New Year's Resolutions

It’s New Year’s resolution time once again and the web is full of great ideas on how to slim down, save money or party like a Kardashian. The first two sound ok, but I still don’t get the fixation with the dysfunctional Kardashian clan…but that’s another topic all in itself. No matter which great idea you choose, probably close to 100% of these ill-chosen resolutions will fail. But how can this be so when we see so many thin, rich people partying like its 1999? It will work, but I think the failure rate is tied more to the timing of the resolution than the resolution itself.

Here I go again sharing good advice I gleaned from my very first broker; you know, the one I said I got no good advice from. But what he told me on this matter has stuck with me for years. We were sitting around the office during that lull between Christmas and the New Year trying to act like we were conducting some type of real estate business. I was still trying to get used to the idea of sitting around talking about work actually being work, but he had been at it for years so he genuinely appeared busy. This is when I asked him if he had chosen a resolution for the coming year. “Nope” was all he said as he grabbed the phone to make a call.

Well he never said anything else on the subject so later in the day, while we were eating lunch, I asked him again. Food always made him friendly, so I knew it was a good time to follow up. He said that he never made any type of commitment to a new idea as long as there was a celebration (he probably meant alcohol) going on. He said a new year’s resolution was like hugging a stranger in a bar and telling them you loved them. He said his new year would begin on February one as would his resolution. Seems kind of simple when you think about it; when you think about what it really means. How many times have you made a good decision when you were making one just because everybody else was? Lemmings leap simply because the others do, and the last time I checked they all die! Happy early New Year, it’s a little more than a month away!

whoo-whoo

It never ceases to amaze me how often I think about someone that I haven’t seen in ages and the next thing I know they are standing behind me in the checkout line at the grocery store. It’s almost like you knew you were going to see them soon and your brain was doing the prep work. Going over the notes before the big test? I don’t know if this is some kind of sixth sense, but I do try to pay attention to these things. They might just be important.

It’s not hard to imagine that my wife and I would share a common wave length, we’ve been together over half of our lives. But almost every day (if I call her) she says “I was just thinking about calling you”. It happens so often I don’t give it a second thought. But what about when this “whoo-whoo” thing happens with old friends? What about extended family…or ideas; how much time do you spend on those thoughts? I have random “good ideas” all the time that I usually just let slip away or write off as daydreaming.

My wife and I spend a lot of time “double daydreaming”. We dream out loud of things to add to our “some-day list”. Not things like winning the lottery or going to the moon, but more practical ideas like building a new house in the country or moving to the beach. I think it is really the only way that you will truly know what your partner is thinking, and it does help some of these dreams actually happen. The ideas have changed over the years as many of our dreams have been realized, but the latest one seems like the best ever; owning a bed and breakfast.

Really it would be more like a bed and supper, but that’s just a technicality. It would probably end up being more work than either of us would really want, but it does sound like fun meeting and cooking for a few new people every night. Of course we would locate in some semi-exotic location and the house would practically take care of itself, but we are dreaming, right? If we ever stop and declare just how much work it would really be the dream would be over. No need in killing our dream of the last few years over details!

But mixed in with every dream is the reality of day to day life. Christmas is always a busy time; a time when you need to think of others more than yourself. We don’t need anything, and all we really wanted this year was some time off together; we are getting that right now. But I must admit that I wonder about the meaning of what happened to me when I checked my email Christmas morning. We were in a bit of a rush to get out and be with family, but I was ready before the girls and decided to turn on the computer. I replied to a few emails and deleted them but I couldn’t make myself delete the single message in my spam box; three months of free advertising on Bedandbreakfast.com! Whoo-whoo!

An heiress and a pool house

There is nothing like celebrating a birthday to remind us just how fast time flies. If you’re sitting around waiting to turn sixteen or twenty one you might not agree, but the older you are the faster time seems to move. I will never forget being at a wedding once when the groom’s grandmother, who was in her late eighties at the time, asked me how old I was. “I’m thirty four” I told her with my chest poked out just a little, proud to be a very grown man. Well this little lady that probably wasn’t five feet tall laying down with her toes pointed out said “You think time is moving fast now, don’t you. Wait until you get my age; I eat breakfast every fifteen minutes”. This was many years ago, but I can still remember it like it was yesterday. At the time I really didn’t see how things could move any faster, but throw in kids, houses, jobs and birthdays and the next thing you know co-workers are saying yes sir calling you Mr. Ande.

When I was younger I could sit down and compile a list of things I wanted without even having to think. It’s harder to do this now, and often when I have free time I can’t even think of something I want to do much less buy. It’s not that I have gotten everything I ever wanted, I simply don’t want as much. It took years to understand that a good meal and a movie with my family is as exciting as buying a new truck or house on the lake. I know that I had to try these other things to understand the concept, but I’m still happy that I learned this lesson….at any age. With the economy in shambles, some are learning this the hard way.

The lesson is humility and I met a lady this week that, for me, put it all in perspective. I see low income families every day in my job, and yes, more than a few are milking the system for whatever they can get. I don’t know the situations of any of the clients I meet unless they offer them up, and to say that few do is an understatement. Most critique the free work done on their home like an heiress building a pool house, but it IS their home and I try to be respectful. Then I meet a client like this.

The first time I see her she is standing on her small concrete porch with her arms wrapped around my agency escort. “Come on in” she almost screams as she grabs my hand and pulls me inside the small home. “Ya’ll are some of my favorite people on earth right now!” Wow! I get very few this excited I think as I head inside; this is going to be a good day.

As I walk to the kitchen to put my files down I notice that a small artificial Christmas tree and a few other modest decorations are about the only furnishings in the living room. I wonder if she has just moved in, but I don’t get a chance to ask her any of my normal questions as she is talking nonstop about her new low power bill and cozy home. I hear kids laughing in a back bedroom and remember that I had planned to take this week before Thanksgiving off myself, but ended up having to work around the agency’s busy holiday schedule. I’ll make this one quick, I think as I take a few pictures and begin to wrap up my visit.

“Is there anything you want to ask me?’ I ask her as I close my files and look toward the door. “Did everything turn out as you hoped?” She smiled at me and sat down at the kitchen table where her two kids were now eating breakfast. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but when I reached out to shake her hand she very softly said “I’m just glad to be here. I’m 53 years old and up until three years ago I had been on the same job for eighteen years. I think the only thing my husband liked about me was my six figure income and now I have neither. I went through my savings and discovered that the only thing worse than living in a trailer park was living in a homeless shelter. Before this I thought I knew what humble meant. Things can change very fast.”

As I drove back home I thought about her. I admit the man in me wondered how, if you truly made six figures, you could now be broke, but I couldn’t stay on that thought long. All I could think of was how grateful she seemed. She was smiling at me, cooking breakfast for her kids before she went to work later at Home Depot; she was happy. She was enjoying the moment she was in; the moment before things changed again. Happy Thanksgiving.

Recycling Day

It’s the second Thursday of the month; the day my street puts the recycling at the curb for pick up. Collecting the last few cans and water bottles from the counter, I put them in a bag and head for the door. It will be the second time I have done this since my dog (Buddy Jeanes) died and I think that I will forever think of him when I do this. I’m not sure why he liked it so much, but he got excited and scratched on the door whenever I made a run for the recycling bin. Maybe it was just that he knew for sure I was going outside, but somebody would invariably say “Buddy loves some recycling”. One of those little inside family jokes.

I bagged the last few items up and headed for the bin. It was kind of a tight squeeze in the garage because we had crammed both vehicles in last night due to bad weather, so I made more noise than usual getting everything out. As I walked up the driveway with bin in hand, my neighbor’s two little dogs begin to bark. “Shit-snappers”; Buddy hated both of them. The closer I got to the street, the closer both of them came, tails cocked and ears erect, toward my location. They wouldn’t be doing this if Buddy was around, I think as I place the brimming bin beside the road; he would just look their way and they would go silent. I gave them both my best evil eye, but it had little effect; they continued to bark. Note to self: work on my evil eye.

As I headed back toward the house the barking died down. The two little dogs drifted over to my neighbor’s fence across the road and marked their new territory. It was obvious that they were still unsure about coming in my yard, and maybe they weren’t as stupid as Buddy thought they were; he had only been gone a month. No sense in getting rolled over a bad decision!

As I reached the end of the driveway I looked down the hill behind the house at the leaf cover mound that has become Buddy’s final resting place. It is really a beautiful sight this time of year with all the changing leaf colors and it made me stop and think for a few minutes. I silently told him not to worry about the two “street crappers” next door; I would keep them away from the cats and out of the garage. I told him that I missed him every day but that we would be ok without him. I thanked him for watching us for 11 years and offered my best assurance that we would try to remember the things he taught us. The exact location of his grave was hard to spot from my vantage point, and the changing season had begun to cover it as well. In less than a month his memory was already starting to fade.

