Kool Aid and Crafts: Memories of Vacation Bible School

I'm at that stage of life where I've had to bury both my parents, as has Mary.  Friends who have gone through the same have told me they, like us, have had the task of dealing with decades of stuff their parents accumulated.  Most complain about the "hoarding" of their parents and the sorting through, distributing and disposing of the "estates."

As we went through this process after Mama's death, the memories flowed as the treasures were given out.  Among the items I got returned to me was a gift I made in Vacation Bible School  in my childhood. It's a lot worse for the wear of over fifty years but a little glue and a dusting made it presentable again.

This bird, can't tell if it's a chicken, duck or what, was created to be a sewing center. There is a cradle for housing scissors, a number of dowels vertically mounted and designed to hold spools of thread and lastly, the "wings" are stuffed cloths shapes to be used as pin cushions.  This highly useful device is something I made at summer bible school.  My mother, the consummate seamstress, quilt maker and skilled artisan in the needle and thread arts, as far as I can remember, never used it as it was intended.  But, she kept it for over fifty years and displayed it for most of that time.

As I reflect on the bird, I recall the many years of attending Bible School, usually held the first couple of weeks in the summer after normal school let out.  Bible School was usually a half day session lasting about one week.  There was time to study the Bible, a time to play, singing, snacks and a time for making crafts.  I'm sure that I could attribute some of my limited knowledge of biblical stories to the training I received in VBS but my memories are pretty much limited to the crafts we did and the snacks: cookies and KoolAid.  I remember drinking a lot of KoolAid in my childhood and even in young adulthood but I haven't seem any in many years, is that stuff even made anymore?

There was a lady in our church, Mrs. Long, whose first name I can't recall,  who owned a ceramics studio.  Many years our crafts consisted of making something of clay which she would fire in her kiln.  Sometimes the ceramics were pre-formed items that we simply painted before they were fired.  We had one that featured a deer with a large rack of antlers.  We painted the deer in our crude way, it was fired and at the end of VBS, I took it home.  My older brother Joe saw it and decided the paint job needed more detail so he proceeded to "touch up" my art!  I never have forgiven him for that! That deer hung in our dining room for years.

A craft piece that  brings a chuckle to me now is the fig-leaf ashtray we made!  Mrs. Long brought clay and freshly picked fig leaves.  We molded the clay to fit the shape of the leaf, pressing the leaf into the clay to form the vein pattern of the leaf, then curling the lobes of the clay leaf where it would hold a cigarette and keep the ashes contained. I don't guess kids get to make ashtrays at Bible School today!  Unfortunately, the ashtray didn't survive the years.

One day, hopefully many years from now, my kids will sort through boxes and lament the things Mary and I have kept but I hope they will trigger warm memories as the bird has for me.  Either way, it'll be be their job to dispose of them , I'm too much like my Mama, I can't bring myself to do it!

Hey Mister! Throw Me A Memory!!

Mardi Gras tends to remind us all of Moon Pies, the ubiquitous treat tossed from the floats in the parades.  And Moon Pies, remind me of my late sister, Bonnie.

Bonnie loved Moon Pies.  I don't think she ever went to a Mardi Gras parade but  bought her Moon Pies in the grocery store.  When we were young and some of us still lived with our parents, Bonnie's late night snack was a Moon Pie and a small glass of milk.  She kept a box of the pies in the cabinet above the refrigerator and every night around 10 p.m., she would enjoy her snack.  If I was lucky, she would share one with me.

I don't think Moon Pies came in but two flavors in those days, chocolate and banana.  Bonnie didn't care for the banana so it was the chocolate pie at our house.  When a new box was opened, we always counted how many were in the box.  A normal box contained 12 pies but frequently, we would discover 13 pies in the box.  I don't  think we ever had less than 12 but we always had to check.  You would have thought we won the lottery when there was an additional pie in the box.

One hears the expression a " Baker's Dozen" describing 13 baked goods when a dozen was ordered and I guess that's why we got our extra treat.  Somebody at the Moon Pie factory was being generous, or careless but we benefitted.

