DOES GOD HAVE A PONYTAIL? [F, 9-20-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—DOES GOD HAVE A PONYTAIL? [F, 9-20-24]

 

I knew Nic first when he was just a kid in the Conference Youth Fellowship with my daughters. They liked him. So did I. He was funny and pleasant. He stuck green beans up his nose. [2]

He went into the ministry, and we became colleagues. As I was nearing the end of my full-time years, he was on our conference’s Board of Ministry. One of his jobs was to run the orientation for pastors new to the conference, both the newly ordained and those transferring in from other conferences.

He called me. “I want you to be the last presenter,” he said. “For two days they will hear what it’s supposed to be like. I want you to tell them what it’s really like.” He knew my approach. He knew my reputation.

I felt honored. It was a significant responsibility. I was glad to do it. It sounded like fun. But it was tricky…

…because we are hampered both by knowing too much about what it’s supposed to be like, and by knowing too much about what it’s really like. [1]

We need ideals. As in Robert Browning’s line, “A man’s grasp should exceed his reach, or what’s a heaven for?” In my freshman year of college, I wrote that out with an ink pen and propped it on my desk. College freshmen are especially attracted to grasping beyond our reach.

But heaven is not reached on earth. Trying for it will result only in disappointment and disillusion.

I did not want to destroy all that was said before me in that new pastor orientation. On the other hand, I knew those new conference members would have their best ministries if they could hold together what should be and what would be.

So I wore my ponytail cap, a blue baseball cap with a long, blond ponytail attached.

None of the new preachers knew me, of course. Nic just introduced me as a member of the Conference. Didn’t say what I would talk about. I was dressed quite casually under my gray beard, with the cap on top. I began to talk. No one seemed very interested. They were tired after two days of this.

Then I laid the cap on the desk in front of me. Just kept talking. At first there were smiles, then a ripple of chuckles, then full laughter. “I thought you were just some old hippie preacher” one guy chortled.

“And there is the main thing you need to take away from this orientation,” I said. “Stay open. Things may not be what they look like.”

As I approach the end of my life, and consider meeting God face to face, I’m thinking about what kind of cap God might wear…

John Robert McFarland

1] When women clergy in our conference became numerous enough to have their own caucus, I was, by invitation, the only male member. They knew I was an advocate for their inclusion and advancement, and they thought I could tell them about how stuff worked in the conference, stuff that only men knew at that time. I did not know nearly as much as they thought I did, since I was always an outlier to the seats of power, but I wanted to stay in the caucus, so I made stuff up out of my miasmic imagination. It was okay; it all turned out to be true.

2] When Nic was appointed by the bishop to be a District Superintendent [an assistant bishop], I called him to wish him well. “As a DS,” I said, “you can’t stick green beans up your nose.” “Too late,” he replied.

 

 

 

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY [W, 9-18-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—A DEATH IN THE FAMILY [W, 9-18-24]

 

Aunt Dorothy took me for my driver’s test when I was sixteen. She understood the importance of knowing how to drive.

When she was a girl, she got behind the wheel of a Model T Ford. [They were produced from 1908 until 1927.] I’m not sure why she was behind the wheel, but it was a mistake, because she couldn’t drive. The car took off, down the main street of Francisco, Indiana. By the time Aunt Dorothy realized what was happening, she was beyond the city limit. No side streets. So she drove all the way to Oakland City, five miles, so that she could go around a block and return home. She couldn’t turn around any other way, because she didn’t know how to put the car into reverse.

She must have figured out brakes by the time she got home.

Some members of the family thought that Aunt Dorothy never did learn to drive, because she had “a lead foot.” It didn’t bother me. From the time I could remember, about age four, to almost 17, my family didn’t have a car, so I thought it was swell to ride with Aunt Dorothy, at any speed.

