Daily Bread

[Williamsmith]

It's not the first check you've collected. There was the little gas station down the road that was your first job. It didn't pay even minimum wage and when the heroin junky from the next town over decided to relieve you of the wad of cash that represented the nightly proceeds......you learn what it feels like to be robbed. When the police ask you for a description, you can't remember much of his features since you were mostly paying attention to the finger that seemed to be way too close to pulling the trigger of the gun that was stuck in your face. You decide to move on.

Since your dad worked at a steel mill, your next job was as assistant to the mill wright in the blooming mill. He fixes everything that breaks down. Lots of dangerous machinery breaks down and often. You find yourself in precarious situations sometimes handing tools but mostly staying out of his way. You consider it successful at the end of the summer when neither of you are killed. He considers it a miracle.

In between some of this you stop at your grandparents house and work in the garden or sell vegetables out of the roadside stand. Grandpa never says a word to you. You just sort of know what to do or you do what you think is needed. Grandma always sends you away with Mason jars full of chili, canned tomatoes or left overs. Supper is good those nights......not Banquet TV dinners you are getting used to boiling on the stove for yourself because mom is going to night school.

There are more jobs, none of them fulfilling. One summer you make wooden style lake chairs with a friend. You don't make much but later he becomes your best man at your wedding and in the same month.....you at his.

All these jobs you have in mind while studying the art, science and craft of keeping airplanes separated. It has given you the courage to press on even as you realize that you don't have much talent for scribbling on little cards that stack up in a rack in front of you....each one representing a hundred or so human souls. It's a game that drains your energy and bores you instantly. Most of your instructors have suffered nervous breakdowns in the field, been divorced and have been sent to the academy to finish out their career. You don't think about that at age 24. You think about the paycheck, supporting a family and maybe some day...retiring.

By the the end of the six months, impossibly, you have survived the previous cuts. There is only the final exam left and you have to score 70 to be passed and sent to the field. They have already assigned you Washington DC but there is plenty of uncertainty. In the back of your mind you know a wedding is set to occur when you fly home, and it is yours. Everything is riding on this final exam. You do everything in your power to be prepared. The test is excruciatingly difficult but you have faith. It might be blind faith. The results come back in an envelope. As you open the envelope you know that your future will be determined by one simple number. Staring at the paper.....it seems to be a cruel joke. The number is 69.5%.

Continued...

[Float On]

Agh...what a cliffhanger!!!

[Williamsmith]

There's no way really to come to grips with what that number means without first wondering if you are able to withstand the embarrassment of the moment with your ego in tact and then humbling yourself before a bunch of people who genuinely feel sorry for you. That happens in the seconds after your eyes hit the paper. But it quickly fades into a numbness that makes the sympathy seem forced. You get the feeling people are avoiding you because you don't fit in with their celebratory atmosphere. Or is it that you want to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

Back at the apartment, you meet with three roommates you have been getting to know for six months. You pack and say your goodbyes. As you pick up your bags and turn and leave the rationalizing begins in your mind. You begin practicing the things to say to the people who were counting on you or wishing you the best. You will never see these people with whom you shared your life for the last half year again, won't remember what they looked like and will forget their names on the way to the airport. All you can think about is the future. However pitiful it might be.

Whoever first uttered the words, "Better to have tried and failed, than not to have tried at all.", you suspect never really experienced such a grand failure. The flight back home seems to defy the laws of relativity. In one respect it seems to take forever to get there....at the same time you feel like you are being sucked into a black hole of oncoming disaster.

The phone call with your fiancé was perhaps the hardest thing you had to force yourself to do ....ever. But she is gracious and says something you will hear often over the next 34 years of marriage, "If it was meant to be...it would be. There is a reason for everything." With those simple words you feel like you can go back. And start again. What ever that means is left to be seen.

You arrive home and have convinced yourself that the worst is over and time to get busy moving forward. Your finance seems onboard with that, as does your in laws to be. It's not so easy in your own house. There is a dark cloud hanging around and you sense disappointment and even anger from your parents. As soon as you get home the accusations start backed up by the questions. " Well, what are you going to do now!" And..."You and HER will not move in with us. You made your bed, you lay in it!" The atmosphere is toxic. Heated exchanges, emotional outbursts and physical threatening erupt. Your mind is on overload. At one point while you are on the phone with your fiancé, the phone gets ripped off the wall. It's hard to see good coming from this. But you are steadfast. The wedding date is set. The plans are made. There will be a wedding. And neither of you have a job or a place to stay.

Continued......

[Williamsmith]

Intermission....

