Posts Tagged ‘life’

He Was Much the Man

Posted: November 14, 2024 in Life and Memories, My view of the world, Parents
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Recently I started thinking back on some of the many good times I had with my Daddy and I started looking over some notes I had written about different conversations I had with him over the years and the memory of this visit with him came flooding back so I decided to compile the notes of the wonderful conversation we had on this fall day a few years ago.

My Daddy called yesterday (October 7, 2009) and asked that if I were in the area could I come down to the farm and help him with a little problem with the truck. I told him I would be happy to come help and after arriving a short time later he told me about his truck not shifting correctly, and how it didn’t want to go into park. He continued to say about how he had crawled under it and found a shift rod that had slipped out of place and how he had to put it back into the slot in the lever so he could shift it into park. As I listened to him talk I was amazed that at eighty-eight he is still able to get down and crawl under his vehicles.

I crawled under the truck and replaced the rod’s retainer clip from Daddy’s parts stash that would ensure the rod would stay in place and after we fixed it he asked if I could go with him around behind his house to do a couple of things to the tractor, so I hopped into the passenger seat and he drove around to the back. As Daddy and I were sitting in his truck behind the house he suddenly said, “I can feel myself getting older…I’m slower, I ache more, and I don’t feel as good as I used to. Hell, I’m not suppose to I guess for in two and a half months I’ll be eighty-nine.” I just listened and nodded in agreement as he continued. “I have a little something for you if you want it. I’m too old to hold on to all this stuff.” He handed me a bicentennial Eisenhower silver dollar and said, “I don’t how much it’s worth but I want you to have it.” I thanked him as I took it from him while he looked at me and said, “There is something else I want you to have as he held his hand out.” I reached out and Daddy placed a small, recognizable shiny brown leather pouch in my hand. As he continued to talk, I noticed the patina of the leather and the smooth polish on the metal edges of the coin purse that only comes from years of use. As I ran my thumb over the lines in its metal edge, a flood of memories came pouring over me as Daddy continued to talk, memories of Papaw, my paternal grandfather, smiling down at me as he reached into his left front trouser pocket, pulling out the brown leather coin purse as he says, “I have a little something for you here Dick (his nickname for me of unknown origin),” as he reaches in with his right hand to extract a nickel from its recesses to drop into my small palm as he closed the coin purse and placed it back into his pocket. Memories of him reaching into his pocket and counting out change to pay for something at a store, memories of him allowing me hold this wonderful coin purse and to count the change that it held within. Memories of feeling the uneven leather surface when it was almost full of coins. “I don’t know whether you remember my old daddy having this change purse,” Daddy continued, “but this is one I remember him using.” I told him this was the one I also remembered Papaw using, as I thanked him and promised to take care of it, I gratefully slid it into the front left pocket of my trousers, as I remembered Papaw doing, somehow hoping that the act itself might bestow some sort of familial aura around me that might make me worthy of the memories that came with it.

We got out of the truck to grease the tractor, a ritual that I remember sharing with my Daddy multiple times throughout my life. After getting the grease gun out of the shed, we begin the familiar rite at the back of the Massey Ferguson tractor…Daddy holding the body of the grease gun with one hand, as I snugly hold the tip of the hose to the grease fitting to make sure the pressure of the grease going into the joints of the tractor doesn’t pop the hose loose from the fittings as it often tended to do, while he pumped grease out of the gun with the other one. We always greased the joints starting at the back, and then on to the left side as we work our way toward the front where we grease both front axles and then work our way down the right side greasing the pedal joints there. It was a time-honored dance that we performed together from the time I was old enough to snugly hold the hose to the grease fittings. Even as an adult, as I saw my father slowly getting older, I would happily hold the hose to the fitting while he worked the gun knowing if he ever wanted to swap roles he would tell me, but even at eighty-eight years old I was thankful that he was still healthy and strong enough to take the lead with this, as well as most of the farm maintenance. When we finished I offered to put the grease gun up and after I returned the grease gun to the shed and walked back to the tractor, Daddy reached across the gas tank with his cane, asking me to hold it while he parked the tractor. I smiled and complied and as I watched him climb aboard, start and maneuver the tractor into its parking spot, I wondered to myself if I will still be alive at eighty-eight, much less crawling under cars and driving tractors.

