Nothing is
new, but everything is different when a story is told well.
There is love in one another that can make
the whole world right.
Life’s old
stories are somehow told again and again, but each becomes its own truth.
You can’t stop the storms but you can
shovel your neighbor’s walk.
In time, however, real things
happen. Nobody ever sees it
coming. You won’t see it
either. That is how stories
usually work.
Ron likes to check the sky and then look at the pocket watch he keeps
in his overalls. He keeps track of
things. He knows everything that
is going on and every bad thing that could happen in the next few hours. Ron is a living, breathing example of
what a Missouri farmer used to be.
The things
that are true to them are filled to the brim with honor and sacrifice.
No advertiser will pay money for
research that concludes we don’t need money, toys, celebrity, physical beauty
and personal power to be truly happy.
Maybe we should remember to tell our wives that we love them each
morning or tell our children what they mean to us more often. Maybe we should remember there are no
guarantees. Maybe we should think
about not postponing our dreams.
Learn to laugh at yourself. Help others, stay busy, and make it fun. It’s a good life!
All fall
eventually to their lawns.
What a season this is, filled with surprise and
wonder; life all around.
Who knows what treasures are buried, waiting to be
found.
Caring,
thinking people should not lightly join the executioner’s side.
If we are to lead the world,
it must be with a solid reputation as peacemakers first
and warriors last.
“Will you quiz me on my spelling words just
in case the world doesn’t end?”
You
would think people of faith, no matter where they stood in the political
spectrum, would denounce slander, hate, and false accusation.
All of our great religions,
and especially Christianity, call us to care for each one of God’s children and
all of God’s creation.
The
shrill voices on the radical edges of the world’s faith communities are all
defending their wars.
All of them gathered around a simple antique wood box, fire blazing,
eating pies, and telling stories.
No television, no video games or radio, and no little cliques of people
off in different rooms ignoring each other. No martyrs out in the kitchen cleaning up. Nobody left out. Everybody gathered around and listened
to everybody else.
Though the extraordinary path
of life leads through death and divorce, injury and accident, decision and
dismay, it has a way of swinging back to the middle and becoming ordinary
again.
Those who stay on the road find it flattens now and
then. The return of the ordinary,
the blessing of consistency, and the passing of time are the comforts of the
old North Side Cafe.
A carpet of soggy leaves layered the lawn, announcing
the end of another spring storm.
A cold mist crept through the backyard, looking to bed down in the creek
below. The day belonged to
drizzle and things indoors.
It is etched
in a farmer's heart. The harvests
of living may not come for many years.
"That is a peckerwood,"
Jake would say hauling his grandson up in his arms and pointing to a bird. "Over there is a granddaddy long
legs, and you are a little boy – about the best thing God ever put on this old
earth."
When did we
get so touchy?
These stories
are actually dangerous.
Three rows back, young rowdies were flashing flab, swilling
beer, and swearing, but it was Mack's hotdog that was nasty.
It was a night of liquid diamonds and
rubies, and at long last, rain.
The last day of her life, she gave
comfort and then left with a grace and dignity befitting her rank as a purebred
Golden Retriever and revered family member.
The best
stories are the little ones.
The smell of burning food is
a sure sign that men are in the kitchen.
Women understand lists, and
men understand schedules.
You never know,” my father-in-law likes to say.
The guy was a worm evangelist.
People sit in silence, as scattered as the
dust in the drought.
The walk to the barn in the morning to milk,
nursing a sick calf, guiding a cultivator down majestic rows of beans, the
smell of fresh cut clover, and raising kids on open land are memories too rich
for letting go.
Rainy days mean nothing to suit and bean
counter farmers.
I
don’t feel any need to work up anger over gay marriage,
The person who comes to take
blood tells the truth.
"This may hurt," he
says, gouging around for a vein.
That guy is always honest.
It
was a life filled with the distinctive chug-chug of an old John Deere tractor,
small round bales of hay, cats in the milk house, and early mornings in the
chicken house to gather eggs.
Eventually,
back roads lead to river bluffs and the true splendor of autumn. Nature’s art is random and wild. Driven by instinct and physics, not
motive, forests wrap themselves in color, unaware of the combined majesty of
their effort.
We could be constellations of colors, our
lives filled with diversity and amazing transformations.
Educating the young ushered in an era in
which the United States became the world’s most important nation.
Everything
is important. Everything comes
back to help you someday.
Always over-tip the waitress.
What mattered most were children, and
that they were safe. Home by home,
heart by heart, if that thought spread across our country, school violence
would diminish.
