled a eunuch, if you agreed with the cause, or a chauvinist pig if you didn’t. Most of the Newberry coeds were southern gals (Is my chauvinism showing?) and had grown up under the same Biblical tenants as mine. The “times they were ah changing” and it wasn’t unusual to hear discussions about “Who should pay for the cost of birth control?” or “Who should make the decision about getting an abortion?” Fifty years later I still avoid expressing opinions on those questions because to do so would be to spoil for a fight.

Women’s Lib finally tied me in knots in the early Seventies. I remember walking up to the campus library door and seeing the reflection of a coed approaching me from behind in the door’s polished glass. Her reflection was dressed in bell bottoms and a pea coat, fashion staples of the period for those individuals who took political positions somewhere left of center. I also had time to notice her really short dark hair and the narrow, hawkish shape of her face. Nevertheless, I paused and opened the door for her. Smiling, I nodded my head and then got my ears pinned back. With a face that truly had turned hawkish she spat, “What are you asking me to do? Inviting me into to your male-dominated world? Baby Dicked Chauvinist Pig!” If you are waiting for my snappy comeback, hell may freeze over first. I still don’t have one. I should add, she still managed to enter the library ahead of me through the still-opened door but then so did the next fifteen people as I stood with jaw “slack and agape.” Baby dicked? Where did that come from?

Despite wearing khakis, oxford cloth and penny loafers during most of my adult life, I find myself embracing my “Old Hippy” side with flip flops, blue jeans and tee shirts to accommodate my move to the center left of politics as I have retired. Hawaiian shirts are a far cry from bells and pea coats but I wear them proudly. I believe in equality above all else. Equal rights, whether racial, gender, sexual, religious or economic, should be our goal as a country or as a people of that country. Women should have the same opportunities to succeed or to fail as men and it should be for the same pay. I was again sheltered when I chose teaching as my vocation. Teaching opportunities and pay were always equal and, as far as pay was concerned…Sorry, wrong movement. Now, I don’t know about upward mobility into administration but I do know that if I were ranking principals, women would take the top two positions as the best of the many I have had. The best one asked me during my interview in 1974 if I would have a problem working for a woman. She kind of leaned in as if she were going to tell me a dirty joke when she asked me. I thought, to myself, “I want this job so badly I would work for an orangutan.” To her I simply answered, “No problems whatsoever, I love women. My mother was a woman.”

I think there might have been a price for the equality so deserved by women. I read more about the rise of attacks against women or spousal abuse and see that doors are not opened and seats not given up nearly as often as they used to be even here in this hotbed of Southern chivalry. I guess I should add despite a little hawk-faced witch from 1970. Could that be the price that women pay? Maybe they did knock themselves off of their pedestal.

During the late Seventies, athletics were equalized due to Title IX legislation…except it wasn’t, at least in the school district in which I toiled. Rather than add resources to girl’s athletics, resources were taken away from men’s athletics which left a bitter taste in most male coaches’ mouths. I remember being told that, as a baseball coach, half of any money raised by my baseball team could be spent by the softball team whether they participated in the fund raiser or not. Luckily I had great relationships with my softball coaches and this never happened. Everyone didn’t have those great relationships that I fostered with malice and forethought.

While sitting quietly in a graduate course that included a study of the distribution of monies for athletics, a young female coach commented that it did not matter. “God Football” gets it all and until they fire all of the football coaches, girls would get nothing. At a break I could not help myself and strolled over to advise her that, while her feelings might be warranted, expressing them in an open forum might not be the best idea, especially if she were looking for a job. I also pointed out that football paid the bills and probably was what allowed her to have a job. She said something about having to “audition instead of interview” and that she was not “giving up the cause” just to get a job and that “maybe I should wait until my advice was asked for.” Her bell bottoms and pea coat were showing and no good deed goes unpunished. Several months later as we were looking for a girls’ softball coach, I received a call from my principal informing me that he was sending a prospective coach to be interviewed. Yeah, it was her and the look on her face was priceless. No, she didn’t get the job. Instead, we hired a softball coach who was also an offensive line coach. To her credit, she didn’t back down either, but then I am sure she knew she was doomed from the start. Does this make me a chauvinist? I don’t think so… but I do admit to being a realist.

