Sixty Years Ago

How many lifetimes are there in sixty years? One? Three? Twenty? It seems like forever.

This morning I sent birthday greetings to someone who was my world sixty years ago. I sent an Email and a YouTube video to her page on Facebook. How different from the modes of communication available sixty years ago! In 1953 I rarely had enough coins in my pocket for a greeting card let alone a worthy gift. I was a senior in high school and she was a sophomore. I spent more time thinking about her than about graduating and facing the unknown future of college or beyond. We had a few minutes together after school waiting for our respective school buses. When I could, I’d hitch hike to her house so we could sit in her sun-parlor to be alone together. If my dad let me borrow his car we’d go for ice cream or just park. We went places with her gym teacher. It felt good to have someone who loved me.  I didn’t know a thing about real love.

I had to go to summer school that year to make up a class in which I got a failing grade and in September I started college. I didn’t want to be there. I’d always hated school. I had no educational or career goals. While school classes were easy, effortless for me, college required hard work, long hours of study, dedication. Add having to work the job I’d picked up during the summer as an afternoon duty, I was faced with a choice between the future and the present. Immature as I was, I chose the joy and contentment with the latter. Between my classes I’d rush to the high school to spend a period with my love. Everyone knew we were a couple and felt good for us. I was popular for my singing and she was as pretty a girl as any young fellow could want. My college grades were terrible. I had special counseling with a mentor.

I began amateur singing locally and that led to attention from other girls. I liked that. My love was still in school and her mama had a curfew for my visits. Sometimes I couldn’t see her for appropriate reasons. There were phone limits as well. I also played recreational baseball and spent time in town with friends I’d made. To my everlasting sorrow, I took up with a girl who would have been called an almost-stalker nowadays. It began innocently enough. Just another school mate. But she was convenient and available when I couldn’t be with my love. I’ll never know what the hell I was thinking…other than I wasn’t thinking. Keep in mind, this was back when sex wasn’t part of establishing a relationship. It was something still saved for marriage or at least a family and public commitment. Word got around and my love broke up with me. My pleadings went unheeded. Justifiably so. My heart was broken and all I could do was write country songs about her and about my feelings.

I attempted to “make up” by joining the gymnastics school she attended with her new boyfriend. He was an excellent gymnast; I was a jerk. I wound up going with another girl but continued my mourning.

Several years later, I ran into her at a park where we’d both taken our children to play. We exchanged some pleasantries, inquiries about our progeny, but nothing about spousal relationships. I didn’t know she was divorced. I’d long wished I were single as well.

About six or seven years ago, I found her name on an Internet social page. She was still close to home in New Jersey and I was stuck in California. Emails became phone calls. We were both single. My missions work led me to El Salvador but our communicating continued. My 55th class reunion was coming up and I asked her to be my date. She accepted. I planned for staying only a few days and those with a life-long friend. But she arranged a hotel room for me not far from the site of the reunion. My friend loaned me a guitar for me to play at the reunion, something of a reminiscence of our senior year assemblies and exchange talent shows with other high schools.

The hotel desk informed me of her arrival in the lobby. I couldn’t wait to see her after all these decades. She’d sent me recent photos from local plays she’d performed in and she looked amazingly great in them. But nothing could have prepared me for the vision waiting at the desk. This wasn’t my blue-eyed angel in jeans from the 50s. This was a glamour queen, a super model right off the runway, the beautiful, youthful, graceful woman of whom I’d dreamed so many times for more than a half-century. Her short hair graced the little changed face of her teens. Her body was slender and firm. Her hug was as I’d remembered it. Her lips were as lovingly warm as they were fifty-five years ago.

When I introduced her to my classmates, I’m sure they sensed the excitement radiating from deep within my soul. Many remembered our end-of-year romance. She was the grace at our table. The excellent dinner was outshone by her presence. We were king and queen of the prom.

Singing for my class, singing to my lady was the high point for us. How many years ago had I written songs of love and pain for her and she’d never heard them. The one record I’d cut at our local radio station got ruined in transit when I mailed it from California. It was one-of-a-kind and now lost forever. I sang some of the blue-eyed songs I used to sing for her in high school. Then I sang the songs I wrote for her so long ago. An old but still strong love filled the room.

At her home we talked a lot. We’d led different lives but had our joys and sorrows. I wondered as I always wonder what if… She was the level-headed one. I hadn’t known how wise she was. She was a guiding light that helped me overcome the insecurities of a fledgling singer. I didn’t know how much I needed her help me balance my life until I passed up opportunities without thinking. Roger, the genius, couldn’t make the right decisions.