The wind was blowing a steady stream of leaves from the trees and the woods felt alive with movement. I could think of nothing else to tell him, so I just stood and looked, without really looking at anything, down the hill. My focus changed and I realized that a deer was standing behind a bush just a few feet from his grave. She was uninterested in my intentions even though we were less than fifty feet apart. It gave me the start that all hunters understand, and when I really looked I realized that there four other deer around her, almost encircling Buddy’s grave. How had I not noticed them before?

I stood there for a few more minutes as the deer looked for acorns on the hillside. Of course I tossed a pinecone in their direction to make them run; I wouldn’t be a true boy if I didn’t do something like that. But I continued to wonder why I had stood there for so long without noticing the deer. They had to have been there the entire time and if they had walked up while I was standing there I certainly would have seen them. How can we ever fully understand what is around us? How will we ever really know who or what is with us if we cannot see even what is offered up in plain view.

My hunting buddy

After taking a year off from hunting, I decided to give it another try this season. I’ve spent many a fall morning over the last forty years shivering in a deer stand waiting for the sun to rise, and while this may not sound like fun to many, for me it doesn’t get much better. Listening to the woods wake up while you sit unnoticed is a religious experience. After my brother died my daughter shared it with me for a few years, and although puberty has her currently riding the bench, I think she will be back. I hope she will be back.

My daughter looks and acts so much like my late brother that she has made my heart skip when I glanced at her profile in the early morning light. And she seems to have his luck. I always dressed in layers when I hunted with my brother because I knew that it was just a matter of time after the sun came up that I would be helping him drag a deer out of the woods. I didn’t mind; at least I got to warm up and we shared the proceeds.

But this morning I went alone. I went to the old reliable hunting grounds that my brother secured permission for us to hunt twenty five years ago. As luck would have it, there ended up being a truck parked in my spot even though I was supposed to be the only one there. I got out and talked to the other hunter and realized that the landowner had misunderstood my choice of locations and put us in the same area. Bummer. The stranger was really nice, and after discovering that he and his buddy had driven over 100 miles to get here, I offered to go home and let them hunt. He thanked me and said he didn’t think that would be necessary, we should all stay. He told me where his buddy was and where he was going to be (my lucky spot!), so I chose a new area and took a seat on my stool.

Well to say that it was a little cool is an understatement! I guess I had forgotten just how cold it is when you sit still in the dark in 25 degree weather, but when it started to get light and the birds began to rustle, I forgot all about it. I sat in an area that neither I nor my brother had ever hunted, but it looked like a decent spot. As it continued to get light, I told him how much I had missed him over the years and how coming here made me miss him even more. I thanked him for providing us this location and smoothing things over with the other hunters. I told him that I didn’t care if I saw any deer; I just loved spending the morning with him. Now I was warm.

The beautiful morning slipped by uneventfully, and I started to get restless knowing that the other hunters would be getting ready to leave soon. It was at that moment that I saw a buck appear at the edge of the field fifty yards in front of me. I appeared to him as well and he turned to run back in the woods. I called him a few times and he came back out in the field. After I got a chance to get a good look at him I realized that although he would certainly never make the Boone and Crockett scoreboard, he was respectable and some cubed steak would be delicious on a chilly Sunday evening. Well he didn’t go down in the middle of the field as I had hoped, and my heart sank as I saw him disappear into some very thick brush surrounding the open area.

Well I did find the deer; he had not gone too far into the woods, but he was in some very thick stuff. Let the work begin! After I said my goodbyes to the other hunters and headed home, I replayed the morning’s events. I thought again of my brother and the luck he had sent my way on an unusually crowded morning. I thought of the prayers we shared that morning and realized I had left one out. Thank you for sending those strangers to help me drag and load OUR deer! Once again my brother, you think of everything.

A Child

The news this morning was once again all about the Penn State child molestation scandal. Over the past two days I’ve seen interviews with every type of person that just might have an opinion on the case. Faculty, students, football players and even psychologists have all chimed in with their reasoning of what should happen next. But all they really end up talking about is if it was fair or not to fire the longtime football coach. Don’t get me wrong, I love football, but is this really what the case is about; A man’s job?

Personally I think that if there was any indication of a cover up of a crime against children everyone involved should be fired, but that is just my opinion, and it is really no more important than the others I’ve seen on the news. But this morning I saw an interview with a young female college student that (for me) put it all in perspective. She stated that she just could not understand why the school would not let the coach finish out the season, or at least coach the last home game. It was, after all, senior day and he is not accused of molesting anybody! What I understand is that, from where she stands, she is correct. She is simply stating the opinion of a woman that has never had a child.

Having one of your own changes everything. I try not to tell childless people this because I hated it when, before becoming a parent, people told me. But it’s true. Parenthood gives you license to worry for other people’s children and to feel for the parents when something goes wrong. Maybe license is not the right word; I think it activates something stored inside of you that you can’t turn off; it flips a switch. It lights a flame that is extremely fragile, but impossible to extinguish. A flame that has the ability to keep you warm at night or burn your house to the ground.

I remember feeling exactly the same way about children as the young college student, and I think she should be forgiven. I don’t think trying to explain the difference between the love she feels for her family and friends and the love of a child will do any good; it did no good for me. You must live it. None of us will be there to tell her I told you so, and I wouldn’t want to anyway. She will remember the interview one day, and while she will be proud of her fifteen minutes of fame, she will be realize that she didn’t quite have enough information to make the best decision.

Less is More

Friends and family can offer you advice until they are blue in the face, but most of life’s valuable lessons are learned the hard way. The often painful way. I’ve always been a big talker and I learned at an early age just what that looked my parents exchanged (in the middle of one of my rants) meant. Basically “My god, are you still talking?” But I couldn’t stop; I just kept trying to talk my way out of it. I was in my thirties before I really learned that, in a conversation, less if often more.
Case in point: A friend of mine had moved to Alabama after a series of most unfortunate events. His life could have been a novel, but I don’t think most would find it believable enough to finish the book. A decorated helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War, he was later in a terrible car accident that caused him to suffer a moderate (if that is possible) brain injury. This injury leads to the loss of an important administrator’s job and he ended up raising exotic animals on a local farm. I became friends with him when his wife hired me to install some beautiful stained glass sidelights she had built for a wealthy client. One spring morning of the following year the wife dropped dead on the front porch while drinking a cup of coffee. Unbelievable, huh? Well it goes on.
My friend decided he could not stay on the farm after losing his longtime spouse, so he moved to the north Georgia Mountains with a divorcee friend. They planned to raise horses and built a barn with a loft apartment to start another life. After the barn mysteriously burns they move to Alabama and try again. After settling in yet another home, my friend discovers he has bladder cancer that he believes is caused by exposure to Agent Orange during the war. The VA disagrees and he is forced to spend his life savings on treatment of the disease. After becoming almost destitute, the VA submits and agrees to pay (and back pay) for his treatments. Hooray! Finally some good news. Not quite; he is found a few days later floating in a local creek with a fatal head injury. What a tragic life.
The local authorities contacted me several days later to ask a few questions. As luck would have it, I was one of the last people he had spoken with before his death, and they were trying to create some sort of time line of his last few days. I really didn’t have anything to offer and they told me they would be in touch. After weeks ticked by with no breaks in the case, a detective called to ask if I would mind his coming to Georgia to ask me a few questions. “Sure” I offered “Anything I can do to help”.
I made plans to be in my office the day I agreed to meet the detective, but I was a little shocked when the unmarked car arrived and four large men climbed out. My office at the sawmill was tiny and I hardly had room to drag in enough chairs for everyone to sit. It went down just like an episode of Law and Order. Only one (extremely nice) man spoke and the other three glared at me while taking notes. I think we breathed up all of the good air in the first few minutes, and while I really wanted to help, I was very nervous. I understand now why people often confess to something they are completely innocent of; they make you feel guilty of something!


