Age

Our perception of age can sometimes be a funny thing.

The older you get, the more the numbers mean to you and the quicker they seem to change. When I was in grade school, time passed agonizingly slow, especially when school was in session, but now it seems to be passing agonizingly fast.

When we discovered dating, it was almost unheard of to date more than a year or so either side of our own age – especially someone younger – but after the 20s, the age gap didn’t seem to mean as much. Couple’s ages became 3, 4 or 5+ years different. I once knew a couple with an age gap of 20 years.

Older people put more stock in numbers. They have almost a need to give each person a specific age; but when you’re younger, you know four basic age groups. People are either younger than you, your age, a little bit older than you or just plain old.

When I was a kid I remember hearing my Mom say she was 39 and thought, “wow, that’s old”. Now, I think being 39 again wouldn’t be all that bad.

What got me thinking about this was the passing of a local icon in my hometown. When I was growing up he was the mailman, and that was back when that ‘neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night’ thing really meant something, because for six days a week, he brought the mail. Come hell or high water.

He was one of those ‘older’ folks. I had no idea how old, and it really didn’t matter, he was just older. He was not a kid.

According to his obituary, he and I were only 16 years apart. He doesn’t seem to be so ‘old’ now.

Grannie Fannie

"I'm gonna cloud up and rain all over you."

One of the many Fannie-isms I heard growing up.  She was my maternal grandmother and her name was Fannie Bell Simpson.  How much more southern can a name get?  We all called her Grannie.

She was just an old mountain woman, and one of the biggest loves of my life.

She made melt in your mouth biscuits and the best iced tea in the world, both of which you could find at her house almost every day of the year.  Summer or winter.

She could also make the best pot of pinto beans you ever ate cornbread with.

At least once a year she would make a batch of "tea cakes", which were basic shortbread cookies, but they were so good, and even better when you could sneak a nibble of the dough she let "set" in the fridge overnight.

She also made a terrific banana pudding which she always topped with meringue she made herself and then lightly toast in the oven.

To her there were three meals - breakfast, dinner and supper.  I never heard the word lunch until I started school.  And those meals were served at 6am, although she'd save you something if you wanted to sleep in til say, 7am.  Dinner was at 11am and supper was 4pm.

She always looked the same.  The same type dress, it just came in different colors, her hair worn back in a tight bun and a hairnet of course, and an apron.  The dress was worn below the knees, but a touch closer to the ankle than the knee.

She collected salt and pepper sets.  She must have had over 100 sets.  Every time someone in the family would go somewhere, they got her another set.

In her entire life, she probably never got more than 50 miles away from where she was born and raised, except for a trip to Atlanta to visit her sister and once or twice to Charleston, SC to visit her son.  But if anyone came by and asked her to go somewhere, she was almost always more than ready.  She might have to put on a head scarf and a sweater, but she was ready.

She never shopped at a grocery store, she traded, and almost every small store in town let her run a tab.  Her name was good enough for anything she wanted.  They all called her Aunt Fannie.

She called a soda a "dope", and Upper 10 and Seven Up were her favorite.

She woke up each morning at the ungodly hour of 5am and she went to bed at the ungodlier hour of 8pm, and at times, when she went to bed, everybody went to bed.

She loved blue grass music and used to run me out of the house when she put on Bill Monroe or Flatt and Scruggs.  Now I like blue grass.

She didn't watch too many soap operas, but she loved her "quiz shows".  Jeopardy, The Price is Right, The Match Game, Password, and a bunch of others.   I think she had a thing for Bob Barker.

She tried to be mad at us when she was supposed to be, you know, we did need discipline from time to time, but I don't think she ever really was.  Ten minutes later she would be smiling and laughing.  As she would say, her bark was much worse than her bite.

She also would play at times too.  She ran me up the tree in her front yard more than once and then went in the kitchen for a dishpan full of water to try and throw at me.

She sat on her porch every day, waiting for the mailman, Tater Watts, to come by.  Whether he left any mail or not, he would stop for a minute or two.  I think he appreciated the break from carrying that mail bag around town.  Oh, and the iced tea.

She also liked it when the Jewel Tea man would stop by.  She didn't always buy something but she always looked.

We all loved her and she loved us.  I think for the longest time our world centered around her, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

She died on my birthday and for a time I hated that, but have since come to view it as another connection I have with her.

The Latest Graduation Day

Tomorrow Christopher graduates from Bellarmine. I cannot begin to say how proud I am of him. The last numbers I saw was a 3.2 GPA. I don’t know if that is for the last 4 years, the last year or the last semester, and you know what, I don’t really care. No matter what period it covers, it shows he never gave up applying himself and I couldn’t ask for any more from him than that.

