Author: Mark

My old friend, Don Gordon, Yale ’56, Penn ’58, author and educator extraordinaire, sent me a copy of his letter to Representative Cantor which I think merits the attention of a broader audience.  Don gave me his permission to reprint it here. 

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Let me set the stage for this self-exploration ny giving you a frame of reference. The environment where my “default settings” (see my last blog) were imprinted on my operating system (psyche, values, preconceptions etc.) has several characteristics. I was most vulnerable to input from one or so to the end of junior high, roughly to age 16, or from my birth in 1936 to 1952.  This puts my ages-of-greatest-impression in a period spanning the end of the Great Depression, the whole of World War II,  and the start of the Korean Conflict, nominally FDR through Harry Truman, the pre-and post-War years and the beginning of the Cold War.

The location of the imprinting was the upper south (as defined by a geographer) but quintessentially The South as defined by the area’s residents who, to a man (deliberate sexist remark), identified himself as Southern. However, women did too. We were all Southerners, Kentuckians. We knew we bore no resemblance to the “Yankees” across the Ohio River in Indiana or Ohio.

My parents and their friends, born in the first decade of the 20th Century,  were nominally Christian (Protestant), white, mostly Anglo-Saxon types, middle and upper middle class professional folks who had attended college, owned their own homes, a car or two, went to white collar jobs five days a week, spent Sundays in church, and usually belonged to one of the local service organizations such as the Kiwanis, Lions, or Rotary, and almost without exception never to the Masons, Knights of Columbus, or B’nai B’rith.

It was clear to me at an early age that my parents and “their type” were the “real” Americans and “real Christians.” So was I. Others weren’t. The standards that my parents followed and set for us children were accepted my me as True, and people who deviated from those standards were somehow less desirable and not to be mingled with and certainly not dated or married.  They were not Our Type (hereafter OT).

When I told my mom, one day, that I was on the verge of asking Betty Sue Atkinson out for a date (she was an absolutely beautiful, bright, curvy red head who attended Sacred Heart Academy), my mother turned an even paler shade of white than usual as she tried to explain to me, with her own style of convoluted logic, why that was a bad idea.  (It had seemed like a great idea to me given the standards I knew about up to then–Betty Sue was religious, smart, college-bound, attractive, clean (big points), and her father was a well-known surgeon who enjoyed a membership at the most fashionable local country club.) However, as mother explained it to me,  Betty Sue’s family was Catholic and that meant a load of negative stuff (Pope, children raised Catholic, no birth control, meatless Fridays,  St. Christopher on the dashboard, and cheering for Notre Dame…) blah, blah, blah. So, since mother controlled the car keys and my allowance (the iron matriarchal hand clothed in the velvet Southern glove), I decided it would be a better idea for me to relinquish my dreams of lust and glory and go with the guys to a movie or ball game and then the local drive-in restaurant for a burger.

It was in this atmosphere that my earliest “default settings” concerning work and labor were imprinted. To begin with, as an indicator, there was the matter of clothing. The men who came to work at our house doing heavy cleaning or mowing the lawn were usually dressed in blue jeans, khakis, or blue or green khaki work clothes, suits and pants. Almost all wore blue and white cotton work gloves and high top work shoes or boots.OT never owned such clothes as far as I knew. The only exception were a few fathers, ex-GI’s,  who wore their old army khakis when doing weekend projects or fishing.

Likewise, the women who came to work at our house wore black dresses with white aprons or, in the summer, white dresses with black or white aprons, heavily starched, and they clomped around in well-worn black or white leather shoes which were usually down at the heel. Many wore hair nets, and occasionally for formal serving occasions, they would sport a little, white, stand-up cap to match their formal, starched aprons and dresses.

