A Muncie Boyhood-A Few "Back in My Day" Reflections

This post isn't quite as story oriented as some of my other posts, but really is just a random collection of memories from my childhood.  I thought I'd quickly share them.  It might add some background color to some of my other stories.  On with the show...

“Times have changed.”

“Back in my day…”
“When I was a kid…”

I heard that from time to time as a boy. When I did, it usually provoked a roll of the eyes and an under the breath “here we go again.” Every generation gets to hear it, and every generation gets to do it.

Now it’s my turn.

Here are some “back in my day” reflections from my Muncie Boyhood…

Television

A. No satellite. No Cable. We had an antenna. It sat on top of a metal pole that was tucked into an outside corner of our house. Attached to it was a wire that connected to a 4” x 6” black box with a dial. To adjust the signal, we would move that dial back and forth, which theoretically moved the antenna around. It never seemed to make much difference to me.

B. We had 3 ½ channels. That was it. Channel 6-ABC, Channel 8-CBS, Channel 13-NBC, and sometimes we could get a good enough signal to pick up Channel 4. We always hoped for a good signal from Channel 4 on Saturday night so we could watch Sammy Terry and the old scary movies! There was also a local Muncie channel, but it was PBS and we rarely cared if we even got that one.

C. Cable came along in the mid-70’s. My parents resisted for a while. “Why would I pay for TV?” Eventually, they gave in and we suddenly had twenty channels. Wow! Then, HBO showed up. My nephew and I discovered that before the adults did. “This movie is rated R. HBO will show this feature only at night.” Need I explain further?

Telephone

A. We had one phone. A black table-top model with a rotary dial.

B. For most of my childhood, we also had a party line. If you’ve never heard of that, a party line was one that you SHARED with some other random and unknown family. If they were on the phone, you couldn’t use yours. You could literally pick up the phone and listen to some strangers discussing whatever strangers discuss. If you had an emergency, you had to break into their conversation and ask them to hang up so you could make your call. Eventually, as party lines gave way to private lines, we no longer needed to deal with that, but we kept the party line anyway. It was cheaper. No one else was on there, but we still paid less than we would have with a private line.

Air Conditioning

A. Our air conditioning was an open window with a screen. August in Muncie can be hot and very humid. It was normal to have the curtains pulled back and a big box fan stuffed in the window to pull in the night air. It sounds terrible, but you just learned to adapt.

B. Dad never did invest in central air, but after I was grown and gone, mom did eventually nag him to the point that he allowed her to put a window unit in the dining room—one window unit to cool the whole house.

School Transportation

A. I can remember riding a school bus a few times in only one early year of my days in the Muncie Community Schools. It was short-lived, and I really didn’t like it.

B. For most of my days, I walked to school. Kids never walk to school these days. I think parents would be brought up on charges if they expected them to. I started walking to school probably in first grade, and I either walked to or from…or both…all the way into Southside High School. I walked in the sun. I walked in the dark. I walked in the rain. I walked in the snow. I walked in the heat and I walked in the cold. I never walked “five miles, barefoot, up hill both ways” but I did walk.

C. I remember one day in high school when there was a huge snow storm just beginning, the officials released the students early. I had walked to school as normal, but it was snowing like crazy, so I went to the office to call my dad. ME: “Dad, they’re letting us out early because of the snow. Will you come get me?” DAD: “Nope.” ME: “Dad, please. It’s terrible out there.” DAD: “Nope. It won’t hurt you to walk.”

So, I walked.

Trash

We had three ways to deal with trash.

a. A half-gallon paper milk carton was torn open and placed beside the sink. Mom would put all food scraps in that container. Weekly it would be put in the main garbage.

b. We had a paper sack that sat on the kitchen floor in front of the refrigerator and next to the trash can. We placed un-burnables in that bag; things like cans or other metal or plastic items. Once a week, the paper milk carton was closed up and added to one of the sacks. The sack would be put in the steel garbage cans out by the alley for the garbage truck to collect.

c. We had a plastic trash can that also was kept in the kitchen. We would put mostly paper in that receptacle, and from time to time, we would take it out to a barrel that my dad kept by the alley to burn. We burned trash as long as I lived there. Most of the neighbors did the same. I don’t think you could get by with that today.

Things we didn’t have…

A. No microwave ovens

B. No cellular phones—geesh, we didn’t even have cordless phones

C. No TV remote controls

D. No DVD players,…we didn’t even have VHS until I was in high school

E. No home computers—a handheld calculator was even rare when I was real little

F. No I-pods, no CD players…we had 8-track players, and before that it was plain old vinyl records.

G. No power nuthin’ in my dad’s car. No power steering. No power brakes. No power windows. I’m lucky he even got an AM radio put in his 1968 Chevy Nova.

You know, as I think about it, it’s a wonder my whole generation even survived. I mean, we even played OUTSIDE in the summer time.

More to come.

Is Your Worship Synchronized?

Sometimes I feel a little conflicted in worship; torn between what I perceive to be the expectations of those around me, and what I feel on the inside. Have you ever been there? More and more, I find myself examining the words my mouth sings, and comparing them to what I am actually doing in worship. Frankly, they don’t always seem to be synchronized.

This thought process began a couple of years ago when I was sitting with a group of parents and teens on a Sunday night. The youth minister was having a devotional to kick off the summer activities. At one point, we sang “This is How We Overcome” by Reuben Morgan. A key line is:

He has turned my mourning into dancing!

He has turned my sorrow into joy!

The more I looked around the room, the more disturbed I became. NO ONE was smiling. No one seemed happy at all. Here we were singing about how God had made us so happy, and our faces were giving off the opposite message. Were we lying to God? Or, were we just not paying attention to what we were singing?

I wasn’t sure then, and I’m still not sure.

That experience got me thinking about our worship. How many times do we sing about things that we just simply don’t mean? Or, maybe we mean them, but we’ve really turned them into metaphors.

What is a metaphor? It is a figure of speech that is applied to something that it does not literally represent in order to reflect a resemblance. It becomes a word picture that describes something else. For example: “Her face shone like the sun.”

I think we have taken acts of worship and have literally made them metaphors of what we think is going on in our hearts. We have suppressed outward obvious worship, and have begun to rely on what we “think” about those things.

“I feel that way, so I don’t need to actually do it.”

Maybe I’ll try that with the IRS. “I felt like I paid my taxes, so I don’t think I really need to do it.”

So, are you interested in some examples? Here you go….

In the last three weeks we have sung three different songs that I think illustrate my point.

First, we sang a song that included a line about “lifting holy hands to God.” That phrase was used several times. In an audience of over 200 people, maybe three or four were actually doing it. I hesitated at first. I’ve been brought up in this suppressed worship atmosphere and I have a hard time breaking out. But, I had to deal with it. How can I sing about it if I’m not willing to do it? So, reluctantly, I raised my hands. It felt so awkward….but, it also felt more honest.

Secondly, we sang a song that encouraged the church to “Shout Hallelujah!” Over and over, it said to “Shout Hallelujah!”

Shout Hallelujah!

Shout Hallelujah!

Shout Hallelujah to the Lord!

Hallelujah literally means to praise Jehovah.

We sing other songs that repeat “Praise Him. Praise Him.”

But, do we ever really do that? To praise someone is to tell them about all the wonderful things they do, all the wonderful things they are, all the features they have that mean so much to us. It would be weird if I walked up to my daughter and only said: “I praise you.” However, if I told her how beautiful she was, or how proud I am of her talents and abilities, then I have actually praised her.

So, we sing about praising God, but how often do we actually do that? What are His features, His qualities, His wonders that mean so much to you? Tell Him about it.  Tell others about Him.

On top of that, the song was encouraging the church to actually SHOUT HALLELUJAH! I wonder what would happen; what people’s reactions would be, if some folks actually started doing that. “Hallelujah!”

Lastly, we sang the song “Here I Am to Worship” by Chris Tomlin. One of the key phrases is:

Here I am to worship

Here I am to bow down

Here I am to say that you’re my God

Here I am to bow down?

Really? Bow down? Actually get down on our knees and physically humble ourselves before God? Bow before the Great I Am? Really?

We sing it. What if we actually did it? If Tim Tebow can do it in the end zone, surely we can do it in church. When Tim does it, the media makes it all about him…Tebowing. However, I’m sure he would agree that it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with God. It is funny how physically humbling our bodies can actually enhance the humility of our hearts.

