Intention fail

Intention fail

Caution can find you

can can what its made

with ribbons and bellows

and a bright blue charade

The dancers have settled

and followed us here

for dangerous candles

and a laps in a year

Dark to morning

with 26 long

each letter a riddle

for 26 strong

So pocket the cupcakes

and color the sky

and build up those muscles

for tomorrow we die

test deeper waters

with water and faith

but make sure you know how

to find your escape

Dark to morning

with 26 long

each letter a riddle

for 26 strong

Rainbows and magic

come once in a while

the norm is the difference

when faced with the miles

They tell you to walk them

and tell you to fly

but the suggestions undoing

without a man in your eye

Dark to morning

with 26 long

each letter a riddle

for 26 strong

Tomorrows gone its gone forever

"all our days pass away in your fury, our years are finished with a gasp... our days are soon cut off and we fly away... Teach us to number our days... Satisfy us with your mercy..." (Ps. 90)

To be continued...

The acclaimed Holy Land begs for a realized reformation. While it sure would be interesting to celebrate that full realization of that kind of thing, it seems a far ways off...

I am in full blown summer. The need for fans, the pathetic short tempered market goers, the absorbent heat, all seem to mark Jerusalem at this time of year. The heat is as expected: my physical and temporal destinations seem a little less obvious.

I am writing for two distinct reasons. First, I am writing to inform the very few who read my blog that I intend to post more frequently; secondly, to comment a bit on the happenings and drama of my summer.

My comments will follow as they fall on me. I suppose I will talk in brief about Burna and bitterness, the reign of Christ and its affect on the my heart and the church... So here gos... I have found a kind of respite in garden work and mopping over these summer months. Its a little under the radar and a bit dull but it pays the rent and priveledges the doers. My schedule has been more inconsistent due to the draw of trying to make connections and trying to spend time with people who are coming in and out. I have obligations on campus that absorb more time than I should give to them, but soon I will get the balance right. I have had extra time this summer to invest in travel and this only seems appropriate given that I am studying the places and ideologies that have originated and emerged from these very places.

Late June, I was privileged to dig at Tel Burna and you can check out the website to see the details of that excavation. It was headed up by the Bar Ilan team... http://telburna.wordpress.com/

Early July, a short-term student rented a car and invited me to tour with him. We made our way round the country, hiking Mt. Hermon and En Gedi (Ivan ought to remember this one). A little park ranger confrontation only added to the excursion. Late night clean after Holland beat Uruguay and one computer out the boot later, stephen was at the airport.

The next day, we traveled to Tel es Safi and met up with memebers of the Bar Ilan-Burna team that explained the site to us. This is kinda it, in a word. I intend to write more and be a bit more detailed but I thought this would do for the time being...

As for a little digression on Church, I thought I might add... Church, here, is mark with the constant mantras of Jesus' jewishness and the primacy of Judaism as a springboard for understanding the Christian scriptures or Israel is bigger than the lot of Eber and his talodot. I could give examples from both sides of the seam where hermeneutic bleeds by consequence and is, like it or not, predetermined in the eye of the beholder. Caught betwixt and taught, too often I feel un-equipped to test systems, question ideologies and critique the modern progression. Its so inflamed and people are less interested in common sense readings, we are interested in perpetuating a piety of tradition or anti-tradition. On all sides there is a great need for re-evaluation and reformation... At times I am enviable of so many people that divorce theology from its affect on them, though I think that no matter how divorced the two become in word, they are always associated in reality, realized or not.

The encouraging bit runs like this: God will build His church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.