“He does manual labor” was a pejorative condemnation irrespective of the type of work or the pay received (hourly bad, salary good). So I came to associate manual labor with not only the clothing worn (above), but also by what kind of work was done (with hands not brain) and with the location
(usually outdoors).  Other negative hallmarks of work not acceptable to OT were rough or calloused hands (unless you played a harp or were a sculptor), red and/or sunburned skin (the darker the worse), physical exertion (except in sports), sweating, bodily odors caused by same, sweat stains on clothing–especially armpits, dirt, over-developed muscles, safety glasses, dirty clothes and body parts (especially hands and face which OT scrubbed assiduously on a regular basis), beer drinking from cans or bottles and/or in a bar, Chevrolets, Fords, Plymouths, riding the bus anywhere. Sears, J C Penney, and Montgomery Wards were not places to be patronized and, in the the early days, neither were supermarkets

My “defaults” were set to appreciate, approve, and associate with “OT”  professional men, of men who worked in offices (not stores); to respect those who hired, fired and supervised others,  doctors, attorneys, bankers, ministers,  educators. high level politicians (can you imagine??), musicians, artists, and journalists. I was rock solid certain that here and here only, with these kinds of people, would my future lie.

As I engage in some serious introspection at this point in my life, I, like David Foster Wallace, see how much of what I automatically took as true– was and is pure balderdash ( a polite, British-sounding family synonym for bullshit). I am astonished as I think and write this blog just how thoroughly my early environment affected the way I have automatically viewed (“default to”) virtually everything, even though I have only dealt here with the issue of work so far. I am appalled at the people and opportunities I passed by just because I actually believed that they were not worthy of my attention or affection–or even my notice, that they were inferior as humans or as ways of making a living.  These prejudices run deep and they are old and, as discussed, they have operated outside of my deliberate intent, informing many of my actions and judgements and attitudes for a good part of my 75 years. 

Fortunately, I have known and dealt with (excised) many of defaults along the way, so at least my internal responses are not as automatic as they once were. There’s still work to be done, investigations to be pursued, stock to be taken. The process is a mixture of the  excitement of self-discovery combined with genuine sorrow about what I have allowed to control pieces of my past life. I am genuinely surprised, even shocked  at how arrogant I have been, but  more on all this in the next blog…after I discuss what and how I learned and changed over the years.

Can you imagine that I was once embarrassed to have my executive-type father shake the rough calloused hand of my scoutmaster, a professional carpenter, a wonderful human being.  Shame on me!

I have learned from Jungian analysis that there is such a thing as synchronicity, the meaningful juxtaposition of two people or events or ideas, striking coincidences. For example, I take notice when I read about a book or author or poem in several very different sources within the time span of a couple of days.  Inevitably, when I check out the material I’ve been repetitively made aware of, 99% of the time, I find a new reservoir or wellspring of insight or truth, an author to be explored in depth, an idea or concept to be massaged, or a person to get to know.

Such was the case with my discovery of David Foster Wallace and his brief commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, three years before his death by suicide in 2008. This man and his commencement address at Kenyon were referenced three separate times in wildly different sources in less than a week, so I pursued this blatant synchronicity in hopes of discovering something important. And, as expected, I did.

Wallace was obviously an internally troubled soul, yet we know that sometimes those with the greatest internal pain give us the most relevant, honest, and trustworthy ideas and insights. Such is the case, I think, with Wallace–his unfortunate self-inflicted demise somehow lends a sort of additional validity to ideas which are so obviously correct as to almost “go without saying” (we do know the danger of “not saying” what we think is obvious, right?).

Wallace begins his address with a parable of sorts, a joke, which really made me think (ponder) about the way I have lived, about my life and the forces which have shaped it.  The story goes like this:
  
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swam on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
…The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about….A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded…[Why?] …Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It’s our default-setting hard-wired into our boards at birth…
—[Life therefore]…is not a matter of virtue–it is a matter of my choosing to do the work of someone altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting[s]…


I certainly agree with Wallace’s notion about self-centeredness being hard-wired in all of us as a default-setting; but I would argue that (in my case at least) a significant number of default–settings were added to my boards after my birth, very early on, by my parents, extended family, community, my friends, my gender, color, race, etc. Said another way, my predispositions to think about lots of stuff in certain automatic ways accumulated in my psyche without my knowledge or approval (more like a process of osmosis) long before I was capable of rational discrimination, judgement, and self-understanding. These “predispositions” or “biases” have been largely unconscious and have the unfortunate attribute of operating automatically and outside of any process of ratiocination or deliberate making of choices.

In my next few writings, therefore,  I plan to examine several of my own default-settings (biases, predispositions) and try to understand their origins and the impact they have made on the way I have lived and viewed my life, made choices, and on the way my living has affected those around me–often, as said above, without me even being conscious of the reflexive nature of my thoughts and actions–certainly evidence of  a default-setting in action.

