the very stuff you've been looking for … like finding a purple rock in a world of plain gravel

January 19, 2024
by John Shouse
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living water … the view from here

Love and compassion and kindness are like the pure water of life that we each need in order to survive. I mean that literally. They are a basic human need, and without them, no abundant life is possible.

This is true no matter how far or how near we are at any given moment from embracing and manifesting them.

The cup from which we drink is not nearly as important as the fact that we both freely give and gladly receive that water. The cup may be religion, spiritual practice, a chosen way of being in the world, or simply relationship with others and with ourselves. These cups may be flawed, inefficient, or even broken. It’s not important. It’s the water that is life giving, not the cup.

It is only when we begin to understand the essential nature of love and compassion and kindness that we can begin to glimpse the gift that we each can uniquely gift to the world. Those gifts are unique to each of us because we’ve each led different lives, have had different experiences, different interests and passions, faced different obstacles or challenges, had different failures and different victories and opportunities.

When we begin to finally understand and integrate this uniqueness and the power of the love that under-girds it, we cannot help but want to live FROM this knowledge and the values that support it.

More importantly, we find that we move toward wishing to live a relentlessly wholehearted, intentional, authentic, and simple life. Not simple as in austere or ascetic or shallow, but simple as in uncomplicated. There is no need for allowing our love and kindness and compassion for those we encounter every day to be a complicated thing. There IS a need to practice it intentionally and wholeheartedly. And to do so in the knowledge that for most of us as flawed human beings, citizens of a too-often challenging world, we’re going to get it wrong at least as often as we get it right. And to not beat ourselves up too badly on those occasions, but rather double-down on our resolve to do better next time.

Ok.  I’ve written the first part of this using the “we” voice.  I did so intentionally because I really do believe the thoughts do (or should) apply to all of us.  Now, for the rest of this piece, I’m intentionally switching  to the “I” voice.  Because while I may feel that others should believe as I do, I want to make the specific point that what I’m saying from here on out applies to ME, and to the way I choose to be in the world. 

Up above I said we need to choose to “not beat ourselves up too badly on those occasions, but rather double-down on our resolve to do better next time.”   I know what I’m talking about here.  I really do.   I’ve been world-class at beating myself up … for a long, long time … for choices I have made (even choice that go back decades) that were clear mistakes, or actions I have failed to take when a radically different choice would have served me and those around me better. I have also been unable or unwilling to forgive myself for some of those mistakes or omissions.  Like some of you, perhaps, I have lived with an inner critic that second-guesses most of what I do.  Silencing that voice has proven not nearly as easy for me as I think it may be for some.  I have worked, especially very recently, to sit with that voice … that “inner me” …. to try and understand him, know him, and to engage in an inner dialog with him.  I know that sometimes he is motivated by love.   But I also know that sometimes he is motivated by fear or even anger.   I am not good at expressing anger, and not even particularly skilled at understanding it and working through it or letting go of it.  However, acknowledging that it is there and seeing it for what it is has been a huge first step in living my way in to a better way of being.

I won’t even pretend to deny that part of what has led me here is the way in which becoming a grandparent has changed me.  Changed me. I am looking forward to being the best possible grandpa to my new little ones (Aurora and Bonnie) that I can possibly be. I want to share my stories, help them both make sweet memories that last a lifetime, and shower them with the special one-of-a-kind love that they will not be able to find other than from me.   Of course I know they’ll get the gift of love from SO many people in their lives, and that fills me up.  But I cannot bear the idea of NOT gifting them with …. well…. with me and what I have to teach them.   So there.

I don’t need to have everything figured out to live a fulfilling life of joy (shared) and happiness (experienced and given) and wisdom (revealed and discovered and shared). What I DO have to do is “wander unafraid” ( this phrase chosen intentionally … it truly IS a wandering, as saṃsāra) through a world that so badly needs what I uniquely have to give and offer and share, and to do so with a mindset to make the best difference I can in other’s lives each day. And how DARE I intentionally choose NOT to give of that fount, no matter how freely it may be flowing at any given moment.  How DARE I not let that fount fill ME every day as well.

It’s taken me a long, long time (and a lot of therapy) to be able to articulate these thoughts in a way that feels authentic, and to feel that I’ve begun to integrate them (at least a little) into my life. And to bravely be able to say that I do not mind you calling me out when you find I am NOT living my values.

So let me say it here as clearly as I know how:

My values are love and kindness and compassion.
My desire is to be wholehearted, intentional, and authentic.

I do NOT think that the universe can be arranged and made sense of without love and kindness and compassion.   Just as surely as mathematics can predict the nature of the universe through the equations of quantum mechanics or general relativity, I believe that what is true and essential and eternal in the universe (and in our lives) can ONLY be understood utilizing love and that which flows from it.

There is so much I do not know, and will likely never know, and perhaps am incapable of knowing.   That’s ok. It really is. I believe with all my heart that love is (and must be) at the center of it all.

I’m not as old as some of you who will read this, but I am older than many of you who will. At age 66, I don’t have a specific retirement date in mind. It won’t be tomorrow, but it won’t be too long.  And whenever that happens, I choose NOT to view it as the off-ramp of my useful life.

What I choose is to embrace these values and desires as the on-ramp to the rest of my life. And to enjoy the hell out of both the highway and the rest-stops.

Wander with me, won’t you??

love,
John

August 23, 2021
by John Shouse
6 Comments

the clarity of love

My sister Janet Dowell passed away on August 16th after a long and difficult battle with cancer.   I loved her so much.  While I know it is good that her pain is done, processing and dealing with her loss is going to take while.  She was so loving and so warm..  When I was up there some while back, she said she wanted me to speak at her service when the time came.  When I sat down the night before her service to try and organize my thoughts, the words came out effortlessly.  So much so, it surprised me.  I credit that to the clarity and genuineness of her lifelong gift of love to those around her.  I was just one of the lucky recipients.

What follows is what I said last Friday morning, August 20th at a family-only (due to Covid) grave-side service at Elmwood Cemetery in Mexico, MO.

When our dad died, I wanted to speak at his funeral service.   I just felt that I owed him that …. To have someone who knew him and loved him unconditionally speak to the folks gathered there.  Someone who could speak from firsthand knowledge about his character and the incredibly wonderful man and husband and father and grandfather and great-grandfather he was.  It was the right decision.   It would have felt wrong to me not to have done that.

Because of that, when mom passed away my sister Janet presumed I would do the same thing. I think she even told the good folks at Arnold’s (funeral home) I would speak.  And she also told them that I could probably be persuaded to play my guitar … some of the church songs that I used to play for mom, and that she loved so much.  But somehow, it just felt different to me. I didn’t really want to speak.  It’s not that I loved her any less than dad.  It was just that I wanted to be a little boy grieving his mommy in that moment.  So I didn’t speak.   I sat with family, next to my sister and we hugged and we cried.  That was the right decision too.

So here we are today ….. and a big part of me just wants to be that little boy grieving the loss of his beloved big sister.     But Janet had specifically asked me to speak at her service, and of course I said yes. Because just like each of you in your own individual ways, I loved her unconditionally.   And there’s nothing I would not do for her.

When I was up here in May, we were sitting in her living room talking about things ….. she already knew her time was very limited….   She looked at me with that special smile she had, and said, “I’ve loved you since before you were born.”   My heart just melted    It was a tender moment with one of the most tender-hearted souls it’s ever been my privilege to know.

When I spoke to her on the phone early last week, her voice was so weak.  I knew I had to get up here quick for an in-person visit.   I flew up on Thursday.  Our visit that night was so sweet.  I sat by her and held her hand and we talked.  She was physically wasting away …. but that old sparkle was in her eyes.  And though her voice was weak, she asked about my family and how was everyone?  And she told me again how much she loved me and was proud of me.   Because true to her spirit, right to the end she was thinking of how she could make ME feel good and special and cherished. She did that for everyone.   That was one of her true gifts.   Her superpower.