As any parent knows, it’s a day of mixed emotions. The happiness and pride will be tempered a bit by the uncertainty of what lies ahead of him. After all, now he has to face the ‘real world’, but he’s making a good solid step toward realizing his goals so I’m sure he will be fine. His three siblings who took the step before him have done well for themselves and their families. I have no doubt he will do the same.

In my eyes, the little turtle butt of a baby, the 3 year old decked out in a homemade dinosaur outfit at Halloween, the 7 year old who seemed so proud of his broken arm, the 8 year old who made the basketball team, the 9 year old who found a way to take the school trip to Notre Dame even though he was so sick he could hardly stand up, the 12 year old who started noticing girls, the 15 year old who took his first nervous drive around the block and the 18 year old who left home for the first time on his way to college, will all be walking across that stage with him.

Son, you outgrew my lap, but never my heart. ~ Author Unknown

Vegas and Me

Sue and I spent a week last month in Las Vegas.  I guess you could call it our second honeymoon, but that would be a stretch since we really didn’t have a first honeymoon,  that is unless you count the 3 days we stayed at her uncle’s mobile home just outside King’s Canyon State Park in California.  We had too many things to do to get ready to move a family of mine and hers across the country to Charleston SC.  I’ve been married to this wonderful woman for 28 years.  Who knows where, or even if I would be, if she wasn’t here?

My first trip to Vegas was 1971 and to say it has changed would be putting it mildly.  Now, I will admit that my memory is clouded by a few brain cells lost to age and selective overindulgence, but I’m fairly sure I remember enough to make some comparisons.

Back then the draw was gambling - gambling with side orders of a quickie marriages and/or divorces and legal prostitution, but make no mistake, gambling was king.

Driving in from the south, after miles and miles of desert that made you wonder if you were ever going to get there, it suddenly popped up, almost from out of nowhere; an oasis of glitz and glitter.  After driving so long in the desert it could have been a lot less visually imposing and still look good.

There were a few tall hotels, but the largest structures back then were the casino signs, each showing the headliner act.  A lot of the shows were free and some, like Elvis, went for about $15 bucks a ticket.  The food was very cheap.  A breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast and orange juice was 50 cents in some places, no more than 99 cents in the others.  The Circus Circus was the only one I can remember that let minors in, and that was only in very restricted areas.

In one of the hotels we stayed back then, there were only two ways to get from the hotel rooms -- which was really no more than an attached motel -- in the back of the casino to the strip.  You could either go down the driveway and dodge cars or go through the casino.  There was a wide, red carpet that ran from the back door to the front door of the casino and a security guy eagle eyed us from one door to the other.  If we stepped off the carpet he was on us in a flash, reminding us that we were under age.  But in some cases, if you played your cards right (pardon the pun), you could find a crowded corner of a casino you could sneak into, underage or not.

Now, fast forward 42 years.  The gambling is still there, but it appears that Vegas has found other ways to get your bucks.  Now, almost all the casinos, especially on the strip, are tall, imposing looking buildings, and they all sport a hotel and a host of other things too.  One has a roller coaster that runs through it and out over the grounds.  Another is reminiscent of the Seattle Space Needle and has a spinning ride at the top that carries you out over the edge of the building so you can look at the ground some 900+ feet below.   The same one will also let you bungee off the top for $100+, and still another had a multi screen theatre and bowling alley inside.

The food has also changed.  Each place has at least a couple of places to eat and most have buffets that range from about $15 to $60+.  I was actually shocked and a bit irritated to find not one, but two McDonalds on the strip.

I’m not a gambler.  I’ll watch the high rollers a bit and play the slots, but even that has changed.  Gone are most of the old 3 reel machines and they have been replaced by the newer video models that not only let you change the amount of money you want to gamble, but actually change the game with the press of a button.  In fact, most machines I saw would let you bet any amount from 1 penny to 5 dollars, and the irritating part is when they preset the minimum bet to 50 cents or a dollar.  I’m not cheap, but don’t call it a penny or nickel or quarter slot and then set it to a higher figure.  If I want to play dollar slots, I will go find a dollar slot machine.

Oh, and being video they pay off with paper.  Press a button and get a certificate, no more coins clanking into the tray.  The tray is still there, just no coins.  I will admit I’m not well versed in slot machine psychology, but I always thought the sound of falling coins was the perfect tease to get someone to drop in a quarter or three.  What better way to coerce someone into trying their hand at the machines than seeing some lucky soul jump up and down while watching the tray to fill up.

As I said before, I’m not sure whether Vegas has outgrown me, or vice versa, but I do know that it’s not the place it used to be.   The only thing that reminded me of old Las Vegas was Fremont Street downtown; that is until they turned the overhead light show on.  Plus there was still the overall stench of cigarette smoke, but I smoked back in the old days so it didn’t bother me.  This trip it was almost smothering.

