Tidings from Tim

“Fahrenheit 451” was a movie about a futuristic and dystopian society where all the buildings are fireproof, and the only responsibility of the fire department is to find and burn all the books.  The protagonist of the film was a fireman with a conscience who wanted to preserve the classics instead of sending them up in flame and smoke, and the title of the film refers to the fact that 451 degrees is the temperature at which paper will spontaneously combust.  The movie sent a chill down my spine because it reminded me of the day when I was a spectator at a four-alarm fire that was intentionally set by the local fire department. 

The local government wanted to pave the way for a downtown redevelopment project but standing directly in the way was this enormous and abandoned eyesore that sat right beside the railroad siding, covering an entire city block.  It was the packing house, which had fallen into disuse when we Americans stopped squeezing the fruit ourselves, finding it cheaper and more convenient to get our morning orange juice by adding three cans of cold water and stirring.  By decree, the city fathers instructed the fire chief to torch the old relic.

o o o

I was about four years old when my father took me for the first time to the packing house where he was the manager.  Citrus by the tons whisked by on conveyor belts.  Every day in the life of a packing house the fruit came in from the local growers.  There was some grapefruit and some lemons, but it was mainly oranges that were graded and sorted and packed in slatted crates and rolled directly into the waiting boxcars.   

The place was big, dark, and noisy, and I held onto my dad’s hand as we walked around.  This one big guy stopped what he was doing and spoke with my dad in words I did not understand.  This friend of his gave me a big smile, reached out, plucked an orange, gave it to me, and tousled my hair.  It was a beautiful thing and a beautiful moment with my father.  Whenever I returned to the packing house, the “man with the brown face and the big mustache” always found the most perfect orange for me.

Yet my strongest memory was the aroma of the millions of just-picked fresh oranges, mixed with the odor of the ones that dropped in hidden places or fell under foot.  Just like the farmer who loves every smell in the barn, I loved the pungent assault on my senses.  It was a wonder.  My nose remembers that big noisy place where a little kid half-hid behind his father’s pantleg and clutched a big old orange to his chest.

o o o

The occasion of the planned arson was newsworthy, and hundreds of curiosity seekers came to gawk.  The local dignitaries were quoted in the local press, saying that it would be a “controlled burn.”  They had no idea. 

The packing house was four stories high and bigger than a soccer pitch, with millions of board feet of aging lumber.  Plus, for years she absorbed the citric acid that seeped into the floorboards, only adding fuel to the fire.

Within minutes the spectators were fleeing two blocks away, then three blocks away, then four.  The fire was so big, and the heat so intense, that windows blew out of the surrounding buildings.  Car interiors burst spontaneously into flames, and the paint peeled off the fire engines.  Rather than monitoring the conflagration, the firefighters fought valiantly to protect the surrounding properties.

As the flames engulfed the building, the last thing on my mind was the oncoming progress in the community.  On the contrary, sadness overwhelmed me.  The packing house was a last remnant of an industry and a way of life that drove the local economy for decades; and as she went up in smoke, so did a treasured memory.  That old “house” was like a friend, and it was comforting that she did not go down without a fight.                       

o o o

Some years later I revisited the site and looked over the expanse of concrete where my father and his amigos had kept the oranges moving.  My four-year old daughter held onto my leg with one hand and clutched her toy “heckalopper” with the other hand.  As a big Huey lifted off the tarmac, we were both awash in the downdraft of the rotor.  It reminded me of the rumble of the conveyor belt and the scent of a big orange.  My daughter will remember the whup-whup-whup of the chopper blades and the smell of diesel fuel in the air.       

My dad’s brother, Uncle Bob, was married to Aunt May; and she had a brother, also named Bob.  In order not to confuse the two, I referred to May’s brother as my “Uncle Bob in Montana,” where he made his home.

He earned a PhD in history and sent his resume to colleges and universities all over the country.  He had several offers, but the most intriguing one came from the University of Montana in Missoula.  He had never been to Montana and was profoundly curious about the school and the town.  He accepted the offer and signed a teaching contract, just because he wanted to see what it was like.  As it turned out, he saw what it was like for the rest of his life.

He gave the lectures and assigned the term papers and graded the exams.  As he moved up the tenure track, they made him department chair and gave him other administrative jobs.  Bob became a fixture at the university, and he was known to drink socially.

A dedicated historian, he zealously conducted his own research, and alone, or in collaboration, submitted treatises to history publications.  Esoteric stuff.  It fulfilled the publishing demands of his employer but did not fulfill his pocketbook.

Then one day he was sharing a highball with a colleague who was also a writer of historical novels.  She suggested a joint project about the real “baddies” throughout history.  The result was a tongue-in-cheek tome of anecdotal accounts of the bullies, tyrants, and murderers from Caligula to Torquemada to Stalin, and many others.    

They did not burden themselves with footnotes and they dedicated the book to themselves.  The acknowledgements included about 175 people and several cats.  When their publisher changed the title of the book from “The Villains of History” to “The Bedside Book of Bastards,” they celebrated with another highball and chuckled on the way to the bank.

Bob had a great sense of humor and he loved the limelight.  In the classroom or the lecture hall or the cocktail party, he was on stage.  Learned, intelligent, and witty; he was a great storyteller.  And a bachelor.

He got married once, but it didn’t take.  They did not want to bend their lives.  He and his ex-wife eventually became good friends again, taught on the same faculty, and even dated occasionally.  Dating, Yes!  Marriage, No! 

His bachelor pad sat on the edge of town, a restored Victorian masterpiece on the National Registry of Historic Homes.  The basement was a beautifully decorated example of masculine academe — with booklined shelves, historical photos elegantly framed, soft lighting, lots of leather, lots of wood.