If you enjoyed this story you may download it and other “STUPID MAN TRICKS” in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu

SUMMER OF LOVE

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This is an excerpt from a story, “Summer of Love,” that can be download with the book PATHWAYS using the link http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

How did I react? I was pretty much oblivious. I knew about the war and did not want to go fight in a distant rice paddy. The Summer of Love decade in San Francisco, however, was nothing like the summer of love decade for me in Indian Land. From 1964 until 1969 I was so in love I could not think about anything that did not involve my raging hormones. A little blond girl had me by the short hairs and would not let go even when we weren’t seeing each other. For five years we drifted into and out of each other’s lives until I figured out the dynamics that were at play and managed to end it for good. Even then she may have contributed to a divorce in 1978, despite the fact I have not seen or spoken to her since 1969. I was a late-blooming baby boomer who was primarily a blooming idiot. The day we met, in the late summer before our freshman year in high school, I was walking up the dirt road from the river to my home after an afternoon of hay hauling. Not exactly dressed to impress in hay and mud-covered blue jeans, a tee shirt covered in sweat and grime, and “s@#$ kickers” that got their name honestly. I might have had on a straw cowboy hat but it would not have been described as “jaunty.” I am sure I did not make a great first impression. I am also positive when I stammered a greeting of “Hey, how y’all doing?” her first estimation of me was even further reduced. Sharon Leigh Busch, however, made my heart stop or, at least, flutter. Already “full-figured” in a Rubenesque way, fourteen-year-old Sharon Leigh had the attention of the fourteen-year-old me, even though she was dressed quite sedately in her longish shorts and fully-buttoned oxford cloth blouse. With short blond hair and blue eyes to go with the clear, alabaster skin poems are written about, her lips were red without benefit of lipstick. Not fully understanding why I was attracted to those lips, I am sure I was a sight standing there with jaws slack and agape, acting like the country hick that I was.

Don Miller has also published two other books

Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING by Don Miller #1.99 on #Kindle goo.gl/DiO1hcX

“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu

All books may be purchased in paperback.

OUR FIRST WINTER

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I normally post on M-W-F but decided to post this in the expectation of the two snowflakes that we may receive here in the foothills of Greenville County, South Carolina. I hope you enjoy. For some reason the forecast of possible snow has lost its appeal since I retired from teaching.

OUR FIRST WINTER OR HOW LONG WAS IT BEFORE THE DONNER PARTY BEGAN TO EAT EACH OTHER?

We moved into our little piece of heaven in November of 1987 over Thanksgiving break from school. We had five short days to get it done. Thirty years later we are still trying to finish unpacking. No, just joking…maybe. It was a close thing. Mr. Copeland really didn’t want to leave so he dragged his feet. His second wife, a woman thirty years his junior, wanted to leave and go back to her little piece of heaven in…Union County? The things we do for our ladies! He finally just gave up packing his “treasures” and departed. He left a whole bunch of stuff behind – books, papers, old records, even a bed. A complete set of 1956 edition Funk and Wagnall’s remained where they had always sat. Okay, younger readers, there used to be a company called Funk and Wagnall that produced encyclopedias. They were sold in grocery stores and…Encyclopedia? Oh no! Think of it as the boring part of the internet in book form. Books?

From Mr. Copeland we also “inherited” several pickup truckloads of junk. I had a 1972 blue Chevy work truck. Let me say, it looked older than its fifteen years and the two hundred or so thousand miles it had on it. Driven hard and put up wet, the paint was so bad that whatever was not rust was filmy oxidized blue. There was just enough metal to hold the rust together. The “powers that be” at our condominium complex had requested, nay demanded, that the truck not be left on the street to be seen. As I finished loading the last of Mr. Copeland’s “treasures” and began the five-mile trek to the trash dump, my faithful steed gave up the ghost or so I thought. As I coasted to a stop at the base of my drive I had just enough forward momentum to pull off to the side. A day or two later a Hispanic gentleman stopped and asked if it was for sale. I said it could be. He asked what I meant and I answered him saying that he would have to get it running. This began a really odd form of bargaining. He countered with, “If I get it running, what are you asking?” I said, “That depends. If I have to unload the trash $300. If you unload it, I’ll let it go for $250.” He unloaded it. You know, I kind of miss that old truck.