She also asked me that night, “Tell me stories about my mom and dad.”   So I did.   I told her about being a little boy, and how dad would need to go “down to the plant” at night.  And how he would often take me along and loved it when the guys working the late shift would look this little skinny kid in way-too-big white hard-hat of a member of management and say, “Hey Shouse!  I see you brought your helper along!”    And the hard-hat I was wearing was one of his.  Janet loved that story, and even more when I told her I still have his hardhat with his name on it.  I reminded her of how when I was a little boy and she was a teenager, dad stored most of the Christmas lights for the city of Mexico in our basement, and on the day after Thanksgiving his crews would come over, pull them all out and light them up in our back yard.   How kids would come from blocks around to see the red and green and blue lights in our backyard that evening.   She smiled and softly said, “I remember.”

I told her about how when I was a little boy, and it was time for bed, I’d ask my mommy to tell me stories about when SHE was a little girl.   Mom told me about delivering the mail on a mule, up and down the road their farm was on in Callaway County.   She told me about being chased by a big angry mamma sow when she and her sister Polly were taking a shortcut to school across a field.    She told me about how her own mom, our Grandma Sampson would send her out to the chicken yard with instructions to “wring a couple of chicken’s necks” so their big family could have fried chicken for Sunday dinner.  And I told Janet how much I loved HER for the way she took care of our mom right to the end, and what a comfort she was to mom in her final weeks and days.  As I told these stories to her last Thursday she smiled, her eyes occasionally got wide, and she squeezed my hand.    It was bittersweet … and so wonderful.

I told the girls later that our Thursday night visit was priceless.   I’ll cherish that time and those memories forever.   I meant that.  I believe there are timeless moments in our lives that just live so clearly and perfectly inside of us.   This was one of those for me.

My big sister Janet could be tough as they come.   Seriously …. She was one of the toughest people I’ve ever known.   And wicked smart in so many ways.   She’d HAVE to be tough and smart to have not only survived in that job with the Missouri Department of Corrections but to have thrived and to have risen to a position of great responsibility as “Major Dowell”.   In her job interview, they asked why she thought she could do the job.  Her reply?  “I’m a farm wife. I do farm chores. One of those is when my husband Ron is driving in the cows, and I take up a station at the gate and turn out the bulls.  Have YOU ever faced down a bull?  I’m pretty sure I can handle this.”

Tough and smart and tender and giving and loving.

Seriously, is there a better combination for a person to have?

I remember a conversation with dad where he told me, “You know, if Janet had $10 and you needed $9.50, she’d give it to you.”  I said, “No, if she had $10 and you needed all 10 of it, she’d give you the $10.”   I believe that’s true too.   I know you believe it as well.  That’s just who she was.

But it’s the tender and loving part that meant the world to me and to so many of you.

Our daughter Emma wanted to be here today, but it’s just not a great time in her life to travel right now, with so much going on at home.   Even so, she wrote the sweetest memory of her Aunt Janet, and I’m going to share it here.

One of my recurring memories of MO visits in my early years was Aunt Janet always being so calm and loving and affectionate with me and doing my hair.  Mom didn’t enjoy doing it (Mom, it’s ok, really!  I have so many OTHER gifts from you).  But Aunt Janet and Dana probably took me to the bathroom and brushed my hair and did it up pretty at least a dozen times through the years.   I felt so loved cared for and special when she took that time with me. I felt like she treasured me and it was SO wonderful! 

Emma loves her Aunt Janet (and Aunt Linda and the rest of the family too.)

 

Recently a very wise person explained the idea to me that in this life we each have things that are life giving, and things that are life stealing.  Life giving things are happy times with loved-ones, pleasant memories of good times in the past …. All those happy and wonderful experiences that each of us have.    Life stealing things are when we experience strife and conflict and anger and setbacks of all kinds.  And yes, of course those include loss.

It’s our responsibility to try to find a way to “tip the scales” in our own favor by seeking out life-giving experiences.  That’s just common-sense self-care.

Today we are each grieving Janet in our own way.  And that’s normal.  It’s normal because we each have our own unique, individual experiences of her.

Even so, I think we can all agree on one thing.   Being with her was ALWAYS … ALWAYS … ALWAYS a life-giving experience.  That’s because she gave so freely and generously of her love in every way.

I told the girls that my trip up here last week, even though Janet was so clearly right near the end, was far more life-giving and life affirming than it was anything else.

I can’t know exactly how any of you are feeling.  I only know for sure how hard this is for me. It’s so hard.  So hard.

Dwight, I cannot imagine the sorrow and level of grief and uncertainty you are feeling.  The hole you said you feel in your soul.   But I know the love that Janet … and Ron … poured into you continually.  She was more than just a grandma to you.   You are the man of good character that you are today, with a huge and tender heart, because of the love she poured out for you your entire life.

Lisa, Missy, Dana, I likewise cannot imagine the loss you are feeling now with your mom gone.  I know that she was always there for you. Always. And I know that each of you in your own way leaned on her and counted on her presence.  So of course the future seems scary and uncertain. Cling to one another as best you can … and as I told you last week … I am here for you.   I am here for you.   I’m a poor substitute for your dad, and could never replace you mom and wouldn’t try.   But I’m here, I love you, and you can always just pick up the phone and call.   And I really hope you will.   And look at the example of sisterly love your mom and Linda left for you.

Jim, you’ve lost one of your two baby sisters…. I can’t imagine how you are feeling.   I’m reminded of that picture of the three of you before I was ever a gleam in dad’s eye, standing by Mr. Green’s fireplace at Christmas in your jammies, for a photo shoot for the cover of the AP Green magazine.   I would love to go back and be a fly on the wall in the Shouse House in those years on West Love Street, to see those two little girls and their big brother and a young and vital mom and dad.    I know there were good and precious times.  I pray that you have those memories to cling to.

Linda, I have no words.   None. I can’t fathom what this loss must mean to you.  You said

“She has been my rock for as many years as I can remember, always willing to let little sister tag along. Through the most joyous of times and saddest times she was by my side. The laughter and tears we shared are the special times that made all of the memories precious.”   

You two shared so much of “life” together.  For over seven decades now …. SEVEN DECADES… you’ve been there for each other.  You were more than just sisters.  You were best friends.  In good times of joy and laughter, and through far, far too much tragic loss … you were there for each other.  I can only say that you need to know that YOU were her rock too.    I cannot think of either of you without the other.   This is going to be so, so hard.   But you will…. You WILL find that new “okay”.   I promise.    And I want to be part of it, okay?    I am here for you too, love.   I am here, and I love you unconditionally.

You know…. You two could talk about anything.   Anything.

Well….  *almost* anything.      There’s one area that Janet told me she just wouldn’t “go there” with you.  Politics.   So over the last four years, as she sat there and watched the news …… and got more and more disgusted with what she saw….. it was little brother…. a reliable Yellow-Dog Democrat … that she turned to.

She’d call me up and say, “Have you seen what ‘that man’ in the White House is doing???”   And proceed to rail about the latest perceived atrocity.   And I’d sympathize …. (because she was right) ….. then we would turn the conversation to her and family and how my family was doing and we’d just end up having the best conversation.  Okay, sorry about that.  I really just wanted her to have the last word on that subject.   So there.   And I choose to believe she’s laughing right now.

Seriously now…. I hope we can agree on one MORE thing…   That even in the midst of our grief, Janet would want us to draw closer to one another, to cling to one another in love.  To put the cares of this world in perspective and realize that the gift of family …. Both the family we are given, and the family we choose to love, is really the very best thing ever.

There are gifts in EVERY moment of our lives.   Sometimes … like in moments of sorrow and pain …. we have to really dig hard to find them. It can be hard to express gratitude in the middle of grief.

