Reminiscing

This old boy turned 66 today. I suppose technically I'm not there until 4:30 this afternoon, the time I came into this world in 1960. A few more hours of 65 won't hurt.

I can't say that I've always been happy with my life choices. If in looking back you can't find at least some regrets you're probably not looking hard enough. Yet on the whole I'm all right with what I've done. 

Staying in the family business may have been the most critical decision in my life. Financially, I could have done better for myself and my family, and that does prick at my conscience a bit. But it's one of those choices which, overall, I think has been good.

Standing just inside the door of the old barn this morning, I could see Joe holding court, cigarette in hand, from his seat by the coffee table. There was Uncle John whom we call Zeke atop his perch of steel parts boxes, reading the morning Free Press. Me Pops was on the phone handling a customer while me brother Phil toiled at a bench vise, hitting a cable fitting a few too many times in showing it who was boss. Both my sons were there doing whatever as Uncle Patrick pushed a broom. And I haven't even gotten to all the other characters, welders and sewer cleaners and various employees who came and went. They all made the Shop memorable.

Not only did I get a lot of time with family, but so did my brothers and my sons. Would my boys have known Paw Paw as well if I had not stayed? Would I know Joe and Zeke and Craig and Price and old Arthur Williams and Stanley, Willie Deal and his boys and Chuck Bias, as well? I can't say enough about late Fridays at the Shop when Dad would decide to call it a day at 3 PM and we'd nurse coffees and simply talk to each other until the more formal quitting time arrived. I wouldn't get that in an office or classroom.

You can't prove a negative, so who knows what friendships and opportunities I may have missed. But you know what? Life was just fine as it was. I wouldn't do it different.

Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

This or something similar has probably happened to other parents. Hopefully it was with equally uneventful results.

When our oldest was in second grade, he stopped his mother and I one morning and proudly told us that he had made his own lunch for school that day. We did all the proper oohing and ahhing which parents should, praising him for his effort. Still, when he turned his back my wife thought it best to have a look at what he had packed.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, okay.

A napkin, good.

Apple, very good.

A bottle of beer. Okay, that of course had to be switched out for a juice box. We then explained to our son, kindly because we didn't want to ruin his pride at being otherwise considerate, that he was too young for beer and that the school wouldn't allow it. He was okay with the explanation.

Can you imagine how quickly we would have been called to social services though, if she hadn't checked his lunch box?

Jethro Psychology

There was a Beverly Hillbillies marathon on this weekend. What better time can you have, I ask, at 3:30 on a Sunday morning than watching Jethro Bodine being psychoanalyzed?

"What is your relationship to your mother?" the Doctor asked.

Incredulous, Jethro replied, "I'm her son." The show went on, the basic story line being that the psychologist must be interested in dating Jethro's widowed mother because she was all he asked about during the session with him.

You gotta love it.

I'm not going to argue that The Beverly Hillbillies was particularly inspired. Well, maybe I am. The mockery they made of modern psychology in that episode was a hoot, under the guise of the fish out of water premise of the whole series. It left you wondering who's the real yokel.

Not to disparage worthwhile psychology (which I suppose has its merits) but people need to be able laugh at themselves, be able to poke fun at even, perhaps especially, things near and dear to them. We don't do that enough anymore. 

And it shows.

April 19, 1775

On this day in 1775 the American Revolution began in earnest. The militiamen, the ordinary citizen soldiers of Lexington and Concord, turned back the more organized and more highly trained British, harassing them all the way back to Charlestown outside of Boston. The Shot Heard Round the World had been fired. April 19, 1775 had secured its place in American and World history.

The significance of this event cannot be underscored enough. To date, it lit the lamp of almost surely the only large scale revolution which has had any modicum of positive success. Most new nations sink into anarchy, more terrible tyranny, or simply the same old same old with a new face after a known form of government falls.

To be sure, even our Revolution was subject to severe trials early on. It was no certainty that a civil government based on popular will would result from the breaking of age old ties. Yet somehow it did; I believe that it was American Exceptionalism through Divine Providence that our nation rose from those battles as it did.

I do not mean this as an insult towards other people and nations who have or are now seeking similar freedom and respect. I know that we aren't and never have been perfect, and that there are and have been other rightly proud and blessed peoples and countries. But the fact is that popular uprisings need more than simple change. They need enlightened leadership. They need more than mob mentality. Any dictator with charisma and organizational skills can turn crowds to their will quite readily.