40 year trib.avi

40 Years and Counting...

Once upon a time a tall, spirited, piano-preachin' girl from the farms of Indiana found herself involved in mission work. Another just as lovely and young, bang-em-up, overall's-wearin', bet-you-can't-ride-a-big-bike-and-win-20-bucks, Fletcher girl found herself partnering with Erma in a lifelong journey that would endure through the decades. A Miss Erma Augsburger and a Miss Jean Zirkle invested themselves in the ministry spending their tears on church reform in a small American baptist church. Of course their friendship, like nearly all friendships, involved familial ties - especially important for their nephew and niece. Erma's brother, the ornery, even-taller, mam-you-dropped-your broach-you-should-pick that-up, Ivan Edison married a much older Wheaton-grad, Grace Maxine (not my sister, obviously). They went off to the Dominican Republic fulfilling a call to the ministry, and when their daughter was of age, she was sent to Erma and Jean in Indiana. Jean's beautiful, touch-my-boys-and I-will-beat-you-with-a-bat, sister Betty May married a hardworking, handsome chap - locally grown in western Ohio, Ernest Junior. On occasion the family tree would mingle and naturally Erma's brother's little Blondie, Maxine, crashed into Betty and Junior's fair, conscientious, dimpled boy, Keith Ray...

To many details to recite them all. A kind of home grown affection budded into bloom out of a life long friendship. I can think of two stories in particular that seem characteristic of that journey and this romantic tale. Though I don't know Kieth Ray Hague, my father came down with Mono-nucleosis. I was told Maxine read him stories and babied him back to health, perhaps because she felt like she may have caused it. How ever this is connected to their dramatic engagement seems to follow in line with natural sequences.

Now, the story my sister would tell you about their engagement is perhaps a bit more cynical than mine. I think their engagement is characteristic of their marriage. It tells you something very authentic about my parents. I suppose Grace would say Dad's cheeky “If you can put up with me” proposal on highway 75 was romantic-less and lame. I would argue that it emerged out of a passionate and rooted and affectionate love for the one person in all the world for whom he cared the most. Consequently, he had to take care of the deed in the most honest of ways... true to life... in rhythm with the real... the flavor of the “this is how it is. I love you and I will always love you. I don't need to get in a cannon and show off, walk down no stupid park lane or throw up some fanciful masquerade. This is me wishin' that you would stand by me through thick and thin till death do us part.” Though Dad would probably not say it like that, he had under his breath actions that better exemplify this kind of sentiment than do my words...I would argue 40 years later hindsight is 20/20...

If the signature of that affection is not authenticated by my father's hours in the driveway on yet another part that fell off the car, his willingness to brake his back to bear the load of a budget that is running on God's provision, or my mother's hours, in the back-room fighting the eternal hamper of good clothes ruined by bad children, spending herself thin trying as she might to be involved with their kids education and pay the balance for those same bills that seem to keep on coming, I don't know what does... Though these days, I wish Dad would sleep less for moms sake and I wish mom would stress-out less for his, I understand now better than I have ever before what commitment ought to look like. Their example is good. In a world where divorce has become the norm, my parents have raged against the machine, the machine of "if its not working, get a new one" and the machine of "get what's yours, you deserve better." With a keen awareness of their need for Christ and each other, they have vowed to preserve that union that God has consecrated unto Himself for their good and his Glory.

The most enduring grace that marks my parents and for which I am most grateful is their own sensitivity to their sin and their love for the Gospel. That is Jesus Christ's coming to die for our sins to propriate God's wrath, his resurrection to champion death securing eternal provisions. This informed the way they tried to love each other and the way they raised my brothers, sister and me. Mom's “Do your best for Jesus sake” prompted us to rehearse the Gospel to ourselves that we might act differently. I suppose we did but not without big falls along the way.

Its rare to find people who are so quick to admit their wrongs, so honest about their shortcomings, and so accepting and charitable as a result. If Mom isn't signing bout God's perfections to her grand kids, she is off preachin' to the dog... If Dad isn't trying to fix the American political wreck, he is entertaining the funny lookin' people we bring home with his famous jokes. The church is needy for more people like this. After 40 years a banner has been raised, stones gathered together as a memorial, an Ebenezer has been lifted into place memorializing a theme etched forever into my sister's and brothers' ears “

This is the day the Lord has made we will be glad and rejoice in it.

Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous: "The right hand of the LORD does valiantly,

the right hand of the LORD exalts, the right hand of the LORD does valiantly!"

I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the LORD.

The LORD has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death.

Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.

This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it.

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

This is the LORD's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day the Lord has made we will be glad and rejoice in it.

I am very sorry I am not in there in person...

I love you very much Mom and Dad...

Happy Fortieth Anniversary

A Day at the Beach

Late-night walks stereotypically invite casual reflection, if not wearied confessions or something like it. At times like this, my mind seems to toss back and forth along with the shuffle of my feet. Last night, a bit weary from school drama, last minute assignments and inevitable finals that lurk just around the corner, I found myself on my way home worrying about my stuff. Stuff... stuff... stuff...

I was raised in a house where the mantra of "its o.k. to have nice things" stood only as tall as the distance it took to fall to the floor, while an aunt of mine would oblige herself in reminding us to take care of the things that we had, lest we loose them. (Just for clarification, my parents charged us to take care of our things but they were anything but obsessive and for this I am grateful) I heartily appreciate this interesting contrast because I think the paradox in practice is at least useful.

So the story goes like this... Captain Nat and his beautiful wife, Shirley agreed to take a trip with Emily and I to Mt. Hermon. Emily and I went to pick the car up in Tel Aviv where we would eventually return the thing. After a wonderful end-o-semester trip, we made our way back to the Airport rental-return dock, not before a Shirley-planned Tel Aviv outing. A plan that included: a walk through old Jappa, drinks on the beach, and pizza in downtown Tel Aviv. The night was beautiful; the evening meaningful, and good. Once we arrived at Ben Gurion, I went to grab my bag so that I could exchanged the right papers to the Budget rental receptionist and my bag was gone.

Gulp. Question marks. What had I done? I knew that I had gotten into it before our walk into Old Jappa, I knew I had hid it in the trunk. And now, what? I felt guilty and dirty, violated and stupid, irresponsible and weak. My stomach churned and twisted inside of me and I knew of nothing better to do than to affirm true things. "Its going to be o.k." "God is Soverign."

I suppose outside the experience itself it seems a bit brutish to sound affirmations like this especially if someone does it for you; but I found that even in the shadows of a really-not-that-terrible-but-still-bad-thing, I was completely dependent. I mean, everything I had there of any value disappeared and I had to pay the bill? The monies I had set aside to pay the tab, my debit card, my licence and my passport. And its one thing to loose these kind of things- my things, my mp3 player and my maps; quite another to loose other people's things; say, for instance, a camera I was borrowing.

I can hear your tisk-tisk. I have been over this already. I have done it to myself a thousand times and I don't think it has any substantive good because above the noise of the should-have-beens lay the sweet reminder that independence in isolation from God is nothing better than Hell. Whatever independence is truly, I was in that experience reminded of how needy I really am.

God is not mocked, He is not unable to vindicate. He will restore all losses. He upholds the head of the offended.

Miss-led regret is but a cowardice companion that desires to have us. Do you think that God didn't see it all? Do you think he missed it? Its not like the storm doesn't come to the rock builder in just the same way it comes to the Sand-dwellers. Its not like God is incapable of planning good to emerge from evil intentions. God does all things well and He has made a promise to finish the good thing he started in us to the praise of His glorious grace.

Oh no...

Pulse check. The heart beat murmur of the steadily unchanging pitter-patter echoes a real and hearty challenge. Are you consistent? Are you pacing to the noise that lives inside you? Are you inhibiting it with poison and popcorn?

The metaphor may or may not do, but the reality of untempered commitments may very well keep you racing to the nearest stimulant irrespective of how good or bad it makes you feel like a dog waxed on by cats right and left only to wain back for a quick snack on yesterdays vomit. This life-style will only lead to fickleness and heartache. Someday the wounds are going to show. Someday the blister is going to pop. Someday the hollow tree is going to fall and there are no roads back to wholeness once the timber is burned.