When we lived in Indianapolis, ages 4 to 10 for me, Aunt Dorothy lived there, too. After high school, she got a job in the payroll department at the Link-Belt Company and worked her way up to be its director. She had a car—a Pontiac. It was a new brand when she was a young woman, started in 1926. For some reason, she fell in love with Pontiacs. Probably because it was her first car. Anyway, she drove them all her life, getting a new one almost every year. I was the poorest kid in school, but I got to take my driver’s license test in a classy new Pontiac.

Dorothy Pond never married. She had a couple of boyfriends, fairly long-term. First Gus, and then Roy. I liked Gus, because he worked in a bakery and would bring us rolls and cookies. I don’t know why she switched from the slightly rowdy Gus to the dandy gentleman Roy, who lived with his mother. Maybe because she spent so much time taking care of her mother.

Aunt Dorothy was a teen when Grandpa Pond was killed in a coal mine cave-in. She and ten-year-old Johnny were the only two of eight children still at home. They formed a life-long bond in caring for their mother. Johnny was a very handsome and eligible bachelor who lived with his mother until he married at age 35. Dorothy drove 120 miles each way every week to spend the weekend with them.

When Grandpa was killed in the mine, Grandma is reported to have said, “I would rather have lost one of my children than my precious Elmer.” I think Dorothy and Johnny were trying to prove to her that they were precious, too.

Aunt Dorothy was not effusive or affectionate. I’m not sure she ever hugged me, or anybody else. But I knew she was proud of me. She and Uncle Johnny gave me a high school graduation gift together, a big Samsonite suitcase, and a portable Smith-Corona typewriter. The message was clear: you shall be the first in our family to go to college.

Toward the end of her life, which ended when she was only 70, she said, “You are the only one of my nieces and nephews who looks after his parents.” That was the highest compliment she could give.

I grieved when Pontiac gave up production in 2010, after 84 years of great cars, a victim of the Bush recession 

It was like a death in the family.

John Robert McFarland

The car in the photo is like the one I drove--same year and model, but not the actual one.

 

 

 

POETRY POTPOURRI [M, 9-16-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—POETRY POTPOURRI [M, 9-16-24]

 

NO THEME: JUST SELECTIONS FROM MY POETRY JOURNAL…

[Sat, 8-24-24]

THE END OF MORNING

I love this time of day

just before a lunch in early afternoon

The list that must be done at dawn

is completed or forgotten

The errands of the notebook run

The coffee of mid-morning gone

Now no invisible judge can see

me as I grasp a book

so redolent with frivolity

that only a man of great wisdom

would dare to read it

 

[T, 8-20-24]

SEVEN BROWN-EYED SUSANS

They peek from behind

the gas meter

in the weed-filled pebble plot

of our absentee neighbors

Volunteer,

“Happy to be here”

No one other passes by

I alone see their smiling faces

They are enough for me

I am enough for them

 

[r, 8-1-24]

FINDING ANSWERS

Yes, it is true, the answer

is blowin’ in the wind

It is also falling in the rain

and growing in the hollyhocks

and muddling ‘round in humidity

and floating in the clouds

The answer is not

that hard to find

 

[w, 7-31-24]

FINALLY IN THE EVERLASTING ARMS

No, you are not forgotten, my friend

not as long as I still take

the ways we once walked together

When the time comes

that even the letters and numbers

on your stone are erased

by wind and rain and time

and I have joined you in death

Only then shall you be

completely in the everlasting arms

 

John Robert McFarland

I apologize to Christian Wiman, but not to Mary Oliver.

 

 

 

BEST FRIENDS [Sat, 9-14-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—BEST FRIENDS [Sat, 9-14-24]

 

Not long before his death, a man told me that he was writing his memoirs. I had known him from all the way back in grade school days He said that in his memoirs he named me as his best friend. That made me sad. He deserved a better best friend.

I tried to be a good friend to him back then. We had quite a bit in common. But when we met, he was two years younger. There is a big gap between eight and ten years old. And he was immature even for eight. And in the years after, his maturity never seemed to catch up.