But her gifts to us in this moment are clear. They are all the memories we have, the guidance given, the lessons taught, the laughs shared, the tears shared, the warm hugs, the amazing smiles, the sparkling eyes, and the knowledge that when we were with her, we were loved.    Those are precious and priceless gifts.

For me, I don’t think she’s gone.  Not really.    She lives in our hearts, and in our memories, and in our undying love.    And I choose to believe that somehow, in ways none of us fully understand yet, she is with us, still loving us and cherishing each and every one of us.    And we can choose to “lean in” on the example of love she showed us.

And THAT is a life giving thing if ever there was one.

I know that would make Janet very happy.

August 5, 2021
by John Shouse
1 Comment

two boys … one town (part II)

As the title of this piece says, it’s Part II.  If you haven’t read Part I, you might want to go back and read that for context.   I hope you enjoy this.  It’s been quite a while in the making, and I’m feel like I’m leaving so much out.  But it feels *right* to go ahead and post it now. Be sure to click on the photos for a larger view.  And on the blue links for clippings and other images.

Now I want to shift gears just a bit to tell a remarkable story about ANOTHER young man who was born in Mexico, over a hundred and twenty years ago, and who had dreams of his own.    I strongly suspect this story, Leonard’s story, has never ever been told in just this way…. and probably could NOT have been told at any other time in history than now. Due to the power of the internet to connect threads, and random bits and pieces of “ordinary” history, it’s possible to piece together narratives that are remarkable and moving and meaningful, even if incredibly obscure.

To set the stage, I need to go back to Part I of this story, and that very kind gentleman who loaned me the fifty cents that day for the summer movie at the Liberty Theater.  Alan Coatsworth didn’t just “happen” to be sitting there in that lumber company office.  He was born into it.

He was the fourth generation of Coatsworth lumber men in Mexico.  Before him, his father, Alan Coatsworth Sr. (1896-1977), was in the lumber business in Mexico, as was his grandfather Frank Whitfield Coatsworth (1860-1939), and his GREAT grandfather Ralph Musgrove Coatsworth (1808-1889).

Frank W Coatsworth, c.1872

In May of 1889, Frank W. Coatsworth, the second generation Mexico lumberman married Ida Lee Myers, and together they took up residence on East Promenade Street.  They would eventually have five children, William Myers Coatsworth, Ralph Coatsworth (named for his grandad), Leonard Broughton Coatsworth, Alan Coatsworth, and a daughter, Helen Coatsworth.  As stated before, Alan Sr. would succeed his father in the lumber business in Mexico. Their lumber-yard in those days was on West Love Street, on both sides of Jefferson Street, just a block north of the downtown square.    A couple of the other brothers stayed in the area as well.  But it is Leonard, who was born in 1895 that I want to focus on.

Coatsworth children. Leonard in the Middle

Leonard was never destined for a life selling wood and nails and building supplies, even as noble as that profession is. As we shall see, Leonard dreamed of adventure, and adventure indeed would come his way.

Leonard was a precocious child, always doing well in school.  All the Coatsworth children did well in school, but Leonard was exceptional.  He was drawn to words, and to reading.  He had an affinity for science as well, but it was always words that drew his interest most powerfully.  He also was known well to be the jokester of the family, and he loved to make people laugh.

However, before we get ahead of Leonard’s story, and looking at some of the specific events in and around Mexico and the world that would shape Leonard’s life, let’s take a moment to get some perspective on the age into which he was born.

More so than perhaps any time in the history of mankind up until then, the late 1800’s and first few decades of 1900’s were a truly magical time to be alive.  The world was changing so incredibly rapidly … far more rapidly than at any time in history. The pace of innovation and invention was just astounding.   And the people then were quite aware of this fact.

For a kid to be alive and witnessing all of the changes around him must have been one almost fantastical amazement after another.   The invention of the automobile, the rise of industrialization in towns and cities of all sizes (not just the big urban centers), Orville and Wilbur Wright making their first man-powered flight in 1903, the electrification of our cities and towns, the development of wireless telegraphy, the dawn of the telephone age,  … the list goes on and on.  In the late 1880s most of these things either did not exist, or were so rare as to be unfamiliar to common folk.  A couple of decades later, they were beginning to be seen everywhere.   Since there were few if any “moving picture shows” yet, (and therefore no movie theaters), no TV, no internet … both kids and adults had to find their entertainment where they could.  Mexico had a grand Opera House that held regular productions and public lectures, and an open-air venue where more “ordinary” entertainments could be had.  But the opportunities were limited.

One thing the families in Mexico in the early years of the last century could count on was the Chautauqua.   Chautauqua was an adult education movement, and was highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It brought both entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and various “specialists” or experts in their given field of study.

And yes, Chautauqua came to Mexico in the summer of every year in those days.

From the book “Traveling Culture: The traveling Chautauqua in the twentieth Century”,   comes this definition:

“What was Chautauqua? Theodore Roosevelt called it “the most American thing in America,” Woodrow Wilson described it during World War I as an “integral part of the national defense,” and the politician and orator William Jennings Bryan deemed it a “potent human factor in molding the mind of the nation.” Conversely, Sinclair Lewis derided it as “nothing but wind and chaff and… the laughter of yokels,” William James found it “depressing from its mediocrity,” and critic Gregory Mason dismissed it as “infinitely easier than trying to think.”

However Chautauqua was characterized, it elicited strong reactions and emotions.”   It goes on to say that, “There are few Americans left who remember the Circuit Chautauqua but there was a time when those words conjured up a host of images. To its supporters it meant a chance for the community to gather for three to seven days to enjoy a course of lectures on a variety of subjects. Audiences also saw classic plays and Broadway hits and heard a variety of music from Metropolitan Opera stars to glee clubs to bell ringers. Many saw their first movies in the Circuit tents. Most important, the Circuit Chautauqua experience was critical in stimulating thought and discussion on important political, social and cultural issues of the day……    Lecturers were the backbone of Chautauqua. Every topic from current events to travel to human interest to comic storytelling could be heard on the Circuits. Chautauqua would swell by the thousands to see William Jennings Bryan, the most popular of all Chautauqua attractions. Until his death in 1925 his populist, temperance, evangelical, and crusading message could be heard on Circuits across the country. Another popular reformer, Maud Ballington Booth, the “Little Mother of the Prisons,” could bring her audiences to tears with her description of prison life and her call to reform. In a more humorous vein, author Opie Read’s homespun philosophy and stories made him an enduring presence on the platform. . Music was also a staple on the Circuits and bands were particularly popular. The band most identified with the Redpath Circuit (which came regularly to Audrain County) was Bohumir Kryl’s Bohemian Band. Kryl, a protégé of John Philip Sousa, and his band were famous for their memorable version of the “Anvil Chorus” (Il Trovatore). Included were “four anvils with four husky tympanists in leather aprons….as the hammers clanged down on the anvils, an electric device sent sparks cascading around the darkened stage.”

Any way you look at it, Chautauqua, was quite the spectacle.  And judging from the newspaper accounts of the day, it was just considered the thing to do when Chautauqua came to town to alter your plans and attend.  And many town people would buy a weekly ticket, and attend EACH night, all week long of the Chautauqua’s run in the city.

A mentioned above, Mexico was a regular stop for the Chautauqua circuit during those early years of the century, and the Coatsworth family, with Frank being a leading businessman in the city, attended every year.  Coatsworth Lumber was one of the advertisers in the Chautauqua programs.

For many years, Chautauqua would set up in a vacant field on the north end of Eastholm street, not far from the railroad tracks.  A regular rail shuttle from the downtown depot carried Mexicoans out to Chautauqua and back again each evening.  The location on Eastholm would have been easy walking distance for the Coatsworth children from their home on East Promenade.

One of the frequent speakers on Chautauqua circuit, including on those trips to Mexico, was a man considered one of the greatest orators of all time, William Jennings Bryan.  He brought populist and evangelical messages to the crowds, addressing topics such as temperance, and personal responsibility.

