Willow Trees and Whip-Poor-Wills

   Some of my earliest coherent memories are of my grandparent's farm in southeast Missouri. It was located a few miles outside the small town of Willow Springs. I lived there for a couple of years in the mid-1960s while my father deployed to Vietnam.  After he returned, which I was too young to remember, we moved to Fort Ord, California, and later to Seattle. We relocated again, after Dad retired out of the Army, to North Carolina.  Throughout the 1970s, we made an annual summer drive to the farm in Missouri. Usually we spent a week there before returning to Asheville. 

My grandparents were not wealthy people.  Herbert Miller purchased the property sometime in the 1920s and remained on it until his death in 1975. The land was mostly hard rock hills and ridges, suitable only for grazing, though at one time he did have a few grape vines. A small two-story farmhouse, a barn, shed, and a couple of what I know were small ponds made up the center of the farm.  

There was no running water.  A hand dug cistern was a few feet outside the screened-in porch. A concrete shell covered with a wood frame was above the ground. Looking down inside the sides were lined with field rock and descended into murky water. This was not a well, but a cistern.  Rainwater was collected from the metal roof of the farmhouse and directed into the pit. The water was cool and apparently good to drink as we all survived.

Something that is almost completely foreign to Americans today: as there was no running water, there were no bathrooms in the house. Down the hill, about a hundred feet away was an outhouse, complete with a Sears catalog that came in the mail. Perhaps I misremember that part.  It was a nasty smelling place, especially in the summer. Bathing was accomplished in a large, galvanized tub. That tub was moved from room to room as needed. Water was heated on the stove and then poured in the tub. You soaped up, scrubbed, rinsed, and got out. 

I don't remember much about the barn, except the loft being full of hay and my allergies being awful.  There was a long low shed that I remember my grandfather taking me to early one morning.  He had one milk cow and did the milking by hand. I'm not sure why, by the 1970s surely it would have been easier and cheaper to buy milk in town. 

The house itself had a screened in porch, kitchen, living room, and three bedrooms on the first floor.  There was no foundation beyond piled up field rock. Also there was no insulation. I think my grandmother had a gas stove.  Sometime in the 1950s electricity was provided to the county through a co-op started twenty years prior. 

Besides the pond, the most memorable to me I think was the front yard. We could be out there without adult supervision.  I was allowed to go as far as the pond, but not into the forest itself without an adult.  There was small willow tree, just perfect for climbing, which grew along with me. It was past the cistern and opposite the path to the front gate. At our home in the city, I would sometimes sleep on the front porch. However, the sounds were completely different. On the farm, I would lay on a cot on the front porch and try to fall asleep. It isn’t always quiet in the country. Most summers on the porch were a cacophony of cicadas, whip-poor-wills, with the occasional screech owl in the mix. Eventually, though, I’d drift off. 

These visits were not idyllic. Ada hated my father, and perhaps to a lesser extent my mother.  Her for getting off the farm and away from the small town and him for marrying her. Things would be fine for a few days and then her hatred would simply come out. Much later, I figured she was mentally ill, but it is possible to be both mentally ill and mean at the same time.

Our last two trips to Willow Springs were the in the late 1970s about a year apart. First to see my grandfather, who was dying of cancer. He’d smoked a pipe all his life and cancer had settled in his throat. The doctors had sent him home essentially to die. This was before the advent of hospice. He was in the back bedroom.  

At one point he called me back there with my parents and placed his old .22 rifle in my hands.  Even at the time it was old, and I still have it. Apparently, this caused even more of a rift within my mother’s family.  However, grandfather insisted and gave it to me. He died a few days later.  

Six months or so later we were back again for my grandmother’s funeral. She also died of cancer, though I don’t remember much about it. Shortly after Herbert Miller’s death, my grandmother sold the farm to Ada for about a hundred dollars.  Just enough to make it legal. However, Mom forced a sale of the remaining estate assets. The rift was final within the family. When we left, I did not set foot on the place for forty years.

Some time in 2009, I drove my mother back to Willow Springs for her 50th high school reunion. She had called ahead and planned to see her sister. We met 

her at a diner in town and then followed Ada out to the farm. I remembered the gravel lane out from the county road well enough, including the sharp turn. Driving along after that turn there is a slight rise and the old farmhouse came into view. It had fallen into severe disrepair.  The second story was leaning dangerously over and looked as if a good wind might cause the entire thing to topple. We found that Ada had sold the farm to a timber company, retaining a life estate.  With the proceeds she built a small home behind the farmhouse, this time with running water.  I did not go in but was told that it was full of trash. Certainly, I did not go into the old house, it did not look safe at all. 

