Category Journey

The day I turned old

normanjameson Leave a comment

I turned old on August 30, 2025. I know the day. And the hour. And the moment.

No wonder the young lady stood to offer me her seat.

For much of my life, I looked younger than my age. I was a husband, father, and owned my second house before I shaved every day.

About age 26, I was in the barber chair with my hair wet and glasses off and my wife walked in, ready to take me home when I was finished, since we managed with one car. The barber noticed that she caught my eye, and asked, “Is that your mother?”

Later we listed some furniture for sale, some of our original “we-need-something-and-this-will-do-until-we-have-money,” pieces. A college girl called, said it would be perfect for her dorm, and arranged a time to come pick it up.

When I answered the door, she looked at me and asked, “Is your mother home?”

To say I was devastated is to say the Johnstown Flood was a trickle. I was floored. It took me days to get over it. Evidently, I still haven’t.

I was a college graduate, Army veteran, working a professional job with national connections and a college girl sees me in my Saturday morning T-shirt and jeans and asks if my mother is home.

I told her my mother lives in Wisconsin, 640 miles away, but if she’s here for the furniture, I can help. And then my wife picked me up off the floor.

Eventually, the sirocco winds of life aged my face, bleached my hair to arctic blonde and added enough wrinkles that I didn’t have to say, “No, really” anymore when my age came up.

My oldest son shares some of my facial features and when I’m introduced as his father, his friends invariably say, “I could’ve guessed.” I keep hoping one day someone will mistake me for his older brother.

Which brings me to the fateful day when the harsh reality of simple observation by a stranger shattered the mistaken impression that all the mirrors in my house are broken. I walk past a mirror, see the image it reflects, and I know that grizzled face can’t be me.

And yet.

In Budapest, Hungary at the beginning of a Danube River cruise taken to celebrate the 50th anniversary of marriage to a beautiful woman I had bamboozled long enough to convince her to marry me, the curtain came down on my illusion.

I stepped onto a tram car and a young woman stood to offer me her seat.

Glass shattered. Ego crumbled. Humility fallen over my shoulders like a granite yoke.

I implored the innocent to return to her seat. Over a language barrier, my pleading eyes, exasperated face and arm motions made my intention clear. “Please. No. Take your seat. ARRGGG.”

She politely declined, and I resolutely remained standing, amid the laughter of our traveling colleagues.

The insult of reality was exacerbated the next day when on a similar tram, my wife was warned that a conductor was on board and was checking tickets. In Budapest persons over age 65 ride public transportation free.  The local was kindly warning my wife that she needed a ticket.

Sue Ellen graciously informed her that she didn’t need a ticket, because she was 70. To which the kind commuter expressed astonishment, of course.

She then looked at me, seeing I was with Sue Ellen, and I swear I heard her ask, “Is that your father?”

 

‘/

Are you as good as dead?

normanjameson Leave a comment

While collecting shellfish in Australia, Eric Nerhus was bitten almost in half and swallowed by a 10-foot shark.

Swimming 25 feet below the surface, Nerhus, 41, was grabbed over his head by the shark, which took half of Nerhus’ body into his mouth. He was as good as dead.

Thinking quickly, he reached up and poked the shark’s eyes with the chisel he used to collect abalone.  The shark open its mouth and Nehus wriggled out.

Nerhus estimates he spent two minutes inside the shark’s mouth and said his chest was protected from the shark’s sharp teeth by the lead-lined vest used to weight him down as he scoured the ocean floor. He swam to the surface in a cloud of his own blood, where his son helped him into the boat and rushed him to a hospital.

The 2010 movie “127 Hours” featured the dramatic story of Aron Ralston whose arm was pinned to a rock wall by a suddenly shifting boulder while he hiked Utah’s Blue John Canyon.

No matter what he tried to dislodge his arm, he was trapped. After four days his water ran out and he drank his urine. On the sixth day, Ralston realized he was as good as dead.

Then the 27-year-old mountain climber did what he’d always known he had to do, but could not bring himself to do when he thought there was an option. Using his own body weight for leverage, he broke both the bones in his forearm. Then, with his pocketknife Ralston cut off his arm below the elbow and applied a tourniquet. He then rappelled 60 feet to the canyon floor and started walking.

He walked seven miles before encountering two tourists who called for a rescue helicopter.  

What’s the point?

Neither Eric Nerhus nor Aron Ralston are dead. At that point in their lives when there was no prospect for more life – when they were as good as dead – they found a way.

Ever thought you were “as good as dead?”  Or wished you were?

