The Joy Of Giving

Most young children are ravenous at Christmas. The excitement builds for months, giving way to the ultimate feeling of excitement in mid December. As my favorite movie, A Christmas Story said, “Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas, upon which the entire kid year revolved.” I like every other kid I knew was occupied with all the gifts I would be receiving. I had spent many nights with those giant catalogs from Sears and J.C. Penny. They were called wish books for a reason. I would dog-ear the pages where I found things I liked, sometimes going further to circle them in ballpoint pen. These would be hints for my mother. The gifts would be stacked high under the tree, and I would sit there imagining what might be inside. If given a chance, I would shake them or examine them closer trying to find answers before Christmas arrived. 

One of my favorite Christmas memories is about the year that I was shown the joy of giving. Sure, I liked to try to get things for my parents. They would be trinket gifts. Maybe a cheap candleholder for my mom and a pack or two of Red Man Chewing Tobacco for my dad. Yes, a kid could go to the corner store and buy this in my youth. But up until this time, I really didn’t think about giving to people outside my family. This Christmas would be a lesson I would carry with me for the rest of my days.

My mother taught fifth grade. I attended the same school. While we lived in the country, this school was in what we called “town.” There were kids at the school that you could tell were living in different circumstances than what I was accustomed to. Forget toys and gifts. They were just trying to survive day to day. I don’t know what they expected for Christmas, but I guess it would have been meager. One such family had a boy in kindergarten and his brother in first grade. The teachers talked among themselves. Word was out about this home, where this single mother worked evenings, leaving her two young sons at home to look after each other. It was a different world. Such realities were realized for the hardships they were. Authorities didn’t step in and do anything. It was just the way the world was then. While in some ways children were more innocent than they are now, in other ways some children were expected to be beyond their years, adapting to the hardships that faced their families. We heard stories about the slightly older brother being in charge of fixing them something to eat, getting them to bed and being responsible for getting them up in the morning and on to the bus, since their mother would have come in late from work and would be sleeping.

My mother had decided that we would give this family gifts for Christmas.  We bought them a few new toys. In addition we wrapped up some toys that I no longer played with. My mom baked her homemade chocolate chip cookies, and we brought them grocery items such as chili, Chef Boyardee canned pasta, crackers, cereal, bread, milk, cheese and other things. We gave them 2 liter Cokes and other easily made food items. 

I can still remember showing up at their house across from Rutherford County Hospital unannounced one afternoon. I couldn’t have been but a few years older than the oldest boy that lived there. I knocked on the door. After a minute or so, the young mother showed up at the door. I explained that we had some things for the family. The two boys sprang up and came running out of the house to help us take the items in. They brought in the paper Kroger bags of food and were reacting to groceries they way I might to some amazing toy that I was hoping to get.  The joy on their face was like a drug. It gave me a powerful feeling of happiness to see how excited they were by what seemed like meager offerings to me.

From the groceries they went to the toys and started opening them with abandon, throwing wrapping paper behind them as they went. The young mother stood in the corner of the room with what looked to be a combination of embarrassment and gratitude. She thanked us as we left. The kids looked up from their “new” toys, offering us the biggest smiles you would ever see. What a gift it was to see their reactions. Even as a child, I felt overwhelmed by how much I took for granted. I realized more than ever the blessings that were in my life. 

It’s been more than forty years since the Christmas that I was taught the joy of giving. Yet, the faces of those children and their mother are still very vivid in my memory. 

Concord Creek

There’s one place more than all the rest that I go back to in my mind. It’s a little creek that runs through rural Rutherford County, and it ran through my grandfather’s property off Versailles Road. Concord Creek…..You’ll find it on some maps. It was just a little stream. There was a small bridge that took the road over the creek.

I always loved this creek. As a little boy, I loved to go wading in it. Occasionally, I could find a chance to go swimming in it. I would watch all the tadpoles and minnows moving about through the water. Occasionally, I would see a snake skimming the surface. Little bugs would touch the water, creating a ripple effect.

There is one spot in “the creek” as we called it that became my favorite. About 30 feet from the bridge, there was a series of rocks that were layered almost like steps. Deep green moss covered some of these rocks and they made a V shaped progression with the water cascading down the step appearing rocks. I would get old bottles and cans and play in this area for hours. It’s amazing what a kid can come up with with some sticks, rocks and some old bottles of course, now, kids probably wouldn’t be amused by such, but I invented all kinds of scenarios akin to Little House On The Prairie.