In the huge back yard was his rose garden, also a masterpiece.  Oh, how he fussed over his roses.  It started as a manicured lawn, bordered by half-a-dozen flower basins and beds around the edge, each one with two or three rose bushes.  Over the years the number of basins grew, and the lawn shrank, until there were about forty rose beds separated by narrow and winding paths of grass.  The number of bushes eventually grew to more than a hundred.  Not only was he meticulous about the care and feeding of these beauties, he became a total rose geek who scientifically practiced the art of grafting, eventually developing a couple of new varieties.

Each plant had three names.  Set in the ground by each one was a stake with a plaque like you find in the arboretum or on an office door.  Etched on each plaque was the (1) common name, like “American Beauty” or “Judy Garland” or “Opening Night,” the (2) scientific or botanical name, and the (3) personal name.  The personal name for each rose bush was a friend or family member, or someone who had given Bob a plant as a gift.  For example, when my mom gave him a new plant, the “Yellow Rose of Texas” was also known as “Audrey.”   

The garden was Bob’s real home.  He built his own gardening cart with a place for potting soil, the rose feed, a container for clippings and a rack of tools.  There was a big umbrella to protect him from the summer sun and a built-in bench for taking a break.  The cart was also equipped with an ice bucket and a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label.  He pushed the cart around the garden, going from plant to plant – sipping, clipping, and chatting.

Good morning, Audrey, you’re looking a little wilted today. Let me pull off these droopy petals and brown leaves.

Hi Janice.  That was a real beauty I picked from you yesterday.  Could be a prize winner.

Toby, my lad, your buds are very promising. 

May, my dear, I need to cut back this old cane.  Don’t worry, it will only hurt a little and it will be good for you. 

I found my uncle to be … eccentric.  It was a mystery to me that someone could spend countless hours in a pursuit that included frequent stops to talk to a flower.  He explained it to me.  He took a swig and put his arm around my shoulder.  He told me to close my eyes and to take several deep breaths through my nose.  It was late spring and the aroma of tens of thousands of rose petals was intoxicating.

Then he told me to open my eyes and look across the garden to the hillside across the road.  I was looking at a riot of color near me and an expanse of purple lupine beyond the fence, stretching halfway to Canada.  He was surrounded daily with unimaginable beauty and was also surrounded with students and colleagues who loved him and whom he loved in return.  He shared his philosophy of life.

If you want to be happy for an hour, get high on scotch. 

If you want to be happy for a weekend, get married.

But if you want to be happy all your life, get yourself a rose garden.

It may not be your way of thinking, but it was part and parcel of the life of an interesting man of extraordinary talent and good will.  He loved the life he had chosen.   

Bob was taken way too early, dead at fifty-five.  Not able to travel to Montana for the funeral, I later caught up with Aunt May for some commiseration.  The wake had taken place in the rose garden.  The mourners spent time along the paths appreciating Bob’s artistry, and many of them were pleased to find their names engraved there. 

Bob was continually adding new varieties, and May discovered the recent addition of a gorgeous tea rose with petals of peach and apricot hue.  The plaque had the botanical name, the common name, “Brass Band,” and the personal name – Timothy.  I will never forget my Uncle Bob in Montana.  What a blessing to know that he did not forget me.         

This is a story about two boys from a small town just outside Louisville, Kentucky.  Tom and Bobby were friends and teammates in high school.  In the summer after graduation the local slaughterhouse was hiring, and both ended up getting jobs on the loading dock.

Bobby worked hard and earned a promotion to the kill floor.  Two hundred times a day he put the cattle gun to the head of a steer and pulled the trigger that put a hole the size of man’s fist in the animal’s skull.  Sometimes he worked the prod that electrocuted the two thousand hogs that came through each day.  The shock killed the brain, but the heart kept beating until all the blood was pumped out of the slit in the pig’s neck, while hanging by its heel.

He detested the kill floor and talked about college and moving on, but two things happened to change his mind.  He married his high school sweetheart and did not want to give up a steady job, and they moved him to the smoker room.  He decided to stay on a little longer and worked with loyalty and distinction.  As the months turned to years, there were promotions from department to department, where he got regular raises and learned a lot about the meat packing business. 

Before his education was complete; he  worked the boning room and the butcher shop; shipped the swine and cattle fetuses to the university for research; prepared the dried blood for high protein hog feed; rendered the fat into lard; processed the pigskins into gelatin; ground up the hooves and horns for fertilizer; sold off the viscera for chitlins, tripe and other delicacies; and bundled the hides off for the tanner.  Nothing got wasted; as they say in the meat packing business, the only things left of the pig are the tail and the “oink.”

That was a source of enormous pride for Bobby.  A feeling of discontent still lingered; but quitting at this point was out of the question, with a good income and a growing family.  Besides, he played first base on the employee softball team, and everyone expected Bobby to turn the ribs at the annual company picnic.  Bobby knew down deep that he was never going to leave the slaughterhouse.  He also knew down deep that Tom was always going to leave the slaughterhouse.  

Tom was a quick study and a hard worker like Bobby, destined for advancement in the company; but Tom was also something of a free spirit, which Bobby certainly was not.  Tom made little sculptures out of discarded pieces of bone, and he was fascinated with Hollywood and the movies.  He taught himself how to do studio makeup and could dress his arm to look exactly like someone got careless in the butcher shop with a cleaver.  Nobody around there thought it was funny — except Bobby.

Bobby loved Tom, but he also envied him, and resented him a bit too.  Tom was just a little better and quicker with everything — from sports, to rendering sides of beef, to making friends.  The inevitable day came when Tom announced that he was moving to California.  He was heading off to bigger and better.   Bobby saw it coming all along, but Tom’s leaving was another reminder that he was never going anywhere.  Bobby reacted with a scoff, saying, “You’ll be back in six months.”

