SOME ODDS AND ENDS FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

My wife always sends me to the store with a list. And, I mean this is a very detailed list. She doesn't just say get cheese. She stipulates the brand, the size, the number of slices, the kind of package; every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. No room for error.

It was a few years ago, when people were just beginning to carry those damned cell phones everywhere. I was at the dairy case trying to find just the right kind of cheese when I noticed this young woman coming closer and closer to me. I wasn't paying very close attention because I was sure she was shopping for cheese, just like me.

I was concentrating on my purchase when she said, "Hello."

I turned to her and politely said, "Hello."

And there she stands with a cell phone to her ear and looking at me like I'm a fool.

Ah, but I was talking about shopping with one of my wife's infamous, detailed lists. She sent me to Wal Mart one day a while back. On the shopping list were a few items from the pharmacy and a longer list from the grocery area. These big Wal Marts are as big as some hometowns. It's a long walk from the pharmacy to the groceries, and by the time I had made the hike across the store I was tired, so I sat down on a bench to rest.

As I sat there I must have dozed off. I'm sure I wasn't in REM sleep, but I was in that stage my grandpa used to refer to as "resting my eyes."

So, part way between sleep and wakefulness I heard this little voice say, "Mama! Is that man dead?"

I wasn't exactly startled, but when I opened my eyes I saw a little girl maybe five years old, bravely staring at me.

"Hi," I said.

"Mama! Is that man dead?" she repeated.

I didn't quite know what to say. Her mother looked as if she was on the verge of a stroke. From the wild look in her eye I had the impression that she would have been happy if I had been dead. She was trying everything she knew to get her little girl to walk away before she attracted more attention. You'd think she would be happy for me that I was still alive, but nooo. Her embarrassment was rising and she just wanted her daughter to give it up and walk away and stop calling attention to her.

We were at an impasse. The little girl wouldn't budge. The mother was beginning to realize that all those people staring at her knew that she was the mother of the determined little girl calling attention to her mother. And   there I was, still alive.

The solution came to me like a flash of inspiration. I winked again at the little girl, closed my eyes, and went back to sleep.

A DAY AT THE CEMETERY

One day when my youngest son was about five years old I found myself in a deep conversation with him on a number of subjects during a long, roundabout walk home from the auto repair shop. It was his idea to walk.

"We need to spend some time together, Dad," he said. "Why don't we walk home instead of calling Mom to pick us up?"

Perceptive, huh? How could I refuse, even if I had wanted to?

Our walk took us by the city cemetery. It's one of those lovely old graveyards with stands of mature trees and shrubs and lots of markers and monuments stretching out across acres of verdant grounds.

"Hey, Dad," my son said excitedly, "look at all that grass. That would be a good place for a picnic, huh?"

"It's a pretty place for sure," I said, "but we shouldn't have a picnic here."

"Why not?"

"Well, because this is a cemetery," I replied.

"What's a cemetery?" he wanted to know.

You see? They always catch you off guard like that. Have you ever had to explain a cemetery to a five-year-old without the Internet to back you up? But as almost always happens, I was on my own.

"A cemetery is a place where they bury people when they have passed away," I said. "There's someone who has passed away under each one of those markers."

Simple explanation, I thought. That should do it. But it didn't occur immediately to me that most of what I had said, and the words I'd used to say it, had no meaning to my son.

"What does 'pass away' mean, Dad?"

"It means to die."

"What does 'die' mean?" he asked.

Hmmm. I wonder why we say that someone "passed away" instead of the straight forward truth, that he just up and died? Which is easier to explain? It would have been so much more uncomplicated if everybody still lived on a farm and had the every-day chance to see the cycle of life up close.

My brain was flashing ideas to explain this phenomenon of death. Hey, we had a cat that got run over by a car. There's the quick answer, I thought.

We had stopped walking by now and were sitting on the low block wall surrounding the cemetery. I pulled him close and began. "Do you remember when Junior, the cat, got hit by a car the other day?"

"Yes," he said with a sniffle as he remembered his dear friend.

"Well, Junior was dead. He had passed away. He had died. That's why we dug the hole in the back yard and buried him.

Suddenly my son's demeanor changed. He looked over his shoulder at the grave markers behind us. There was a hint of panic in his eyes as a new realization dawned on him.

"People die, Dad?"