The eschatological vision pent up in Revelation helps. Yesterday's forgotten mantra about death and taxes has a surety epistemologically tested by all known methods of observation. I suppose it is discouraging for some people to think about death. I suppose it may be scary or ripe with noisy absolutes we would like to avoid. Whatever the case maybe, I am quite confident I will die and the impending reality bolsters sobriety.

The surety of God's judgment may not have the same kind of observable validation, but the Scriptures have conclude that death assumes a call to trial, a judgment. Judgment language is quite impressively common in the Scripture and yet comically absent from the Evangelical pulpit. I have heard it said that while God is fully capable of blessing, he is incapable of condemnation. This seems belittling and arrogant to me. I suppose if someone is interested in the Scriptural attestation, they would have to take God's right to judge and bless seriously.

Samaritan Priest

Samaritan Audio...

Here is a bug-on-the-wall look into the current ideals and religiosity of the Samaritans according to the word of a priest on Gerizim. I think I have them in order...

Part 1:

Part 2:

Billy woke up from a series of fantastically peculiar dreams. Half run by the industry and mystery of it all, he came to his wits and heeded Mamma McMichael's breakfast call. Sitting with his Mother and Father at the table, there was a calm so unique - kind of distracted from the morning stresses. Whatever the case may have been, they didn't wish to start eating until every McMichael was seated at the table. Cindy was not there. Rushed for time, Billy thought to save Cindy the drama of late-to-breakfast lectures by leaving the table and attending his morning duties, knowing he had only to clean himself up a bit to put himself together for the day. He didn't think it would take too much time and he found himself dressed for the day at the table with his mother and father still waiting on Cindy. Cindy seemed a bit sour at least from the sound of things. No one had seen her face, but the growing clamor in her room seemed to suggest as much.
If travel time stood at 45 minutes between home and the social house, they had 2 minutes to spare before they would be late. Suckered for time, Cindy came all disheveled and hurting. The McMichael's had a rushed and awkward breakfast feeling the tension that something had gone terribly wrong, without any sense for what it could have been. Before jumping in the mover, something in Cindy spiked and Mama McMichael threw her arms around her. Billy felt the rush of wanting to do the same. She unwelcomely accepted his embrace, but the sting of whatever crucible she had entered into kept pulling and pulling and pulling.
They all filed into the mover knowing they would be late and they would have to face the later-than-thou comedy at the social house. This however seemed insignificant compared to Cindy's growing pain. Mama seemed to think a no-touch policy was requisite, while Billy tried to offer compassion through the vehicle touch. The problem-tension encouraged a solution-tension that kindled a fire of passion. The great and wild climax spilled out and over when Cindy screamed, "Billy don't, Mom is trying to help!"
Billy was immediately torn because he was also trying to help. He meant well; yet, she perceived his attempts and efforts as unhelpful. To add sugar to stove-tops, Billy shelled off commenting about interpretation offering a defense for his actions. This was met by a parade of noisy, condemning jeers of Mom and Dad McMichael. Father let out, "Heaping coals, heaping coals, heaping coals, Billy!"
Billy immediately restrained himself and bit his tough hard. He instantly became conscientious. He was afraid to suggest any more concern or comment on anything else for fear of unbridled angst that would no-doubt boomerang. He sat and thought. He thought about the mornings progress only to find himself confused. The things he meant were not seen and the things he did not, were. On a more sophisticated level, I presume, he thought about the elements of transmission and communication. He thought to himself: "My intention was not appreciated and this seems to prove a lack on both ends, respectively. For if my intention was not appreciated, I obviously failed to make it clear. However Cindy's shortsightedness inhibited her from appreciating my concern." Funny how strange dreams meet strange things and how in the end there may be a lesson to learn. It seems that a gift must be understood relative to its giver and that the strings of communication have two ends.