Tom did not come back in six months, or even six years.  With his creativity, determination, and a reputation as a fix-it man; he landed a great job in the Hollywood studio system, where he kept things running behind the cameras on the sets of television shows, movies, and commercials.  He worked all over Los Angeles and spent parts of several seasons on a popular show filmed in Hawaii.  The work was fun and varied and well-paying, and he loved his career as a techie in the entertainment business.  Oh, the stories he could tell about some of Hollywood’s biggest egos.  Tom could do some serious name-dropping.

After fifteen years, Tom took his family back home for a visit, and he met up with Bobby at the company picnic.  By that time Bobby had moved up to foreman, but he was still tending the ribs.  His son was on the loading dock, and Bobby was the coach of the softball team.  Bobby told Tom that he would have become the general manager or even the VP of the company, if he had stuck around; but Tom knew that it was not his gift to be the Vice President of anything.

At so many reunions you run out of things to talk about, but Tom and Bobby did not.  They agreed that each one was exactly where he needed to be.  They respected each other’s choices.  They know that often you need to give something up to get what you really want.  Bobby gave up his wanderlust; but he lived well, had a happy family, and was well regarded in the community.  Despite his earlier misgivings, he was a son of the bluegrass forever.  Of course, Tom misses his Ole Kentucky Home and is occasionally wistful about the slower pace, the pastoral life, and the house you can buy for the money outside Louisville.  But he is a one season guy now.  He prefers the swaying of the palm tree to the swaying of the bluegrass.

By my junior year in college, I had acquired a serious interest in napping.  Although hating it as a kid, the rediscovery of dozing in the daytime was one of the great awakenings of higher education.  The zeal which I brought to this practice elevated it to performance art.  

After a tough afternoon of study, or research, or attendance at a lab, or what is just as likely, playing volleyball; I repaired to my dorm room.  Clad only in shorts I splayed myself face down in the pillow and zonked out while the sounds of college wafted in my second-story window on the spring breeze — the best white noise ever! One of my friends would give a wake-up knock on the door, just in time for me to stumble off to the dining hall for dinner. 

It was not a struggle to nap; it came honestly.  My grandfather was a Johnson from the Lone Star State, and like six-hundred-thousand other Texas Johnsons, he claimed a familial relationship with the former President of the same name who — as anyone might remember from reading the papers — was a committed napper.  My granddad, like the former Chief Executive, would go to the bedroom after lunch, take off his clothes, put on his pajamas, draw the blinds, jump in bed, pull up the covers, turn out the light and saw some serious wood for an hour-and-a-half.

Not the sofa.  Not the recliner.  Not the hammock.  No Ma’am. The Bed!

As good as he was, though, he did not come close to rivaling my father who was the unquestioned champion of nodding off.  For the last twenty-five years of his life, Ted took four naps a day.  His seasonal job, his semi-retirement status, his flexible schedule, and the proximity of our house to his work made it possible for him to organize his life and his calendar around the time he spent on the daybed in the den.      

After checking messages and mail at the office, he returned home for a 20-minute mid-morning power nap.  After an early lunch he stretched out for about 40 minutes.  He got home for a few winks before dinner, and in the late evening he fell asleep in front of the TV.  We woke him up to go to bed. 

Although napping has been a regular pastime for me from college forward; on most days it has been limited to one nap, never rising to my dad’s level of commitment.  For years, the nap was a luxury, a few moments stolen from otherwise busy days.  However, now it is a necessity for me and many other guys my age.  When you are approaching 80, you make two or three trips a night to the bathroom, which destroys your “rem” cycle. Sleep is a vital component of a healthy lifestyle, which makes the nap essential.

Nowadays there is a well-established routine, which is determined by my youngest grandson who is thirteen months old.  When Davey starts to yawn and rub his eyes and appears to be ready to give up the ghost, the pre-nap routine kicks in: change his diaper, put him in his “zippy,” fix his bottle, settle into the rocking chair.  As he sucks away, his eyes dim to half-mast, and I sing softly one or more of his favorite tunes, like “Truly Scrumptious” or “Bring Him Home” or “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

By the time the bottle is empty, he is out scout; but I am not ready to put him down just yet.  Cradled in my arms, his head is turned and pressed against my chest, and I am holding on just a moment more.  Like with his older brothers, his naptime will eventually disappear, and I will sorely miss these quiet times of exquisite closeness with a grandson.  This moment stirs up a lovely memory of his mommy who also fell asleep on my chest.   

Because we are blessed to live under the same roof as our daughter and her husband and their three boys, my crib is not too far from Davey’s crib.  He will sleep until he wakes, and so will I.  Napping will be very different when there is no longer a grandson to share a pre-nap routine with his Poppa.

Yes, there will be an adjustment, but there will always be biographies and Kenny G and Dodger games to lower the pulse and dim my consciousness.  The grandsons may give up their naps, but their relentless energy will continue to tire me out — a good pre-req for sleeping in the afternoon.

Many adults eschew napping and regard it as wasted time.  My friend Frank and I are not among them.  Since our college days his devotion to napping has been as intense as my own.  A philosophy major, he offered up pithy sayings of the kind that Mr. Miyagi spouts in “The Karate Kid.”  So, once I asked him to drop me some wisdom on napping.  After sleeping on it for a while, he came up with a phrase that captures one of my strongest feelings:

“Wakefulness is highly overrated.”                

My dad was a dreamer.  He saw himself as a prince, not a pauper.  He wanted to make a big mark on the world and hoped to make a ton of money along the way.  He had a lot of what it takes to turn a buck.  He was charming, creative of mind, quick-witted and well-spoken.  He could sell and was willing to take risks.