Luckily the interview didn’t last long, and as I walked them to the car they in turn handed me a business card. “If you think of anything that would help us with the case, please call” each offered “We need a break here”. I was still pretty nervous as we stood beside the car and to this day I still can’t imagine why I said what I did. “Where exactly did you find his body?” I asked “I think my brother lives a few miles from there.” Time stood still. I could hear my watch ticking and my heart beating as all four investigators stopped in their tracks and stared at me. When they finally broke the trance they looked at each other with an all too familiar expression. What had initially peaked their interest as a “Hmm…..” ended up with a “My god, are you still talking?” Lesson learned; less is more

Lessons

If I had paid attention to everything that was going on around me since day one, I would be a genius. Those teenage part-time jobs and great grandparent funerals were as much learning experiences as were the fishing trips when your grandfather made a point of showing you exactly how to hook the catalpa worm. Most of the time nobody says “pay attention, you’re going to be tested on this”. You just have to learn that you will be, at some point, responsible for all the material covered.
Everything and everybody is a lesson. Most don’t need to me mentioned aloud; they just need to be cataloged. I’ve always admired those that had the good sense to write down a time and a date when a fishing trip produced fifty crappie or a hunting trip a ten point buck; I’ve never had the discipline. I guess I’ve just assumed it was kind of like getting hit by lightning; you were in the right place at the right time…you were lucky…the planet’s aligned; take your pick. Either way I simply chalked it up to good fortune. Applying a mathematical formula to it just takes the fun out of it.
The older I get, the more my past relationships become distilled into one or more things I learned from them. They become themes, and often lessons. I think of this today as I look for a place to put the passing of a longtime friend. A friend that had more patience with me than I probably deserved; he would not only stand by one of my bad decisions, he would enforce it. A friend that I often think knew me better than I knew myself…and still liked me. This friend that took great pride at being second in command and who took it upon himself to improve my image was my dog. My family was his most prized possession; we were his herd.
From him I learned that nobody really likes a heated conversation; these sent him sulking to another room. I learned that if you are the smallest dog in the fight you had better be the most determined, and that if you issue ultimatums you have to be willing to back them up. I learned that if you greet people with a smile most will give one in return; if someone is scared of you, only humility will prove them wrong. I learned that the line between confidence and arrogance is a fuzzy one and explaining yourself should not hurt your pride. Being an ambassador for your species is not an elective, it is a requirement; we’re all in this together.
I honestly think that my friend held on for a few days to lessen the shock for me of his dying. His last few days were terrible and watching him suffer was just about more than I could stand; he was hanging on by a thread. I held my breath every time I went to the garage to check on him because I feared each time he would be dead. When my wife came home from work he wagged his tail and gave her as much of a smile as he could muster. After eating supper we discovered he had left the garage and was lying in the rain at the edge of the woods. Even from that distance we both knew that he had left us. It was time; the herd was all here.

What was that?

After sleeping in the same bed with the same woman for twenty five years, you would think that I had seen and heard everything. Before you get the wrong idea let me say it again…sleep…in the same bed. After this much time in grade you get so used to your partner that even the strangest of noises and movements become the new normal. I do keep a set of ear plugs handy for allergy season, but that’s another story worthy of claiming an entire chapter. Garden variety snoring is welcome background noise similar to one of those sleep machines. Water in a mountain stream, birds in the forest, a mild thunderstorm or snoring spouse; choose your personal setting.
But what never ceases to amaze me is just how quick one can go from stage 4 REM sleep to casual conversation. It’s like flipping a switch. Last night for example; we’ve been sleeping with the windows open for the last few weeks, enjoying the cooler weather. This week has been extra special because we’ve had rain! I remember waking a time or two and listening to water coming over the top of the gutters instead of exiting through the leaf choked down spout; music to my ears! You probably think this would be cause for concern, but let me say that old age has allowed me to sleep like a baby through the most urgent of home maintenance concerns. But sometime later in the night I heard PJ say in a normal tone “What was that?” I responded in real time “I don’t know”. Just a normal conversation in the middle of the night…how was your day or did you feed the dog?
Yes I heard it too; there was a loud noise of something crashing to the ground. PJ did ask me if I thought the falling satellite had hit us, but we were both fully awake at that point and I assured her that our yard would probably already be full of vans wearing NASA stickers. But isn’t it funny that I don’t hear the toilet flush or the dog bark anymore, but PJ can ask “are you awake?” and I will say “yes”. Maybe it’s just the ears of a parent. Before Taylor was born I rarely got out of bed in the night; sometimes I didn’t even roll over. But now thanks to the combination of an almost fifty year old bladder and daughter to care for, I get up at least once every night. I think that before we go to bed each night we “set ourselves” just like the clock. It makes me wonder what else is going on?

The Right Thing

Just another Tuesday morning. Two taps of the snooze button and the routine begins. Pour the first cup of coffee, iron some clothes, wake up Taylor, fix breakfast and maybe have a few minutes to watch the news. I at least like to have my weather professionally guessed before I hit the road. It’s a routine we can all do half asleep, and this day begins like so many others have before and (god willing) will again.
The weatherman declares that once again there is no rain in our immediate future. I think about washing my truck or watering my grass, some of the tricks that have worked in the past to force precipitation as the local news shifts back to the national scene. As I grab the remote to pull the plug on the steady stream of unemployment numbers and political infighting, I’m drawn to the images on screen of a burning car. Wait, it’s not the car that’s burning, it’s a motorcycle that is pinned under the front bumper. People are trying to lift the car amid the flames, and after several attempts they succeed! An unconscious man is dragged from underneath the car and he appears to be alive. “Wow”, I hear my daughter say as she appears from the bathroom. “Where is this?”
We watch the footage several times and Iearn that this has happened in Murray Utah. The man dragged from underneath the car, a 21 year old college student at Utah State, is expected to make a full recovery. The people that saved his life are strangers that just happened to be there at the right time. We collectively decide that he is a lucky man as we turn off the television and head out the door. This will be on my mind all day because I have about 200 miles of driving before the day is done. I’ll be extra careful!
As I went about my travels that day I continued to think about the accident. The attempts to lift the car. The first try with only 4-5 people was not enough, the car was too heavy. People kept appearing from the wings like extras in a movie. College students and construction workers, men and women, blacks and whites. A cross section that an independent survey would approve was giving it their all. All volunteers with one goal in mind; saving the life of a perfect stranger. What would I have done? Would I have jumped in and helped? Would the car explode and kill us all?
Luckily this is not a question that today I will have to answer. I was a thousand miles away when the accident occurred, and I watched it from the safety of my own home. I didn’t feel the heat from the flames or smell the smoke from the burning rubber; I didn’t have to decide. But what I did get was an urge to help someone, to do something good. To pay it forward. I don’t have to pull a flaming car off of someone to make a difference in another’s day. I will not make the evening news by simply treating other with respect and kindness, and I honestly don’t think I should. I don’t think stardom was what the rescuers were seeking when the saved the young man’s life, they were simply doing the right thing

A Team

In the name of getting my life on a more productive track, I joined the United States Navy. The year was 1982 and I was twenty years old. To say that I was uneasy about this decision was an understatement; I was terrified. Being from a small, rural town in middle Georgia I had never ventured more than 300 miles from home and even on those trips I was never alone. Time to grow up.
The only things I knew about military life came from black and white episodes of Gomer Pile. Somehow I knew that this would be of little use, though I caught myself listening for the laugh track and background music on several occasions. I began to feel comfortable when I came to the realization that although this was new to me and I had no idea what to do, I was not alone; we were all brand new. We struggled to learn to correctly fold our clothes and make our beds, and we flopped on our beds nightly exhausted from the additional exercise we were all “awarded” because of mistakes made by individual shipmates. We must work together or we would be the fittest graduating class in history.
Like many other young men of this era I was a smoker. This not something I’m proud of, but it was the perfect thing for the company Commanders to hold for ransom… and believe me they did! One Sunday morning we were hanging around the barracks writing letters, resting and just enjoying a much needed day off. I was in the bathroom shaving when I heard a shipmate yell the dreaded “Attention on deck”! This meant we were about to receive a surprise visit (and possible inspection) from our constantly disappointed superiors. “On the line” was called and we lined up at attention in front of our bunks. This could not be good!
All hopes of receiving a smoke break this day were brought to a screeching halt when it was discovered that one of our fellow recruits had a pinch of smokeless tobacco in his mouth. Tobacco of any persuasion was considered smoking, and the fact that this young fellow had taken it upon himself to partake was going to cost us dearly. A large steel trash can was turned upside down and the offender was made to stand on display in front on 79 very angry recruits. “You may never smoke again, and you have this young fellow to thank” was announced by the company commanders as they turned authority over to the head recruit and exited the building. The young man stood at attention on the trash can for hours receiving the taunts and catcalls of an angry mob.
Well I learned a valuable lesson about human nature that day. You are only as strong as your weakest link. Even the angriest of sailors began to feel sorry for the young man, and the taunts turned into “don’t worry about it” and “It’s no big deal, I need to quit anyway”. We were becoming a team. Even though this young man had made a mistake that would cost us dearly, he was one of us. I wonder to this date if this event happened in real time or was simply a bonding exercise, but either way it hit its mark. If we can begin to learn to view mistakes as learning opportunities for this great big team, the world will be a much better place to live.

Teach One

Since I was a little boy I have loved to cook. Growing up in a working family with three boys very close in age, food (and competition for food) was always a big deal. We all three learned to cook well enough to survive on our own, but I really loved it. Granted this was not a very manly thing to tell your buddies in junior high school, so I really kept my love for cooking to myself. “Dude I baked a really nice pineapple upside down cake last night, it was really moist”. That doesn’t sound weird now, but if you grew up in the 1970’s you would understand.
I’ve made several career changes over the years, but my love for cooking is one of the few things that has remained a constant. My wife of 25 years didn’t know how to boil water when we married, and while she is a pretty good cook now, I have been the one to feed us since the very beginning. I don’t mind because she does most of the cleanup, the smoke detector batteries last longer and we don’t eat at midnight. An excellent delegation of duties!
Since my daughter was very young I’ve let her help me prepare meals. I hoped that she would share my love of the kitchen, but she is now fourteen and I’m not so sure she has. The older she gets the more important it has become to me and I often feel like she thinks I’m leaving or dying when I tell her, “you really need to know how to make this” or “come watch how I do this part, I won’t be around forever”. I know this sounds morbid, but I have always thought the more she knows how to do for herself, the more independent she will be. Parents!
This makes me think of something I recently learned in an OSHA class. It was presented as the surgeon’s axiom and it is as follows; “See one, do one, teach one”. This is naturally what we do for our children, but this is also a wonderful approach for your business. When you take the time to help co-workers or new employees by answering the “there is no such thing as a stupid question” questions; you will be rewarded with a productive office and some karma bonus points. Teaching others is the best way to teach you!