The only thing I saw that was absolutely the same is the lack of clocks.  There is no need worry about trivial matters such as time when the house wants you to spend your money.

Passing It Along

For a couple of summers during high school I worked for the city.  I guess their official name is the city utilities, or something like that.  Today they would call what I did 'weeds and seeds'.  We cut grass and brush, and a lot of it.  It was way before weed eaters came along and I got to be pretty handy with a sling blade and a briar scythe.

Each morning before work we would all gather in a little room in the basement of the utilities building,  It wasn't fancy, just functional.  Amongst some tools and other essential clutter, there were wooden benches along different walls.  The teenagers would gather on one bench, and the older crew would sit on the other.

Mostly, the teenagers dozed while the regular crew sat and talked.  They all looked very much alike.  Older, at least mid 50s with some well into their 60s.  They wore bib overalls or work pants, a work shirt and brogans.  Above the brogans you could see the top of their white socks rolled down at the top.  That was the way my grand dad wore his socks.

Most of them smoked unfiltered cigarettes or roll-your-owns, and one of them usually had a wad of tobacco in his cheek.  They sipped their coffee and talked about the latest news around town, or maybe politics in Nashville or Washington, but never about anyplace else in the world, unless one of them knew a local 'boy' in Vietnam.

But the talking didn't last long.  When the time came to start work, they were out the door in a flash.  Of course, all they had to do was drive the trucks, the teenagers did all the lifting and loading and unloading, but I figured they had earned the right to the jobs they had.  They all wore the signs of doing what we did, but for a much longer stretch.

The best part of the job was the little nuggets of advice they gave us.   They covered everything from women, to what kind of job to get, what was the best car, and where in town or the county we should look for a house; which was usually where they had a friend or a family member with one for sell.

They were good men filling a niche, who were happy to pass along advice, and for the most part the teenagers seemed happy to listen to them.  It seemed to be the logical progression of things.

I started thinking about this today, because I came to the realization that I was one of those men now, or at least close to it.  I work in an office where most of the younger folks are way ahead of where I was at that age.  I may have experience, but they have a lot more knowledge and skills than I do from being weaned on computers from almost the time they learned to walk.

I had a similar feeling when I retired from the Air Force.  When I started bumping into more and more troops who were born after I had enlisted, I knew it was time for me to start thinking about retiring.

A Winter Storm

I don’t recall the exact day of the week, or the month, but I can tell you it was late in the winter of 1977.  I know that much because I took over as day shift weather observer at 8am and it was already daylight.  While daylight could come late in the Aleutians, it wasn’t near as bad as upstate Alaska.  In fact, the length of day/night isn’t that much different than in Seattle.

 On my first observation I almost called the sky clear, which would have been a first for me, but there was a little bit of cirrus to the west, so I called it scattered.  It looked like it was going to be a fairly nice, uneventful day with just a touch of clouds and light wind.

Was I ever wrong!   I may not remember the exact timing and numbers since the mind get fuzzy over time, but I will never forget the event.

We didn’t pay that much attention to the weather forecasts.  We had a forecaster on the island, but he was strictly there to support the reconnaissance aircraft.  Our “official” forecast came out of Elmendorf AFB, and it usually left something to be desired.  Not that it was their fault since they were over 1500 miles away.

Within the hour the clouds began to increase and the wind had picked up, but that was a typical day on the island.  I never saw the sky clear or the wind calm in the entire year I was there.

By late morning we were overcast and snow had started to fall and the wind was increasing by the minute.

By midafternoon it was snowing heavy and the wind was over 50 knots, the magic number to limited outside activity on the island.

At 3pm, my boss called and told me to be patient; my relief would be in as soon as the weather eased up.  By then the wind was gusting to around 110 knots and the snow and blowing snow made it impossible to be outside.

At one point I had to measure the snow.  Those were the rules; everybody in the world measures snow at the same time, so I put on my parka and went outside.  I could have estimated it, but that wouldn’t have been near as much fun.  After all, how many people get to go outside in what amounted to a frozen hurricane?

I went no further than 10 to 12 yards from the building.  I could see the bare light bulb above the door to the weather shack and the light on a pole in one corner of the concrete slab that provided the shack’s foundation.

As I stood there, everything suddenly turned white - a total whiteout.  I could not even see my feet and after a few seconds my equilibrium started to get shaky.  I knew where the building was -- it was right over there -- but I wasn’t totally sure where “right over there” was.

Thankfully, just as I started to stoop down and touch the ground, I caught a faint glimpse of the light over the door.  That was all the reference I needed and I literally ran to the building.

Near midnight, the wind had started to slacken.  The wind gusts had dropped to the 50-60 knot range, so one of the weather balloon guys made it in, he only had to walk 50 yards or so, but still no bus, so no relief for me.