He always had a job, but he never wanted a job.  Basically, he wanted to strike it rich.  His schemes were numerous, wacky and wonderful, and it was fun to dream with him. 

For years he worked for a family with extensive citrus holdings in Arizona and Southern California.  Because he was whip smart and fluent in Spanish, he supervised the braceros who worked the groves, and he also managed the packing house operations.  Every day they sorted, crated, and loaded the fruit onto the railroad cars that were pulled into the siding right next to the packing house.  Seeing those oranges and lemons and grapefruit rolling off to chillier climes, Ted dreamed his most promising enterprise of all.

His idea was to package some fruits and nuts from sunny SoCal and ship them to folks in Minnesota as Christmas presents?  He talked to growers and shippers, got a line of credit, and opened an office within a block of the packing house.  He hired some legal work, printed up business cards, and became Ted Piatt: President, Fiesta Fruits, Inc.  Dang, it was exciting.

He had a big need for packaging, and he had a big idea for that.  He could save a ton of money and have a more realistic appearance for his Southwest-themed business by purchasing the baskets in Mexico.  Plus, he loved all things Mexican – the food, the music, the language, the people.  So, he did some homework on basket-makers near Tijuana and took a buying trip south of the border. 

He returned with about 100 baskets of various shapes and sizes.  Each basket had green and orange ribbons that were woven into the straw of the basket itself. It gave them a distinctive look, like a logo. My mother Audrey began to create gift baskets for promotional purposes, which created some real enthusiasm.  Dad was sure that this dream was not going to be elusive, like so many others. 

At about the same time, someone had a similar business idea; they called it Mission Pak.  I can still remember the words and hear in my head the advertising jingle from their TV ads:

            Say the magic word, say Mission Pak, and we’re on our merry way!

            No gift so right, so gay, so bright, it’s the Mission Pak magic way!

If you are wondering what Mission Pak was like, or what Ted envisioned Fiesta Fruits to look like, think “Harry and David.”  You know, terrifically overpriced fruits, nuts, and candies, right to your doorstep.  Yum-Yum and Cha-Ching!

However, somewhere between the creative urge and the final big payday for any dreamer, there is a land mine of hard work, entrepreneurial drive, personal and fiscal self-discipline, and of course, sobriety.  Just when it seemed within reach, Ted went to Mexico again for a bigger order of baskets, and they only took cash. 

Ted withdrew a wad of money and rented a big trailer, but on the way, he got distracted.  No one ever knew if he stopped in Del Mar, or if he made it across the border into Tijuana, to find a racetrack, his preferred gambling venue.  Or maybe he put down some of the advertising dollars on high hopes for an inside straight at a casino, or perhaps some of the line of credit ended up at the sports book where he took the Rams by seven over the Bears. 

Ted had been planning to return within thirty-six hours; but by the third day, Audrey and friends were a little jumpy.  After a week, things were falling apart in the offices of Fiesta Fruits.  The plan was to buy 600 baskets; but when he got to the factory, he only had enough money for 60.  By the time he got home with his tail between his legs; the bank, the backers, the buyers, and the suppliers were jumping ship. 

This dream did prove elusive, and the disappointment was not about the riches we would never see.  It was about my dad’s self-incrimination and shame, because he had thrown away his best idea and his best chance.  Yet Ted was not down and out for long.  Before he had much time to ruminate on the one that got away, he was already chasing another dream.

My parents even had something to laugh about — they had all those baskets.  For years they were good as Birthday and Christmas presents, as centerpieces and waste baskets, as attractive storage containers with a Mexican flair.

Finally, there was just one basket left.  It was round, about 12 inches in diameter, and maybe 14 inches tall.  It narrowed near the top and had a curved woven handle across the opening.  My mom used it to store the scraps of material that she was saving to create a braided rug. 

After she began to weave the scraps together to form the braid, she worked steadily for a while until the rug took its shape.  When it grew to about six feet long and four feet wide, she put it down in the living room near the front door.  As she collected more pieces of cloth, her project grew and became a rug of many colors.

Whenever she ran out of scraps, the work stopped for a while, but the braid did not end.  She never cut off the braid.  She never sewed the last two or three feet of the braid into the rug.  It snaked back into the basket, awaiting more cloth and more color.

After my dad died, she finally stopped working on it.  It had become this gorgeous six-by-nine-foot oval work of art, with a tail that disappeared into a woven straw basket with green and orange stripes.    

Once I asked her why she never finished the rug, and why she kept it leashed to its basket, right there by the front door.  It was simple.  She left the rug unfinished because she did not want to get rid of that one last basket.  Whenever she walked across the rug, going in or going out, she paused briefly.  The rug was a beautiful but unfinished metaphor for their incomplete hopes, and the basket reminded her of the things she absolutely loved about her dreamer of a husband. 

If you are concerned about the political rancor in the country and find it painful to listen to the shouting from the right and the left, you are not alone, and this is nothing new.  It has been around from the dawn of the republic.  George Washington warned us about political in-fighting and the destructive force of partisan politics. 

One of the sad things about this divisiveness today is the fallout among family, friends, and neighbors.  That is also nothing new.  My dad and his good friend George were miles apart politically.  George was a flaming Democrat; my dad was a stubborn Republican, and their discussions got really heated at times.      

George was a conscience liberal who had slugged it out in the newsrooms of Midwest dailies for years before moving to California.  Before the cold weather drove him out of Duluth, he wrote the news releases and the side bars and the editorials in support of Hubert Humphrey – a liberal icon who championed civil rights and who became Vice-President under Lyndon Johnson.  George came to write for our local paper and soon became the Sunday Editor, where he continued to write and fight for the promises of a caring government. 

