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Speaking of that, I’m not sure when I automatically stopped knowing my age and have to do the math – maybe it’s fine to just freeze on a certain age,  when you don’t feel like doing the math or just decide to go with how you feel inside.

If we went with how old we feel inside, my father might be younger than me.  If I did the math, he’s 82, but sometimes I think there is at least 40 years off of that inside.  He decided to start riding bikes at 81.  He’ll take off in his Suburban on a horse trail on the farm and if I say, “Dad, I’m not sure how wide that trail is the whole way,” he just seems to get a twinkle in his eye as he reminds me he’s good – he has a chainsaw.

For 15 years of my growing up days, we lived in a house in Rockville, Maryland.  It was pretty ideal.  We played hide and seek at night with our neighborhood friends and walked to school.  There used to be a brick fireplace in the house that I thought was amazing and I wanted to live there forever.  I told Mom and Dad if they ever sold the house when I was older that I wanted to buy it.

The yard was beautiful but small.  We had a push mower to cut the lawn. I remember my sister and I decided to surprise Dad and have the yard looking nice before he returned from a trip.  I am hoping we were pretty young and not just challenged, because we filled the gas in the oil compartment – at the time, it seemed totally logical – and when we started it up, it exploded and flew in pieces two yards over.  We could have killed ourselves or a neighbor’s dog, but we were fine.  I thought, “How in the world are we going to tell Dad?”, but we didn’t have to. Mom and neighbors came from all over to see what blew up (they followed the black cloud).  No wonder I still pray that my kids just live through the day.  I never can think to tell them all of the things you aren’t supposed to do until after.

When we lived in that house with the small yard, I would ask Dad what he wanted for Christmas or his birthday and he would say, “I’d really like a John Deere tractor.”  I would tell him to be serious and he would laugh.

One Christmas, I bought him a matchbox John Deere tractor.

Years have passed and it wasn’t until this week, when I was taking the picture of Caleb included here online, that it hit me and I remembered, “Dad finally got his John Deere tractor”, the one thing he wanted for Christmas.

My sister and I won’t try to surprise him by doing some mowing while he’s gone.

No matter how much you search she cannot be found. She no longer exists.

Desperately, you begin to look for another love exactly like her in every detail, in order to be adored in all the same ways. Upon finding the replacement of the love of your life, you bestow all that is left of your affection on her. Sadly, she and all her future likenesses vanish in precisely the same manner.You are left empty and heart broken.

Sensing your despair, a friend reaches out to you. He offers a small powder substance to lift you up so you can begin your search anew.

Soon the white powder replaces the need for your lost love with a new need to simply pull yourself out of a dark pit.

The wealth that your former loves showered on you before they vanished no longer brings you joy. Your world is now one dark hole where more and more of the white powder is required to bring in a brief period of sunlight.

In a moment of spiritual renewal, you remember the teachings of your youth. Seeing through the darkness you realize that an audience is an unfaithful love that adores you for a moment then vanishes. Applause of an audience is like white powder that creates a need which one’s everyday life cannot fulfill.

Sadly, it dawns on you that the addiction of your need for applause given by an audience is like being loved for a moment and then lost for a lifetime.

Illustration credit Peter Suneson

A friend named Ruth Skelton and her sister, Better Alfred, were also there. Ruth was humming a tune I had heard when I was a boy.

I asked, “Do you know the words to that song?”

She said, “Yes.”

We made a deal: I agreed to pick strawberries for her while she sang the song, “May I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister?”
 

My wife and I wanted to see the President close up. I was equally curious to see my fellow citizens who were either rich enough or dumb enough to contribute that much money for a ten second encounter or photo opportunity with George W. Bush.

While rubbing elbows with the big spenders, I remembered the time sixty-five years earlier when one of my buddies bummed pennies from a stranger because the State Theatre in North Nashville had increased the price of a Saturday matinée by forty percent. The cost to see a Western movie went from five cents to seven cents in one week. Now, I’m paying $2000, and I don’t even get to see Gene Autry or Roy Rogers.

At the appointed time, the President arrived. He spoke for about thirty minutes to this responsive and enthusiastic crowd of about two hundred. There were bursts of spontaneous applause.

Afterward, he rewarded his supporters beyond their expectations with handshakes, conversation, and photo opportunities. In this brief hour it became obvious to everyone present that George W. Bush was far more presidential than the media depicted him.