Draw and its Death

It seems to me that relationships inspire people. I have seen it before. Boy meets girl: Girl meets boy: Woman, wooed: Man, pitied. Is this not the stereotypical fantasy awaken in funny bone-pains felt by the penetration of Cupid's arrows? Maybe it's the knight sat up in tin-can armor fallen upon that white horse bridled only by the force of passion or is it the frog tongue-tied and hopeful that there is one princess out there, just one, silly enough to kiss him? Cynical or not, these penetratingly deep affections -commonly referred to as love or passion- persuade men and women to engage in a language game for whatever reason or against it. My point is that “love” drives people to do all kinds of things it doesn't seem they would do on there own.
Honestly, there is a kind of disguised hubris in it all – love binds and blinds all for the sake of freedom and clarity; though, I have seen so many singles turn ga-gas fade into sordid relationships that seem to be anything but freeing and helpful. I have seen friends from all kinds of backgrounds, emotively enlivened, given the courage to “gird up their loins,” as it were, and effect a try-harder attitude because they think that it will make the relationship work. While I think its good that they finally give up their smokes and soaps, too often the exchange brings about nothing more than love stupors and drama.
However contrastingly, it seems that good relationships evoke good initiative and potential, happiness in general and good deeds. I suppose bad relationships could do the same though the effects would eventually die away. Of course, I am taking the liberties of big brushes and lots of paint, but I think this is a fair analysis of loves initial exuberance. This interested-ness of two people in each other drives a good thing forward, even as it acts like a “dam against fornication and lust.” I guess, even this is a bit idealistic given the Sex-god troubles placating the American milieu.
Whatever the case maybe, it seems that the substance of a relationship gives a unique kind of resolve to people involved; maybe its the pressure, maybe the sense of benevolence or concern. Whatever it is, something so terrible happens when and if that relationship falls apart. When a relationship dies it seems easy to embrace a kind of despair so fantastically real that it is as if demons are speaking. With the noise of fall-outs and fracture, divorce and break-offs comes the dissonance of that rhetorically savvy... persuading... feeling of apathy... I suppose other inexpressible emotions are evoked with a kind of damning rise that makes simple tasks more daunting than they have ever been before.
Questions remain: so many questions. I suppose your asking things like: why, what did I do wrong, what was I thinking? This is only natural though it seems to force the nail of failure even deeper. That constant impulse, that itching passion and that insidious draw recklessly leading you here has come full circle and left you in the place where you started.
I am under the conviction that hope has a peculiar and unique tie to God and the Gospel and its here that the pressure to turn of other gods is incredibly real. Affirming that loss has its own kind of good in the mystery of pain seems terribly unhelpful though it seems we have good reason to do just that.

Men without Chests

Relationships have a uniquely different kind of problem in the 21st century. Men are encouraged to sell there dignity for eyeliner and egoist sensationalism and women are duped into materialism dressed in raging manipulative cycles disguised by the memes of what is or isn't fabulous... Perhaps both flounder in similar ways wrestling with never being or feeling quiet like we should... What is so wrong with the biblical model? What is it precisely? Too conservative? Too libral? I suppose that conservatism has died a death no one is capable of redeeming if the archetypes for its prestige are the same egotistical men, too commonly lost in their own addictions and/ or self-righteousness... advocating, full-on- for a model that gives them a justification to treat their wives in intolerable ways... and liberals bury their best arguements for the necessity and beauty of equality, in mantras that bastardize monogomy and adulturate the santity of life. Who then is faultless and aren't these both acting in a way radically opposed to the Scriptures. May God help us as we try to get it right... in God's mercy.

Malcolm Muggeridge

We look back upon history, and what do we see? Empires rising and falling. Revolutions and Counterrevolutions. Wealth accumulated and wealth disbursed. Shakespeare has written of the rise and fall of great ones, that ebb and flow with the moon. I look back upon my own fellow countrymen, once upon a time dominating a quarter of the world, most of them convinced, in the words of what is still a popular song, that the God who made them mighty, shall make them mightier yet.