In contrast, Ted was a Republican for less noble reasons.  He saw the Republicans as the party of the big shots, a club he would have loved to join.  He was in total agreement with the laissez-faire and limited approach to government that has been historically attributed to the GOP, but his ardor was not as strong as George’s.  Sometimes I felt he was a Republican in large part to needle my mother, who was a dyed-in-the-wool FDR New Deal Democrat. 

And to needle George. 

They met in an AA Meeting.  This was the glue in their friendship, although George was more successful at dryness than Ted.  Whenever my dad fell off the wagon, George was there in a heartbeat to buck him up, to drive him where he needed to go, to surround him with other AA buddies, and to encourage him to get to a meeting.

You would often find Ted and George at “Betsy Ross,” a patriotic-themed restaurant and ice cream parlor.  There they would order chocolate malts with chocolate ice cream.  (When you take the alcohol away, the body will demand some sugar.)  However, they did not debate the issues of the day out there in public over chocolate malteds.  Those conversations usually took place in the comfort of our home, where the front door was almost never locked. 

The door would open slightly, and George would stick his head in, shouting:

“Yoo-hoo!  Anybody home?”

“Come in, George.  Ted’s in the den.”

We could hear them talking; and we would know when they began to cover immigration or Social Security or foreign policy or the resident of the White House or whatever, because the volume would increase.  Before you knew it, the door would slam.  George would be gone, and they would both be sore as boils.  But without warning, in a day or three the door would open; and George would stick his head in and say:

“Yoo-hoo!  Anybody Home?”

“Oh sure, George.  Ted’s in the kitchen.”

Again, the conversation in normal tones.  Again, the inevitable moment of increasing decibels.  And again, the door slamming and George’s sudden departure.  Until the next time when the argument was forgotten, and the friendship prevailed. 

There was always a next time.  Regardless of their disagreements over current events, they cherished their friendship way more than the GDP or strife with Cuba.  Those two friends always found time to talk sports and business and the weather, and whatever else chums talk about over a BLT and a malt. 

After Ted died, George didn’t drop in as much, but he and I often saw each other.  After retiring from the newspaper, he became the director of the news bureau at the college, and I became the drop-in.  It was delightful to visit his office and to see him in his natural habitat.  He was surrounded by the accoutrements of his trade: scattered newspapers on the desk, a half-empty cup of cold coffee, a full ashtray, the necktie pulled down, the typewriter at his elbow, and the phone ringing off the hook.

George was my dad’s friend.  Then he became my friend.  We had some keen interests in common and enjoyed time together at the racetrack.  We had fond memories of my dad.  We laughed out loud about those days when George had a special “yoo-hoo” place in our family.  He could come in anytime and bicker over politics with his friend Ted without even knocking.            

George and I also spoke of the difference between a private disagreement and a lack of public civility.  He and Ted drove each other a little bit crazy, but they would never have carried their personal feuds into the public arena.  “Betsy Ross” was off limits.

They would also be appalled at the level of public rancor today.  It would have been unconscionable to them that our leaders of the highest order would openly demonize the opposition with such vitriol, such hatred.

Tragically, this great political and social divide has crept into the church.  We need to remember that God is “…above every throne, every dominion, every ruler, every authority.” (Colossians 1:16)

In my most recent previous blog (“Mighty Fine,” posted October 6^th), my grandfather’s favorite passage of Scripture was quoted. (Matthew 22:36-40) It is also my favorite.

In brief, we are to love God and love our neighbor.  Whatever happens in this election, we would do well as a nation to learn to love our neighbor; whether we like our neighbor or agree with our neighbor.

I am encouraged that two brilliant jurists who were widely separated politically – Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – were steadfast friends.  They shared a love of opera.  I am encouraged by the memory of the friendship of my dad and his friend George, who argued vehemently.  They loved each other and shared a love of chocolate malts.

There is a poignant moment in the classic film “Field of Dreams” when the Kevin Costner character realizes that one of the ballplayers from the cornfield is his father.  With wonder, the father surveys the baseball diamond under lights and asks, “Is this heaven?”  The son responds, “No.  It’s Iowa.”

There were so many times as a kid when I pinched myself and asked, “Is this heaven?”  The answer was, “No, not exactly!”  But it was close to heaven for me.  It was my grandparents’ hilltop home and avocado grove in Vista, California.    

In 1935 my grandfather and grandmother bought the property, about four acres in size atop a gentle ridge near the end of a winding and narrow country lane.  For the next seven years they spent weekends and vacation days developing the site, laying sprinkler lines, planting avocado “starts,” fencing the land, and building a house.

It takes about seven years from the time you plant an avocado tree until you see the first fruits, and they had planned it perfectly.  By the summer of 1942, the grove was ready to be harvested for the first time.  In that year Granddad turned sixty-five and retired with a pension from the Union Pacific; and they moved into their new two-bedroom home on the hill.

For the last time he took off his official ticket-agent hat, his crisply ironed shirt, his necktie, his slacks with the sharp crease, and his shiny shoes.  He traded them in for the broad-brimmed Stetson, the khaki pants and shirt, and those work boots that would be his uniform of the day well into his 80’s. He had fulfilled his lifelong yearning to be a man of the soil.

As a kid I was farmed out to Vista quite a lot — unaware at the time that my parents were shielding me from the family upheaval that frequented our lives; and some of those difficulties have been chronicled in previous entries on this blog.  What had started out as a planned escape for me became so much more. 

Oh, how I loved to see my grandfather’s ’48 Plymouth business coupe coming down the street.  He was coming to pick me up for the weekend or for Easter vacation or for a long summer visit.  Sometimes I took the Greyhound bus with the small square windows; and after the DMV sent my drivers’ license, the visits were even more frequent.  From the time my parents first dropped this toddler off with Jim Ned and Leona Johnson until my college years, it was my favorite place of joy and refuge. 