It had not struck me that he could understand death on one level relating to his cat, but that I had just given his young confidence a jolt by suggesting to him that all living things shared a similar, common fate. This called for a delicate touch, something I'm not famous for.

"Everybody dies sooner or later," I began as I hugged him closer. "Just like cats and birds and horses. Everything that lives has to die."

"Like Junior?" he asked.

"Yes."

"So, Junior is gone forever and is never coming back?"

I didn't want to deal with this. "Well, his presence is gone," I began. I wasn't even sure what I was talking about, but my son's expression told me that I was starting too far up in the clouds.

I tried again. "His body is gone. But the real Junior will always be with us. In a way you can have him with you whenever you remember him and how much you loved him. So part of him is still with us, you see?"

During the few silent moments that followed this pronouncement I wondered it it had sounded as plausible to my son as it had to me.

"But I won't be able to see Junior though, will I?"

"No."

"He'll just be in my heart, huh?"

"Yes."

His eyes began to widen as this information sunk in. After a few seconds he asked, "Are you gonna' die, Dad?"

Ah, the moment of truth.

"Yes, Pal, someday I'll die and be buried in a cemetery, too," I said. I didn't want to get into all that other stuff like cremation and being lost at sea and "dust-to-dust." Why ask for trouble?

His next response was quicker. "What will they do with all your stuff?" he wanted to know.

"What stuff do you mean?" I asked

"Oh, like your glasses and your books. Stuff like that."

"Well, I won't have any use for those things after I die," I explained. "All those things will be given to you and your brothers, or to other folks who need them."

That seemed to satisfy him for a few minutes. Then he leaned away from me and looked over his shoulder at the grave markers again.

"All those people out there are dead?" It was a statement as much as a question.

"Yes."

There were a few more moments of silence as he surveyed the cemetery. This death business is tough, and I admit that I'm still trying to understand it.

Finally he said, "Does anybody ever dig 'em up just to check on 'em?"

          -- From a book I'm working on called "The Car Wash That Ate the Green Wrinkle", a sequel to "I Only Laugh When It Hurts".

SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE

Now I know the economy is bad. I just read on the Internet today that the company that makes Twinkies and HoHos is on the brink of going under. Say it ain't so, Joe.

I can't imagine a world without Twinkies. This sweet, little treat has been an icon of generations of Americans. It has been a staple in millions of lunch bags over the years. It has been on fishing trips and hunting trips. I can only guess at the number of kids who munched on Twinkies around countless campfires.

It even found its way into the history of American jurisprudence. Who can  forget the famous "Twinkie defense" that got a defendant off on a murder charge? I don't remember if it was established in court just how many Twinkies one would have to eat in order to be acquitted. Maybe the judge and members of the jury were munching on Twinkies during breaks and were primed to accept such a farfetched plea.

The Internet article announcing the possible downfall of the Twinkie also reassured readers that help was on the way and that the Twinkie company would be saved. Maybe they're too sweet to fail, or something like that.

So I'll nervously await the final outcome of one of the great dramas of the early twenty-first century. It's a  little like the great Santa Claus dilemma. I believe. I believe. Long live the Twinkie.

A MAN OF CHARACTER

In the old days it was common for grandparents to live in the same home with one of their children. I benefitted from such an arrangement. My maternal grandfather was a part of our family when I was a boy. We all called him "Pa"and he was beloved by all.

That old man was as wise as they come. He was illiterate, I learned later; could barely write his own name, and he didn't learn that until late in life. That's because in his day you didn't need school. At least that's what they told him. It was too late to go back by the time he figured it all out, so he took what he had and made the best of it. But he wasn't ignorant. He hadn't missed a lot along the way.

I remember him as a man who could do anything with his hands. Though he made his living working in the cotton mill, he was always building projects around the neighborhood and figuring and drawing in the little notebook he always carried. Numbers didn't seem to present much of a problem for him, and the things he built were made to last.

He wasn't much for giving up on anything he started, and he didn't have much patience with anybody else who did either; especially one of his own. Seeing things through was an article of faith in his belief system; a mission statement for his family corporation. He was a good role model for me, and wouldn't let me quit, no matter how discouraged I became.


I was tearing around the family kitchen one afternoon when I was about eight or nine years old. I was in a silly rage about something and declared that I was going to quit school as soon as I was old enough.

His reaction was immediate and forceful. "Get out back. I want to talk to you," he said.

