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For me, there is the Muse and, then, there is the Rich Little Muse. The Rich Little Muse does a hilarious impersonation of the real Muse. My weakness as a writer is in my inability to distinguish between the impersonator and the real thing.

The Rich Little Muse inspires me to sit down and begin work on a simple idea. Four hours later, I find I have started a novel or a poem or a screenplay and I have none of those skills. Or worse, I discover I’ve spent four hours of my life that I’ll never get back, delving deep into my creative side and only brought forth sentimentality or pretentious pedantry.

At my best, I write stories. On a good day, I can string together a few good stories into a semi-coherent point.

Lately, I can’t finish a thing. There is a blog piece about road trips that I just can’t seem to end. There is a short story about, well, I guess it is about a young man who has moved far beyond his West Texas roots, yet, he only need step off a plane, and in to his father’s dually, to be engulfed by the part of himself that he barely remembers.

All writers get stuck from time to time and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Getting stuck is different from writer’s block. Getting stuck usually happens when the writer is growing and the shift is a challenge.

A stuck writer can still see the wall of rock, the next hand and foothold. Writing is like rock climbing. It requires stretching, fear, balance and discomfort. Stretching creativity requires daring and perseverance.

For stuck writers, irony and metaphors lurk everywhere, like similes about the stars in the sky. But, to no end. Writer’s note: When you are stuck you are allowed to start sentences with, “But”.

In a stuck phase, ideas collect into something resembling “Bartlett’s Quotations”. Reassuring in their availability, but lacking a context, they ring hollow and less profound. Clever song titles without words or score.

Still, if you are stuck, you are not afraid to write for the sake of improving your craft with no notion that someone must read it to make it useful. Being stuck is a way of taking inventory of everything that goes into the creative process and is why writing does not pay by the hour.

Writer’s block on the other hand is like a dead end cave you are sure holds treasure. You crawl deeper into the narrowing crevice of promise, so deep your shoulders become wedged. In a while you start to hear the echoes of clown laughter from a nightmare, drawing closer to check their traps. Writer’s block is the place where self-doubt feeds on the soul. This is the place where some of our greatest writers, and many who could have been, disappear into the abyss.

I think I am either lowering my standards or getting better at this writing thing. I may get stuck now and then, but I rarely go in caves, literal or literary.

In the work in progress on road trips, I write about temporarily overcoming my claustrophobia and visiting Carlsbad Caverns. I had baby Jonas on my back and he suddenly took ill, deep in the cave. He began projectile vomiting in all directions, especially at the back of my head and down the neck of my shirt. It took a while to get out of the Caverns but then there you were in the high desert of New Mexico covered in vomit.

That’s really nothing compared to writer’s block. I may have had it when I was young, or was that just arrogance and a lack of discipline? The fear of being told or admitting to yourself, “You’re just not very good”, is probably at the root of writer’s block.

At some point a writer becomes mature enough and lost enough in the process of developing the craft of good writing that it doesn’t matter what anyone says or thinks.

The last little bird flaps his wings and takes a few short circles around the nest, growing stronger, preparing to launch in a year. I imagine a time when my schedule will be such that I wake, make coffee, take a walk, then a seat, and write for a few hours every morning.

For now the process is a little more lurching and halting, like my 1966 Mercury Montclair in the final days of its life in 1973. I should write a blog post about that.

I stopped at an estate sale in Lake Highlands this afternoon, even though I had far more important things to do. I only stopped because I noticed there were boxes and boxes of books stacked outside. As I perused, the son of the owner of the books, deceased three months ago, entertained those of us staggering around in the heat and humidity, sweat rolling off the end of our noses and splattering the spines of the books in the boxes.

“Anyone need a copy of, ‘Meditations on Wine as a Cure for Gout’” the son offered.

“”I’ll drink to that,” a neighbor called out, without looking up.

“Dad didn’t even have gout…” the son lamented with a laugh.

Having cleaned out the houses of several late family members, I understood his surrender to laughter. The acquisition process of someone who clearly already has more than enough of everything and is no longer present to explain themselves, leaves us pondering the great unanswerable, “Why?”.

The book digging was hot and rough and not all of the books were in good shape. I almost gave up early in the hunt. Then, I found a pristine and odorless copy of, “The World of Paul Crume” edited by Marion Crume. This book is a collection of 254 columns from Crume’s almost quarter of a century at the Dallas Morning News.

In the forward, Texas historian Lon Tinkle wrote of Crume, “If his targets were hypocrisy, cant and bunkum, his weapon was laughter, and his ammunition was ironic, rarely sardonic, tolerance of the human frailty…The humor comes from a broad, generous understanding of the gap between what dream promises and what reality forks over…”

My grandfather was often tickled by Crume’s pearls and would insist on reading the column aloud to whoever was around. I wasn’t very old when I too started to read Mr. Crume regularly.

I remember “Teaching a City Dog to Swim” and “What to do about Dandruff” turning my giggle box over and I thought this grown man seemed to have a fine sense of not taking things too seriously. Yet, Crume’s column that I read to my family every year on Christmas morning, “To Touch an Angel”, always brings a tear, well, just because it does.

Since Crume lived on the same street as my grandparents in Casa View, we felt a kinship toward him like a famous uncle who we rarely got to see. Occasionally, we would see him riding in a car with his wife driving, or walking home from the bus stop. It seemed a humble life for someone so incredibly famous. I recalled all of this in an instant, and held this treasure close.