My grandmother was just lovely to me, always making my favorite dessert; but my grandfather and I were joined at the hip.  From the time we woke up at dark-thirty, until bedtime, we spent nearly every waking moment together — except for naptime.  After lunch he would take off his clothes, put on his pajamas, draw the drapes, crawl in bed and snore away for ninety minutes.

But for the rest of the day, we were constant companions.  Together we worked the grove, and I learned his pet names for each and every tree.  “Queen Bee” and “Shorty” and “Prudence” and “Patience” and “North” and “East” and “Strawberry Roan” and “Dallas” and “Waco” and “Horseshoe” and “Aunt Rachel” and “Skimpy” and … so on.  We always knew where to find each other in the grove, and there were always so many wonderful trees to climb.

We fixed the whirlybird sprinklers, looked for signs of “cinnamon root rot,” mended the fences, and of course picked the fruit in its season.  In addition to the avocado grove, there was as a Navel and two Valencia orange trees, a fig tree, an apple tree, a pear tree, a peach tree, a persimmon tree, a pecan tree, and a stand of sweet corn.  Three or four times each summer we took a carload of this provender to stock the pantry of the nearby boys’ home and orphanage. 

We spent time in the workshop, where I learned about the care and feeding of all kinds of tools.  He was very skillful, designing and handcrafting his own special use gadget to pick the fruit from the highest branches.  He also babied the Plymouth coupe and told me how to take care of her.

Of course, he taught me about avocados.  It you want to know about “Hasses” or “Fuertes” or “cukes” or “off-blooms,” or how to pick an avocado off the tree or out of the bin in the produce section of your local Vons, I’m your guy.  And if you want to make some “shut up” guacamole — the kind that is so good it leaves you speechless — well then, ditto!

But of all the things I learned from Jim Ned Johnson, it was a simple ritual that had the most impact on the arc of my life.  Each day after early chores and breakfast and before heading back to the grove, we sat down in the sun porch for my grandparents’ daily devotions.  This routine was etched in stone.  They sat facing each other in their Naugahyde rocking chairs; hers was white and his was red.  He stuffed his pipe with his favorite Prince Albert tobacco, and she took up her knitting.   

They subscribed to a bi-monthly publication that guided their morning Bible study: “Our Daily Bread.”  For each day there was a one-page homily.  From the time I could read, my job was to look up the Scripture reference that went along with the daily lesson.  Over a period of fifteen years, I slept at least 400 nights under their roof, which meant at least 400 mornings of opening the Bible.  That was a seed of faith which was planted in my life.

Their devotions ended in the exact same way every time.  Granddad would refer to whatever verses were cited that day, and would sigh, and say, “That’s a mighty fine Scripture.”  He was from Texas, mind you.  Mighty fine means really good.

And then he would continue:

“But my favorite Scripture is Matthew 22:36-40.”  He would then recite it from memory, quoting the King James version of the Bible.  Allow me to save you the trouble of looking it up.

Master, which is the great commandment in the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

If I heard it once, I heard it at least 400 times, and my grandmother thousands of times more.  While clicking the knitting needles, she rolled her eyes and mouthed the words along with my grandfather; but there was no mockery there.  She had a benevolent smile on her face and an expression that said, “You dear man.”    

There is for me a weekly reminder of that wonderful season of my young life when my granddad told stories and demonstrated tools and let me talk all I wanted and addressed his avocado trees by name and opened my heart to the Bible.  This is what is written on the wall in the foyer of our church:  Love God.  Love Others.  That is Bible 101, and those are some mighty fine words.

My brother has a bestie named John, and they have been cherished friends for almost sixty years.  John’s nickname is Giant.  He stands six-foot-eight and is a handsome dude, a combination of power forward and leading man.

Raised in Hollywood, John was the son of a successful actor.  His playground was an exclusive country club, where he grew up teeing it up with his dad in some celebrated foursomes.  He thought about professional golf; and if you ever saw him strike a golf ball, you could understand why.

His driver is as tall as I am.  When he stands on the tee box and looms over his shot, it is scary.  Even scarier when he hammers his drive!  For you golf fans, think John Daly, and then add twenty yards.  It used to be that he could lose his cool on the course, and that was also scary.  If he shanked a shot, he could wrap his club around a tree, like in a cartoon.  In those days, “Giant” was a good guy to avoid if he missed a “gimme” putt.

He forsook the idea of a celebrity life or pro sports and took his considerable intellect to law school.  After passing the Bar Exam, he became a deputy district attorney.  There he met my brother, and together they prowled the halls of the county courthouse, putting the miscreants in jail. 

John was an awfully good lawyer — smart, hard-working, and disciplined.  Yet, there was something about lawyering that never took.  Even the prospect of going into private practice — where he could have used his name and connections to financial advantage — seemed to constrain him.  The legal profession just did not quite fit.  In more ways than one, John was a guy who was hard to fit.  Sadly, one of the things that did not fit was his marriage.

When that relationship went aground, he bought a boat, lived in Marina Del Rey and sailed on the weekends.  There was something about the wind in the sails that led him to wonder where it had been all his life.  Then one day John decided he could no longer live the life that neither fit him nor thrilled him.  He resigned his job in the D.A.’s office, cashed in a few chips, cancelled the lease, and literally sailed off into the sunset on his Westsail 33.

Many of us have dreamed about stepping off the world for a while, but John lived that fantasy.  He re-fitted in Hawaii and headed south into Polynesia.  For nearly two years he went on a personal and maritime quest to find out what he really wanted, who he wanted to be, what he was made of.  Some of the time he had a sailing companion, but for long stretches he was solo on the high seas.  Before his odyssey was complete, he had sailed the Pacific from Micronesia to the Aleutians. His final eastward tack had taken him into Puget Sound.  In the words of John Denver, “He came home to a place he’d never been before.”