Angel

I moved back to Milledgeville a little over four years ago. I would say that I moved home, but actually I was born in Atlanta and lived there until I was five or six. This, I know, is splitting hairs because Milledgeville is where I grew up and will always be home. I moved back here after spending about seven years right down the road in Wilkinson County. We lived just outside of Ivey on what was, at that time, my childhood dream farm. A home and almost eighty acres! Taylor went to the public school there and PJ was a stay at home mom. What more could a man want?
Well we all know that dreams have a way of changing once they are given life. Want is what makes us dream, and we both begin to want something else. We had moved there to be closer to my younger brother, but after his death the county just didn’t feel welcoming. I built a new home in Milledgeville and we moved back. We moved from eighty acres in the middle of nowhere to a neighborhood inside the city limit. Talk about change! I spent a large portion of the first year looking out the window at my neighbors cutting their grass, washing their cars and just sitting on their porch. All of this in plain view! They were coming and going like they didn’t know (or care) anybody was watching.
All of this now seems like so long ago.
I was in the area of our old place several times in the previous weeks, so I rode by to take a look. There is a brand new highway that comes within a few miles of our old place, but everything else looked the same. It was like I had gone to the store or maybe a short vacation and was returning home. I didn’t stop. I told myself that I needed to get back to work, but really I had mixed emotions about being in the area, period. My brother has been gone for over eight years, but looking at things that we discovered together made it seem like yesterday.
I’m not a stranger to death. I’ve cried my eyes out at funerals for friends and family, and some I still think about today. I’ve helped choose just the right casket and I held my grandmother’s hand when she took her last breath. My grandfather was one of a kind and hardly a day passes that I don’t wish my daughter had known him like I did. But my brother’s death, for me, was different. When I lost him I was scared. We talked a lot and I pretty much bounced every idea I had off of him before I acted on it. But just losing my voice of reason was not what scared me. I think this was the first time I actually wondered what happened to someone when they died. I understand the biological part, but would he still be around me in spirit? Would he haunt me? Would he leave signs for me so that I would know he was watching over me? Would any of this happen, or was he just gone?
I looked for him everywhere. Every morning I looked out the window overlooking a small field in front of the house. Sometimes I would see deer and turkeys crossing the field, but I never saw him. I half expected (or just plain hoped) that one day I would raise the blinds and he would be crossing the field. He would hesitate just for a second to acknowledge that I had seen him before fading into the wood line. A fake Bigfoot sighting that was too blurry to really tell what was going on. I could image it so clearly that at times I thought that it had happened. It never did.
When I told my family about riding by the old place they got excited. I agreed to ride back there the coming weekend and maybe even get out and look around. I wondered what effect this would have on them, especially my daughter. We had moved there when she was only three years old and she had experienced many “firsts” there. She had seen her daddy at his worst there as well. She arrived as a baby and departed as a young lady.
We got up early Sunday morning and headed to Wilkinson County. The new highway was a shock to both of them, so we traveled its full length before heading up the dirt road to the old place. All three of us put on our hats as we pulled in the drive in front of the locked gate and climbed out of the truck. Luckily the deer flies were not too bad, but we kept our hats on anyway, holding hands as we silently walked down the short drive to the front of the house.
We reached the clearing separating the house and shop and stopped to catch our breaths. The weeds were tall in front of the house and the field that I had kept almost manicured was overgrown nearly head high. Nobody said anything as we each looked at different components of our memories. My eyes were scanning the field when a movement at the wood line caught my eye. My heart fluttered and I dropped my daughter’s hand. I searched for words but none would come. I knew that I should say something because the moment would quickly pass. I somehow managed to point in the general direction of the movement and say “look”. They both turned in the direction of my outstretched arm and gasped. For standing at the end of the field was an almost completely white deer with a large set of chocolate brown antlers. A beacon in the drought burned scrub. An angel.

The Game

It’s the biggest game of their lives and everybody involved is getting nervous. There are only three outs left and the pitcher has almost reached the maximum number of pitches he can throw, eighty five. The coaches are pacing back and forth in the dugout trying to decide what, if anything, to do next. They can let him pitch to one more batter or take him out now. What to do when you are down by one run and facing elimination in the Little League World Series.
The manager makes his move toward the mound; he has to make a decision. He calls time out and walks on the field. The man waves his arms as he walks on the field and a crowd of long faced twelve year olds join him at the mound. Some of the boys appear to be fighting back tears while others are looking at their shoes. The team looks to have already lost the game and judging from their expressions, they are already thinking about the long ride home to New England.
The manager gathers the boys around him and looks each boy in the eyes. Here it comes, I think, he’s going to rip them a new one. “Isn’t this great? You guys are great!” he says with a thick Boston accent, “This game is great, we are a great team!” The boys look up at him and a few even manage a smile. “I’m so proud of each one of you. Go get them”. He hands the ball back to the struggling pitcher and walks back to the dugout.
Well a miracle did not happen for those boys that night, they were eliminated. They will watch the remainder of the tournament from home, and playing under the Williamsport lights will be only a memory. The numbers are not really in favor of any of these boys making it to the big leagues, so this will probably be the biggest sporting event in which most of them will ever participate. But what a memory it will be!
I have continued to think of this game since I watched it last night. Sure, the competition was intense, but what their coach told them when all was lost has really stuck with me. Whether we win or lose, we are great. If we enjoy life for what it is, what we are doing and who we are doing it with…we win every game.

Oh No!

By now I think that everyone who reads my blogs knows what I do for a living. Officially I am a monitor for the federal government’s weatherization program working in a grant funded position. Unofficially I am an inspector hired by The University of Georgia to oversee the work done by community action agencies. Before I go any further let me just say no, I can’t get you any free football game tickets, but I do like both the job and the employer. Getting to talk to the clients that have had their homes weatherized has been a lot of fun too. I’ve met some genuine southern characters.
Honestly I am a re-inspector. The work has already been inspected, so I inspect the inspectors. That is a mouthful, I know, but it’s to insure that there is no impropriety with our tax dollars. Sometimes I get to see some pretty rough stuff in some neighborhoods that, let’s just say, I wouldn’t want to be in after the sun goes down. But for the most part it goes smoothly. I have been trained on how to handle people that approach me, and I’m a diligent truck locker. I never go alone and I usually follow an inspector (my escort) from one of the agencies in my personal vehicle; safety in numbers. Sounds like we’ve got it all figured out, huh? Well something happened to me today that you just can’t train for.
We left a home in Houston County and headed for downtown Macon. I don’t care much for the east side of that town, but quite a bit of work is done in that area so I’m there frequently. We pulled into the driveway that was shared with two side by side houses and I began to look around. It was pretty much what I expected, so I grabbed my camera and stepped out of the truck. I usually let the guy from the agency go in first because he already knows the homeowner, but as I got out and walked around the home, he got back in his truck to let a car, he had blocked in, out of the drive. When I came back to the front of the house my escort was nowhere in sight, so I spoke to an older man that was sitting on the front porch as I walked in the front door.
It was pretty dark inside the home, but I could see three people sitting on the couch as I walked toward the kitchen. I said hello and they responded in kind. When I reached the kitchen there was an older woman sitting at the table. I spoke to her as well and started taking pictures of the appliances. I opened the cabinets and looked in the stove. I pulled the clothes dryer out slightly and took a picture of the exhaust pipe. As I went through the motions of my routine inspection, the lady sitting at the table asked me why I was taking pictures. I explained to her why I was there and what else I would have to do before I left. “Humph” was all she said. I apologized again as I ran another person out of the bathroom! How many people were in this home? After twenty minutes of taking pictures and opening cabinet doors I walked out back to look at the rear of the home. One of the ladies went with me because there were three pitbulls back there, and while I could tell that at least two were on chains, I didn’t want to take a chance. I hated to ask her, but I thought it was the least she could do after all of the work that had been done on her home.
She was in the middle of an apology for how much stuff she had stacked on the back porch when my cellphone rang . It was my escort, but why was he calling me? “Where are you he asked?” as the homeowner stopped her speech in mid-sentence. I thought this was a stupid question, but I told him I was in the back yard. He walked around the home at this point and stood there looking at me with a big smile on his face. “I was wondering where you were.” He almost laughed. “But I would have never dreamed you were in the next door neighbor’s house!”