I didn’t spend the night. With each other, we are still virgins. Her words were, “Why start something we can’t finish.” At 72 I was not the stud I was at 27 nor the clumsy novice I was at 17. Once again, she was the practical one while my mind (if not my body) was in impulsive mode.

We spent a wonderful next day together. We visited my friend to return his guitar and say good-bye. We drove over the river to Pennsylvania and had lunch there. We took photos by the river and she took me back to my hotel for our last good-bye.

 

Five years have passed. I’m married again. I’m very much in love with Margarita. She’s the perfect wife for where I am physically, emotionally, spiritually and geographically in life.  We’ve got two fun kids who keep me crazy. This is not the life that Willie Nelson is leading or that George Jones led until his recent passing. El Salvador is not where I ever expected to visit let alone live out my days. 

My date has a friend she spends a lot of time with. She stays active at her senior center playing bridge and pool. She visits her kids. We don’t write personal letters now. I never finished a song I’d entitled “What Almost Was Is Never Gonna Be” but the title gives you a bit about what I was thinking. Still, I will always be in love with her and wonder, wonder, wonder.

Kids: Why Do We Have Them?

May 9, 2013. My fourth daughter (by my second wife) turns 43 today. As the old-folks say, “Where did the time go?” I can still hear her mother screaming and cursing from the labor room after a long drive to get her to the hospital. I can still feel her little body in my arms when she’d wake up crying in the night. I can still see her holding on to furniture as she learned to walk. I can still picture her when I found her after her mother absconded with her and her brother from New Jersey to Michigan to avoid a custody order. I can still envision her transition to a California girl. That’s still frightening! I can see her hitting a softball or pegging one in from the outfield. I yet marvel at her versatility as a ball player, her talent as a singer and actor, her strong will as a rebellious teenager. She was and is a source of pride and wonder as she’s gone through the stages of life.

She’s in San Francisco, CA USA and I’m in El Refugio, Ahuachapán El Salvador C.A. I haven’t heard directly from her in years. There’s little on her Facebook page to let me know how she is, what kinds of adventures she’s had lately, if she’s happy. Almost all of her sisters and brothers are no different. No greetings for my birthdays, Father’s Day, or anniversaries although I don’t forget theirs. With all the world electronically connected it shouldn’t be a chore.

I don’t know what she thinks of my, let’s see, fifth marriage and assumption of two more siblings for her. I would be happy for my parent if he or she were happy. And I am. But if life is a partially damaged cake, this estrangement takes most of the icing from the remainder.

I look at family relationships this way: They’re for life. Your father is always your father no matter how many times your mother remarries or he remarries. Your child is your child whether he visits every Sunday or once a decade, whether he becomes President of the United States or a recidivist in his state’s prison system. Like any relationship, you don’t have to like or agree with everything your buddy, your brother, your son, or your dad does, but he’s still your buddy, your brother, your son, or your dad.

I’ve made two major geographic moves in my 77 years. At age 42 I moved with my wife and 3 8/9 kids to California from New Jersey. At age 72 I moved single to El Salvador, where I’d done missionary work and was made to feel part of the community. The first move was to find peace and geographic separation from ex-wives. The second move was to find peace from the destructive chaos which is the substance of California. My older children were adults at the time of my California exodus. They were all adults with children of their own when I sought refuge here in El Refugio. I have never been unavailable to my children at any stage of my life. I did not abandon my children or my grandchildren. I certainly did not demote them with the adoption of Adriana or assuming the father role for Luís when I married Margarita. My happiness should in no way diminish that of my descendants.

I’ve known complex families in which there have been two or more marriages with “his, hers, and ours” offspring. Occasionally there might be conflict when the children are young and one kid’s dad buys more or better toys than the other non-custodial parent, goes on more exciting vacations, or lives near the beach. But for the most part, the kids grow up as siblings without the prefixes “half-” or “step-” and enjoy a close relationship. Civilized divorces (if such exist) allow current spouses and ex-spouses to socialize for the benefit of all.

Here in El Salvador, “informal marriages” are part of the social norm and it is not uncommon for a woman to be raising several kids by several dads. Margarita’s four children have other siblings, some with whom they are close and others unknown to them, but these four are brothers and sisters. There’s no stigma, no jealousies, and certainly no neuroses about these “un-American” relationships. As with breast feeding in public, perhaps we gringos are behind in our social norms with the rest of the world.