After he parked the tractor, I handed him his cane back and as we started walking back to the truck he said, “I’m almost eighty-nine years old and I can’t live forever. When they bury me in the family plot, there is a spot at my Daddy’s feet where they’ll plant me and that is where I want to be, at his feet. He was much the man and I have spent my life trying to be deserving of him.” He paused for a few seconds and then continued;
“There was one time I stole a nickel box of pencil lead and it bothers me to this day. Me and Buddy Cox were at Kuhn’s and…”
“Where was Kuhn’s?” I asked as I interrupted him.
“Kuhn’s store was on Broad St,” he said.
“On the West End?” I asked. “Yes, it was on the West End.” he replied and then continued, “Buddy had this new mechanical pencil where you replaced the lead in it. We went to Kuhn’s and he found a nickel box of pencil leads and we were standing at the counter waiting to pay for it. There were several people in there and we were kids and they just weren’t paying any attention to us or waiting on us. We got tired of waiting and I took the box of lead and gave it to him and said, “Here, I’ll give it to you!” and handed him the leads and then we left. I have felt bad about that ever since, and I don’t think I ever took anything again.”

After visiting for a little bit I left, and as I was driving home I thought of the things he said and I thought of how Daddy stood in awe of Papaw and I smiled to myself because I felt exactly the same way about him. As I continued home, I hoped that some day in the future after my father has been laid to rest at the feet of his father, that he would look down on me with favorably as I attempt to be a son that is proud of.

(My father died peacefully at home in his sleep four years later on November 9, 2013 at the age of ninety-two)

Jim Bussell

I Blame China for this

Posted: May 14, 2020 in Life and Memories, My view of the world
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Alternate title OK, So Maybe I am a Racist (but I’m proud of it!)

I grew up in the 1960s and I remember reading and seeing heaps of things growing up about Nazi Germany and the Gestapo and the tactics they used to control people. The Totalitarian German Government throughout the 30s and 40s completely controlled its subjects and a few of the tactics they employed were things such as controlling the travel of the populace and enforced curfews as well as lock downs and generating programs in which they encouraged people to “snitch” on their neighbors for illegal activities…there was much more they did to control the people unfortunate to be within the realm of their control, but you get the picture and it sounds terribly familiar to what has been going on across America in the last couple of months.

The 1st amendment to the United States Constitution addresses the protection of free speech, but the formerly free media and militant liberals (those guys that espouse tolerance) proves daily that they have no toleration for anyone that doesn’t see things their way and is doing their best to erode that individual liberty by attacking anyone says something they don’t like. For example, today I saw a news story where the liberals and their minions (the media) were absolutely up in arms, accusing a family run business in Texas that has been struggling because of the Corona virus (that started in China, the same country that pressured the WHO to not report the virus in January and subsequently started preventing export of masks and respirators to the West) of racism because they placed a sign on their marquee that said “Don’t buy Chinese, buy American”…so what? The owner has a right to post whatever he wants on HIS sign and he wanted to get the word out that America’s dependence on China hurts all Americans…and I wholeheartedly agree with him. The dependency of America and many of the world’s nations, on cheap Chinese products has severely hurt local community manufacturers and many small, local economies around the nation, as well as the world to the point that many small communities around this nation are starting to look like ghost towns with all their boarded up buildings where local small manufacturers used to employ local citizens. This country has an opportunity to turn that around.

When it comes to the virus, I truly believe that China weaponized this virus to hurt and destabilize western economies, for the purpose of strengthening their own economy and I believe that it has had an opposite effect (to strengthen my argument this was intentional, China has almost no cases of this virus in their larger and most populous cities such as Beijing and Shanghai). They have hurt economies across the globe, but many of the western governments are actively blaming China for this as well and are seeing China’s response such as refusal to allow Westerners access to their areas infected, threatening to withhold medicines and the raw elements required to make effective antibiotic and anti-viral medicines to the west, as we learned that 90% of all medicines and raw elements to make the medicines are now manufactured in China (the last penicillin manufacturer in the US stopped making it in 2002).

