Life
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Hello New Zealand
My dad is on the top of a 40-foot pine tree next to our house, but it’s okay. No, really. He has emphysema, a bad heart, 40 year’s worth of very hard-living, an unfiltered cigarette addiction, and clearly a lack of trust in others. He believes he is the only person who can install a new CB/short wave antenna even if it is at the top of a 40-foot pine tree. CB (citizens’ band) radios were a big thing then in the 1970s. Once he installed it, he could talk to new friends as far away as New Zealand. He’d sit in his room with a large shortwave radio shouting:…
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Not a Singer
At the end of the year in elementary school, the band teacher at the middle school arrived to test us, fifth graders, to see who had “the music.” If you had the music, you could be a part of the middle school band the following year. If you did not, then you took woodworking. We lined up by the stage. The band director played a few notes on the piano. It was strange to be in the cafeteria when it wasn’t time to eat. Every sound bounced off the floor and empty tables. Some students hummed in tune. Many were off. If you hummed in tune, the director would look…
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Russian Sweet Tea
“You’re doing this wrong.” Don’t you get tired of these stupid headlines? I do! You’re Eating Apples All Wrong You’re Making Beans All Wrong You’re Eating Pizza All Wrong You’re Cooking Meth the Wrong Way I could go on. Regardless, let me share why it’s important that you make sweet tea the right way. You’re welcome! Once, I was in Russia and I wanted sweet tea. That’s all. As it turns out, they don’t drink cold sweet tea in Russia, or pretty much anywhere else in the world. I don’t know why, because sweet tea done right is awesome. We stayed in a dormitory in a college town in the…
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Living on Russian Time
Ivan Ivanov (not his real name) was a pretty important person in his little town in Russia and was involved in a lot of building projects. I’m not sure if his work included the statue of Lenin near the airport (or the one at just about every street corner in town). This project was to be completed by the end of the calendar year. Which sounds reasonable. Unless there just isn’t enough time to complete said project by the end of the year. Then, there could be problems. The government was making an addition to the hospital and it was crucial that the project must be completed before December 31.…
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The Russian Lesson
In the next room, I hear the unmistakable chatter of a foreign language. Actually, I hear my bride, Inna, speaking Russian, which is not all that unusual as she was born and raised in the land of matryoshkas (see picture), permafrost (be thankful you don’t have it), and, well, more snow. Inna is teaching Russian to one of my daughter’s friends, who wants to be a translator. Although she can speak a few sentences, they’re starting with the alphabet. Which of course, is a great place to begin. My youngest is also sitting in. But she has an unfair advantage. She’s heard Russian from her mother and grandparents since the…
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Lame Claim to Fame
To successfully navigate the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, one must have a sponsor to steer the drunk from continuing on his or her destructive path. My dad had just such a sponsor. He is the guy in the photo. I’ve listened to my dad, through smoke-filled rooms, give testimony to his life with and without alcohol. I preferred without. Thankfully, he did too. After sitting through more than a few AA meetings, I’m convinced that all alcoholics really just trade alcohol for coffee and cigarettes. In our little town in South Alabama, there was a house on the banks of a small river. In this house, converted to a…
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The Useless Microphone
I‘m sitting in an audience, straining to hear the speaker. “Why?” you ask. I’ll tell you. The microphone is too far away from the dude’s mouth. All he needed to do was move closer to the microphone, and, BAM, his little voice would be amplified, and we’d hear him. But he doesn’t. Why do rational people refuse to use microphones? Why do they believe that the conversation level of their voices will carry through a large room? I once sat in a large meeting room in San Antonio, Texas, that could hold 500 people. An Army JAG Colonel was talking about career progression in the JAG Corps. I was interested,…
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Congratulations, you’re pregnant
There are a few things that professors will tell you not to do when you are in law school: don’t get married, don’t have a baby, or don’t rob banks. Crazy, right? I mean, how are we supposed to live? Thankfully, my experience in these endeavors is limited. And the statute of limitations hasn’t run yet, so… I’ll just stick to my story here. At the tender age of 33, I went back to college. Before that, I’d been preaching for small churches and wanted to get away from all the legalism I had encountered. So, I went to law school… Anyway, my bride and I found ourselves at the…
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Tunnel Vision
There were no signs warning me not to drive into the tunnel with an empty gas tank. I was driving my mom’s Ford Focus, which was embarrassing enough. The next embarrassing thing was that the gas needle was on “empty.” There were no signs necessary because the state highway department assumed that I had the intelligence to fill up my gas tank on occasion. While the last thing the highway department wanted was to have some punk teenager run out of gas right in the middle of the busy tunnel and stop eastbound traffic, the state department of Transportation did not care about my automotive fuel needs. Running out of…
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Learning To See Clearly
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash We’re at a little church that we’ve visited several times lately. It’s just a big country church with good, friendly people. Nothing fake here. There is one problem, however. And I hate to bring it up. But … There are pieces of artwork on either side of the front wall, on both sides of the preacher. It’s metal ironwork with curves and circles. The iron forms a fleur de lis, a flower lily. It’s the symbol that the New Orleans Saints NFL football team uses. It’s also the symbol numerous churches have used for thousands of years. Sometimes people use the fleur de lis to refer to…