“How much for this one?” I asked the son of the deceased.

“Well, here is the deal, it’s a dollar a book, or, if you grab one of those boxes, you can fill it up with as many books as you can carry for five bucks.”

I grabbed a box and got serious about mining the five or six hundred books stacked in the sun and the two or three hundred others under the tarps in the backyard.

You learn a lot going through people’s books. The departed was clearly someone I would have enjoyed knowing, throwing his newspaper or mowing his lawn. Judging by the tools, electronics, and chaos of his garage workroom, he was a retired engineer, turned tinkerer. He had a huge number of hardbound engineering books and old photographs revealing a man who had been important in the construction of major power and sewage treatment plants. “Arithmetic of Sewage Treatment Facilities” was one of the more esoteric titles.

Beyond his profession, this gentleman had been an avid reader of politics, war history, and literature. I found evidence he had been a New Deal Democrat and had kept the faith, maintaining collections of newspapers from Bill Clinton’s election. He was a true renaissance man before they became obsolete or at best, highly endangered.

My box began to fill with titles, a play by Eugene O’Neill, the autobiography of Kit Carson, “Landscapes of Texas”, “The Best of Will Rogers”, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, the classic, “Up Front” by Bill Mauldin, “Lonesome Dove”, and a biography of Winston Churchill.

I also picked up a copy of old favorite North Dallas Forty and couldn’t resist a paperback copy of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E. #3, The Copenhagen Affair”, with cover art of the actors David McCallum and Robert Vaughn.

One title, which is possibly the most unfortunate book of the late 20^th Century, is “Richard Nixon, The Man Behind the Mask” by Gary Allen. Allen’s 430 page treatise on Nixon was published in 1971, near the end of Nixon’s first term. It is hard to imagine a book about Nixon that is totally devoid of mention of Watergate. That’s like a book on World War ll that fails to mention the atomic bomb. Allen clearly didn’t like Nixon, he was a Goldwater/John Birch Society man and must have kicked himself at the premature publication of his best shot at Nixon, less than a year before we first learned the word, “Watergate”.

Wandering through the tangible artifacts of the life of a neighbor I did not know, particularly his books, carries mixed feelings. I am glad to give some of his books a decent home and a proper place on a shelf. Yet, I would rather have known him and heard his stories and impressions of all that he read and experienced.

I drove the few short blocks to my house wishing I knew more of my neighbors. Like old books, they are treasures waiting to be shared.

58 is a precarious age. 57 was, too, I guess, but as usual, I wasn’t paying attention.

This morning, the gathering storm clouds promise a break in the drought and the change in barometric pressure has left me a little on the brink emotionally. I’m sure there are more factors than the weather but my mood often follows the meteorological conditions. Not necessarily a bad thing. I’m all about navigating everything that falls off of the back of the life truck that is always weaving erratically just ahead of us.

Personally, I wouldn’t care if it rained hard for a week. Rain brings reflection and that’s a nice time to write. However, a monsoon would really disappoint the boys and girls of spring with their bats and gloves, and their fresh uniforms, and I wouldn’t want that.

Sure, I’m a big, opinionated, fat head most of the time, but I’m a crier. The beauty, complexity, sadness and exhilaration of this life have always had control of my tear ducts. I have watched “It’s a Wonderful Life”, 40 or 50 times and I always cry.

Sometimes the flood gates open with the breath of an angel that opens your eyes to some miracle of humanity or nature. Sometimes a good cry is a little more of a process of melancholy realization.

One morning, you are sitting on the edge of your bed and you look down in the dark and you see an arm and it is the arm of an older man and you feel sorry for the man, who is not you, can’t be you, with the flabby arm.

Later that day, you are thinking about another day, an earlier day, one that felt just like today feels. The people were so young and carefree, you can barely recognize them.

That day, they were just married. They cuddled in their sleeping bags in their tent “first home” in the Quechee State Park. They listened to the warning wind in the pines overhead, smelled the coming rain and watched the light growing greener and darker and comforted their new dog. There was no other day than that day and that moment.

Then you cry because you want to do that day all over again, exactly the same. You are struck with the terrible feeling that that day was not yesterday and too many days have passed. No matter how many years pass on those moments, you can close your eyes and you are full of the joy of having been there at least once.

There is a boy-man in the shower. Soon he will leave for college, as the others have, and the water bill won’t be as high but I can’t think of anything else good to come of that. I am sorry I ever gripped about the long showers and high water bills or the cost of car insurance or the rowdiness at bedtime.

Sometimes I think I wouldn’t mind if life played in a loop and I could relive over again all of the family days with my wife and our boys. Just once more through the sweet times. But if life could loop around the block one more time I might never get to see what wonders come after.

Thank the lord for the life giving rain.

There are parts of human nature that dogs can never understand. It isn’t for a lack of trying.

The dogs I know spend countless hours fretting over how such a loyal and trusted companion can fly into such a tizzy over the most normal kinds of behavior, like rolling in another animal’s excrement. Humans are disgusting. They don’t lick themselves nearly enough.

