Running the 75-Year Dash

The last day of 2009. Wow!

The late, great jazz musician Eubie Blake summed up my position perfectly when he said "If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." Like all of us, I had my period of reflection today about what I've done with this year, and how that stacked up against what I'd PLANNED to do with it.

As I was doing all that reflectation (that's a word in the South!), something hit me like a bolt out of the blue, and I wanted to get it on paper (well, on-screen at least) before it evaporated into the same realm as whatever it was that I was thinking of at 2:15 PM last Thursday.

If you've read any of my earlier pieces, you're aware that I delight in remembering things. It probably won't come as a great surprise, then, for you to learn that I am a great history fan. As an outgrowth of that, I've been in an on-again/off-again, love-hate relationship with genealogy for the past 7 years or so. It's love-hate because, on the love side, it's very exciting to tap into a rich new deposit of information on the people that brought you into the world. On the hate side, those rich deposits can be very few and far between.

I was blessed enough to really strike a big one on a cold night a couple of years back. We're talking about birth dates back to the year 1234. Having been stuck at dates of around 1720 for over a year, this was a big deal, and I stayed up until 3:30 AM that morning, happily assembling details between yawns.

Using my genealogy software, I was typing in the information on George Steed, my maternal grandfather's brother. Uncle George has long since passed on, but if you could meet him, I could guarantee you two things:

1. The first person you'd think of when you met him would be Jed Clampett, and
2. Uncle George would be just fine with that.

Right down to his scraggly whiskers, this was a man who made no effort to be anyone or anything other than himself. I never saw him in anything other than a pair of Liberty bib overalls. I also never saw him in anything other than a good mood, offering a smile, a soft kind word, and a warm welcome to everyone he came in contact with.

That's the picture I was seeing in my mind as I was entering his information, but I realized before long that I was also remembering the little sweet-apple tree in his yard, the way-cool old swing by the creek behind his house, and the old wood-stove that he cooked on and heated his little house with.

He lived alone, at the dead end of a dirt road in rural (and I do mean RURAL) Roane County, East Tennessee. In no time at all, these memories played out in sequence in my mind's eye: riding down that dusty old rough road, getting to Uncle George's little place, stockpiling a bunch of those sweet apples, and heading for that swing where I'd savor the woods, the apples, and the smell of hickory smoke drifting out from the stove to permeate the woods and the crisp autumn air.

I'm obviously still under the spell of that memory, because I still haven't gotten to the "bolt".

It's simply this, (and it really is so simple that lots of folks miss it): nobody in your family (or anywhere else) is just a name, a set of dates, or a location. They all have a story, and that's the tangible part of their memory. It's not the collecting of a bunch of dates to show what a skilled statistician you are. Remembering who they were, as real people dealing with the full array of things life can bring to a person, should be the bedrock reason we remember them at all. And that's the standard I think we should use when we do our New Year's self-evaluation. What are WE going to be remembered for this year?

My genealogy software informs me that, as of this morning, I have 487 names plugged in, and the same things that made remembering Uncle George such a worthwhile exercise are also true of the other 486 names. They all have a story. They all, for better or worse, have left a legacy.

There is an old Southern gospel song called "The Dash". The title refers to the dash that separates the birth and death dates on a gravestone. Even though the actual dates on the stone are the specific information, what happens "during the dash", as we live out our lives, is what we're going to be leaving with the world, and it's what we'll be remembered for.

So that's where I stand on this cold morning. The sun's bright outside, but as my good friend and Tennessee native Doug Presley (who now lives over in Indiana) says, "it's lying its butt off". It's still cold. The momentum from Christmas is still winding down, and shoppers are still packing the stores looking for bargains and exchanging gifts.

As corny as it may sound (did you hear that? I was worried about corn in Illinois!), I know I will consider it an entirely different kind of gift to have learned what a great, ongoing family story I'm part of, and how I fit into it. Whether you ever tackle genealogy or not, I hope you get to experience the joy of that in your own way.