I’ve rarely accepted “Just because.” as an answer to “Why?” and I don’t accept similar excuses for ignoring family or cutting them off.  My opinion won’t change anything in my life after decades of childish behavior and my expressing it publicly might even lead to a “See how he is?” response among the collaborators.

I believe that God takes care of His own. So I have beautiful memories of when my kids were my kids. I have also been blessed with the opportunity to make new memories with Luís and Adriana, two kids who didn’t have a father until Margarita and I married three years ago May 7th.  They’re not replacements for the ones that got away. You don’t replace originals (parents, siblings, kids, best friends) with substitutes. The new ones are also originals, different from each other and their predecessors. Adriana will never be the poised ice queen or the outgoing hail-missy-well-met that might describe a couple of my four older daughters. Luís won’t be the Spartan go-getter or my clone that might describe a couple of my three older sons. Heck, they might never learn to speak English well. But God has provided them for me to love and enjoy in and of themselves and not in lieu of relationships missed. For that I will be grateful until the day I die.

Happy birthday, Jackie. With love from your father.

Jackie 1970

Jackie 2012

On Death and Dying (With Apologies to Elizabeth Kubler Ross)

I wrote in my last kountryking blog that I am 77 and as far as I know in reasonable health. Longevity is mine from my mother’s people, from my abstinence from common life-shorteners, and from my modest dedication to physical fitness. Still, I am dying.

Yes, we begin dying from the moment we’re born but I mean I am dying. Do I have some fatal disease? Not according to the doctors here. But I am dying. I feel it in my body. My ability to do the things that I enjoy is diminishing at an accelerated rate. The aches in the muscles I use less frequently and the pains in the joints worn with use can no longer be ignored and “worked out”. I’ve given up trying to learn the names of new people and to whom they’re related because I can’t remember the names of people I’ve worked with, taught, or shared some other experience with in recent years. For someone who has taken pride in his mind and body, two tools that have kept me ahead in life’s race for so long, it is difficult to accept all this deterioration. I’ve been hit by a tsunami of aging and I’m being flushed out to sea. I can’t swim against the tide and I can’t mentally locate a solution to my dilemma. The fact is, there is none. Death is part of life.

I can’t say I have a timeline. No doctor has given me x-number of weeks, months or years. It’s just something I feel. I’m  aware of the beginning of the decline. It started when our church school closed at the end of 2010. Having been blessed with a second chance to teach was so uplifting. But then I suddenly found myself with more time on my hands and nothing meaningful to fill the space on a full-time basis. Ensuing changes in my church further left me rather isolated from the human contact everyone needs. Moving from Barrio Nuevo to Barrio Centro diminished my casual contacts with passers-by for verbal intercourse. Our new street is rather dead. I truly relied on my students, colleagues, and fellow church activists to improve my Spanish and understanding of the local culture. You don’t learn either from books.

I have done my best to keep alert by writing blogs, communicating with peers and family via E-mail (such as have interest in me and my life), and over-connecting with Facebook friends. I do crossword puzzles. I accept other challenges that come via Internet. I find most as easy as ever, but some formulas and tricks elude me on challenges that used to give me little problem. I enjoy conversing with educated people because they speak Spanish on the level at which I learned it. The Salvadoran Vulgate is horrendous. I enjoy conversing with kids because they speak Spanish at the level to which mine has deteriorated. My daughter gives me lots of practice. Sometimes I don’t understand my wife at all. On these occasions I don’t even bother. I feign listening and act out the appropriate body language based on hers. In church it’s the same way. If the person at the pulpit speaks clearly and at a moderate rate of speed, I’ll follow the message. If not, I contemplate the bananas on the tree outside the sanctuary window. My interest level has also sunk to “I’m not going to miss anything”. That’s another sign of dying. So is “Tell me something I haven’t heard before”.

The ankle I broke in 1980, the shoulder surgeries I had in 1999 and 2001, the knee wear from years of almost daily distance running, and creeping arthritis in my finger joints have forced me to stop running, doing push ups, and enjoying my guitar. Lately, walking has become painful. Getting up from a long session at the computer hurts my knees. Being unable to play guitar as fast or as accurately as I once could (not that I was ever a very good guitarist) is not only physically but mentally painful. All of the above can be depressing. I want to do things but I just can’t.