My dad told me to get along
with teachers, even if the teacher was wrong.
Excuses and rationalizations didn’t mean much if the
hog died, or weeds took the beans.
My philosophy of teaching is
to trust my students and turn on the lights.
Teachers know how to diagnose illness, react to
multiple emergencies, fix Spiderman’s broken arm, counsel love-sickness, duck
and roll, and clean-up anything.
A person with a disability is not brave or heroic
because they are in a wheelchair. They
are not special gifts from God.
They don’t always need a compliment. They just want to be a person and be included.
Seeing kids achieve is what makes teachers tick.
We
need to brag about our kids!
In a dazzling display of Martha Stewart Living,
towels are coordinated with bedspreads, wastebaskets, toothpaste holders, and
Kleenex dispenser.
Our lives are not
endless cycles; they are winding roads to a set destination.
Kids have money
instead of freedom.
Those who
have the hum can tell stories about rivers, and you hear the water drifting
by.
Stories offer meanings without making the unbearable mistake of
defending them.
The
first rule in storytelling is to leave a story better than when you found it.
They seemed to be one living moment
gliding on the dance floor, kicking the teeth of time.
“There’s a
rat in the stool,” he called to his wife.
“A rat!”
“It’s a woman
here to bless our land. The Lamb
sent her.” Cindy calmly said.
Even the most
stable people have moments when they lose the connections that keep them sane.
It isn’t low-life, mind you. It’s fine, upstanding pillars of the
community – members of boards, church officials, ladies aide societies, and gas
station attendants. They all just
seem to lose control.
Stella was never
bested, but her tongue always cut toward a smile.
From that moment on,
Stella mothered over the young woman like a sunny day.
We
never know the good we do, but feel it as a dim reflection – in a stranger’s
smile, in sparkling lights across the night sky, in simple pleasures.
He takes the season, with
its trees, for what it is today…then sits with the wind, watching the world.
Those were the “good old days” of leaf raking – the
soft colors of fall, the kids playing, the scent of burning leaves wafting over
the town.
Leaf piles are the swimming
pools of autumn.
I'm the mass media teacher who told him to study so
he could look good in the interview after the game.
There was once a time when
manhood required some discretion among men.
We're sitting here in a restaurant talking about a
woman locking herself in an unplugged freezer, and you wonder why people get up
and leave.
Armed with that insightful knowledge, they laid a
path of broken hearts from Little Rock to Kansas City and back.
What is the world coming to
when a woman is reduced to pumping her own gas?
Men serve on the front lines in war, drive on the
ice, do the plumbing, and tighten their belts when resources are scarce.
The only pills I take are
aspirin for the headaches you give me.
Only the
fleeting, ethereal snippets of life are eternal.
Time is the gentle friend who
allows them to grow old, to experience each moment as infinite, then allows
them to fade, like a fire burns down, and be forgotten.
The meanings
of life all smell like a story.
The gold and orange splash across
the deep blues of autumn and say it's time for another fling.
Anyway, riding on the back of the pick-up, their feet
dangling, their pockets bulging with apples, the old boys were having a day.
These are the days of slush and potholes, windshield
wiper fluid, and the salty white residue of a fading winter.
Expectation exceeds reality, and we are out of tune with life.
Haphazard stacks of feed and seed
bags created a labyrinth of cobwebbed, shadowy tunnels and passages in which
cats and mice played out an endless game of life and death.
The ubiquitous dust claimed every
inch of a feed store leaving a tactile and olfactory signature that every farm
boy knows and misses now and then.
Gathered around hot glowing
coals, the dust forming halos on hanging bulbs of light, the calico cats
sneaking in shadows, our great grandfathers created a tradition so rich and
full of comfort, that it is part and parcel to who we are even now.
They run rough, wrinkled hands
through the steam rising from hot coffee, and they begin to thaw.
Off we went into the mighty corn
belt of the earth, our car chugging, the family reading signs, playing the
Alphabet Game or 20 Questions, feuding, drawing boundary lines on car seats,
and then falling asleep in each other’s laps.
Autumn feels
comfortable to those on the happy hour side of life.
It is a sadness to her that our
culture and the media are more interested in death and rumors than the real
stories of life and survival.
Autumn
with its brilliant death charm was calling for a new celebration, and all earth
answered with an obedient technicolor burst of life
They are desperate, inadequate people consuming their own freedom,
parasites feeding on themselves.
Truth spins its way in and
out of fantasy like steam drifting off cups of coffee.
"I'm better with the
yard," he said. “I know,"
she replied, and life closed on another day in paradise.