One of these days, it will be my turn to again lead the congregation I serve in prayer. I’ll get my turn in wording a “Shepherd’s Prayer.” When it comes around again, there’s a better than average chance that I’m going to give the church an opportunity to join me in a little physical humility.

Get ready. It’s coming.

So, how about you? Is your worship only a metaphor? Are the words you sing only a representative of what you hide inside, or are you actually living out the words?

Maybe you could join me in my awkward attempt to be honest, making the words I sing synchronize with the actions I perform. If so, then I say:  HALLELUJAH!

Destiny's Reign

Destiny’s Reign

2/24/2011

By Michael DeCamp

One day I went to worship

And God gave me a gift

The praise was over

The sermon had ended

And my destiny said hello

There she stood before me

My future with brown curly hair

Smiling with exotic eyes

That captured my gaze

My heart took notice

My life made a shift that day

A change of direction

It was subtle at first

A simple yearning

A friendship blooming

As friendship matured

And our hearts began to merge

Our lives intertwined

Destiny took the wheel

And our journey began

My gaze is still held captive

By those exotic eyes

Time has not mellowed the yearning

As God’s gift still abides

And my destiny still reigns

In my heart

The Emerald Shadows

Photo courtesy of Pamela Enos

The Emerald Shadows

March 4, 2012

A Short Story by Michael R. DeCamp

The woman stood at the end of her pier staring out over the now calm waters of Whistler’s Lake; the slight chill in the air raising goose bumps on her arms and legs. The sun was shining brightly and through the mist of her exhaled breath, she could see ducks paddling in and out of the reeds along the shore. Despite the heavy storms of the previous evening, everything looked normal enough this morning; everything that is except for the wooden door floating in the placid ripples about thirty feet off the end of the dock.

The door, frame and all, looked as if it belonged there. It seemed as if it was simply part of the normal order of things, and that there was a hidden chamber underneath, sort of a natural portal to another watery realm.

Curiosity. That’s what the image evoked in the mind of the middle-aged woman as she stood there staring and her light blue nightgown flapped lightly in the wind. It seemed odd to her that the door would be in that place. How could it have come to be there? There did not seem to be any other debris nearby, and yet there it was. Stationary in the water just a few feet away; locked in place as if God Himself had hung it there.

She had always been prone to curiosity. If she had been a cat, she would have used up her nine lives before she exited her teens. At times it tended to dominate her and threaten to drive her over the edge. Times like when a friend would start to share some meaty gossip, but then would say: “Oh, I can’t tell you. It wouldn’t be right.” Those times drove her nearly mad.

Now, that curiosity seemed to swell with each ripple that flowed up to the doorframe. However, unlike the tiny waves that dissipated when they reached the hinged portal, her curiosity only continued to blossom. A bud of wonder formed, then began to open, until when in full bloom, she finally determined that she simply had to take a closer look.

On her right, rocking gently against the aluminum framework of the pier was her old rowboat. She walked over and looked inside at the collection of oars, lifejackets, and dirty water gathered in the bottom of the small vessel. She really ought to go back inside and put on some better clothes, but she just could not bring herself to turn around. She was drawn to the door like mouse to a piece of cheese, or a moth to a porch light in the summer.

She stepped down onto one of the seats, careful not to lose one of her matching, light blue house-slippers; holding onto a mildly rotted wooden support post for balance. Once aboard, she stepped on down into the boat, soaking her slippers in the dirty mixture of rain and lake water in the bottom, and sat down onto the seat. After untying the line from the mooring and fixing the oars into their mating hardware along the port and starboard sides of the boat, she pushed off and began to row quietly toward the strange door that seemed to be beckoning for her attention.

In a few minutes, she found herself along side the door. As was the norm with a row boat, she had paddled facing the stern with the bow of the boat at her back and she had come up along side the door with its knob on her right along the port side of the boat.

Now that she was upon it, she could see that it was a plain sort of door commonly used for bedrooms or closets with no ornamentation at all. There was nothing to visually stimulate the kind of essence of intrigue that she was feeling as she looked upon its oak laminate finish save one spot that had been crushed inward. The knob was simple as well; a plain, round brass knob. No lock.

It is an odd thing about closed doors. They seem to beg to be opened. It harkens back to the days of your youth when your parents would take you on a visit to some seemingly ancient relative in an even more ancient old house with lots of old, six-panel doors, layered thick with paint, that just called out to be opened. A weird mixture of fear and curiosity would tug at your mind until you could sneak a peak only to find a pantry full of canning jars and cereal boxes.

This door in the lake evoked that same sort of feeling. The woman knew that logically the only thing under the door was more water, but the mere fact that it was floating there still latched in its frame seemed to demand that the knob be turned and the door pulled open on its hinges. She had no choice. She had to do it. She had to open that door and look inside. It was calling to her. There was a pressure from inside pushing her to sneak a peak.

Slowly, with a trepidation that she could not understand, she leaned over the edge of the boat and turned the knob. It clicked and popped free of the latch. It took a bit more strength than she expected to pull the door open because she was leaning at an odd angle over the rim of the boat; pulling up with her right hand while trying to maintain her balance in the rocking boat with her left. With much effort, she managed to pull the door free and fling it open.

The door stopped, frozen in place when perpendicular to the water revealing within the framework an emerald staircase that descended deep into the heart of the lake. The sun was just high enough that she could see down quite a distance, but she could not see the bottom. The light faded away after maybe ten steps and the shadows of the deep took over.

If a closed door whispers feelings of curiosity and fear, a shadowed staircase to somewhere unknown screams the same and more. She simply could not ignore its call. She had to know. She had to know what was down there, and how could it have come to be. She trembled with fear, but her curiosity drove her forward.

Tilting the boat to the side, she slid overboard and onto the top step and let the vessel float away. Down she stepped. One step. Two. Three more steps. Soon her head was even with the surface of the lake. She was amazed at the weirdness of the situation. She could look down into the darkness of the portal that should not exist, and at the same time she could look out over the waters of the lake; at all the beauty that was her home. The ducks. The water lilies. The roses, lilacs, and peonies that she so delicately cared for each spring.

Should she keep going, she wondered. Or, should she ignore the longing to further descend into the darkness below?

She loved the world above, but it had lost much of its luster when her husband had passed. Her children were grown and had moved away. All that was left for her were the flowers, the ducks,…and…the lake. So little to satisfy an intense curiosity.

Now, the lake was calling to her. It was as if she could hear her name echoing up the emerald steps. “Maaaaggie. Maaaaggie. Come down, Maggie. Come down.”

She looked around at the sunshine reflecting off the rippled water one more time, and then stepped down. One more step. Two more. She glanced up at the sky as she took a third, smiled as a bird soared overhead, and then turned back toward the darkness as the door smoothly swung shut sealing her inside the emerald shadows.

Each day now, they wheel her out to the end of the pier to sit in the sun and stare blankly over the water; hopeful that the lake will free her mind and let her come back. But, she cannot see the ducks or the flowers or the bright rays of the sun reflecting off of the calm waters. All she can see is the swirling, twirling, whirling emerald shadows, and she is captivated by the intensity of the images as each is more intriguing than the last.

End



Roommate-itis

I’ve never had appendicitis, but I did have tonsillitis a number of times, at least up until my folks finally had them removed. Itis, itis, itis. An inflammation. A sore swelling.

This is the story of a sore swelling of a set of roommates…in a fun sort of way.

In the fall of 1984, I wasn’t exactly inexperienced in the realm of roommates. I’d had two during my days in Bible College in Williamstown, West Virginia. (That’s another story, or series of stories.) However, I’d just become engaged to the girl who is now the wife who puts up with me, and Sheridan, the campus minister at my church felt I should have a bit more understanding of what it meant to live responsibly with someone other than my mom or dad. As a result, for about three months I moved in with a couple of guys in the campus/young pro ministry.

Three very interesting months.

There were three of us in the little, two-bedroom bungalow on west Abbott Street. Walter had the front bedroom to himself, and I had to share the back bedroom with Tom. I moved my folding, hide-away bed into the northwest corner, and Tom had his twin in the northeast corner. There was one bathroom and an extra shower in the basement. It was a cool little place to live; close to campus and a pleasant neighborhood…despite the occasional drunken party down the street.