Later in life, a visit to Bonnie's house would result in a Little Debbie Oatmeal snack cake but that never created the memories like the Moon Pies did.

This past weekend, we had relatives in from out-of-town for them to take their young children to a parade.  I asked one of the youngsters to bring me a Moon Pie.  He came back with a bag full of beads and several Moon Pies and shared one with me.

The Moon Pies today are about half the size I remember from my childhood and I doubt the revealer who tossed the pie took the time to count and see if he or she got a Baker's Dozen before showering the crowd, but whoever they are, they certainly helped me relive a special memory

The pie tasted good, maybe just like the ones from long ago,  but not nearly as special as the ones I shared with Bonnie.

More Than a Christmas Tree

At this time of year, our house, like many others, is filled with a variety of Christmas decorations, Nativity scenes, and, yes, Christmas trees.  Trees of all sizes and shapes and materials from which they are made can be found in nearly every room of our house.

But the largest and most special tree is the one in front of the living room windows where we put it so all the neighbors can ooh and ahh over it as they drive by.

It's the one I have to drag from its storage place in MY SHOP into the house, unbox it, assemble and fluff it and make sure all the lights work.  If, by the time all this is done, Mary and I haven't strangled each other, I disappear and stay gone until she has it festooned with the contents of  two dozen boxes of ornaments she pulls from storage in the Christmas closet.

Mary takes her time to make sure each ornament is in exactly the place it should be.  It has to be so because each ornament has special meaning and needs to be placed just right.

We didn't go to WalMart or even Robert Moore to buy boxes of ornaments, we have built this collection, piece by piece,  over our 39-years of marriage.

There are ones from our first Christmas, a time when we hardly had money for a tree or decorations.   Mary's grandmother had some fabric balls so she and Mary decorated them with foil stars and snow flakes along with beads held on with pins, creating our first ornaments. As we finished our tree decorating, we realized we didn't have a star for the top.  I took gold foil wrapping paper, some cardboard and a coat hanger and made a star for our tree.  It has topped every tree we've had since and will continue to do so until it disintegrates.  The handmade ornaments from our first year are still there also.

That first year, we had a real, cut tree.  We left it up too long after Christmas so it dried and started to shed its needles which promptly embedded into the carpet.  Our vacuum could not get them out.  The needles were quite prickly so if one dared walk barefooted over that part of the room, an exclamation of pain was quick to come!  That continued as long as we lived in the apartment.

For the last few years, we've had store bought trees, completely pre-lit!!  While these are nearly as nice as a "real" tree, it does serve to reduce my yuletide frustrations and keep me from using the portion of my vocabulary usually reserved for times of exasperation!

Along with our handmade first-year ornaments, there are ornaments that our children have made over the years, starting in daycare and continuing through kindergarten and on.  It takes care to make sure they survive the packing and unpacking each year but they have special places on our tree.

Mary's birthday is only a week before Christmas so she has frequently gotten ornaments as gifts, especially on her 40th birthday.  One of the first ornaments to go on our tree each year is a motorized mobile-type ornament with angels revolving.  It always gets noticed on our tree.

There are ornaments that were hand-made by loved ones long since departed from this life, crocheted angels made by my mother and beaded bells by Aunt Grace.  They bring special memories and an occasional tear.

There are ornaments acquired on vacations to special places or to commemorate special events.

So, yes, it is much more than a Christmas tree.  And I guess the things hanging from the branches aren't ornaments but rather memories.  Our tree is a living, growing recording of our family history. It is a memory-recalling, memory-making gathering spot during the holiday season.

At Christmas,  Mary and I will be joined by Amy, Travis, Oliver, Jonathan, Kim and Maddie, around our tree.  We'll tear wrapping paper from the gifts, we'll laugh and shout thank you's as each gift is unveiled and we'll make more memories.  We'll probably also add an ornament or two to the collection and next year they will take their place of honor on the tree.

Awesomely Amazing, or What?

We all like to brag about ourselves, our kids, our parents or other loved ones from time-to-time but with social media, we take it to new heights.