It’s not uncommon for military folks to work extended hours, especially in such a remote location, but when my relief showed up the next morning I really didn’t feel all that tired.   Constant activity and adrenalin will do that to you.

Holiday Travel, Part 2

In November 1990, I retired from the Air Force and we decided to take Douglas, Michael and Christopher to California for Christmas.

We had agreed to let Douglas stay with friends in Summerville to finish his senior year in high school.  We tried to find a way to get him to Memphis, but couldn’t find any.  We couldn’t afford for him to fly, he had a bad experience on a bus so that was out and the train wanted to get him from Charleston to Memphis via Philadelphia and Chicago, and that would have taken a chunk of his Christmas break.

I left Memphis on Thursday and spent the night with my Mom in Loudon then left Friday morning to arrive in Summerville just as Douglas was getting out of school.  We packed up his stuff and drove straight back to Memphis.  We got there at about 4am and Sue packed the car while I got a couple of hours sleep.

She woke me up at 6 and we hit the road for California.  We knew the weather was going to be touchy through Arkansas and Oklahoma but I felt we could beat it.  We didn’t.  The system picked up speed and spread through the plains quickly.  Before we got to Little Rock, we heard that there was ice and snow falling in western Arkansas so we made a snap decision to drop down thru Dallas and hit I10 in west Texas.

We didn’t make Dallas.  Before we got there we heard on the radio they were getting ice too, so we dropped south thru Tyler to Austin.  We then cut across the hill country above San Antonio to catch I10 near Kerrville.  We thought we could knock off at least 50 miles.  We drove the last hour through ice as it had beaten us to south Texas too.

Finally, I found a rest area near Fort Stockton to pull over for a couple of hours sleep.  The weather was clearing up, we would soon be down into the low country, and the worst was behind us.  At this point, I had been driving for close to 20 hours straight and all but 2 hours of the last 40.

Later that day, when we were west of Phoenix, one side of the interstate was almost solid headlights and the other side was almost solid taillights.   They had closed I40, the road we were originally on, and if we had not dipped down into Texas we would have been stuck somewhere in the mountains of northern New Mexico or Arizona.

For what it’s worth, we did finally learn how to travel over the Christmas holiday.  Four years ago, we flew to Hawaii to visit Amy and the girls while Tony was in Iraq.  We flew above the weather and Hawaii in December/January is heavenly.

Holiday Travel, Part 1

The holidays draw families together, but sometimes, the traveling doesn’t always end up the way you plan.

In 1983, I was stationed at Fort Ord in California, doing Army support.  A guy in the same unit, John Jarrell, was also from Tennessee, so we decided to take leave over Christmas and drive back there.  I was going to take Doug and Amy back with me.

So, I got a roof rack for my car, loaded it full of our stuff, and headed off to Tennessee.  The plan was for John and I to take turns driving and we could drive straight through.  You would think since he and I worked in a weather station we would at least take a peek at what the conditions were going to be, right?  Well, we didn’t.

We did okay the first day and night and just before sunrise, we were approaching Oklahoma City, OK.  Since we needed gas, I told John to take the next exit and I would drive after we gassed up.  There had been a very light snow falling for a while, but it was a dry snow and not sticking to the ground at all, plus the wind was keeping the road clear.

Our first clue that something was wrong was when we pulled up to the gas station.  It was a full service station, but the guy inside made no move to come out and pump the gas, so I jumped out into wind that had to be close to 50mph, and was keeping the wind chill down in the single digits.

After gassing up, I pulled back out onto the road and I drove about 40mph through Oklahoma City.  It was snowing harder but still not sticking to the road.  About 20 miles east of Oklahoma City I felt the road ice up and lightly tapped my brake to slow down.  That was a mistake.  The car went into a skid and turned completely around in the middle of the road.  I recall looking at the berm coming closer out of my side of the car and hoping the weight in the carrier didn’t flip the car when we hit the shoulder. 

We lucked out and the car went off the road tail end first and stopped 3-4 feet off the pavement.  Amy was crying in the back, begging me to go back to California, but I intended to go on.  I wasn’t overly thrilled about it myself, but I was less thrilled about turning around.

Our luck held up as a state maintenance truck pulled up within a minute or two after the slide.  The two men in the truck helped me and John push the car back out onto the interstate.  One of the guys said, “It’s ice like this all the way through Arkansas.”  We would no longer be driving at 40mph.

We drove the rest of the way to Memphis at 15 to 20mph, depending on the road conditions.  It was about 8am when we ran off the road and it was almost 11pm when we got to Memphis.  As bad as the day had been, we still enjoyed the light show as we approached Memphis.  A thunderstorm was in progress over the city and the lightening reflected in multiple colors through the freezing rain/snow mix.

The rest of our trip was peaceful in comparison.