That was probably because he lived with his grandparents. Not for the usual reasons—single mother on drugs, dead parents, etc. It was just that his parents “needed” a childless life style. They both worked so could not care for him during the week. They were too tired on the weekends to drive a hundred miles to see their only child. So, as so often, grandparents.

His grandparents were good people. Good, old people. It had been a long time since they had raised their daughter, their only child. They treated Don both like a fellow oldster, and like a toddler. Which made him needy.

That neediness caused him glom onto me. I was embarrassed even to be seen with him. He was a little kid while I was a mature fifth grader. But I was the one kid who tried to treat him like a friend. Not that I wanted to. I wanted to hang out with older, cooler kids. I didn’t want to be seen with an eight-year-old who acted like a six-year-old. But I had learned from my mother, and from Mrs. Derringer, my Sunday School teacher at East Park Methodist in Indianapolis, that I was supposed to be nice to “the least of these.” So I became Don’s best friend.

He was not, however, my best friend.

BFFs are not necessarily mutual. I recall being struck by a conversation with a neighbor when I was recently retired. We were talking about our mutual respect for the local Catholic priest. “He’s my best friend,” AJ said. Then added, “But I’m not his best friend.” It was sad. It made me remember Don.

Don and I had kept in touch off and on for thirty years after high school. But stuff happens. Like geography. He lived all over the world. He settled on the west coast. We were in different school classes, so I didn’t see him at class reunions. He divorced and married again. I had never met his new wife. We had different lives. Another thirty years passed.

But after that conversation with AJ, I looked Don up. I was able to do it because of that new thing called the internet. He was a dying man. An unhappy, dying man. His parents left him all that money they had made without him to raise. A financial advisor had stolen from him the only thing he had gotten from that deal.

So, I reminded him of all the things we did together. Reading comic books. [I always had to wait for him before we could turn a page.] Playing basketball. [He was terrible.] Singing duets at church. [I was terrible.] Double dating [His date kept asking my date to switch places.]

“We had such great times together,” I said.

That’s what best friends do.

John Robert McFarland

A MODERN EDUCATION…IN 1929. [R, 9-12-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—A MODERN EDUCATION…IN 1929. [R, 9-12-24]

I have mentioned before that my mother was the first woman in the state of Indiana to graduate high school with her married name on her diploma. And, as it turns out, in her yearbook, Francisco, Indiana’s “The Echo” of 1929.

A few years back, the very progressive librarian of the Oakland City public library decided to digitize all the high school yearbooks of the area for as far back as she could find. At the time, I thought I had lost my 1955 “Oak Leaf,” and so was delighted to copy the digital yearbook.

Since the Oakland City, Francisco, and Mackey schools merged, with the name of East Gibson [County] School Corp, she has also digitized the yearbooks of all three schools, for as many different years as she can find.

So I got to read about my mother’s class, and see her picture, in her own yearbook.

The Class of 1929 Francisco “Owls” had a sense of community and appreciation. They dedicated the year book “…to the tax payers of Center Township, who made it possible for us to get a modern education.”

That sense of community took in the past, not just the present, even though they were proud of that “modern” education. They listed all the alums, from the school’s start in 1891, and where they lived in 1929.

I’m not sure why Francisco had that sense of community. Maybe it was because they were mostly coal miners, and had a common enemy in the absentee mine owners. For whatever reason, it was there. My grandmother, Maggie [Margaret] May Dill Pond, even named her sons for local boys who had gone off and achieved significant things.

Aunt Virginia, # 2 in birth order, told John Hubert, # 8, when she was older, that he was named [the Hubert part] “…for the Presbyterian preacher’s dog.” She meant to say “The Presbyterian preacher’s son,” who had become a teacher, but I thought it was much better to be named for the Presbyterian preacher’s dog, so I have often repeated that story.

Education was very important in Frisco [the common name for Francisco], and Grandma would have been more impressed by a boy who became a teacher than by a doctor or lawyer.