Memories wait just below the surface on a cool June
night. After a rain, they grow
again.
I’ve seen it all – the mountains and the oceans – and I’m
here to tell you that few things match early summer in Missouri .
“Congratulations son, your first deer,” he heard his dad
say. It is hard to underestimate
the emotional impact of a deer with its butt blown off.
They were
gone. The forever days had ended.
He remembered the simple joy of doing what was possible with
a day and saying good night tired.
We just want our drains working, traffic lights
synchronized, roads maintained, and trash picked up,
Red and yellow, black and white, male and female, old and
young, rich and poor, believer and nonbeliever, blessed and hurting; all are
precious here.
I’ll just bet the best old
teacher, carpenter, nurse, chaplain, or mom you know was once a hippie.
We can poke around the edges of reality with a good story and
not get burned.
What will remain is love, and the
memory of love.
Confronted with the
undeniable fact that evil exists in our world, cell phones rang, and the human
spirit went to the well where the water is clean.
The fiddle music, the steel
guitar, and songs of lost love, broken hearts, and whiskey nights at the Grand
Ole Opry rang so true to a boy who had grown up on the countryside of
town.
There
is a common magic in country music.
The world we live in is as messy as any Hank Williams tune, but there is
a comfort in the ordinary simplicity of “three guitar chords and the truth.”
We all must
move to the constant, insistent drumbeat of “grow up!”
Massive doses of moist, succulent
turkey, rich steaming oyster dressing, warm home-
made rolls running with butter,
candied sweet potatoes and, of course, dessert are coming, and proper
preparations must be made.
A diet is an
unconceivable thing to an old Iowa farm boy.
Thanksgiving
is what a holiday should be – food and feelings.
Somewhere, it’s all there, all magic and alive. Those people and times we loved so
much, floating on the airwaves of Thanksgiving.
Small, rural towns are full of
four-room houses built on bare ground with a crawl space underneath. One gas space heater warmed the whole
house. Worn, yellow wallpaper
covered picture-less walls.
Sparse, throw-covered furniture and cord-bare area rugs, now a dull gray
or brown, were all there was to hold back the empty space. No house we ever
visited had a Christmas tree.
SHARE YOUR BLESSINGS: The person who dies with the most toys
is still dead.
You feel it when they grab your shoulder and say,
“Merry Christmas.” You hear it
when the family gathers, and they pull out a Bible to read the Christmas story. You see it when they take the time to
play with little kids. You taste
it in the pecan pies and chocolate fudge they just happen to have around.
All of us have a fine coating of grit on our souls
that keeps us both tender and tough in hard times.
Side by side, grandchildren and
grandfather battled into Christmas night, romping and hiding, slamming doors,
and sliding under beds. It was a
glorious victory for childhood, light sabers, and life.
Kids, tinsel, and parents do not
mix.
One does not just walk into the
great Christmas tree forest and calmly cut a tree.
Life truly had saved the best for last in the
mysterious bond between grandchildren and grandparents.
Folks make their living from chickens,
lumber, service trades, and farms; but they make their lives from each other.
This detour would be more
than across Kansas, however; we would detour through time, too. Driving into the night across Kansas is
a family tradition. We are usually
on our way to Colorado and the mountains, and Kansas is an annoyance at
best. On this night, however, with
a generally full moon shining in the driver’s side window from the south,
Kansas turned spacious with farm house and grain elevator etchings along the
horizon. Radio stations carry the full spectrum of music, from
country to western music. Grain and hog prices, and radio garage sales joined static
to complete the spectrum of wireless entertainment. Crossing Kansas at night, Highway 54 becomes an endless
repetition of white lines, telephone poles, all night Pepsi machines, and empty
spaces.
At breakfast, the milk was
five days outdated, and the most edible offering. A sign above the counter read, “DO NOT SPIT IN THE SINK.”
We are in the same car, going the same direction, but
my son is still beginning, and I am going the other way.
The old magic that takes young kids to the right
fishing hole or opens doors to old barns where time stands still has its way of
coming back.
Do we find ourselves or create ourselves? Are our stories already written, and we
tell them as best we can, or do we make them up as we go? What does it mean to really live your
life?
We are steadily and
unalterably becoming part of the past.
This new thing is never noticed in the present.
Forgetting
and “who cares,” will eventually take care of everything. Let’s move on.
They
told “stupid chicken” stories, “good dog” tales, and how a man was once gunned
down in broad daylight in front of an entire town in Northwest Missouri, but
nobody was ever charged with murder.
Things
end, and not much is relevant in a year or two.