It is a matter of record that Mr. Bryan on his Chautauqua lectures also often waxed eloquently on the issue of the “Single Tax”.  His talks on the subject included at least one occasion in Mexico that was reported in the Mexico Weekly Ledger.  More on that issue later, but for now, back to Leonard’s story…..

Leonard Coatsworth, as mentioned before, was a precocious child and a good student. He was interested at an early age in words, and language, and this early talent would serve him his entire life.  He also had quite a sense of humor.

In high school at McMillan High School in Mexico, he was a star on the debate team, and under his leadership that team handily raked up a near perfect record.  In fact, during Leonard’s high school years, the Mexico debate team was regularly regarded as among the best high school debate teams in the entire state of Missouri.  Not just Leonard, but his good friend and classmate Morris Dry, were the stars on that team.  One of their topics of debate, as reported by both the Mexico Missouri Message, and the Mexico Weekly Ledger, two of the town’s three newspapers, was the question of “Single Taxation”.

The “Single Tax”, basically is the notion that taxes levied locally upon the assessed value of personal property (land) could and SHOULD be sufficient to provide one-hundred-percent of the operating capital required by counties and municipalities.  The opposing view was that it was entirely appropriate to consider OTHER taxes as a means of municipal revenue as well….. sales taxes, usage taxes for things like vehicles, etc., and even the very controversial notion of some sort of an “income” tax.

The way the debate process worked (then as now), the debate teams needed to study an issue, both sides, and be prepared to be randomly selected to argue either side of the issue.   Leonard seemed to have a particular affinity for arguing in the affirmative.  I’m sure the actual debates were every bit as scintillating as it sounds.

In actuality, the question of the “Single Tax” was one of the foremost political issues of the day.  Political campaigns would be waged, won and lost on this issue.   It would be akin to today’s students debating capital punishment or abortion, or a national mandated health-insurance, or any one of several other “hot button” issues.

 

In 1910, when Leonard was still in school in Mexico, there was a great visitation that caused quite a stir:  Halley’s Comet.  As it happens, the historical record shows that the 1910 appearance of the comet was probably one of the brightest and most spectacular ever, given that it is also one of the closest approaches the comet has ever made to the earth.

Now, one can look back easily in history and see that by using hindsight, the previous appearances of the great comet once every 76 years, were (with suitably vague and loose interpretation) often in historical proximity to some great cataclysmic event… Halley’s Comet of 1066 was hanging in the sky for two months while the English and Normans were planning for an invasion. At the Battle of Hastings a few months later the Normans emerged as victors and from that time on the comet was said to have been a sign that favored the descendants of William the Conqueror.  In 1456, Pope Calixtus III condemned the appearance of the comet as an evil omen, as the Ottoman Empire had defeated Europe just a year or so prior to the comet.  The comet of 1665 was believed by some in the next decades to have been responsible for the Black Plague that killed 90 thousand people in London. The appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1835 was blamed for a number of  things, including the fall of the Alamo, the destruction of 530 buildings in New York City because of a fire that raged for several days and nights, the massacre of over 280 people in Africa by ten thousand Zulu warriors.   The common sense we bring to bear on these things now in the 21st century makes those notions seem provincial, and even almost comical.

From “Comet Hysteria and the Millenium” by Gary W. Kronk:

“With the invention of newspapers, the telegraph, and the telephone came an increase in communication between people. Although doomsayers have always existed, this opened up a new avenue for them to pass their word to others. Perhaps the first major test of this came with the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1910.

A little bit of scientific information in the wrong hands can be dangerous. During the latter half of the 19th century astronomers had developed a tool that enabled them to analyze the light being reflected by comets. One of the first discoveries was that comets reflected sunlight, which makes a lot of sense to us nowadays since we know comets do not emit light, but this did surprise of lot of people. Interestingly, however, bright comets would actually reflect sunlight as it passed through their own dense clouds of dust and gas. This allowed astronomers to begin determining what comets were actually made of. One of the earliest discoveries was that comets contained cyanogen, a very poisonous gas.”

As Halley’s Comet approached the sun in 1910, astronomers announced that Earth would actually pass through the tail of this comet during May of that year. The scientists assured everyone that Earth was completely safe and suggested that at best, the comet’s visitation might lead to the possibility of some spectacular sunsets. Meanwhile however, the doomsayers latched onto a potential link:  If comets contain a poisonous gas and if Earth is going to pass through the comet’s tail, then the people of Earth were surely in serious danger!  Numerous newspapers actually published this story. Astronomers countered by saying the material in the tail was so spread out that there could be no ill affects, but few newspapers published this accurate information. Interestingly, a minor panic arose in some cities and entrepreneurs took advantage of it. They sold “comet pills” which were said to counter the effects of the poisonous gas. The pills sold like crazy. On May 20, after Earth had passed through the tail, everyone who had taken the pills was still alive…but, then, so was everyone else.”

 

My hometown of Mexico, Missouri was not immune to the influence of those who wished to take advantage of this “Comet Hysteria”.  Some newspaper ads and stories of the day warned people that it might be best to stay indoors during the peak of comet visibility.  Some merchants sold those pills, or gas masks, or even a “comet helmet” that was supposed to protect one from …from …. well from “something”.   The vagueness of the claims magnified the fear, and fear itself was the main selling point.

Then in the May 26th, 1910 issue of the Mexico Missouri Message, shortly after the peak of the comet visibility, we find this small article:

“The graduating exercises of the graded schools were held Saturday night. The valedictorians were: Mildred Pearl, south side; Anna Caldwell, north side. The following essays and orations which were interspersed with music were given: ‘Halley’s Comet” by Leonard Coatsworth; “Boy Achievements” by Morris Dry;  “Suffer Yet and Suffragette” by Miriam Glandon; “The Experiences of two Circulating Library Books,” by Mabel Threlkeld; “Missouri,” by Orlando Worrell; “The Schools of Other Lands”  by Mildred Pearl;  and “Burgoyne’s Campaign,” by Wallace Mathews.”

One wonders what, in the aftermath of the biggest uneventful “doomsday“ scenario that any of these people had ever known, what sorts of wry observations the precocious young jokester Leonard, age 14, might have come up with?    One may get an idea, by imagining what a 9th grade commentator known for his sense of humor might have said at the end of 2012 when the so-called “Mayan Apocalypse” did not come to pass and the world did NOT end as “predicted” by the big Mayan calendar rock.

Whatever it was specifically that Leonard said to the assembled that evening is lost to history, but given his emerging talent for oration and his known sense of humor, one can suspect it may have had the crowd laughing along.

 

In 1907, in England, General Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts. A Chicago Publisher, W.D. Boyce, had made a trip to London.  On the foggy streets, he lost his way, and encountered a young man in a uniform who came to Boyce’s aid.   This “Unknown Scout”, as Boyce would later immortalize him, guided him to his destination. The boy then refused Boyce’s tip, explaining that he was a Boy Scout and was merely doing his daily good turn. Soon thereafter, intrigued by this notion of a veritable army of young men out doing good deeds in uniform, Boyce met with General Baden-Powell, and told him of his encounter.

On February 8, 1910, the Boy Scouts of America was incorporated.   Only a short seven months later, plans for a Boy Scout troop came to Mexico!  It was one of the very earliest troops of Boy Scouts in small town Missouri.   As reported in the Message on September 29, 1910:

“Mexico has organized a company of Boy Scouts.  And if the youngsters grow to be nothing more than gentlemanly men to the Hardin College girls, their organization will have been justified.”   

 

Among the very first group of boys to join the Mexico troop of Boy Scouts when it was begun in earnest early the next year, one of the first troops in Missouri, was none other than Leonard Coatsworth.