We have an opportunity to lessen our dependence on the Communistic and Totalitarian regime that runs China by a huge amount and bring manufacturing back to this Country, subsequently helping those that are struggling in many of the small communities to make ends meet. Lets help America become a manufacturing giant again by weaning ourselves of the communist teat that currently controls us.

America was based upon freedom of speech without fear of government intervention and freedom of religion where folks can worship without fear of reprisal or government repression. It appears those guaranteed rights and freedoms are under severe attack, for today if someone voices their opinion that offends someone somewhere they are immediately excoriated and labeled either a racist or an (xxx)phobe and these labels are swiftly shot across the major media outlets like a raging wildfire, with the intent of destroying the offenders reputation. I have no reputation to damage, and even if I did, I don’t believe I would cowtow to the readily offended. According to those that appear to control the media in this Country now, and because of the current mentality I am a racist for saying “screw China…buy American”…and I am tremendously proud to wear that label!

 

 

Jim 5-14-20

Smokey Robinson and a Girl Named Charlene

Posted: May 8, 2020 in Life and Memories, My view of the world
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For as long as I can recall, I’ve had a compelling infatuation with music of all kinds. I never did have the overwhelming desire to learned to play an instrument, as so many music lovers have had and I can’t seem to carry a tune in a bucket (though I think I sound pretty good in the shower) but I love listening to all forms of it.

When I was 6 years old my grandmother gave me a little Sonic brand transistor radio for my birthday and I thought that was the most wonderful present I had ever seen. I adored that radio and carried it with me whenever, and everywhere I was allowed to. At some point in my young life, I acquired a radio for my room and I would listen to it at night or in the evening or really anytime I was in my room doing something. In the 1960s the FM radio band was really unheard of and the only thing that you had available for listening to music across the airwaves was an AM radio. I discovered early on that the properties of AM radio was that the radio waves would bounce off the ionosphere and come back down at an angle (so they say) so you often could tune in radio stations from far, far away. Generally, in the daytime you could mainly only pick up local stations and many rural and small market stations were limited by the FCC to how much wattage they could use to transmit their signal (I lived in a small town of about 7000 people). Most of the lower wattage stations would only transmit during the day light hours which meant that when the sun began to set and local stations would sign off the air, then their signal would stop overriding the more distant signals and we could tune in to listen to high-wattage stations from hundreds of mile away.

There was a radio station out of Chicago with the call letters WLS that was a huge favorite of mine and was one of the most popular radio stations among teenagers in the nation as they constantly played all the hits that America’s youth loved to hear. I looked forward to the evening hours so I could tune in and listen to my favorite Disc Jockeys. One hugely popular DJ that I recalled looking forward to hearing on WLS as he talked about and played the current hits as well as emerging new songs and artists was John Records Landecker. It was only after 6 or 7 in the evening that I was able to start receiving WLS and night after night I would loyally listen to it either with my transistor radio or in my room until it was time to go to bed, at which time I would tell John Records Landeker good night and grudgingly turn off the radio.

Overall I was a pretty shy kid and in 1968, at the age of 11, I was secretly and madly in love with a beautiful little dark haired girl at church by the name of Charlene. I vowed to myself I would build up enough courage to tell her how I felt, but every time I would see her at church, that courage would just melt away and I would set there silently adoring her. That summer on WLS, one of the new songs that started playing across the airwaves was one by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles called Tears of a Clown. I instantly fell in love with the song and I secretly dedicated it to Charlene as our anthem, as I continued to try and grasp the courage but continued to fail to approach her. One Sunday morning in August I noticed Charlene wasn’t there at church. That same evening at the Sunday night service she still wasn’t sitting in her normal seat in the auditorium, and so I assumed she might be sick. When I didn’t see her again at the following Wednesday evening service, I became concerned and on the way home that night I asked my mother if she knew why Charlene wasn’t at church and my mother replied that they had moved to Livingston. I was stunned, flabbergasted and totally devastated, for even though Livingston was only twenty mile away, to an 11 year old kid, it might as well have been twenty thousand. As I went to my room that late summer evening in 1968, I allowed the fact to sink in that because of my complete shyness and fearfulness I had squandered the opportunity to tell Charlene how I felt about her and now it was too late. As I began to wallow in this depression of my own making, I turned on the radio and proceeded to tune it in to 890 to listen to WLS. As if by design, mine and Charlene’s personal anthem, Tears of a Clown came wafting out of the radio speakers and I sank down to the floor and softly cried. Even to this day, some fifty years later, when I hear Tears of a Clown, I often think back to a simpler time and wonder what happened to that little dark haired girl I was so madly in love with in the summer of 1968.