I've heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a Reich that would last a thousand years. I have seen an Italian clown say he was going to stop and restart the calendar with his own ascension to power. I've heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin, acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka.

I have seen America, wealthier and in terms of military weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people so desired, they could have outdone a Caesar, or an Alexander in the range and scale of their conquests.

All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running our of those precious fluids that keeps their motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate. All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these solemn supermen, and self-styled imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one, because of whom, by whom, in whom and through whom alone, mankind may still have peace: The person of Jesus Christ. I present him as the way, the truth, and the life.

Grandpa Hague

 My son Keith called, said he'd meet us in Richmond, and wished me a Happy Birthday. My fingers don't work like they used to. My bones feel heavy and weak. My legs and knees seem to work against me more often than not. The doctor came over and told me about my arthritis in my shoulder and its hard to feel like things will get better when I know good and well they probably won't.

A few days ago Betty came to bed - the first time in a long time. She usually sleeps in the La-Z-Boy, though she rarely sleeps through the night. She was unsettled all night long, tossing and turning. She kept callin', “Junior, Junior, Junior.” I am not complaining; I just find myself confused and kind of desperate wanting to help and not knowing what it is she really needs. She was so blasted cold, though the new gauge on the stove read 81 degrees. I threw a blanket over her and lay back down. About the moment I got all situated back in bed, her begging voice began to resonate through the kitchen walls, soft and needy-like. To be honest, I thought the temperature was scorching, myself. Who knows? Could just be me? I told her what the thermometer read and she seemed to think the thing was broken; so I turned up the heat and wrapped her up again.

Today is one of those days that seemed longer than a usual day, more full maybe. For now my days are themselves full, though I don't feel like I accomplish much. I get up and get Momma her breakfast. Then I get mine and give her her pills. Lord knows, I think she is taking too many. I give her twenty pills in the morning alone. After I get my breakfast I get a load of laundry in the wash and by that time, its time for lunch. I can't move as fast as I used to. It's really kind of frustrating. Funny how so many things I thought I had good control over now have their own kind of control over me.

In any case, today I turned 88. Jean, Betty's sister, hosted things 'cause I can't get 'round to as much as I once did. I used to host my son and his whole family. All the boys and his little girl would stir things up in a magical kind of way. They were each so unique… and even amid the tension and chaos, I think, they got along all right. Now a few of the boys are married and they have children of their own. I sat next to my grandson’s newborn as he held her and started to think how we sat like book ends one next to the other. Beginning to end, as it were. Her fingers so limber and yet just as inaccessible as mine: hers because of ignorance; mine, age.

While birthdays tend to make you think more about your own life and death, how it's fitting and strange that I begin to think about the corn rows and army nonsense; the ladder, paint, and wasps; my two boys and my beautiful wife. Things like falling in love seemed so particularly fickle and weighted, important and unimportant, the same.

   My grandson began to ask a number of unrelated questions, or maybe I thought he was asking one question and I heard three different and unrelated things. It’s those damn pop cans that did a number on my hearing or maybe the end of Mrs. Migilicutty's stick… She did a number on me sinking that stick into my temple for wrong answers or sleeping in class.

   At first, I thought he asked about my army stripes. I told him three stripes means I was a Staff Sergeant at one point. Then, I thought he asked about the farm. I was born and raised there. Hell, raised my kids there. Finally, I think I understood him. He asked if I had any scars with a story behind it. I told him, “no”. I thought maybe that would shut him up, though it’s nice to get a bit of recognition here and there. Seems like everywhere I go, I feel beggarly or unnoticed. 

   He pressed me again, “Did you ever break something?” What kid doesn't break something? I thought. I said something about my collarbone and a football incident. The questions kept coming and I began rehearsing a story with all sorts of funny paradoxes and opening closets with different kinds of things than fantasy lands and witches but closets full of old Christmas cheeses and dinner rolls.