Dogs don’t understand why humans would crawl around dumpsters, sketchy neighborhoods and, my personal favorite, highway medians, to rescue them and, then, try to train them to stop all of the behaviors that have kept them alive. Dogs live by cost / benefit analysis. If they are warm under a bridge, near plenty of food and water, they don’t necessarily have a conscious need for someone to swoop in and say, “Hello, Doggie, I’m one of the good humans, I have come to buy you food, toys and sweaters, if you will just come away with me!”

Dogs aren’t just sitting around thinking, “Oh, if only a human, one of the good humans, would come and take me to their home and adore me.”

All of this is to say, I had not realized that I was running a dog rescue. I say “had not realized” rather than “was not told” because that is a fight that has been waged, lost, and with a heavy toll. I have now been made fully aware that I am running a dog rescue and the early results were not satisfactory.

I do admit, my wife had mentioned something to me about wanting to someday have an animal rescue. I thought that meant, like, well, after we were dead. One of those bucket list things that you just don’t quite get to do.

I thought the ability and generosity to nuture was being fulfilled when we started regularly producing animal-like sons. Lord knows we’ve rescued them any numbers of times.

Apparently, the empathy one feels for their own flesh and blood is nothing compared to a feral dog with mange, heartworm and a constant red thing sticking out. Almost all dogs are rescues. I don’t know many people who still buy full blood dogs, but it is encouraging that people do seem to be looking for a dog with a story.

Our history with dogs is complicated.

I moved to Vermont, adopted a dog, eloped with my life-love, and started law school, all in August of 1988. We met Margaret, a goldie-lab mix a week before we eloped. I always thought that adopting Margaret helped seal the deal. We had already done one impulsive thing, why not do another?

The dog was Duffy’s idea. I am innocent of any manipulation, or, can, at least, feign the belief that she really did love me more than the dog. Duffy saw Margaret’s gentle, hurting spirit and said, “What about this sweet, girl?” She wasn’t barking, had eyelashes and little dreadlocks around her ears. She came out of the kennel, sat up on her hind legs and wrapped her front paws around my leg in a hug.

The Upper Valley Humane Society on the Vermont / New Hampshire border, told us all about her terrible life. Margaret was about three and recently had puppies. It wasn’t her first litter. She had been chained next to a garbage heap, so mostly she had to rummage for scraps. They said she would take a lot of work.

Duffy did almost all of that work, while I “studied” law but it was easy and done with an appreciation that Margaret was giving her something special in return. Margaret went swimming in the River, fetched sticks, took good long walks every evening and hikes on the weekends. Duffy took her on errands and to parties (where Margaret would offer spiritual counseling), so people could tell her what a special dog and how beautiful she was.

In later years we moved four times and had three babies. Margaret was a good sport but none of that was easy on her. In my book, all dogs are measured against Margaret and none have made the grade, particularly, this current crop.

We put down Margaret, then, Sam and Lily, who had come to us as old dogs in search of a peaceful end of life. All three within five years. I, being the designated family witness to these events, was excited to have a little dog free time.

Oh, but, they couldn’t stand it.

Duffy took two of the boys – her covert majority – to “run some errands.” They show up later with a mutt, who they had named Fonzie, bathed, wormed, and vaccinated. The boys called him, “ the Fonzie Dog”, or, as I think of him, a Chihuahua head, grafted on to a Terrier body by Dr. Frankenstein. Fonzie sensed instantly that I hated him, and he, me. He was a demon, ran off all of the time, wouldn’t listen. And he made me miss Margaret. One day, I was off somewhere, and my wife talked to a dog trainer / rescue person. You know the rest.

Soon, she had found a wandering multi-breed in a parking lot. It was incorrigible. If Fonzie was a demon, this dog was the spawn of a cucachabre and the devil himself. He kept trying to run away and I said let it go. No one spoke to me for three days. That dog, I was told, needs a home and Fonzie needs a brother. The thing had a name but I will consider myself lucky, if during the writing of this, his name does not pop back into my head.

Well, they became quite the criminal enterprise, Fonzie and he who shall not be named. They committed vandalism and mayhem. Eventually, they took off together and no one could find them. Everyone knew Fonzie was being led astray by that no-name asterisk of a dog. Seven bleak days around here ended with a 4 a.m. call from a neighbor. Fonzie was 3 blocks away with a broken hip. There was no sign of the other. It was the greatest day of my pet owning life.

A couple of months later, someone put up posters, “Found” with a picture and info. I think it was Jonas who said, “Daddy that picture looks like…” The other two boys faces went white, but I knew they would never tell. At last, I had the majority! Then a couple of weeks later, a woman was wrestling a whirling dervish across the mockingbird bridge. My heart skipped a beat, because you can feel it when you are close to true evil.

“Don’t make eye contact,” shouted Liam.

“Hide!”, warned Caleb. The older boys, the ones who had aligned with me on this issue, stared over the top of the seat at the woman and the dog until we had driven well past them.

“Dad, that was…” said Liam.

I cut him off quickly, “NAHHHH, he was smaller than that”. No one ever said another word.

After the broken hip and 7 days on the road, Fonzie and I made our peace. I admitted that we really missed him and he admitted that he had, at times, been ungrateful toward me. He said he appreciated that I was the person who came and got him and he apologized for following the anonymous vagabound and all of the pain he had caused the family. I accepted his apology and we have been on very good terms since.