  • In the midst of company chaos, your boss approaches you with a grim face;
  • A truck in the approaching lane veers into yours;
  • You discover your father’s debilitating illness is hereditary;
  • At a conference in his office, your docor leans forward and says, “I’m sorry.”
  • Your job loss has led to anxiety, depression and a mortgage foreclosure;
  • You face an impossible financial burden to make good for a child’s accident, illness or bad mistake;
  • A dark secret you’ve carried is suddenly revealed.

Jesus’ friend Lazarus was not only as good as dead. He WAS dead. Then Jesus exercised his power of life over death and he raised Lazarus, demonstrating to us though we be as good as dead, we still possess the life option.

The same is true for a host of other biblical characters. Young David could have killed King Saul (I Sam. 24) when Saul was relieving himself in a cave and David crept in behind him and cut off a piece of his robe. Saul was as good as dead and didn’t even know it.

Joseph had a coat of many colors (Genesis 37), and was his father’s favorite, when his jealous brothers threw him into a cistern to die. He was as good as dead.  

Shadrach Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace; Daniel was tossed to the lions; Jonah was swallowed by the great fish; the adulterous woman dragged for stoning by an angry mob.

Why did God rescue them? Because God had a higher purpose for their lives and something in that near death experience equipped them for that purpose like nothing else could!

Your faith isn’t feeble in the face of life threatening odds. It’s most flaccid when you operate only in the realm of your own abilities, when you’re deluded enough to think you can “do it yourself.”

My favorite traditional hymn is “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Verse two says, “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.”

Remember, when your dreams and promises appear to be as good as dead – yet they breathe. Aron Ralston wandered out of the dessert after cutting off his own arm. Eric Nerhus fishes again. Childless Abraham, whose body the Bible says was as good as dead, became the father of a nation.

Senior adult groups have many adorable names. One of my favorites is the ADY – Ain’t Dead Yet – Club. Circumstances may conspire to make you feel you’re as good as dead, but guess what.

You Ain’t Dead Yet.

One is the loneliest number

normanjameson 1 Comment
My mother-in-law, during last days in nursing care.

In August 1971 anonymous government functionaries conducted a lottery to determine the order in which 19-year-old boys would be drafted into the Army, thousands of them eventually to die in the politicians’ war in Viet Nam.

They drew my birthday first. No. 1. It was the only thing I’ve ever “won” except a case of beer at the Rio Fireman’s Picnic, and the hand of my wife. I was too young to claim the beer, and my wife was almost too young to marry.

From that day on, the musical hit “One” by Three Dog Night became the soundtrack of my life as I went off to college, hoping to get a semester in before I received my draft notice. It’s resounding assertion that “One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do,” pounded time after time out of my reel-to-reel tape player, putting to music the angst of a life on hold.

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do…

“It’s just no good anymore since you went away

“Now I spend my time just making rhymes of yesterday.”

Then the resounding, pounding refrain:

“One is the loneliest number

“One is the loneliest number

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.”

Every time that song surfaced on the radio or in sequence on my Three Dog Night album, I sank emotionally. No. 1 in the lottery. Draft certain. One is the loneliest number. The saddest experience.

Thoughts of “one” and being alone jumped at me recently while I stood in line for a table at southeastern America’s food oasis, Cracker Barrel. It hit me when the hostess asked the lady ahead of me, “How many?” and she responded, “One.” The loneliest number.

A sudden sadness for her and others being alone hit me like a gut punch through a curtain of memory.

One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.  And it’s a growing trend in America. We’re in an epidemic of loneliness. It’s not just aging widows and widowers. It’s younger people isolated by screens who possess no ability to communicate with real, live people.

Lacking meaningful, human to human connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to an advisory from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

We once called on a young man who visited our church to encourage him to become involved. He said he walks into his apartment on Friday night after work and doesn’t leave it until Monday morning. Week after week. Crawling out to visit the single adult class we led was a major effort.

The prevalence of single-person households is unprecedented historically,  rising from seven million to 38 million since 1960. 

I don’t equate “being alone” with loneliness or depression, but community involvement and social interaction is the leading indicator for health in senior adults. Of course many single adults lead vigorous, joyful, involved lives and God bless them.

It’s just that as I approach my 48th wedding anniversary I know the deep satisfaction life with a loving partner brings. I think of the shared joys, sorrows and triumphs of raising our three children, and of their loving spouses and our seven grandchildren. I would wish that common good for anyone.

Beyond that, what are the implications for a society in which so many of its members live as single, unaffiliated, isolated souls? Think – as I’m sure they are – of long term health, housing, community, end of life?

And yet, one out of four of today’s 50-year-olds will have been single their whole lives. Never married, never partnered.