Jim 5-8-20

Hello Dolly Started It…

Posted: April 17, 2020 in Life and Memories, My view of the world
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As I walked out of the house this morning, to take advantage of the beautiful spring weather, I decided to start weeding my flower garden and as I pulled the little weeds that were beginning to spring up and cleaned away leaves and debris from around the flowers, I began humming whatever tune that happened to pop into my head at the moment. This morning the tune that dropped into the mental music slot in my cranium happened to be Hello Dolly sang by Louis Armstrong and as I happily hummed it as I worked, I started thinking about that song and the musical it came from. Whenever I hum tunes and then begin to think about whatever I’m humming, I often think of the context I remember the tune in. Whenever I think about the tune, Hello Dolly, I instantly think about Carol Channing’s smile. The beautiful Carol Channing starred in the musical in 1964 and it was a huge success for Hollywood at that time and Carol Channing was a much adored and beloved film and stage actress (when I was growing up we called females that performed on stage and screen, actresses…somewhere along the line I suppose someone got offended and the rush by the thought and speech gestapo to correct the “wrong” was swiftly enacted) and they simply became actors.

I recall reading a story a few years back about Carol Channing where it was revealed late in her life that her father was half black and how she had to shamefully conceal that fact because if people had found out that she was any other race or color other than Caucasian then she could not have achieved any level of stardom in Hollywood as an actress. Sure, she may have been able to find work, but she would have been limited to roles that were specific to non-white actors…and that is a shame. My thought progression continued and I started thinking about my country’s history of racism and how for too long that people were snubbed, castigated and looked down upon as second class citizens because of their skin color. I then began thinking specifically about this, relating to Hollywood, and how not only were people judged and graded by their skin color, but also because of their sex (more thought progression).

This made me begin to think about the Me-Too movement that suddenly popped onto the scene and began to get coverage all over the media a few years ago…and I guess that this movement, at its core, is a good thing because nobody should have to be judged on the casting couch or to be forced to have sex just to try to get a start or to get noticed in Hollywood (or in politics, it would seem) but that’s the way life was in America, and especially in Hollywood, for much of this country’s history.

That being said, the problem with the Me-Too movement (and others like it) is that liberals and the media get hold of something that has a good solid basis and purpose and they proceed to destroy it to push and achieve a certain agenda. It appears most things that the media become involved suddenly is taken way, way off path to where it becomes unrecognizable, even to its original founders, and they end up politicizing it and ruining the original purpose of it. This coupled with the fact that people are no longer innocent until proven guilty, but are instantly adjured guilty and are demolished by the media while their employers are publicly shamed by bleeding heart liberals to fire them, clearly demonstrates that the “innocent until proven guilty” tenet that has been part of our justice system, is tossed out the window. In addition, if these folks want to try to prove their innocence, they have to fight the almost insurmountable uphill battle with their own funds as the media that happily annihilated their lives and reputations, clean their razor-sharp talons of the affair and scan the horizon for other victims like digital carrion birds.

Those folks that consistently hijack the desires to right long-term cultural wrongs, end up turning something good and righteous into these runaway movements that, through false narratives and paid hirelings (who on cue pose as victims to assist the attempt to destroy the current target), have bastardized and politicized years of hard work by good people to the point that they have almost become meaningless and are completely unrecognizable from their original purpose. Also, it seems today you can’t read or watch anything coming from the political left without hearing them accuse someone of being a racist, to the point that they have severely diluted the word as they bandy and fling the accusations about without cause or merit and often in a laughable way, that all they end up doing is jading the public to the point that if someone is justifiably accused of racism, it will not carry the weight or truth that it should. Americans are finally waking up and are beginning to turn a deaf ear to all these adulterations of the truth for you can only cry wolf so many times until folks begin to stop listening to you.