Then, along came Buddy, some sort of very hairy Shepard, because, you know, Fonzie needed a brother. I looked at my wife like she had lost her wits. Didn’t we just try that with Phantom Dog? She says, I found a dog but you get to decide. Of course, when I met Buddy, I was absolutely emphatic.

“Oh, he’ll do. Come here, buddy…”, I declared, mustering my bitterest condemnation of the whole proceeding! After that I just sort of gave up.

Fonzie was better and a comfort to me at times, but Buddy was the other extreme from that forgotten, little tramp. I have never seen a dog worry as much as Buddy does. It’s understandable though. He was abused and separated from his brother. Every time he tells me that story, I just tear up. He hasn’t gotten over the time I told him about Margaret’s life and that he better buck up. I should have been more sensitive.

I don’t know how much time passed, maybe just a few months. I remember there was at an epic heat wave. It was between 100 and 107 for about 40 straight days. Somewhere in there, I became vaguely aware that the family was beginning to worry about animals generally, in a drought and heat situation.

That concern became quickly focused on the specific instance of a wild or dumped beast currently circling our neighborhood. Again and again he passed the house. Each time, I could see the call to arms rallying the troops! I on the other hand, observed from the garage. The thing was a mottled mixed breed. It looked like a hybrid of Alien, the ever popular pit bull, and a black lab.

Rescue people will probably scorn me, but I only like to rescue Dogs that come up to me and ask for help. Like Margaret did. I saw this dog, he saw me, 15-20 times over two days. I even called to him but in his core he believed he was better on his own than to take a risk with me. Dogs today are worse than Human Beings about that false pride stuff. If you need help, ask. Otherwise, I have a garage to clean.

The only family member who had the courage and the persistence to see this rescue through was Jonas, our youngest. My wife is so clever. She sends a small child out to tame a pit bull. Day and night he put out food and water. The dog, very cautious at first, then slowly trusting, ever so slowly building trust… finally, let Jonas pet him. Next thing I knew, “Zeus”, was in the house watching TV and acting like a poodle.

So this merry trio – the aging, but still spry, Fonzie; the neurotic, sheep-less, Buddy; and Zeus, who has bitten 5 or 6 of our friends, all of whom claim they deserved it – has been doing fine together now for a number of years.

Last Saturday, Duffy comes home with some sort of terrier looking mish mash. I gave her directions to a place and she said, “Oh you better not send me that way, I might pick up a stray dog.” I had a sinking feeling as she pulled out of the driveway.

Did I mention my wife is psychic? Not an hour later, she was stalking a stray in the rain in Oak Cliff. She says we are fostering him and she will find him a home. By the time she got “Beckley” home, he had a name, his shots, a shower and shave, and an appointment for a nut clipping. She says we are fostering him and she will find him a home. He doesn’t look like he is going anywhere to me.

He is an agreeable fellow though the other three dogs hate him. They are highly insulted that we are not trusting their judgment on this one. Zeus is so upset we have not even let him near the dog without a fence between them.

I prefer someone adopt Zeus, and would pay them to do so, as I am growing quite fond of “Beckley”. He is all black with just occasional white spots and appears to be very smart. He has a tiny strand of longer white hair near his rectum. It looks as though he might have a string hanging out of his butt and people have commented on this.

Beckley (or Zeus!) clearly needs a patient group of humans who have their own flaws and foibles. So, if you know anyone who wants a man killer, or a smart, sweet, little dog that’s sure to start a conversation, just let me know. That or I’m stuck with the very real possibility that for the next 10 years or so, I may find myself repeatedly saying the words, “No, that’s not a string. No it’s not hanging out of his butt.” This is how a rescue dog can open the world for us!

Note: A rich, white, kid, one county over, gets 10 years probation for killing 4 people and crippling another in a DUI accident. A poor, black kid gets 10 years for killing 1 person in a DUI accident, from the same judge. Listen people, probation is no sweet ride. It is a terrible punishment paying all of those fees and the inconvenience of having to report every month to surly probation officers who look at you like you were, you know, a criminal.

I definitely believe in “affluenza” (rich kid’s syndrome) but, I certainly don’t believe it should be a “defense” or a “disease”. I was thinking more like a malaise, for which. the punishment should be “shoot on sight” and “aerial spraying”.

Do I understand the concept correctly?: The Rich lawyer (a poor defendant could never afford) finds a Psychologist. The Psychologist – or was it a psychiatrist? – is probably rich, but rich and famous nevertheless, after this trial. Poor Kids do not have psychologists. They defend the Rich Kid, using a previously unnamed cultural defect that nurtures children who disregard human life because they are just too rich. Bulletproof, corrupted, by wealth and privilege. The Rich just can’t be trusted to raise proper children. What the left says about them in “ad hominem” attacks is really nothing compared to what the Rich will say about themselves to avoid a little prison time for one of their own.

I wonder if this judge has a record of “second chance”, rehabilitative probations, with long, stringent, monitoring and reporting, regardless of their economic position. If she is consistent with these kinds of sentences then, really, I don’t have a problem – in fact, I respect it. That is the intention of juvenile justice. According to retired Judge, John Cruzot, the juvenile system is set up to achieve rehabilitation. Be that as it may, it doesn’t explain the disparity in sentencing in the cases above. Rehabilitation for some and hard time for others.

The illness of affluence afflicts not only Rich Kid behavior but, apparently, the rest of a system that simply can’t see its own class/race biases.