We were in our new home, well new to us. At that time, we were “younger” and stupid. We had five fireplaces and a wood stove to go with a thirty-year-old fuel oil furnace as we faced our first winter. Okay, wood stoves and fireplaces take wood and we had plenty of deadfall wood lying around but did I have a chainsaw? No, I did not even have an axe. I had not used a chainsaw in a decade. With no heat upstairs, just a couple of fireplaces, I was going to have to reintroduce myself to one. Did I have a method of transporting said wood? Oh yeah, I had just sold my truck.

That winter we received seventeen inches of snow over two days during a late winter storm. With temperatures refusing to climb above freezing, everything shut down and we were stranded for a week. With a forecast of a hundred-year storm, I purchased a chainsaw and in lieu of a truck, a wheelbarrow. “Barrowing” loads of wood sure made me miss my old Chevy. At least, we wouldn’t freeze to death if we lost power.

Our little piece of heaven is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains at the foot of what is known as the Blue Ridge Escarpment, or according to my Funk and Wagnall’s “a long, steep slope, especially one at the edge of a plateau or separating areas of land at different heights.” We sit a little over twelve hundred feet above sea level and our land rises to about fifteen hundred feet behind us. We don’t get a lot of snow at twelve hundred feet compared to what we get at fifteen and, in contrast to our northern brethren, even our big snows are lacking. Before you Damn Yankees snicker just understand seventeen inches of snow in South Carolina is like six feet of snow in Buffalo. Linda and I actually live in an area known as the Thermal Belt that is, for some reason not understood by me, a little warmer than the surrounding areas. We usually have to go “in search of snow” because of the extra warmth we receive. Again let me say it will still get cold! It especially gets cold in an old 1880’s farm house that had insulation blown into the walls about 1956. Sixty years later, insulation or not, in winter the house is still…BURRRRR!

Seventeen inches of snow closes everything in South Carolina…okay two inches will close us down like Blue Laws on a Sunday. The mere hint of snow or ice sends people into a frenzy of shopping…for milk and bread. At one time there was a theory suggesting that the dairy farmers had entered into some type of cabal with the weather services to boost milk sales. “Just sayin’!” I mean… why not a frenzy of canned goods buying? Sardines will last. With sardines, crackers and mustard I’m good for a while, especially if you replace the milk with beer or Jack Daniels. Should you not also see an increase in peanut butter and toilet paper sales?

In a song by Jimmy Buffett, “Boat Drinks,” the singer laments the cold weather and being stuck watching a hockey match. “I just shot six holes in my freezer; I think I’ve got cabin fever.” I understood the feeling. With three puppies, Linda and a TV that received only two channels “some” of the time, my incarceration was fun…for about forty-eight hours. Even hiking in the snow got old since I had forgotten to get insulated and waterproof boots. After five days of this misery, I was willing to try anything; however, with a Volkswagen bug and a Thunderbird our options were limited. We found out that the little VW got around in the snow pretty well once it could clear the drifts. I swore I would never be without four-wheel drive again and haven’t been since! Funny thing, after I bought it, I have needed it only once…for snow. But I must confess that I do use it often to haul wood…lots and lots of wood.

WORK TO BE DONE

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“In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies…but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Harry Smith, the longtime NBC journalist once posed the question, “If Dr. King was still alive today what would he think about present condition of Civil Rights in the United States?”