As for myself, well, you can tell by my stories that I'm working on a very interesting "dash" to leave behind.

How's yours going?

Hit-and-Run Hoots

Something about road trips brings out an extra degree of mischief and silliness for me. Yeah, I know, but this is even more than usual that I'm talking about. I find that everything's amusing for me, and I also find that I'll sometimes pop off the stupidest jokes to total strangers, just for the glee of seeing their reactions.

So it was Christmas Day this year, on the way to have dinner at my in-laws about 100 miles away. We had to stop at one of the few convenience stores open that day, and when I went in to pay for my gas, I discovered that the lady running the cash register and another lady in the store were engaged in a detailed discussion of canning, and specifically the use of vinegar.

As my turn came to pay for my gas, I simply interjected, "Boy, I got pickled on vinegar once!" Both their heads snapped around, and both their jaws dropped. I didn't say another word- I just walked out like I had good sense to let them react however they wished after I was gone.

It didn't even make sense, and I'm still chuckling about it. It was great fun!

I DID have the tables turned on me once at a little market on the edge of Maryville, Tennessee. The gas pumps at this little place were the kind that go full-speed, and you can't stop them right on the amount you want. As a result, I pumped $20.03 worth of gas and went inside to pay.

"I got $20.03 in gas," I told the little lady inside, "I couldn't cut it off in time."

"That's OK, honey" she said sympathetically, "none of us can anymore."

I got back to my car feeling as if I knew WAY more about that lady than I ever would have wanted to.

What goes around comes around, I guess!

Happy Holidays!

The Shortest Post Yet

Around my house, we're as caught up in the season as everybody else, and we're apparently going to be busy enough to keep me from putting anything substantial on here until after the holidays.

Having said that, though, I didn't want to let this chance go by without thanking everyone for all the positive responses to the blog. You guys have been plenty encouraging to this rookie, and I just want you to know that I appreciate it, I'll keep plugging at it, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you have the greatest Christmas and most prosperous New Year ever!

See ya' next time!

On Maturity, Manners, and Fast Talking

Sometimes the most obvious things are the easiest things to overlook. Most of us have learned that to some degree, at some point, and hopefully, we’ve benefited from the lesson. At the moment, I’m thinking specifically of our approach to teaching our kids the real basics; things like politeness, selflessness, self-control, and being considerate of others. It’s so natural for us to go to work on instilling these traits from the get-go that we overlook a most obvious and amusing truth- in fact, the primary truth- that makes that job necessary:

The little scutters are born with absolutely none of that stuff.

I’m positive that some of you are thinking right about now that that mean old man is saying all manner of uncalled-for things about little Johnny or Janie (or, for you Southerners, little Jim-Bob or Julep). It happens to be true, though, and if you’ve ever visited a hospital nursery, you’ve seen all the proof you could ever want. When those kids get hungry, they want food 5 minutes ago, and they have no reservations about screaming their little heads off until they get their point across. Waiting their turn is rock-bottom on their priority list, and the next item up from that is the amount of inconvenience, work, or outright sacrifice it might take to meet those relentless little demands.

Now, before you decide that I’ve gone all anti-kid, let me complete my point by saying that most of us somehow manage to do an incredible job at helping those little personalities form properly. In fact, by the time school age rolls around, the transition can be almost unbelievable. What started out as a crying, wrinkled, self-absorbed, and often smelly little creature becomes a truly amazing creation in an amazingly short time.

I have been blessed with 4 absolutely delightful great-nieces, one of which has just reached kindergarten age. At a recent family dinner, I asked her how school was going. She gave a cute little shrug and said “Oh, school’s OK- it’s nothing I can’t handle”. This kid is 5 going on 35, and the air of confidence that comes with having a firm grasp on kindergarten radiates from her.

My youngest daughter, after her first day at school, answered the "How was school?" question by saying “Boring!”. When she was asked why it was boring, she said (with not an ounce of doubt) “ I already KNOW everything!”. I guess coloring inside the lines wasn’t a challenge that she considered worthy of her potential.