As the boys gathered together at their troop meetings, they learned their orienteering skills, and about knots and about survival outdoors, as scouts of today do.  But they also talked about the ways in which the world was changing, and about the latest inventions of the day. Among them, some few boys were keenly interested in wireless telegraphy.  A few months later, from the March 7, 1911 Mexico Ledger:

“Mexico will soon be the center of a youthful club of wireless telegraph experimenters. Leonard Coatsworth and Willie Greer, the first boys to begin experiments with wireless, are meeting with so much success several others are preparing to procure outfits. Among the new boys that will join the club is Russell Moore, son of R.D. Moore, the well-known horseman. He will install a wireless outfit at his home a mile and a half east of this city.”

Even more remarkably, Leonard conceived of a plan to build a PORTABLE wireless station that could be used by the Boy Scouts ….. attaching the set to any barb-wire fence to use that as an aerial to pick up signals being sent from any base station miles away.    Being among the first to experiment with an exciting new technology must have been pretty amazing stuff for Leonard and his friends.  It seems to not be dissimilar to a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak building a computer in their garage, excitedly joining in with a few other enthusiasts.  Doing it precisely BECAUSE it was new and exciting, and because they were just looking for some kind of adventure, and saw a potential in it.

From June of 1912, a notice appeared in the Mexico Ledger about a Boy Scout encampment at their “new cabin” north of Mexico.  This encampment would have been just beyond present-day Plunkett Park.

BOY SCOUTS TO BE IN CAMP JULY 8 to 11,
AT THEIR CABIN NORTH OF MEXICO.

No Guns, No Drinking Creek Water, and Other Prohibitions.

“The Boy Scouts at Mexico will go on their annual camp July 8 to 11, at their new cabin 4 miles north of town, on the electric railroad. A scoutmaster will be in charge all the time, although the camp will be practically in charge of the scouts. No guns will be allowed in camp and every effort will be made to keep the camp sanitary at all times. The boys are warned against drinking creek water. The parents of the boys and the Scout Council are invited to be present on the last day for dinner and to witness the athletic events. Others interested are invited for the afternoon events. Boys, who intend going, must report to P.L. Hanly at once. “  

 

In reporting on the grand encampment, this story ran couple weeks later, on July 11, 1912, in the Message:

THE BOY SCOUTS.

Having a Big Time at Their Camp North of Mexico.

The Boy Scouts of Mexico, numbering about 40, went into camp at their cabin, on the banks of Salt River, last Monday.  Morris Dry, Patrol Leader, officer in command and having general charge of details.

The boys are having the time of their lives. Water baseball is one of the great fun-making diversions. Tuesday, Lee Richards landed a big catfish, weighing three pounds, his first catch. The catch caused great excitement in camp. There are six tents on the grounds besides the cabin is occupied also. Athletics is the program for today. Parents of Scouts invited for dinner. The Wellsville Scouts will also be present as guests. Three classes of Scouts will take part in the following events today:

 

50 Yard Dash.
Running Broad Jump.
Running High Jump.
Pole Vault.
Swimming Race.
Fire Building
Race to Boil Water.
First Aid Competition.

A medal will be given to the boy making the most points in the athletic events; for the best showing in First Aid and the patrol making the best showing will be given a special patrol flag. Among those in camp from Mexico are: Roy Ferris, Mitchell White, Rev. A. A. Wallace, Dr. H.W. Gibbs,  R. Chandler, Chas. Kunkel, Hall Pearson, Maurice Pearson, Gibson Winans, John Million, Archie Rodgers, Tom Reed, Frank Morris,  Orville Austin, Robert Cordner, Guy Holliday, Russell Lewis, Maas Rowland, Morris Dry, Eric Cunningham, Theo Winans, Roselle Haskell, Frank Kunkel, Orval Staples, Lee Richards, John Dearing, Mason Guthrie, Blake Williams, Leonard Coatsworth, Joel Guthrie, W. F. Bridgford, Harry Rose, Ross Ferris, Edwin Winans, Richard Harth, Ray Highbreeder, Ross Gallop, and Frank Boatman. 

 

So there’s Leonard again, right in the middle of grand adventure with his Boy Scout troop, with his buddy Morris and several other friends.   One can imagine the plans and escapades being dreamed up by Leonard Coatsworth and his scouting buddies at that encampment.

Around the fire those evenings, those boys made plans for other camping and hiking adventures.  They talked about the world, and how it was changing.  One of them, maybe even it was Leonard, may have wondered if it were possible to hike from Mexico all the way to St. Louis, and if so, how long it would take?   It’s very likely that most of the boys had never been to St. Louis, never seen a city with tall buildings.  Maybe none of them had.  If so, it would almost certainly have been on an excursion with family by train.   We can be pretty confident in our guess that this was a topic of conjecture, because before long, that’s exactly what a small group, a group LED by Leonard Coatsworth himself, purposed to do.  To hike from Mexico all the way to St. Louis.

Keep in mind; this was in the days LONG before the Interstate Highway System, and even before any major US Highways.  There were barely any automobiles on the roads.  Seeing one was more of a rarity and a curiosity than it was a usual occurrence. So the way from Mexico to St. Louis would certainly have contained long stretches that were not paved, and it was probably not all that direct. Undertaking that trip, even with some sort of a horse-drawn conveyance, was not something one did lightly.  On foot was a bold and adventurous leap of faith.

Yet, from the August 5, 1911 edition of the Mexico Ledger, we read this:

“A telegram from Leonard Coatsworth to Roy Ferris on Saturday afternoon states the three Boy Scouts who departed from this city Thursday to tramp to St. Louis arrived at Truesdale at 9 o’clock Saturday morning. The message states they will reach St. Charles on Sunday morning. All are well and the three boys are making good progress.”    (Truesdale, fyi, is near Warrenton). 

Their news of their trip eventually reached a wider audience, for from the September, 1911 edition of Boys Life Magazine, the national magazine of scouting, comes this brief from Missouri:

“Boy Scouts End Hike – Three Youthful Hikers Cover Distance from Mexico, MO to St. Louis in Four Days.  

Clad in Khaki, and carrying neatly rolled camping outfits, three boys entered the office of Henry Clay Thompson, Jr., Boy Scout Commissioner for St. Louis, Monday afternoon.   Leonard Coatsworth, 16 years old, was their leader.  He introduced himself to Thompson, and standing erect, at attention, said – “Scout Commissioner Thompson.  We are instructed to bear you, as representative of the Boy Scouts of St. Louis, a greeting from Troop A, Boy Scouts of Mexico, Missouri, and best wishes for your success!”   “Thank you,” Thompson answered cordially.   The three boys, Coatsworth, Minter Bragg, 16, and Kenneth Sanford, 17 years old, left Mexico Thursday morning, and walked the 147 miles to the city limits here.  They finished their Tramp, Monday noon.” 

That’s 147 miles of hiking in 4 days, or an average of almost 37 miles per day. While there in St. Louis, they were “given their freedom of the fine Y.M.C.A building there.

It doesn’t say whether they also walked home.   I’d like to think maybe Leonard’s dad Frank, the Mexico lumber man, sprang for train tickets for the boys to ride home in style, to a hero’s welcome back at the same depot that would be part of my own childhood, over fifty years later.   But 37 miles a day for 4 days!  My long trail hike was about 22 miles… less than HALF that.  And I remember being worn out.   These boys did 37 miles a day for four days straight!  Presumably with knapsacks for sleeping rolls, mess kits, food, etc.