Posts are filled with adjectives like awesome or amazing in describing a loved one when we all may have different thoughts about the individual being described!  We can no longer talk about someone as simply being special to the writer, we have to give the subject super-human characteristics, using superlatives in all cases.

What brought this rant on?  Let me preach on it!

This past Saturday, Mary and I attended an event in which Jonathan and Kim (son and daughter-in-law) participated.  The event was a fund raiser for a charity called Neverthirst whose mission of providing clean water to third-world countries.  The event was a Crossfit competition with an entry fee and donations accepted for the charity.

For those not familiar with Crossfit,  this is an exercise/fitness program which uses many different exercise regimens to achieve fitness and strength..  They use weights lifting, running, jumping rope, and among many others.  The first competition for the event on Saturday involved teams of two people who alternated jumping onto a wooden box, two feet high,  then back down, then doing a "burpee" which is a cross between what we used to call a "squat-thrust" and an pushup; and as soon as the first completed this series, the second would go.  The alternating kept up until they had each completed 50 repetitions. They then performed forward lunges down to one knee and back up while holding a barbell weighing 95 to their chin, 10 times.

That was followed by lifting a kettle bell ( a round ball with a handle) weighing 53 pounds, from between the knees to over the head and back, 10 times.

They then picked up a jerry can filled with water, (weighing about 40 pounds) and ran for 100 meters where the can was passed to the other person who carried it back to the starting point, where they repeated the activities two more times.  The carrying of the water is symbolic of the focus of the charity since a large portion of the world obtains their daily water needs in this fashion, frequently from contaminated streams or wells.

Doesn't sound too tough?  Try just one rep.  And that's just the first event!  The others are too strenuous to describe, much less do!

Neither Jonathan and his partner nor Kim and her teammate won their events so this is not about how awesome they are in their strength or how superior they are to the other competitors.  But it is about the dedication and commitment it takes for any of the people who participated in this event or similar events around the world to get their body in the condition to make participation possible.

There were many who could not complete all the events. But unlike most athletic competitions, when the first crossed the finish line, they stood and shouted encouragement to the others, urging them on to completion.

I don't know the stories behind all the athletes but by observing Kim and Jonathan I have a pretty good feel for what it takes to get to the point of being able to enter the competitions; training at 5 o'clock in the morning  then coming back home to get ready for a day's work and then back to the gym afterwards.  Trading off times so that one can tend a child while the other works out and then reversing the roles.

As I said before, this is not about how awesome Jonathan and Kim are but it is about how awesome the dedication they and their fellow athletes show as they constantly strive to improve.  They are not looking forward to multi-million dollar contracts with the associated fame that we see in so many athletic events.  They are seeking fitness and friendships, they have to pay to compete.

There were some events for the kids, mostly children of the competitors, since they live the Crossfit life too!  But it was all for fun, no competition involved.

As I took these pictures, I knew I would be writing about the them and the words awesome and amazing kept popping into my mind.  But I knew those words are used way too often and were inadequate to express what I was seeing.  I can't really say I know the words that are needed.  It is inspiring to see the strength, skill, dedication and commitment that is necessary in this individuals.  It is encouraging to see them put their interests into something benefitting to mankind. And, it's pretty neat that they raised over $83,000!

But, when it comes to talking about Maddie, there's only one thing to say:  She's the awesomest!!

Final Resting Places

It seems that almost every trip I take, I wind up visiting a cemetery.

I've found that one can learn a lot about the history of an area in its cemeteries and you can also find some of the area's best art and architecture there.  Monuments are often in the form of statuary that rivals that of the local art museum and the poetry from tombstones can be quite remarkable.

Graves of the famous and notorious become tourist attractions and objects of veneration.  I've visited the graves of JFK in Arlington, Virginia, Marie Laveau in New Orleans, tried to visit famous railroad-engineer Casey Jones' grave in Jackson, Tennessee but the cemetery was locked, Meriwether Lewis's grave on the Natchez Trace Parkway and the grave of Joe Cain in Mobile, Alabama.  The infamous Boot Hill in Dodge City, Kansas is now a major tourist attraction.