Francisco was a Spanish laborer working on the Wabash and Erie Canal when it started construction in 1832. He built a shack in the area. The shack became a town in 1851. The town kept his name.

I’m not sure just what the Class of 1929 meant by a “modern” education. In many ways, it was a classical education. The only language taught was Latin. But up to that time, education was usually only “The 3 Rs—readin’, riting,’ and rithmatic,” often in a one-room school house. In tiny Frisco, population around 600, in 1929 they had music and art and home ec and sports teams. That was a modern school…

…with an especially enlightened superintendent. When my parents’ secret marriage was revealed before graduation time, everyone assumed Mother would be thrown out of school, as married women always were. The great fear was that they would tell the unmarried girls about sex. But the Francisco Superintendent said, “That’s silly. Mildred is a good student who has earned a diploma.”

I guess that is what they meant by a modern education.

John Robert McFarland

SCHOOL IS FUN? [T, 9-10-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Activities of an Old Man—SCHOOL IS FUN? [T, 9-10-24]

 

While we’re on the subject of school… As I walked one morning in the first week of school, I passed a house where a grandfather, a mother, and a little boy were coming out to the car. The boy was wearing a backpack.

“Are you going to school?” he called to me.

I was not surprised that he thought we might be classmates. I look quite young when I walk, with my bright “staggering shoes” [called “running shoes” in the past] and my white socks and my cargo-pocket shorts and my Hoosiers hoodie and my Reds baseball cap. But I had to tell him the truth.

“I wish I could go to school,” I said, “because I have a lot of things to learn.”

I already knew that this boy probably was not eager to go to school, for it was taking both a grandpa and a mom to get him there. Grandpa appealed to me for help. “School is fun, isn’t it?” he called.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “School is fun.”

It was a lie. School was not fun, not when I was his age.

I was so worried about it on the first day that I got sick and couldn’t even go. My mother was desperate to get me out of the house, though, so after lunch, she walked me down N. Oakland Ave. to Washington St. to 23 N. Rural St. to Lucretia Mott PS # 3.

There she sat beside me at the side of the room while the other kids ran around like they’d been there forever instead of just half a day. My February birthday made me a mid-year starter. January is not a good time to start anything. I was already a stranger, an outlier, because I had missed the morning. I was wearing a coat that I didn’t take off. I didn’t intend to stay.

But there was a big sand box up on legs. I had never seen such a thing before. It had lots of good stuff to play with—trucks, cars, toy animals. I thought I should check it out. “Better take off your coat first,” Mother said. I did.

I was having a pretty good time when I remembered that I wasn’t staying. In a panic, I looked around for Mother. Not there. Just my winter coat, hanging on a peg. Well, no choice. I didn’t know the way home. Might as well play some more.

My anemic older sister, who was a denizen of the top floor, in the Fresh Air School [1], came to get me at the end of the day to walk me home.

I liked school, but it was an anxious time, a fearful time, not a fun time. The report cards in our progressive, experimental [2] school in Indianapolis were just notes from the teacher to the parents. Mine always said something like, “John does not participate much, and he needs to work on his spelling, but he knows an amazing amount about current events.” Praise for current events knowledge was not enough to make a fun time.

Then, right after I started fifth grade, we moved to the farm near Oakland City. Oakland City was an old-fashioned “3 Rs” school. They gave letter grades. My first report card was full of the letters A and B. I found out that I was smart. Uncle Ted said he would give me a dime for each A and a nickel for each B. I started to have a fun time in school!

I’ve often told this story as though I started having fun in school because of the letter grades. but that’s not true. I started having fun in school because of the kids I met there. I got smart because I got friends. Because of good friends, not because of good grades, I was able to experience school as fun. 

So many of those friends are gone now—Darrel and Don and Donald Gene and Mike and Ann and Bob and Hovey and Nancy and Donna and… well, it’s much too long a list. But when I think about them, yes, school is still fun.