I will begin with the topic of vocation and work,  and then move on to other subjects such as gender and sexuality, race, religion, sectional loyalties and prejudices, leisure activities, education, food, money and economics, sports, government and the like.  I look forward to this exploration as an opportunity to discover more about myself–what I really believe and think and why, and where all this comes from. I suspect and hope that in the process lots of my unexamined certainties about myself and my life,perhaps about life and the world in general, will be blown out of the water (“totally wrong and deluded”)  by the time I complete my list. I wonder how successful I have been “altering and getting free” of my default-settings.

I find that undertaking this process is exhilarating, though somewhat daunting. Onward!

[To read Wallace’s full commencement address, go to:  http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words]

I don’t need a car for trips. All I need to do is to keep alert to my senses here at home, and then fuel up the old brain and memory and re-experience “trips” I’ve taken in the past. Sometimes mental trips “occur” quite by accident, but other times, I take them deliberately. Many, but not all,
of my accidental trips are initiated by my olfactory acuity which, as you may know, is legendary.

For example, not long ago while walking through Macy’s on my way to the mens’ department, I was brought up short by intense stabs of something like nostalgia, or a deep sense of loss, a little fear, combined with  a split second of sexual arousal. On its own, my mind filled up with memories of hot Southern nights, soft skin, insistent kisses, apprehension,  and the thrill of a novice’s exploration of forbidden territory.

I stopped in my tracks and wondered what in the world could pull me up so short in the middle of a Department Store, especially when my mind was focused on the sale I was about to scout out in the shoe department. I looked around for the stimulus; nothing obvious in sight. Then I became aware that I was standing in the midst of the ladies’ cosmetics department which was rife with a kaleidoscope of scents, to mix a metaphor. Knowing myself pretty well, and being used to the impact that odors have on me, I began to sniff.  Incredibly, in the midst of literally thousands of fragrances, my nose had picked out one, an ancient one which had once had particular meaning for me– picked it out from a multitude of perfume scents of flowers, spices, herbs, resins, barks, etc. Incredible! Sniffing helped me find that whole experience again,  drawing with it some disdainful looks from the designer-clad soccer moms walking nearby. My gut also reminded me of how sadly that original encounter had ended.

The scent which my nasal apparatus had selected from a vast menu of thousands of aromatics was “Tigress.” an older perfume, made by Faberge, and difficult to find these days. It was the perfume worn by my first college “love,” we didn’t have “lovers” in those days. It was she who taught me, within very strict limits,  of course, that having a sensual side was OK for a man. Tigress, um. I hadn’t  smelled that perfume in 50+ years, yet there it was in Macy’s, in my nose/brain, and apparently in my heart as well.That was an unplanned trip for sure.

Here’s another. When I taste raspberries, red ones, I am taken immediately back to the side of Pine Mountain in Kentucky, to my grandparents’ home perched there under the tall sycamores, walnuts, maples, and Buckeyes looking out over the Cumberland River and L+N Railroad tracks in the valley below. In my mind’s trip, I can see the flock of chickens out back, smell their feed stored  in the drawers of an old ice chest on the slanty-floored back porch, and hear Grandma Stone, on our way to her large berry patch,  beating her boiling pot with a metal spoon and shouting out her warning: “Now get outa here you rattle snakes and copperheads.  Here comes Grandma Stone to pick berries.”

The sight of raspberries growing on that hot mountainside was blissful, but nothing compared to the treat that Grammy prepared for us when we returned to the house. The raspberries, still a little warm from the sun, were covered with cold Jersey cream which Grandma Stone  had separated earlier by placing a quart Ball canning jar of fresh milk on the moving  treadle of her ancient Singer sewing machine. I can still see and taste it all.

The  treat was finished up with a pinch of sugar as light “frosting” for the berries, a precious gift in wartime rationing. As a city boy, this red and white mixture was as close to heaven as I figured I’d ever get. To complete this picture with all my senses firing, I would need to add the aroma of stale Camel cigarette smoke and lamp kerosene to the olfactory mix. I have both in my memory bank.

Red raspberries have just been on sale in the local market here in Denver and so Liz and I have eaten many pints with yogurt, on cereal, in smoothies, or just plain; but alas, no Jersey cream. Makes no difference.  All I have to do is bite or smell a red raspberry and I take a sensuous mental trip back to the Kentucky mountains. Not the real thing to be sure, but those berry memories are a worthy substitute for the real thing when all I can take is a sentimental journey.