The colonists had rational leadership. The colonist themselves were on the whole reasonable people. They were able to overcome the occasional rabble to form a stable, reasonably free nation. And that's exactly what makes April 19, 1775 so memorable. Our revolution is truly unique in history. It was essentially founded 251 years ago today.

Cloyce Wars

A friend of me Pops, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, related once that he had married well. "We never, never came close to divorce but once, Bill, and that was over a dime."

"A dime?" Dad asked, his curiosity peaked.

"Yes, sir," Cloyce responded. "We was grocery shopping, and after all the stuff was rung up and bagged, Mrs. Cloyce says that we'd been overcharged ten cents and she wanted it all re-rung."

Cloyce paused for a breath. "Don't worry about a dime - this was years ago, Bill, and it was a cart full of groceries - the store's busy and people's waiting in line and let's just go," I told her.

Mrs. Cloyce tells me, "Maybe you don't care about money but I do!"

"I care about money! Just not ten cents over $108.62!" I responded.

"I want her (the cashier) to re-ring everything!" my wife demands. 

"Well I don't, I told her, and I started putting the bags in the cart to go to the car," finished Cloyce.

"She didn't talk to me for a month. That was okay with me cause I didn't wanna talk anyway."

"But we got over it. Ain't that the important thing, Bill?" Cloyce asked. 

Pops agreed.

The Pope and the President

I am really, truly loathe to address all the ballyhoo surrounding Pope Leo and President Trump. It's simply a morass, and neither one is quite right about matters that I can see.

The President's recent bombast is over the top the point of insult and blasphemy. Someone needs to tell the man to SHUT UP. He owes the Pope an apology for his condescension towards the head of the Catholic Church. Trump isn't helping anyone and is increasingly hard to defend. That he was a better choice than the alternatives (and he was, I say emphatically) is becoming a lame mantra.

At the same time, the Holy Father isn't exactly presenting himself favorably. It's one thing to preach the Gospel and remind us of our moral obligations. It's another to be rather one sided about it. Criticism of the current Iran War is fair and ought to be expected. But to say whose and what types of prayers God will and will not answer is presumption, even from a Pope, and flies in the face of the Church's Just War dogma. Sometimes we must fight. Violence can be a rational moral alternative. Indeed, even an imperative. When that's the case, it's perfectly all right to pray for a successful war.

In light of its criticisms of Trump (and of Catholic Vice President Vance's occasional comments on Church teaching) the Vatican's reticence to be as critical of American liberal politicians is rather galling. To very nearly say Trump is wrong on Iran while not ordering that Catholic politicians who vote for abortion be withheld Communion is, as such, a travesty. Like it or not, the rightness of this War is where minds may in good faith disagree. But direct abortion is murder, every time and with no exceptions. It is settled doctrine and Catholic politicians who support abortion must be censured. I worry that Leo, like Francis before him quite honesty, fails to lead but instead foments confusion among the faithful when spiritual direction goes only one way.

To the President, just knock it off. You have and are going too far and it's time to put a sock in it. To the Holy Father, if you really wish to be bold, preach the entire Catholic creed. Not simply the politically expedient parts.

Insult to Injury

Tony's Restaurant in Birch Run, Michigan is known for the pound of bacon which comes with it's breakfast entrees. Me brother Phil is known to eat ravenously. Indeed, he takes a certain pride in that.

The two of us were in the northern part of the state making an early delivery yesterday. On the way home I said, let's stop at Tony's. We have time. Full disclosure: maybe we didn't really have time, we've been so busy. But dammit, you're only near Tony's every now and then, so, priorities.

We ordered a platter each of scrambled eggs, a heap of them, a ton of hash browns, and toast with Tony's strawberry preserves. I'm not huge on strawberry but their homemade preserves are fan-bloody-tastic. Of course, the pound of bacon came with it all.

About halfway through our meal the waitress came by to check on us. She left us, of her own volition, take home trays. We didn't request any.

"I am personally insulted by that," Phil said indignantly.

"Huh?"

"Like I can't eat this whole platter at one sitting. But maybe she doesn't know me."

Your reputation doesn't proceed you everywhere, bro.