Jim

4-17-20

Perspective

Posted: April 15, 2020 in Life and Memories, My view of the world
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I was walking through a big box store today and saw an enormous TV…it was elephantine and appeared to reach to the sky. I don’t know the size of the screen, but it looked like it was 50 feet across. It wasn’t, of course, but as I walked past it I started thinking about how quickly we get used to the unordinary so it swiftly becomes ordinary, normal and unexciting. As I continued to think about it as I walked through the store, I recalled that when I was a young adult on my own for the first time I had very little. One of the things I owned was a little 13 inch television set that my parents had given me and it served me very well. At the time, a 25 inch set was considered huge and very few households had one that large.

Within a few years I was able to afford a larger television set and I happily graduated to a 19 inch table-top unit and I felt I was stepping in high cotton to obtain such a big tv. Man, that television set was gigantic compared to the little 13 inch set I used up to that point. When I acquired the 19 inch tv, the largest set generally available was a 27 inch model, but occasionally you would see ads for 32 inch televisions but they were much too expensive for most Americans to be able to afford. The only televisions available at this time were CRTs…cathode ray tube units that were deep as well as heavy…I think the 27 inch televisions weighed in around 50 to 60 pounds. If you had a 27 inch television set you had a very big piece of furniture (several years later I acquired a 32 inch television set and that monstrous tv was also monstrously heavy, weighing in at close to 90 pounds). Today the flat screen tvs are generally less than 4 inches deep, but decades ago when televisions had a cathode ray tube as the main component, these things were at least 2/3 as deep as the were wide. A 27 inch television would likely be 24 inches deep and would occupy floor space in the family room as a center piece of furniture. At some point I bought a 25 inch set and I remember watching it and wondering how I was able to watch anything on that little 13 inch set and at that point after getting used to the additional 6 inches of viewing area, the 19 inch television seemed small to me also.

Fast forward to twelve years ago and as I unboxed and plugged in my first flat screen tv that was an astounding 42 inches diagonal I was completely blown away and awe-struck at the size of it. Today we enjoy super sharp images on a 60 inch unit and when I saw a 42 inch television set the other day, it looked so, so small. If I were to build a room that had a wall large enough to fit a 100 inch screen onto, I’m sure that I would look back on the puny little 60 inch screen and wonder how I was able to watch anything on that seemingly minuscule surface.

So, today have we come full circle? I see the younger generation watching movies and gaming on a screen they hold in their palm while those of my era seem to want to bring the stadium jumbo-trons into their homes. Is it all perspective, or could it be something else? Up until I was 35, I could watch a honeybee’s path in the sky as it flew across a field, but today? No, I have to have glasses to read a book and I lose sight of the honeybees after a few feet. It could be that those of us with failing eyesight compensate with larger and larger screen, but after a short while even those screen don’t seem so large anymore…so I think it is a combination of both…age and perspective.

Jim

(I mentioned the weight of that 32 inch tv. When I got my first flat screen, nobody wanted CRTs and I eventually was able to give it away. The guy that came to take it off my hands was a big guy that arrived in a tiny car that was leaning to port (left) as he drove up. We struggled, sweated, cursed and stumbled but were finally able to shoe-horn that thing into the passenger side of his roller skate, which left him hanging out the driver window. As he drove away the car was no longer leaning to port, but it was squatting very low to the ground…he would have been right at home in East LA…)

On a side note, When I was younger, I kept the 19 inch television set for several years and as a bachelor, I often would lie on the couch on my side watching tv…so even though the TV had a horizontal aspect sitting on the shelf, my eyes were positioned vertically when I would lie on my side. I started wondering why the television shows looked normal with the difference in aspect…the set being on a horizontal plane and my eyes on a vertical plane, so I decided to experiment and I turned the television set onto its side so the tv and my eyes were on the same plane. That was so weird…I tried to watch the shows from this angle for a few nights and it was so unsettling watching the cowboys on their horses seemingly galloping straight up and straight down a grassy wall that I couldn’t concentrate and had to right the tv back to the proper perspective. So even though I was turned sideways watching a television set sitting on a shelf, my brain compensated for it to the point that when they were both vertically aligned, my brain was still viewing the tv set as horizontal, throwing everything off…strange…

4-16-20

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