This creek and this particular part of the creek has become a place I go back to quite often in my mind. I love to think about the cascading water moving over the rocks that had been there since the dawn of time. I think about them being a constant in this ever changing life. They were there thousands of years before my forefathers showed up in Rockvale. They were there when they rolled in by wagon in the 1830’s. They were there when the first cars came through and they have seen generation after generation come and go. Through all of this, they have remained constant. They’ve seen the snow and ice of winter, the blooming plants and flowers of Spring, the heat and critters of summer and the falling leaves of autumn. In a world of constant change, these rocks remain. They are a safe and calming place for me to return to again and again, if only in my mind and memory.

The Sandbox

Kids today live much of their lives in an alternate reality online. I guess I lived part of my life in an alternate reality. I created it, just like so many kids of my generation did. Four 2×4’s and a load of sand from the hardware store in Eagleville allowed me to create for hours. Fill a pail with the sand, pack it and place it, and you have a building. Build some roads, take some Tonka Trucks, and I would create a story and drive those trucks and maybe throw in some matchbox cars.

Imagination was our alternate reality. Sitting in the sandbox under a big oak tree covered with lichens, the temperature felt a little lower on the hill that our home sat on. I would dig my toes into the sand, and it cooled me off further. The world ceased to exist as I created my own world there in the sandbox.

Maybe I would get out the vinegar and the pale orange box of baking soda and create a volcano. Build the world and then destroy it with vinegar and baking soda. Such simplicity.

Labor Day

Remember back when we had 4 channels to watch? Aerial antennas were visible on most home roofs. They beamed television from the big city TV stations directly into our TV. We would have balked at the idea of paying well over one hundred dollars a month for cable. Where I lived, that wasn’t even an option. I dreamed of the day cable TV would reach our home. I kept close tabs on the stringing of cable lines out toward our direction.

Believe it or not, I think we were just as well off with better quality programming then on fewer channels. Labor Day was the unofficial ending of summer and would bring about get togethers, but what excitement there was waiting on TV. Locally, we watched The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon on WTVF, Channel 5. There was massive excitement for me in watching the telethon. Every hour, they would update the tote board with a new total donation amount. With a massive national audience, the giving was tremendous. This was also way before charities cold called homes and sent lots of solicitations by mail and e-mail.

The stars would join Jerry Lewis and do a variety of entertaining. The big voice of Ed McMahon we knew from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, assisted Lewis in keeping the train moving. The unpredictable nature of what might happen while you were gone was a real thing. FOMO must have been invented from this. Whatever you saw, you saw, and whatever you missed, you missed. It was live….one time only.

Lewis loved the camera and at least appeared jovial. We later would learn that he could be exactly the opposite. I’ve learned over the years, you’re better off not to know all the details about those we admire from afar. Those shooting stars can fall fast.

Ringing phones, celebrity operators, matching donations…..people bringing loose change to a fish bowl at a mall….so much excitement wrapped up into one weekend of giving, going non-stop around the clock.

Like so many other things, the telethon is a thing of the past. Now, they probably would have a minute audience. It’s probably easier just to have a business like Target ask you to round up to the nearest dollar. So many good, wholesome and entertaining things are gone….living on only in our memories like the days of summer just past.

Parallel Universes

More than ever, it’s become clear that the truth is what you can convince the most people of. All of our lives, we’ve been living on the edge of reality, as parallel universes were all around us. Before you think I’ve completely flipped my lid, follow me. Let’s just look at a few examples…America’s dad turned out to be a real creep. America’s Mayor turned out to be a crazed man who held “news conferences” at Four Seasons Landscaping rather than The Four Seasons Hotel. “The Juice” says he didn’t do it, but wrote about how he would have done it if he had. The former chairman of The NASDAQ pulled off the greatest ponzi scam in American history, as we all watched thinking, I wish I could get that kind of return on my money! There are many more examples, but I’ll stop, as I think you have the idea.

Now, we are living life like everything is normal. Don’t pay any attention to what you see in front of you. It’s not real. At least that’s what they imply. Meanwhile, we watch so many sick and dying. Did I just want to drag you thought this realization all over again? I did have a deeper point.

All of our lives have been like this. Now, it’s just more evident than ever before. What is the truth? Whatever you believe will be at best what half of the rest of the world thinks. Now, we are living in parallel universes. You have your truth. I have mine. The truth has been diluted, repeated in part with added lies. It’s in every aspect of our lives. Smile…give them a good show. It doesn’t matter if it’s real, as long as they truly believe it’s real. We are looking at life through a prism. Depending on which way the view is bent, you are either living your best life, or you are struggling to survive. So, which is it? They’ll only know when they are far enough removed, that time will have played out the truth. Then, the reality will be obvious.

