Saturday, April 4, 2015

the great lawn chair in the sky

whenever people ask me where i "got" my writing sensibilities from, i always attribute them to my grandad, Ol' Red Hunt.

grandad didn't even graduate the 7th grade. he had a rough childhood. poor as dirt.

poorer than that. picking cotton in west Texas as a boy was more important to the family than secondary school. he didn't learn to write.

who cares? writing isn't about grammar, it's about a message.

he wrote:
This man who comes and hunts with me from Arkansas got a 8-week old huntin' dog and asked me what I was telling [my dog] Sally when I told her"Chores, Sally, chores." 
I told them I was telling her to pottie. 
"Hey, that's Ok! I'll teach Luke that!" 
Well, the next morning they came by to go hunt and I was out front with Sally, and just as I told her "Chores, Sally," he turned to me and said, "Not so loud, Jim! I told Luke that last nite, and she shit all over the pickup afore we could get out!" 
somehow Grandad met and married my grandma, Lois Leola, a sweet, tough girl from Iowa, and they had a life together. they settled in Oregon after gramps' discharge from the Marine Corps during WWII. they had three children. they were both frugal and tough. kind, but tough. they had a marriage that lasted nearly 70 years, because they were tough.

as we say goodbye to grandad, we mourn. we mourn a person who was original beyond the cliche of originality. yes, we all are one-of-a-kind, but very few of us are memorable. we will remember James Wells Hunt.

a story:
At 0538 I took all three of the dogs for a potty run, they all knowing a reward was awaiting them when they were done. Now picture, if you will, where I take them. There is a three-foot hi berm that we must cross on our way. They all three need to go pretty bad. High-energy on Rico's part, and of course Sally wants to be close to her owner (old-age and seniority, etc) is straining to stay ahead of the other two.
Well it's frost every day now that it has rained a little and we have a big supply of leaves on top of the ground. Rico is one fast, energetic dude, strong. He don't know much about seniority and old age. He thinks evidently who gets there first and wet's down the area is the winner! 
They never consider the old owner for one second! So on down the side of the berm, Rico sees just the spot he has to piss on first, before Sally and Punkin can get there.
Zippo! Lunge, 75-lbs hits the leash and this old man was holding on to the other end for dear life!
Well, you can guess where the old man is by this time, eating frosty leaves BEFORE breakfast, and thankful to the good Lord that he doesn't have a broken leg (like Jackie, Klutz!), now trying to find three dogs in the dark.  
he was a tyrant at times. bullheaded. angry. close-minded at times. a red-hot temper that cooled as he aged into grandfather-hood. he was a man of conviction and faith. he made hard workers look lazy. he was disciplined. he didn't drink. he liked to lecture and preach. he studied the bible every night. he didn't understand affection, but he loved us. his voice would crack. his hugs were few, yet emotional, meaningful.