The old way

Another long week in Atlanta is now a memory. This last year of forty hour classes and proctored tests has taken me away from my family more than any year since Taylor was born and really even the twenty five years since PJ and I have been together. I think we have done pretty well with it, and come to find out my household will function without my supervision. But the weeks are beginning to become a blur. It would be different (I think) if the subject matter was the same, but we have jumped around a bit. Mixed in with the basic “whole house as a system” that this program is based on, we have taken classes in Thermographer imaging usage, pest control and even commercial construction safety. Yes, I am being re-trained as part of the Stimulus Package, but some days I’m not sure just exactly what I’m being re-trained to be.
Last week was the second (and final) of the commercial construction safety certifications I will be offered; the first one was basically just a study course for the second one anyway. So now after two weeks of information overload I am authorized to teach an OSHA construction safety class up to thirty hours in length. A pretty nice portable certification, I hope, for a guy that will have to re-invent himself again in less than a year. My resume looks a lot different than it did a year ago, but I’m not sure of its intended value in the small town I call home. Honestly I have never spent much time worrying about future employment, but I have never lived in a time when the economy was this bad. I have also never been forty eight years old.
Last week’s class was a little different than ones I’ve had before. Most of the ones I’ve attended lately begin with the each member of the class telling a little about themselves. Where they are from, where they work and what their interests are. The last instructor added “tell us something nobody knows about you” to the list; I thought that was a nice touch. A little window in to your personality. To me it was not so much the something itself as much as it was what you were willing to tell. The opportunity to describe yourself as you wish you were? Maybe. But it was right down my “people watching” alley because I usually sit around and imagine what I want to about the other students anyway. This was a very diverse group. We had students from 25 to 65 years old; students that called towns from New York to Miami home; students that were men and women of at least 6 different nationalities. Diverse.
Well this was a very short introduction to the class and its students, now the course begins. Industrial construction safety is, shall we say, not the most exciting course one might take. A course like this is made (or not) by the instructor. So short of standing there for five days lecturing about respirators, silicosis and mushroom caps on re-bar, our instructor took several different and interesting approaches. We played a few games and watched some silly videos and he broke us up in to seven groups that would give a one hour presentation on the last two days of the class. The instructor would choose the topic and the four other students that you would work with. Strangers that you would have only an hour at the end of each day to plan your presentation with. I, of course, got the guy that was a closet Green Bay Packers fan and the fat guy that dreamed of being a chef, but I did mention that this was a diverse group… right? Well, luckily we each had pretty strong ideas about how we wanted to do our part, so it went smoothly minus the fact that we went dead last and most of our topics had already been covered.
The part that gave me the most trouble about going last was this; everybody was really good! The majority of students were much better than I expected and I’m the one that gives everybody (according to my wife) way too much credit. Several were going to be hard acts to follow! But of all the presentations that day, only one bothered me. It was given by a twenty five year old safety manager from Alabama. He worked for a large construction company but dreamed of playing professional soccer. At least that was the thing that nobody would know about him…the person he wished he was. His presentation was on welding safety. I will add that entire class was blown away by his demeanor when it was “show time” because he had hardly said a word the entire week. He was good! He began by showing a few slides of welding equipment and tools, and then stopped on a slide that was an up close picture of a very rough looking older man. The man had obviously taken his “store bought teeth” out for the picture, and he was making a silly face with his eyes crossed. He had on overalls with the pant legs cut off and no shirt under the straps; a fuzz of red and gray hair covering his bare shoulders. If you were to look up redneck in the dictionary, his would be the picture attached. All of the students laughed at the image, and I would have to give the guy points for the distraction. But what followed really caught my attention, and kind of disturbed me; scared me.
“This is what we have to get rid of!” the young man said “This is the face of your typical construction worker, and it has to change. If I find this guy on my jobs, I will find a way to get rid of him! This is the old way and it scares me” Nobody said anything at this point and the young man proceeded with his presentation. His next slide was an image of a much younger man wearing a welding outfit that had obviously just been taken out of its packaging for the photo to be made. The guy modeling it looked to have recently received a fresh haircut and the only thing missing was the trained Palomino horse that he would ride home at the end of the day. He was… a young welding superhero.
As the young man finished his presentation, the lady sitting in front of me turned around slightly and looked at me. She was about my age, and had been an OSHA compliance for many years. She didn’t say anything, but I was pretty sure I knew what she was thinking. Before she could speak, one of the three co-workers of mine that were in the class poked me in the arm and said “That was really good.” I looked at him and catalogued the similarities he shared with the presenter. Their ages were pretty close; both could be my son. I just nodded my head and waited for the next student to stand before the class. Old guy…I’ll find a way to get rid of him…this is the old way; I could think of nothing else.
The day came to a close and I went back to the hotel to practice my presentation and study for the looming test. I had it down. I could recite my part about concrete tools without notes, and barring any type of last minute stage fright, I was ready. The old guy was giving a presentation about something that he had only learned a few days prior. Re-invention number…? Could this young man be right? How did I wake up one morning and be the old way? I had to get this out of my head and finish what I had started.
When I walked in to class the next morning, the lady that sat in front of me, the OSHA officer, was waiting for me at the door. She started talking about the young man’s presentation from the day before, and really she was talking so fast I was having a hard time understanding her. “I had to pray about it.” She said, “This is something that has followed me for my entire career.” I looked at her and decided again that she was about my age; maybe a little older. But she looked nothing like the old guy in the previous day’s photo. She was very nicely dressed and had on just the right amount of makeup and jewelry. She looked professional. “What do you think it has been like for in this business all these years?” she asked. “Honey, sugar, baby doll, I’ve heard them all. That boy yesterday is nothing but trouble.” At this point I’m thinking I missed something yesterday. He didn’t say anything about women. He was just knocking me, the old guy. The old way. “You let him get to court and tell the judge why he fired that guy. They will make a fool out of him!” she almost yelled, “A man that thinks like that will do the same with women, blacks, Mexicans and any other person on the job that is not just like him.”
Boy had I missed it. She was right. As soon as he had nailed me I had just turned on myself and turned off my logic. It wasn’t about the old guy…it was about tolerance. She had identified the big picture while I sat behind her feeling singled out; an antique. She had identified the problem, and it was neither of us. So this being said…who do you think was thinking the old way?