Funeral Home Humor

Every family in the south has their funeral home of choice. It’s like that favorite restaurant and the place you always go to have your hair done. It has become a part of your life over a long period of time. When I was growing up, Woodfin’s Funeral Home in Murfreesboro was the funeral home of choice. We had been there enough times that it felt oddly like home when the time came to usher another loved one from life. I found the funeral home fascinating as a kid. There were all kind of rooms that held mystery. The smell of fresh flowers was everywhere. Muted lights and comfortable couches set the scene. That grandfather clock in the entryway, with the model hearse sitting in the little window kept time while reminding us that our time was limited. None of us will get out of this life alive. Yet, most of us think there are decades, many years before our loved ones will face such decisions about us. The funeral home is a place we come to mourn the old that have left….the occasional death of a baby, child or teen……A young adult struck down by a tragic illness. All of these explainable in how predictable they were, or in how unlikely the circumstances were. These are the moments we look to God, knowing He had a plan in where we see no logic. We grieve here. We laugh. We love. We bring food. We sign the book, indicating we were there to pay our respects.

I’m getting to the title of this post. There are those that play roles of keeping it all on track, as funerals go. Bubba Woodfin was a fixture about town for years. He was part of the Woodfin family that had helped members of the Rutherford County community mourn and bury their loved ones for many decades.

I knew funerals were very mournful events. I was always slightly taken aback by Bubba Woodfin’s demeanor. He was perfectly skilled in his position. He could be mournful and respectful but always managed to bring a trace of humor or upbeat energy to the event. I once was slightly interested in being involved in this business, but ultimately my emotional makeup would not be fitting for such a job. It took someone that could meet the moment but not wallow in it. Bubba Woodfin was a master at it. He became part of the reason that families returned here. They were put at ease….helped through the moment by a trusted friend. How many times did he tell families how things would proceed, when to file in and out….tens of thousands of times. It was something that to him was everyday life.

Now, several decades removed from attending those family funerals of grandparents and great aunts and uncles, I see how difficult it must be to face death on a daily basis. I think over the past year, we all have come to see that clock in the foyar must be ticking faster than we realized. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t lost someone special over the past year. Death in all its forms has become more common….the death of babies, COVID deaths, traffic accidents, random violence and the normal disease and old age. We aren’t promised another year, day or even another breath. Let us be thankful for the Bubba Woodfins of the world. Now, we see what they saw everyday and what a burden that must have been. It’s a reality.

Love deeper, laugh louder and try to enjoy the good moments. They all are numbered.

A Trip Back In Time

I’ve always been interested in all things historical. Sometimes I’ve thought maybe I would have enjoying living in an earlier time. The closest opportunity I ever got came when I was about 9. The distance from my childhood home in Rockvale to my great-grandmother’s home in Christiana, was only 18 miles, but it felt much further. Christiania was a booming little town back in the early 1900’s. It sat on the railroad. Trains came through several times a day, connecting the community with the outside world, back when trains were as much for passengers as they were for freight.

The little town these days is most known for the restaurant, Miller’s Grocery. The store ran by Mr. Stanley Miller was the hub of the community, which also had a bank and a post office. But where my great-grandmother lived wasn’t in the town proper. It was further removed on an old roughly paved road. Rock Springs Road felt like it must have been further than the 18 miles from our home.

My great-grandmother lived in this five room home for all of her adult life. At the time of my stay, she still didn’t have indoor plumbing. She didn’t get a bathroom until a government grant gave the money to do so in 1982. At this time, she had a potty chair in the only bedroom. There was an old outhouse. She used an old metal tub, which she would fill with heated water once a week and use in her kitchen. The house wasn’t much to look at. It was a tar paper shack with a metal room. An abandoned and opened unattached garage set about 10 feet away from the house. Grandmother, as I called her, like so many women of her generation, never learned to drive a car. The house could just as easily be a remote island. Her only close neighbor was a family with a farm that lived across the road. Otherwise, a rotary dial phone and her TV with rabbit ears was her only connection to the outside world.