The stories began on my first night in my new pad. At bedtime, I crawled into my bed just a few minutes after Tom jumped into his and he was asleep by the time my head hit my pillow. About twenty minutes after falling asleep, I learned that Tom can be very animated in his slumber.

I was shocked awake by:

“WHAT IS THIS MESS?” shouted Tom!

“Huh? What?” I said.

“What is that?” he asked.

“What is what?”

“It’s right over my bed!” he explained.

“What is?”

“That’s okay. It’s over your bed now.”

And then, Tom was back to snoozing. Sometime later, the adrenaline finally drained from my system and I went back to sleep too. The next day, when I asked him about it, he said he was seeing some sort of light that was just dangling there in mid-air over his bed. Then he said it floated over to my bed and then was gone.

Just a bit creepy.

You never really knew what any given night was going to hold. One night Tom took me on a tour of his office. Of course, only he could see it.

One other interesting night, he woke me with an urgent whispering request:

“Mike. Mike. Hey Mike.” He said in a hushed tone.

Groggily, I replied: “Uhhhh, yeah. What’s the matter?”

“Quick! Turn on the light!”

“Why? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“There’s a snake in the room!”

I was no dummy, so I answered with: “Ummm, you turn on the light.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” I replied.

“It’s riiiight by my side.” He stammered.

So, I carefully crawled out of bed and made my way across the bedroom to the light switch and flipped on the bright ceiling light. Looking over to Tom, I watched as he reached across his body with his left hand and jerked the blanket off.

Nothing there.

“Whew! I guess I was dreaming.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Back to bed I went, again waiting for the adrenaline to drain from my system.

Now, I don’t want you to think that Tom was the only creative entertainment in the house. Walter made his own special mark on my psyche. He was a cool guy, and I say that with deep affection. I also say that with some sadness because he passed away this last fall. He was a friend. He was sharp. He was smart. He was professional. He had a spiritual mind.

He also had one key bad habit.

I preferred the stand up shower in the basement. That was Tom’s choice too. However, Walter preferred the bathtub in the main bath on the main floor. His bad habit revolved around that bathtub. He would wake up and turn on the hot water to fill the tub, and then lay back down to snooze while it filled. A fine plan most of the time. One day, though, he fell completely back to sleep.

The tub filled. The tub overflowed. Gratefully, he caught it quickly, before it got too bad. Also gratefully, his brother owns a carpet care company in Muncie, and he recruited him to come by and suck up the water.

Ultimately though, there was the special day in December. A day of disaster. A day when Walter struck fear in the hearts of Tom and Mike.

It was a nice day. Sunny. Cool, but not cold. A Saturday. A day off. A day to play.

About noon, Walter did two things simultaneously that interacted to create one near disaster and one real, albeit minor disaster.

First, he liked to deep fry french fries, so he put a pot of cooking oil on a flame on the stove, and he covered the oil with a lid. Secondly, he was planning to take a bath, so he turned on the water to fill the tub. While he was in the bathroom turning on the water, the oil on the stove boiled over and began to flame on the stove. Tom, Walter, and I converged on the kitchen to deal with the tiny fire that was threatening to become a big fire. None of us were clear on what to do. I knew we shouldn’t use water and that we needed to smother it, but I wasn’t sure what to use. I suggested flour, so we threw flour on it. Nope still burning. More flour. Apparently the wrong choice. Still burning. Getting desperate, I took a deep breath and blew it on the flame as hard as I could.

I blew it out!

What a relief! We were standing around the kitchen laughing at our own ineptness. What idiots we were. Hahahahahaha! Tom heard something down the back stairs. He trotted down a few steps to look in the basement.

“Walter!!!!!! The baaatthhhroooom!”

“Oh, no!” cried Walter as he sprung down the hall.

The tub had overflowed while we were putting out the fire. This time the water had completely soaked the floor, then had drained down the air ducts into the furnace. Water was all over the bathroom floor, the hallway floor, and the basement floor.

Time for Walter’s brother Carl to come to the rescue again. It was so convenient that day to have Kizer’s Carpet Care a simple call away.  http://kizercarpetcare.com/home.nxg
  
Now, if those two things weren’t enough, my friend Walter was not done that day. The messes were cleared up, and later that night Walter was entertaining a couple visiting from out of town. They came over to our place while Tom and I were away. It was a cool evening, and Walter thought it would be great to build a fire in the little fireplace in our living room.

Of course, a fire in the fireplace works better AFTER you open the flue.

He lit the fire. The smoke started to billow. He said they fled the house, and he kept crawling back in and using the poker to try to open the vent several times before he finally succeeded. Thankfully, he was finally successful, and a serious house fire was averted for the second time that day.

The smoke cleared out…and, so did I a few days later. It was safer back home with my folks. Great stories. I don’t know if I really learned anything that ultimately helped in my marriage, but I do enjoy the memories. I guess I did learn three or four things: Showers are safer than tubs, don’t put a lid on hot oil, use baking soda on stove fires, and make sure you open the flue BEFORE you light the fire.

This story is written in a spirit of fondness for both of my friends, Tom and Walter. Especially, I want to dedicate this post to the memory of my friend Walter Kizer. He will be missed by both his family and his friends.

You can run the tub all you want now, my friend.

A Muncie Boyhood-Erector Sets & Mousetraps

Toys. Every boy needs his toys. That fact hasn’t changed in….well,…ever. It also doesn’t change as a boy becomes a man, but that’s a different discussion.


In a previous post, I discussed my boyhood Christmas experiences and some of the toys I was excited to receive on Christmas morning. I got the popgun. I got the drum set. I got the Hot Wheels racetrack. I even got a cool Tinker Toy set with its little, round wooden sticks and wooden wheels and stuff. Stick this stick in that hole in that wheel and connect that doo-dad to that thing-a-ma-gig and you can make your very own….

Weird doo-dad thingy.

I had fun with it. It was creatively interesting. However, I wanted a couple of things my cousins had. It always seemed that my cousins had the cool stuff and I had the….creatively interesting stuff. You know how that goes. Childhood envy.

They had a set of Lincoln Logs. I mean WOW. You could build your very own log cabin or log castle or any other kind of log stuff. How cool is that?

I never got one. I never got one and I’m still resenting my parents for that deficiency to this day. So if you are a parent and you’re debating as to whether or not you should get your little boy a Lincoln Log set….DO IT! Buy it. I promise the little guy will love you forever. And, if you don’t, you may one day end up explaining your poor parenting choices on some TV talk show.

My cousins also got an Erector Set. Oh, man!!! That thing even put the Lincoln Logs to shame! Not only could you build all kinds of interesting gadgets, but you could make them crank and turn and buzz and, and, and be all mechanical and stuff. Coolness upon coolness!

I did finally get one of those. It was Christmas, sometime early in my high school years before my nerdiness began to wear off some. (My nerdiness never completely wore off….just look at me now.) I was still into science fiction and monsters, and not yet fully engrossed into girls. I couldn’t believe it! Finally! I could build a,... a,... a….well, I didn’t have a clue what to build with it. It was just a box of little metal plates, strips, screws, nuts, rods, wheels, and other assorted mechanical things.

I had no idea what to make with this stuff. After all, I was a TV and book nerd into werewolves and Klingons, not a mechanically inclined nerd. I fidgeted with the pieces and mocked up various ridiculous contraptions without making anything memorable for a few weeks, and eventually the set began to lose its appeal. It was in danger of becoming just another one my interesting collection of items that I used to think was cool because someone else had it first.

Then, an interesting opportunity arose…or, should I say scurried up?

I was sitting in my family’s basement one night, probably avoiding the cigarette smoke clogging the air upstairs, and looking at the hodgepodge of odd items that my dad stored on the shelves between his workbench and the cabinet where he kept his good tools. I can’t really remember anything that was there anymore. It was just an assortment of various things that weren’t all that useful anymore, but they were kept around just in case they might come in handy again someday. (Come to think of it, I have a similar assortment of stuff sitting out on some shelves in my garage right now. Hmmm.) Anyway, I was sitting there looking at the stuff when a little mouse scurried out from behind one of the various items, darted back and forth, and looked at me like I was somehow invading his personal space.