I grew up “white” in the Fifties and Sixties in the South. Like most preteens or teenagers, I wasn’t a particularly socially aware person and believe I was somewhat sheltered from the realities of race relations by both my family and the area I grew up in…or it could have been my own form of “white privilege” rearing its head. I have very vivid memories of the stories that played out on our black and white RCA. School desegregation in Little Rock, Freedom Rider buses burning in Anniston and nonviolent marches and protests turning violent in far off places like Selma. I remember wondering why white folk so angry? One outcome was to make me wonder if I should have been angry too.

Throughout these times, filling my TV screen, Martin Luther King was quite visible and the center of much of what was going on. I remember a man with a powerful, yet soft baritone voice and a slow Southern drawl to go with it. I would not fully comprehend the full power of his voice or his personage until I watched a History Channel presentation on his “I HAVE A DREAM” speech, too many years later, as I tried to explain the impact and power of his words to a “lily white” US History class more than twenty years after his death. Sometimes I truly find myself quite late to the dance.

As hard as he worked to promote positive social change, I also remember the furor created when John Conyers and Edward Brooke co-authored a bill to recognize King’s birthday as a holiday. It would be fiercely opposed not only in the South, as one might expect, but also in states like Arizona. Arguments against its recognition included King’s beliefs on “Marxism or Communism” and his stance against the Viet Nam War along with personal attacks that I won’t speak to. South Carolina, my home state, would be the last to recognize it in 2000. I really don’t have to wonder why.

As I finally return to Smith’s question, I would believe Dr. King would be disappointed. He would recognize there has been some improvement in “individual” race relations but would find we still have a framework in place that is systematically discriminatory toward large numbers of our population. I believe he would say that we have lost ground overall and become less willing to cause any type of meaningful change. I also believe Dr. King would point a finger directly at our government shenanigans starting with a President who should have done more for race relations and trailing down to a Congress that would not let him. Dr. King’s biggest disappointment, however, would be reserved for “We the People” because we are ALL still “judged by the color of (our) skin,” (rather than) “by the content of (our) character.” I would also add judged by our creed, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and lately our political orientation. Like Harry Smith, I believe Dr. King would say “There is much more work to be done.”

Don Miller’s authors page https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1p7QBN-yUWs1bOs47zAoMreKP53kpsAFiOvGMKCjhOffcnqjhHneB4zMk&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

PERSPECTIVE

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Facing my first baseball season after retirement I began thinking about players I had coached and coached against. This story from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” is about the best player, in my opinion, I ever coached against and a very special baseball team.

“Two, three, the count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stand
Rounding third he was headed for home
He was a brown eyed handsome man.
That won the game; he was a brown eyed handsome man”
“Brown-eyed Handsome Man”-Chuck Berry

