Monolith

The Dictionary

    

        

The Dictionary

In Tularosa school, first or second
grade. I was in the bathroom and
got called to the principal’s office
where I was worried I would
be punished for some infraction.
Instead, the principal presented
me with a dictionary. He had seen
me carrying an old battered one
around the school—my early love
of knowledge and words—and gave
me the signed dictionary. It became
a prized possession. Later, my parents
purchased us a set of Encyclopedia Britannica
which must have set them back a fortune
and which I enjoyed reading “for fun” in my
                      thirst for knowledge. 

Graveyard Chicken

    Graveyard Chicken

In Lemitar, New Mexico we boys played one
game to test one another’s bravery
in the dilapidated graveyard next
door to the school with its chipped,
hard to decipher tombstones and
leaning, wooden crosses.
A boy had to stick his arm down
into one of the gopher holes
inundating the graveyard’s mesquite
and tumble weed-adorned surface
because he had been “dared”
and of course one had to respond
to being dared or one faced the horrible
nomenclature of: chicken.

We played that game along with
marbles, jacks and horses—where
the girls were horses and the boys
were cowboys and had to capture
them—at the risk of being kicked in the chins.
We stuck our arms down into those graveyard
Holes until a boy, I can’t remember who
Said that something inside the hole:
gopher, ghost, a child’s wild imagination?
touched his hand. This led us to search
for other games that did not delve as deeply
into the mortal fears of a grade school child.

Thoughts on becoming a Father

I became a father during one of the coldest winters on record in the Permian Basin. I was working for Dowell as a Service Supervisor and we were cementing several wells between Midland and Andrews. They were deep wells and so the cement jobs were in stages. Barbara had had a tough pregnancy suffering from toxemia, I believe it's called without looking it up again. You think one would remember that but I've never been good with the names of diseases or the medications that fight them.

Around Thanksgiving, Barbara was hospitalized and unbeknownst to us the hospital was doing the worst thing they could for her: giving her a saline drip when it turns out she had too much salt in her system as it was. She was fighting to keep from having our son way early. She held out, but then later, the last few days of that year of 1983 the doctor said that would have to induce or possibly lose Barbara and the baby.

So, it was back in the hospital. This time in Midland/Odessa instead of Monahans. Cold. So cold. Barbara's parents were both there and my sister and mother. My mom was on crutches. She was always having trouble with her knees and I believe that was before she had them both replaced.

There was another young woman in the emergency pediatrics at the same time as Barbara and she had her twins too early and they did not survive. But I remember hearing them crying.

I did not stay in delivery with Barbara. It wasn't as common in those days. Barbara's mom did. Then, she was a registered nurse and there wasn't much she hadn't seen.

We were on a different floor waiting around like you always see in the movies and when word came that labor was over and I was a father, I raced down to the room where they have the babies to see my son. Jim, Barbara's father, in the confusion, thought that I was making a run for it from the hospital and that became a family joke.

The oilfield waited for no man, so as soon as I knew all was stabilized, I had to return to the cement job. There were several wells we were servicing and I would supervise running the first stage of the cement job and then run visit my new family at the hospital. Then back to the rig, drop the plug, and perform the second stage of the cement job.

Our son couldn't wait to see the world, but Barbara held in there so that he was only six weeks early. He was so tiny. Looking back now, I don't know how we thought we could be responsible for something so little and helpless. Two kids in their early 20's without enough sense to worry too much.

Microwaves were fairly new. They were huge also. We bought a refurbished one (they were expensive also) to heat formula in. And heavy. It was all I could do to carry it into the house by myself.

Cabbage Patch kids were the craze that holiday, so it was almost impossible for us to find preemie diapers for our real kid.

And there was more excitement to follow. Changing his diaper one day, I noticed something unusual. Didn't want to acknowledge it, but something was wrong. Back to the doctor: double hernias. Our tiny preemie would have to endure his first surgery that winter: double hernia repair.

So....that's what I remember about first becoming a father. I always thought that being a parent made one a better teacher. I saw it when several teachers I knew had their own children, because being a parent wises one up.... or should. It changes you, when a person becomes a parent one realizes that you are not IN CONTROL of life. Parenting humbles or should humble one. It introduces you to someone who, for a few years, you are totally responsible for. After that, well, my grandfather said one never gets rid of that responsibility. It's a lifetime commitment. That's what being a father is. A lifetime commitment.... but worth the price.  

