BITTER-SWEET CAR MEMORIES

The dog woke me up before I was ready on Saturday morning. After taking her to do her business and making a pot of coffee, I sat down at the computer to check my email and Facebook for news and other things. Chuck Mier, a boyhood friend who lived across the street from us, posted a video of two sons hunting down their dads 1965 Impala. It took 5 years, but the men finally found the car, brought it home, and presented it to their dad. It’s a touching story that sparked memories.

My daddy, too, bought a 1965 Impala. It also was what “crocus yellow” color. The interior was black and sleek. For years, Daddy had driven a 1954 Chevrolet, a used one that he bought after it was a couple of years old. We piled into that car and traveled exclusively around Knoxville. After Jim and I began school, Mother decided she’d rather learn to drive than to always bum rides to her teaching job, and after she earned her license, Daddy bought a car in 1962, a fawn-colored 4-door Impala. The seats were covered with clear plastic that assured the upholstery would stay clean and that our legs would be blistered when we sat on it in the summer months.

For some reason that became apparent a while later, Daddy traded that car for the Impala in the fall of 1964. He’d let Dal, my older brother, help pick the color and interior before he ordered the vehicle. Jim and I had finished a football practice, and we walked out to wait for someone to pick us up. Daddy and Mother pulled up in the car, and we whooped with excitement. The four of us cruised up Western Avenue to the Jiffy and ate hamburgers and French fries before making the trip home.

Daddy had been feeling bad since April of that year. His face remained swollen, and the family doctor told him his problem was his stomach and another told him it was allergies. By the spring of ’65, he’d been in the hospital a couple of times, and Mother finally called in another specialist upon who looking at him declared that he had lung cancer.

Dal was a senior in high school and was looking forward to attending the prom. Somehow, he managed to get permission to drive the Impala on that big night. Daddy was in the hospital at the time, so Dal promised he’d be careful, offered a thousand thank-you’s, and left to pick up his date.

Dal drove away from the house that evening, but he didn’t travel more than a couple of miles. While passing a car on a narrow section of Ball Camp Pike, his right rear tire slip off the road, and as he steered to correct the problem, the right rear fender made contact with a telephone pole. In the blink of an eye, that beautiful car and the prom were both crumpled.

I don’t think I ever felt worse for Dal than I did that night. Not only had he wrecked the car and ruined his prom night but he also had to make the journey to the hospital to tell Daddy what had happened. Dal said Daddy assured him that things would be okay and that he shouldn’t worry, but he felt terrible over the whole thing.

Not more than a couple of months later, Daddy passed. Mother had the Impala repaired and drove it; the ’54 Chevy became Dal’s vehicle. She drove the Daddy’s car, but it never rode right. After dealing

with it for a long time, she had a mechanic check it out. He told her that the springs and mounts were incorrect. They’d been put on at the factory and were for a Chevelle instead of an Impala. In 1968, Mother traded the yellow Impala for a Plymouth Fury.

No car we ever owned came close to being as pretty as that Impala. However, it lost its appeal and glow with the death of Daddy. The old ’54 Chevy stayed with us much longer, and Dal passed it down to Jim and me, and we drove it in high school and in college. It eventually gave up and became a fishing car for a man to whom Jim sold it in Cookeville. I miss that Impala and that old Bel Air, but more than that, I miss my daddy, even though it’s been 50 years since he left.

So, thanks Chuck Mier, for sharing the video that brought up some bitter-sweet memories. 

MUSIC IS VITAL!

I visited Farragut High School on Thursday afternoon a couple of weeks ago. My brother Jim, who is helping the band in Lenoir City, asked me to drop by so the kids could see his twin. A prior engagement prevented me from staying to listen to the bands, but what once again became important was the fact that music is a vital component in the education of our children.

Instrumental music offers students the chance to belong to a group. It’s no different from a sports team or another school club. Band, as most of us call it, starts in fifth grade, or at least it did when I

was a kid. In the blink of an eye, I became a member of an organization that was fun and demanding . In high school, freshmen band members are every bit as important as seniors. Unlike football, nobody sits on the sidelines and waits for a chance to participate.

All we hear now is how America lags behind in math and science. (I suppose that’s true, although I think our students’ scores would rise if our best tested against other countries’ best. Instead, we include all student scores.) Yes, we need to continue to push for excellence in those areas, but at the same time, we need to push for participation in music courses. The studies have been completed and announce that students who participate in band actually perform better than other students. Here’s just one finding:

“Students of the arts outperform their non-arts peers on the SAT according to reports by the College Entrance Board. (To the tune of 57 points higher on verbal and 41 on the math portion.)”

With that kind of information, parents who hope their children can pocket a scholarship or gain

admission into some favorite university should insist that the young students join band.

Band teaches students how to become a team and how to compete. Summer band practices are every bit as demanding as football practice. Students pound the pavement for hours to perfect shows that they perform for home crowds and competition judges. Concert bands divide into smaller groups of musicians who play the same instruments and then return as one band to play beautiful music that is difficult to master. Earning a top rating for a performance on the field or on the stage is every bit as rewarding as winning a football game.