Social isolation is associated with a higher risk of dementia and other serious health problems in older adults — while having positive social relationships can help people live longer, healthier lives.

In other parts of the world, nearly four in ten older adults live with extended family, an arrangement that mitigates aloneness. But older adults in the U.S. rarely live with family. 

Our culture almost demands we go it alone, that we not “need” anyone or anything. Yet that is not the preferred condition of most single adults I know.

And when the person ahead of me is asked, “How many?” her “One,” sounds like the saddest experience she’ll ever do.

“I never thought about it”

normanjameson 3 Comments

Much of the remodeling and landscape work on my son’s renovation of a 200-year-old house and barn in Pennsylvania is being done by Amish. Their work is exemplary, consistent and dependable.

Amish settled in southeastern Pennsylvania in the 1720s, leaving behind in Europe the persecution of their “strange” and separatist beliefs. Amish emphasize humility, family, community and separation from the non-Amish world, which includes a reluctance to adopt modern conveniences such as cars and electricity.

The Pennsylvania Amish community in Lancaster County is the largest in the United States, numbering about 30,000, double its size of 20 years ago. They’re distinctive for their simple dress, beards, bonnets and horse drawn buggies.

We wanted to give visiting relatives an authentic Amish experience, without being “ugly Americans” who gawk or get our legs caught in tourist traps that exploit this set apart people. So, who better to ask for advice than Aaron, a white bearded, retired farmer now working for his son’s landscaping company on our project.

To my delight, Aaron suggested simply that if we wanted to experience Amish life in Lancaster County, “Come to my farm. I’ll show you around.” We made a date two weeks hence.

I texted a couple days before the appointment and was concerned that I didn’t hear back. But on a beautiful fall afternoon we pulled into his manicured yard and Aaron and Barbie, his wife of 40 years, appeared immediately. Since they hadn’t heard from me, they wondered if we were coming.

I mentioned the text I sent earlier. Then we both laughed. Their telephone is in a building separate from the house, to be used for business purposes only, and of course, is not mobile.

We took seats in their recently constructed house, modern and perfect in every way except that there are no electrical outlets, nor lamps, nor counter appliances, nor overhead lights. Designed to let in lots of sunlight, a propane tank on wheels with a filament bulb on a tall rod provided light when darkness falls.

A propane powered refrigerator graced the kitchen. While electricity is considered a convenience too worldly, workarounds with generators for power are apparent in the barns. Rules and restrictions governing humility and simplicity vary by area bishop.

We asked Aaron why farm implements roll on bare steel wheels, with no rubber tires. He said it’s a bishop’s rule to keep people from going fast.

Daily life is guided by simplicity and a pace slow enough to appreciate the smell of freshly turned earth or cut grass or a grandson’s grasp of your leg as you walk the fields together. No doubt outsiders romanticize these things about Amish life, but the truth is starker. Anyone dependent on modern conveniences woven so completely and unconsciously into daily life that we don’t even realize our dependence, would find it very difficult to shed them in favor of a slower, harder, more deliberate life.

For that reason, Aaron said, they do not encourage people not born into the Amish community to “convert” to their faith and culture.

As a young sharecropper, my grandfather walked behind a mule pulling a plow. But when he gained access to a tractor, he embraced the innovation and convenience wholeheartedly. Amish farmers are content with their mules. Whether tractors, telephones, automobiles or microwave ovens, they recognize that innovations do not necessarily contribute to a better, fuller, deeper life.

Sitting together in a comfortable living room, a Bible and reading glasses atop a small table by their chairs, we asked this 62-year-old couple if they were granted permission to embrace any single modern convenience – the kind of utility they see every day as they live among “outsiders” – what might it be?

Silence.

After a while I suggested to Barbie that I thought she might say “electricity.” She smiled meekly and said, “I considered that.” When pressed for his answer, Aaron said, “I’ve never thought about it.”

Whoa.

Aaron farmed 50 acres with mules, raised eight children, six of whom have 33 children, raises dogs and tobacco for extra income, gave the farm to a son and now works another son’s landscaping business, is a stalwart in church and community, and he’s never thought about what mechanical, transportation, electrical, communication tool available to others he might like for himself?

All the while he lives among outsiders who think camping out overnight to be first in line for a new phone model is logical and that instant gratification is too slow. We’re bombarded by constant messages that we will be happier if we grasp, strive and reach for the next purchase, entertainment, or experience that will somehow endow us with the satisfaction Aaron has just by living a simple life in a caring community of like-minded folks.

“Content” is the only word to describe a man whose lifestyle barricades him against the onslaught of television and social media, who has never thought about embracing modern conveniences. He is content and committed to a way of life that is set apart, not conforming to the world. Romans 12:2 He evidently thinks about such things no more than a fish considers water.