He had gone from two-hundred-seventy pounds down to a lean two-thirty, and he had also become a world class sailor.  For years John sailed competitively — a regular in international competitions.  He gained some renown as a sportsman when he won the solo division of the TRANSPAC race from San Francisco to Hawaii and was featured in a glowing piece by the late, great columnist of the Los Angeles Times, Jim Murray.

While continuing to sail, he built a successful business as a boat broker with an office in Seattle, hard by the chandleries and dockside restaurants.  His knowledge of boats and his legal training worked together to make his business thrive.  When John sold a boat, he threw in some important advice:

• Never board a boat with a gas engine, strictly diesel.
• Never pull away from the dock with alcohol on board.
• Know what you are doing.  The sea is unforgiving.
• Wherever you voyage, by land or sea, stand watch.

He spent thousands of hours in the middle of thousands of square miles of ocean, where he has been both storm-tossed and becalmed.  He has been at the mercy of God and the cruel sea.  It gives a man some perspective.  He still plays the occasional round of golf, but the missed shot does not bother him like it did before.  He is calm and content.  Plus, not long after settling in the Pacific Northwest, he met “the girl.”  They have shared many happy years together.

Some guys are made to wear judicial robes, dark loafers, and socks.  They are comfortable and at home in the wood-walled environment of the courtroom.  They deal in mercy and justice and the rights of the accused.  They love the law.  My brother is one of those.

Some guys are made to wear yellow slickers and deck shoes.  They are comfortable and at home on a sloop.  They deal in seamanship and captains’ logs and celestial navigation.  They love to stand at the tiller with the wind in their face and answer the call to adventure.  John is one of those.    

When I would visit my grandfather, we got up real early to work in the avocado grove, pruning and picking, or whatever needed to be done.  There is always something to be done on a farm.  After a couple of hours, we would come back to the house, where my grandmother had breakfast ready.

Right after we ate, we would gather in the den, where Granddad stoked up his pipe, and Grandma picked up her knitting.  He opened the family Bible, and we spent some time in daily devotions.  They followed this routine religiously all the days of their lives.

Granddad and I would head back out to the grove; and while following him around like a border collie, I listened to his stories.  As he got older, the stories got repeated over and over, but that didn’t bother me.  I never tired of hearing about the duck with the broken beak, or about the time he threw the thief off the trolley car, or about great-great grandpa Johnson who fought with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto.

My favorite story was about the time he saddled up and rode his strawberry roan from Austin to San Antonio.  Today by car it is a 90-minute drive, but it took him four or five days each way, enjoying the hill country on horseback, dodging coyotes, and sleeping under the stars.  The year was “eighteen ‘n’ ninety-six.” He was nineteen years old. 

Every kid wants to own a horse, right?  My chance came when my friend Ben had a horse for sale, name of Dude.  I bought the horse and saddle, kept him at Ben’s place, and paid for feed and board.  Dude and I spent a lot of time with Ben and his horse Pete — riding through nearby hills and dales, but nowhere as far as Austin to San Antonio.     

Dude was a quarter horse, a big bay with a white star on his face.  As a younger colt, he was trained to carry a pick-up rider in the rodeo, but that kind of horsemanship was way beyond my pay grade as a cowboy.  He was also well-mannered and schooled in Western showmanship.

And he loved the work.  Whenever we came to the corral, Dude would turn his hip toward the gate and sidle up, like a ship using its thrusters to move sideways into the pier.  With my left hand on the reins, I reached out to unlatch with my right.  While I held on to the gate post, Dude shuffled sideways to open the gate widely.  With my gentle pull on the reins, he would pivot backwards around to the other side of the gate and shuffle sideways again to close it.  Dude knew how to go through gates without the rider having to dismount.  

However, after retiring from rodeo and show work he developed a bad habit. He was barn sour, which means that when you turned for home, he did not want to waste any time. Going out he was mellow; coming back to the barn he was a handful unless you wanted to flat-out gallop. After a few months I had learned how to relax and take charge, and Dude had learned who was boss.  On the days he was rarin’ to go, we compromised on a brisk trot.

When I told my granddad about the horse, he reminded me that next to his grove there was a half-acre of cleared land, completely fenced, where a horse might graze on sweet grass.  He invited me to bring Dude for a visit.

Ben loaned me his truck and horse trailer, and my mom hitched a ride with me to visit her Papa.  When we pulled into the driveway, Granddad was sitting on his front porch; and seeing the truck and trailer, he leaped off his Adirondack.  That moment is frozen in my memory.  There he was in a sweat-stained Stetson, pipe in hand, in his workday uniform of khaki pants, long-sleeved khaki shirt, and those high lace-up shoes with the eye hooks.  He was eighty-eight years old, and he was a kid again, eagerly wanting to know how soon he could take a ride.

He needed a little boost getting up in the saddle; but once he got there, no one needed to tell him what to do.  It had been all of fifty years since his last time on horseback, but nothing was forgotten.  Like riding a bike or kissing a girl, it all came back to him: his back was ramrod straight, his feet perfectly set in the stirrups, his heels down and in, his left hand gently but firmly holding the reins, and his right hand resting comfortably on his right thigh.  He had been there before. 

And off they went. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Grandfather and Dude went down the road and disappeared around the bend.  Only after he had gone did I remember about Dude’s habit of stampeding home at the end of a ride.  We did not want to hurt my grandfather’s pride by telling him not to go very far, but we also did not want him to get thrown by a horse in a hurry.   We waited — my grandmother, my mother and me. Fifteen minutes! Thirty minutes!  Forty-five minutes!  Still no sign of horse or rider.  Just when we began to consider a search party, here came the sound of hoofbeats, clip-clopping on the road.