Note: Deep breaths here as I post a poem. That’s not usually my comfort zone, but because of people like my brother, Jay, the encouragement of friends, especially Tony, and my love, my wife, Duffy, I am finally pursuing my long neglected love of writing. Realizing that the poem below may possibly be the worst kind of schlock or just not very good is not really as important as just the act of hitting “Publish Post”. Reconnecting with my creativity, and working hard to sharpen it, requires a certain, previously lacking, fearlessness in the face of failure. One needs to know and have slapped into his thick head, his absolute limits as a writer. I think I have a chance to learn my boundaries and be a pretty good writer by the time I am 70 or so. So, please free to comment below. “Not My Cup of Tea.” is as helpful as, “Meh.” Consider carefully whether or not you ever want to see another piece of poetry of mine again, before handing out any compliments. That could be really dangerous. A good winter, to you and yours.

The Bowing

by Jeff Veazey

Winter is winter, until it becomes a number.

This one is harder,

like the first unyielding winter up north,

like the snap of a limb of an old friend.

Falling ice, empty shelves and gas pumps,

the loss of power.

We worry about the birds – and the bees.

Remember the ice storm of ‘76?

That one was worse-

it was easier, but it was worse.

Let me tell you, you ought to be more careful about the way you use that term, “happy camper”. I am not a happy camper and I’ll let you know when that changes.  In fact, I don’t want to be a camper at all, especially in my own home.

There are trained professionals, men and women of daring and determination charged with the job of restoring folks to happy camper status and I ran into several of them in my alley just awhile ago. Public Utility Service employees out of Corpus, drove 8 hours and went right to work helping restore electricity to almost a quarter of a million North Texans.   

“Well, at least we can get some happy campers over here on these two blocks,”

I heard of one the out-of-towners say. He seemed to motion toward my block. I wanted to interrupt and ask the one question they hear a hundred times a day in situations like these, “HOW LONG WILL IT BE?” Instead, I kept a respectful distance. There was purpose to their movement and discussion and it was not something you would ever want to interrupt. They were serious and did not dawdle. They were weathered and wore work jump-suits, helmets, boots and gloves, but appeared professional in every way.

They were discussing “Plan B”. Their original plan for the 4-5 block patch of houses surrounding me on three sides had hit a snag. Our outage was a big job – lots of limbs on wires in the alleys, blown transformers, and meters and service wires snapped off of the side of houses from falling timber. Their “saw truck” had been diverted to another area for a couple of hours.  However, it was immediately apparent that these are not people who ever say, “Uh-oh, this is hard, let’s go home.” Assessing that they could do some but not all of the area until the saws arrived, they immediately made a plan to restore the areas where they wouldn’t need saws.

It’s all on the national TV news and, if I had power, I could confirm that Dallas is in the midst of a mean winter storm. Here it is early December and it is acting like its February. I have lived through crippling North Texas  ice storms and been without electricity for longer periods during and after other storms, but it has been a long time since we have lost power for more than a couple of hours and suffered the extreme cold and wind chill that this storm brought.  My dear wife reminds me it was really cold and we lost power for 2 plus days just a few years ago. Isn’t memory loss a symptom of hypothermia? I guess I am learning what they mean when they say this kind of weather is particularly hard on older people. Every storm makes you feel a little older.

A friend of my wife’s, from Minnesota, wrote on Facebook before we lost power, “-2”.  People will laugh and say, “Oh Dallas, why don’t you try a real winter like we have in Minnesota or Alaska?” Having lived in Vermont, I know what real cold is, but the people, homes and infrastructure in Texas are geared for the blast furnace of June – August, heat that would bring a North Dakotan, who doesn’t even own an air conditioner,  to his knees.  Last night, my bride and I sent the last of the nest dwellers to a friend’s house and hunkered down.  We built a cozy den in front of the fireplace and the three dogs circled in.  We listened to the battery powered, hand-crank radio. We danced.  We ate soup. When we woke at 3 a.m. the temperature outside was 18 and the wind chill was about 0. That’s cold anywhere, if you don’t have heat. Our fire was very low, so I got up and threw on a few logs. With the flashlight I could see the heavy frost of my breath and could feel the frigid draft around the fireplace. Yet, we survived and the dogs thoroughly enjoyed it.

We were not as enthusiastic about a second night of roughing it and came home to get provisions for an overnight stay (though we had heard rumors it might be 5 days before electricity was restored) when we saw the trucks had arrived. The sight of trucks and emergency lights and workers combing the alleys reminded us that when there is real trouble, people, will come. Help will arrive.