The visit was sad.  Ada never left the farm and never married. She worked in a local factory most of her life and went to town on weekends for church and laundry. She reminded me of a Ms. Havisham, only without the wedding dress, choosing a life disconnected from others. We left after a couple hours, and I drove Mom home. Several years later I returned to Willow Springs with my mother for one more funeral. We picked up a couple boxes of things from Ada’s room at the nursing home. At some point the county administrator had established guardianship over her. There was no estate as the cost of care consumed whatever funds remained from the sale of the farm. 

Time has a way of coloring our memory. As we age some moments are forgotten and others conflated with those which do not belong. Childhood and youth become over-idealized in the face of much evidence to the contrary. I deliberately try not to do this and have little time for sentimentality. However, when I think back on the old farm, I generally don’t think of the strife. I don’t think of the hard labor my grandparents went through scraping out a subsistence living on that hard ground. Hauling up water from the cistern and walking to an outhouse in the middle of the winter do not come to mind. That farm is long gone, as are the people who lived and worked the land there. The people have died and the farm sold off, such is the transient nature of Man.  But within my memory are the warm summers I spent along the creek behind the barn, fishing in the pond, and climbing in the willow tree. And always present is the never-ending song of the whip-poor-will.

Two Funerals

 Last month I received a call from my cousin Judy in North Carolina. Her mother (my first cousin), Juanita Loretta (Harris) Dills had died at the care center that evening. The day prior she had become unresponsive and never regained consciousness. 

Juanita Loretta Dills was the daughter of Charles E. Harris and Helen Smith Harris.  Her life spanned August 15, 1938 to May 13, 2023.  Juanita was raised by my father’s family after Uncle Charles went to prison for murder. This was around 1940. She told me once that she did not care for that time in Madison County and had many bad memories from there. Helen Smith apparently ran off after she was born and staying in Marshall, having nothing to do with her.  My cousin Angie told me that Grandma Cary would take Juanita along to town, whenever they needed to get supplies.  Juanita would see her mother at the drug store and have ice cream or a soda and visit. That was the extend of her relationship with her mother.  

Juanita met Bob Dills and they were married May 20, 1960. As a young child I remember going to their small brick home on Davis Branch as early as 1971. There was a small creek running down the mountain only a few feet from the house. I’d fall asleep and wake to it when staying there. I remember the large family Bible under the coffee table in the living room and the smell of cornbread and biscuits baking. When company came, they were expected to eat two meals before traveling on. We moved away, first to Asheville, then to Cole Camp, Missouri.  Visits became fewer and then only funerals warranted the trip from the Ozarks to Appalachia. 

Over they years they had four children: Bob Jr., Judy, Angie, and Tammy. Bob Junior died in 1991 from lung cancer, leaving a young wife and two children. He wasn’t quite 30 years old. I traveled back for his funeral. When there I stuck close to Angie, she rode with me to the funeral. Judy married young and remained in the area. Angie moved to Washington state. Tammy also remained close to Bryson City.  Bob died a seven or eight years ago. A few years later Juanita moved to a care center as she was falling, nearly blind, and no longer able to care for herself. 

Services were held at the Mount Vernon Baptist Church.  I’d always known it as “the church in Alarka.” I’d been there four times before. First for Bobby Jr.’s wedding.  Then Judy and Rick’s wedding.  Then Uncle Charles’ funeral and later for Bobby Jr.’s. It hasn’t changed in decades, except the parking lot is now paved. 

My cousin Angie flew back from Washington State for the service.  I met her at her parent’s place by the creek, though the original home burned years ago, a new one was placed in the same spot.  There are quite a few more homes along Davis Branch than I recall. It used to be all pasture.  Angie rode with me to the funeral, much as we did 32 years ago. Only this time in my truck and without her young daughters, who are now grown women with families of their own. She seemed to take it harder than her sisters. Of course, they have been here while Angie made a life in the Northwest. We talked, and she said that she and David would remain in Washington when the time came as that is now home.  I well understand that.  The mountains of North Carolina, while familiar and comfortable to me are no longer home, as Cole Camp supplanted them some time ago. Even my father, intensely proud of his southern Appalachian roots admitted that to me many years ago. 

The funeral was a simple, Primitive Baptist service.  The preacher looked familiar, and as he talked, I realized I probably knew him briefly as a child. The sermon was short, mostly personal memories, with very few scriptures and no altar call. Music was provided The funeral procession wound it’s way across the mountain roads, back to Davis Branch to the cemetery only a few hundred yards from Juanita’s home. She was buried on the side of the mountain, next to her husband, son, and father.