Then there’s the Crayons.  Ah yes; I have a collection of Crayolas displayed on a special bookshelf in the entry hall of my apartment here in Denver. On it are unopened boxes of crayons. Some are commemorative or yearly anniversary collections, some feature old colors while others show-case new ones. I have boxes with as few as six crayons, and modern assortments, in see-through plastic cases, one with 120 and and another that claims 200. “What’s the big deal with the crayons? you ask. Well, here’s the story.

I began my fascination with color even before kindergarten. The colors I found in nature had always intrigued me. I was blessed by being born in an area of the country which had high humidity and a long growing season and so the variety of colors displayed for me by Nature was extravagant, bordering on excessive. Unfortunately,  those colors,  I learned,  were only temporary, coming and going with the frosts and seasons. But when I went to kindergarten, I discovered a source of colors which was more permanent: crayons.  The boxes of fanned-out, paper-covered,  blunt-pointed, pencil-size and quaintly-named little sticks of color really caught my attention. As I used them,
I memorized many of their names, and some, like baseball players, became my favorites: turquoise blue, violet, magenta, cornflower, blue green, and even their strange cousins the siennas and umbers.

During my early years I amassed a fair number of crayon stubs–no crayon sharpeners on the boxes then–some protected by shreds of their original protective wrapping,  but most just short, unclothed tag ends showing little of their former elegant size and shape. The color of each one, however, was still electrifying, singly or in combination, I couldn’t throw away even the smallest of my little friends. I kept my  growing collection in a round cake tin with a snap on lid (which could also be spun like a modern day Frisbee).

One day, after coloring, I dutifully put away my crayons, out of the way on the living room window sill. When I returned to take them up the next day, I discovered that I had unthinkingly put the cake tin on a sill which received the full force of the morning summer Kentucky sun, and when I peered inside the box, all I saw was a melted mass of color, now hardened as it cooled,  into a flat pancake of blended together color resembling a lava flow. I  wailed in mourning,but assuaged myself with the certainty that my benevolent mom would “feel my pain” and head to the store for replacements. I was wrong.  It was an occasion for her to “teach me a lesson” about responsibility. “You will get no new crayons because you have showed me that you are not responsible enough to keep them safe.” “Crayons are expensive; money doesn’t grow on trees.” “When you earn your own money, you can buy crayons yourself.” “Maybe your sister will let you borrow hers.” And, “Big boys don’t cry about melted crayons; now go to your room and don’t come out until you have put on your ‘sunshine suit.'”

From that day to the present, the waxy scent of crayons or a display of a variety of colors of various hues and shades of anything, brings me to a fever pitch of excitement–of desire, of the urge to buy and have “for my own” these tangible pieces or fragments of beauty. I want to have them and to control their destinies. The combination of sight and smell of crayons, specifically crayolas by Binney and Smith, even at my advanced age, take me on such a wonderful interior sentimental journey that I can hardly stand it. To preserve thos feelings,  I have my crayon collection displayed in the front entrance hall where I have to pass them, see them, and smell them many times a day.

Fortunately, I have less opportunity these days to smell “Tigress” and live through that trip again. But, “hey,” there are always raspberries and crayons to take me far from home,  or maybe back home, most anytime I want to go,  on yet another sentimental journey. That’s an easy way to avoid the financial costs associated with real travel, and there are no State Troopers along the way to monitor my direction or speed.

My daughters know how I love roses, so on Saturday last, the delivery person showed up with a long gray box from Pro Flowers (my favorite purveyor of plants and flowers) filled with 24 roses of strikingly different colors.  It took Liz and me quite a while to prepare them properly for the vase. Stems were unusually tough and stubborn to cut through and were, atypically, covered with various sizes and shapes of thorns. We removed some “guard” petals as per instruction, cut the the bottom of each stem diagonally with a knife (not scissors), put flower food and water in the two vases left over from previous occasions, and arranged the little beauties in two splendid bouquets. The only missing ingredients were my daughters’ smiling faces, their contagious laughter. and, alas,  the smell or scent of roses which commercial plant breeders have long since eliminated from the flowers’ DNA in favor of brighter colors and extended shelf life.