The Rock

It’s been a long, hot week. A week that I would normally do my best to split my duties between the office and the ovens otherwise known as attics. It is a joke with the other monitors in the program that we only inspect mobile homes after lunch in the summer. Since they have no attic, they are a much better choice for 100+ degree heat. I don’t like spiders and snakes, but I will face them in a crawl space any day if I don’t have to endure 150 degree heat.
But this week I had another out of town monitor ride with me. He has only been on the job a month, and has had little hands on training. One thing about this job that is unlike any other I’ve had is that they will send you to classes and trainings until your eyes pop out. Weeks in class and little time in the field made the training very slow for a “hands on” learner like me, so I try extra hard to give new guys as much real world as possible. Since today was his last day with me, I lined up two homes in Thomaston early this morning and we took off.
We arrived at the first home about 10:30, only to discover that it was in fact a manufactured home. No attic! It was out in the middle of nowhere in a blink of a town called The Rock. The doublewide was very neat with a circular drive way and a well-kept lawn. Blooming flowers and shrubs surrounded the long front porch, while small flocks of birds battled for space at the feeders. A small black and white kitten greeted me at the front door and demanded to be recognized before I was allowed to enter the home. This place was pretty remote, but it was feeling like a little slice of paradise.
As I reached for the door knob I looked at my watch. We were about thirty minutes late so I figured the agency employee that was meeting us at the home was getting impatient. Taking us to this home was a last minute favor so I wanted to stay in his graces. “We’ll make this first one kind of quick” I told my partner, “I know our escort is tired of waiting”.
The inside of the home was as nice as the outside. Very clean, and as tastefully decorated as any home I’ve seen. A lady that could double for Paula Deen was planted in a recliner watching The Weather Channel with one eye and me with the other. After I introduced myself, I was absolutely sure this had to be Paula Deen’s sister, and I asked her if she had ever been told this. “Lord no, honey” she laughed still holding my hand. “But I bet she can’t make biscuits like me”. I guess you have to be careful telling someone that they look like Paula Deen, but I meant it as a compliment and she had taken it as such.
I asked her if it was okay if we looked around a bit as I turned my head and scanned the adjoining rooms. I noticed two AK-47 assault rifles propped against the wall by the back door, and while I’ve seen everything in these country homes, I think it worried my trainee. He is from Atlanta via New York via Maryland via Jamaica. Raised a little differently? Probably. Neither of us gave it a name, and we continued to look around in the rest of the home.
I called his attention to a door jamb in a hallway that is a notorious air leak in this type home. We were discussing the correct ways to remedy this when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a person lying in one of the beds. I’m sure I jumped when I realized he was there because I just assumed the homeowner was there alone. “I’m sorry I woke you up” I offered the young man lying on top of the fully made bed, “I didn’t know you were here”. He just looked at me for a few seconds and said “ok”. Grandson I thought, way too young for Paula Deen’s son. He was about 25 years old and was a very large, muscular man. The room he was in was quiet, (no television) and he was lying on the bed fully clothed. I have seen more than a few unemployed people since taking this job, at home during the work day, but it still struck me as odd.
As we headed back to the other end of the home I had to walk between Paula Deen and the TV. “What you planning on shooting with those machine guns?” I asked, pointing to the rifles propped against the wall. “You have one for each hand”. She laughed and told me that they were not real. “Relics” she said as she got out of the chair and walked toward them with me. “My grandson spent two tours in Iraq and they let him bring them home with him. They won’t shoot anymore.” She reached down, picked up one of the rifles and handed it to me. I knew she said it wouldn’t fire, but it always makes me uneasy holding a strange gun. I placed it gently back beside the door and followed her across the room. That is when I noticed the room was pretty much a shrine. A trophy room. Medals draped with red, white and blue ribbons arranged neatly in glass top boxes, certificates in frames hanging on the walls and a book shelf with military uniform items sitting on its shelves. Paula Deen walked over to the shelves and removed a light brown, desert camouflaged helmet that looked like it had seen better days. “You gotta see this” she said as she turned back toward me holding the helmet at arm’s length. “He got shot in the head while he was in Iraq.”
That is when I noticed the large hole in the frayed camouflage covering of the helmet. She was poking her finger in and out of the hole when she said, “He didn’t know who he was for two and a half months and his mama didn’t know where he was either. We figured he was dead.” She was handing me the helmet at this point, and I really didn’t want to take it. I couldn’t imagine what was on the inside of this thing, and she could tell I was hesitant. “Stick your finger in the hole” she said as she put it in my hands, “You won’t believe it.” It was a dead cat. It was her father’s ashes. It was something personal that I was not supposed to touch. All I could think to say as she placed the helmet in my hands was “Is that him lying in the bed in the other room?”
“Yeah, that would be him” she said “There really ain’t nothing wrong with him…physically. This here helmet saved his life. That ain’t what got him.” At this point I looked down at the battle scarred hat. I put my finger in the hole and realized it was only in the covering. “Wow” was all I could think to say. “You are lucky to have him here alive.” I was holding the shield that prevented the sword from piercing his heart. The seat belt that kept him from flying through the windshield. The suit of armor that brought him home alive to The Rock. Something both scary and magic.
“He got over this in a couple of months.” She said “Then they sent him back though, said he was fine. I don’t think he was, but I ain’t no doctor.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. She proceeded to tell me a story of how his buddy, a “colored fellow” had pushed him out of the way of a rifle shot, saving his life. How this man had been killed by a sniper’s bullet that was meant for her grandson. “He ain’t never got over that.” She said as she looked down the hall toward his room. “Sometimes he just paces around the house all night. He says he don’t want to talk about it, but I think he does.”
I had been here too long I thought as I handed her back the helmet. I could feel the tears somewhere inside looking for an escape. I turned to leave and almost ran over my new helper who I didn’t realize was standing behind me. I needed to collect my tools as well as my thoughts, and I really didn’t want to talk to anybody else. I wasn’t sure how long he had been standing behind me, so I just looked at my flashlight and walked to the kitchen to gather my files. I said goodbye to Paula Deen, and as we prepared to leave my feet directed me to the door of the room where the young man was lying on the bed. He looked up at me as I tried to make my mouth work. “Thank you” I croaked, “Thank you for your service.” He smiled a little as I turned, looking at my feet, and headed for the door. I almost plowed over the new guy again as he walked past me straight to the young man’s door. I could hear him thanking the soldier just as I had done as I walked out the front door.
We got back in the truck and headed for the next home. Neither of us said anything for quite a few miles and I silently wondered what my co-worker was thinking. What he was thinking… and how much he had heard of the grandmother’s story. What did he think about the “colored fellow” comment? I knew that Paula Deen didn’t mean anything by it, but what did this city boy think of it? I hate to say that I thought he had probably heard worse in his time and I just added that to the guilt I was feeling. Conveniently my co-worker began a conversation about the testing procedure for a gas furnace, and we talked shop until we reached the next home. Thank you for stepping in front of that bullet.
After a long drive home I dropped him off at his hotel. We had a good week together and I felt good about his training. As I drove away I realized that while we had not spoken again of the small town soldier, he had never been far from my mind. The perfectly healthy looking young man lying on the bed with nothing but his thoughts. Replaying the images of his very short life and struggling to move forward. Paula Deen had told me that he went to college some, and I could only think of how much older he was than his fellow students. How mundane a final exam must be.
We all watch the news. We tune out when we hear headlines declaring “Deadliest month since….”. The war(s) have been going on forever and the body count numbers have a way of just becoming….numbers. 36 million pounds of turkey recalled, 104 degree heat, 25 killed by roadside bomb. The media brags about the men and women that have returned safely, and family reunion stories are often quite touching. But how does one put a number on the small town soldier pacing the floor in the middle of the night. Running from the sights and sounds only he can hear. Lying on the bed in his grandmother’s home reliving the events that have changed him forever. I can’t imagine that in his mind he has returned “safely” to The Rock.

The man

I decided to get up early this morning and drive to a job that was underway in a county that was one of the most distant in my inspection area. I made an extra cup of coffee for the road and took off. Some good quiet time in my truck with the sun just starting to rise. I entered the address in my GPS but I knew where to go except for the last couple of turns. I could relax with the radio and plan my lecture for a crew that was struggling to get things right. I’ve never been a big “on paper” planner, but I mentally lay every scenario out, sometimes to a fault.
With only a few miles left to my destination I get a phone call from the crew leader. This could not be good.
“We have to go to another job a few counties away to fix a roof leak from last night’s heavy rain” the worker says. “I guess I should have called you earlier, huh?”
Yeah, that would have been a great idea I think, but I don’t say anything. He was probably telling the truth, but it was awfully convenient for them to have other last minute plans. I know he was anticipating what I was planning to tell him, and he was just delaying the inevitable. Staying home from school on the day of the big test.
“That’s ok” I offer, doing my best not to accuse him of anything “Are there any contractors at the job?”
He said that the heating and air guys were there and gave me the homeowner’s name. I rarely go alone for safety reasons, but I was almost there and quite frankly needed this home for my monthly numbers. Well at least now I wouldn’t have a confrontation with the crew, I just needed to think of what I would say to the homeowner about my surprise visit. A visit from “the state man”.
As I pulled in the driveway I saw the HVAC guys working on some ducts in the carport. I had never met this group, so I got a couple of cards out to validate my introduction. After rustling for a few nonexistent items in my truck, I opened the door and walked to the house. The two very young guys were hard at work and barely looked up as I approached. Since when did they let fifth graders install air conditioning I wonder? I said good morning, but their smiles disappeared when they realized who I was. I’ve spent most of my life on their end of the job, so I am all too familiar with the look on their faces. I do my best to minimize their dread. I ask them a few simple questions just to be a fellow human, then head inside to talk to the homeowner.
I walk in to a very dark home, a television blasting in some distant room. I don’t think I will surprise anybody because the workers are coming and going from the carport to the attic, but I make more noise than necessary just in case. The TV noise seems to be coming from a room down the hall, but I need my flashlight to insure that I don’t stumble over anything in the hall. When I reach the doorway I see a man lying on the sofa, the crook of his elbow covering his face. Before I realize what I’ve done, I’ve shone the beam of the flashlight right in his face. He quickly sits upright and struggles to stand. Judging from the wild look in his eyes, I’ve scared him.
“How you doing?” I ask, trying to calm his nerves. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
The man just stood there and stared at the hand I had shoved in his direction. He was caught somewhere between the TV, his dreams and the beam of the flashlight, and for a second I imagine he thought it was the microphone that the host of The Price Is Right was pointing at the giggling contestants. Or worse, the police asking him to step out of the car. I hate when that happens, but I don’t know how I could have done it any differently. He finally accepts my handshake as I attempt to explain my presence.
“Just taking a look around” I say, as his eyes leave mine and scan the darkened room. “No reason in particular I’m at your house, just looking at some jobs and yours came up.”
I move through the house, and he hesitantly follows me. I continue to make small talk about the weather and the work done, but all he really wants is for me to leave. Am I going to ask him questions about the application he filled out to get the work done? Will he remember the answers he chose to write down six months ago? Am I going to look in the medicine cabinet or count the beers in the refrigerator? All of these questions and more flash through his mind as he grabs a towel and wipes the kitchen counter.
We all have these emotions. When you hand your driver’s license to the policeman that pulls you over, of course you are nervous, even when you’ve done nothing wrong. But we also have them when we do something as simple as showing ID while writing a check or using a credit card. Calling in sick to work requires the use of a strained voice that has little to do with the ailment. It feels like you are asking for a favor; begging. Being validated by another before you get what you want; what you deserve. We would all do well to recognize this situation and try to put others at ease. When you reach a point where you enjoy “being the man”, you are headed for disaster, we all answer to somebody.