Last week, I got another message, from my cousin Michael on my mother’s side.  He told me his brother Adam’s son, William, while working his summer job in the recycling center, was crushed between a tractor and trailer.  Emergency services were called, but there was nothing to be done. He was sixteen. The family is devastated.

I don’t really remember William. About ten years ago, we all got together at Mom’s place and had a cookout.  He would have been one of any number of children running about. This service, wasn’t a service, so much as a gathering of family and friends. The family is not religious, as far as I can tell. I had no words of comfort for my cousin. Cremation will follow at some point in the future.

Time is fleeting. Cliched, perhaps, but true. Also true is that life is short, whether 84 or 16 years. The brief mortal span marking life is defining of humanity. I personally believe life is a gift of the Creator. Our immortal intelligences, souls if you will, wedded to a mortal body.  One expires, the other does not. I resolve to do better with the time I have. Will you?

Juanita Loretta Dills

William Michael Hampton

A Bridge Too Far and Waking Ned Devine

I said it before: It’s a hard thing to watch a parent in decline. It doesn’t get easier and there is no respite. At times I feel I’m living on the ragged edge.

It isn’t just physical frailty, though that has continued. We completely stopped the walks, whether around the block or on the walking paths over a year ago. There were too many times she couldn’t make it back to the car. Falls are becoming increasingly common. There is a walker, which she didn’t want to use, but now doesn’t go anywhere without. Her bed was removed and replaced with a hospital bed. There is a bedside commode due to the risk of fall should she go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Decline is more than that. It is a decremental loss of the person you knew. In this case dementia is a part of that. It is insidious, slowly robbing the afflicted of the most basic of memories. Mom has said several times when she thinks of home she pictures the farm where she grew up.  She has no memory of the place in Cole Camp and thought that it had been sold (It hasn’t and is not for sale.).  No real memory of living in North Carolina. Recently the pastor from Cole Camp called and spoke with her.  Mom didn’t really talk, I don’t think she knew who it was.  The Ladies Aide (or whatever it is called) from the church sent her a care package and all signed the card.  Mom looked at it and said she had no idea who they were.  She recognized some of the names, but couldn’t put a face to them.

Last summer Mom was on the deck enjoying the sunshine.  She had a puzzled look about her so I asked what was troubling her.  “My daughters are Stella and Hester…right?” I waited a few moments before replying to see if she would correct herself.  “And Leslie,” I replied.  She looked a bit confused and then nodded. I don’t know if she remembered or merely took my word for it.

In February, Mom was hospitalized for a few days due to a severe infection and medication reaction.  It was an ordeal.  She was discharged into routine hospice care.  This is apparently for the elderly when death is not imminent. Since then family has visited her more often. Increased visits revealed more memory problems. She has difficulty remembering who her grandchildren are when they are here. The older granddaughters seem to take it in stride. However, the much younger grandson (13) seemed hurt when she asked “who are you?” She has always confused granddaughters with daughters and that has continued.

Routine seems to be the best thing for her.  She has almost completely stopped eating solid food, in favor of relying on Boost shakes.  Which is fine, as long as she is taking in calories, and they are full of those. She can only do the simplest of daily care activities (get dressed, toilet, brushing teeth). Hospice came with nurse aides which assist with bathing.  I shudder to think of Mom trying to use the shower on her own. Certainly that would end with an ambulance ride and a relocation to a nursing home.

Days are spend re-reading the same books over and over: Sharpe’s Rifles series, Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse, Tolkien.  Wash, rinse, and repeat.  These books are all very familiar to her, I wonder if she is actually reading skipping about the pages? I know she’s been on page 100 for a time and then on page 20. In the morning she carries a half dozen books to the living room. At night she carries the same half dozen back, and perhaps more.  She says she’s reading them, but that doesn’t happen. In the evening she’ll decide she’s going to her room and when she does, she puts on a movie.  Invariably she’ll go through her DVDs almost one at a time.  “Oh, that’s a good one!” She says pointing to Patton. “That one’s good too!” (A Bridge Too Far). She goes through them all. Her favorite is Waking Ned Devine. More often that not, she’ll choose one of these films or a DVD of  Jeeves and Wooster or Rumpole and settle in for the night. She has literally watched these dozens of times, particularly A Bridge Too Far and Waking Ned Devine.

I don’t know when she sleeps. She complains of tiredness during the day, but we can hear the television at night. I’ve particularly come to detest the British comedy “Are You Being Served?” Absolutely hate it. More often than not, this is what is playing when me and my wife rise in the morning.  The DVD will be on the title screen on repeat. Yes, Mom is sleeping, but I don’t see how she can possibly be resting.