John Robert McFarland

1] Mary V has always claimed that she did not need to be in Fresh Air School, which she did not like, because she was sure she was not anemic. They put her up there, she says, just because she was skinny.

2] Education professors and text book writers tried out their ideas on us. They figured we were the ideal experimental group—white working-class kids whose parents favored education but were too busy to pay attention. Some of the ideas they tried on us were crazy, but we got extra attention, and that always helps learning.

 

THE ALL SOULS FINISHING SCHOOL FOR UNDER-ACHIEVERS [sun, 9-8-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—THE ALL SOULS FINISHING SCHOOL FOR UNDER-ACHIEVERS [sun, 9-8-24]

 

Today I am the same age my mother was when she died. That’s the start of my “dying envelope.” I assume the end of my dying envelope is seven years from now, the age my father was when he died. [1]

There is no such thing as a dying envelope, of course, but it’s a way to start a conversation about death. Some folks just don’t want to consider it at all, like maybe it won’t happen if we don’t talk about it.

Stephen Colbert of The Late Show on TV has no such qualms. One of the questions he asks celebrity guests is, “What happens when we die?” I’m surprised how many of them don’t know.

It’s not all that hard to figure out, at least for me, since I am a Chrisian, a resurrection believer.

Period # 1: First there is a tidying up period. We all need tidying up, regardless of when we die. I don’t mean that God will send angels to return our overdue library books, or inform the post office of our new address. That’s why we have children. I mean smoothing out the rough edges of our soul.

Principle # 1: We are souls that have bodies, not the other way around. When we get to heaven, we become our real selves.

Period # 2: Then maybe there is a period of seeing old dogs and old friends. I’m not sure about this as a heavenly period. I think it’s probably meant for thinking about while we are still in our earthly bodies. I spend time each day with Wags and Ernie, and Grandma Mac and Uncle Johnny and Jack Newsome… Maybe, though, if we haven’t done enough of that, it’s included after tidying up.

Principle # 2: All these periods may occur at once. Don’t get sidetracked by linear assumptions. We are in heavenly time now.

Period # 3: Then we are assigned to our eternal place. There are billions of planets. Lots of places for God to put people. I’ve always thought that underachievers—like preachers who told people they should believe stuff that they themselves didn’t understand—would be sent to Pluto, since it’s an underachiever as a planet.

In our eternal place, we are put with people like ourselves. God uses the same principle as my pastor friend, Roger Rominger: “Put all the malcontents on the same committee and let them drive one another out of the church.” Not exactly the same, but… you get the idea.

What? You don’t want to be forever with people like yourself? Then you’d better change your ways.

Principle # 3: Eternal doesn’t mean forever. It means complete. [2]

Period # 4: We are reassigned if it turns out we were put in the wrong eternal place. What? You think there are no mistakes in heaven? [3] If there is no forgiveness, then what’s a heaven for?

Principle # 4: Our souls are finished, completed, whole. Not forever, for time has no meaning. Just complete. So, now they are ready just to fall back into the everlasting arms, be at rest, be part of God’s eternal love.

John Robert McFarland

1] In rocket launches, there is an envelope of acceptability for launching. You have to go within the period of when the launch will work. Weather conditions mostly determine the envelope. If you are “pushing the envelope,” you are getting close to the end of the period when a successful launch is possible.

2] Reminds me of one of my early sermon illustrations, when I was myself an unmarried, but hopeful young man. I don’t think I would dare use it now, but “then” was a different time, and I think the “point” is still valid:

The young couple was engaged. She invited him over to sample her cooking. It was execrable. But afterward, she sat on his lap and said, “Just think. When we’re married, we can eat like this forever.” He thought, “Oh…I don’t think I can take forever…” 

3] For instance, the lawyer who died and went to heaven and complained to St. Peter, “I’m only 35. Why did you take me so soon?” St. Pete said, “Oh, we looked at your billable hours and thought you were 90.”