I have listened to Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, but as I observed George W. Bush I saw something I had not seen in a politician in the past sixty years.

The police who guarded the perimeter were ready to put themselves in “harm’s way” on behalf of their fellow officers. The Secret Service was ready to become a human shield to protect the President.

To my surprise I came away convinced that this extraordinary President had reached a point of leadership and maturity that he himself would have put himself in harm’s way on behalf of the least “important” person in the crowd.

I went to hear a speech and left having a seen A LEADER OF MEN.

Detroit City depicts a period of each of their stories.

1. Burns delivered a friend’s Harley Davidson motorcycle from Nashville to Detroit and stayed on to work in an automobile plant.
2. Ben fled from a little town in Florida to avoid prosecution. He went to work in an automobile plant and stayed on.
3. Frank went to visit a friend who was working for Chrysler and took a job in the automobile plant also.
4. Kemp followed his older brother to Detroit and accepted a job at the Dodge Main Auto Assembly Plant in Hamtramck, Michigan.
5. Bill Pendergrass took a job in Detroit in an Automobile plant. In late October he concluded that he had to buy a heavy coat or go to a warmer climate. He put the money for a winter coat into a bus fare to California, where he met a nurse and was married.

Detroit City is a composite of each of these homesick guys. Let’s call him Burns Bridges to be consistent with his story.

Burns served in World War II in the US 3rd Army under General George S. Patton (Old Blood & Guts) – “Our Blood this Guts.”

Having quit East Nashville High in the 10th grade, Burns was limited to construction or factory type jobs. In 1946 he took a job as a framing carpenter for Evans & Morris Construction in Nashville. They were building low cost housing for WWII veterans who obtained total financing on the $5,000 to $6,000, 2 bedroom started homes. His framing crew could frame a house from the sub-floor to decking the roof in about two days.

As winter set in he was laid off on a Friday. On Monday he went into the US employment office to apply for unemployment compensation at about 9:00 a.m. The clerk told him that she did not want to fill out his form until the office was warmer. He was to return in the afternoon. Years later, that poor clerk was probably still calling, “Burns Bridges”.

Southerners who migrated to Detroit usually bought a new car before they returned on vacation. One such former neighbor offered Burns a free ride to Detroit if he would help with the driving.

He was able to obtain room and boar from his aunt, Hester, later from Jimmy D. Lovelady, and finally from Mrs. Lulla Bee Gaw. She often cooked fried apples for dinner and would include an apple sandwich in his lunch for a mid-morning snack. A creative guy on the assembly line made coffee with a soldering torch to go with the apple sandwich.

Burns had a pain of conscience when he first started to lie about his prosperity. The Cadillac he claimed to own still belonged to General Motors. He simply had the privilege of driving one every few minutes from the end of the assembly line to the parking lot.

He had an addiction to gambling on nine ball at the poolroom after work. This kept him broke from paycheck to paycheck.

In his mind, what had been a very mundane life in Nashville over time became more and more glamorous in his memory. And Jo Ann whom he had left behind became the lady of his dreams.

In reality he had no home, but within the longing of every wanderer is the deep groaning, “I want to go home. Oh, how I want to go home.”

Bobby Bare described this longing in the song, “Detroit City.”

“Detroit City” – sung by Bobby Bare

Lyrics for Song “Detroit City” by Bobby Bare

I want to go home, I want to go home,
Oh Lord, I want to go home

Last night I went to sleep in Detroit city,
And I dreamed abut hose cotton fields and home,
I dreamed about my mother
dear old Papa, sister and brother,
And I dreamed about that girl, whose been watin’ for so long.

Home folks think I’m big in Detroit city,
From the letters that I write they think I’m fine
But by day I make the cars
by night I make the bars
If only they could read between the lines.

I rode a freight train north to Detroit city
After all these years I’ve been wasting my time
I’ll take my foolish pride
on a southbound freight and ride,
Go on back to the ones I’ve left waiting’ so far behind.

As an annual fundraiser for Agape Nashville, Bella Rustica is no half-hearted attempt at vintage style. It is “a three-day juried event, meaning vendors and dealers are selected based on the goods they have to offer, flair for display as well as pleasant personalities. Experience isn’t necessary, however friendliness is.”

You can read more about the event on bellarustica.org.