She has become far more emotionally labile than in the past. I don’t know whether sadness or despair, but suddenly bursting into tears in the evening happens more and more frequently.  Especially since we brought her home from the hospital. I’ll tell her we’re just trying to take care of her and not to worry about things and it happens. I mask my own feeling so as to not burden her further. Or she’ll look at a picture of her deceased grandson and cry.

Mom’s world continues to shrink. Where she used to go down on the patio in the summer, she changed to staying on the deck. She’s afraid of the stairs.  Last summer, the boundary shrank further and she only went on the deck two or three times. It was either too hot or too cold. Though not exactly homebound, she makes no effort and expresses no desire to leave.  When asked if she’d like to go out, she’s pretty adamant about staying home. 

My wife and I are constantly exhausted. It isn’t physically hard, but it is emotionally draining. Nothing can be done about this, it just has to be borne. We do what we can for the people in our lives. It’s called family.

January 2023

 January so far has gone much as expected.  Interest rates rise, inflation appears out of control (if it really is inflation?), the incompetence of Branden is exposed on a daily basis.  The cackling hen of Branden Junior continues to embarrass. Federal agencies made of unelected member of the civil service publish regulations at will, making millions of citizens unconvicted felons overnight.  Somehow this is done with no repercussions at all. The incredible debt of the country is beyond control.  Thirty trillion dollars.  Mathematically impossible to do anything about. The Left continues to be divisive along racial and economic lines. Branden as completely left the border open for two years. Something like three million illegal aliens cross a year. It seems all nations in the world have sovereignty, except the US. Why? All proposals lead to restricted liberty for all and demonization of those of us who prefer to be left the hell alone.

I truly fear a crisis is on the horizon. There is no reconciliation with the Left. When the ideas you propose are antithetical to individual liberty, where is there room for compromise?  

There were very few good things to come out of the pandemic years with their unconstitutional lockdowns and restrictions.  The greatest of these was that the Left tipped their hand.  Statists in power shut down schools and businesses. People were left in destitution. Statists determined what was “essential” and what was not.  Here’s a Blinding Flash of the Obvious:  all businesses are essential for those who depend upon them. How can anyone not see this and not have a sociopathic desire for power over others. 

There was something else I’d mention. Sending people to work from home served as a proof of principle for many. The company I work for sent us home on 23 March 2020 and we were there for a year with few exceptions.  My wife’s company sent them home on the same day, and that continues now with only one day a week in the office. I could see this upending the real estate market. Sure, with DSL and internet from your local cable provider this has been available to an extent since the dot com bubble burst. However, assuming there was an employer willing to do this, the employee was limited to availability of network access. Enter Elon Musk and Starlink, you have multi-megabit upload and download speeds over a much greater geographic area.  A young couple demonstrated this on the Isle of Skye:  Does STARLINK work in a Remote UK Location?

There is no reason for many jobs to not be dispersed. For all their claim to being the party of progress and science, the Left will despise this, just as they’ve despised citizen journalists since Matt Drudge broke a story about a blue dress. To be controlled, people must first be concentrated. It is my belief that Elon Musk and Starlink has demonstrated the possibility of breaking this forever. 

Something is rotten in Denmark

 Today is Saturday, the 19th of November.  The general election was the 8th.  Yesterday I read somewhere that “the Republicans had gained control of the House.”  Apparently there were several races around the country that were still being tallied. Among these was the race in Colorado for Representative Boebert’s seat. Surprisingly there is no court filing from the challenger.

A Red Wave was predicted, and I think one occurred. Look at Florida. The state of Florida restricts vote by mail to ten days prior to the election.  Drop boxes are also restricted. Third party organizations are restricted from registering voters. There are no same-day voter registrations.  Everything that was placed in effect in so many states during the campaign of 2020, is restricted in Florida. 

Florida made strides toward securing the election.  Florida had a red wave. Other states did not make any effort toward securing elections. Other states did not have the wave. 

All the poling prior to the midterm indicated that Republicans were going to have a landslide in the House and were favored to take the Senate.  They did not take the Senate and have one of the slimmest majorities in the House in the history of the country.  

How is this possible? Voting machines are used in every district in the country. Outside of a few remote villages in Alaska, why aren’t these results known within a tiny fraction of a percent in just a few hours? Reporters exhilarated over the continued counting, “the (Democrat) continues to close the gap…” This, after days of counting and no mathematical possibility of victory. Even here in Kansas, the race for Attorney General should have been called far earlier than it was, all because the Democrat was moderately close.  I don’t even think it was within a margin of error, though it would have been within a margin of fraud (if it had been a race worth noticing outside of Kansas). 