Few modern Christians are consciously set apart from the world. Our most significant symbol – the cross – has been so co-opted and adulterated that it no longer retains significance as a Christian symbol.

Maybe that’s why we admire the simple, quiet, slow – contented – pace of Amish life.

Before I met Aaron, I’d never thought about it.

What Color is Your Duck?

normanjameson 3 Comments

I was not a self-assured little kid. I lived in the country and wasn’t particularly athletic, didn’t know my way around the terminology of machinery as it seemed my friends did. I was reticent in a crowd of my peers. But I was an early, voracious reader and I felt confident in the classroom.

white duck on grass field

Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash

At least until Mrs. Roberts assigned a coloring project that I blew.

Louise Roberts was my first grade teacher. She was lovely, kind and patient. But my most vivid memory of my nine months with her (not the same nine months as each of her sons experienced) is the zero she gave me on a coloring assignment.

I’m quite certain it was she who delivered my first academic trauma. First grade seems right for that kind of project. I doubt it was second grade, because Mrs. McGowan never would have given me a zero.

Mrs. McGowan lived in the county seat of Portage, 14 miles and a half century from my little school in Rio, and possessed a sense of savoir faire. She loved her students enough to invite a select few one at a time to her house in Portage overnight to give them a taste of “city life.” Portage had 10,000 people, to Rio’s 788.

I was one of the lucky chosen for an evening in Portage with Mrs. McGowan and her husband, a local official. She made dinner, then they drove me around the city, and introduced me to city hall and the jail. Come to think of it, maybe she was trying to “scare me straight.” Anyway, she was sweet enough that she would have given me a second chance, not a zero that haunts me 64 years later.

Mrs. Roberts’ assignment simply was to color the animals pictured on the white sheet of paper she distributed. I forget what all the animals were, but the ducks… oh, the ducks.

What color are ducks? In all of my six years of limited exposure to Disney and storybooks in which ducks floated in ponds near where Snow White lay waiting for the kiss that would bring her back to life, or beneath the tower that held Rapunzel, the ducks were white. Pure, innocent, naïve images floating blissfully about the main story characters to remind us that even when things appear to be going smoothly, we need to paddle like crazy.

The ducks I was to color were presented to me on a sheet of white paper. So, very logically, I colored the other animals and left the ducks alone. White ducks on white paper. That’s the color of ducks.

When I got the assignment back with a big ZERO on it, I had the temerity to ask Mrs. Roberts why. She said I didn’t do the assignment because I didn’t color the ducks.  “But ducks are white,” I said, a nascent lawyer arguing for the defense.

“You should at least have colored the bills and feet,” she said. I could see her point, but how about a second chance? Maybe they were albino ducks.

Fortunately, I recovered from that initial academic setback and grew up avoiding drugs, thievery, rock and roll and mayhem.

Thank you Mrs. McGowan.

Committing Errors and Omissions

normanjameson Leave a comment

Oh good grief, will that lady please sit down so the rest of us can see?

I’m at the spring school concert for one of my grandchildren, who is dressed in white shirt and dark pants somewhere on the third row, right side, there, in the shadow, just beyond the edge of the light. Yeah, him. Take your finger out of your nose, buddy.

But the lady, and a dozen others, are making it hard to see my kid at all because they keep popping up, holding cameras, iPads, and phones at arm’s length to record their little darlings’ anonymous instant. Me, I’m trying to sit back, focus, and be in the moment so that the images and sounds in real time are seared into my memory.

I won’t need to pull up a grainy, dark, blurry picture to remember the grainy, dark, blurry image of the event I saw – through a viewfinder.

Studies show you will remember something better and appreciate it more if you concentrate on the moment with your own eyes, instead of looking at it through a viewfinder.

Elizabeth Loftus, a psychological science professor at the University of California, Irvine, says when our concentration at an event is to record it, it’s like we are offloading the responsibility of memory from our brain to our phones. Or, we’re so distracted by the photo taking process that we miss the moment altogether.

People upload 30,000 hours of content to YouTube – every hour.

I’m not sure if there is an exact parallel to the “losing the moment to a photo” idea, but I’ve discovered a strange phenomenon relating to journaling and memory. I’ve been transcribing my handwritten notes from journals of 50 years ago when I was in the army. Everything was new and not so wonderful for a young, pacifist country boy who grew up in a town of 788 people now thrust into a world of strangers being trained to kill people.

Still, there were friends, events, churches, girls and Kodak moments from those years that I’ve shared with people ever since. Special moments, meaningful events and forks in the pathway of my journey seared into my memory.