Believe it or not, I was more subdued on my first day of school. When the teacher asked me if I knew the alphabet, I said “No, ma’am- it’s just my first day.” I wasn’t (yet) devious enough to deliver a line like that for selfish purposes, but the teacher later told my mom that I pretty much melted her with that one. Score one for the little brown-eyed kid.

I have a theory (actually a fact to me, but a theory by the world's standards) that the human brain can only get up to about 50% speed by 7:30 in the morning. I'm living proof. In any form of research, the rules of scientific method dictate that the results must be reproducible and repeatable. Well, I can be right there, functioning at 50% every single morning, for days on end without even breaking a sweat. I rest my case.

I was in just such a stupor one morning when I stopped for gas on the way in to work. It was freezing cold, and I was zoned in and staring at the display on the pump, wondering how it could possibly take so long to get to $20.00 when gas is over 3 bucks a gallon. Suddenly, though, a little voice broke my trance.

"Ein taima abitheeth!"

Huh?

I looked down and saw this little boy of about 5 smiling broadly up at me, front teeth missing. He was apparently the grandson of the guy getting gas on the other side of the pump island. I finally put it together that he had proudly been announcing to me that he could say his ABC's, and it was obvious that he would be willing to do so at the drop of a hat. Grandpa said nothing, but just rolled his eyes as if to say "Oh, brother, here he goes again!"

I would have wanted to act suitably impressed anyway, but after seeing that reaction from Grandpa, I immediately felt compelled to see if I could take this thing to the next level. So, in my best Andy-Griffith-sounding Southern accent, I said "CAN you?" My little buddy went into a head nod like a bobblehead doll on a roller-coaster. Grandpa was now giving me a look that said, "Come on, buddy, do we have to do this?"

"Let's hear you", I said.

Grandpa let out something like a snort as the kid took in the deepest breath he could hold. He then unleashed the entire alphabet at a breakneck pace, running the letters into each other and lisping every time the missing teeth interfered. He also cranked the volume up a few decibels (which I wouldn't necessarily have thought of). When it was all over, he was breathless, eagerly looking up at me for my reaction.

"WOW!", I raved, "I've never heard anybody do it any better than that!"

He proudly marched back over to Grandpa's truck and got in, his mark made on the world for that day. Grandpa never said anything, but gave me a stern look as he replaced his gas cap. I smiled and cheerfully said, "You guys have a good one!"

As I drove on in to work, I replayed that scene in my mind, analyzing it from both Grandpa's and the kid's perspective. Honestly, Grandpa's perspective was sort of dull and depressing, so I didn’t dwell much further on it, but the kid's was fascinating.

You just get a new piece of knowledge and you want to show it off, but you know that the people you're showing it off to already know it. But if you can do it faster (and/or louder in this case), you still come off as doing it better. You've driven home the point with insurmountable force that you know the same stuff they know, only you know it better.

I don't know which is more amusing- the fact that little kids naturally process stuff this way, or the fact that a lot of us never seem to outgrow that way of thinking. You could build your own list of your favorite examples of this: politicians, infomercial announcers, salespeople - it could go on and on.

We get older, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we mature in the process. If that’s all bad, I guess I’m sunk. It’s neat, though, when we manage to change enough to recognize it in ourselves, to appreciate the fact that we’ve progressed, and to get a chuckle out of realizing where we’ve come from.

Just my thought for the day.

For Procrastinators, There's No Time Like The Future

I have a good friend, a fellow Baby-Boomer, who is chewing on the idea of going back to school and getting a degree in Business Administration. I think this would be a smart move for him at his stage in life, and I told him so. He's not quite as convinced as I am, however, and can't seem to fully decide whether to go for it or not. I've tried to inject helpful suggestions, like pointing out that getting the degree might help him learn to make decisions on stuff like this. Heck, I figured that out right away, and I don't have a degree in Business Administration!