he showered us with insults, but it was a way of invitation. he scolded us for sending vacation postcards, but it was a way of showing pride that we were enjoying life. 
  • he warned us about becoming like Lennie Smith, an obese old man, when we packed away too much at Sunday dinner, but he always filled up our plates three-times over. he always had dessert.
  • he built his home out of salvaged materials from old military barracks in the mid-1950s, the home he lived in until the day he died. 
    Are those dead frogs?
  • he drank buttermilk. often. he cooked in bacon grease. always. in his 70s, as his his cholesterol neared 300, the doctor remarked he had the stamina of a man in his 40s. bypass surgeries came and went, but he still walked 3-6 miles a day hunting in the rough Arizona mountain terrain until his legs just wore out.
  • he gave me a sex talk before i got married. "a man has needs...."
  • he taught me how to shoot a pistol, but it was a pre-owned broken pistol with a crooked sight, that he "bought off a fella who didn't have two nickels to rub together" and he was even more pleased when i actually hit the target
  • he lived off $500 a month, had the lowest utility bill in the neighborhood because he wouldn't turn his hot water heater on. i once had to return a plumbing fixture for him to WalMart. it came to $2.19. he had kept the receipt. 
  • he saved everything. our wedding gift was a giant coffee can full of nuts, washers, bolts, screws, clamps, wire and assorted hardware that he found on his long walks - with a duct tape wrapping paper.
  • he repaired everything. our $50 croquet set became ultimate woodsman croquet as he replaced the mallet handles and/or ends with tree logs. he even learned to sew. it was a mess.
  • he recycled everything. i have a letter he sent written on the cover sheet of a 150-pack of lined paper. you know, the piece on top under the shrink wrap that says "college rule" and has the UPC code? yeah, he put that letter in a return envelope he got from the IRS and crossed out "IRS" and put my name in. 
    How did this get to me?
  • he gathered everything. if it was on the side of the road, in a ditch, under an overpass, or otherwise "free," it was likely picked up and repurposed. he made $1,500 one year in aluminum can deposit money. he sat outside an entire weekend shooting birds with a pellet gun as they came near his (salvaged from old screen doors) sun-drying racks where he was carefully tending to the dehydration of 50 lbs. of "found" plums.
  • when he couldn't climb into his truck as he got older, instead of get a smaller truck, he welded a towing ball to the side as a handle to hoist himself in. he only owned two trucks in 35 years.
  • My '84 Datsun was unpredictable, so I took her to the auto saw-bones! Well that old gal must have smelled the embalming fluid at that place...the day of the examination she stopped her contentiousness and ran so good, I decided to take her to Texas, pretty near 2000 miles! Oh, but not without some last words on her part! Coming back she blew the oil cap off and sprayed hot oil all over the engine, so that every time I get the engine hot, that last word from her reminds me that she is a FEMALE. But, I have never had a better car in all my life.
  • he told you to do things, and you did them. even if you absolutely couldn't do them - like lifting something heavy, like a boat or a freezer or a box of bees. you just did it. and you always wore gloves (mostly both the right hand because none of the sets actually matched...he just had a box of gloves he picked up on the side of the road somewhere) 
  • his hobbies were a type of work: beekeeping, mushroom hunting, drying fruit, squeezing citrus, canning quail, fishing
    • Now just because you might notice that the date of this writing, you might be thinkin' all I have to do is what I am doing! Well let me tell you! I got chores that have NEVER been done! I just felt this letter of yours has been laying on top of my kitchen table since about the 10th, and to be truthful, I need that space on the table it is taking up!
  • except the motorcycle. that was just joy and the road and the wind. i started going when i was four. we all went a few times, i think. 
    How did my parents approve this?
  • no worky // no eaty 
  • he always asked me how long it took to boil and egg. i still have no idea. i have to look it up every time. 
  • he loved camping in the trailer house. often, he would just stop on the sides of roads instead of pay the steep campsite rates... you know, like $20 a night....
  • his hat was never on straight. 
  • he could kill anyone at croquet. anyone, any time. he would run the table and be done with the field before you had gone through the third wicket. and he liked to cheat, just to get you to pay attention. 
  • he said things like, "sonofagun" and "darn near" and "goodfornothin'old..." he rarely cursed.
  • "Fatherwethankyoutodayforthisfood, forthosethatjoinsusheretodayforthismeal, weaskyoutoblessittoourbodies, ifitfitsyourwill, wethankyouforthegoodhealthyouhavebestoweduponus, pleaseforgiveusofoursins, weaskforyourmercy, intheLordJesusChristwepray, amen." 
and he was unflappable. he had money. quite a bit actually, thanks to grandma's investment plan, but he didn't give a crap if you teased him about the hot water or questioned whether the lawn chair was going to collapse if you sat down on it, it being repaired several lifetimes over by using other broken lawn chairs. 

he lived this way because it gave him purpose. he had faith, and part of that faith was frugality and hard work. he was truly unimpressed with material things, other than their utility today and their durability (and how that good ol' boy was a complete idiot for paying that much for something). he could be too hard on us, too hard on strangers, too hard on himself, but he loved us.
  • I am glad of you grandchildren. Gee I have enjoyed u so much. I just think of the times we have shared with one another
the surety he had of his meeting the heavenly father as he approached the end was something i can't quite understand personally, but his own peace with this trip to the promised land brought such peace to me as i spent a weekend with him last month. he was not afraid. he was not sad. he was ready.

he was tired, but he was ready.

he wrote:
I hurt so much for your grandmother. It is hard to enjoy anything. But one cannot stop living, life must go on!
we hurt so much for you now, gramps. we love you. 

Monday, February 9, 2015

Walking on the surface of the sun

I read this [
http://www.scarymommy.com/being-everything/] and it resonated. 

M, too, looks at me as if I paint the sky.  

She's almost 2 1/2, so I wonder how much longer I can count on the snuggle nest and the cuddle couch, the tears at school drop off, and the stretching-reaching arms begging me for bedtime stories. 

She is a girl full of love. She loves her daddy and her Vicky and her Grammy. She loves her friends and her kitty. She loves her baby dolls (Holly and Dan, obviously). But so far, she reserves the most exhausting love for me. 

It's the "crawl back into the womb" sort of love. She wants me to hold her. She wants me to wear her. She wants me to be her furniture. She wants me to pretend and build and color and sing and hide with her. 

Mostly, she wants me to see her.

Seeing her is scary. 

It's like seeing everything you've ever known about the world destroyed in a second and finding a new, unfamiliar world in the next. Seeing her is looking at the past and the future at the same time. Seeing her is knowing that you've given something very important away, and you can never get it back. 

Seeing her is hot, bright and blinding. It's so blinding, that I can't even write about it unless I am 2,000 miles away where it's quiet and dark. 

So much of parenting is isolating or frenetic or boring or frustrating - or all of those things in one minute. I live in that world, too. But just one look reminds me that I created this person, yet I don't own her. Somehow, she owns me. 

Being a parent takes so much bravery as you give away to the world what you hold most precious and dear. And you don't give it away all at once, but a little bit every minute. It's a weight. I am so afraid I can't be as brave as she needs me to be. 

I am here to help make her strong. I am here to protect her. I am here, and I am afraid, and full of hope, and...I am just here, and she is just there. And I wonder what I've done. And then she looks at me.  

When she looks at me, it's a broad, warm, innocent true love. 

When I look at her, really put down my distractions and see her, my eyes burn. She is everything.