The 1992 Riverside baseball team began the season hotter than any team I have ever coached and finished the regular season ranked second in the state just behind Belton Honea-Path. With playoff brackets already drawn, everyone circled the second game of the upper state series. Riverside would host Belton in the second round winner’s bracket game if the baseball gods saw fit. Unfortunately, sometimes the baseball gods get a kick out of not allowing things to happen as they are supposed to. In a game we could not have played any better, we lost to eventual state champion Lugoff-Elgin, one to nothing in extra innings. Riverside still got to host Belton but it was in the loser’s bracket. Belton had also gone down to defeat in its respective first round game. I could hear the giggles from above.
Belton was a perennial upper state power we had faced in the playoffs my first year at Riverside. I was almost tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail when I opted to put their best hitter on with the bases loaded, even though it walked in a run. I did this rather than risking a grand slam homerun with the score six to two in our favor in the seventh inning. Six to three sounded a lot better than all tied at six. As I retreated to the safety of our dugout I was serenaded with a chorus of boos, accusations of cowardice and a couple of descriptive terms or phrases questioning my canine parenthood or when exactly I might have been conceived as compared to my parents’ wedding date. The hitter I had walked, Chad Roper, might have been the best high school hitter I had ever seen and in 1990 was just a sophomore. We escaped with a victory although BHP got their revenge later in the playoffs. Roper had the game winning triple in that revenge game and pitched BHP to a two to one victory.
As a senior, Chad stood about six foot one, weighed two hundred pounds and in addition to his ability to hit, had sprinter’s speed. On the mound Chad was also a pro prospect. He truly was the total package. Unfortunately, for him, a freak preseason horse riding injury had limited his innings on the mound. Prior to this 1992 edition of what became a mutually respected, if somewhat one sided rivalry, I had made the decision we were not going to allow Chad to beat us with his bat. We were not going to give him an opportunity to hit anything good. What should have been sound logic turned out not to matter at all. He hit two solo home runs on pitches that were well out of the strike zone. One low and inside pitch was golfed over the left field foul pole, the other pitch thrown up and way away was hit over the trees beyond the left field power alley and into orbit…around Pluto. (I spoke to several of my pitchers from this era and no one will own up to being the guy who gave it up) When I decided to intentionally walk him, he stole second, then third and scored on a ground out. We played well; he played better, eliminating us from the playoffs. We went home for the summer while he went on to win the State AAA title. I guess I should have said BHP went on to win the state championship, but they would not have won it without this rare player.
I have always had mixed feelings when a season has ended. You are sad that you lost your last game, on the one hand, and question yourself on what you did wrong and congratulate yourself on what you did right. On the other hand, you are a little glad because the hard work is over until you realize spring football practice has started so your own work goes on. After the great season we had just completed, I was a little sadder and questioned myself even more about what we could have done differently. As I puttered around the dugout, picking up gear, speaking to parents and waiting for the field to clear, I picked up a box that was supposed to be full of unused game baseballs and found it to be empty. I knew we had not used that many balls. We started with one and one half dozen baseballs and I could account for six we had used. I am not a mathematical genius but calculated quickly twelve baseballs were missing. As I looked around, I found twelve of my players in a huddle around Chad Roper. They were getting him to autograph the baseballs. There was also a lot of joking and laughing taking place between Chad and my team. That brought more than a little clarity to the importance of losing a baseball game. Mad at first, I suddenly found myself smiling as I realized how young people could put the minor bumps in the road into perspective so quickly. As disappointing as losing is, baseball was and still is a game to be played and not a life or death situation. Most of these young men would not play baseball past high school but would be successful in so many ways. My third baseman William Patton comes to mind. He was offered a full scholarship from NASA and it was not to play baseball. He was unable to find Chad’s home run ball either though I understand he sent several unmanned space probes out to try.
Chad was drafted in the second round of the Major League Draft in 1992 by the Minnesota Twins and spent ten seasons kicking around the minor leagues never rising above double A. He seemed to be one of the unlucky ones who were unable to overcome the obstacles life sometimes places in your way. Sometimes success is the biggest hurdle to overcome. I am sure some people would say he was a failure because he never got to the “Big Show.” I believe those people were wrong and narrow minded. Chad got to do something he loved to do for ten years longer than most of us and got paid for doing it. Professional sports are professional sports at any level, and it takes a special talent to get paid to hit or field a baseball wherever you play. How was that a failure? I believe it was pretty special and would have given up a reproductive body part to have had the same opportunity. My biggest regret from that particular day was not getting him to sign my baseball.
Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING by Don Miller #1.99 on #Kindle goo.gl/DiO1hcX

“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu
“Baby Boomer History” in Don Miller’s PATHWAYS $3.49 on Kindle http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