Funky Junk – Creative Decorating

Donna from Funky Junk Interiors (recently featured on HGTV) will be there for the 3-day event sharing her “knowledge and talent for creating beautiful home décor out of JUNK!” Donna writes for FOLK Magazine, Flea Market Style Magazine, and has recently been featured in Cottages & Bungalows Magazine.

The usual Saturday morning crowd was gathered when Peyton Smith planted the seed for the idea that would change Old Jefferson forever.

“You know time doesn’t seem to have any identity. You can’t see it or hear it as it passes. We carry a pocket watch or have a clock that ticks as if time were not silent. A time piece reminds us of time but it is not time. It is really events that mark the passing of time. ie: We are born, cut our first teeth, start to school, break a bone, get a job, get married, have kids, etc. All these are events which mark time for us.

Now that we are in what is being called an economic depression this will be an event which marks time for all of us for years to come.

We can already see how this “depression” has changed lives. We all have to get by on less. Some of us were rich and are now poor. Some are depressed, others have begun to fight and steal from their neighbors. Children are often beaten for no reason, wives are battered, couples have divorced, and a few of our women have turned to prostitution. A few men have begun to make “moonshine” and sell it to their neighbors who have become drunkards.

I have an idea: this depression is not going to last more than a few more years. Why don’t we put our heads and hearts together and see if we can’t come up with a plan to survive without falling apart (as we have been doing). What would happen if we think of our whole community as one family? If some of us have more than we need and our neighbor’s children are hungry and barefoot, it is in the best interest of all of us that we do something before it’s too late.”

The others gathered at the store soberly agreed something needed to be done.

Everyone was silent for what seemed like several minutes. Finally Ben Ward broke the silence. “Peyton, you seem to have done some thinking about this thing. You see the people who come into your store. All of us try to put on our best appearance, but when a family runs out of money their grocer is the first to know. Tell us more of your idea on how to help all of us endure without hitting bottom or turning against one another.”

One ship drives East,
And another West
With the self-same winds that blow;
Tis the set of the sail
And not the gale,
Which decides the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the ways of fate;
As the voyage along through life;
Tis the set of the soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

– Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Creative Commons image courtesy of kulicki

There seems to be a natural phenomenon related to people when they form into groups, regardless of the purpose. Within a certain sampling, whether it’s hundreds or thousands, a group will always divide into moderate, conservative, and liberal. Thus a group will always form into center and left and right wings.

The Center

In order for the group to maintain its central purpose or to stay consistent with its reason for forming, the center group must be dominant. The right or left elements influence but do not control if the group stays true to its original purpose.
The central (main) body may turn slightly to the left or right in order to compromise but if there is balance of influence (power) between the right and left wings (conservative and liberal) then the main body will stay on course.

Once a change is made by the body by the urging of one wing but with the consent of the other wing it might alter the direction of the main body slightly but does not steer it off course.

When either the left or right wing becomes so powerful that it forces a new direction of the body without the consent of the other wing the main body goes off course and forms a new center.

In this new direction the influencing wing becomes the new center and from within the new entity a new formation of the center and left and right wings are formed.

The energy for change seems to come from the right or left wing. The main body maintains the status quo and resists change.

The motivation of the center is to move forward while maintaining the current status. This would apply to the economy or any other established public policy, such as education, health, housing, fire, police, etc.

It’s true for any group

This analogy is not limited to political concepts. One can apply the same statement or hypothesis to any group: (1) Religious, (2) Social, (3) Business, (4) Military, (5) Tribal, (6) Professional.

The left and right wings not only provide the energy for change, they also, when balanced, provide the momentum for forward progress. The main body advocates progress but resists it by being steeped into established bureaucracy.

There is only a slight difference between the center and the left an wright wings, which are closest to the center. As one moves farther from the center in his views, he becomes more radical in relation to the established views of the organization. The extremes of the right and left wings being furthest from the center of the group are more similar in behavior than they are to the body to which they are attached.

In each extreme, whether right or left the feelings become so intense that violence is often the advocated means of achieving objectives. The center may express disagreement verbally but yet cooperate with the majority. The moderate might boycott due to a lack of agreement. The radical might show anger or vile language toward those in disagreement. The extreme radical will injure or kill in order to coerce their views on the total body.

Each of us demonstrate by our words and actions as to where we are placed in each grouping to which we belong. Ideally, the strength of one’s conviction does not exceed the rights of others to hold a different opinion.