My wife put this on Facebook with her phone, you know, since everything else is cold and powerless:

“Here are some of my gratitudes I have on day two with no electricity on a very cold day In Dallas, Tx…My fireplace, my husband still cooking cuz we have our gas stove, my friends who have offered their homes , our great neighbors coming together, our three dogs who slept with us and kept us warm, laptops to watch movies, our great sleeping bags, the fact that our trees didn’t fall on our cars or house ( like our neighbors), my upbeat husband, my hot shower this morning, clean underwear, working flashlights, our crank radio, really great hot coffee, and our health. “

To that, I would add a gratitude for the people who come out in frozen weather when the rest of us are scrambling to get inside and get warm. It takes a special person to come out in the worst weather situations to risk their lives to help people have light and comfort in their homes.  As far as first responders, Public Utility Service workers get far less credit than they deserve.  I, for one, have discovered a deep and profound appreciation. In a little while my lights and heat will be back on and I will probably sink back into the “take it for granted” mindset. I hope not, but we are human. In just a week and a half the whole gang will be home for the holidays. There will food, warmth and joy. I will try to take a moment and send a prayer of thanks toward the people from Corpus and or anywhere else, where there are people who get a call in the night to chase the path of a tornado or hurricane or winter storm,  in hope that they are home with their families, warm and dry, and joyous and the one’s who are working somewhere can get home soon.  The next time there is a natural disaster I’ll think of what Mr. Roger’s said:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”

That, was last night. Today, my electricity is on and the house is warm. Some of my neighbors are, not yet, so lucky. Around the neighborhood, I can hear the “Beep-beeping” of trucks backing up and saws clearing the lines, creating happy campers, one block at a time.

After his first hitch and before WWII, Dad drove a Cab during the Eat Texas Oil Boom.

Dad 15, home on leave with niece, Barbara, and nephew, Gene.

One of my last visits with Dad before he died in 1982., fall of

I have written about fatherhood before in this blog and this mysterious relationship continues to inspire me to understand. One of the wise men talking to Bill Moyers long ago, (Was it Robert Bly or Joseph Campbell or both…?),  commented the problem with fathers and sons occurs when they both realize they are in love with the same woman.  One of them also spoke about the cultural shift of the 20^th century that took men away from real, meaningful work and gave them far more money for far less spiritually rewarding work.  This caused their children to see more of their rage than in any previous culture since the barbarians.

Although I might have had better reason than most, I have tried not to see my shortcomings as something caused by my father or anyone else. The mind wants absolutes and yet, there are very few purely good or purely bad people. There are people and they are just all over the place in how and why they make certain decisions. Through the years my brother and friends and even strangers have drifted into long conversations about our fathers. The men who became our fathers grew up in the depression and fought in wars. Poverty and War prepared the men of my father’s era for work and survival and not to be “emotionally present”.

There were a few dads who I thought were terrific, like my grandfather, Raymond Barlow,  and  some of the men from my church, or Mr. Peppermint, who I wrote about in a previous blog piece, and  but they were the exception. My Dad, to put it gently, was not the model of fatherhood portrayed by the stars of the TV shows I watched as a kid. There were fathers on TV like my Dad, but they were the ones played by great character actors as tormented, insecure, prideful, Dads wracked by sorrow, guilt, disappointment or sin. These Dad’s were straightened out and offered salvation by Matt Dillon, Ben Cartwright or Lucas McCain, et al, over the course of an episode. If only life were so neat and tidy.

I was lucky, though. For whatever reason, I had a knack for deterring or distracting my Dad’s grouchiness and quick temper.  He was not particularly violent but his demeanor suggested he certainly was capable of it, if you pushed too hard. He was insecure around people who had more education than he had and was a bit of a bully. Like the loyal kid of those rotten, TV-dads, I played the role. Deep down, even as a young child, I had this wiser-than-my-years understanding that my Dad loved me, but that he just had a lot of problems that weren’t my fault.  People have told me that I could defuse him with a smile but I remember my fair share of trepidation, quickly judging his mood and, if necessary, heading out the back door, as soon as he got home from a day of selling cars.

I know that things were much harder for my brother, six years older and more sensitive, and our Mom, who seemed to me to do all she could to shield us from Dad’s dark side, though my brother certainly has a different memory. Emotional pain can never be a shared experience. Each person’s experience is so different from another. It is not a knife, or acid, or fire, or a punch to the gut. Yet, we feel cut, poisoned, burned and like the wind has been permanently knocked out of us. Emotional pain gnaws and bores in, and each is left alone to interpret, endure and come out the other side.

So we, my brother and I, have our own story of Dad, and I couldn’t begin to tell his. Our stories are quite different based on the filters of consciousness and memory and the difference in our ages and personality.  But, my brother and I both remember the terrifying argument that woke us from our sleep in the fall of 1961. We both remember the gun, laying like an ashtray on the nightstand, and our father’s low, hateful, growl, like an enraged animal, “You can leave, but if you try to take the boys…” and the implied threat of his menacing glance toward the gun.  I didn’t remember much at all after that, like a concussion, everything moved slowly, out of focus and in black and white. Then, after the divorce was final, my memory recovered. Life was never really the same and everything, where we lived, how people looked at us, our self-esteem, was shaded by “the divorce”.

So between the divorce, the “Meth”, prescribed for my hyperactivity, and the Kennedy assassination, there were a few years there where I just disappeared into a rich fantasy world. (Also, described in the Mr. Peppermint blog piece) For several years, I saw very little of my Dad. I looked for him, thinking he’d turn up or that he and my mom would reconcile. Once, he gave my mom, my brother and me,  a ride when my mom’s car was in the shop. I remember asking my brother, “Are Mommy and Daddy making up?” He looked horrified and, then, sympathetic and said, “No. No they aren’t.”

During this time, I became quite the story teller. A psychologist would say I was crying out for attention but, honestly, I just thought the stories in my head were more interesting and full of possibility than the life I was living. Willie, our once a week domestic worker, would say to me, “Honey-child, are you tellin’ Willie a sto-ree?”  Most often, I was. I remember telling her once, that my mom and her parents were discussing a plan to send me to live on a small horse ranch in Missouri, with my Great Aunt Millie and Uncle Homer, because they didn’t have any children.