Now, I thought this was sort of exciting. Here was a wild animal living in my folks’ house, right under our noses, and I got to watch him in his natural habitat. It was as if Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom had come to my basement. So, I just sat there and watched him do his thing, which of course included pooping all over the shelving. I watched him and he watched me.

I told my mom about it.

Telling a woman about mice in her basement, which is also connected to her kitchen and her bedroom, is almost always going to spur a reaction. Soon, we were talking D-Con and mousetraps. That’s when it occurred to me.

I could build a mousetrap with my Erector Set!

I finally had a purpose for my mechanical junk set!

So, I did. I built a better mousetrap. (Look at the picture for the basic design. I don’t mind sharing.) I created a little rectangular box with a trapdoor on one end. I tied fishing line to the top of the door and strung it over a wheel on the back and through one of the holes in the back panel. Then I tied a piece of dog food to the fishing line inside the box for bait.  Tension on the line kept the door open.  Finally, I set it up on the shelf to see what would happen.

Sometime in the night, along came Mr. Mouse. He crawled into the box to the dog food and nibbled away until the fishing line was released. The door dropped. He was trapped.

I found him the next morning. I was so excited! My trap had worked. Awesome!

The thing was that I didn’t have time to do anything with him. I had to leave for school, so I figured I’d deal with it when I got home in the afternoon. I left him there for the day.

I’d never really considered what I was going to do with him if I caught him. I mean, if you use one of those spring traps, the mouse is normally dead when you find him and you throw it in the garbage. However, with my little invention, he’s sitting inside the box just staring at you through all those little Erector Set holes. As I thought about it during the day, I sort of decided I’d be humane and take him out in the alley behind our house and release him. Maybe he’d end up in a neighbor’s house, but at least he’d have a chance at life.

Morning became afternoon, and finally I was released from that scholastic trap called Southside High School, so I came home to deal with my mouse issue. I came in the backdoor, trundled down the stairs, and found my dad piddling with stuff down there.

He looked at me and began to cuss.

Apparently, he had come downstairs and looked in my trap also. He saw the mouse. He decided he’d take care of the little furry vermin himself, so he reached out and grabbed the little metal box, lifted it up, and discovered that I hadn’t considered far enough ahead in my design to put a bottom panel on the trap…as he watched the mouse dart off behind the cabinets.

&$%*@#!

I fixed that problem that night. The bottom panel was installed.

I’ve got to say, that little trap worked better than any other mousetrap I’ve ever seen. We caught mouse after mouse after mouse. We had a pretty good infestation before we’d discovered them, but my little Erector Set trap did the trick.

My dad nixed my plan for the humane catch and release. He would have none of me simply releasing them into the wilds of South Hackley Street, so they all met their demise. Mostly, I caught them and he killed them, but I did kill a few of my own.

There were too key lessons I learned from my Erector Set mousetrap experience:

1. Always put a bottom in your mousetrap. (Is there a moral there?)
2. Mice are dirty, nasty animals.

I had to throw away the Erector Set pieces out of which I had made the trap. They were nasty and disgusting, corroded from contact with the mice. Eventually, the rest of the set followed because I never created anything else useful from that kit.

Finally, if you have any mice issues, feel free to utilize my design. It is very effective…if you don’t mind doing the killing yourself.

Until next time......

The 2012 Fitness/Food Plan

Some of you may have been following my fitness updates from last year as I pursued a goal of hitting 2011 miles in the year 2011.  I posted weekly updates for about six months with updates on my number of miles and how my weight was going, etc.  Well...  I hurt my leg in July and basically just abandoned the whole thing.  I gave up.

Have you ever been there?

Quitting for a little while may be okay, but quitting for extended periods is out of the question.  So, I'm going to take the opportunity presented by the new year to make a new start on my fitness.  However, I'm making some significant changes in how I pursue fitness and health.

One thing I've learned is that I can't be as successful with those big, strenuous pushes toward huge goals anymore.  I'm just too susceptible to injury.  Whether it's my foot, my achilles, my knees, my hips, or my back, something is going to betray me if I push hard.  As a result, this year I'm going to make small, incremental efforts and look toward consistency instead of quick results.  I'm going to do this with both my physical training activities and my eating habits.

Here's the plan:

Physical Training:
I'm going to track 5 things.  Walking.  Push ups.  Sit ups.  Pull ups.  Squats.  I'm not going for big numbers, but just a little activity every day.  For example, in January, my goal is to walk one mile every day, and do five of each of the other activities everyday.  Just five.  Not five sets.  Five.  In February, I stay at one mile per day, but go to 10 sit ups, pull ups, and push ups, plus 8 squats.  Small monthly changes.  Never any big push.  Consistency is the key.

Food:
Each month I will have three things to think about.  A focus.  A change.  A fast.  I will have one issue to focus my attention and consider with each of my meals; particularly my meals out.  I will have one significant change that will happen within that month.  Finally, I will fast from some particular food item for the entire month.  I will have Saturdays off from the plan except for the fast item.  I will also be flexible around holidays, special events, and vacations.  My January focus is to look for something new and healthy to try in my meals.  The January change is to give up french fries.  Lastly, the January fast is from all cookies and candy.  In February, the focus changes to eating chicken, the change is to increase water intake, and the fast item is pizza.  Each month, those three areas change to something new, but after spending a full month on some issue, there will be a carryover effect that should create a sort of a snowball effect.

In the end, it will be a combination of the consistency and the effects of the cumulative changes that should bring me some results.  One more thing, I will only be weighing in about once per month.  I don't want to start chasing the scales.

I won't be posting regular updates, but if I tend to be successful, I will probably share about things from time to time.

Wish me luck.  I hope you have a healthy and successful 2012.

50 Years, Did They Matter?

Fifty years ago today, it snowed in Muncie, Indiana. It was a beautiful, fluffy snow that coated all the tree limbs and power lines, and gave the landscape a bright, soft feel. That is how my dad described the day I was born to me years later.

50 years.

Where did they go? It’s like I took a nap and I’m now half a century old.

When I was born, John F. Kennedy was president. We had not yet gone to the moon. Our black and white TV only got 3 ½ stations. Nobody had ever heard of a microwave oven, a cell phone, the internet, or even something as mundane as self-serve gas stations. Computers existed, but they took up entire rooms, and NO ONE had one at their house. I probably have more memory space in my Blackberry now than some of those old prehistoric computers did back in those days. No one had ever heard of video games either. The closest thing was a pinball machine, and you had to go somewhere outside the house to find one. Now, you can play video games on your tablet computer against people you’ve never met halfway around the world.

I wonder what things will be like in another fifty years?

It is my personal goal to reach the date of December 30, 2061 while still retaining a fairly good quality of life. I just want to see what things will be like then. I bet if we could leap forward, it would blow our minds.

I asked myself a question today. I took a long drive back up to my hometown, had a Pizza King Royal Feast, then I drove over to Ridgeville, Indiana to see if I could find the place where my grandma lived when I was a little kid. I found it because I recognized the little creek and bridge I used to play around. It looks exactly the same. On the way back, I stopped at a Speedway Station in Pendleton, Indiana for a drink, and that’s when the question occurred to me.

The water tower in Ridgeville, Indiana.  I like water towers for some reason.

Have I done anything with my 50 years that really makes any difference?

I think I’m a pretty good salesman. I’ve been doing it a long time, and most of my customers seem to like and trust me. However, when I have finally moved on, I’m guessing that within a few months or a year, I’ll just be another guy that came and went. Even if I were to be promoted into some corporate leadership position, nothing that I could ever do there would matter much beyond my tenure. Stuff people do just doesn’t matter much after enough water has gone under the bridge.

I like to write. I write blog posts. I write an occasional poem for my wife. I’m working on a larger project that I hope one day will be a book. Even if I succeed in getting published and become even a little famous, it won’t last. I hope I can get good enough at it to someday make a little money with it, but fame and a little money won’t last much beyond my lifetime. How many authors do you know from 50 years ago? A handful maybe. How about 100 years ago? I’d bet the list got shorter. Go back further, and you’ll see that the further back you go, the list of authors with lasting power continues to dwindle.

So, what could I do with my life that would really matter?

I’m reminded of the quote from Clarence the angel to George Bailey in the classic movie, It’s a Wonderful Life: “Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?

My hope really is that I’ll simply make a difference to people I interact with on a daily basis, so that one day I can be remembered as someone who mattered to them.