When they came into sight; oh, what a sight!  He was tall in the saddle, and Dude was trotting along under perfect control and in no apparent hurry.  The horse just knew that he had real horseman up top.  And Granddad was singing an improvisatory tune as he came along—something about a Texas cowboy riding on his horse.  He had gone around to a few neighbors to say, “Howdy!”  Nothing to worry about!

After lunch we sat on that porch and watched as Dude enjoyed the pasturage, and my granddad asked several questions:  Do you have a nice place like this for Dude?  Is there sweet grass up there?  Does he get ridden enough?  He never did ask the real question, and I never answered it. 

Over the years I have thought about getting another horse.  Maybe a strawberry roan!  But it would not be fair to put a horse under anything less than the best rider I ever saw.

“The Waltons” was a television program that debuted in September of 1972.  It ran for nine seasons, and my wife and I never missed.  It was about a family who lived and worked on their land in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia during the Great Depression.  There were seven children, the parents, and the grandparents – three generations under the same roof.  At the end of each episode there was a view of the farmhouse, and you could hear the voice-overs of the family members as the light faded.

“G’night Momma”

“Good night John Boy”

“G’night Grampa”

“Good night Ellen”

o o o o o

After forty-two years in the same house, with loving prompts from our grown children, we decided to scale down.  We took some of the proceeds from our sale and contributed to the purchase of a house where we would live together with our youngest daughter, our son-in-law, and their family.  We now reside cheek by jowl with them and their three boys, under the same roof, but in our own apartment.  Going from 1,900 square feet and four bedrooms to 600 square feet and one bedroom was a major adjustment.  But it does not feel all that cramped because: we frequently spend time at their dinner table, we have whole family movie nights, and we have easy access to the pool and patio.

Reactions to this major life move were mixed among our family and friends.  We got a lot of advice, some of which was requested.  We got many cautions about living with our offspring.  Some people thought we were just nuts, as in … “We could never do that!” 

However, we were steadfast.  We knew this was to be the true course of our lives, but it was not an easy thing to do.  Two and one-half years elapsed, and lots of upheaval took place, from the first conversation with our children about this move until we were finally ensconced in our new home.  If you have ever sold a house and made such a move, you know what that is like. Our realtor team told us it would be one of the most difficult seasons of our life, and they were right.

There were improvements to give the house “curb appeal” in a competitive housing market.  The fix-up cost more and took longer than we planned, and in between it was a mess.  We listed the house, and nineteen families came by to visit, all by appointment.  We had to vacate each time.  We had an offer and opened an escrow, but it fell through.  More visits.  When we finally made the deal, the escrow experience was laughable.  It had been decades since we first bought the house, and oh, the changes and legal requirements!  There was writer’s cramp from signing on scores of documents. 

Then came the move.  Man-o-man, that was tough.

The Garage

If you have lived in your home for forty years, what does your garage look like?  Ours wasn’t terribly messy, and we could still get a car in there; but it was a tight fit, because we had refused to get rid of anything.  Instead of winnowing from time to time, we kept adding more storage cabinets.  Does any of this sound familiar?

When the time came, it was very painful to give away — or throw away — a lifetime of stuff.  Yet, it was also a great blessing.  We donated much of the physical evidence of our history to several charities.  For months we filled the shelves of “Second Story,” a boutique thrift-shop whose proceeds support a ministry which rescues children worldwide from the bondage of sexual slavery.     

What was not usable for donations went into the dumpster.  You know the one.  It is six feet long, four feet wide, and four feet deep.  It is made of steel of the thickness that would protect a Sherman tank, and it is a hideous green.  The dumpster people drop it at your curb, you fill it up, and they take it away a week later. 

Fill it up we did, and not just one dumpster!  You cannot believe how many boxes in how many cupboards contained stuff that we had not looked at in thirty years.  Not until dumpster time, did we wake up to the realization that nobody wanted most of that stuff anyway.  We had a few tender moments as we and our daughters stood around the dumpster and ceremoniously bade farewell to the campfire coffee pot, my mother’s three foot chicken-wire Christmas tree, and the Betamax version of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

The House

The house was never lovelier than when we spruced it up for sale; and moving away was an occasion for real grief.  We miss those friends and neighbors.  We miss our rose garden and the generous lemon tree.  We miss the spreading front porch with its railing and the Adirondack chairs where we could sit together  of an evening, sip on lemonade and watch the people pass by, walking their dogs.

We do not have room in our new house for many souvenirs, but we do have hanging on our kitchen wall a framed, watercolor rendering of our longtime family home on Citronella Street.  This cherished piece of artwork was a housewarming present from our daughter, welcoming us to our new home.         

We do not regret our move.  We gave up a lot, but we gained even more.  Our new neighbors are welcoming and generous.  There is a gaggle of a dozen kids in the cul-de-sac who will be our grandsons’ friends and playmates for years to come — with bikes and kites and sparklers on the 4^th of July. Our garden space is limited, so our herbs and tomatoes and flowers are growing in pots.

We have been pruned way back. As a result, there is some abundant new growth in us.                   

The timing was perfect.  If Liza and I were still in our old house during the Covid pandemic, it would have been unbearably lonesome and challenging.  But we are all sequestered together now.  If either of us had died while still living in the old place, the process would have been doubly painful for the surviving spouse.  If we both passed away at the same time, it would have been overwhelming for our adult children to deal with it all.

God closes some doors and opens others.  We are content in our new digs.  It can be exhausting to be around three rambunctious little boys.  But at the end of the day – literally at the end of every day as the light is fading, we have three little space invaders knocking on our door.  They burst in with their hair still damp from the bath, in their super-hero jammies, coming to get a hug and a story. 

G’night Gramma.

G’night Poppa.

Good night boys.