Yet, I’ve discovered that many of the most memorable, transformative, fulfilling moments of those days went completely unmentioned in my journals. Stories that made it through my memory dozens of times during the past half century never made it through my pen.

When I first realized the omissions, it struck me as strange. What I’ve come to believe, in a totally unscientific insight, is that I didn’t write down such significant things because I knew they were so memorable I’d never forget them. Things like:

  • My first ski trip when we encountered girls from church at the top of Monarch Mountain. It was my first day on skis and I’d done well and wanted to impress them. After we chatted a minute, we all turned to go down the hill and I immediately fell. Trying to catch up, I fell again and didn’t see them the rest of the day.
  • After wearing a full leg cast from a ski injury I had my buddy drive me to the base hospital to get it off, carrying my bike along with us so I could ride it home. Ha. My leg was useless until I’d rehabbed it.
  • A spur of the moment trip to Tacoma to see a girl I’d met through her cousin in Wisconsin.
  • After saving for a big ski trip to Vail, buddies Steve, Paul and I brought a fourth, Dennis, from Florida. He hadn’t skied, but said he was a surfer, so we thought if he could surf, he could ski. Wrong. After sleeping in the heatless van in the parking lot, waking to a quarter inch of frost inside the windows, we spent the morning at Vail, the premier ski area in Colorado, with him on the bunny slope. He never got it and we abandoned him.
  • Or, feeling compelled to back out of a trip to San Antonio to see a friend I’d met when stationed there, feeling I shouldn’t go. Hours after I was to leave, my mom called to say my cousin Dickie had died in a one-car accident. I went home to Wisconsin instead.

So, what prompts recollection of these events as I transcribe my journals? As I’ve gone through chronological entries, little butterflies flap around in my mind, whispering, “Didn’t this or that happen about this time?” We are an accumulation of our memories and each works in some kind of symbiotic relationship with others.

It’s kind of like how the things we eat work together in our bodies for nutrition and health. Who knows how an orange releases enzymes from a pork chop? Or how fish digests better with a glass of white wine?

I don’t. But thinking about why I wrote about fairly mundane things without recording events I considered very significant then and since makes me scratch my head.

Now, please scooch aside ma’am…I need to get this pic.

And the angels sang

normanjameson 5 Comments

(To read the prologue of this story, click here)

The snow outside church portended a brutal night and I watched the parking lot as much as I watched the costumed kids preparing for their role in the Christmas pageant. I expected the arrival of a new helper who was racing south from Colorado ahead of a blizzard.

She was a helper whose arrival I anticipated with mixed emotions.

I had been a volunteer at Templo Bautista in Espanola, NM for two months. Recently discharged from the Army as one of America’s last draftees, I’d gone there to exercise my faith with the goal of making a difference in an environment foreign to me, a Midwestern Scandinavian who grew up in Truman’s World.

Is it any wonder I wanted no intruders? Teresita Naranjo, left, recognized as the No. 2 potter in all of New Mexico, cut my hair with Mrs. Abbott.

Mrs. John Abbott – never Ethel – carried on the work at Templo that she and her husband started decades earlier. But John had been killed in a farming accident and Mrs. Abbott told God she could only carry on as God would send help.

Enter me.

I was the first long term helper and became bus driver, Sunday School teacher, wood splitter, phone tree operator, youth director, visitation director and encourager. Life was good. Mrs. Abbott treated me like a son, fed me like a king and taught me like Socrates.

Two months later I returned to the church I attended in Colorado Springs to tell my crowd what was happening in Espanola, and to raise a few bucks to buy Christmas gifts for the kids there. In that crowd was the daughter of a man I knew well. She had just left college and was at loose ends, struggling to discern a broader, greater plan for her life.

My heartfelt appeal and enthusiasm for life at Templo Bautista struck a chord in her heart and she wanted to pray with me about the possibility of coming to help. The last thing I wanted was an intruder to dilute my lone role as Golden Child in Mrs. Abbott’s realm.

But, we prayed and this girl and I had the unmitigated gall, the brazen audacity, the cocksure brass to demand the creator of the universe provide a clearly discernible answer within seven days.

I returned to Espanola with some cash for gifts and a secret. I didn’t want my apple cart upset. I wasn’t going to stand in God’s way, but I wasn’t going to feed him an easy assist, either.

So I waited several days before telling Mrs. Abbott about Sue Ellen Carver’s interest in coming to help. I figured Mrs. Abbott would take a couple days to  pray, to cogitate and consider. By then, the seven-day deadline would be passed and I’d be home free. So, at breakfast on the sixth day, I mentioned casually that Bob Carver’s daughter, Sue Ellen, was interested in coming to Templo to help.

