Category Remembrance

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.

‘Nothing lasts like it used to’

normanjameson Leave a comment

I once took it as irrefutable truth that “Nothing lasts like it used to.”

For the most part, I agreed that manufacturers were “building in obsolescence” so you’ll have to replace that refrigerator you’ve had for 25 years with a new one you can expect to last only 10 at best.

It’s easier and cheaper to replace appliances than it is to repair them. Good for the manufacturers, bad for service repairmen.

Credit that brief functional life to plastic parts. While it may take 10,000 years to decay in the landfill, plastic in the essential workings of everyday products seem to decay in 10 months. Plastic is so pervasive that we don’t even realize how many items that once were made were made with metal or wood and were strong enough to become heirlooms are now made with plastic and won’t get your kid through kindergarten.

To start a list of all things plastic would require more capacity than my computer has. You may be reading this through lenses held to your nose with plastic frames. You bring home groceries in plastic bags, or get fast food through your car window in plastic containers. Plastic is often useful but nothing plastic can be expected to last long enough for your child to use it as an adult.

Yet, I’m still using an electric grinder my dad used to sharpen the ax he handed me to split firewood. A brass lawn sprinkler I finally sprung for has outlasted a dozen plastic sprinklers.

So yes, I agreed for the most part that “Nothing is built to last” anymore. But then I thought of shoelaces.

Remember when you had to replace shoelaces? When you had to keep extras on hand because they always broke just when you were hurriedly tying a knot to catch the bus for school? Or when you’re trying to get your gym shoes on for phys ed?

And weren’t the only shoelaces available in the catch-all drawer never the color or length you needed? Lots of white laces in the draw when you needed black and vice versa. Don’t even talk to me about brown.

Now the laces in my shoes, from court shoes, to hiking boots to dress shoes outlast the shoes themselves. My sole was falling off my 35-year old Vasque Sundowner hiking boots, but the laces are unfrayed. How DO they do that?

And cars.

Car buffs wax nostalgic about the autos of our youth, but our love affair with those massive, ungainly hunks of American steel was more about style than quality or agility. They burned gas like the sun burns hydrogen.

I became a writer because I couldn’t fix cars. All my buddies, it seemed, knew how to adjust a carburetor, or set the gap on a spark plug, or adjust the timing belt. I knew where the gas went. And I could change a tire.

But, what future awaited in my rural Wisconsin community if I knew nothing about cars and didn’t have a farm to inherit? Cars are another thing better today than a generation ago. Even Car and Driver magazine says, “Cars these days are made to last much longer than those produced even a few decades ago.” Reason being, “car parts are now constructed to withstand more wear than in the past.”

New cars are basically computers on wheels. Electronic eyes can keep a safe distance between you and the car ahead; can keep your vehicle centered in the lane; go 5,000-7000 miles between oil changes; are just getting warmed up at 100,000 miles on the odometer.

Of course, people are driving more today. Commutes of 45 minutes each way are common and longer distances are not unheard of. But no one had 100,000 miles on a car when I was a kid. A guy would hesitate to buy a used car with half that mileage.

 And then there is the elastic that holds up my socks, and keeps my boxer briefs from falling off my hips. My socks never stayed up when I was a kid, and the elastic waistband in my underwear didn’t last many rounds through the wringer washer before they collapsed in their effort to stay aloft.

Today the elastic in my socks could cut off my circulation and that in my waistband could be a tourniquet for an elephant’s mangled leg.

So, it’s not true that nothing is as good or as long lasting as it once was. And if you argue about it, I’m going to throw my Walkman at you and tie you to the broken fridge in my garage.

Going to need extra chairs

normanjameson Leave a comment

Me in the middle, with Janet and Bill in 2021.

When my grandmother died in 1979, I drove my young wife and one-month old son from our home in Nashville, TN to the funeral in Wisconsin. Grandma was young enough to have a large funeral, just 72 years old. My age.

Of course, in Rio, WI, population 788, funerals were as big a social event as Friday night football at the field in Fireman’s Park. I didn’t play football. I ran cross country instead, which I convinced myself was harder.

But I was at the football games, either running the sideline keeping stats, or in the stands playing “CHARGE” on my trombone.

After grandma’s funeral service at Redeemer Lutheran, one of six churches in town – equal to the number of bars – everyone gathered in the church basement for a lunch prepared by women of the church. Because the meal was free, and there wasn’t much else happening in town that day, the room was crowded.