My son, daughter in law and grand dog are without a suitable home to live in thanks to Hurricane Harvey. When they were picked up by a boat Monday night, the water was up to the electrical outlets on the first floor. Since then, we don't know what the conditions are. They were ferried to a National Guard "dump truck" climbed a ladder and sat inside. They left with only the soaking wet clothes on their backs and a dog carrier. The truck dropped them off at a shelter and DILs employer took them in his house for the night.

When your mind is numb with random thoughts, reflection is near impossible. The best thing you can do is keep as close to routine as possible but allow for your melancholy state of mind. I have found healing in the simplest of things. Today it is a quilt that sits in our bedroom on a rack. It is a quilt made by the hands of a 101 year old woman. My wife's great aunt. It was our wedding gift 34 years ago. Aunt Nan as we called her was in a nursing facility at the time she made it by hand. Her husband was a rather famous explorer of the early 20th century. The surgeon and medical doctor for the Admiral Peary North Pole Expedition.

The quilt is elegant if rather simplistic in design but the colors feed my soul. It has a robin egg border, diamond patterns of bright colors of yellow, purple, pink, green, blue and purple. There is a variance of design within the triangular shapes but a continuity only an artist could realize. Aunt Nans physical presence is long gone but her spirit is healing me this morning.

My my son called yesterday to tell me he was walking the dog with his wife. They were thankful for the dry land and suddenly the clouds parted and the sun shown. He called to tell me about that.....I know he will be okay.

[Williamsmith]

Youth is not impressed by the odds. In fact, it assumes to beat them. Perhaps it cannot see the risks. And so you show up at the church on the appointed day in a cheap suit with a best man who has unbeknownst to you filled the hubcaps of your car with gravel, tied loud cans to your bumper and written embarrassing cliches on your windows with soap.

The car is a Datsun B210, manual shift with a cracked heater core that ensures your feet freeze in the winter so you carry a credit card with you to scrape the frost off the inside of the windshield to see the road. But today it is warm and after the ceremony you are headed to a state park in West Virginia for a honeymoon. After that, on to Pineville, West Virginia where your bride has an interview for a teaching position.

It is late and you don't make it to the state park. You stop in Morgantown, West Virginia and check into a hotel. Carrying your bags to the room, you slip in the key and throw open the door. There is something wrong. Why are two people sleeping in your bed.....my God they gave you a room that had already been occupied. This isn't starting very well.

Somehow you make the best of it and eventually arrive in Pineville. It is a mining town deep in the Appalachians and it is poor. Fewer than 1000 people live here and most are out of work. It is a stark and naked place with little greenery. The roads snake their way up and down mountains and have no guiderails. Coal tailings cascade from every hillside. The people have blank faces and you look in your new brides face and see astonishment. You think to yourself, "Can we live here? Can we even fit in?"

You wait in the car while she has her interview. When she comes out she tells you she got the job. There is a silence between you and her. You catch yourself and feebly say, "Great!" It isn't convincing. She has the name of a realtor and already they have made arrangements to see a house. You pull up at the address. Inside a kitchen with no cupboards. A pot belly coal stove for heat. You are starting to get tunnel vision and stomach cramps. There's no much to be seen. Out in the car there is another long silence and you notice a tear welling up in her eye.

You know what has to be done. You have to take the pressure off her but you know what the result will be. Returning yet again to your families having failed. Is it possible to recognize the wrong choice but still make it? You say to her something like, "This isn't feeling right is it? It's okay. We will make it and we don't have to start here." She shakes her head and cries out loud. It breaks your heart.

The very same day she accepts her first teaching position... she resigns from it and you drive her out of the shadows of those mountains never to return again. But now what.

continued.....

[iris lilies]

That is a Pretty old quilt with cheerful colors.. They have a great feel with that cotton soft and aged.

I over heard a conversation between random stranger in an airport recently. They were talking about air traffic control positions back in the day of Reagan and how those schools were designed to flunk the huge majority of people out.

You and were wife were probably job hunting during that period of 10% unemployment in the U.S. Thats when I was seeking my first professional job as well. I was too you g and stupid to k ow this was a problemt time. My dad told me "you WILL accept a job if offered" and that was uncharacteristically dictatorial of him. Fortunately, The job I wanted was the job that wanted me and I moved 1200 miles for it.

I am enjoying your journal.

[Williamsmith]

That is a Pretty old quilt with cheerful colors.. They have a great feel with that cotton soft and aged.

I over heard a conversation between random stranger in an airport recently. They were talking about air traffic control positions back in the day of Reagan and how those schools were designed to flunk the huge majority of people out.