As fun as Boy Scouts must have been, it’s not ALL that Leonard Coatsworth was interested in.  As previously mentioned, he was a wordsmith, a debater, and a skilled orator.  The following is from the December 26th, 1912 edition of the Message:

The Juniors of McMillan High School entertained the student body and faculty last Friday afternoon with a Christmas tree and literary program. The gymnasium, where the exercises were held, was beautifully decorated in appropriate colors. A herald was sent to the different classrooms, who invited the students to partake of the hospitality of the Juniors. The program was opened by an address of welcome by the Junior President, George Irion. Leonard Coatsworth made a spirited oration against the “crystallized bureaucracy” of the Faculty.  Anna Caldwell gave a humorous oration on “Fashions,” and Mabel Threlkeld, carrying a suffragette banner, advocated woman’s rights” with true suffragette vigor. The debate also was very humorous. The question was, Resolved that the Jesse tribe should be forced to pay the “Single Tax” or be exiled from the country. The affirmative was represented by Morris Dry, Mildred Pearl, Percie Fuhrer and Alma Shoush. The “Jesse Tribe”, represented by Morris Rodes and Louis Jesse, ably espoused their own cause. The last number on the program was a travesty on “Macbeth” by the following: Macbeth, Hubert Warden; Banquo, John Creigh; King Duncan, Oscar Haskell;  Three Witches, Frances Pearl, Lucile Kunkel, LeRein Warden; Herald, Halley Bradford. After the program Santa Claus emerged from the chimney and distributed his presents. The Freshmen, who were seated in the balcony, received their presents from a baby carriage, which ran on a track just outside the balcony.

 

Hmmmmm…. “a spirited oration against the “crystallized bureaucracy” of the Faculty”.   I would have loved to have been there for that speech.

Then, from April 13, 1913:

 “Leonard ‘Coatsworth and Chas. Wright, representing the Mexico High School, debated against the Marshall High School team last Friday night. They discussed the Single Tax question, the Mexico debaters favoring the question, and the Mexico debaters came off victors for the single tax – and what do you think of that?”   

As a senior at McMillan High School, Leonard was quite active in the class. He was not only a skillful debater, but was also featured prominently in the Senior Class play, “The Dictator” and was listed among the cast who “did honor to themselves and their class by their skillful individual interpretations”.   At the Senior Class graduation banquet, the “Address to the Class of 1914 was delivered by Miss Mary Dearing, Class of 1913”.  However, the “Response” was delivered by Leonard Coatsworth, and was reported to have greatly regaled the attendees.

In the June 18 Ledger of that year, 1914, though he was set to attend the University of Missouri as a journalism student, it is reported that:

“Leonard Coatsworth has accepted a position of some responsibility with a big realty company in Taney County, MO.  Leonard is all right, and will make good.”    

Perhaps Leonard needed to earn the money for college. Perhaps he just wanted to gain some practical experience in the work-world before heading off to school.

In any case, by the first of the New Year, Leonard was in Columbia and ready for studies, just a bit later than his old high school classmates.  In January of 1915 as a new freshman at Mizzou, it was Leonard the jokester that showed up before Leonard the scholar.   Under the headline, “Seen Twice in One Picture” comes the following from January 19, 1915:

SEEN TWICE IN ONE PICTURE

Leonard Coatsworth, Freshman, Appears at Both Ends of Photograph.

The likeness of Leonard Coatsworth, a freshman in the College of Arts and Science, may be found twice in the panoramic view of the visitors here during Farmers’ Week, taken just east of Academic Hall. Mr. Coatsworth stood at’ one end of the bleachers, which had been erected for the accommodation of the crowd, and was photographed by the revolving camera. By hurriedly running around behind the crowd, he was able to take a seat at the opposite end before the lens of the camera pointed in that direction, and was again photographed when the camera reached that point. In the picture he is standing at the left side with a large book in his hand. He wore a cap and may easily be identified as the same person seated, with a large book in his hand, at the right side of the picture”  

 

On June 3, of 1915, the Mexico, Missouri Message reports that “Leonard Coatsworth, a graduate of McMillan, son of Mr.  & Mrs. Frank Coatsworth, is set to become a reporter at the Omaha (Neb) Daily News. Leonard is a fine boy and able. Success to him!!”    The very same story was reported a little differently that same week in the University Missourian.

“Former Student Now on Omaha Paper –  Leonard Coatsworth of Mexico, MO a student in the School of Journalism of the University this last year, has begun working on the Omaha Daily News.  Coatsworth left school on account of poor health. He has also been working on the Des Moines Capitol.   Next year he expects to return to the University. “

No mention of what the “poor health” might have been.

Just a few weeks later, June 24th, Leonard is back in Mexico:

“CLASS of ’14 –   Enjoy Big Eats and Picnic at McMillan High.  The graduates of McMillan High School of the class of 1914 enjoyed a “get-together” at the school building Thursday night. A night picnic in the country had been planned but the weather prevented. A luncheon was enjoyed and then all went to the Lyric. The chaperones were Misses Flemma Snidow and Frances Glandon.  Among those in the party were Misses Nellie Noel, Mildred Pearl, Lucile Kunkel, Grace Lagenback, Alma Shoush, Louise Willard, Mabel Threlkeld, Nina Machin, Jessie Morris, and Messrs. Wm. Greer, Louis Jesse, George Irion, Clayton Snook, Halley Bradford, Leonard Coatsworth, and Morris Dry.”  

And ever the busy guy, Leonard “bought a booth under the grandstand” at the County Fair at auction in August of 1915.   No word on what he was doing with the booth, but I feel confident it was interesting an drew a crowd.

Leonard enjoyed visits back in Mexico with his family when he was able.  Here he is enjoying winter ice skating with his sister Helen in late 1915.

At the University of Missouri as a student in the School of Journalism, Leonard took a job in the Classified Advertising Department.   There, Leonard and another Mexico boy, Charles Wright, started a new advertising venture called “Today’s Bargains“, where merchants could choose to feature something that would be on sale in their store the next day.   They met with great success and earned some good money for the idea.

After his short stint at the Omaha paper, Leonard returned to the University in January of 1916, where he became Vice President of the “Audrain County Club”, a University organization of students from Mexico and Audrain County.

As the Spring semester came to a close, he took job for the summer of 1916 doing something seems right up his alley …. Travelling with the Chatauqua.  From the Mexico Missouri Message of September 7, 1916:

 “Leonard Coatsworth, son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Coatsworth of this city, has been with the Redpath-Vawter Chatauqua System this summer.  His company showed at Centralia last week.” 

Chautauqua!!  Leonard must surely have dearly loved it.    Hearing the lectures and debates, going from town-to-town… Chautauqua must have been quite an adventure for a young man with Leonard’s talents and disposition.

That fall, though, Leonard was dutifully back in Columbia at University, and once again pursuing his journalism studies. Leonard had not given up his enjoyment of hiking in the years since his epic “tramp” to St. Louis.  On November 15, 1916, comes this piece from the University Missourian:

“Marcus Asquith, Morris Keith, Sam Locke, Leonard Coatsworth, and Wentworth Seldon walked to Providence Sunday afternoon, going by way of Rock Bridge and Rutland.  The seventeen miles were covered in about four hours.”    

Seventeen miles …. just a leisurely Sunday jaunt for Leonard!

The next month, December of 1916, Leonard was again in University news, and back to his forte:

“Debate Squad Chosen.    A final team of eight men was chosen last night to represent the University in a triangular debate with Oklahoma and Texas.  These men, chosen from among the fifteen that had survived the preliminary elimination last Tuesday are: Leonard Coatsworth, Mexico, Morris Dry, Mexico, Fred Gableman, Kansas City, Frank Henzlik, Columbia, Frank Lowe, Kansas City, Nathan Scarritt, Kansas City, Fred Sudarth, Kansas City, and J.G. Umstadd, Columbia.  The topic debated for the final selection was, “Resolved: That all state and local revenues should be drawn from a single tax on land values”.     Six of the men took the negative of the question, two took the affirmative.”   

Leonard and his hometown classmate and old debating partner Morris Dry, together again, and debating for the University team, the same issue they knew inside and out, the Single Tax.  Talk about stacking the deck in Mizzou’s favor!!

 

Allow me to take a bit of a detour here to talk a little about that other Mexico boy I’ve mentioned a couple of times, Morris Dry, who was himself a remarkable young man and would go on to some notoriety of his own.   In the September 13, 1917 Columbia Daily Missourian we learn that Morris had become Student Body President at Mizzou.   The article says that Morris E. Dry, calling for “No Hazing” of incoming new students this upcoming school year. As context for where Morris’ spurning of the practice of hazing may have come from, read the clipping from the Mexico Message from the Fall of Morris’ Freshman year, September 1914 of his own hazing ordeal at the hand or rascally Sophomores.