Today I did something I’ve been putting off for years. When I came to El Salvador, I sold, gave away, or trashed most of what was near and dear to me. I kept some papers, letters, my school records and entrance exam test scores. I threw away the card that American MENSA sent me when I qualified to join that group of geniuses. (“Mensa” in Spanish means “crazy” so I didn’t want to have to explain that to Customs or my neighbors.) What I kept was in manila folders in my desk. For ages I meant to go through them to see what I had but never did…until today.

I had report cards from elementary school with notes from my teachers relating my strengths, weaknesses, and unsocial behavior. I was reminded of “not living up to his potential” and “willful and continued disobedience”. This was long before schools had accelerated programs for “gifted” students. I read letters between my mother and the bitch-teacher I had in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades, as well as with the superintendent of schools. I didn’t realize how articulate she was and how much she fought on my behalf. She was aware that I was not an angel but that the teacher was not doing her job. She had to write letters again when I didn’t graduate high school with my class because a teacher who thought he was doing me a favor cost me the credit and I had to go to summer school to make it up. She also had to write for a letter of support from the superintendent in that school district so I could enter college without my diploma. That would come the following year.

I found letters to and from lawyers, Legal Aid, Attorney General Jerry Brown, journalists, and newspapers regarding my phony conviction that cost me my career, my reputation, and my family. There were articles by and about others who had been overzealously prosecuted for various illicit reasons. Some had their cases reversed. Others were futilely seeking justice. I’d hoped I could get justice as well. But during the past 25 years I’ve given up hope and accepted a life in exile and relative safety. If there was any justice it’s in the knowledge that the guy who prosecuted me was given the opportunity to resign rather than get fired when he was finally confronted. He now works for the Public Defender in another county. But there’s never been an investigation of his convictions to determine how many victims he put away and who should be retried.

Two items I kept and scanned to my laptop. The first was from the local paper. It had a photo of my mother in 1976 with a cook book assembled by senior citizens. The author/chefs represented different ethnic backgrounds which made for a tasty batch of recipes. I guess the reporter interviewed her and found her story interesting. Seeing the article after having read her letters and a graduation card left me sitting in tears. She was able to physically abuse me as punishment for my actions and call me the most awful names. These did nothing for my self-esteem or social life as I grew older. (I wanted to say “matured” but that would be a lie.) Still, she introduced me to culture, provided me with musical instruments and six-months of piano lessons (until the teacher moved to Florida), books and encyclopedias to fill my mind and salve my curiosity about the world, and encouraged me to excel. Well, encourage may not be the word I want. Cattle prodded me toward the unattainable perfection she desired?

The second piece I found was a letter and hand-made birthday card from my beloved sister Sally. It was mailed to me when I turned twenty-one. Before I reveal its contents, let me tell you something about my sister and how much she has meant to me. My life with my mother was one of constant fear. My father did his best to avoid conflict with her.  He commuted to his job in New York and made himself busy working in his workshop, being a volunteer fireman, or helping neighbors with all kinds of repairs. He was very skilled with his hands and tools. My sister, my only sibling, is eight years my elder. When she wasn’t studying or involved in her social life, she would play with me. I could always look to her for the emotional support that my parents weren’t equipped or of a mind to give. Not having a big brother to look up to or learn from, my sister was my mentor and inspiration. She taught me my first guitar chords. She let me look over her shoulder when she studied and I picked up a lot of French and math while I was still in primary grades. If only the bitch-teacher could have been more like Sally. She went to college, worked at a camp or a mental hospital during her vacations, and got married. I missed her, but such is life. Friends and playmates come and go but your sister is supposed to be for as long as you live. Sadly, that’s not been the case.

The letter on a legal sheet of yellow paper in the envelope postmarked Nixon, N.J. Jun 9, 1957 reads as follows: I remember the cold winter nite your were born or rather, I really remember the morn — Daddy woke me & said, “You now have a brother” and he lifted me up so I could see over the dresser & chifferobe & right into their room….no mother! And right after school I moved in with the Scotts for 10 days, an experience I guess I’ll remember always— Goldy’s good cooking. I remember that, and then, too, there was Libby’s cat (crawled on my face at nite) and Sammy & Libby fighting over a particular chair and screaming, “You’re putting yellow vapor in the air!” (day & nite)

And then Mommy came home and I rushed in to see you, Roger, My Brother! What a disappointment—so red–so wrinkled—so ugly—Can’t we change him for another? And you cried and you wet but you smiled and then you walked and you tipped over my potty and got into my trunk, but you talked! Ethel’s “Golden Keppele”, Yampolsky’s ”Pompush”, Meyer White had a pet name for you too. A smile for everyone, a cheerful hello–and how those golden curls grew.