The slanted front porch gave access to the front door. When you walked in, you were in the living room to the left. Straight back, there was an open dining room and two doors on the left. One accessed the attic and the other was the entry to the only true bedroom. To the right of the front door, you could go into the front room, which she used almost as an apartment. Her bed was a single bed that was pushed up into the far corner. An old rug was in there, along with a propane heater. She had her TV in there and an old low sitting rocker with a thatched seat. By this time, she was already in her 80’s. Her days were very predictable. She fixed her meals and watched her stories. I’m sure it was loneliness, but she would engage with verbal criticism and questions for the characters on the soap operas.

We enjoyed each other’s company more than we ever could these days, with all of the online this and that, cell phones and what have you. A flimsy card table was produced, and I put it up, where we could play checkers game after game. Except she didn’t have checkers. She had the board, but for the checkers, she got out an old tin can filled with every button you could imagine. We had more than enough to get colors that would work, where we could keep up with what we were doing.

Afternoons were times for leisurely strolls on the road, where we would walk to a creek and turn around at the bridge. She required a walking cane, and I felt like I needed one too. So, I used the cane that had belonged to her husband, who passed away before my birth. It sits in my living room now, as I write. A rattlesnake was carved, where it circles down the cane. I thought I was something, walking with that cane. It was rare to sight a car on these walks. This area felt more rural than the one I lived in.

For supper, she would whip us up something or other relatively simple. We would eat at the small formica table in the kitchen that looked like it was right out of the 1950’s. She baked these wonderful cookies. But she called them teacakes. She would fill this old cookie jar with them.

I would beg her to tell me the same stories about her childhood, that I’d heard a hundred times before. I then would go to sleep on a cot in the living room. The simplicity of our time together allowed us to really enjoy each other.

She lived alone in this home until she fell and broke her hip, when she was in her early 90’s. She lived until she was 95. She was the first grandparent I lost. It’s only now that I realize what a unique experience it was to know so many of my grandparents, especially my great grandparents.

The Horn

Father’s Day gifts seem to come in two varieties. There are the practical gifts, such as ties, socks, candy or the more colorful, off the wall gifts, that Dad never saw coming. No one needed The Horn O Plenty, as it was called. It came with a horn output that you would place under the hood. You then extended the wiring, carefully drilling a small hole in the area where the glove box would be. On the other side of the wiring, a calculator looking keypad which would allow you to input a number, playing the corresponding tune. There were 76 tunes! This was top of the line 1980 technology!

This was the gift we gave my dad one year for Father’s Day. It was a gift that was more for our amusement than his, but he did get a good deal of amusement out of it. He placed it under the hood of his 1971 Chevy Truck. To this day, I’ve never seen another car or truck with a manual transmission, that is controlled on the steering column. It was a unique design, which made it look like an automatic. Learning the gears was a tricky proposition.

I’m sure he thought it was goofy when he opened the gift, but he played along, installing it where we could enjoy the tunes it would put out. When you live in a community where everyone knows everyone for several square miles, you rarely pass a stranger. A large part of the fun was watching the faces of our friends, neighbors or relatives as we went by. I was in the passenger seat. We had yet to give seat belts a first thought, much less second thought. I was armed and ready with the keypad in hand. Dad might call for a specific tune, such as the Dukes of Hazard theme or maybe The Entertainer. More often than not, I simply put in a random number and saw what the horn would spit out, as I hit enter. We would laugh in anticipation, as we waved at the person, while the horn would begin to blare. Then we would laugh at their responses, as we traveled on down the road.

Sometimes, it’s not the gift that is the gift but the memories that result from it.

Fried Chicken

I wonder about odd things. For instance, how did fried chicken become such a staple in this country? Did you know that the dish originates with the Scottish, and prior to the 1830’s, it hadn’t been heard of in The United States? Imagine the perplexing looks early Americans might give each other if they somehow were transported in time to today, seeing chicken restaurants on every corner.

Growing up in the rural south, I knew some ladies that were amazing at making fried chicken. Both of my grandmothers, as well as one of my great grandmothers, were amazing cooks. I would watch them take a whole fryer and cut it with a big knife right there in their kitchen. While this seemed rather primitive, when for a few cents more a pound, they could have had this already done, I guess it wasn’t too bad, when they remembered their mothers and grandmothers actually going out to the hen house, catching, killing, defeathering and doing all of the other necessary actions to bring fried chicken to the table. My childhood was before the days that plastic came to rule our lives. It was a given that when you bought groceries, they would be packed in large brown paper bags that were carried out by polite young men in ties and loaded in your car. We didn’t waste them….They would be used for garbage, maybe to make book covers for textbooks and most certainly they would be used in the kitchen to make fried chicken! They would have their flour and some of their seasoning in the bag. Piece by piece, they would put the chicken in the bag and shake it like the bird was still alive, and they were trying to kill it.