Morris, of course was also a 1914 graduate of McMillan High School, along with Leonard Coatsworth.  His father, J.W. Dry was the Mayor of Mexico, and up until 1913 the elder Mr. Dry also ran a hardware and farm implement business in Mexico. Morris, along with his buddy Leonard was a top debater while in high school on widely recognized McMillan High School debate team, and became a top debater at Mizzou as well.

After Morris graduated University, he enlisted in the Navy during WWI and became a Navy Pilot.    Think about that.  A WWI pilot.  Another young Mexico man was also a pilot in WWI, Humphrey Craddock.  That’s pretty remarkable, two pilots from one small town in Missouri in the First   Morris was in fact so remarkable a pilot that he ended up going to Pensacola, FL where he trained Navy pilots to fly seaplanes.   Think “Top Gun”, but over sixty years before “Maverick”.

At the end of the war, Morris went to Boston to go to Harvard Law School. After he graduated Harvard and passed the bar, he moved to New York City to practice law. He joined U.S. Rubber Company as an attorney in 1926, specializing in Anti-Trust law. He was a founding partner of the Arthur, Dry & Dole law firm. At some point in the late 1920’s he reconnected with home-town Mexico girl and classmate Barbara Johnson, who was also living in New York City at the time. Barbara was a graduate of Smith College and with a Masters from Bryn Mawr. They married in 1934.  Barbara had also been trained at the Cordon Bleu culinary institute in Paris.

In 1942, Morris registered for the draft at the age of 45, and served the army as an attorney during WWII. Morris became General Counsel for the U.S. Rubber Company in the 1950’s, a position he held until his retirement in 1961. He died in 1990.

During his life, he became one of the most important and extensive collectors of old, original sheet music of American popular songs.  He had amassed over 20,000 songs in sheet music, including some of the rarest copies of certain songs known to exist.  One of these is the sheet music for “To Anacreon in Heaven”, from which Francis Scott Key got the tune for the Star Spangled Banner.   Morris’ collection of sheet music is now housed as the “Morris E. Dry Collection of American Popular Music” at the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  It is one of the most extensively accessed collections of sheet music by music historians today.   Follow this link to read a retrospective on the legacy of Morris E. Dry and his sheet music collection.   Absolutely remarkable.

 

Leonard 2/17/1919

Now, back to Leonard’s story.   1917 would prove to be a year of big changes for Leonard.  But the changes for Leonard would pale in comparison to the changes in store for the world itself.

In the spring of 1917, this VERY curious piece ran about Leonard in the University Missourian…. from March 20, 1917:

“Leonard Coatsworth, a student in the University, left today for Mexico, where he will clerk in a big hog sale tomorrow.  He will return on Thursday.”  

Clerk in a big hog sale??   Hmmmm.   Wonder what that was all about?

 

Apparently though, Leonard’s sense of wanderlust was kicking back in…. judging from this piece from a month later, April, 5, 1917.

Journalism Student with Chautauqua

“Leonard Coatsworth, of Mexico, MO, and a junior in the School of Journalism has obtained a position with the Ellison-White Chautauqua Company, and has left Columbia for Kansas City, preparatory to beginning the trip.  The circuit, which begins next week at Orange, Texas, will last five months, and will cover Texas, California, Washington, and other Western States.” 

 

As Leonard traveled to Texas, California, and eventually to the Pacific Northwest, the world at large was in turmoil.  The June 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and set to become one of the most powerful leaders in Europe … and not long after Leonard Coatsworth was graduating from McMillan High School … had plunged Europe into war.

In 1914, when war was declared in Europe, America under President Woodrow Wilson had adopted an official policy of “Neutrality and Isolation”. When news of trench warfare and the horrors associated with it reached the shores of America, it confirmed to many Americans that our government had adopted the right approach.

That approach had wide support of the majority of Americans – many of whom could not believe that civilized nations could descend into such depths as were depicted in the stories of trench warfare and the futility and horrors associated with such a strategy.  The newspapers, including the hometown Mexico Ledger, reported in almost every issue, news of some new atrocity.  Hand-to-hand combat, mustard gas attacks, random mortar shelling bringing devastation raining down from above … all these things were shocking and disturbing to the people over here reading about them.

So, America had tried to keep out of the conflict. But unrestricted submarine warfare, introduced by the Germans on January 9th, 1917, and which included the sinking of American ships, was the primary issue that caused Woodrow Wilson to ask Congress on April 2nd to declare war on Germany.  Four days later, on April 6th, 1917 America joined World War One on the side of the Allies.

That was the very day after the April 5th newspaper story about Leonard rejoining the Chautauqua.

So the summer of 1917 wore on, with Leonard traveling the country with Chautauqua. Going from town to town, he undoubtedly heard continually in each new city about local boys joining up right and left everywhere the Chautauqua went.

Soon the news reached Leonard on the road that all three of his brothers back home had joined up as well.  At many of those Chautauqua stops, he may have even seen the long lines at enlistment centers. As a budding newspaper man from his University experience, Leonard bought local papers at each stop, and read with a heavy heart the long lists of names of boys who had registered and joined up from each new town on the circuit.  The news of the war weighed heavily on Leonard.  With his nation at war, friends, and classmates …brothers … enlisting apace, Leonard knew the time had come for him to act.

Leonard’s Army Photo

In the August 19, 1917 edition of the University Missourian, comes this story:

“Leonard Coatsworth Into Army.  – Leonard Coatsworth of Mexico, a student in the University last year, is a member of the medical branch of the regular army. He is now at Recruit Barracks, Fort George Wright, Spokane, Wash. He resigned his position as advance man for the Ellison-White Chautauqua Company to enter the army.” 

Why he decided to enlist in the Medical Corps is a mystery, but after some basic training in the state of Washington, Leonard was transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas to get his training as a battlefield medic, learning to treat the most horrific of injuries seen in battle.  After that basic medic training, he was transferred BACK to Washington State, to Fort Lewis just outside of Tacoma, as a Medic with the United States Hospital Corps.  He was assigned to the 91st Army Infantry Division, and stationed at Fort Lewis.

Ethel

At Fort Lewis, prior to shipping out, Leonard met Ethel Lenore Tanner, a lovely local girl from the Tacoma area.  How they met is not recorded, nor is it known exactly how much time they had together prior to his deployment. What IS known is that they fell in love, and Leonard pledged to return from war and make Ethel his wife.  She gave him a picture and asked him to think of her often, and write as much as he could, and Leonard would indeed write often.

In the ensuing year of 1918, as a battlefield medic, Leonard saw horrors and hardship that simply cannot be imagined. Just as surely, he thought constantly of Ethel, and she reported later that he would send letters whenever he could, pledging his love, and vowing to do whatever he could just to stay alive, so he could make it back home to her.  She was his reason to survive.   He carried her photograph in a breast pocket next to his heart.

He was sent with his Division to France, to the Argonne Forest, where some of the most brutal warfare the world has ever known was taking place.  The Meuse-Argonne battle was the largest frontline commitment of troops by the U.S. Army in World War I, and also the deadliest.  A large portion of the battle was trench warfare, with men on each side squared off against one another in trenches which were sometimes only a few dozen yards apart.  Bullets were constantly whizzing overhead.  To pop up out of a trench was to risk certain death.  At times, as new assaults were mounted, it would devolve into the most brutal and-to-hand combat imaginable.

The Argonne forest offensive saw the first widespread use of the “Browning Automatic Rifle”.  This was the first practical “machine gun” that allowed our soldiers the luxury of rapid-fire.  Prior to that, it was one-shot at a time.   The Browning was effective in two ways. Defensively, it allowed our soldiers the ability to more effectively stem the enemy advancing assaults.  Offensively, it gave our troops their first real chance to have an advantage when advancing a line, of actually being able to outgun and overtake the enemy and gain territory.