Until one afternoon when we were all at Germaine’s, Daddy took you home & clipped your locks. Lovely curls on a cotton bed–’neath a glass–in a blue box. How we cried! And I wrote:

I have a smiling brother And I know there’s not another. He can smile away your sighs With the twinkle of his eyes.

And now I write: I have a singing brother And I know there’s not another. He will sing his way to fame or Mushkee tala ma platt is not my name.

The Mushkee thing was one of our private fun things. We’d look at each other and know the look that told us to recite those meaningless syllables. We had other brother-sister craziness as well.

Sally’s birthday letter, page 1

Sally’s birthday letter, page 2.

The birthday card will need some explanation. If you grew up in Stelton in the late 1930s and 1940s maybe not so much. Here are two panes of the card:

Back & Front of 21st Birthday card from my sister Sally

If I ever knew what the first frame represented I’ve forgotten. It looks like a play pen with a bearded fellow stuck behind the bars. Maybe Sally was prophetic. I didn’t have a beard in 1957. I barely had to shave twice a week. The bow tie looks like one of the ties I’d wear to perform. The second frame is Sally wearing a cake with 21 candles. We had a running joke about her nose. It was so big there was a little man living in the 14th precinct. Her nose really wasn’t big. 

Inside panes and envelope.

You’d probably never guess what the left pane is about. I’ll tell you. It’s a drawing of the coal stove in the corner of the front room in our first house. It was a Windsor with stove-pipe leading to the chimney behind the wall. There was always a chinik, Yiddish for tea kettle, on top. The stove sat on a metal plate to keep it from burning the wood floor. What’s missing is the coal pail and shovel that sat beside it. The shovel became my mother’s weapon of choice if one of my little toys got in her way or for whatever justification she had for beating me. But the stove was warmth in the winter. It was the place to get as close to as possible when coming in from the snow. You’d feel the cells of your body tingle as they danced apart from the sudden warmth. Grandma Nellie’s rocking chair sat across the kitchen entrance from the stove. It was always a favorite place for a little boy to sit or to be rocked on the lap of a parent.           

The right pane is our yard. The weeping willow tree was the center of the family’s social life, especially during the war. By day it offered shade and a sense of coolness when the narrow leaves and thin branches would blow adding to the ventilation. By evening, GI’s from Camp Kilmer, neighbors, and friends would initially meet there. Or my sister’s school friends would gather to party and sing. The Southern GIs brought their guitars and country music. I had to go to bed early but I could hear the music in its native twang. Who could know that one day I’d be earning money from following their tradition. So there are the soldiers and the guitars. All these things were important to my life and my family’s.

At the bottom is the envelope these came in. How quaint to see the three cent embossed stamp, the postal address with Nixon on it, and even my sister’s married name stamped in the corner.

I would never want to live my life over again. There have been many highs but as many lows. The old house has been torn down and a new one put in its place. Only one family still lives there who can relate to this accounting. My sister has estranged herself from me believing I was guilty of the crime that never occurred. My parents are long dead. My children feel I have abandoned them. First from my move to California. Then to my new home in El Salvador. I live now to love and serve the God who gave me so many gifts which I abused or didn’t use to their full potential. I love my wife Margarita and our two little kids. Reading the notes from my teachers made me think of some of the problems our Luís has with his own identity and self-esteem. I want to be there for him and help him to become a good man. Adriana amazes me with her creativity and mature understanding. Oh, she’s still a child and has her moments. But we can talk about things and she understands well. Even with my fractured Spanish. It’s to see her grow up and become whatever she chooses to become for which I want to live a long and healthy life. But I’m not worried or fearful of dying. It’s inevitable and often I look forward to the rest and the end of pain and sorrow for opportunities missed.

One can never retrace his steps through time and edit regrettable events or actions. One can only own up to his sins and ask forgiveness. I feel I have done that. If a loved one doesn’t understand who I am after so many years, I won’t be able to alter their opinion before I go. Materially, I have less than I’ve had since early childhood. You know what? I don’t care. God has seen fit to make sure I’m not alone as my grandfather was when he died in 1929. I feel the love every day that Margarita has for me. Adriana has become a real daughter in so many ways. Luís still needs a bit of work on personal responsibility. He’s spoiled as have been all of Margarita’s children. I have friends in and outside of my new church. I get hugs in the marketplace. I enjoy tending the chickens and watching the cute chicks grow into dirty, ugly, hens and roosters. I’ve accepted the fact that I can’t be here, in North Carolina, New Jersey, Wyoming, and (certainly not) in California to participate in the lives of my middle-aged and thirty-something children, and my adult and young grandchildren. I’m sorry they are not moved to communicate with me using the electronic marvels of the day such as Email and Skype. Not my choice.