I think that is the reason that I write some of the blog posts I put up. It’s stuff that helps me, and I’m hopeful that it can be helpful to someone else.

I want to be like one of my family’s old neighbors from my childhood. Emma Ogletree was a young housewife and someone who was committed to Christ and Christian service. She was simply nice to me, and she reached out in service to my family. As a direct result of her simple sharing, I am a Christian today, my daughters are both Christians, my mother eventually became a Christian, my Uncle, my nephew…and others that I have influenced along the way. Someone made a difference to her, she then made a difference to me, and as a result I was able to make a difference to some others, and the chain goes on.

Emma Ogletree and her kids

The thing is, the only REAL difference I can make in this world is not truly of this world. I could build skyscrapers, but eventually they would come down. I could establish an empire, and eventually it would fall. I could set records, but someone else would break them. The only thing that will matter into eternity is to make a spiritual difference to someone else…to help them in their search for God.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:20

Fifty years have come and gone. I hope I’ve helped a few people. But, now I’ve got a new half century ahead of me, and I’m hopeful that I’ve gleaned some wisdom from the first fifty that can make me even more helpful going forward.

Time to pay it forward some more…keeping the chain alive…

RU Too Old to Change?

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks!”


“He’s set in his ways!”


“She’s too old to change now!”

If you are wondering why I put an "RU" at the beginning of the title of this post, you need to read on...

Sometimes, I think we can let adages have too much control over who we are. The ones that I’ve quoted above indicate that once you reach a certain stage in life, there is no turning around, no changing directions, no chance to try, do, or be something new. Somehow, in our minds, there seems to be an unspecified age that once reached prevents a person from exploring new avenues in their lives.

I just don’t believe that.

I’m only two days away (as I write this) from reaching the age where I can officially get my AARP card. I started getting mail from them a couple of years ago. I find it sort of unbelievable that I could possibly be reaching that half century mark, but it seems to be so. Last year, I stopped into a McDonalds in Versailles, Indiana on my way to make some sales calls in Kentucky because I needed to use the facilities. (No, that’s not an age thing. I just needed to go.) On the way out, I decided to buy myself a drink.

Me: “I’ll take a small Diet Coke.”

Counter Girl using a conspiratorial whisper: “I don’t really think you’re old enough for this, but I gave you the senior discount.”

Me: “Ummm. Thanks.”

She didn’t think I was old enough to get it, but I must have been close enough for her to even consider it.

Geesh.

So then, I suppose I need to wonder just how close I’m getting to that magic age when I can no longer adjust, adapt, change, or become anything beyond what I already am. How soon will my path be set in stone? When will learning new tricks become impossible for me? At what point will some younger leader in the church look at me sitting in my usual spot and say, “Oh, we can’t do that ‘cause Mike would freak! He’s way too old and set in his ways!”

Maybe I’ll be blindsided, but I just don’t see it coming. It may get tougher for me to keep up with the faster and faster changes happening around me, but I don’t expect to completely become a pillar of salt while life goes on with those younger than me.

I just don’t believe that you ever get too old to change.

Consider my mother, for example. She spent 80 years living one way, and in the last year of her life she made a couple of huge shifts in direction.

First, after somewhere between 50 and 60 years as a smoker, she quit. Cold turkey. It did take a throat cancer to motivate the change, but change she did. She didn’t take Chantix. She didn’t chew Nicorette. She just put the things down and quit.  Boom!  Done!

Mom & David before her baptism.  We were in a room of friends who were sharing words of encouragement.

Secondly, after avoiding God for 81 years…after living her own way, doing her own thing, and ignoring the pleas from me and others…she finally found some faith in Someone greater than herself.  God worked on her heart through various means and various people, but the point is that even at 81 years old, my mother was not too old to change.  She was not too old to learn about God.  She was not too old to become a follower of Christ.



David and I just about to baptize my mother in my friend Brian's giant bathtub.  She was a bit frail, so we needed to hold her carefully.




Mom's baptism



It was sort of like she broke through a barrier that had been holding her back for years and years.  I loved seeing the wonder in her eyes as the realization that God really did love her began to sink in.



Can you see the wonder in Mom's eyes as Jean Keim (who was instrumental in my mother's conversion) greets her after her baptism?

So, whether you’re stuck in a spiritual rut and you think the chance to really do something with your faith has passed you by, or you have a family member that you think is too old to listen to a spiritual message….think again.

You are never too old to enjoy the adventures that God puts in your path!

Now…where’s my reading glasses? I need to fill out that AARP application!

PS:  If you are still wondering, "RU" is computer-speak for "Are you."

A Muncie Boyhood-Christmas

Me & Santa in downtown Muncie at one of the department stores; Ball Stores maybe or perhaps Sears & Roebuck.

As I look back on it now, Christmas was as much my mother’s holiday as it was mine.  Perhaps, even more so.  It was her time of the year.  She could spend all the money she wanted, decorate the house with a myriad of ornaments, and cook and bake to her heart’s delight.  We had electric candles in the windows, a Styrofoam candy cane held together with straight pins and taped over the archway in between the living room and dining room, and lots of synthetic icicles hanging off of the artificial tree that was overloaded with light bulbs, glass balls, and garland.  Goodies filled tin jars and metal trays.  Gifts were stuffed in every possible space around the sparkling plastic pine.




Notice the tree loaded with ornaments & the Christmas cards taped to the wall.  Mom always taped all the cards around the archway.

 I remember the food.

Ham. We always had ham sandwiches. Homemade macaroni & cheese.  Baked beans.  A fruit salad that was a blend of red (probably strawberry) Jell-O and Cool Whip. Lots of fudge….and I mean a lot of fudge. Mixed nuts still in the shells.

Mixed nuts still in the shells bring up a question: Does anyone else wonder why they would put Brazil Nuts still in the shell in a bag of mixed nuts? They have got to be the single hardest nut to shell by hand!

I remember the gifts.

A Hot Wheels race track. Tinker Toys. An Erector Set.

My folks did get me an array of gifts that they probably regretted. The noise-makers. One year, I wanted a guitar. Got it. Never learned to play it. Another year, I was going to be a drummer, so Mom bought me a full-fledged drum set. Snare. Bass. The whole bit. I pounded and pounded, but never learned how to play them correctly or with any semblance of rhythm.

When I was a teenager in middle school, they finally got me something I could play quite well. A stereo system. I’m sure after just a few hours of Billy Joel, The Bay City Rollers, Kansas, and several others rattling the windows and vibrating Mom’s knickknacks off shelves, they probably were wishing for a “do-over.”

Another Christmas, in the earliest years of video games, I wanted a wanted Pong. It seems quite crazy by today’s standards, but back then, Pong was the bomb with its little electronic ball screaming across the screen. There were three games in one: Handball Pong, Tennis Pong, and Hockey Pong. Hockey was the best! Anyway, I had a little black and white TV set in my room, and I desperately wanted a video game.

“Mom! Can I have a video game for Christmas?”

“No.”

“Please Mom. Please. I really want it. Please?”

“No. I’m not getting you a @#%$& video game.”

However, after all the gifts were wrapped and placed under the tree, I began to snoop. I found each one with my name on it, picked it up, shook it, and squeezed it. One likely suspect fit the profile of an electronic device. It was about the right size. It had the feel of protective packing. Hmmmm.

Could it be? Could Mom really have bought me a Pong game?

That’s when I got clever. I walked into her bedroom where she was lounging; surrounded by her police scanner, clock radio, and TV…all going at once.

“Hey Mom!” I said with manufactured excitement. “Thanks for getting me the video game for Christmas!”

Of course, I didn’t really know that that was in fact what it was. I was going for the telling reaction, but she was good, and didn’t give it away.

“I didn’t get you a (bleep, bleep) video game.”

“Okay. If you say so,” I said.

Nothing more was said. I went off to my room to watch my little TV, and she went back to her police calls/Conway Twitty/JR Ewing medley.

The next day, I strolled into my sister’s house down a few blocks on Monroe Street. I spent a good amount of time there as a kid, mostly because I was close to my nephew, David. David and I were more like brothers, and in fact I was closer in age to him than I was to my sister, his mother. Anyway, I walked in the front door, and the conversation went like this:

My sister: “Mike, did David tell you what you got for Christmas?”

Me: “Nope. You just did.”