A cemetery on the edge of Taos Pueblo in New Mexico surrounds a long-destroyed church dating to the 16th century.  The cemetery is no longer accepting new burials as it is full.

Cemetery at Taos Pueblo, New Mexico

I've visited a cemetery in northwest Alabama, the only creatures buried there are coondogs that have been certified, in writing by three witnesses, to have treed a raccoon without assistance from another dog.  There are dogs brought there from all over the country, their monuments ranging from simple wooden crosses to elaborate inscribed marble.

I've visited the grave of the only man in America to create a monument to the assassin John Wilkes Booth.  Joseph Pinkney Parker, a Confederate Veteran of the War Between the States,  hated Abraham Lincoln so much that when Lincoln was assassinated, Parker had a monument created and engraved: "Erected by Pink Parker in honor of John Wilkes Booth for killing Old Abe Lincoln." Parker, a resident of Troy, Alabama, tried to have the monument erected in the county courthouse square to no avail.  He placed the monument in his yard where it stood for several years.  It received national attention with demands that it be destroyed.  Parker died before the furor did.  His family had the monument re-engraved with Parker's  name and dates and stands today as his headstone, sans his tribute to Boothe.

Tombstone of Joseph Pinkney "Pink" Parker, Troy, Alabama

Exploration of a cemetery leads to finds of tombstones bearing inscriptions telling the stories of lives cut way too short, children victims of epidemics from bygone eras or of entire families consumed by disease or tragedy.  Headstones tell love stories between couples and between parents and their children.  Honors received and achievements grace some epitaphs.  Then there are the newer cemeteries where no headstones or grave slabs are allowed except for markers, identical to all the rest,  with only the name, birth and death dates inscribed.

Cemeteries tell of our society.  We are buried with "our people."  There are cemeteries for Catholics, for Jews, for members of the church where the cemetery is located.  The Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia has an area for burial of retired railroad conductors.  Mobile's Magnolia Cemetery has sections dedicated to various fraternal organizations as well as an area for Confederate soldiers.

There are cemeteries for our veterans with the monuments laid out with military precision reminding one of formations on the parade grounds with soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines marching to a common cadence.

Veterans Cemetery at Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama

A google search reveals that the largest US cemetery is Calvary Cemetery, a Roman Catholic cemetery, located in the Queens portion of New York City, with over 3 million burials.  Contrast that to family burial sites with as few as one burial.

Theologian, professor, pastor, Dr. WC Dobbs, Sr. grew up in the southwest Oklahoma towns of Altus and Blair.  After many years of living and working in various parts of the country, he longed to be buried on the family farm located just outside Blair.  A small family cemetery was created and Dr. Dobbs was buried there following his death in 2007.

His son, musician and minister WC Dobbs, Jr.,  who was also my sister's husband, expressed his desire to be returned to that cemetery. Following a life of service to God, his family and to churches and people around the southeast US, WC died in 2012.  But he continued to serve following his death when his body was donated to the University of South Alabama's College of Medicine through the Anatomical Gift Program.  Medical students use the donated bodies to study anatomy and gain knowledge and insight of the human body.  His remains were then cremated and returned to the family.

So on a Sunday in late May, 2015, WC Jr. returned to Oklahoma where his family held a brief service then spread his ashes on the family cemetery.  Although he's not buried there, he is there as is his headstone.

I started writing this by saying that every trip I take ends up in a cemetery and I guess, for most of us,  the long trip through life ends that way too!  I'll follow WC's lead and donate my body to science and where my ashes end up, it really doesn't matter.  Maybe these writings will be my epitaph. "

The World's Most Interesting Man

Cotton field awaiting harvest in southwest Georgia 

I spend a lot ot time getting my entertainment in the form of YouTube videos.  Not the videos of cute cats gone wild or folks doing crazy stuff to their own detriment but "how to" videos or people demonstrating their work or hobbies.

I was watching videos of sawmills in action, (yep, I'm a wild and crazy guy!), when I found one  featuring a man named Steve Cross.