On the stove, that old cast iron skillet would be waiting, Crisco, shortening, lard or some other such concoction, would be already boiling hot, probably just slightly cooler than the surface of the sun. Well maybe not that hot, but scalding hot. Each piece would hit that grease and make a racket, promising all in proximity, that they would be eating good tonight. Each of these grandmothers had a distinct way of making fried chicken. It was their fried chicken. It’s been rare that I’ve sat down at a meat and three or cafeteria and dined on the delacy that came anywhere near the perfection they achieved.

My great grandmother was nicknamed “The Fried Chicken Queen” by family. She loved fried chicken! Ironically, my great grandfather refused to eat any fowl. He had grown up around chickens and said they were dirty animals. As a result at every gathering, there would be chicken or turkey at holidays and ham, since he wouldn’t touch the bird. He wouldn’t eat fowl, but he would eat pig brains. Somehow, his logic never added up for me.

Fried chicken always meant great side dishes. If it were a family dinner, it might be homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and biscuits. If it were summer and picnic fare, it might be baked beans, potato salad and deviled eggs. Can you tell I like to eat?

How odd that quick serve fried chicken has taken over the United States. For the longest time, it was all about Kentucky Fried Chicken….what the kids call KFC now. In the south we had other chain chicken restaurants like Lee’s, Mrs. Winners and Churches. Everyone got in on the chicken game. For awhile, Hardee’s served up fried chicken. I can remember when McDonald’s first introduced Chicken McNuggets. I personally never cared for them, but that gave rise to a whole new generation of chicken restaurants. Back in the 80’s, Chick-Fil-A was still a kid, hanging out at the mall. Who would have figured that when they left the mall they would have cars wrapped around the building, and their drive thrus would be doing business at record speed? In the 90’s we were introduced to this novelty called “chicken tenders.” Hard to believe that a whole slew of sauces were invented just to dip perfectly good fried chicken in. This wasn’t a passing fad, through. It’s apparently here to stay. No wonder there’s a chicken shortage, given that we are just using breaded breast meat! What happens to the rest of these birds?

Now, I look around any given corner and you have Zaxby’s, Chick-Fil-A, KFC and others. ALL Chicken restaurants are a thing. Now, I have absolutely no problem with these restaurants, but even on their best day, they will never compare to that chicken my grandmothers would make, shaking it in a big paper grocery bag.

T I M E

Time used to run much slower than it does now. There were still 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day, but it just ran different. There was a day and time not so many decades ago, when we didn’t multi-task. Whether it was work or play, we soaked it in and lived in the moment. We dwelled there….

We looked at time differently, too. Your favorite TV show was something that you carved out time for. You had to be there, watching at that exact time on that exact night to catch it. Somehow, it was different than today. Sure there weren’t as many choices and channels, but millions of people shared the experience of watching that show together. Maybe they would talk about it the next day at school, work or church. Radio was the same. We were living life together in large groups rather than the fragmented audiences of today. We didn’t have songs on demand on iPods or podcasts or anything like that. We lived in the moment…all of us together.

School seemed to move at a slower pace. Teachers taught, based on their knowledge, rather than a prescribed schedule by a school board. Work was an interactive experience. We talked to each other. There was no email or text or messenger to do it, so we had real conversations with real people, experiencing their real emotions.

Sometimes time seemed to go on forever. Summers felt like a world unto itself, where kids could be free to roam and play. It was almost as if time stood still, observing the clothes lines filled with sheets and clothes. The gardens demanded time of their own to grow and then to be worked.

At night, we went to bed, experiencing the overwhelming darkness of the night. The silence was only interrupted by the wind in the trees or the thunder and rain that sometimes would consume the sky.

There was no mini computer in our pocket. No one could reach us. And that was good. We lived in the moment. Whatever we did took up our full attention. There were no Facebook updates or breaking news alerts to distract us or ruin our day. No texts coming to give us directions on the next thing to do….the next place to be….fires to put out.

W e m o v e d t h r o u g h l i f e a t a s l o w e r p a c e. Those days are gone. I sure miss them. I’m glad I was alive to know there was something different….something better….something real and experienced. But, time has gotten away from me. I’m on what some would consider the backside of middle age. My wife and I have been together for 18 years. My children aren’t really children anymore. They are becoming young ladies. And I sit here trying to understand where the time went. It evaporated right in front of my eyes. I was there. I experienced it, but I had no idea it was moving at the pace that it was.