Vote

I will have to start this blog with an admission. I like to listen to talk radio. I still like music and play around on Youtube on a regular basis, but when I’m driving I like conversation. It can be sports, NPR or political talk; it doesn’t matter. I don’t remember exactly when this happened, but I think it was somewhere around the time that I had to start cutting long hairs from my eyebrows. It really doesn’t matter if I agree with what is being said, I just like to hear people voice their opinions. Kindred souls; I have been known to be opinionated myself.
I was in Macon one morning earlier in the week and I was listening to AM 940. Their early morning show is mainly about local issues, and while most of that doesn’t apply to me, I find it interesting. This particular show was dedicated to the mayoral race. It was the day after the election and they were taking calls from local people that wanted to weigh in on the outcome. Many of the callers told of how they had to find a ride to the polls because they had no car and one lady had to get a ride because a tree had fallen on her vehicle. This was amazing when you consider that 74% of the population of Macon did not vote at all! Three out of four citizens didn’t even bother.
The hosts, and some of the callers, were really down on black residents for not voting. I know they have been voting the least amount of time, but it really hasn’t been that long for women either. Some of the singling out seems unfair because if you really think about it, it hasn’t been that long for any of us. We crossed the ocean to get rid of kings and queens so we could vote for our own government, and now only a couple of hundred years later we hardly participate. One out of four citizens voting is inexcusable.
Most of the calls were pretty much the same until one man called in to explain why it was alright not to vote. He explained that he liked none of the candidates and that none of them had a viable plan for running the city. The hosts tried to empress upon him that he had to pick the best of the worst and vote anyway. He wouldn’t listen. He continued with his argument that he hated all of them and didn’t want to give them the honor of his vote. This is probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Surely this man does not believe that if nobody shows up to vote nobody wins! There will be a winner, and if you don’t like it you have only yourself to blame.

Everything changes

I read a post on Facebook a few weeks back that, for some reason, has really stuck in my head. It was a short bio about a young man that died at the age of 26. It was written by his older brother and accompanied by a short video. None of the footage was taken any later than 1994 because that was the year of his death. I knew both of the brothers while I was growing up but had lost touch with both of them as we got older. The brother has now been gone for 17 years.

In one part of the video the young man is carrying a microwave oven through the house. It was Christmastime and the oven appeared to be a gift. It is one of those parts of a video that is annoying when someone is taking it of you because at the time, it seems meaningless. It is now priceless. The young man has a big smile on his face, glad to have received a gift of the latest technology. The writer mentions that his brother never sent an email or even had a pager. He missed the computer age. We changed that much in only 17 years.

We have all lost loved ones, this is inevitable fact of our lives. If you live long enough, your friends and loved ones will die. Some deaths hurt worse than others, and it seems extra painful when the one who dies is too young. But they all hurt. You start with unimaginable grief that slowly changes to reflection. From how will I go on, to what if he was…wouldn’t she have loved to….this makes me think of…..But this can be a slow process.

I’m not really sure when this happened to me. My little brother has been gone for over 8 years now, and no it does not hurt the same way it used to. It is different. My wife and I talk about him daily at home, but it is no longer my first reaction to pick up the phone and call him when something good or bad happens; that is not when I think of him. I think of him when I pay my cell phone bill; he had one before anybody I know. I think of him when I say something mean to another person; he always told me it wasn’t cool. I think of him when I pet my dog; he loved his dog more than life.

Writing this makes me sad, but thinking of him daily does not. I miss him and I would love to call him up and say, “can you believe I just….”. I don’t think (and I hope) this never goes away. I like to think when I have these thoughts he is hearing me; we are communicating. What has really changed since time has passed is that I can once again say I love to think about him.

Unemployed

In March of 2012 I will be unemployed. This seemed like forever a year ago, but some days it seems like it’s in a few weeks. That’s right, I have a stimulus job. I’m a recipient of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as ARRA. A two year grant written by The University of Georgia was written to fund this job, and I monitor the work done by the Weatherization Program in Georgia. I inspect a nineteen county area covered by two action agencies that perform the actual work. There are twenty or so monitors that cover the entire state, but we only see each other at trainings. We will all be unemployed very soon.
I did not vote for the administration that put this program in place. This is the truth. As much as I have enjoyed this job, I won’t vote for this administration when it is time for re-election. Would it save my job if I did? I doubt it, but I wouldn’t vote for them anyway. The program needs to run its course like any true contract; it must have a beginning date and an ending date. Make way in the line at the labor department? Nah, I can always go back to real estate or some of the other businesses I’ve had before. I hope to do some private energy auditing and testing as well, but the paying public’s response to this has been slow. I should be ready for a new venture because this job was meant to be a “breather” anyway.
But right in the middle of my working vacation I learned a new way to look at construction and energy consumption. Actually the only time I thought of energy consumption was when I wrote my monthly check to Georgia Power, but I thought of construction all the time. I learned that good enough can cost you a lot of money in the long run. I learned what insulation actually does and does not do. I learned how to build an energy efficient home for basically the same price as an energy hog. I learned a lot, but I mainly learned to think about energy…period. Now I want to spread the word!
I will admit that my eyes glaze over when people talk about polar bears and ice caps; things that I can’t see. Things that really don’t seem to apply in middle Georgia. They glazed before this job, and hundreds of hours of training later, they still do. I know they are real, but I there is just too much other stuff to think about. It’s kind of like watching tornado victims out west. You feel terrible, but in a long distance (reduced) sort of way. This is human nature; you can only stand so much.
So my job will end. It needs to end. The Weatherization program will basically end too. The government is not a giant bank that finances our every need. But whether you agree with the program (or the administration that put it in motion) or not, you should take advantage of what it has done. You should capitalize on the knowledge your tax dollars have paid for. I won’t go into great detail about the living conditions I have witnessed in the last year, but I will say that you can only imagine. But the work done on these homes is only half of the program. Yes it is the half that most people think of when they think of government waste and corruption, but it is accompanied by another part that is often not thought of. The other half created jobs. The people that took these jobs are now some of the most highly trained in energy usage in the country.

We, as tax payers, must take advantage of this knowledge. Do not let your tax dollars go to waste. What would you do with a few extra dollars a month? Extra money that is really yours anyway; money that you just give to utility companies. Even if you disagree with the current administration’s stance on renewable energy, windmills and solar power, you have to agree that saving money is a good thing.

Life is like a bowl of...birdseed.

After two weeks of out of town class I finally have a day off. It is a weekday, so I will enjoy the first half of this day alone. No alarm clock, no roommate and no study material, a legitimate day off. I’m the last one out of the bed so the coffee has cooled and needs to be reheated before heading to the porch for a little bird watching. The birds woke up with the sun, and they are hard at it already. I am late.

I dust off the cushion in the rocking chair and sit my steaming coffee on the table beside it. The cat uses the chair every morning, so I have to ignore a nest of hair that won’t brush away and sit down. The birds momentarily scatter as I disrupt their morning routine. A grizzly with a cup of coffee; a mountain lion with no tail; a kid with a bb gun. I could be any of these and the birds take no chances. They watch me for a few minutes perched on the limbs of nearby trees before hunger and routine lures them back to the feeder.

The House finches are the first ones back. They come in waves of safety; strength in numbers that will allow only the most unlucky to be singled out. They fuss, peck each other, and enjoy the welfare that has allowed them to raise a family in my yard. Delighted that the trough is full, the teenagers compare eating skills. A tiny nuthatch swoops in between the crowd and stakes his claim. He grips the wire basket upside down and extracts a single sunflower seed with the precision of a surgeon. He quickly exits before the mob can react; the finches close ranks.

The show continues to play out as the different species arrive for their breakfast. The larger birds, making the smaller ones retreat momentarily to the woods line, seem to notice me more. Larger eyes I think. I move only to sip my coffee. The chickadee makes up for his lack of size with his constant chattering. I wonder if he is announcing his claim to the feeder or praising me for it’s content. He spends the day relocating as much of it as he can; hiding it for later use. Enjoying the warmth while planning for the cold; banking the proceeds.

The hummingbirds seem to notice nothing but each other. They dart like dragonflies while buzzing like bumblebees. Showing off their dazzling flying skills to their slower cousins who seem not to care. The cousins that use their wings as simply tools for the collection of food. Cousins that have never been out of the country. Locals embarrassed by the brilliant world travelers that enjoy meals from a private feeder. Guests.

A storm carrying an inch and a half of rain passed through last night making the morning air feel like a tropical cloud. A respite from the 100 degree heat that has been the norm of late; relief. An event that makes a declaration of the season; summer. A reminder to the chickadee that it is collection season. A note to the hummingbird that a long flight is eminent. A message I understand as well. That this day is simply a day that I have flown from the feeder to the limb of a near by tree. I will enjoy the rest for a short time until hunger and routine bring me back to the feeder.

