Together Again, Yet Worlds Apart

Lindale Texas

Together again, yet worlds apart. The life of my long time friend Dawn and I took such very different directions. Her the whole world. Mine, the person next to me.

I met Dawn years ago when hippies and bell bottoms were in, and the Jesus People combed the streets of Southern California. Our common friends brought us together to work in the media department for a large missionary group. Late nights that blended into early mornings were spent publishing the next magazine, or newsletter that had to hit the streets. We worked sided by side with high energy and a common goal. Our enthusiasm for communication, and love of an adventure, started in Calif and took us eventually to to set up an international media department in East Texas.

We shared motherhood with an abandoned demon possessed cat that wandered into our lives at an old beat up gas station in Abilene Texas. Our caravan of huge Ryder trucks carrying all of our printing presses, supplies and personal belongings had stopped there to try and resurrect my old VW beatle. It just couldn't make it any further east, even though it was being towed. The VW was left behind, and Kitty Rat joined our family.

We lived in a rat infested building while we patched the roof and the floors to start a school. It was such hard work, but we didn't care. When it rained outside, it rained inside. The symphony of water dripping into buckets, were only temporary. We were determined to change the world, but first we needed to change our surroundings. We did it with bright colored paints, and the company of many others.

Summertime heat in Texas can be brutal. On one of our work breaks we drove cross country in Dawn's VW to Calif. The car ran just fine, but had no air conditioning, With Kitty Rat, and litter box on the back floor board, we endured the scorching sun until heat exhaustion took over and we started singing theme songs from Disney movies. I never knew the mirages that appeared in the desert could be so funny.

And then a man came by recruiting people to join him in the far east. Dawn went and I stayed. She worked in refuge camps - I in a bookstore. She talked to people in China - I talked to people in East Texas. Her journey took her to Hong Kong where she lived for many years. I settled in North Texas to go to school. She had the world as her family, I married and had two kids.

Then we both crashed.
Dawn crashed on the rocks of Hawaii. My life was falling apart in Texas.
Her busy life took its toll and she needed to rest and restore. I just needed to get out of a bad situation. In both of our lives, in completely different lands, we had reached similar ground. We were both looking up.

Now we are together again, for a short time. Time has passed but not our friendship. We are sharing stories and our lives with the common friends that brought us together 30 years ago. Their three sons, boys that we have seen born and raised, are now gathered with wives and children of their own.

Dawn is still roaming the world. Her life touches thousands. I'm still walking along with one or two. I've always thought my calling was to walk along side one person at a time. She trains leaders of the world. I walk with atheists. We both reflect our father's love. To all the ends of both our worlds.

Elderly Neighbor

I meet her every morning at the gym. Just as the sun is beginning the day, Connie arrives with her husband of many years. I used to see her on the weight machines, and we would stop and greet each other with a smile and a bit of gossip. Who was at the gym, and who was sleeping in? Her husband Kenny, a former boxer, is keeping his youthful physique by lifting weights and riding the bikes. His eyes are always twinkling.

She hasn't been on the exercise floor lately. A bit of trouble with her hips. So she sits with her paper, at a table reserved for the early birds. Her stories are endless, her face lined with years of living, are beautiful. I learned so much about her, in between searching for the letters to fill the crossword puzzle. The pain of great loss in the early years of their marriage. Her willingness to help others. A cook beyond compare.

This morning, our laughter shook the rafters. Her story of cooking for an elderly neighbor almost knocked me off my chair. "Connie," I roared. "Your elderly neighbor? How old is she?" Connie got the joke and joined in the fun. "

Connie is one of the youngest 88 years old friends I have.

My Life as a Verb

It was in the 7th grade that I finally understood what a verb was. "An action word" said Sister Mary Jose. For all my six previous years of parochial school, English was my worst subject. I just didn't get it. When I was called on in class, I would just guess at the answer. I rarely raised my hand. All those parts of the speech: verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions - what was I suppose to do with them? And getting the subject and the verb to match! I was more interested in diagramming sentences....even at an very early age I was an artist. I liked dissecting the sentences with all those diagonal lines. Spelling was easy if the word looked right. So I thought I couldn't do it. At least, I couldn't do it according to the parochial curriculum.

And then one day, I started writing. The words moved and flowed, and the stories came together. My fingers danced on the keyboard. All the events of my life that needed to be told were bottled up in my soul, and then they just came gushing out. Not always in complete sentences. Sometime with misspelled words. I don't always get my quotation marks in the right spot. But the dangling participles that have been hanging on the tip of my tongue for so long, have finally found their homepage.