My wife was most concerned with the one-month old son not accustomed to the noise and crowd and whose only real concern was keeping his tummy full and his diaper dry. So, he started fussing and wailing and that’s not the sound you want to hear piercing the din of chattery family members chowing down on store bought dinner rolls filled with a slice of ham and a slab of butter, potato salad and red Jell-O with marshmallows.

Suddenly, from across the entire fellowship hall, packed hip to hip at the folding tables, my aunt Janet yelled, “Give that boy some titty!”

Now, in another context other than a rural Wisconsin farming community, that comment might have seemed out of place, even impolite. Certainly it caused all the blood in my wife’s body to flush to her toes and then recongregate in her face, making her flush a brighter red than the Rio High School Vikings mascot. But, it also gave her the freedom to excuse herself, find a quiet Sunday School classroom, and take care of our son’s immediate need.

Aunt Janet died this week, at age 91. She was my mother’s last surviving sibling and mom preceded her in death by 29 years. They were two of eight siblings, prompting my grandpa McFarlane to say he had “Two and a half-dozen children.” When grandma McFarlane died, petty sibling grievances broke familial bonds and later on, as one sibling after another died, obituaries did not list all surviving family members, as if they never existed.

But Aunt Janet was always a friend, in part due to the loquacious character of her husband, Bill, a former police officer and much longer a seed corn salesman who knew every farmer and what they needed most. Bill preceded her in death by three years.

I confess Janet’s was the first bare breast I ever saw, as I stood wide-eyed at age five while she fed her first born son, Mark, a man who grew up to be a Presbyterian pastor, nurtured as he was on the milk of human kindness. He could preach from I Peter 2, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.”

Janet and Bill had five children and 10 grandchildren and money never flowed like water over Niagara. Janet always put her hand to the wheel to find additional resources, driving school bus for more than two decades and making wedding cakes for lucky brides and grooms.

She looked at driving bus as ministry, taking the opportunity to offer a bright, encouraging word to children with dour faces, lifting heavy, reluctant feet up the step on the way to school.

She was certain of opinion and ready with advice.

When Janet learned my cousin Allen smoked, she asked if he would rather kiss a girl or an ashtray. Allen, sarcastically defending his nasty habit, told me he responded “Ashtray.” He’s since grown beyond that – both in girls and habit.

 Janet and Bill built a house on a hill overlooking that of her mother Eva and she was diligent in looking after her mother to the end. Eva –my grandmother on my mother’s side – expressed concern that bad weather would limit the size of her funeral. She was mentally comparing her eventual celebration to the big crowd that showed up for her husband’s sendoff. In her mind, her funeral would suffer by comparison and somehow that would reflect negatively on her life.

Though such comparison is a false equivalency, if every person whose life Janet affected positively were to attend her funeral, ushers will need to bring in extra chairs.

Two Ways To Do It

normanjameson Leave a comment

I grew up working with and for my Norwegian bachelor farmer uncle Donnie, who made a living milking 19 cows on 80 sandy acres in southern Wisconsin. As a kid I tried to impress him with my strength by carrying 40 pound buckets of milk to the cooling tank when I didn’t weigh much more than twice that. I struggled to make it look easy, but he knew it took all I had.

I get to practice what i learned while young at White Horse Farm in Pennsylvania, where my son’s family lives.

In the ‘60s corn had to be cultivated to keep the weeds down before “poison ready” genetically modified seed became the norm. So I’d sit on the tractor with Don as he drove the little plows through two rows at a time to dig out the weeds. If he hit a stone or lost concentration and the cultivator dug out some corn, I’d hop off, stick it back into the ground, and run to catch up.

Building or repairing barbed wire fence, learning how to drive tractor and truck, milk a cow and slop a pig, being rewarded with a chocolate milk and donut at the Midget Kitchen on Hwy. 16 all were part of my kinetic education – along with learning how to understand the punchline of coarse jokes.

Once I reached about age 13 my services were much in demand by local farmers who needed help detasseling corn, baling hay, picking stones or cleaning out stalls and stables. I was a tall, thin kid who was young Sheldon in the classroom and who saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in the mirror.

Our local farmers were basically one-man-and-a-son operations, and I replaced the boy who had grown and gone to the city. To make hay while the sun shined, we cut the alfalfa, let it dry for three days and hoped for no rain. Then we raked it into windrows, scooped it up and compacted it into 40-50 pound bales with a tractor pulling a baler pulling a wagon with a kid on the wagon stacking the bales.

Most generally it was me and the farmer – baling, loading, unloading onto an elevator and stacking in the barn. There were two kinds of farmers when it came to engaging my services on a hot summer day. One I’ll call Uncle Donnie’s way, on account of it’s about my Uncle Donnie. The other I could call “the efficient way,” on account of it’s the opposite of my Uncle Donnie.