“Bob Carver’s daughter?” she asked. Bob had been to Templo many times on weekend work trips and was a member of a very supportive church.

And yet, who could blame me for my resistance fading?

I nodded, smug in my manipulation of the calendar. To my dismay, Mrs. Abbott reached for the phone, asked me for Sue Ellen’s number, called it and said, “Come on.”

“OK,” I thought. “It’s a couple weeks before Christmas, and she’ll have to give notice at her job and make arrangements and well, maybe I’ve got three to four weeks before the invasion.

Instead, within three days she was on the road, racing a winter storm south from Colorado to New Mexico, sliding into the median, using every ounce of knowledge her dad gave her about rocking the car to get out of a drift, crossing Raton Pass just before it was closed and arriving at Templo Bautista just as the shepherds and angels were marching through the hallway to line up for their part in announcing good news to a waiting world.

She arrived covered in frost with a smile that would melt many a heart just as the kids were shuffling down the hallway to the stage. It was a Christmas pageant scene so perfect that it would have embarrassed even Hallmark.

Over the following months, we worked daily together. Eventually, of course, I began to see Sue Ellen far less as a nuisance and far more as someone I wanted to know on a far more personal level. Sure, she was the only green-eyed blonde in Sante Fe County, but just as attractive was her indomitable, loving spirit that pitched in enthusiastically to every task and made every person who crossed her path feel like they’ve been heard, seen and loved.

Whatever it was, we left Espanola heading in different directions and had only occasional, long distance conversation until in October the following year, she came to Oklahoma Baptist University to visit her sister and we reconnected. We talked for hours – much to the dismay of her sister, who felt neglected. We talked of our own perspectives of the future, who we were and who we wanted to be, never really talking about that future together.

Yet, when I returned to my apartment after seeing her off to the airport, I knew. The next morning I called her dad and said “I want to marry your daughter.” To which he replied, “Which one?” He had four and he had no clue Sue Ellen and I had been talking.

One month later we returned to Espanola for the first time – to plan our wedding, which took place one month after that.

I’ve made a lot of decisions in my life, but none were better than that one 47 years ago.

Fateful day half-century in the making

normanjameson Leave a comment

Sept. 13.

Fifty years ago today my dad wrapped his arms around me and said out loud for the first time I can recall, “I love you.” Then I turned toward the bus idling there to take me to Milwaukee where I was inducted into the U.S. Army.

With a draft lottery number of one, received a year earlier, this day was inevitable. But it arrived under a dark cloud of dread that wouldn’t lift for months.

I never doubted my dad loved me. I never asked myself if he did. I never wondered, pondered, considered, weighed or suspected his love. He showed me in many, non-verbal ways: working hard to provide for his family, being present, shooting baskets with me, including me with tasks we could do together, assigning me responsibilities like cleaning the barn or splitting the wood for our farmhouse furnace, then bragging about me to his friends when I worked beyond his expectations.

Primarily, my assurance of dad’s love and my subconscious security in my household growing up was how he loved my mother. Our dinner time was consistently 5:30, but no one sat down until dad arrived home from his gas route. He drove a fuel truck that serviced farmers in a four-county area, but he consistently arranged his days and route to be home for dinner on time.

Then mom would meet him at the door and the kids would have to sit at the table, waiting while they hugged and kissed and got all sloppy in the doorway.

Dad never fully grasped the implications of my lottery number. It didn’t penetrate his consciousness that radio announcing my birthday as No. 1 had changed the trajectory of my life. Nor did he comprehend my heart when I petitioned for and received status as a conscientious objector, willing to serve in the military, but not willing to bear arms.

To my surprise and delight, my basic training platoon at Fort Sam Houston consisted entirely of conscientious objectors of my same persuasion. We were all to be trained as medics. Logic was, I guess, if we weren’t going to carry a gun, we should run around with a target on our backs.

Religious belief was the overwhelming rationale for conscientious objection in my platoon. And not all represented religions were Christian. Consequently, our discussions were invigorating and affirming. Our attitudes were positive and our nascent friendships sincere.

Then, we graduated from basic. And our 40 men were divided among 10 other platoons of men who had just finished basic training that included weapons, and an indoctrination of “enemies” versus the right and righteous arm of the United States.

Suddenly, barracks were bellicose. An undercurrent of distrust and tensions ran through the room where long rows of bunks ran down both sides of the room, with lockers in the middle and footlockers at the end of each bunk. You never wanted to leave either open or unlocked.

One day I hung a pair of clean underwear on the hook while I showered. When I got out, mine had been taken and replaced by someone’s dirty underwear.