The video opened with a man in bib overalls and a floppy felt hat, holding a microphone, standing in front of a conglomeration of metal and wood and calling it a sawmill, while speaking in the thickest drawl I think I've ever heard.  My first thought was this is a comedian seeing how country he could sound and I was expecting the jokes to start. But no, the speaker was for real.

Steve Cross operates a sawmill in the wiregrass region of southwest Georgia, near the town of Iron City.  He and his sawmill have been featured in many videos that can be found on the intranet and has also been the subject of more than one documentary.  He states that his homemade sawmill is the largest horizontal-cutting, thin-kerf, bandsaw-sawmill in the world.    He specializes in cutting up lumber from trees no other sawmill can handle.

After watching some of the videos about his operation, I knew I had to see it.  So, two days after my retirement in November, 2014, Mary and I left for a trip to Savannah, Georgia, our route carefully planned so I could go to Iron City.  Following a GPS-guided route, we passed the acres of cotton fields, white with their crops near harvest, many pecan orchards and peanut fields.  The sawmills that I have seen in the past are large operations with huge buildings and stacks of logs awaiting the saw along with cut lumber stacked for drying.  With this image in mind, we would have passed the Cross Sawmill if it hadn't been for a small sign alerting us to its location.

As we turned off the road, I expected to see a bee hive of activity and hoped only to get a picture from the parking lot and drive on.  But the only activity to be seen was a man sitting in his truck, talking on his cell phone, a man I would learn was Cross. I waited until he got off the phone, introduced myself and told him I wanted a picture of the mill.  He graciously invited us to come get a closeup view.

I mentioned earlier that Steve has a drawl but that's only part of the story.  You see, people in the wiregrass part of Georgia pronounce words, particularly names, in a way no one else does.

In this area is the city of Albany.  Most of the English speaking world would pronounce this AWL ba nee.  Not the locals, it's ALL benny.  Cairo, Georgia is not pronounced like Cairo, Egypt, it's like Karo, the syrup.  I was speaking on the phone to a gentleman named Stanley Houston, which he spelled carefully for me.  Then he went on to say, "It's Stanley like the tool company and HOUSEton, like the city in Texas."  I fought back the laughter because I, along with a majority of the English speaking world, thought it was HUGHSton Texas.

In my conversation with Steve Cross, I had to pay close attention to keep up with him, partly because of the regionally pronunciation of words but mostly because he was speaking way over my head!

Cross and I inspect the sawmill

Steve Cross is a 5th-generation sawyer, carrying on the family tradition but with his unique sawmill, a homemade contraption made up of spare parts from various equipment.  The platform that is the base of the mill, is comprised of 9-flatbed trailers, the kind you see on the interstate hauling freight. The power operation of the saw comes from what was originally three fork lifts!  These raise and lower the cutting head and power the device that turns the logs to position them for cutting.  The blade is powered by an engine that powered a parking lot sweeping machine!  The portion of the mill that moves the logs in and out of the cutting operation was originally-a sawmill!

Stacked around the weed-filled lot are slabs of wood and piles of saw dust, the remnants of previous milling operations.  Also evident are piles of large stones.  Cross Sawmill now does part-time duty in stone milling.

I asked Cross about the stone. He not only told me about how he cuts them  but how he sold a slab to former first Lady Rosalynn Carter when she accompanied her husband, former US President Jimmy Carter on one of his numerous visits to Cross's business; and, how the rocks were formed during a time millions of years ago when the moon was closer to the earth and when that portion of Georgia experienced daily tides in excess of 500 feet!  As I said, I had a hard time keeping up with my new friend!

So here's a man that is a combination of Fred Sanford, the junk collector from the television show, Sanford and Son; Rube Goldberg whose designs of complex machines to accomplish simple tasks are legendary; and Carl Sagan, the late scientist who informed viewers of his Cosmos television show of the billions and billions of stars in our universe.  Cross is a renaissance man with the ear of a former US president (and his wife).