“ So,” I said to Willie in a grave tone. “ I might not be here when you come next week.”

There was a long pause as Willie ironed. “Oh-Baby, I might not be here next week if you wasn’t here. My heart might break and Jesus just take my soul.”  This caused me to backtrack quickly. I loved Willie and she loved me and under no condition could Jesus have her soul.  I often “faked sick” on days that Willie was coming so I could stay home and hang out with her. I loved to hear her sing the spirituals while she was ironing.  Whenever I told stories to Willie, I felt bad because she seemed to be closer to God than anyone I knew.

“Well, if I don’t go to Missouri, they might send me a horse down here! We could ride it together!”

“Wouldn’t that be fine!  Willie and Jeff riding yo’ pony all over town!”

The idea of Willie and me riding a horse together made me laugh so hard I got a stitch in my side. I am so grateful for adults in my life who encouraged my imagination and didn’t judge me too harshly when I was lost and trying to find my way. However, there was one story, and still is, that I would tell, that people most often would assume I was lying about, but was actually true.

In 1933, in East Texas, it must have seemed as though there was no end to the misery. The crash of 1929 had followed an almost decade long “cotton depression”. Share croppers eeked out an existence in the best of years but it had been many years since anything resembling a good year.  As poor as they were farm families bonded together in the fields and in church several times a week and helped each other through every hardship. At a time when city people were getting used to having cars, most farm families still used a wagon. While my Dad, whose name was Judson, but was called “J.E.” and “Tiny” as a child and young man and “Jud” later, told what few stories he could recall, in mostly the darkest, saddest, terms. His older sister, Hazel, however, recalled the family as being very poor but not wanting for the most important of comforts, love, family, laughter, warmth and food. Their memories, like mine and my brothers, were separated by some years. The joy my Aunt Hazel could recall was experienced during a time when my Dad was too young to remember. His earliest memory seemed to be when the family was enveloped in tragedy, while Hazel had clear, sweet memories of their mother.

My Dad’s family lived on a farm outside Mt. Vernon, Texas, with a couple of acres to grow food and an additional acreage of cotton to plant, tend, and pick. My Dad was picking cotton by the time he was 8 and working a mule and plow by 11. At the age of 6, his mother died, they believe from blood poisoning, possibly tetanus, as did her infant child, about a month later, of causes unknown.

My grandfather’s mother, who widowed young and raised six children on her own, came to live with the devastated family and care for the children. About a year later, my grandfather, Jesse, found a wife and mother, Oma,  for the four children.  Oma was 18 and half his age. They met through a friend at church, and Oma was known to possess all of the necessary skills but it turned out badly. Jesse had to run Oma’s relations off from the house once, due to their drinking in the front yard. Jesse’s children had never seen anyone drink alcohol. Oma had terrible mental issues and suffered frequent breakdowns. Her rages could last for several days as she threatened to kill everyone. On more than one occasion the children locked themselves in a bedroom while her husband, Jesse, tried to calm her. When the episodes passed, nothing more was said of them and things returned to as normal a state as possible. The youngest child, Eddie Mae, was sent to live with an aunt, as relatives began to worry for the children’s safety. Somehow the family survived.

By the time he was 14 1/2, my Dad looked like a nearly full grown man. “Tiny” was over six feet tall and had the body of a young man who had dutifully, if not enthusiastically, done a lot of daily farm work.  As Hazel tells it in her memoir:

“I remember once, my aunt and uncle and their children were helping us chop cotton.  My brother J.E. was standing and leaning on his hoe.  My uncle said, “J.E., you will never get rich that way.”  J.E. was about ten or eleven years old, but already he was dreaming.  He answered, “The only way I’ll ever get rich in a cotton field is to dig up a pot of money; so why work so hard?”  J.E. was always dreaming of money and made many of those dreams come true, and, as he always told us, “not in a cotton field!”

In those days between the two great wars, in the years when Mao and Hitler were rising to power, the United States Army enlisted farm boys to work with mule teams.  One day, on a trip to town in early 1934, J.E. went to the post office and saw a notice that said the United States Army Cavalry was enlisting “able bodied” men, especially those with experience with work animals, at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, minimum age, 17. My Dad’s sister, Hazel, against her father’s wishes, had run off and gotten married at 15 and had a baby, “one year and 9 days later”, as she carefully points out.  So when my Dad was 14 and headstrong about trying to join the Army, his Dad decided to let him. The family myth was that they were so poor and needed the money that my Dad sent home every month. There may have been some truth in that, but Jesse had, by then, moved the family in close to Sulphur Springs, Texas where he worked a regular job at the Dairy and farmed on the side. Jesse always worked hard to provide for his family, rendering dead animals and repairing water wells. The Depression was hard on everyone but they got by better than when they worked as share croppers.  The reality may have been that Jesse knew his son was dreaming of things well beyond life on the farm and the Army might help him grow up a little.  Still, there was the matter of J.E. not being old enough to join.