   I was born in the small decent village of Sydney, Ohio. I was the youngest of three boys, though the middle child of six girls. Margaret, Dorothy and Blanche; Chester and Eugene were all born before me. Betty, Ruth and Shirley were younger. Ruth died as a baby. Shirley came along not too many years later.

My parents’ ingenuity seemed to get us through, though Dad's severity distanced him from me. I had to walk to school even as a kid, four or five miles to the Orange Township schoolhouse. I know my grandkids have gotten sick of the woe-is-my-generation lectures, but I think they understand that things were just harder then. That said, getting by has its advantages. Seems like people are generally unhappier these days though they have more things.

   I started first grade when I was something round the age of 6. There isn't much to tell here though I found myself more excited about football and games than I did about school and the farm. At the age of twelve or 13, Mom suckered me into attending the local Baptist church and I found myself making a profession of faith. My inability to understand just how needy I was didn't seem to inhibit my neediness from growing with age. The older I get the more I realize that I have had needs my entire life and God met them, time and again. Because of this, I have been able to draw on the things I once confessed in these difficult times: my need for Christ and His saving grace.

   I ended up breaking my collarbone and dropping out of school somewhere round this time, maybe a bit earlier. I quit school in 8th grade and joined Dad on the farm. I dropped out because I failed twice and got sick of the beatings. I felt like I knew things well enough anyways so why put up with that shit. I had a number of chores and responsibilities that Dad assigned to me. At different points in time, I had to feed the cows, chickens, and hogs; milk and clean, as well as other things. During the winter months I found good work at the elevator tossing grain into bins.

   When I turned something like 16 or 17, Dad started to pay me and I found myself earning a little extra by taking on other chores at the neighbors’. I worked for fifty cents a day for farmers nearby. Our employer owned three farms in my area so it made work kind of easy to find.

   I don't know how it all works but the Lord wasn't the only one that noticed me at church. Miss Betty Zirkle started to pay close attention to me. We were set up on our first date: we were sent to the skating rink and we ended up holding hands by the force of silliness. While we had struck up a friendship, the world had gone off to war. In these difficult times, all my buddies were joining the fight. I felt like I needed to join them. After having deferred my draft twice for farming sake, I didn't want people to think I was coward or somethin’.

   I joined the army and set off for Alabama for training there. During the break, I found myself a ring and took Betty by the hand. I can't remember where we were in my parents’ house, but I know my knee shook more, then, than it does now. That whole break seemed to come and go, far too quickly. Through the tears, I waved goodbye and I joined my company in Kansas where we waited for our assignments. I don't know what we were thinking, Betty and I. I don't know if we believed we would for certain see each other again. I don't know? Nothing seemed certain then; save Christ and Him crucified.

   They held us in Kansas no more than a couple days and they transferred us to a neighboring state - Lord knows which one. Not too much later, they shipped us to Washington State to await the ship to Saipan. Infantry has its machismo draw, but I don't think I was looking to die. In Saipan, the news of Jap cease-fire reverberated through the base. Two bombs and the war seemed like it was over. It didn’t seem real. How could two bombs end a war of this magnitude? Big bombs, I guess.

   I don't think I ever grew tired of receiving Betty's letters. It made such an impression on the guys that they held me down and tattooed my forearm BMZ, her initials. It was times like this I was really grateful for a friend like her. Funny how lonely it can get surrounded by so many people. The things you miss... the people...

We were transferred again to Guam, where we relieved a company that had served through the war. The administration took volunteers and so I found myself volunteering for mess-hall responsibilities and they made me a cook. I didn't know much about politics but I knew well enough to make sure the Captain was fed well. “Don't bite the hand that feeds you.” Sure. But if you feed the one feeding you well enough, it seems to pay off. Captain sent me off to cooking school in Hawaii. After training, I returned by boat to Guam. The twenty-one-day journey set us on base in the evening right after supper had been served. The boys told me the Cap. was waiting for me. I will never forget the way he looked at me and pointed saying, “You are the Mess-hall Staff Sergeant and you start tomorrow morning.” Either the shit they were feeding the boys was just that bad or I had made an impression upon him before leaving. I guess in this case both may have been true.