I remember the parties.

In my family, Christmas was comprised of two major events. First, there was the Christmas Eve party where our extended family always came over to eat and exchange gifts. Second, there was Christmas morning where it was just me, my folks, and the stuff Santa brought. Later, when Santa stopped bringing me stuff, Christmas morning was just a time to sleep in and recover from the previous night’s festivities….and the bigger gifts that my folks didn’t want to give me in front of everyone else.

There were things you could count on for Christmas Eve at my house. Good food. A big party. A number of arguments. A gift exchange. And, finally, an all night Monopoly game between me, David, and my niece Krista.

There were also a few things that you could never really count on…

1. You never quite knew what time my sister would show up. Her preparations were always last minute and invariably, we always were waiting for her to arrive well beyond when she was supposed to have been there.

2. You never knew when the fussing would start and who would be involved.

3. You never knew who would be willing to endure the torture of handing out the gifts. No matter how it was done, it never met everyone’s satisfaction with regard to how fairly they were distributed or at what pace.

One other thing that you could actually count on was air pollution. When I was a child, everyone who wasn’t a child smoked. They smoked a lot. On Christmas Eve, besides my Mom and Dad, usually, my sister, my sister-in-law, their respective fellas, and a smattering of other adults would be over to the closed-up-for-the-winter house…all smoking away to their heart’s distress. As a result, my nieces and nephew and I would retreat to either my bedroom or the basement to get away from it. We would only come out for the food and the presents.

The schedule of events for the adults went like this….

Smoke…eat…smoke…presents…smoke….smoke…smoke.

Of course, we were all excited for the presents, so we wanted to start opening them right after the meal. After the last food dish was put in the sink…

“Can we open presents now?” rang out our childhood voices.

“After we have one more cigarette,” replied the adults with the soiled lungs.

“Ahhh, man!” we’d reply as we headed back to the basement.

Now, we’ve all grown up and we’re in charge now. These days, the smokers have to go outside and out to their cars to get their nicotine fixes. Turn-about is definitely fair play.

As I close out this chapter in my Muncie Boyhood series, I want to share two other Christmas stories:

First, my sister had a husband named Lewis. Sometimes he could be nice enough, but a lot of the time he was a…a…a….not so nice guy. This particular Christmas, he told my sister that he’d like to get some Blue Stratos cologne. In her own special way of getting even for some way that he’d mistreated her, she told EVERYONE in the family that he wanted some Blue Stratos, and that we should get that for him. “He would love it!” she said.

She told everyone independently….and everyone complied.

Every few minutes, he would open a gift….and every few minutes he got another bottle of Blue Stratos. I’m not sure how many he actually got, and it didn’t make him any nicer of a person, but at least he smelled good.

Secondly, on Christmas Eve in 1978, I brought my girlfriend Toni over to the house for our family party. This was my first year having a guest, and her first experience with my family as a whole. I was a bit nervous, but all went well enough. No major knock down, drag outs, and it was a fairly painless party as our parties went.

Around 9pm, we decided it was time to take her home. After all, she had an 11pm curfew, and there was no time to waste. She lived about fifteen miles away and I only had two hours to get her there.

Perhaps you are wondering why I needed so much time to go such a short distance.

Well, you see, we liked to “visit” with one another during the drive home. She lived out in the country, and as I recall there were five stop signs between Highway 32 and her road. We would stop and “visit” at each one. Sometimes, if we had the time, we might take a detour further out into the country so that we could “visit” even more. On this Christmas Eve, we took one of those detours and found ourselves stopped in the middle of no where, “visiting.”

After a time, I looked down at my watch and realized that it was 10:55 pm.

“Oh man! We’ve got to get you home!” I said with a touch of panic.

Her dad was not one to fool with when it came to curfew.

We sped off in the direction of her house. There was just one problem. We were coming from the wrong direction.

“You can’t turn in from this direction!” she said. “If dad sees you, he’ll want to know why we were coming from that way!”

“Okay,” I said as we hurried past the house. “I’ll go down to the corner and turn around.”

There was no time to waste! We had to hurry to not be late!

Did I mention that on Christmas Eve in 1978 it was quite cold, and very icy?

Very icy!

About a hundred yards or so from the corner, I applied the brakes to stop and turn around. I hit the brakes, but we didn’t slow down. Instead, the rear of the car began to fishtail. Then, the fishtail became a full out spin. I’m not sure how fast we were going when the spin began, but my dad’s ’68 Chevy Nova did loop after loop all the way through the intersection until we came to a stop on the other side. No need to turn around now because we were facing back toward her house.

Whew! We didn’t hit anything and nothing hit us.

There was no time to contemplate just how lucky we were because we only had about a minute to get back to her place, but I can tell you that the feeling of relief was palpable.

Mission accomplished, and unless she has told him about it over the years, or unless he reads this blog, her dad never knew about our near disaster on Christmas Eve.

There are other stories, but I’ll stop for now. Merry Christmas to all. Take a few minutes to consider the good times and the blessings, and perhaps pass along some blessings to someone else. May Santa stop at your house too.

The "R & R" Challenge-A Whac-a-Mole Follow-up

A few months ago I wrote a post called “Playing Whac-a-Mole?-A Discussion of Personal Demons.” In it, I discuss how we…all of us…are plagued by some sin or sins that despite how much we fight, they keep popping their ugly little heads up in our lives. If you want to read the original post, it is one of my most popular and as such it is listed prominently along the right side of this page…just click on it and give it a read.

Like everyone else, I have my own set of sins that tend to attack me from time to time. I hate them. I fight them. They burden me. They embarrass me. You understand what I’m saying…I know you do.

Anyway, this morning I was lamenting my set of personal demons…and I was struck with an idea. I’ve decided to give it a shot, and I thought I’d share it with you just in case you want to give it a go also.

I shouldn’t need any more motivation to change than the knowledge of how much I’m hurting God when I fail, or how much I’m hurting myself, or even more so how much I might hurt those that I'm closest to, but based on my ongoing failures, I apparently do.

So, here’s the idea…

I’m going to reward myself for success. Each day that I am successful in avoiding my specifically targeted failures, I will pay myself one dollar. I will put that dollar in an envelope marked as “R & R” for safe-keeping. I will save the money for a future item that I’d like to buy…in my case I think I’m going to save for a new laptop computer. If I stay successful, I should have the new device in about eighteen months. Of course, if I hold out for a Mac, it may take a bit longer.

On the flip side, there is a penalty for failure. If I fail, I have to pull 50% of the money out of the envelope and donate it to my church. The longer I’m successful, the bigger the penalty for failure and the more disappointed I'll be. For example, if I’m good for 100 days and then fail, I give $50 to the church and I start again with $50 in my envelope. If I make it to 300 days and then stumble, the penalty jumps to $150, and I lose 150 days worth of successful effort.

In case you’re wondering, the “R & R” stands for “Repentance & Reward.”

If you want to join the challenge, here are the rules:

1. Get an envelope or small box and write “R & R” on the outside.
2. Identify an item that you’d like to save for so that you have a clear reward.
3. Determine how much you will put in the envelope/box for each successful day. Any reasonable amount will do.
4. Decide where you will donate the penalty money. Any charity you feel good about is appropriate.
5. Clearly define what constitutes a failure so that you cannot rationalize your way out of the penalty…I know how you think….or, at least I know how I think.  Be specific with the targeted sin.
6. Start today and pay your first reward tomorrow.
7. If you have a failure, immediately pull the money out and prepare your donation. Don’t put it off and don’t hesitate.
8. Share the plan with an accountability partner.

This may seem like a crazy idea, but it’s got my attention, so I’m going to run with it. Wish me success.

Now….where’s my mallet? I’ve got some moles to whack!

A Muncie Boyhood-Random Memories of Home

The little two-bedroom house has blue collar written all over it. From the diluted white aluminum siding to the rusty, ancient wire fencing around the backyard, it screams lower, middle-class America. It wasn’t much, but it was my home; the place where I grew up, and the place that still holds a special spot in my heart.


Nestled comfortably on the corner of 21st and Hackley Streets in Muncie, Indiana , it still seems inviting every time I drive by in stalker mode to see how the current tenants are caring for it. It seems like I ought to be able to pull up in the front driveway, trot down the sidewalk on the north side of the house, swing through the gate that my dog used to climb up and over, and slip through the back door onto the landing above the basement steps. Do I turn left and go up into the tiny kitchen, or go straight down the stairs into the full basement? My memories can carry me in either direction.