Even in the face of such sage advice, though, he continues to waffle. He figures it'll take him 3 years to complete the program, meaning he'll be 55 when he finishes. I told him that's not so old, and besides, I asked, how old are you going to be in 3 years if you don't get the degree?

Of all the justifications he could have pulled out to defend this exercise in indecision, he said he was concerned it was just maybe a mid-life crisis. Of all the options he could have selected, that was probably the worst one he could have possibly picked to use on me.

I'm not an expert on this subject (although you'd think so after reading the world-class advice nuggets above). The fact is, though, I'm just a regular guy who has never been completely sold on the idea that there's even any such thing as a mid-life crisis. I think it's largely an overworked excuse for behavior that would be unacceptable if measured by any other standard. It's fine to make course corrections in life, but I think you ought to take responsibility for them instead of blaming them on a syndrome.

I read a quote once (and I TRULY wish I could remember who said it) that said that we focus on living in the present so intensely because we regret the past and fear the future. It's a depressing little quote, to be sure, but it has the ring of truth, doesn't it? How many things will we never do, not because we aren't smart enough or don't have the resources, but simply because we'll just never do them?

I left college at the age of 19, fully intending to go back after taking a little time off. Next thing I knew, I was 30. It's around that age that many folks start realizing that there's such a thing as time you can't get back once it's gone. Every turn my life has taken since making that move at 19 has been influenced in one way or another by that decision. Some turns have been for the better, some not. Overall, though, I'm extremely happy with how it turned out, and I understand that I travelled the path I selected. I don't blame a syndrome, or a disorder, or society, or anything else. The things I've gained or lost were results of the choices I made.

My point is that I'd still be my present age right now no matter whether I went back to school or not. The history of those years was written, in many ways, when I was still 19 and on the threshold of that decision. The way things are set up, we just have to wait and read our histories after the fact. The only true disappointment I would face would be to read that history and realize that I had robbed myself of the experience of finding, and being responsible for, my own direction- robbed myself by taking the "safer" option of taking no action at all.

So let me address this personal note to my friend- just get your degree, willya? You'll be a better man for it, and it's giving me a headache figuring all this stuff out for you.

A Quick Thank-You

I just want to say a quick "Thanks" to my friend Carla Clemens for the nice things she said about MY blog on HER blog, http://yagottaknowthisaboutthat.blogspot.com/

Carla was really my inspiration for starting this project, and I always seem to use the same word for her blog- delightful! She's extremely knowledgeable about the history of this area, and even if you don't live anywhere near Greenview, IL, you still get that hometown feel from reading her blog, regardless of where you might be.

She also comes up with some great recipes from time to time, and of course, I support this wholeheartedly!

Well worth checking out!

In the Eye of the Imaginer

Not many people ever get the opportunity to achieve true hero status. I was blessed enough to achieve it numerous times before age 12. Over the years, I've been Superman, Batman, Captain America, Spiderman, and The Green Hornet during my more intense phases. In off-periods I've been The Lone Ranger, Zorro, The Flash, Thor, and Steve Canyon. Steve Canyon was a USAF pilot for the majority of you who probably don't remember him.

Being an only child gives you the required time to concentrate on being all these guys. Distractions are annoying enough to mere mortals, but when you're being Superman, for example, you can imagine the consequences of looking away from your target when your heat vision is activated. One slip and you've vaporized your Aunt Mildred's Studebaker. Focus and study are keys to being a successful multi-hero.

Understanding this, I studied every episode and issue of all these various characters' exploits, analyzing them and committing them to memory. Along the way, I'd have the occasional revelation, like noticing that Superman could stand there with bullets bouncing off his chest while he was being shot at, but when the gun got empty and the bad guy threw it at Superman, he would duck! I asked my parents about that one, but they just shook their heads and sighed.

Even at that young age, I somehow instinctively understood the importance of applying stuff I'd recently learned, so usually when I saw somebody do something cool on a nighttime show, I was out trying it the next day.