Perhaps the most important reason to include band in a high school curriculum is that if offers a break from the constant cry for better scores on standardized tests. Somehow, some way, has education lost sight of its purpose: to educate the whole person. Yes, we want our children to learn so that they are ready to enter a demanding work world. What has been forgotten is that life isn’t fulfilling when all it includes is work. Music offers an escape from the rat race. It appeals to the other sides of people. It expands horizons and helps to produce truly well-rounded individuals.

Congratulations to all the students who participated in the concert band festival. Each of you is a winner simply by learning to play an instrument and then taking the risk to perform for judges and audiences. I hope that the cry for more rigor will be ameliorated with the realization that instrumental

music, as well as choral music and theater, are vital to the complete the education of students. If you agree, make sure to let your school board representative know. Even a small loss of music  or those talented folks who teach it diminishes the education of students.

Elementary Memories

Maybe our memory banks dredge up selective events as we grow older. My work buddy Steve and I were talking the other day and began recalling some of the things that occurred during our years in elementary school. They came flooding back in living color and might have been embellished by the span of years since they took place.

Some of those memories involved girls. I never understood why some guys declared that they hated them; I always found them to be interesting and perplexing. In my first year of school, I developed a crush on a girl named Andy Underwood. She was in the eighth grade, but I still pined away for her. War and Peace-length letter on a roll of toilet paper. I’d like to think that Andy got that note, but to be honest, my memory fails me.

At some point, I decided that the right thing to do was pen a love letter to her. Back then, paper wasn’t something that we wasted on such foolishness. So, being a determined goofball, I wrote what seemed like a

Arlene Moore was a rather mean female who tormented me in fourth grade. Every day, she’d kick me in the legs, and every night I whined about how much my skinny legs ached. Mother listened to my pouting for as long as she could, and then she sat me down for a talk. She first told me that hitting a girl was wrong. Then she added that enough was enough; if I came home one more time with complaints of my legs hurting without having retaliated against Arlene, she warned a spanking would be coming. I left for school the next morning “loaded for bear.” Never again did I have a problem with the girl.

Suzanne Fletcher came to Ball Camp Elementary, and I was smitten immediately. She was taller than everyone in class, had curly blonde hair, and was already developing. To my surprise, she seemed to like me back. I fell head over heels for her, but before love’s embers glowed to brightly, her family moved to Tunnel Hill, Georgia. I wrote her a few letters, but replies soon dwindled. It was the first of many heart breaks I experienced during my school years.

I also recall some strange occurrences during those years. I was hefty in those years; more accurately, I was fat. Finding a place on the classroom field day team was difficult. I couldn’t run fast, jump high, or throw far. However, I did eventually find a spot on the tug-of-war team. Steve Buffalo, Steve Cox, and I were the heavyweights that anchored the team, and we did fine until another team supplanted weight with might.

In first grade, I sat in my desk the first day and shook in fear. Other kids were leaving the room to get shots. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I knew that those gigantic needles hurt worse than anything I’d experienced before. I pouted and tears filled my eyes as I waited for the teacher to come for me. As it turned out, the kids who received shots were ones who had failed to get the required inoculations to enter school.

In the spring of the seventh grade, I stood at the window of the classroom as one wasp chased another. They soared toward the ceiling before dive bombing into my shirt. The stings began

This is the best I could find. I wish I could find a picture of the school prior to the fire.

immediately, but I refused to take my shirt off because I didn’t want girls to see my fat body. Eventually, the insects exited the bottom of my shirt that I’d pulled away from my body. The teasing that followed was brutal.

 Lots of other things come to mind, but space limits me to these few events. Elementary school memories are always more interesting when they come with 50-plus years of time passing. Given the chance, all of us can conjure up those mind pictures that bring smiles and grimaces. 

HOME

Not too long ago, I read a Facebook post by Kim Morton. She was a student of mine back when I was young. She and her family are leaving the house her mother called home for 40 years. I’ll steal just a few words from her post to let you get a sense of how she feels:

“Tonight is the last night I will sleep in this house. We've sorted through pictures, letters, newspaper clippings, artifacts, clothing, jewelry, furniture, glassware, and every other sort of thing one collects over forty years. With the sorting came funny stories, not so funny stories, laughing hysterically, crying hysterically and feeling numb and number that this is happening.”

Home…it’s such a wonderful word. Only “family” comes close to evoking the same kind of emotions of all kinds. Kim and her family share memories from every year of life. When the time came to leave the house, her family had the chance to relive some wonderful moments. I know how she feels.

In my life, I have called 2 places home. The first was located on Ball Camp Pike. Mother and Daddy built this house in the 1940’s. They worked at Southern Extract. After finishing shifts, both traveled to the country, as Ball Camp was known at that time, and mixed concrete to make the blocks that carpenters used to put the place together. The house was cozy until Jim and I arrived. Then a new kitchen was built and the old one was converted into a bedroom for us.

Throughout our childhood, home was Rt. 18, Ball Camp Pike. We warmed ourselves by coal stoves and then by a black smoke-coughing furnace. In warmer weather, we opened all the windows and relied on a single floor fan to suck enough cool air into the house to keep the sweat away. All five of us somehow managed to share one bathroom.