View of homemade sawmill

As Steve gave me a tour of his sawmill, i was truly amazed at how he was able to put these various machines designed for one purpose and make them into one machine with a different purpose.  The machine is not the most polished thing one might encounter.  In fact, I suspect there is bubble gum and bailing wire holding most of it together but it works and works well by all accounts.

Main cutting mechanism

Gauges to monitor sawmill functions

Mechanism for rolling and positioning logs.  Note skull at top of forks!

As we toured the grounds, we found a wood carving completed by Cross.

Adjacent to the carving was a space-age looking device.  When I asked what it was, Cross told me that it was a prototype of the flight control system from a Patriot missile!  He remarked that when Jimmy Carter visits members of his Secret Service security detail don't like to see the missile parts!  I failed to aksed how one acquires such a device but with connections to the White house, I guess you might have just about anything!

Missile flight control system

We ended our visit with Steve giving me a ride around his property in his '60's model Jeep that he is so proud of, "It has 43000 original miles on it!"

You might ask how did I conclude that Steve Cross is the most interesting man in the world.   Here's a man in rural deep south, earning his living by hard work.  When he needed a larger saw to improve his business, he didn't commission an engineer to design it, someone else to manufacture it, he made it himself.  It's not pretty, but it works and has built him a reputation that has brought him business from around the country and visits from a US president.  There is no pretense to Steve Cross, he wears his overalls and gets embarrassed by all the attention.  

He might not be the most interesting man in the world but the most interesting that I've talked to in a long, long time.  

If you'd like more information, visit his website:  http://crosssawmill.com/.  I think you'll enjoy it!

You Only Go 'Round Once

The people who have worked with me over the last few years have heard (and probably grown tired of) my rants about cliches and their use in modern business.  It is my opinion that we've forgotten about substance and about communication in our language.  But we want to sound like we know what we're talking about or be on the cutting edge (how's that for a cliche?) so we use the words or phrases we learned at the last seminar we attended, whether we know what they mean or not.

Among my least favorite "phrases" is "thought processes."  There was a time when one was asked a question like:  "What do you think about this?"  The answer would be something like: "I think we should...", or "My thoughts on the matter are...",  Today the answer one is likely to get is:"My thought processes are....."  I always felt this was pretentious and that the speaker was only trying yo impress.

We even had a presentation at one of our management meetings where the speaker related that his company would " take your data and bucketize it..."  To this day I don't know what he meant!

But this isn't a rant about cliches, although I've wanted to do one for a long time.  I've had other cliches or maybe more appropriately, slogans,  on my mind a lot in the last few days. Things like "grab for the gusto," "you only live once," and "Carpe diem."

You see, a person that I'm quite fond of recently received a medical diagnosis of the sort none of us wants to get.  In fact, this is the third person that I've worked with that   has received similar news in the last several months.  With these diagnoses, they face at best, months or years of unpleasant treatment.  People in the prime of their lives, with bright futures or with their golden years at hand, will, along with their loved ones, be forever changed.

In hearing of the latest diagnosis, I had a feeling of great uncertainty.  First, I felt anguish for my friend but I also realized that if this can happen to these friends, it can happen to me or to someone very close to me.  It makes me think about how you and I should live our lives daily.  That's what made the cliches come to mind.

I certainly don't claim to have the answers or the right thing to say that will help someone approach their life to make sure they are getting the most from it but I am reminded of the Harry Chapin song "The Cat's in the Cradle" (1974).  The lyrics tell of a  father who is too busy to enjoy time with his son, hoping to do that later in life,  only to find the son is then too busy.  I recall my teenage years  when the last thing I wanted to do was spend time with my father.  By the time I was in my mid twenties and came to my senses, his health was such that I never got to know him man-to-man.

I was in conversation recently with a young man who was asking me about how I was enjoying retirement.  He went on to say he couldn't wait until he retired so he could do some things he longed to do. I quickly admonished him that if he had things he truly wanted to do, he must do them now. The next life changing or ending diagnosis may be his.

I think the late, great Lewis Grizzard may have said it best, however grammatically incorrect:  "This ain't no dress rehearsal!"  You have to get it right the first time.