You and were wife were probably job hunting during that period of 10% unemployment in the U.S. Thats when I was seeking my first professional job as well. I was too you g and stupid to k ow this was a problemt time. My dad told me "you WILL accept a job if offered" and that was uncharacteristically dictatorial of him. Fortunately, The job I wanted was the job that wanted me and I moved 1200 miles for it.

I am enjoying your journal.

Thank you for sharing that, IL.

[Williamsmith]

https://youtu.be/671AgW9xSiA

I became aware of Jerry Garcia (Lead guitarist of Grateful Dead) but not for his work with that band. I was immersed in the folk culture and bluegrass community. Jerry did an album called, "Old and In the Way". Jerry never worried about whether something would sell or if it was commercially successful. Many who influenced Jerry were mentors of mine in a musical way. People like David Grisman, Tony Rice, Mark O'Connor, Doc Watson, Norman Blake, The New Grass Revival. These are the threads of folk and mountain music that wound through Jerry's playing and his music. I can't think of a band so misunderstood, shunned and mislabeled as the "dead". But none of that ever mattered to them because they paid the bills with concerts and never tried to make records that appealed to the masses. They chose a path and walked it honestly without regret. I suppose among other things that is why I like this song.

Since the day I met my wife I have owned at least one guitar. During the first days of our marriage it was a Martin D-18. The music has been like a glue that holds the chair of my life together. The legs get wobbly sometimes and need reset.

[Float On]

I had a very vivid picture in my mind of the West Virginia area you were in. I spent the summer of '84 out there and it is remote! I was leading a group of inner city kids from DC on a backpacking trip and though I'd been over the trail several times before got myself turned around which is hard to do since I have a very good sense of direction. We ran across a sibling group in bare feet, undersized overalls and faded feedsack dresses, on their daily walk to get water in buckets. They were kind enough to point us back toward where they knew the trail was that "city folk use". I had a feeling we'd been caught in a time-warp and that we were in the '40's and would never find '84 again.

[Williamsmith]

Continued

Just the hum of the tires on the highway. That's all you hear. Your mind is going through scenarios. Your wife is dozing, worn out emotionally from the turmoil of decisions. There is a small matter of where to hang your hat until one of you gets a job. It's inconceivable that you are actually considering asking to move in temporarily with your new in laws. Their house is viciously small. It is a row house in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Your father in law is an electrician preparing for retirement. Your mother in law is a traditional German housewife, has never had a drivers license, and is a colon cancer survivor. The last thing you want to do is get in the way of their lives. There are just two bedrooms and one tiny bathroom. You can imagine how proud they will be to tell their friends about the new son in law who is jobless and homeless.

Eventually, the road runs out and you bring your wife home, back to where she began. That's the sum total of your glorious honeymoon. All you bring to the table is the clothes on your back and another mouth to feed. You begin in earnest to search the paper for a job. Both of you. On the weekends you help your father in law fashion a corner of the basement into a bathroom. You learn a lot about things you should already know. Plumbing, electricity, patience!

You take up running. Every morning you go out into the streets and you run. There is something therapeutic about it. The sweat seems to be a way to purge your life of thoughts that weigh you down. You can't understand how gracious your in laws have been. They seem to have a kind of light approach to life that you've never experienced. Your wife explains that it's because of the gratitude they have for her mother's recovery from cancer. And she tells you about her brothers open heart surgery when he was just ten. He was one of the first ever for a child his age. You experience a new level of thankfulness modeled by the family. It's not fake made up religious zealousness. There is consistency.

Your wife brings you the newspaper every day. One day there is a bulletin, the State Police are hiring and the first step is a civil service test. You apply to take the test even though you have never once in your life imagined a career in law enforcement. Most of your life has been spent avoiding the police. Sometimes for good reason. But it is a job. You also apply to the Air Force for Officer Candidate school. You figure that the pilots license you acquired as a teenager might help sway the decision in your favor.

In the meantime, your wife gets a job interview at a private endowment for severe and profound mentally handicapped people. They need a teacher. You happily drive her for the interview. She is dressed nicely. You think this could be something to celebrate. As you wait in the car in your jeans and ratty sweatshirt.....she comes out after just a few minutes. There's no way she got the job that quick is there? She comes to the car but doesn't get in. Rolling the window down, you hear her say, "They need houseparents! We can live here. There's one room in the back of each house and thats where we can stay. It pays $12,000!" "Well? They want to talk to you." I'm am thinking.....they are in wheelchairs, they can't speak, they have to be fed, they wear diapers and have to be changed, they have to be bathed.

Continued