Zorro, for instance, was being held captive in an upstairs room on one of his episodes. Deftly untying himself, he made his way out onto the balcony and whistled for his horse Tornado, who dutifully ran up under the balcony to allow Zorro to jump from the second story onto his noble horse's back. In retrospect, I have to question the wisdom of this from both their viewpoints, but that's what they did, and at the time I was impressed and inspired.

I was still inspired the next morning, when I happened to wake up and notice our old dog lying just underneath my bedroom window. It seemed that fate had dictated that I try the neat trick I'd seen my hero do the night before. My window would be my balcony, and the dog would be Tornado.

I suited up.

Back then you had an outfit for every character, and I had a Zorro set with a mask, cape, hat, and flaccid rubber sword. I usually augmented this setup with spurs from one of my cowboy outfits, so I opted for those, too. So equipped, I muscled that old window open and awkwardly climbed up into position.

Now, this dog was accustomed to seeing me do questionable things, so at first he just laid there looking up at me as I teetered, crouched in that window. Eventually though, I could see this wave of understanding come over him and he realized what I was about to do.

I made my leap... and just in time, he just casually moved out of the way. Tornado would never have done that, and as I was on the way down, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This wasn't going to be anywhere near the cool landing Zorro had made, and there was obviously no turning back.

To quickly do the math, I was probably about 3 feet tall at that point. I was jumping from a height of probably 6 or 7 feet. So, once my "horse" abandoned me, there wasn't much chance of landing on my feet without my knees buckling. That's what they did, which STILL might not have been so bad if I hadn't had those spurs on.

When you squat all the way down, your heels are touching your rear end. If your heels happen to have pointed metallic disks attached, you're going to get tenderized. You can see where this eventually went.

Nevertheless, I was able to continue my heroism career for several more years and build up a memorable childhood. Nobody got hurt (permanently), and nobody recommended I get counseling or imagination-management classes or whatever the heck they do now. I might have BEEN hyperactive, but I wasn't diagnosed with it or medicated for it (as far as I know).

I guess I said all that to say this: I think nowadays, maybe we're a little too tough on kids whose imaginations are in overdrive and whose energy levels are immeasurable. I have a grandson (Oh, my God! Am I old enough to be somebody's Grandpa?) who is a case study in this sort of thing. In fact, he's amazingly like you-know-who. He has a Harry Potter outfit, a Spiderman outfit, multiple pairs of Superman PJ's, and this strange-looking pair of goggles that came with one of them. I'm not sure what they're supposed to be for. He mixes and matches from all this collection to suit whatever his imagination is busy with at any given time. He zooms around the house doing all the dialog, sound effects, music, and narration needed for the adventure at hand. Obviously, in his mind, there is an epic unfolding during every waking moment, and he throws himself into it completely.

Do I think he probably spends too much time on movies, TV, and video games? Yep, I'd have to admit I do. And do I just sort of watch in puzzled amusement as he streaks by my chair challenging aliens at the top of his lungs? You betcha.

But, I keep in mind that, in addition to having been all the folks I mentioned at the outset, I've also been HIM, and I still understand that childhood and summers are all about spending as much time as possible with your head in the clouds. It's a great paradox that spending a measure of time with your head in the clouds can make you better-equipped to keep your feet on the ground.

There's a lot of that behavior I hope he never outgrows, and I hope he gets the most out of every summer he has. He'll only get so many, and one day, all to soon, he'll realize how many of them are already in the past. So I vote for letting him zoom around the house all he wants while his imagination and enthusiasm still have that much influence.

But if I see any spurs, I'm gonna hide 'em. From experience, I know it's the humane thing to do.

Great Zinger, No Witnesses

On a quick trip back to Tennessee a couple of years back, I had the chance to visit for a short time with a little lady I always called my "favoritest" aunt in the world, my Aunt Carol. What a sweetie! If you could meet her, I know she’d be one of your favoritest people too.