[As I write this blog, I look from my apartment window into a strip mall across Colorado Boulevard where there is now located a sign with a green cross indicating the presence of a “Farmacy” selling a wide variety of marijuana buds ostensibly to be used for medicinal purposes. The ads for  establishments like these literally fill a third of the local alternative news magazine, Westword. Until I read these ads, I had no idea that so much time and energy was being devoted to the breeding and cultivation of different strains of medicinal Cannabis Sativa (nee pot, Hemp, blow,ganga, Puff etc.).

Interestingly, the names given to the various strains of Cannabis across the way are as exotic as those bestowed on roses, to wit: White Widow, Purple Haze, Blueberry Bud, Bubble Berry, Blue Dream, Perma Frost, Sublime, etc.  Compare these with the more “dignified” sobriquets of roses, to wit: Gentle Giant, Touch of Class, Glowing Peace, Dream Come True, Black Magic, Fragrant Cloud, and Pink Promise. Hmm! Which is which? I know the difference, of course: medicinal pot has not (yet) had the scent or smell bred out of its DNA.]

Why bother with all this? Well, it began with my comment and internal lament about roses which have had their scent bred out in favor of other virtues.  My thought then moved quickly to pot, er medicinal cannabis, which shares, it seems, an avid interest of people all over the world (not the same ones, God forbid) devoted to breeding new strains with various attributes, scents, colors, etc.

Which led me back to my incredible progeny (who sent me Fathers Day roses), real hybrids as it turns out, whom I helped breed more than forty years ago and have helped nurture ever since. Fortunately, over time, the scent of their loving nature is undiminished. They are not only beautiful to look at, but they replicate brilliantly, and have proven sturdy enough to handle the most severe of New England’s storms, personal and climatic, and are still so ineffably stunning in every respect that they are prize-winners wherever they go…and, in an imitation of the “buds across the street,” they have also given me “mellows” and “highs” beyond compare. So this is why I choose to combine, each year, Thanksgiving with Fathers Day, for I am truly grateful for my exquisite hybrid F2’s.

It’s the Summer Solstice, a great time to thank the Universe once more for our good fortune at just being alive and able to savor this incredibly beautiful earth day by day, season by season, specie by specie, individual by individual, and to receive the love of our children.

Just as I was about to embark on my recent trip, I dreamed a dream which was so vivid and different that I must report it here. Unlike many of my dreams, this one involved the revelation of several ideas rather than the narrative of a series of unrelated events or descriptions of people and places. The ideas occurred in a systematic form while I was a participant in a small group of faculty in a familiar private school library setting.

Earlier in the dream, small groups of faculty were sitting on the carpeted floor among the low slung stacks in a school library.  The conversations were informal, casual, friendly and probed into heavy topics other than education, topics such as religion.  For some reason, I had to leave my group, in fact the whole meeting, and was absent for a while. Later I returned, but was made to sign in in a book open by the entrance. I did so, but felt it was unnecessary since I had been there earlier.  I recall that I was wearing a beautiful new, intensely red shirt which I was proud of.

I returned to my discussion group, sat down on the floor with the rest of the participants, and was suddenly aware that I was very clear, for the first time in my life, about what the meaning and purpose of life was and what roles religions played in every one’s existence.

My “revelation” began with the Ten Commandments which I realized should not be taken as a list of absolute rules, given by God to Moses and the Jews, but rather should be viewed and used more as a list of important guides to people about how to live their lives. Problems arose in religions when the “guides” were elevated into commandments, or laws, and then extrapolated from, first by the rabbinic schools and more recently by all sorts of preachers and prophets. I saw that treating the  “suggestions” or “guides” as some sort divinely inspired list  for human behavior became a problem for human-kind when obeying and disobeying the rules suddenly made obeyers and disobeyers into saints or sinners. Furthermore, since it was impossible for the list of Ten to cover all conceivable situations,  many hours were spent by learned holy men extrapolating principles from every “commandment” to cover every imaginable situation (e.g., don’t work on Sunday unless….).

I saw that the Jews had skewed the intent of the original “guidelines” by making them into laws. They were not alone in doing this, however. Look at what contemporary denominations and sects have legislated based on the original “Ten.” In my dream, I saw that the original intention of the guides had been mostly replaced by volumes of derivative legislation honestly intended to clarify the original intent of the Ten Guides. Instead a whole new and detailed and exacting legal system was formed.