When Uncle Don picked me up in the morning, we’d get to the farm and have to gas up the tractor, grease the baler and put in baling twine, hook the baler to the tractor, connect the power takeoff shaft and move the elevator into position to carry the bales up into the hay mow. It wasn’t unusual for us to have round up a wagon or two that a neighbor farmer had borrowed.

All the while I’m looking at all that hay, laying expectantly in windrows in the field, itching to get out there and get started, knowing it was going to be a long day. And it was threatening to rain.

Farmers committed to “the efficient way” and to getting all the work out of me they could, completed all the preliminaries before I got there. The baler was greased and hooked to the tractor, which was gassed and ready. The elevator was in place, all the necessary wagons were lined up, and mother had lunch in the oven.

We got twice as much done in half the time. And there are few things as satisfying as looking over a freshly harvested field, seeing it cut and clean and all the hay is in the barn before the rain comes.

That, and the fact that the more efficient farmers tended to pay $1.25 an hour, rather than $1.00.

Readiness makes the difference. Many of you work with non-profit organizations. Respect the time of your volunteers. Don’t let them show up on a work day or at a fund raising event and have to stand around and twiddle their thumbs. If they are volunteer tutors, have a student already selected and matched.

Then, let it rain.

Carting away your history

normanjameson 3 Comments

Strangers carted away my friend’s history yesterday, piece by piece.

An auctioneer’s singsong cajoling held Dave’s life up for examination and bid. Chains, tractors, implements, house furniture, fuel tanks, rakes and hoes all appraised unemotionally for their “value” by area farmers hoping to find a deal, make a steal.

Dave’s farm, eight curvy, hilly miles from any main road, looked like a Ford dealership, as 120 trucks – at least 100 of them Ford F150s, 250s and 350s – parked nose first along the edge of the cornfield like piglets nursing. Amish neighbors in their round straw hats parked their buggies in the yard, and tied their horses to a shade tree. An early morning deluge left the grounds muddy but didn’t discourage potential buyers from picking at the accumulated instruments of Dave’s farming life.

Dave is in the second year of an ALS diagnosis and at age 72 he’d decided to sell the farm where he’d lived 46 years, raising his three children in a Trumanesque environment in rural Pennsylvania.

He is slowly losing muscle strength everywhere but in his smile.

When major items like his John Deere tractors didn’t sell for what he’d hoped, he shrugged and said, “Let’em go.” Trying to sell them on the open market later, hoping for a more equitable price, was just too much trouble to contemplate.

Dave and his dad built the house atop the hill, where his wife huddled now with a long-time neighbor to avoid seeing four decades of her life picked over, devalued and carted away. The house wasn’t quite finished in time for their first child to come home to it from the hospital. But it was finished two weeks later and she’s lived there ever since.

Dave decided to sell the house, barns and 45 acres on which he’d lived his entire adult life so that Debbie wouldn’t have to…later. Once decided, his second son, Mark, drove him through the rural neighborhood to pass out flyers announcing the sale. They left fliers with neighbors who Mark knew did not have the means as potential buyers, but he eventually realized he was driving his father around on a farewell tour.

“He just wanted to say goodbye to the neighbors he’d known for 45 years,” Mark said. When Mark realized that, he settled in and enjoyed the ritual.

The man who’d purchased the farm was present at the auction. He’d bought it for his daughter and son-in-law as a place to raise their children, in rural Pennsylvania, giving them the benefit of idyllic life in rolling hills, among Amish farmers, an area where church and school are the gravitational centers of community life.

Dave’s adult children and their spouses were present and helping. Grandchildren roamed through the barns for the last time, daringly climbing steep ladders to where hay once was stacked high, making sure that mom and dad saw their accomplishment. Dave’s sons recounted adventures with tractors, camping in the woods, trapping ground hogs and shooting that would make their survival a mystery.

This was their home being carted away on the backs of trucks and trailers. They weren’t sad – yet. The hard decision had already been made – to sell the farm and auction off the equipment. This was just the physical manifestation of their decision.

But, when the last cabinet was pushed into the back of a minivan; and the last tractor was loaded onto a flatbed; when the camper the grandkids slept in the night before rolled away behind a pickup, the somber reality settled over the property like an early morning fog settles into valleys.

I hugged each goodbye, Dave’s arms limp at his sides, and thanked them for including me in their family. Through thick and thin, good times or bad, through the struggles inevitably ahead, he’s my brother and the auction was another milestone toward “next.”

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.

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.

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.