Somehow, my Dad convinced his Dad to write a letter stating that his son, J.E., had been born on a farm, was 17 years old, but didn’t have a birth certificate. My Dad took this letter, some dry food, a little money, a few clothes, and started walking north from Sulphur Springs. He hitched rides on wagons and in cars when he could. The first day, he made it to Paris, Texas, where he had relatives. He lingered a day in Paris, visiting and enjoying the hospitality, and was thrilled to find a ride in a car to Hugo, Oklahoma, leaving Texas for the first time in his life.  The driver joked and said maybe Bonnie and Clyde would pick him up. Bonnie and Clyde had been spotted many times in Northeast Texas. They were killed just a few months later, 200 miles to the east in Louisiana.

At that point in his life J.E. had been in a car less than a dozen times and the thrill of cruising over the Red River into another state was not lost on him. Before noon he was walking and hitchhiking west toward Durant. The third night out, somewhere in the hills between Durant and Ardmore there was a heavy dew . The temperature dropped and a cold frost coated the ground. Cold and tired, he sought refuge in a barn. Inside, the barn was almost pitch dark. He stumbled and felt his way to a stack of hay and began to burrow into the warmth when suddenly there was a terrified scream. My dad screamed back. A fellow traveler bolted upright from the haystack, ready to fend off any attack. In the dark, they spoke to each other and realized they were both in the same circumstance.  My Dad apologized for startling the stranger so and offered to move on. However, the stranger told my Dad not to worry, there was room in the hay for two, and to make himself comfortable.  After walking 20 miles that day and night, Dad slept a deep, long, warm sleep. When he woke, the traveler was already gone.

When he got to Ardmore in the early afternoon, he knew that there were few towns and little on the road between there and Lawton, the city bordering Ft. Sill. The excitement of the trip waned into the sense that he was about 170 miles from home and the gravity of his decision to join the army began to weigh on him. On the edge of Ardmore, he waited, hoping to hitch a ride. Around 3 p.m., a man driving a truck pulled over and Dad asked how far he was going. “Lawton, Oklahoma” was the reply.

The next day, after sleeping at a small rooming house in Lawton, my Dad appeared for induction into the United States Army, almost four months shy of his 15^th birthday. The training was rigorous but he was accustomed to hard work and saying,” yes, sir” and “no, sir”, and he quickly became known as a guy who handled the mules and horses with ease.  He liked the money he could save and send home. The food wasn’t bad and he enjoyed meeting people from different places and making friends.

Two years later, he had saved a little money. He had routinely sent money home to his family and Jesse shared it with a number of relatives who might have needed some help from time to time, which caused my dad, the guy who didn’t pay child support, to be revered in his family as the guy who helped everyone during the Depression. After two years, he had received a real world education and he had learned to drive. He had also learned was there was a guy named Hitler and eventually the Army would probably have to fight that guy over in Germany.  When the papers were delivered for my Dad to re-enlist, he hesitated. He had been corresponding by mail with a cousin and there were opportunities, even during the Depression, in East Texas, mostly created by the Oil Boom.  A couple of days later, Dad told his Sargeant, he would not be re-enlisting. The Sargeant was stunned and tried to counsel him on the benefits of service. My Dad was unmoved and, after a couple of stops along the chain of command, he found himself waiting to see the Colonel.

The Colonel was firm and direct. He knew my Dad was a good soldier and could make a good officer. There was still a Depression on out there and that was something Dad should consider. Then my Dad, a two year veteran of the United States Army, 16 ½ years old, said: “Begging the Colonel’s pardon, Sir, but I’m not old enough to be in the Army.” That was pretty much the end of it. They let my Dad leave without trying to correct the record.  Dad returned to East Texas but not the cotton fields. As best we can tell he did lots of odd jobs, drove a taxi, bought and sold cars, worked in cafes and nightclubs.  Somewhere in there he got married, for the first of six times, had a baby daughter and reentered the Army due to the war. It is unclear to me what the order of events were there

Eventually, he served almost four years in the Philippines and New Guinea. Early in his time there, he met a Filipino boy named Felix. They taught Felix english and he acted as a guide for them. His village also hosted soldiers for wild pig roasts and for awhile they ate food like they had never eaten before. Dad became a Master Sargeant and led convoys of trucks filled with munitions. He admired the brave men he served with and he recalled one who had “jungle rot” on his hands so badly he had to drive and shift the track with only his wrists but never complained.  My father was awarded the Bronze Star for keeping the convoys moving while under heavy shelling, and sniper fire.  Trucks were hit, exploded and  men under his command were killed. There were few real details considering the years he spent there. As most of my friends would agree, the real war stories die with the witness and my Dad held the tradition.

I don’t really know much about my Dad’s youth except the stories that he told us and the stories my Aunt Hazel wrote in her memoir. I am missing the connection to most of his life up until 1965 or so, and that keeps him from being a real person instead of a character with interesting stories. After 1965, I definitely got to know him better but there are still so many holes. Maybe I didn’t ask enough questions. Maybe I missed the content that would bridge his stories to mine and my brother’s. The pain that he created did drive a wedge that we were never quite able to overcome but we worked at it.  I am grateful that there are people in his family who thought of him as sort of semi-saint, a great guy with a big heart. I think it was my brother who said, “It’s good to know he was nice to someone.” That was their story with him. I see it in his sister’s memoir and I have heard it in some of my relative’s memories.  I know the real truth of my story and while it’s different from theirs, it doesn’t make either story less true.