The role of the person, Jesus, in all of this was to be a corrective to the burdensome weight of legalism which had stifled human action, enterprise, and indeed life itself. In the dream, I saw that his role was to live his life in such a way as to be a living illustration of what living a good and correct life might look like.  The good life, as lived and talked about by Jesus, had little to do with adherence to a set of rule– even though following rules is relatively easy, ethically speaking.  Little reflection and thought are required: just find the rule covering the particular  situation and act accordingly.

I saw in the dream that Jesus and his life and his words were to be taken as the best available example of how we should live our lives,  of what’s important for us to do and think about. Since Jesus was to be seen as a corrector of human error,  he would not be viewed as divine or as a relative (Son) of God who was here to be killed  to “pay” for our sins, and then to rise from being dead to give us a  reason or incentive  (a reward or goal for life) to be good (because we followed the rules).

Put simply, Jesus lived the life outlined by the Ten Commandments and, along the way, explained to those who followed him what those commandments really meant in terms of daily living. He was a clarifier not a rule-maker. In the end Jesus was killed by his peers because he “walked the walk” that he preached, and that kind of person tends to make the people who surround him/her angry and jealous. People cannot stand it when someone does what they’re supposed to do–and can’t or won’t–and does it as a matter of course. Jesus by his goodness became an easy target for those who were unwilling or unable to live the kind of life presupposed and articulated so simply by the “Ten.”

I saw that since the commandments were simply principles of good or smart or peaceful living, they weren’t an iron clad set of legal proscriptions. For example, “Don’t Kill”–hey, we don’t have the right to take life because we didn’t create it. To put a person to death for killing another person is a double crime and stupid on the face of it as well. Taking life is not our prerogative any more than creating it is.

Stealing also fouls up society and makes people angry at one another. Wanting what your neighbor has gets you in trouble if you let it become a guiding principal in your life. You honor your father and mother minimally by listening to what they have learned from their experience in the world. In addition, you honor them because it was their union (whatever the circumstance) that created the miracle of your life.  You love/respect/honor  God or some Higher Power (whatever you choose to call it) because you know that you didn’t create the universe and  you aren’t the most important item in the universe or it’s central focus. In addition, you acknowledge that there is  “mystery” surrounding and permeating all human knowledge and certainty (death of a child, for example).

Loving another person’s spouse will inevitably cause troubles for you, and then for both of them. Common sense, right? Love your neighbor even more than yourself. While demanding and difficult, this is a great point-of-view from which to frame one’s actions in the world.  Think how much suffering would have been avoided if we had let this be our baseline for behavior and thought in ages past.

My conclusion in the dream, and it was clear as day, was that Jesus was a walking example of the fact that the principles of the Ten Commandments could be lived out in daily life. No more, no less.

Meaning of life, or not?Whatever it was,  it was sure clear to me and even makes good sense in retrospect. Another item to ponder seriously as my journey continues to unfold.

In days of yore, as we say, when my mother used to take me to our family doctor for my annual checkup, I knew–was totally confident–that  my body was smooth running, faultless, with all measured values well within the excellent to superior range. I was a physical Mercedes capable of feats of both speed and endurance as well as a built-in “quality” which meant that I could go many months between visits to the medical “garage” and my physician mechanic. In short, I took my design and assembly (not so much the sleek exterior lines, I admit) for granted, as I looked forward to longevity of at least 900,000-1,000,000 days before serious work needed to be done on the motor or transmission or drive chain. Perhaps it would go forever.

Then, sometime in my late twenties, I unwittingly traded the Mercedes for a ’65 Pontiac GTO , with a 369 engine generating 360 HP at a screaming  5400 rpm,  (three two barrel carbs, Hurst shifter, zero to sixty in a breathtaking 5.8 seconds). I polished the exterior of this beauty, but took less good care of what it consumed and the TLC I gave it as we spent hours together navigating curving and bumpy  roads at high speeds.  Inevitably, there would be consequences. On an annual visit to my family mechanic/doctor, now called an “internist,” I went through my usual mental exercise of “defying or “daring” him to find a problem. I loved to hear the results of various tests read to me and learn that all values were still in the excellent to superior range. Imagine my surprise, even shock and dismay,  to hear that my sharp-eared internist had heard a funny noise in my valve area; he said it was a flaw, probably there from the date of manufacture; no problem really.  Hmmm. Easy for him to say! But for me, DISASTER. I had a flaw, and it wasn’t in some peripheral component, but in the center of the power plant. How to proceed?