We were just talking over old times when she commented on how remarkable it had always seemed to her that I had started out being such a mischievous little kid and grew up to eventually be a police officer (which I was for a number of years). I told her that I personally knew lots of examples of that happening. For all I know, it might even be the rule instead of the exception. No offense, officers!

Like most cops and ex-cops, I have my own bank of “war stories”, some hilarious, some not at all funny. I was telling her about this one instance in which we got a 2 AM call from a local convenience store, stating that a man had been in there talking so incoherently that it scared the stuffing out of the little girl working there. At the time, the Police Department’s night shift only utilized 2 officers, and we both arrived at the store within a couple of minutes.

When we got there, we saw this old guy out in the parking lot, looking under the hood of his raggedy old Rambler station wagon. It was freezing cold, but he didn’t seem to notice that or us. After we approached him and started talking to him, I finally asked his name. He replied, “Son, gangsters stole my name in 1930, and the same bunch killed your mama.”

“Oh.” I said.

You can get some idea from this of what we were dealing with. He’d apparently been living in this old car for a while, and he had no idea where he was or where he was from. For his own protection, we decided to take him down to the station and try to track down where he might have belonged.

We had computers back then, but not nearly to the degree of sophistication they have now. A lot of investigation was still done, at that time, by long, diligent phone work. My partner wisely volunteered to handle that end of things while I stayed in the booking room with the guy and talked with him. Let me tell you, all sorts of interesting conversation ensued during that next hour or so.

Due to departmental policy, we had patted the old guy down before putting him into one of our cruisers, so we knew he didn’t have any weapons. Still, as I talked to him, I noticed he would reach into his pockets every so often, and several times, I saw him sniff his hands afterwards.

“What’s in your pockets?” I asked him.
“Coffee”, he said matter-of-factly. Skeptical, I decided to have him turn his pockets inside out, and sure enough, when he did, old dry coffee tumbled out of both front ones.
“Why do you have coffee in your pockets?” I asked.
“I worship coffee!” he answered haughtily.

Now, I personally think that it’s ever-so-cool that I can look back at this one moment, point to it, and identify it as the moment of what I feel to be the best wisecrack I ever made in my entire smart-aleck career:
“On what grounds?” I asked.

I was so proud! I felt like Babe Ruth must have felt after hitting that homer at Wrigley, moments after pointing to where he was going to hit it. I looked all around the room for witnesses to this world-class zinger, but no one else was there. It was just him and me, and, of course, he didn’t get it.

I realized that it was the perfect humor analog to the old question of whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one’s there to hear it. If no one’s there to hear a wisecrack and get the joke, it’s like it never happened. In that moment, I was instantly relegated to unsung-hero status in the annals of smart-aleckdom.

In the end, the old guy was fine. We learned that he had run away from a VA hospital about 100 miles away, and the old car was actually his. We put the car in our impound lot temporarily, and, of course, I got the privilege of driving our buddy back to the safety of the VA hospital. He fell asleep in the back seat, but occasionally, he’d wake up and ask the same question I kept asking myself on whether I’d ever be acknowledged as a skilled jokester:

“Are we there yet?”

I Practically Majored In Corporal Punishment

Don't do it! I'm talking to the ones who just read the title of this piece and are already firing up to dash off a letter opposing spanking. Relax. If you don't want to spank 'em, don't. Discussion over.

I was just talking to someone the other day about this, though, and as the conversation progressed I came to realize that I have quite a base of experience in being the recipient of childhood rump-roastings. Being raised in the South, and in the 60's, there was practically not a snowball's chance that you weren't going to get yours if you did something you shouldn't. Believe me, you're listening to the voice of experience here.

One of the first memories I have, in fact, of doing something truly STUPID was the time I was getting spanked by my mom, and I, in a stroke of genius, turned around in mid-spanking and announced "That didn't even HURT!". Note to kids- don't ever do that. When I said that I saw a glow of newfound resolve come over my mom, like something in a movie- a resolve to adjust the process until it did hurt. She was wildly successful in doing this, and I never tried that tactic again.