So with all of the above and knowing that overall my life has been full and blessed, I’m ready for the next phase when it comes. I’ve prepared not a will, but a set of instructions for Margarita on how to inform those who care that I have gone. She’ll do her best with the kids’ help to relate the circumstances. Some folks will need a translation. She’ll have the password for this computer and Adriana will know how to use it. Adriana also knows how to access accounts at the bank. Margarita’s still a bit shy of contemporary technology…such as it is in El Salvador. I won’t care what they do with the few valuables I will leave. I trust Margarita’s wisdom and she knows their value. As I’ve said, I’d love to be alert and strong enough to see my daughter become an independent woman. Whatever God’s plan, it’s fine with me.

Hey Rog! How You Doin’?

I’m glad you asked. I’m a month into my 78th year and ought to be in a rest home or in my recliner watching novelas on the tube. Fact is that despite not being able to run since last May, I’m keeping in shape. My chronic ankle problem is just part of life after more than 32 years. The worn-out knees pain me when I get up after sitting a while or when I stand in one place too long as on a line at the bank or during a l-o-n-g prayer or song session at church. I seem to be managing my dry skin problem with Nivea cream, but it still flakes like the last stages of sunburn. I always wear my sombrero when I go out, or a ball cap if I’m going bike riding or there’s too much wind.

I enjoy bike riding although there’s really nowhere to go that doesn’t include long stretches on the highway. Now that I’m a couple of blocks closer to the park, I enjoy riding or walking to do my pull-ups, stretches, and bench dips for my back arms.

I’ve willed myself to eat less and less of the not-so-healthy foods and Pepsi. I weighed 176 lbs. this morning. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to use the third hole on my belt. It feels good and Margarita likes what she sees.

Only God knows if I’ll live to see 100 and still be reasonably functioning. But in the meantime, I’m enjoying probably the best years of my erstwhile superactive and exciting life.

My more important life, the spiritual one, continues to grow as I encounter God where he comes to give me tasks. Not great ones, but tasks in His service. I’ve learned to keep my eyes, ears, and heart open to receive His call and recognize His blessings. I sit at my desk and the reflection on the screen shows the face of a contented man. In the background I see Margarita going about her chores, Adriana looking for mischief or tagging after her mom imitating her to the letter, and Luís spacing out or leaning on a wall so as not to wear out his 11-year old spine. I see this larger house with its furnishings comfortably spaced, the walls adorned with art and hangings other than Adri’s drawings, the new bed purchased only yesterday that afforded us the best night’s sleep we’ve had in a long time. I think of our daughter finally getting the heart examinations she was supposed to get five or six months ago. I see her papers coming home, “Adriana del Carmen Brown Olmedo”. I conjure an image of our kitchen and bedroom with the new furniture we’ve shopped for and will buy over the next couple of months. I recall the glow on Margarita’s face when we dealt with the salesman at the furniture store. That happy countenance is worth more than any motorcycle I could want. I know the source of all this joy. The more I adhere to God’s plan, the more He blesses me and my family.

How’m I doin’? I’m doin’ just fine, thank you! How are you?

KountryKing

The Shirt off My Back

This is the shirt ON my back. It’s a favorite shirt of mine. It’s a souvenir of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally of 1984. It’s worn rather thin and it’s faded. It comes with joyful memories of a cross-country motorcycle trip with my daughter Jackie. We met family we had known of but not known until that almost accidental day that we turned off Interstate-80 to see if we could find a distant cousin. We not only found her but we stayed with her a few days among the thousands of riders who congregate in Sturgis every summer. I didn’t know at the time that a cousin was one of the founders of the Rally. We got to sit in the box of honor with him at the short track. We also used Sturgis as a base that allowed us to tour the Black Hills. We viewed the magnificent sculpture of the four presidents and the in-progress even more impressive sculpture of Crazy Horse. We visited the Native American Museum nearby and passed through Deadwood where Wild Bill Hickok met his demise. We also passed over the roadway originally laid in part by my father who was a teenage teamster during the construction. That was very emotional for me.