I became a little more careful about what I fed the vehicle and how I drove it over treacherous, curvy and bumpy roads, but by no means conservative in my approach, even after the warning pings and clanks became more and more apparent. Many of the latter I wrote off as the vehicle getting older, the natural results of metal stress and fatigue, rust, the build-up of various deposits on cylinder walls and spark plug and timing gaps. The yearly visits to the garage now produced more and more in the way of test results which indicated, “average,” “way too high,” “needs immediate attention,” and what kinds of gas and oil are you using anyway? (At that point I was making almost exclusive use of specialty 90 octane fuels from Scotland and Kentucky).

During my last years in New England, the temptations of the GTO’s speed and handling proved too dangerous so, as a professional and respected educator, I traded quite consciously for a staid, safe, comfortable, utilitarian Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon complete with faux wood side panels, heated leather seats, and average gas consumption around 10 mpg. That luxurious vehicle took me cross country from New England to Colorado and Kentucky a number of times, and soon the odometer racked up over 125,000 miles. This time when I went to the family mechanic/doctor (now called a PCP), I heard nothing about test results in the excellent to superior range. Every remark was either guarded or qualified. Longer times were spent with the stethoscope’s chest piece moving in vague patterns around my torso while my PCP avoided my questioning eyes as he stared into space.  More tests were ordered and scored against norms.  Clearly the years had not been all that good to the “King of the Road-“masters. So, a major ground-up overhaul and rebuild was rather forcefully suggested. It took the mechanics about 8 hours to perform the job, and took the vehicle almost two weeks more to be ready for any sort of outing

When the fumes from the paint shop finally wore off, I realized that I had unintentionally traded my Roadmaster for an old model of the infamous Ford Pinto, you know, the one with the design flaw in the gas tank which, when the car was rear-ended, would burst into flame.  Not only that, but I learned that the car had nothing but irritating surprises for the owner-driver–malfunctioning switches which changed lights from “on” to “off” or even “dim,”  an electrical system that would short-out without warning, fluid leaks, funny noises, a refusal to run on certain fuels, inappropriate backfiring,  and an increasingly uncomfortable ride. Parts were replaced, additives of all sorts (liquid and solid) were pored and poked into the engine, and various assemblies were repetitively retooled. Everything helped a little, but the sleek lines and power of the Mercedes, the excitement of the GTO, and the impeccable reputation of the Buick have gone forever, except in memory.

The net result of all of this experience with the Mercedes, GTO’s,  Roadmasters, and my current Pinto is this: a realization that no matter how well a vehicle is designed, maintained, and driven, or how badly it is abused over the years, 250,000 miles is still 250, 000 miles and, no matter how I cut it, the Pinto is still a Pinto.

And I am also reminded that one of these days, it will be the First of November in ’55 for my vehicle–see below…

The Deacon’s Masterpiece
or, the Wonderful “One-hoss Shay”:
A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay,
I’ll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, —
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive, —
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock’s army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, —
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will, —
Above or below, or within or without, —
And that’s the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down, but doesn’t wear out.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an “I dew vum,” or an “I tell yeou”)
He would build one shay to beat the taown
’N’ the keounty ’n’ all the kentry raoun’;
It should be so built that it couldn’ break daown:
“Fur,” said the Deacon, “’tis mighty plain
Thut the weakes’ place mus’ stan’ the strain;
’N’ the way t’ fix it, uz I maintain,
    Is only jest
T’ make that place uz strong uz the rest.”
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn’t be split nor bent nor broke, —
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the “Settler’s ellum,” —
Last of its timber, — they couldn’t sell ’em,
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he “put her through.”
“There!” said the Deacon, “naow she’ll dew!”
Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren — where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; — it came and found
The Deacon’s masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten; —
“Hahnsum kerridge” they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came; —
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundreth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. — You’re welcome. — No extra charge.)
FIRST OF NOVEMBER, — the Earthquake-day, —
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn’t be, — for the Deacon’s art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn’t a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!
First of November, ’Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
“Huddup!” said the parson. — Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday’s text, —
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the — Moses — was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet’n’-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill, —
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half past nine by the meet’n-house clock, —
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, —
All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That’s all I say.