HOWDY DOODY EAR MUFFS [F, 9-6-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—HOWDY DOODY EAR MUFFS [F, 9-6-24]

[This is a continuation of the column of 9-4-24]

 

In later years…even at the time, really…I knew that Carolyn, once in a while, maybe, gave me a hint that she might say “yes” if I asked her for a date. But there was no way I could do that, not only because I was too awkward and afraid, but because I was immobile. My family didn’t have a car until mid-way through my junior year, when I could help pay for one, which was mid-way through Carolyn’s senior year. [She was only one semester older, but that put us into different graduating classes.] I would have had to walk three miles into town to her house and then get her to walk downtown to the Storm or Ohio movie theaters or to the soda fountain at Troutman’s Drug Store. Not a very romantic plan.

Worse, I would have had to drive our farm wagon into town to take her on a date.

I first fell in love with Carolyn when we were both ten years old. We had just moved from Indianapolis to the little hardscrabble farm near Oakland City. One Saturday, my father and I hitched “Old Prince” to the wagon and went to town, to get feed ground. I felt like a real Western guy, riding into town on a wagon. It was just like the radio shows.

The problem was… nobody else in town was on a horse-drawn wagon. It was after WWII. The economy was booming. People had cars. Only my father, blind in his eyes and blind to the present, thought a horse was the way to get around. Of course, when he had been a farm boy outside of Oakland City twenty years before, that was the way it was.

On that wagon seat, I was getting introduced to how “out of it” I was, what it was going to be like to be [soon] on welfare, without a car, without a place in the social system. It wasn’t like being on a radio show at all.

But, standing on the sidewalk as we drove by that day, waiting to cross the street, was a girl I had not seen before in my first couple of weeks in school. A wonderfully pretty girl, to be sure, with rosy cheeks and golden hair, but what really got my attention was her ear muffs. She was wearing Howdy Doody ear muffs!

Howdy Doody was brand new then. I had not seen the TV show. I did not see TV until the twelve-inch, black and white, floor cabinet set in the lounge of my dorm in college. But I knew about Howdy Doody. He was the current rage all the kids in school—at least those with TV sets--talked about. I had seen his picture in a magazine. Now I was seeing his face on the ears of the prettiest girl in the world. What a combination! I knew I would be in love forever.

That’s a fun memory, but there are no regrets attached to it. Even if I had later asked Carolyn for a date, and she had agreed, she would have soon realized her mistake. She was, after all, not just the prettiest girl in school, but the smartest. She would have dumped me, though, more graciously than most of my high school and college girlfriends dumped me. Worse, though, would be… I wouldn’t be able to do this fantasizing now, about what might have been.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not regretting. All the girls who dumped me did me a great favor. Carolyn would have just been another dumper who cleared the way for me to find later the true love of my life.

Yes, this column is fantasizing about what might have been, but not regrets for what might have been. It is about appreciation for what was. And is.

But I still remember those ear muffs…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE LARGEST GULF [W, 9-4-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—THE LARGEST GULF [W, 9-4-24]

 

It’s time for school to start. Well, yes, it’s been in session for a month now, but in my day, school started when God intended, after Labor Day. So this is a good time to remember high school friends…

Carolyn and Anne and I were an unlikely trio. They were the prettiest girls in school, and the smartest, and the wealthiest. The beauty and intelligence were absolute. They would be pretty and smart in any town. Wealth was relative. Anne was the doctor’s daughter. Carolyn’s father was a prominent local businessman. They were wealthy by small town standards. Coupled with the beauty and intelligence, though, they were untouchables. The sort of girls who have to hang around together because other girls don’t want the comparison.

I felt strangely comfortable with them, though, because they were so far out of my league. The idea of me, the welfare boy, dating one of them, was ridiculous. Oh, I was in love with them, of course. I was awed by them. But I worshiped them only from… well, close up, actually.

We were outliers on opposite ends of the social spectrum. That gave us a commonality. They were girls who didn’t have a date for the dance because they had money and clothes and cars. I was the boy who didn’t have a date for the dance because I did not have money or clothes or car. The gulf between us was so great that it didn’t exist.