BOOMER

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Boomer was named by one of Linda Gail’s basketball players, Cullen Gutshall, during a celebratory gathering to honor their basketball team at the end of a successful season. Celebration wasn’t an unusual occurrence as most of Linda’s basketball and tennis teams were successful. And as usual, I had been roped into assisting. “Have spatula – will grill.” Cullen had decided, with reason, that our large, beautiful, one-eyed and one-legged Rhode Island Red looked like a “Boomer.” I would have named him “Long John Silver” or “Lucky” for obvious reasons…but I am getting ahead of myself.
We had purposely not named any of our chickens for two very good reasons. First, you shouldn’t name what you are planning to eat. Second, chickens and roosters don’t usually come running when you call their names unless, of course, you have a handful of scratch feed to bribe them with. I should clarify that in number one I said planned to eat because I am here to tell you, “We ate nary a one.” Nor did we eat any of the “meat” rabbits we were raising; however, between the rabbits and chickens, we grew wonderful sweet-tasting tomatoes using their droppings as fertilizer. Can you say “organic?”
Boomer was either the luckiest or the unluckiest animal in my barnyard… depending upon your perspective. Unlucky because he was locked in the chicken coop with his son for an entire day. Do you know what two cocks do in order to while away the hours when locked in a chicken coop? I don’t know how long they fought but when I discovered the closed door and opened it, the yet un-named Boomer quickly exited having lost multiple feathers and an eye during the fracas. He had also lost his standing as the flock’s “alpha” male. Boomer did what any loser might do, he ran away and hid. He disappeared for several days until I thought I heard what turned out to be the weakest of “cock-a-doodle-dos.” He had managed to get himself trapped in an old lettuce sack and was in the process of thirsting to death. I had to cut him out as one plastic strand had become wrapped tightly around one of his legs just below where the “drumstick” began. The normally bright yellow shank had turned a shade of sickly gray. I feared he would die from gangrene but instead, several days later, the leg just fell off and he survived! Boomer was as lucky as any one-eyed, one-legged rooster could be!
All things considered, Boomer adapted quite well. He developed a gait that involved stepping with his good leg and then flapping his wings to get him back onto his good leg. It was a “step-flap-step-flap” cadence. When in a hurry, he was quite humorous to watch and as quick as you would expect a one- legged rooster to be. Unfortunately, he was not quick enough. Normally there were two times when he was in a hurry – to get away from the younger rooster or when he was “à la recherche d’amour” …and he was always looking for love. There was a problem. All the hens knew they were faster than he was or knew that all they had to do was hop up onto a fence to escape his advances.
Hopping onto a fence was how he got his name. Cullen watched him use his wings to propel himself onto the fence between two hens. After wobbling like a broken weathervane, he fell off, landing with a thump and a cloud of dust. Cullen laughed like the crazy person she was and exclaimed, “He fell off and went Boom!” After the third or fourth time the name Boomer had stuck. Poor Boomer was no luckier with the ladies than he had been at life. He eventually arrived at the idea of hiding in the shrubbery in hopes that “une jeune fille” might happen by. If he was lucky and a hen walked by, he would explode out of the shrubs and…well this story is rated for all audiences. Unfortunately, the hens adapted and began to stay away from the shrubs. I believe I had said in a previous story that chickens weren’t too bright. I may not have given them enough credit!
I don’t remember how long Boomer lived but I’m sure it was much more than the somewhat average seven years. I am also sure that his longevity was due to the special care and love given to him by Linda Gail. Short of playing the role of a pimp, Linda saw to his every need. Extra food, yummy beetles and caterpillars, a warm place to sleep in the shrubs…I should have had it so good. I’ve always said if the Hindu’s are correct and we are reincarnated, I want to come back as one of Linda’s animals…except the beetles and caterpillars.
Late in his life, Boomer took to lying in the sun in the one spot of the heavily-treed yard that does receive sunlight for a long portion of the day. He would stretch out his wings which were still inky black and the sun would reflect off of them like a freshly-polished black car. The red, orange and yellow on his neck were just as bright as they had been years before. I don’t guess feathers turn gray like hair. Despite his bad luck he had outlived all of our original chickens. In fact, he was so old that he no longer paid attention to the “spring chickens” in our small flock. That was how I found him on his last spring day. He had died quietly in his sleep while lying in the warm sun. When you think about it there might not be a better way in the world to go…in your sleep, contented and warmed by the sun.

AGING AIN’T FOR THE FAINT OF HEART

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It’s 1-13-16 and many of my goals for the year are in jeopardy. On 1-4-16 I decided I would begin the week by being productive, one of my major goals for the year. Really maintain and dig into the “honey-do” list that I will need another life time to complete. Do my five miler and then load my chainsaw, axe and maul onto my tractor. Time to cut and split a little wood and clean up some deadfall along with it. “Get back to my self-reliant roots!” No problem. I got a great little chainsaw, cuts like a “hot knife through butter.” Light and modern, its anti-vibration technology allows me to cut forever…if I so desire. The axe and maul on the other hand…and there lies the problem I think.