Discussions were not harmonious, but usually disintegrated into offensive and defensive positions on issues, especially religious and political. The most hard core guys could not wait to get to Viet Nam and “kill some Charlie Cong.”

Such was the atmosphere that debilitated my spirit one night when I walked to the bank of phones to call my dad for a word of encouragement. I know he loved me. But he still didn’t understand.

Depressed, I was walking back to the barracks to face another miserable night when my path took me past a base chapel. It was brightly lit and happy sounds were coming from it. I walked in. Why not?

There was a youth group on the platform getting ready to perform a musical. And I found a couple of my buddies from basic training there. After the musical, the youth offered to come pick up any soldiers who wanted to attend their church on Sunday.

Pretty girls populated the platform. I eventually dated one. My buddy Steve ended up marrying her sister.

Events of that night, and that group from Baptist Temple in San Antonio, opened the portal to the rest of my life which included a career among Baptists in communications, and marrying a girl I met at a Baptist church in my next station.

Fifty years ago. Today. As I’ve said many times since, it’s not something I wanted, nor would ever want to do again. But my life was set on course by having done it once.

The Abbotts defined dedication, and I got to play

normanjameson 1 Comment

John earned the shrapnel lodged in his legs, making them ache when the weather changed, when he labored in the fields. When he remembered.

As a battlefield chaplain during World War II, John Abbot worked among wounded and dying American soldiers in Europe fighting the scourge of Nazism. His was an active faith. He believed he incarnated Jesus as he walked, crawled and bled among soldiers who needed assurance that God loved them and that their destiny was assured.

Author as jack of all trades in Espanola, after the Army, before finishing college.

When he returned from the blood-soaked fields of Europe and as America shifted gears to embrace a new, wide open world of possibility, John applied to Southern Baptists’ missionary support agency responsible for “home” missions – or missions within the continental United States. He wanted to be a missionary in his native southwest, serving people, showing them the way of Jesus and leading them to faith.

He was a committed churchman in that denomination and after his service as a chaplain in the military, he assumed that he would be approved for support so he could turn his attention to the purposes of that agency: winning people to faith in Jesus.

Instead, he was denied support because he was deemed medically unsound, due to the shrapnel in his body, lodged there in battle. Disappointed, but undaunted and illuminated by his own vision, John secured support from some Texas Baptist churches where he was known. He bought farm equipment and set up shop in a converted dance hall in Espanola, New Mexico, a small town 25 miles north of Santé Fe.

The dance hall occupied a strategic corner on the main road between Espanola and Chimayo, a tiny town that houses one of only two places on earth that claim to contain healing elements. It’s the dirt in Chimayo, and the waters in Lourdes, France, to which pilgrims crawl. Discarded crutches, canes and bandages testify to the healing properties of the dirt in the Santuario de Chimayo. People have crawled from Santé Fe to Chimayo to do penance before applying the dirt to their injury or illness.

On the north side of the windy, two-lane road between the two towns perched a wooden church, little larger than a garden shed. It was the focal point of religious Penitentes, who marched in a single line, flagellating themselves, seeking forgiveness.

In that environment, John remodeled the dance hall into a church, office, classrooms and an apartment for him and his wife, Ethel, and he utilized the equipment to open doors among the small farmers in the dusty arroyos between Espanola and Chimayo. They could not afford individually field prep and harvest equipment that would increase their yields, and they welcomed the method and message of John Abbott to work among them, to share the work and to share his faith.

With hard work, ingenuity, faith and commitment, John and Ethel started and built a church which membership was primarily Spanish, descendants of Spanish invaders of the 16th century and Native American tribes.  They called it Templo Bautista – Baptist Temple.

Then one day in one of those freak accidents that make Christians wonder if God is paying attention, a piece of equipment that John was working under fell off its jack and crushed him. I guess he was medically unsound after all.

Ethel was suddenly a widow. Much of her livelihood disappeared because she could not run the equipment. John was the pastor, breadwinner, husband, visionary, guide, energy behind the entire effort. I don’t know how old Ethel was. She always seemed old to me, but I was just 20 when I met her. I’m sure I’m older now than she was then.

She promised God she would stay at Templo, would continue the work, if God would send her help. Because of her winsome spirit and compelling stories, Ethel received a fairly regular trickle of weekend or week-long helpers to lead special events and do repair work around the ancient facility. But she needed an everyday helper.

Her prayer and mine – what to do now that I’m getting out of the Army – clanged together in God’s ear and I became that first long-term helper. I was a pale, nerdy Scandihoovian from Wisconsin, knew zero Spanish and was new in evangelical faith. I’d been drafted into the Army after one year at Luther College and now I was out and at loose ends.