I never lusted after them, but that was sort of universal with me. I didn’t lust after girls because I was so afraid of them. I didn’t imagine having sex with a girl because to engage with a girl so significantly and intimately would surely reveal my incompetence as a human being. I fantasized not about sex but about romance—things like…when asking a girl for a date, she might lightly touch my arm as she said “yes.” That was as far as my imagination could take me. [Remember, in those days, there was no birth control pill, and people weren’t even allowed to say “damn” on TV.]

Our strange trio started with drivers ed. [1] We did driving practice in groups of three, with Mr. Oren Stuckey, known as “Overdrive Oren,” for reasons that were obvious then, but not now, when people don’t even know about cars having “overdrive.” Anne and Carolyn and I were assigned together to the dual-controls Ford. When one of them drove, in the front seat with Mr. Stuckey, I sat in the backseat with the other one. I was in the back seat of a car with the prettiest girl in school! [Whichever one I was with was the prettiest one.]

That continued. When they were the only girls in physics class, and we had to do lab work in groups of three, Mr. Kenneth Robinson said they could choose whichever boy they wanted for their third. They didn’t even say anything, just looked at each other and then beckoned to me to come join them. It was a given. We belonged together. We were joined by outlier status—the prettiest and smartest and wealthiest girls, the awkward, overachieving, welfare boy.

If they were nice to me because they pitied me, the pity was not because I was poor. Any pity was because I tried so hard to be a guy that girls would like, and I was so bad at it. I was like a puppy that can’t jump high enough to get the treat but is cute to watch make the effort.

They went out of their way to explain to people that, despite my vanilla appearance and awkward manner, I was smart, and also a friend, and that was all they needed to know. [2]

We stayed in touch off and on through the years.

Anne and I both went to IU. Anne had a new car and was in the premier sorority. I lived in the Residence Scholarship dorm, for kids who were smart enough for college but too poor to afford it. At vacation times, Anne would give me a ride home. All the guys would be out in front, waiting for rides, and this tall, beautiful blond would drive up in her new car, hop out in her long camelhair coat, give me a hug, and carry my suitcase. Oh, did that ever change my status in the dorm.

It was harder to stay in touch with Carolyn, for she went to Purdue, but the Purdue-IU gulf was another that is so wide it doesn’t matter. In her most recent letter, Carolyn said that she is proud of me, what I achieved, the good I did.

They are old ladies now. We’ve all had our hard times. Carolyn’s son died in his thirties. Anne is a widow. My family’s had a lot of cancer. But in my memory, we are still the unlikely trio, the pretty girls and the welfare boy, united by drivers ed, and physics labs, and that special friendship that starts when life is all about possibilities, not limits, when the gulf is so large that it doesn’t exist.

John Robert McFarland

1] Why drivers ed if I didn’t have a car? Because the smart tax payers of Oakland City thought it was good public policy for everyone who might get behind the wheel to know how to do it safely. Drivers ed was mandatory.

2] I wasn’t awkward in all social situations, just with girls. Mostly I was quite comfortable with people, because I really liked people. The saying under my yearbook picture: I am wealthy in my friends.

 

 

LABOR AND RESPECT [M, 9-2-24]

 BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—LABOR AND RESPECT [M, 9-2-24]

 

Labor Day is known mostly as the time for closing swimming pools and to stop wearing white. Stuff for people who care about swimming and fashion. In other words, not my people.

If you stumble into some poorly attended speech in the town square, you might hear that Labor Day was first intended to honor the labor movement and the contributions of laboring people to the building of the USA.

In other words, my people.

I never met my grandfather, my mother’s father, Elmer Pond. He was killed in a coal mine cave-in years before I was born. I miss him. [1]

Grandpa Pond wasn’t just a coal miner. In his spare time, he was a union organizer. He had an Indian brand motorcycle that he rode to get around for his organizing activities on behalf of the UMW, United Mine Workers. [2]

It was a dangerous life, for both his mining and union organizing. Unions were violently opposed by mine owners. By “violently,” I mean violently. If miners tried to organize a union or struck to try for safer conditions and better pay, the company hired “goons” to beat them back into line. I mean “beat them” literally. 