Voyages

Voyages

Doubtless, a hundred years have passed since this ship sailed the seas off the coast of India. Its voyages, probably few ever recorded, ethereal now. Like that old saying that one cannot step into the same river twice, its wakes have long dissipated into the myriad past waves. This ship merely a ghost which left its image on this ancient traveler's film several generations ago. Who knows if it disappeared in a tropical storm, rotted away in a dock somewhere when it decayed to the point that it could no longer perform its function, or was dry docked and its timbers and canvas distributed to other uses. Its captain and crew existing only as faint memories in the minds of kith and kin. To us, mere imaginings we might weave gazing upon this old photograph. None on the ship probably even knew they were captured in that moment, on that day, at that particular place in the ever changing sea.

We all take our voyage on the blue marble. Some have trips where they make more of an impression on Time's passage than this ship and crew. Others, may leave even less of a trace.

Shhhhh.... I might have an idea....

My toughest critic (Barbara) is doing a final read on Fort Davis. A different style than my previously released novel A Second Dawn. Just a rip roaring western with lots of action: blood and guts. So far, she likes the way it gets underway in the first scene. Indian attack with the Buffalo Soldiers responding.

I want to perform some PR and sales promotion for the literary novel A Second Dawn. And then, there's the anticipated work on the next  novel, mentioned above, and a book of short stories on the oil patch and the southwest.

This blog continues to amass hits, which I find encouraging. Knocking more and more catch up chores out of the way, so pretty soon, there will remain only this fairly unimpeded highway ahead leading to the next "new" project.

Shhhhh..... I might have an idea...

Sharpen the Pencils

Anyone who's ever written knows most have to "sharpen those pencils". I told myself I needed to get after the writing...so.... in conjunction with that I've delved deeply into the above metaphor: organized rooms in the house, fixed things that needed fixin, filled in the appropriate boxes on paperwork that needed sent of for various projects, hauled tree limbs to the dump, put a new battery and two new tires on the Blazer, printed a copy of Fort Davis for Barbara to critique, and a multitude of other chores and ends to projects...

Because, as every writer knows, once those areas of procrastination have served their purpose, it will be time to sit, court the Muse, and make that blinking cursor work across that blank page.

Do you have a Ritual you perform before you get down to: writing (in my case), exercising, working, gardening, running, etc.

Getting organized

Well, Memorial Day is almost over with. Just a few more hours. Spent most of the day cleaning, organizing, puttering around the property. Over the weekend, tried to get the last organization done on my retirement papers, so I can get those signed, notarized and mailed to Santa Fe.

Finished the weekend tonight by trying to get my writing projects updated. Printed a copy of my next planned novel publication: Fort Davis. Had my early readers check it out last summer and fall. Yes, that's how far behind I am and, now, with no excuse of having the distraction of a job, I need to get after it. Took me several hours to get the office reorganized to print a reading copy of the novel for Barbara to read and "give me the go".

A Work In Progress...

I started working at around the age of fifteen cleaning two hotel swimming pools, sweeping their sidewalks, painting dingy rooms back into shape, and clerking. From there, I moved on to college, over a decade in the media and well over a decade in the oil patch. For the sake of expediency, I'll leave out several other brief episodes of yet other digressions in my work experience. Now, as of today, I've finished up the career I've practiced for almost a quarter century: teaching.

Now. Retirement. My last day at school. I was reminiscing with a colleague today about those years in that last career. What I related to her, was that all those years weren't spent in the same area and I felt lucky for that. The first part spent teaching communications at a school that had a lot of at-risk youth. Young people going through puberty and their middle school years not always under the greatest of conditions. From there, moving to the high school level teaching literature to both regular and pre-ap students. Then.... on to working as a reading specialist with students who just needed a little extra guidance to master the difficulties some have with knitting together diction, syntax and overall comprehension of the written word.

And, finally, spending the past six years working with the gifted and talented. I appreciate my educational time being like a buffet: sampling a bit of this and a bit of that. And, it's cliché: learning as much from the students as they learned from me. Learning from other colleagues along the way from my first cooperating teacher who told me, "Never leave your drink unattended." Yet, somewhere back there a cliché was a novel truth. That's how they get started before we warn fledgling writers not to use them because they are old and dusty. And, as I stated to a neophyte teacher today who has only been at it two years, one learns from their own mistakes, probably learns the most, in fact, from those.

So, now it's retirement. Probably lots to learn there also, because as I began this reminisce, diatribe, introspection..... I am just a work in progress. Like all the rest of you.

A Cup of Espresso and a Good Book

Old friends I've come to trust:

a cup of espresso and a good book.

In the last few weeks as friends
and colleagues discovered my retirement
plans, they would inquire as to what I would
do. Will you travel? What will hold
your interest? Occupy your time?

A cup of espresso and a good book

and maybe occasionally,

that book will be mine.