Memorial Days are always “downers” for me.  I can’t help but see cemeteries filled with line on line of white crosses and stars of David, in America, Europe, and Asia.  This is the primary reason, of course, that my spirits are always down this day. I remember the millions of men, boys, young men and women, and civilians who have died in wars in which America participated, wars which most of those who fought (along with civilian bystanders) had little to do with starting. Some people were forced into the ranks; however, many of the participants fought because they believed in one cause or another.

In the beginning,  there were the Natives to America who saw their homeland being unjustly seized by unwanted white invaders; then there were  the white men securing the New World from Continental invasion and attacks by the native inhabitants. Shortly, there was the higher moral cause of wresting the Independence of the colonies from Great Britain. Then there was the Mid 19th century sectional war between States of the Union and States of the newly formed Confederacy, a particularly bloody war fought between American relatives and neighbors, between former citizens of the same country, a conflict fought for myriad reasons including abstract concepts of political power, governance, human and political rights, slavery, varied ways of life, money, land, sectional jealousy, and on and on.

Later there were the wars with Mexico and Spain for territorial aggrandizement and expansion (perhaps for ego satisfaction, chest thumping, and pure greed as well), two world wars, one promoted as a war to end all wars, and the next as a war against totalitarian tyranny. This last War also had intense ethical underpinnings when it was discovered that untold millions of Jews and other “undesirables” had simply been exterminated by the Nazis in Germany.

In both Germany and Japan we made war against civilians as well as military personnel, with the Allies firebombing great cities and leaving them in piles of rubble.  The conclusive act of this war was the deliberate devastation of every living and standing thing in two Japanese cities with immediate fatalities in the hundreds of thousands and many thousands more casualties occurring as the results of radiation burns and poisoning began to surface.

More recently, our wars, by comparison, have killed fewer Americans (Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and on and on), but have inflicted numerous injuries and death on military personnel as well as on civilian populations which happened to be in the way of bullets, explosives, and napalm. This is only a rough outline of America’s war history and doesn’t even begin to consider or total up the other deaths in the world, mostly unnecessary, which have been caused by the inhumanity, selfishness, greed, revenge-seeking, and power mongering tendencies of individuals, tribes, cults, religions, and nations.

Yes, Memorial Day, on the face of it is a “bummer” for me. I do remember with thanks the courage of millions of men and women who have fought and died over the years so that the rest of us can live relatively peaceful and comparatively comfortable (if not fulsome) lives. Their sacrifice was great, and I’d like to believe that we are living in such a way that we honor their ultimate gift to us. I mostly try, but think I regularly fall short.

Nothing I can think of can make this weekend in any way uplifting for me.  My memories of seeing the white crosses and Stars of David in the cemeteries at Arlington, Gettysburg, Vimy Ridge, Omaha Beach, Fort Knox and Fort Riley diminish and then totally disable and eviscerate my enthusiasm for celebration on this holiday in May.
                                              * * * * * * * * * * * *
At the most personal and individual family level, Memorial Day is a day when I relive memories of family gatherings on Long Island Sound, the raucous gaiety engendered by beer and booze and good fellowship, the wise cracks and wisdom passed from elders to their progeny, the brats and dogs and macaroni salad, thin overcooked burgers, and succulent clams (swimming in butter) after being roasted on a cedar shingle fire nestled in the beach rocks; and there was the laughter and bragging and respect that gave me a feeling of comfort because I knew that I was accepted and loved–at least for the duration of the picnic. Today I also set aside time to remember those who are no longer among us who made those gatherings so special for me, for us all.

And I remember those in my Kentucky family, Jojnsons and Stones,  who gave so much to insure that I would eventually amount to something and make meaningful contributions to the lives of others, and do my little bit to create a world in which avarice and selfishness and lying were not the hallmarks of existence. I’ve tried, God knows, and am comfortable passing my unfinished tasks on to those I’ve raised to do them better than I have. Why? Because with William Faulkner, I finally believe “…that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”  I’d love to be around to see if this is true! If it is, I’ll celebrate Memorial Day with great enthusiasm.