   The war had been over a good while now and it was just a matter of time before they sent us home. Eventually that call came and we set sail for San Fran. some time that summer. The boat cook needed an extra hand; so, I pitched in during our trip home. I went from the boat and took orders for the train, being set in charge of the cooking there.

   Just for the record, I had my secrets. I knew how to make the boys happy. When we ran out of meat, I found the boys some meat for their eatin'. They didn't need to know I dressed the kitchen rats. I did what I could with what I had and that seemed to make the boys happy enough. This made my job worthwhile. My train north connected with a train east and I was headed home.

   Home. The word had a particular ring to it that seemed so sweet. I mean, landing state-side felt pretty good but getting home was unmatched. The way my baby embraced me. The smell of the October sky, all lit up with flickering stars undimmed by the noise of city lights. This was home.

I got home and Dad was picking corn. I thought to help out a bit or maybe it was just that he suckered me into doing it for him. In any case, I ran the picker a couple different times that fall. I got to know the Zirkles a bit better. They were a unique bunch in much the same way as Keith's kids. Lord knows they cared for each other, though wives and husbands brought more chaos and tension that any of them new how to manage. We could only pray that things didn't get worse… They did, though. Truth is, I don't think I prayed near as much as I should have. It’s easy to grow bitter. Too easy.

   Sometime after getting back I started work at the Sechour's Bakery. Three months after I got back, Betty and I got married. Funny thing is, Momma Zirkle had to sign Betty off to me cause she was a day shy of 18. We got married January 18, 1947. Keith was born 10 months later.

   I made porterhouse rolls and wedding cakes until sometime that spring. Offenbacker, our mailman, gave me a job as a farm-hand. That season I planted for him though I didn't get to harvest the crop. I took on a new position under Hershel Covault. Keith was born that November. Dick's birth marked about the ninth year we were there.  I stayed at Covault’s for about thirteen years.

   There was a time that it became clear we needed to leave so I left the farm… and for good. We moved to the Bradegon's, taking up a factory position in Sidney. I stayed at Bradegon's for 'bout 2 years, 'til I moved to Fletcher. Right around the early 60's, we bought and moved into the house on 2 East Main right next to the Fire Depot. At Stolle’s Sidney factory, I work along a line of boys pressing parts and then moved to another section of the plant where we set up zip-top stamping machines for bottling companies. After a lay-off I re-applied and was given a different position under Stolle. I was assigned to metal sidings.

   Stolle owned half of Sidney, at least it seemed like it. I got to meet the man once. Though I didn't treat him the same way I treated Cap in the army. Things were different. I had a job to do. Stolle stood right in front of the aluminum roll when I had to stitch a new roll. I pushed him out of the way and did my job. Though I don't really think I made too much of an impression, I was given the foreman position soon after I started.

   Eventually, it became clear I needed to move on, so I found good work with Ferguson, a construction company. I painted on the side to make ends meet only to take it up more once I left Ferguson's. Things kind of blossomed and withered from there, a little of both as is only natural. Keith went off to college got married had kids… Dick, well, poor kid… He…

   Just then Dick came and told me that Mom wanted to go. I pushed myself away from the table and one of Keith’s boys brought me the walker. I said my goodbyes and they were said to me as I made my way to the car little by little. I found myself seated in the back seat on my way back to Fletcher. Sitting back, it’s funny what people remember. Joe remembered the candy treats. Seth, my false teeth tricks. Sam remembered my smoking and how I wished they would never start; Ray, my silly goodbyes. Maxine, said something sweet about how I try to take care of my Girl, and Jean, my Girl's mom. Whatever was said, I am sure thankful it’s these things they remember. I am thankful that I got to play a bit of euchre on my birthday and I am glad I won.