Without a doubt, though, the crowning moment of my getting-my-hide-tanned career came when I was around 9 or 10 years old. We lived out the street from a grocery store, and the store still sold milk in big glass jugs. Over time, I got the inspiration and developed a technique to climb up in a tall tree near the store with a slingshot. Can you see this coming? As the neighbors would be walking home from the store carrying those jugs of milk at their sides, I would wait for the perfect moment, and POW! The jug would just explode right there in their hands and milk would fly everywhere.

God help me, I've gotten better over the years, but if you'd been there to see that, I guarantee you would have laughed, and I STILL think it was some of the funniest stuff I ever saw. I know, I know, but it was!

The technique was ballistic genius, if I do say so myself. The victim would never see the rock coming, nor would they see it quickly moving away behind them. Virtually all they would be aware of would be the explosion itself, and let's just say that little old ladies can jump pretty dang high under the right circumstances! See, you're laughing, aren't you? Aren't you ashamed?

My downfall came, however, when I felt I had to share the fun with a smaller kid in the neighborhood, my neighbor Randy. He went up in the tree with me one day, and it wasn't long until a target appeared strolling down the street, milk jug in hand. Experienced now, I took aim, and - BULL'S-EYE! A deluge of dairy product sprayed out in every direction, a true thing of beauty to me at the time. The only thing I hadn't planned for, though, was Randy's goofy laugh.

He had one of those Nerd laughs, where you really don't make any sound until you inhale, then you sort of honk like a seal. I tried to get him to be quiet, but every breath brought a new honk, and it didn't take long for our adrenaline-charged victim to start zeroing in on the source of the sound. It was sort of like dry-land, redneck SONAR. In no time at all, she was standing at the base of our tree, screaming at us to come down.

Now, what happened from this point forward won't make much sense unless you understand a thing or two about small-town life in the South back then. Everybody not only looked after their own kids (how radical is that?), they looked after each other's kids as well. If I was at a neighbor's house playing when suppertime came, we all went in and ate supper. Nobody had any qualms about feeding another kid, and the same sort of principle was at work when you got into trouble. If you were involved in something that called for a spanking, being somebody else's kid was not a get-out-of-jail-free card. If the other kids got one, you got one. I know I've risked scarring some social scientists for life by telling this, but it's true, and we lived.

So, what happened was, she gave us our first one right there on the spot, under the tree. I was amazed at what an arm she still packed at her age! Then, of all things, she took us over to HER mom's house (another past victim), and SHE took a turn at warming our little fannies. Finally, we got taken to each of our own families for a few more rounds. This day would eventually see me rack up the highest butt-whipping-per-offense ratio of my entire career. At least, so far. It would also prompt me to hang up my slingshot for good. It's like the NFL. You just have to be able to recognize when it's time to retire.

That Randy. I hope that little heathen learned his lesson from all this.

For Newcomers, All Roads Lead To...Athens?

Since I moved to Illinois, I've gotten a lot of questions about where I'm from after people have noticed my accent (not that I HAVE one, mind you- Y'ALL got accents runnin' out your ears, on the other hand). Quite often, after I've answered "East Tennessee" (and yes, there IS a difference), the person I'm talking to will say something like, "Oh,I LOVE it down there! We go every year to (Dollywood / Gatlinburg / the Smokies)!" Then, they'll often follow up with "What are you doing up HERE?"

Now, understand, I don't mind the question. Tennessee is pretty much unquestionably God's country, but this is really a pretty cool place to be, too. Most people from the Midwest go down there and go ga-ga over the mountains (a reasonable reaction), but for me, it was every bit as interesting to come up here where you can see a kazillion miles in all directions. It's just a thing about where you grew up.

My lovely wife was raised here in Central Illinois, but, luckily for me, she took a job in Tennessee. We met there, got married, and lived our first few years together there. She loved that whole area, but I would estimate that she was lost about 75% of the entire time we lived there.