This nonsense started with the first "motor voter" laws.  Simply enough, you could register to vote when you got your driver's license renewed.  The problem is that not all who have driver's licenses are eligible to vote.  States issue those to both legal and illegal aliens. Anyway, this passed as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and things have pretty much gone downhill since.  The left fights any attempt to secure the elections, including purging voter rolls. And don't mention requiring identification. Here are a few things identification is required to do: open a bank account, apply for a credit card, cash a check, drive a car, get on a plane, get a passport, buy cigarettes, buy alcohol, buy a gun, get on a military post, apply for benefits, write a check in a store, use a credit card in a store (at least when the cashier cares enough to ask). But somehow, requiring one in order to vote brings accusations of racism and Jim Crow. 

The only rational reason to NOT tighten up the security of the vote is to make cheating (aka FRAUD) easier.

This is exactly why so many in the country no longer trust the elections. 

Uncertainty

 Seasons are turning...

It is mid October and autumn has arrived in full force her in Leavenworth along the  river. The last couple of weeks have witnessed the changing of the leaves, two hard freezes in the last two mornings, and the changing of the light.  There is a discrete change in sunlight this time of year.  Light appears dimmer and there is a different hue in the blue of the sky, foreshadowing the winter to come. I’ve always enjoyed the changing of the seasons and this one is no different. 

Other seasons change as well.  I don’t recall when I first looked in the mirror and saw my father looking back at me. But it does seem I resemble him a bit more every day, in appearance, if not personality. 

My father was a hard man. Born into poverty in the souther Appalachians of North Carolina at the very start of the depression, was the youngest in the family. Life was hard. Grandfather was a stone mason which supplemented the subsistence farming of corn and tobacco along the French Broad.  At fourteen, my father as he put it “had his growth in” and ran away to join the US Army. It was 1944. He was in for a while, until they caught up to him and sent him home.  A few years later he joined again and then stayed for a career.  Hard times make hard men.

However, it was the hard men of that generation that won the war and made for the good times after. The next couple generations did well and could always expect to do better than their parents. Today, I don’t know if that is still true. The communist hippies of the sixties ended up being the elder leaders of the country today. In fact the Democrats of today are little more than communists themselves.  Their party promotes economic envy and racial division, and worship of an all powerful State. Not to mention their unfathomable, absolute disconnection from reality about gender.  

Yesterday I listened to a clip of LGB on the radio. I have no idea what he might have been talking about. I’m not certain he knew. What words he spoke were slurred and not connected in any coherent fashion. He seriously sounded like some of the clients I worked with thirty years ago who were afflicted with serious mental illnesses. There are so many examples of this available on the internet I will not go into them here.  The point is, this is supposed to be the Leader of the Free World, as the position was called in the Cold War. How did this...idiot...end up in charge of the military and executive branch? Someday, I hope to read an insider’s account and see just how far gone he is.

The point is, with this guy nominally in charge, we are not better off as a nation. Inflation is running at 8% or so. Their answer: spend more.  An invasion of illegal aliens across the border. Their answer: “the border is secure” (and spend more). Fighting a proxy war with Russia whose leader now threatens the use of nuclear weapons? Well, I haven’t heard an answer for that.  But spend more, and send weapons. 

The world is more dangerous and the country less safe. I want to think that my countrymen are up to the times ahead. But I am not convinced.

Hard times are coming again. 

Prepare.

Another Early Morning

October 12

It seems to have been particularly difficult coming off this last work cycle.  Even with a four day weekend attached to the end of it.  It is almost 3:30 a.m. I managed to slip out of bed without waking Household-6.  As I write this a mild thunderstorm is rolling through the Leavenworth area, a window open to better listen to it. 

There is a stillness in these early mornings which I enjoy, but many do not understand.  In a way, it is even more still as the cable modem is indicating an outage.  Too often this would be prompting me to try and troubleshoot the problems (well I did unplug it, wait, and plug it back in), but not this morning.  It is better to avoid the cacophony of the Facebook and the outrage of the polemics, at least for the moment. 

Recently I heard a new term: Doomscrolling. As I understand it, the reader scrolls through articles written by thousands of Chicken Littles, and finds it difficult to stop. Perhaps Chicken Little is a bit unfair, but these are both on the political Right and Left. The reader ends up going down the rabbit hole soaking up more and more Doom! 

 I think it may be especially for users of social media accounts who go on to create their own echo chambers, never allowing themselves to hear an opposing thought.  Many who do hear one, immediately scream racism, intolerance, hate, (and don’t forget the phobias!), and go on to block those who have offended. How do you learn to think that way?