I started in November 1973 as a bus driver, youth minister, preacher, log splitter, painter, floor sander, week-night Bible study leader, and encourager. We called many of our members on Sunday morning to wake them in time to catch the bus I drove.

I brought them to church, preached at them and hauled them home. All this was done with sincere, naive spirit and within a profoundly knit community. The names “Ethel” or “John Abbot” opened any door in the county quicker than an electronic key.

I realize now the way we did church was paternalistic. We expected and required too little of members. There was an easy believe-ism in which membership at Templo eased seamlessly into whatever other influences they were weighing. Part of our motivation with activities was to “keep the kids out of trouble.”

But we slogged on. I went back to my home church in Colorado Springs to tell them of the work in New Mexico, and to raise money for Christmas goody baskets for the kids. One young lady was struck by the need, by the opportunity and by my wistful pleas. A few weeks later she arrived as a second helper, in the midst of a snow storm, as the children were trekking down the hallway in their angel and wise men costumes to present the Christmas story.

Her arrival on that snowy night declared that what I’d thought to be the first chapter of this story was merely prologue.

(First chapter to come)

When ‘Star Wars’ was Young

normanjameson Leave a comment

Writers enjoy the enviable blessing of leaving a trail through our history that we can follow back to the beginnings. Like Hansel and Gretel, our words are the cookie crumbs that prompt memories to lead us home. They bring back the people, smells, sights and energy of the moment when we recorded them.

As a reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph in 1977, my “beat” was anything the editor tossed onto my desk. Foraging through boxes of clippings recently, in an ongoing effort to “clean out stuff,” I came across one of my few movie reviews.

We’d heard a big new picture was sweeping the nation; people in California were standing in lines that reached around city blocks to get tickets to the new George Lucas film “Star Wars.”

Earning $140 a week I was always looking for a cheap date night, so when the editor asked who wanted to go see this movie and write a review, I volunteered. No one else really was interested.

I was fortunate the audience that night included a gaggle of legitimate science fiction writers attending a conference in town.

For those of you who are fans of the early Star Wars movies – and I would guess the number to be close to 100 percent – I offer some excerpts of my original review.

“Out among the stars many years ago, the galaxies all lived in peace and were controlled by a ‘force’ that flowed through every creature and held the universe together.

“Then one creature wanted more power than he was allotted and fell in with a band of like-minded rogues.

“With superior weapons, the boys in black took over more and more of the universe until only a die-hard rebel remnant of the original government remained. When the two groups collided, it was ‘Star Wars.’

“So much for the plot…”

As a nascent movie reviewer, I got hung up on plot and dialog, things that make a great play or book.

“The problem with the show,” I wrote, “is that despite a visual feast, the dialogue is so inane it makes the main course much less palatable.”

When a legion of Imperial storm troopers has the hero quartet of Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and that extra from Planet of the Apes, Chewbacca, seemingly trapped, Leia sneers at Solo and blasts through a wall and to provide escape into the ship’s garbage dump.

“When the four are up to their knees in scrap metal and muck,” I wrote, “hero Han says, ‘It could be worse.’ Then a low roar sounds and he says, ‘It’s worse.’ Then comes the clincher. With the walls of the giant trash compactor closing together, the lunk pipes up, ‘I have a bad feeling about this…One thing for sure, we’re all going to be a lot thinner.’”

Ugh, right?

Science fiction writers I interviewed afterwards gave me some perspective. They had been writing around similar themes for years, they said. So, while Star Wars offered nothing new in plot, they were delighted to see “the technical realization of ideas developed long ago.”

Lucas, unknown to the general public before Star Wars, added the visual magic to science fiction ideas that were floating through space for decades.

Although I didn’t keep a clipping of the letter to the editor that criticized my review, I remember the comment distinctly. “Your reviewer must have had his head in a vise,” said the writer, who obviously loved the movie.

But, that’s how ideas work. One creative mind builds on ideas floated by another.

After Karl Benz invented his “motor wagen” Henry Ford added assembly line manufacture. While Whitcomb Judson worked with buttons and eventually built something he called a “clasp locker” it was Gideon Sundback who created the zipper.

Walt Disney drew Mickey Mouse and his successors created the Magic Kingdom.

A zillion ideas are floating around out there, most of them better off lost to history, even lost in space. But, keep your eyes open. Maybe you’ll be the one to magically bring to life an idea that others will stand in line to witness.

By the way, well and properly educated to the sweeping social impact of the Star Wars trilogy, when “The Empire Strikes Back” showed up three years later, I was first in line.