In summer of next year, 2014, this shirt would have turned 30. I’m afraid it’s not going to reach that milestone. Margarita has repaired the holes as best she’s been able, but there is just not enough firm cloth to put the needle through anymore. I hesitate to just toss it in the rag bin. I feel about the same as when we had to put my German Shepherd, Baron, to sleep. Although I knew he was in pain, I just couldn’t bear to part with my best friend. I only hear from my daughter if I comment on her Facebook page. I haven’t ridden a bike in more than a decade. It’s time.

I have other shirts with meaning that are headed in the same direction as my Sturgis shirt. I only wear tee-shirts that have some significance for me. They represent my high school, my college, my last country music appearance, my favorite hockey team, and my beloved El Salvador. The latter shirts were bought or given to me ten years ago on my first missionary trip to this beautiful country. I keep telling myself that at 77 my time is short and I have no reason to think I’ll outlive most of my shirts. Still, I have a little bit of pride in my appearance and wouldn’t let my kids go out with holey shirts. (The enduring fad of wearing worn out jeans is my only exception for my son.) I will NOT wear shirts that advertise the manufacturer, say something stupid that only a teen-ager would find amusing, or that would jam my moral compass. I like plain solid colored tee-shirts but I’m happiest when my shirt sends a message about me. I think I have a good body for my age nd prefer sleeveless tees. But I still have so many shirts in my drawers that I don’t have to worry about running out for a long, long time. Maybe when I’m down to my last shirt, I’ll ask to be buried in it.

How I’m Adjusting to Aging? I’m Not!: Musings on My 77th Birthday

How am I adjusting to aging? I’m not. There are some things in life I have never been able to accept. Fish as a regular part of my diet, the Dodgers playing anywhere else but Brooklyn, any government or any branch thereof putting its own interests ahead of the common people’s, Dolly Parton turning 67 and never having her, children who make it to adulthood and don’t want their parents to have lives of their own while they go on with theirs, ignorance, bigotry, legislating against nature, people who can’t accept social and political evolution as the world shrinks, and folks who purposefully abuse their own bodies with drugs, alcohol, and smoking any substance because they want to (children’s thinking) are among the first things that come to mind.

I have learned to accept, albeit with difficulty at times, changes in my own life. I’ve had many different jobs and was in my 40s before I could say I had a career. I took most of those early jobs with no thought to the future. But I adjusted to changes in work environments and incomes.

I’ve had five wives, children natural or adopted with four of them, and had to make serious changes and adaptations in my relationships (or lack thereof) with them.

I spent my first 42 years in New Jersey before moving to the alien environment of Southern California. Ventura and Los Angeles counties are as foreign to my native culture, my mores, my values, my beliefs as would be Afghanistan. After 30 years of frustration, indignities, and incarceration I realized I could not civilize the uncivilized nor endure further abuse, so I moved, by God’s grace, to a new country, with a different language, a culture for stagnation and failure, but where I can be myself for what remains of my life.

I am happily married for the last time. I have a delightful and loving family. I attend a Christ-based church and serve in whatever capacity I can. I am respected by those who know me and have made a good reputation among those who only recognize me as “the gringo“, “the profe“, or “Hna. Margarita’s husband”. It’s all good!

I have had to adjust to living without many of the material things I took for granted and could always afford, a certain level of health care, traveling in my own vehicle rather than in a death trap condemned-in-the-U.S. little yellow bus, being able to communicate well in the local version of Spanish, having to send my kids to a school that doesn’t motivate and barely educates, living among people who have such low expectations for themselves or their children, learning a culture so different, so primitive in thought process and so different in values. But I have accepted most of what is as just that: what is.

Then there’s me. My own changes. The involuntary ones. I have stated that my life has had three main interests, baseball or softball, performing country music, and women. In my last years of playing organized ball I suffered tears in my shoulders that reduced the velocity of my throwing and the distance I could hit a ball. Not critical when considering the state of the world but critical to me. By the time I resumed teaching in El Salvador, I could barely hit the softball out of the infield and even throwing to first base from the pitcher’s mound was a chore. I sadly gave up playing.

I have always enjoyed running. I was proud of my speed and endurance. Never a race winner in 5k, 10k, or marathons (or even close), there was triumph in finishing. There was gratitude for being able to compete into my 60s with no above normal pains. Even here, I maintained a regular running regimen despite the lack of competition in racing. But last May, my knees had endured their limits. I have not been able to run since. I ride my bike but not with the enthusiasm with which I ran, prayed, and meditated during my hour on the highway. My run was followed by a good workout in the park. I don’t get to the park as often as I used to.