Home Visit

I lay in bed listening to the day begin. It's been thirty years since I lived here, before the call of the world took me out of my home with adolescent fervor. The sounds really haven't changed much.

I grew up in a house that backed up onto an alley, which backed up onto a huge field, where the neighborhood gang of kids played late into the night, or until the street lights came on. We dug holes, covered them up with branches and twigs to capture any trespassers. Our dirt clod fights took place on this open field. Soon the bulldozers came, and replaced our battlefield with a modern post office. Their boxy vehicles, with the steering wheel on the wrong side, were lined up in rows. Five days a week, I would listen to the carriers as they loaded up their trucks for daily deliveries. For eight hours every day the parking lot was empty, and we had our field back.

Saturday the front office was open, but the trucks weren't used, and our desire to perfect our baseball throw got the best of my younger brother and I. With gloves and baseball in hand, we hit the field....the postoffice field and started throwing between trucks. Our accuracy was perfected and our confidence grew...until one wayward ball went crashing thru the windshield. The sound of broken glass, not only ended our perfect inning, but shattered our young consciences. We froze. We stared at each other. With gloves hanging sadly by our sides, we slowly walked to the front door and stood in line behind customers buying stamps. What a sight we must have been! Two barefoot kids with baseball gloves looking scared to death.

"Uh, Mister" I stammered. My little brother lost his voice and stood right by my side. "We were playing catch in the back, and we accidently broke a window." The man without a smile, in a government issued uniform, stood behind a tall counter looking down at us through reading glasses that perched on the tip of his nose. "We're really sorry, and we would be glad to pay for it." A slight curve formed on the outer corners of his mouth. "Name please. Both your names. Phone Number. What's your parents name." I answered all the questions, and the last thing I heard him say was "I will need to call your parents."

I don't remember ever playing there again. We found a safer place in the field next door, before the office building went up.
It was also the place my older brother used to hang dummies from the branches of tall trees to scare passing motorists. When the post office was closed, and the trucks were not used, you could hear the sound of a tennis ball hitting the brick wall over and over again. The perfect backboard for a future Billie Jean.

I Remember When....

I knew I was getting old when the all too familiar smell of my childhood hangout no longer existed. It's my story of "I remember when", like my folks used to tell me:
I remember when I walked through ice and snow to go to school.
I remember when I used to steal rides on the back of the ice truck.
I remember wringing the heads of chickens and then eating them for dinner.
I remember the depression, I remember the war.
I remember when there was no TV and we gathered around the radio for entertainment.

My list of "I remember whens" are less dramatic:
I remember when we went to the movies for double features - two movies PLUS a cartoon, no previews.
I remember when the Helms bakery truck would announce its weekly arrival in our neighborhood with its distinguished tooting horn. I would stand behind the truck as the driver opened up the long wooden drawers filled with donuts of every kind. Sugar donuts - my favorite!

I remember being awaken by the clinking of the glass milk bottles when the milkman delivered them to our back door, before the sun ever came up.

I remember the smell of where my dad worked. Benson's Garage was just a 5 minute ride on my bike, past my friends houses, past the hospital, next to the liquor store. I love the smell of car grease....it takes me back to when I would watch my dad work on cars. He wore coveralls that were stained with the grease of daily jobs. His name was embroidered above his chest pocket.

I begged to be taught how the engine worked. I love the gears and all the parts. He kept a pail of kerosene next to his work bench, where greasy carburetors soaked to be taken apart and cleaned. All those parts, and he knew how it all went back together again. When there was an odd tapping of the engine, my dad would take a long screwdriver, place the tip end on the offending piece of metal, and the handle on his ear. I loved going on test drives with my dad, as he listened to the sound of the engine, as if he was a conductor of a great musical piece.

I took my new computerized car in to get checked the other day. It wasn't sounding right. I knew the sound of what it should be. I was listening. The receptionist led me to the back, in her clean nicely dressed clothes, thru a waiting room with gourmet coffees and filtered water bottles. Neat air conditioned offices lined the hallway on either side. I was "allowed" out back, to a roped off area to see the "shop". It was so clean. Cars were lined up in straight rows. There were no smells. There were no buckets to hold parts. There were no men in greasy coveralls, when at the end of the day, would scrape the grease from under their fingernails. Instead there were cars hooked to computers trying to diagnose the problem. It was state-of-the-art. The latest. It stank. Not with something my nose could pick up, but what my heart was left with–Nothing.

I remember when there no such thing as a computer, and people figured it all out, by listening.