Out of necessity, roads down there conform to routes dictated by mountains, rivers, and lakes. A long, straight stretch of highway is a fairly rare commodity, and, unless you've been there for a long time, it IS easy to get pretty disoriented. She used to tell me that, once we moved to Illinois, I would never get lost because everything's laid out like a grid. Her reasoning was that if I could find my way around the twists, turns, ups, and downs of the southern Appalachians, the Midwest would be a breeze.

That made perfect sense, and she was almost right.

Here's the deal: down south, if I want to go, say, from Knoxville to Atlanta, I just hop on I-75 South and go. Note that I-75 South actually goes south, and if I stay on it, it will take me to a point that is south of where I started. I never gave this much thought. I just accepted it as a universal truth, like when the bread lands peanut-butter-side-down on the kitchen floor.

I brought that line of logic with me when I came up here. Since I at first had a fairly long commute to work, I figured that I could try some different routes occasionally to break up the monotony and to help me learn the area. So I'd often find myself out in the middle of a universe of corn fields that stretched beyond the horizon. No problem. I was enjoying the scenery, and, besides, the roads were well-marked.

Well, marked. Now, right off the bat, I want to know how many of you guys knew about this, because nobody let me in on it. Up here, if you've got a road that's marked "700 North", the truth is, that thing's running East and West! NOT North, as I would foolishly assume from the name, but East and West! (We'll not even get into the fact that the numbers change at county lines). I spent the first few weeks of my life up here 90 degrees off-course because I didn't know that little tidbit. I've been to Bement, Allenville, and Cooks Mills (all fine places, mind you), but I didn't mean to go to any of them, and I'm not even sure how I got there. I wouldn't mind visiting them again, for that matter, if I could get to them without going through Missouri to get there.

I did finally figure the system out, though, and I was eventually told that it has something to do with 911 coordinates referenced to county borders. It made sense once it was explained to me. Everything's fine now, although my wife's confidence in my navigation skills is a little shaken, and I still have to deliberately remember that Charleston is NOT north of Mattoon. If you want to hear something hilarious, you ought to hear me giving directions up here. If you think I was lost, just follow THOSE poor guys and see where they end up! I guess I'm just at a point now of needing to humble myself after 5 years and to just put this question out there:

Is there anything else I should know?

Well look at what the cat dragged in!

The words you're reading at this moment are words I never expected to be creating.

That's because I never expected to have a blog. I never much saw the point, and a lot of the ones I've seen left me wondering why THOSE folks felt compelled to start one. I've even been encouraged a time or two to have a blog, but never really had the urge.

Still, though, I unquestionably can do 2 things- talk and type, and it seems that anytime I'm doing either I can just go on and on. So, in that sense, this is a natural environment for me.

So, here we go.

There isn't much point in getting very autobiographical right now, because plenty of that will no doubt come out as I go along here. I WILL just briefly say that I'm a "transplanted" Southerner, born and raised in East Tennessee, who moved to Illinois in 2002. When I was younger, I was a professional musician, then decided to get a "real job" and went into law enforcement for a good number of years. I then went into healthcare, which allowed me to meet my wife and, ultimately, to make that move to the Land of Lincoln. Along the way, I've also done a bewildering number of other jobs. The upside to all that is that now I can talk to just about anybody about just about anything.

And like I said, talking is something I have a gift for. It might help a little if you try to imagine all this in a Southern accent- if you can do that, you'll pretty much have the picture of anything I might put on here.

I'll even let you in on a little secret. I'm going to cheat on this a little to get started. One of those multiple jobs I spoke about earlier was a side job writing a little column for a quarterly supplement to the Champaign News-Gazette. It was mostly a little humor column, and I'm going to use a few of those to help me get off the ground on this.

We'll see how it goes. I hope you like it. If you do, tell your friends. If you don't, remember that "Silence is golden".