I retired from singing and playing country music in 1978. The music was changing and I didn’t like the new sounds. I quit while I was ahead. Still, I enjoyed playing my instruments and singing the old songs for whomever would listen and for my own enjoyment. I may even have become a better guitar player in my retirement than when I was working. But other than my captive-audience students in California, I found no real outlet, no inspiration to compose, and the incidents of taking the guitar out of the case decreased. Here in El Salvador, no one understands country music. My students were fascinated by my yodeling and enjoyed learning children’s songs in English, but the school closed and my guitars have languished in their cases. I learned from singing praise songs in Spanish (when the lyrics are projected on the church wall) that the range of my voice has diminished and it’s also rather scratchy. I really can’t control it. Years of dormancy have also affected my fingers. They don’t move quickly and have lost their agility. I have difficulty in spreading them across the neck to make good chords. It’s so disappointing to hear one sound in my mind, a sound from the now distant past, and to hear another sound coming from my mouth and rather uncoordinated chords emanating from my guitar.

As far as the third delight of my life, I’m like the dog who chases after the bus barking at it. It doesn’t know what to do if it catches the bus or the bus stops. Margarita is a beautiful woman. She’s intelligent. She’s sexy. She works hard for her family. And she loves me for who I am. There are enough women and girls here who would do whatever to make me happy in exchange for financial security for themselves and their children. It’s a given in this society. But Margarita never asked me for anything in the years before we got together. Maybe she was just smarter than the other ladies. Either way, it’s a win-win marriage. There may be younger and prettier and possibly hotter “buses” in town, but what would I do if I caught one?

So, as I decline physically I ponder two areas in my life. The first area is my family. Margarita has always known the circumstances. The difference in our ages, languages, cultures, etc. has not affected her as much as it has me. I want to be able to talk with her so she’ll understand me. My highfalutin Spanish is sometimes too much for her but most of the time I lack the vocabulary, the Spanish equivalents to the words and feelings I want to express. Still, we are able to communicate or I just let her make the decisions. It’s her world. She knows she’s going to outlive me and be a widow like her mother for a long time. But I am more concerned for the children. Luís is not close to me. He has a father and they mutually ignore each other. He’ll go on to a life as most men have.

But Adriana is becoming more and more understanding and enjoying what it’s like to have a father who loves her, who won’t voluntarily abandon her. I believe I live to see her grow up and have a better life than her female ancestors’ lives. She’s too intelligent to become a typical Salvadoran house keeper/baby maker having to make tortillas for the neighborhood or to carry a tub of vegetables on her head around town to sell. She is the focus of my thoughts and energy. I am happy to have adopted her and given her a name if not a heritage. She may never meet her older brother and sisters or her nephews and nieces but she has a sense of an extended family with them that I doubt some of them could ever feel for her.

The second area is me. I think of the Stanley Brothers’ classic country song, “Angel Band”:

My latest sun is sinking fast, My race is nearly run. My strongest trials now are past. My triumph has begun.
Oh, come Angel Band; Come and around me stand. Oh, bear me away on your snow-white wings To my immortal home. Oh, bear me away on your snow-white wings To my immortal home.

When I’m not directly involved in serving Christ via the Church or via my family duties, I enjoy writing and commenting in my blogs, Facebook, or Email. I’m sure I’ll be busy with Margarita in fixing up our new home to our comfort. With Adriana’s adoption taken care of, I only have obtaining citizenship left to accomplish in order to have all the rights and responsibilities of my wife and neighbors. I eagerly look forward to that. I’ll continue to do my best to stay physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy. I’ll count on the many friends God has provided me over the course of my long life for support and counsel. There are many things I can no longer do, but they really aren’t a part of my life today. I have new responsibilities and a whole new life that’s only relatively recently begun. I will do my best to be worthy of the time and health God has blessed me with.

 

The Blessed Guitar

Here are some of my neighbors. They attend one of the three services at our little mission church in Hna. Angela’s garage.

Here’s my Martin D-16 Limited Edition acoustic guitar. I’ve used it for country, gospel, and blue grass music. Mostly, it stays in its case next to my Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentleman electric guitar. I played a lot of years to make money and make the pretty girls, uh, dance for me. But last Saturday afternoon, I brought old Martin to church and he played alabanzas, praise songs, for the congregation. I think he enjoyed the chance to make music once more. He was a little slow at times following the chord changes for the many songs he’d never heard before but he’s an old pro and quick to recover without missing a beat. He had so much fun last Saturday that he’s going to do it again tonight.