If miners appealed to the law, elected county sheriffs and elected local judges sided with the owners. The more professional and presumably non-political Indiana State Police didn’t even exist until 1933. The goons had a free hand.

The unions worked primarily for safer working conditions. Black lung and cave-ins were a constant hazard, and safety always takes a back seat to profit. But better pay was certainly an issue, also, and, perhaps even more importantly, payment in money instead of script.

Script was “money” the owners used to pay the miners. It was good only to rent mine-owned houses and to shop in the infamous company store, where prices were higher than in regular stores. Shopping there got miners so deeply into debt that they were tethered to the mine owners forever. [3]

The first “record” I ever bought, as a new freshman at Indiana U, was Tennessee Ernie’s “Sixteen Tons,” with its mournful line, “St. Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.” He was singing about my people.

But the union movement wasn’t just about safety and salary and script. It was about self-respect.

I grew up seventeen miles from Ft. Branch, Indiana, where the eponymous Emge Meat Packing plant was located. It was a very successful business. Oscar Emge was an old man when I dropped out of high school to work in a factory, where I was proud to be a member of The International Assn. of Machinists. That was during the time that the Emge workers voted to organize.

Oscar Emge was heart-broken. “They don’t need a union. I’ve always been like a father to them,” he mourned. “I have taken care of them, paid their hospital bills. When they needed something, all they had to do was come to me and ask. And I haven’t resented it. It has given me great pleasure.”

Old Oscar, bless his kind heart, didn’t understand that people don’t want to be taken care of, and it wasn’t about whether he liked it. People don’t want to be dependent. They want to have a say in their own lives and in the use of what they have earned with their labor. That’s what unions are about. His workers respected Oscar, but they wanted to respect themselves, too.

I didn’t know much about Grandpa Pond, except that my mother cried all day each year on the anniversary of his death. But when we moved from Indianapolis to the farm between Oakland City and Francisco, Mother’s home town, I began to hear the stories about him, from Grandma Pond, and from his other children.

The first and constant thing I was always told by everyone in the Pond family: “Don’t go down in the mines.” It was with their encouragement, almost insistence, that I became the first member of the family to go to college. My people.

John Robert McFarland

1] My other grandfather, Arthur Harrison McFarland, also worked in the coal mines, but not as a miner. He was a stationary engineer.

2] I was disconcerted when the 1968 merger of The Methodist Church and The Evangelical United Brethren Church named its new women’s organization the UMW [United Methodist Women]. It took me a long time before I realized that the new UMW was much more powerful than the old UMW even dreamed of being!

3] Script was sort of like Menard’s misleading “11% off everything.” No, you pay full price, then send your receipt to Menard’s headquarters, and they send you “script” that you can use only at the company store.

 

 

 

 

 

REMEMBRANCE AT DAWN [Sun, 9-1-24]

 

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Poetry of an Old Man--REMEMBRANCE AT DAWN [Sun, 9-1-24]

 

I post a new column every other day, but I wanted to write about Labor Day, and seemed to need a post tomorrow, 9-2, which would leave a day blank, so… in case you came here today, Sunday, hoping for something useful, here’s an entry from my poetry journal…

REMEMBRANCE AT DAWN

The sky is always darkest, they say

just before the dawn

be it beyond the earth’s horizon

or in the marrow of the soul

When eyes are misty and cannot see

the mercies of the Lord

When brains are slow

and do not recall

the feel of loving arms

It is then, in that deep dark,

it is good to sing a song

that is engraved upon the heart

A song of hope

that needs neither eyes nor brain

Do, Lord, oh, do Lord

Oh, do remember me…

 

John Robert McFarland

May your September be blessed.