I had cut, split, loaded and unloaded about a pick-up load of wood when it hit me…or grabbed me later in the day. My hip is a little sore and became increasingly so. I had felt this pain before and knew it would gradually work its way down my leg. I joked with my wife, “If I can walk in the morning I’m going to….” I don’t remember what I was going to do because it became a moot point. While I could walk, it was too painful to want to. Recliner to bathroom was about as far as I could go. SCIATICA!!! I’ve had it before. Usually after the Wednesday practice of the first week of baseball season. Too much torqueing due to hitting ground balls or throwing batting practice. Narrowing of the spine due to…AGE! Funny not, I don’t feel old…most of the time. I know my knee is shot but mentally, when I sitting in my recliner, I don’t feel old…until I get up and go look in the mirror. “You don’t look too bad for…AN…OLD…GUY. Right. It took me five days of Advil and stretching, along with hot and cold treatments, to get over this. No walking, no exercise and no productivity.

Finally, I feel great. It’s 1-11-16 one week and one day since my attack of sciatic began and three days since it ended. I’m going to do an easy three and one half miler and then go out with my weed eater and a rake and do a little preparation for spring in my yard. Just maybe fifteen minutes with the weed eater and another fifteen with the rake. Just to test things out…I wonder if it is going to take me a week to get over this bout. I am at a loss. I refuse to give in to my age. Let’s see, there are only fifty-two Mondays in the year. That’s not a lot of productivity and will make a very small dent in my “honey-do” list. Being laid up in the hospital will make me even less productive. Decisions, Decisions.

COTTON FIELDS…FROM “PATHWAYS”

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As a five or six-year-old I did follow along with the plow as my grandfather furrowed out rows to be planted with cotton seed on a small red hill patch located near my home. I also followed along when he plowed his more fertile fields for tomatoes, corn, squash and beans. Sometimes he even let me try to handle the unwieldy plow but my rows were not very straight. I was his number one field hand…his only field hand until my stinky little brother was born when I was five. The cotton field field had so much red clay I honestly don’t know how anything other than broom straw and rocks grew there. “Little Donnie” would follow along as my PawPaw “geed” and “hawed”, keeping his horse on his path while attempting to create straight rows. My job, in the early spring of the planting season and my life, was to hand water the emerging cotton plants breaking through the dry clay crust on that hill. A bucket would be dipped from a nearby stream and carried to each plant and ladled, a cup at a time, until the process had to be repeated when the bucket emptied, which was much too often. Later as the season turned with the leaves, I would help pick the same cotton when it matured, a very painful process for my young fingers. After filling my small but heavy “poke”, I would follow my grandparents down to the cotton gin located across from Pettus’s store just a hundred yards or so from my house. Here, our cotton would be weighed and graded before being placed with like-graded cotton. The cotton bolls were “ginned”, or seeded, and the remaining fluffy and dirty raw cotton was pressed into five hundred pound bales, wrapped with a thick burlap cloth to be transported by the truck load to the cotton mill. After my grandparents were paid off, I would be rewarded with a trip across the road to Pettus’s store and given a “Sugar Daddy” for my trouble. At the time I could not have been paid better.

A Southern boy comes of age in the Sixties in PATHWAYS Download on #Kindle today at http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

A ROOSTER IN THE POPLAR

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Even when Linda and I have attempted to portray ourselves as actual farmers, more times than not, we have found ourselves in a cross between “Green Acres” and a gothic horror story…or gothic comedy. Most of these forays involved our attempt at “domesticating our animals” which at various times have included goats, rabbits, chickens or all three. I have learned lessons from all but will focus on what I learned from raising chickens…other lessons will be shared later.