He might have been thinking that if he had to knock some sense into me he didn't want my mother to see it. When we got outside he sat down on the back steps leading up to the back porch. "Come over here and sit down," he said.

Reluctantly I sat down beside him and stared off at a cloud in the distance, determined not to speak until he did. He took out his little notebook from the bib pocket of his overalls and opened it to a blank page. Then he produced the blunt carpenter's pencil he always carried in the same pocket. "Teach me to write my name," he ordered.

In my immature mind I thought he was just having fun with me. "Aw, Pa, you know how to do that," I said.

"No. I never learned. You teach me."

Still thinking that we was playing some sort of a trick on me I wrote his name on the page: "Joseph Clarence Harris."

He pointed to a few letters that he recognized; an "A", the "E", the "I".

"Pa, don't you know the alphabet?" I asked.

"Teach me," he said.

"Didn't you go to school, Pa?"

"Sure I did," he answered.

"Then how come you say you don't know the alphabet?"

"Well, I only went to school for one day."

"One day?" I asked incredulously. My mind was already jumping ahead to figure out how someone could be so lucky.

"Yeah. They didn't say I had to come back." And he laughed, so I would know he was only partly serious.

I wrote the alphabet out below his name, and we practiced the letters together for a while. Then I supervised as he wrote his name several times.

After a while he said, "Okay. That's enough for now." He closed the notebook and put it and his pencil back in his pocket and was quiet for a few moments. Finally he said, "Thanks. Now, don't ever let me hear you say you're going to quit school again."


Mine is probably the only "Greatest Men" list he ever made. But I saw a piece of greatness that day. An ordinary man would not humiliate himself to teach a lesson that would change the life of an ignorant boy.

I never threatened to quit school again. And I never thought of Pa in the same way again either.

Just Finalized! The Cover For Charlie's Girl!

          The cover for our novel, Charlie's Girl, has been finalized.  Here's what to look for in bookstores.

Technology, Wait For Me

When I was a boy I knew how to do almost everything that was important to me. I could make a sling shot--and use it. If my bike had a flat or slipped the chain, I could fix it. I spent hours building model airplanes, and could even make them fly. My life gurgled on like a summer stream and the complications that intruded were usually quickly solved and didn't warp my tender psyche.

But then I became an adult and while I wasn't looking technology overwhelmed me. Just look at how fast the world changed because of computers. When the company I worked for way back in the technological dark ages installed its first computer the thing filled a room as big as my house. I was fascinated and while watching the process during my breaks I befriended the computer guy in charge. This computer business looked like a good career option so I asked my new friend what courses I should study in college to latch on to this opportunity. "I don't know of a college that teaches computers," he said.

"Well, then what would you study to get in on this deal?" I asked.

"Math is a good field. Or maybe physics," he said.

"What did you study?" I thought surely he had a PhD in astrophysics at least.

His answer left me confused. "I have a degree in French Literature," he said. 

I had a good laugh with him and went back to my desk feeling a little smug that my world was okay and not about to change profoundly. So while I was looking the other way, computers got smarter and smaller and sort of took over. Well, I finally gave in and learned to do what I needed to do on a computer. In fact, I have one on my desk and am using it right now. I also use the Internet, have an e-mail account, and can be found on Facebook. And yet there's always something new to learn.

So, here is my latest attempt to catch up. I'm blogging! And there is much that I want to share. From time to time I'll share excerpts from my books (I am a published author) and my upcoming literary output, and other ideas that come to me. And I hope to hear from you on things that are important to you and feedback on my posts. 

This seems to be a good time to announce a new book that I have coauthored with my wife. Charlie's Girl will be out on May 8, and is our first work of fiction. The blurb on the cover says, "Rosalind never knew the truth about herself, her parents or her past--until now." I hope that is enough to make you want to read it.

I also invite you to get a copy of my other books. I Only Laugh When It Hurts is a series of essays that "paints a bittersweet and vivid portrait of American life and of the lessons--some hard, some hilarious--life can teach."

If you are a Civil War enthusiast you will like Nathan Bedford Forrest: In Search of the Enigma which I coauthored with a former history student of mine, Eddy W. Davison. Edwin C. Bearss, who wrote the foreward recommends it "as must reading for those who want to know Forrest and his way of war." This book won the Arizona Book Award for Biography and was a recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Book Award.

Please check in often. I'll try to keep you entertained.