This little house holds memories for me in every corner, every nook and cranny. In fact, the only spot on the entire property that contains no memory for me is the attic. Otherwise, I can walk the entire place in my mind and remember some little thing or some big thing that happened to me, with me, or for me.

In the front yard, I can reminisce about drinking a Coke or a Mountain Dew at midnight while sitting on the porch steps and watching the traffic going by. I can think about my years of searching for the pocketknife I lost while trying to make it stick in the giant chinese elm that shaded the house and overhung the street. My dad gave me that knife and it was lost for several years until a guy visited the house with a metal detector. He found it for me, all rusted up. I wish I still had it…yep…I lost it again.

Or, I can remember talking my brother down from dragging his family off in the middle of the night in a drunken rage. He had driven home from California towing a travel trailer with his wife and girls to attend a high school reunion. He drank too much at the party and something upset him. He and his wife came home in the middle of an incredibly ugly argument, and he was determined to hook up the trailer, get his girls, leave his wife there, and head back to California. I got him talking on the front porch until he calmed down. Eventually, he laid himself down on the grass and fell asleep. I stayed there with him until the wee hours of the morning.

The backyard was Sugar’s home. It was bordered by that old wire fence on the sides, broken in a few places, the house in front, and the small, wooden one-car garage in the back. Sitting along side of the garage was, and in fact still is, the grape arbor that my dad built when I was maybe seven or eight years old. It will probably still be there in another forty years because he built it very well, put a coat of tar on the posts and set them in concrete. I can still remember the huge splinter I got in my thumb while helping to hold a brace piece while he nailed it in place.

Behind the garage is my old pet cemetery. Buried there is my hamster Arthur (Fonzi), my parakeet (Peppy), my turtle, various wild birds, and my dog….Sugar…in a small wooden box.

Sugar was my confidant and my best friend. She was my buddy from the time I was one until I was seventeen. She shared my pain, loved me anyway, and kept all my secrets. She never made fun of me, and always was there to cheer me up when I might be down. She even scared off a bully once, even though by then she was completely toothless. Thinking about her makes me emotional still.

In the house, it’s hard to know where to begin. My bedroom was in the northwest corner, nearest the intersection of the two streets. There was no air conditioning, so in the summer we’d have the windows wide open and sometimes a box fan blowing fresh air in to keep us cool. There was lots of noise from the street, especially when I was really young and there was a trucking terminal a block away, but your mind adapts until you just block all that out. In the winter, dad would replace the screens with storm windows, and if there was a big snowstorm, my nephew David and I would sit for hours and watch the cars sliding through the stop sign into the middle of Hackley Street in hopes of seeing a crash. Shame on us.

The floor of my bedroom was hardwood. If you went there today, and looked closely under the window on the north side, you could find evidence of my use of the wood-burning set my folks got me for Christmas one year:

M. D.

+

T. F.

Those letters will be forever burnt into the history of that house as a reminder of a young boy’s crush…at least until the house is demolished or someone decides to refinish the floors.

My parents were both smokers, so if you didn’t find me in my bedroom, you’d find me in the basement trying to escape the nicotine pollution. It was a giant playroom with a concrete floor. My dad kept his tools and personal stuff down there, and I used to go down there to “make something.” The most impressive thing I ever made was a chess table. I tacked two pieces of plywood together, mounted some ugly-looking legs on the bottom…in a way that left it remarkably stable…and used stain, shellac, paint, and polyurethane to create a chess board on the top. If you want to see it, you can go over to my sister’s house on west 17th Street. The last time I was there, it was sitting on her front porch, faded and a bit warped, but still stable.

Whether it was flinging darts like baseballs across the room or kicking deflated volleyballs up the steps and out the unlatched backdoor, I found some of my fondest times goofing off in that basement. I built things. I read books. I created a couple of art pieces…one of which still hangs in my kitchen today. And, I dreamed of…of…of…you know, I don’t know what I dreamed of. I guess I just always imagined growing up and going places, becoming someone important, and moving away. Isn’t that strange? Now, I just miss that old place, and sometimes…I just wish I could go back.

More stories to come.

50 Thanksgivings

This Thanksgiving Holiday marks my 50th. I turn 50 years old in December, and since my first Thanksgiving happened before my first birthday, I am about to celebrate my 50th Turkey Day.


In honor of that fact, I am going to share 50 things I am thankful for…by the year in which they occurred.

1. 1962—Diapers. Cloth diapers to be more accurate. My mom used them and I wasn’t traumatized too awfully much.

2. 1963—My first dog, Sugar. She stayed with me until I was 17 years old, and was my loyal companion and confidant. It still hurts a little when I think of her…still miss her.

3. 1964—Rides on my dad’s shoulders. I remember him carrying me on his shoulders as we would walk the nine blocks north on Hackley Street to Heekin Park.

4. 1965—Guiding words from my dad. As he held me one night: “Mike, the most important thing you can ever do in your life is to love God.” Those words have stuck with me ever since. I wish I could fully fulfill them.

5. 1966—Saturday morning cartoons. A ritual that continued for another ten years or so.

6. 1967—Roller skating with my friend Cheryl. Gibson’s Skating Rink held lessons, and my friend Cheryl and I used to go every week. I’m still frustrated by the fact that I never learned to skate backwards.

7. 1968—My brother, Freddie. He gave me a red stuffed dog from the Delaware County Fair. He was 19 years older than me, and was a good big brother until his death in 1969. Also, that year: A red Schwinn Stingray bike…I had that bike until middle school. I wish I still had it. It would be worth some money now.

8. 1969—My mom. It was a really tough year for her with my brother’s death. It took her a long time to get through the grief, but eventually she emerged on the other side. She’s been gone for eight years now.

9. 1970—Collarbones. In August of 1970, I was racing my buddy Jerry down the alley on my bike. I looked over at him and when I looked back, I was headed off the alley path toward a bush. I hit my brakes, slid sideways, and hit a concrete post. I can remember flying through mid-air, doing an aerial somersault, and landing on my shoulder. I snapped my right collarbone. My neighbor, Emma Ogletree came to my rescue.

10. 1971—Glasses. My dad took me to get my eyes checked. I didn’t know I had a problem with my vision until I put my new glasses on. Oh, wow! I could see so much detail that I had been missing! My folks were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to get me to wear them, but that was not an issue. Maybe they would have helped me miss that concrete post the year before…hmmm.

11. 1972—Baseball. I discovered the Cincinnati Reds and the sport of baseball. Johnny Bench became my hero, and I became determined to be a pro baseball player…a dream that stuck with me until my fourth year of being cut from the team when I was a sophomore at Muncie Southside High School.

12. 1973—California and Amtrak. My mother, my grandma, and I made a journey by Amtrak from Indianapolis to San Jose, California and back to visit my brother Bob and his family. It was a fantastic trip worthy of its own blog post.

13. 1974—Minnie Alice Terrell. She was my grandmother and the only one of my grandparents that I got to meet. She passed in 1974, but we became very close prior to her death. I have wonderful memories of her living with us for the two or three years before she died.

14. 1975—Star Trek. Thanks to my friend, Jerry, I discovered the moral teleplays known as Star Trek. It became my afterschool ritual to watch the exploits of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy as they solved the problems of the universe. I once had a poster that said “Everything I need to know in life, I learned from Star Trek.” As crazy as that sounds, when you read the list the poster gave, it kind of makes sense.

15. 1976—Mike Runcie. He was the youth minister at the Fairlawn Church of Christ. In October of 1976, he baptized me on a Monday night. I was incredibly nervous and self-conscious.

16. 1977—Erector Sets and the ultimate mouse trap. This is another story worth of its own post. (Between Star Trek and Erector Sets, I was headed toward a role on The Big Bang Theory, but I was saved by the next year.)

17. 1978—Toni, my first girlfriend. What she could have seen in my goofy personality, I’ll never know, but she took a liking to me. We are still friends to this day, and I very much appreciate that fact. Another item from that year: Drivers License….Oh, yeah! Freedom!