I learned very quickly not to say “I need…” or “I might get…” or “We ought to…” in front of my father-in-law. I wish I had mastered this lesson before saying, “I might get a few chickens since we have a coop.” Never allowing grass to grow under his feet, my father-in-law Ralph Porter immediately went on a quest to get Don and Linda some “yard fowl.” I had to stop him when our flock topped thirty “mixed bag” laying hens and three roosters to go with them. Ralph had gone anywhere there might have been someone who was trying to get rid of chickens, tossed them into the back of his covered pickup, and transported them to “Hemlock Hills.” Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks and American Bantams Game Hens began to lay more eggs than we could even give away…until the wildlife came by to sample our “bill of fare.” We found out very quickly that our Reds and Rocks were fair game for foxes, raccoons and possums. Never quite getting the coop secure enough, we reduced our “flock” by about two-thirds. For some reason out of the coop the roosters and game hens seemed to be well-suited to escape the critters. So, “free range” roosting became a safer option… but that led to more lessons to be learned.

Of all the animals on “God’s Green Earth,” chickens must have been hiding when the Good Lord was passing out brains. My God, being a humorous God, decided to do them no favors by creating a bird that can’t really fly. Our surviving game hens who were brighter and more mobile than most breeds took offense to our robbing their nest for eggs and decided to take advantage of our free range farming techniques. They just disappeared. After a while we believed they had been kidnapped by Br’er Fox who had been shopping for dinner. Later in the spring, while sitting in my upstairs study, I was startled to hear the “peep, peep, peep” sounds of baby chicks emanating from outside the open second-story window. The game hens had laid their eggs in the squirrel nests high in our hemlock trees and were hatching them out. Temporarily struck stupid in amazement, Linda and I never considered how they would make their way to the ground. Their mothers hadn’t considered it either. Chickens fly only slightly better than rocks. Chicks? They don’t fly at all but simply make a sound reminiscent of a nut being cracked when they hit the ground. Returning from a local coach’s clinic I was greeted with the vision of sheets strung from tree to tree. Linda Gail had decided that sheets strung under the trees was a better option than running around trying to catch the helpless little things with a butterfly net which we didn’t have. My wife is one of the brighter animals God created and was able to save most of the babies.

As if cascading biddies were not enough, one of my two remaining Rhode Island Red roosters seemed intent on committing suicide. He was the Alpha rooster if there was such a thing. He was a beautiful bird with a mostly black body but with the characteristic red, orange and yellow feathers on his neck and back. He was also rather…confused.

One morning after an attack by the local predators I couldn’t find him. I had heard him but had not been able to locate him when I went on a search. As I walked away from his coop I heard him again, “Cock-a-doodle-doooooooo!” His crowing was coming from far above me. When I looked up into the tallest poplar tree in my yard, I spotted him. Had he been any higher in the tree he would have been on a cloud! Imitating a weathervane, he was swaying from side to side in the light morning breeze. He had hopped to the very top of the poplar tree, limb to limb, until he had run out of limbs. “So how are you coming down?” I muttered to myself just as he decided to show me. In a method resembling an old “football” death dive, “Boomer” as he would later be named, jumped into the air, beating his wings frantically. Scientifically, his efforts at “horizontal velocity” had little effect on his downward or “vertical velocity.” In non-scientific terms, HE FELL LIKE A STONE! Just before landing…crashing…totally wiping out, Boomer tried to get his landing gear down but to no avail. It would be his chest and beak that would stop his fall…all five times that he bounced. I knew he was dead and had visions of WKRP’s Les Nessman exclaiming “Oh, the humanity!” But Boomer fooled me. Picking himself up and ruffling his feathers, he looked at me as if to ask, “Hey, how did I stick that landing? A ten right?” More like “any landing you can walk away from is a good one.” Another lesson learned – Roosters are a lot more resilient than turkeys!

Don Miller has self-published three books which may be downloaded or purchased in paperback on Amazon.
A Southern boy comes of age during the Sixties in PATHWAYS http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V
Forty years of coaching and teaching in “WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING….” http://goo.gl/UE2LPW
An irreverent look at FLOPPY PARTS http://goo.gl/Saivuu