Ten Guilty Men

The jury is in and the verdict is stunning. Stunning because we have all watched the trial on television; we were there! Not guilty! That's not possible. Everyone is tweeting and posting and positive that an injustice was done. "Just look at her", I've heard several times, "I can tell she's guilty by the look on her face". Must be nice, I have a hard time knowing when my daughter is telling the truth and I've know her for 14 years and talk to her in person daily.
I don't pretend to know if the defendant is guilty or innocent. She sure as hell looked guilty on TV, but I watch other fictional crime shows and try to solve them too. I'm right sometimes and wrong others, it's part of the game. The media gave the score every afternoon so you could know just how well your team did that day. But it's a long series, so there is room for error on either side. Once again it comes down to game 7! I imagine the vendors outside made quite a lot of money.
But anyway you look at it a terrible tragedy occured. A small child's life was snuffed out before it had a chance to really begin. There is not a verdict available that can change that. She's dead. It may be over for the defendant, but it still goes on for the state. After the public outrage of "letting a guilty person walk" dies down, there is still a case to solve. Work to be done.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a lawyer. I could "talk the horns off a billy goat" so it just seemed like the logical step. I could give hundreds of reasons why I never made it, but just plain laziness is the most likely answer. Too much work. Too long to wait. Not enough money to finish, take your pick. But I do believe in our judicial system. Ten guilty men walking the street is worse than one innocent man in jail. I believe this wholeheartedly and think everyone would if wrongly accused. Innocent until proven guilty is easier than it sounds though, it's human nature to think with your gut. Instinct. Hear what you want to hear. Hear what you need to hear.
I challenge everyone that has doubts about our system to take part in it. When that jury duty summons arrives in the mail, don't look for ways to get out of serving. None of us can afford to go, but none of us can afford not to. A jury of your piers. Be a pier. Go with a smile on your face and tell the truth. Be the person that you would hope is seated on your (god forbid) jury. It is much different than you think. Deciding another human being's fate looks easy on TV. It is not.
I feel for the jurors tonight as much as I do anyone. They will be second guessed and called idiots until the cameras are pointed at another high profile crime. You will forget them, but they will never forget what they have heard and seen. Haunted by the binding legal decision they were charged to make...then live with. The life of another in their hands. If you give someone a job, trust them to do it. If you want to bitch...vote. If you want to be a judge...be a juror.

Vacation on the 20th floor

A beer, a book and a pack of crackers. Everything I need is in my backpack as I head for the pool. A short elevator ride a few floors up and I'm on the roof of the hotel. Great views in all directions and an olympic size pool. A little payback and some quiet time at the end of a long first day in class, 100 miles from home. It is typically not crowded at this time of day and often I have the whole place to myself, but it is the week before the fourth of July and I am not alone. I have only sixty pages left to read in my book, so I might have to go back to the room for some uninterrupted reading. Let me just get to a good stopping point and I'll head back down.

After an hour of thinking that the next paragraph would make a better stopping point, I've gotten closer to the end of the book. It seems like I will just stay here and finish up when I hear the sound of a small herd of flip flop covered feet headed my way. I'm in the big city, so I try not to look up. Avoiding eye contact has proven the best approach to keep panhandlers at bay, so why not use it on the other hotel guests. I have noticed that when you ask a stranger a question there there first response is "huh". I'm pretty sure they hear you, I think it means leave me alone. So I keep my head down and try to continue reading.

"Wow! Look daddy, you can see Stone Mountain from here!" a little girl of about eight tells her father. "Are we still gonna go there this week?"

The little girl is one of five children clinging to the railing twenty floors above downtown Atlanta. They seem to fall in a line at the rail arranged by height. The father tells them to turn around and he takes their picture. They are very excited and I'm sure that all five mouths are open in every photo.

"Don't make that face" the father says. "Just smile. You know your mother will not be happy at you posing with your tongue sticking out."

It is really impossible to read with all of this noise beside me, so I stand up and offer to take their picture all together. I catch a fleeting glimpse of fear in the father's eyes as he hands me the family camera, but they turn and face me quietly.

"Perfect" I tell them as I extend the camera back to the father. The smallest boy breaks from the group and runs to view the picture. He takes no more than a few steps in my direction before his father's hand catches his collar and reels him back in. I can't tell if it's the presence of a stranger or the distance to the ground, but the father is on guard.

We talked for a while longer and the father seemed to relax. They were from the Bahamas, on vacation for a week in Atlanta. It's hard for me to imagine leaving the Carribean to come to Georgia, but contrary to the beliefs of my wife and daughter, I dont know everything. He told me the places they planned to visit and asked for recommendations of others and the entire time he never let go of the little boy's collar. We shook hands and exchanged names about the time his oldest daughter ran back up.

"They are from Wisconsin!" she yelled, pointing back toward the edge of the pool. "Wisconsin daddy!" I imagine if you live in Naussau, Wisconsin is like the North Pole. Snow celebrities. The father nodded his head at me and they headed for the door. The other three falling in line, skipping and turning in circles. I could hear his promises of a swim later as they walked away. I think I even heard a "we'll see" or two before they got out of earshot.

I sit back down with my book. Twenty four more pages to go, but I have to re-read a page or two to get back into the story. As I'm turning a page as I hear a woman beside me ask "Mind if ask you a question?" I'm a little startled because she is way too big to have gotten so close undetected. Must be that Wisconsin stealth I think, recognizing her as the one the little girl was pointing toward earlier. I try to keep my adopted city cool and respond with the typical "huh", but it has little effect on her. She takes this as a yes and begins to rattle off questions. Her husband comes up behind her and stares at me blankly as if I'm speaking Bulgarian. Southern Bulgarian maybe.

"Where should we eat? Have you been to the Aquarium? Are we safe going here...there? Is it always this hot?" she asked, with hardly enough time for me to respond to each. I do my best to answer a few questions while she takes a breath. Although I've been staying at this same hotel off and on for the last year, she probably knew as much as I did about Atlanta from looking online. Her husband finally got up the courage to speak. He told me they were from a small town and were not used to "certain kinds of people". I usually bristle at these types of comments, but I really don't think he meant anything by it because they had been very nice to the family from the Bahamas. This family was the "certain kinds of people" he was talking about, if only by appearance.

Well I finally parted ways with the small town snow celebrities and it was no longer light enough to read. I packed my book and untouched beer back into my pack and started to head down to my room. The all too common sound of sirens twenty floors below caught my attention, and I walked back to the rail to look down. Matchbox cars with flashing lights and wailing sirens made their way to somebody's bad day. Sombody's variable. The answer to the questions both families wanted to ask, but couldn't verbalize. Is my family safe here?

With each passing day I am more impressed with just how similiar we all are. We look in the mirror and appear so different from others. We speak different languages and crave different foods, but we all seek the same thing. Food, shelter and saftey for our families.

Georgia America

As I walk to the edge of the pool, I discover that I will probably have to walk down the steps instead of diving in. Too many people with the same idea and it's crowded! Little kids with plastic floats strapped to their arms look up from the shallow steps and clear a path as I enter. I have to stop as a squealing sunburn victim splashes right in front of me, dog paddling like a fifty pound poodle. A very tan lady looks over the top of her sunglasses at me, she lets me know she is watching and the poodle belongs to her. I move even slower.
The water feels great and I ease down toward the deep end. I map out a path and breaststroke through the crowd of coconut flavored vacationers. When I reach the bouyed rope that seperates the swimmers from the sinkers, I latch on. After dunking my blistered head I shift around and sit on the rope. The rope begins to sway and as I reach for a firmer grip, a little boy of six or seven materializes beside me. No float or swimmies, just a firm grip on the cable.
"I'm sorry" I offer, "did I knock you off?"
"Yeah" the boy said, "but it's ok, I have fifteen lives. It's her you need to worry about, she only has one."
He points to another very tan, visor wearing lady that has to be his grandmother. She doesn't look up.
All I could really think to say was "cool", but that was enough and he took it from there.
PJ finally pried us apart after an hour or so, but I had a new friend. The only real pertinent information I got from him was that he had enjoyed his seventh birthday at the beach and he was from Georgia America. He was funny. He told me several things that I feel sure were family secrets, or at a minimum, family embarrassments. But he really just seemed to enjoy having a conversation with somebody that would listen, ask questions and take him seriously. An "adult" discussion.
I saw him several times during my vacation and his grandmother ended up being nice too. I guess everybody is a little more wary of strangers than they were when I was a kid, and after watching the news, why not. When I was little I always tried to talk to adults. Some would talk to me and others would not. It was a number's game for me, but I remember the feeling of confidence I got when they would. I felt important, accepted.
But isn't "remembering" the key? People tell me that I'm a kid magnet because we are (and I quote) "about the same age", but that's not it. I'm fully cooked, I just remember being a little kid. A little kid, a big kid and now an adult. There is really not much difference in the three. At all stages I wanted to be looked at, heard and treated with respect. To laugh, love and play. To not be written off when I do or say something stupid. To enjoy the things we all have in common; two Georgia Americans.