18. 1979—The Fairlawn Church of Christ Youth Group. My closest friends in high school weren’t actually at my school. My closest friends were part of my church youth group. This group helped me overcome a number of personal insecurities. It gave me a place where I could experience the responsibility of leadership in a way that built my confidence. A special “thank you” to Neil Parsons, the youth minister who pushed me to be a leader in the group.

19. 1980—Williamstown Bible College. If I had it to do over again, I don’t know that I would go there again. However, this place holds so many formative memories and experiences that I have to be thankful for it.

20. 1981—Nancy!!! I met the woman who would become my wife in the fall of 1981. I was home for a weekend from college, and after church I saw this lovely girl with long, curly, dark hair. Flirtations were required. Over the next year, we became great friends…despite my initial flirting.

21. 1982—Home. After two years away in West Virginia, I came back home again. Not just to my folks and their house, but also to my friends and to my home church. At the end of 1982, I had my first official date with Nancy.

22. 1983—Great friends. I picked up a couple of new friends, and developed some that were already there. Rick Anderson. Sheridan Wright. Phil Dargo. My friend, Jim Wilkinson was in and out with trips to India…at least I think that was true that year. Also, it was in March of this year that Nancy agreed to “go steady” with me.

23. 1984—Bearings, Inc. I got a job so that I could have money to go out on dates. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was to become the beginning of my lifelong career. Also, Nancy agreed to marry me. Hurray!

24. 1985—Marriage. Nancy and I tied the knot and began our life together. We started out in a small house on East 14th Street in Muncie that we rented from my friend, Phil.

25. 1986—Columbia, South Carolina. We moved there in August so that I could become a ministry intern at the Shandon Church of Christ. It was the start of our love for that state; a state that we will likely return to one day. Also, I met another of my key friends that year in Columbia, Bill Buffington.

26. 1987—Calvin Conn. He was an elder at the Shandon Church of Christ, and even though I never got to know him as closely as I would have liked, his example is one I reflect on from time to time today. He passed that year from colon cancer.

27. 1988—Diet Coke. I started drinking diet soda that year, and between that and the exercise I was getting at work, I lost almost 50 pounds!

28. 1989—Angela! My first daughter came into the world in July of that year. If you have no children, it is impossible to imagine the joy you feel when you hold your first baby. I am very proud of the woman she has become.

29. 1990—My first promotion. I had returned to Bearings, Inc. when we moved back to Indiana in late ’87, but it wasn’t until this promotion that I began to climb upward in my career. The promotion took us back to Muncie where I worked as an outside sales representative.

30. 1991—Steve and Tammy Martin. They came over to our house every Wednesday night after church to watch Quantum Leap with us. It was such a blast!

31. 1992—Andrea! My second daughter was born. I worried beforehand that I wouldn’t be able to love her as much as I loved Angela. However, from the moment I held her tiny body in my hands, I understood the capacity for love that the human heart holds. As with Angela, I am very proud of the woman she is becoming. Also in this year, I received my second promotion and was moved to Columbus, Indiana to become a branch manager for Bearings, Inc.

32. 1993—My third promotion. Bearings, Inc. sent me to Indianapolis to become the branch manager at one of their two Indy locations. It was here that I finally started making enough money to be dangerous.

33. 1994—California with the Krebs. Nancy and I flew to San Francisco with our good friends, Steve & Brenda Krebs for a nice little vacation before we attended a conference in LA. We toured the Wharf, we had a cookout with my nephew David and his family, and we drove down the coastal highway. When we reached LA, we visited Hollywood and drove around the Hollywood Hills. We were there when O.J. allegedly murdered his wife, but didn’t know about it until we were home.

34. 1995—Sanibel Island. This was a tough year for me, and I was feeling quite depressed on our 10th anniversary trip to Florida. That was tough on Nancy. As tough as it was, I enjoyed the natural beauty and the pleasant surroundings of Sanibel. It was soothing to say the least.

35. 1996—David returns. The one person that has been the closest to me my entire life is my nephew David. For a few years, he lived in the Bay Area of California, and I missed him a lot. During this year, I flew out to help him drive his possessions home. He and I drove a full-size Ryder truck towing a trailer with his minivan all the way from Tracy, California to Indianapolis, Indiana.

36. 1997—The ole homestead. Thinking about this year reminds me of the house I grew up in on Hackley Street in Muncie. Mom & Dad moved to an apartment in 1997, and we sold the old house. David and I worked together to get the place ready for sale. There are memories for me in every corner of that house, and even today when I drive by, I feel like I ought to be able to stop, walk in the back door, and plop down on the front sofa.

37. 1998—NSK Corporation. After over 13 years of service with Bearings, Inc./Applied Industrial, I decided to make a jump to a new position with a new company. It was a great move for me, my family, and finances. Also that year was a fantastic family vacation to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, San Diego, and Disney World.

38. 1999—Dad. This was my last full year with my dad. He and mom moved in with me and my family in January and we got to care for him and enjoy his presence in our lives for a whole year. He passed in early 2000.

39. 2000—Catalina Island. Nancy and I took a cruise for our 15th anniversary and the highlight for me was waking up just off the coast of Catalina. It was a beautiful sight from the balcony of our suite on the Carnival ship.

40. 2001—The United States of America. Obviously, this was a pivotal year in the history of the United States. It just proves how precarious life and security really are, and it makes me thankful to live in a land where freedom is still a cherished possession.

41. 2002—The Indianapolis Mini-Marathon. For the first time…and only time in my life…I ran a mini-marathon. My wife had been running in it for a few years already, and I wanted to be able to say that I’d done it. So, here I am saying so. I did it. I was in great physical shape after that event and the 70-mile bike ride I finished a month later, but I never had much interest in running 13 miles again. I can say the following things about that event: I never stopped, I never walked, and I ended up losing a toenail.

42. 2003—Mom. My mother passed away in early December of that year, but it was all the stuff that occurred prior to Thanksgiving for which I am thankful. She fought throat cancer and beat it. At 81 years old, she finally began to look toward God, and I baptized her in my friend Brian Holeman’s garden tub in August. It ended up a tough year, but mom’s turn toward faith made it all worthwhile.

43. 2004—Grace. In 2004, I rediscovered the healing power of the Grace of God.

44. 2005—Arizona Raft Adventures. The year started tough with a herniated disc in my neck, but by late July, Angela and I were rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon on a trip organized by the AZRA organization. It was a father/daughter adventure for the two of us and an adventure of a lifetime. By the time we were done I was also thankful for hot showers, beds, and air-conditioning.

45. 2006—Yellowstone National Park. Three friends and I took a week-long adventure to South Dakota and Wyoming that culminated with three days in Yellowstone. What a magnificent place! Magical!

46. 2007—Hawaii. We took a family vacation to Maui and Oahu for some fun in the sun. Technically, this took place after Thanksgiving that year, but another thing I’ve discovered is that I don’t have to be legalistic about everything. Hawaii is going to see my face again. I don’t know when, but I’m going back.

47. 2008—Salmon, Idaho. Andrea and I took a father/daughter trip also. We toured around south central Idaho, southwestern Montana, and Yellowstone National Park. One cool place we stayed was The Greyhouse Inn in Salmon, Idaho.

48. 2009—The eldership. In late 2008, the Southeastern Church of Christ expressed their confidence in me and asked me to serve the church as an elder. I have never felt up to the task, and I often feel very undeserving, inadequate, and unqualified, but I am honored to be of service to my church and my God. I began serving in January of 2009.

49. 2010—Being able to walk. In late 2009, I tore my right Achilles Tendon and had surgery to repair it. I spent 2010 trying to recover. In fact, I’m still working on getting my abilities back. When you are stuck in a chair for hours, or have to hobble around on crutches, it gives you a new appreciation for mundane things like just being able to walk or run. I’ve always said that I hated to run…now, I kind of wish I could run.

50. 2011—An empty nest. It is a joy to see your daughters grow up and begin to spread their own wings to take flight in their own lives. It is also a joy to have life take you back full circle to where it is just you and your spouse again. Nancy and I have been enjoying our time together, and the freedom to go places and do things again without needing to consider the school year or kids’ activities.

That represents 50 Thanksgivings in my life. I have lots more to be thankful for, and many more friends I could have mentioned. As I worked my way through the years, I did have a few where it was tough to find something to be thankful for, but if I thought long enough and considered things carefully, I could always come up with something. God has been good to me.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving and a wonderful Christmas season!