Over the years, we celebrated birthdays, Easters, and Christmas at home. Extended family dropped in on those occasions. At the center of all gatherings was an old round wooden kitchen table. We extend the table to give everyone a seat for meals by inserting a leaf or two. When we were in high school, our friends visited and sat at the same table. Mother had a way about her that made teens loosen up and talk and feel right at home.

The first somber event to hit our home was Daddy’s passing. He was sick for a year with lung cancer, and he bounced between the hospital and home too many times in those last few months. That house served as the gathering place for family and friends, but it always seemed just a bit lonely with him gone.

The next event many years later was Mother’s death. She, too, fought the ravages of lung cancer. Earlier in her life, she stated that if she ever became gravely ill, we boys were to place her in a nursing home. However, when her final days approached, she asked us if she had to go to such a place and let us know that what she really wanted was to be at home. We honored her request, and she passed in her sleep one night. Again, that home stood as a gathering place for all of us, but this time the emptiness only sharpened the pain of loss with her gone.

Amy and I married in 1974. Four years later, we built our home 300 feet behind Mother’s house. She warned us not to make a path to her door, but when Lacey arrived in 1981, it was she who wore the grass into the mud on her way to our place. We had to add onto the 1250 square foot home when Dallas’ arrival was imminent. A few years later, we added a family room and kept on until the house had doubled in size.

This home is where we’ve experienced arguments, tragedies, and more wonderful times than any persons deserve. Christmases were special when the kids were little. We’d finish opening Santa gifts and then make our way to Mother’s. It was the best of both worlds. Amy’s parents and an uncle and

aunt also came to Knoxville for the holiday.

Lacey left for college, and a few years later, Dallas did the same. The house seemed suddenly too big and empty. Over the years, Amy and I have settled down into our life here as a couple might settle on a comfortable couch. We love our time together, and nothing brings us more joy than to come home to each other at the end of a work day.

Neither of my two homes were perfect. We had plenty of rough times in both of them. What mattered most of all was that we were family in both places, and the love we shared there sustained us through the toughest occasions. Mother’s house is owned by a family that has reintroduced love and laughter and wonderful memories. I hope that when Amy and I leave this world that our house will also become a new “home” for a family.

FOUL WEATHER AND FOUL MOODS

Here we are stuck in another winter. Punxsutawney Phil lied, although no human ought to put stock in anything a groundhog does or doesn’t do. I don’t understand why anyone would declare that winter is his or her favorite season. What I’ve noticed of late is that this cold weather has a negative effect on most of us.

Dogs seem to know how much we humans hate cold, raw, wet weather. They lie in wait for their humans to fall into the deepest stages of sleep. Then they begin whining and pawing and barking, signals that it’s time to go outside to take care of business. So, humans fall out of bed, put on something warm, and brace themselves for the trek to those favorite spots our pets have. When they

finish relieving themselves, those canines decide the time is right to sniff out critters in yards or wooded areas nearby. Owners tighten the leash and drag the animals back toward the house. If the dog is especially in an ornery mood, it will begin the cycle again at least one more time before dawn.

Folks who work don’t have much love for winter weather. Overnight snow or sleet or ice cause havoc. People rise at the usual time and turn on the television to find out if their worksites are closed for the day. Some bosses make decisions early enough so that employees can hit the road or hit the sack again. Parents hold their breaths as they watch the screen for school closings. If weather shuts schools or delays opening, moms and dads scramble to find childcare. If all else fails, a coveted vacation day is burned.

Workers seem to be trapped in perpetually foul moods during the winter. They wear frowns and scowl about everything. The camaraderie that is present during spring and summer hibernates during winter and is replaced with a “Bah, Humbug” attitude. Kindness is in short supply; it’s replaced with stinging retorts that come about inconsequential comments and icy stares that could give winter’s temperatures competition.

People withdraw from the world during the cold season. Instead of participating in activities or visiting with friends, many adults choose to stay home. They wrap up in a warm blanket and stare for hours at the television or computer screen. Others catch up on reading books by their favorite authors.

Some who are like me find staying awake almost impossible. My bed time is embarrassingly early because the bed is one place where I can warm my frozen feet and hands.

The winter also is responsible for poor personal health. People don’t feel like exercising. Instead, they would rather sit at home and eat “comfort food.” We load up on carbs but never take the

initiative to burn the stuff up through exercise. If only sleep could serve as a weight control, those of us who shovel in the food during winter could maintain our weight or have it rise just a bit.

Right now, few things bring a little light and warmth to my world. Amy and the kids always spread happiness and fun to the cold weather. Although it takes a toll on my already aching body, work is a good place to be since I can share time and cut up a little with other workers. Coming home, I can look forward to the love and excitement that canine Sadie offers. We play and lie around on the couch like to lumps.

In no time, the days will grow longer and temperatures will warm. More outside time is coming, and with it are an endless list of jobs. Still, I’ll take that any time as long as I can wear my shorts and enjoy the sweat that comes working in the yard. I’m just trying to hold on right now. What about you?