But it also meant that the fighting became even more close-quartered, and the battlefield injuries and casualties even greater in number.  As a battlefield medic in the Argonne Forest, Leonard saw more horrors and more continual action than medics in any other war up until that time ever could have imagined.

During the battles in the Argonne, and particularly during the frequent assaults, there was constant gunfire, cannon and artillery fire, and bayonet attacks as opposing troops clashed in the trenches, lobbed and dodged grenades, and donned primitive masks to stem the effects of mustard gas.  The overall battle involved US forces equivalent to two full expeditionary armies… over 450,000 troops, most fighting in cramped trench warfare and occasionally packed in shoulder to shoulder.     There were over 26,000 US troops killed and over 95,000 wounded.

The injuries in the Argonne offensive were often horrific. Battlefield amputations were commonplace.  Over 122,000 casualties.   It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like for the young battlefield medics like Leonard and his fellows.

The 91st Army Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis had adopted the 91st Psalm as the bible scripture that would keep them and give them strength during their deployment.  Leonard had a copy of this, which became worn and ragged from the ravages of the battle, but he kept it in his pocket with the picture of Ethel. During breaks in the action, he would take out the Psalm and read it, and gaze upon Ethel’s picture and dream of getting back to her.  In part, the Psalm reads:

You will not fear the terror of night, or the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.

 

What must Leonard have observed with his eyes?  Certainly it included, as the Psalm had promised, “ten thousand falling at his right hand.”

In the December 23, 1918 edition of the Evening Missourian (Columbia, MO) we read:

“IN ALL THE BIG BATTLES “

“Leonard Coatsworth Writes of “Nine Days of Hell”.  First Sergeant Leonard Coatsworth, a former student in the School of Journalism of the University, writes from Belgium to the Missourian: “My service record gives me credit for St. Mihlel, and for the Argonne-Meuse offensive, and the advance on the Esault (Belgium). I went through nine days of hell in the Argonne. There and elsewhere in France and Belgium, I have seen, I believe, nearly every phase of open warfare. It has been a very remarkable experience, and I am deeply conscious of how privileged I have been to have had a part in this.” 

Many did not return from Europe.  Leonard saw dozens, if not hundreds of men he knew personally, men he had been through training with, fall in battle.  He had lived in mud and filth and blood and the stench of war.  He had buried friends (or abandoned them where they lay), treated wounds and injuries and amputations.

But he survived.  And when the war ended, he came home as he said he would.  He came home to Ethel, and home to finish his Journalism degree.

From “The Washington Newspaper”, September 1920, (the publication of the University of Washington Journalism School),

“Leonard Coatsworth, graduate in Journalism in the summer quarter, left immediately for the Montesano Vidette.  (The daily newspaper of Montessano Washington) Mr. Coatsworth had three years of Journalism under Dean Walter Williams at the University of Missouri, and was two years with the Ninety-First Division, most of that time in France.  Mr. Coatsworth was at Camp Lewis (Washington) before going overseas, and the Reason that brought him to this state after the war to finish up his journalism, will presently be with him in Montesano.”     

 

That “Reason”, of course, was Ethel.   Ethel Lenore Tanner and Leonard Broughton Coatsworth were married on the 17th of January, 1921.

Despite being born to a proud family of lumber men, Leonard was a born journalist and word man.  He took to his new profession with a passion and professionalism and dedication rarely seen. After a few years at the Montesano Vidette, he joined the staff at the Tacoma Daily Ledger as City Editor.

From the Morning Oregonian, Thursday August 24th, 1922,  we find this curious piece about Leonard and his car full of golf caddies.

BIG BEAR REARS AT AUTO

Bruin Takes Possession of Road and Car Almost Ditched.

ABERDEEN. Wash., Aug. 23. (Special) A big black bear reared on its haunches on the Olympic highway, two miles east of Aberdeen, early this afternoon, and nearly caused at least one motorist to drive into the ditch in astonishment. Leonard Coatsworth of Montesano, coming to Aberdeen with a number of Country club caddies as passengers, nearly ran into the bear before it decided that it could not cope with an automobile.  The animal dropped to all fours when only a few feet from the car, and ambled into the underbrush at the side of the road.

 

In 1925, Ethel gave birth to their only child, a daughter, Geraldine, whom they called Gerry.  When Gerry was seven years old, in 1932, Leonard brought home a dog for a pet.  The black mixed breed was mostly Cocker Spaniel, but from his very short legs, he obviously had some Dachshund in his lineage as well.  The name Gerry picked out for the pup, a name that fit him perfectly, was Tubby.   Tubby and Gerry were soon inseparable.

Tacoma is located on the banks of the backwaters of Puget Sound.  The Coatsworths  owned a small summer house in Arletta, a beach community on the shore of the peninsula opposite the city.  They loved spending as much of their spare time there as possible, and often took the ferry across to Arletta on weekends.  Leonard, Ethel, and Gerry.  And of course, Tubby went along.  At the beach house, Tubby considered himself the one that “ruled the roost”, and whenever Leonard and Ethel had guests over to the house, they had to first pass muster with Tubby.

Once when Gerry was swimming at the beach in Arletta, with Leonard and Tubby sitting on a blanket keeping an eye on her, Tubby actually saved her life.  Leonard had turned away momentarily when Gerry stepped in a hole or a depression underwater, and the strong current dragged her under.  Tubby started frantically barking, and alerted Leonard.  Leonard could not attract the attention of the young teen lifeguard, who was flirting with some nearby teenage girls.   He ended up plunging into the water himself, fully clothed, found Gerry, and dragged her to safety.

As a very upset father, he saw to it that the lifeguard was immediately dismissed.  But he didn’t stop there.  As a newspaperman with a “Bully Pulpit”, he wrote columns pointing out how ill-equipped the lifeguards in and around Tacoma were to do their jobs, and as a result became something of an activist, spearheading a campaign to call for mandatory training for lifeguards.  This led to laws that were widely adopted, some of which are still in effect today.

Back home in Tacoma, the Coatsworth family lived on North 31st street, and a scenic path just across the street led down a big hill directly to Puget Sound.  One day in 1935 when Gerry and her dad Leonard were out walking with Tubby, the dog rushed into traffic and was struck by a car.  Tubby survived the accident, but it left him with a permanently stiffened and barely functional hind leg, causing him to limp everywhere he went.

When the Tacoma Daily Ledger suspended publishing in 1937, Leonard joined the Tacoma Tribune serving at various times as Copy Editor, News Editor, and Editorial Writer.

At the Tribune, Leonard …

“… enjoyed a reputation as a talented newspaperman, the only one on staff who could cover a story, write it, edit it, set the press type, and even run the presses if necessary. His colleagues would say, “Don’t bother with the dictionary, just ask Leonard”.” (Columbia – The Journal of Northwest History, Summer 2007). 

The closest point across the sound from the city to the peninsula where Arletta beach and the Coatsworth cottage was located, where the channel narrowed down, was called, appropriately, “The Narrows”.   In 1938, construction began on the first ever bridge across the sound, at just this point.   It was to be an engineering marvel – the longest, narrowest, lightest suspension bridge ever built.   The center-span’s length to width ratio was 1::72.  This far surpassed the previous record holder, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco which had opened the previous year, 1937, and which had a length to width ratio of 1::47.  The new bridge was considered to be a triumph of civil and mechanical engineering.  Along with many others in the city, the Coatsworth family kept an eye on the construction progress and eagerly awaited the day there would be a bridge across the Sound, so they did not have to take the Ferry just to get across to their get-away cottage.

When the bridge opened in 1940, it was to great fanfare, parades, and celebration.   It operated as a toll bridge, with toll booths at the entrance to the bridge on each side.

It was soon noted by those crossing the bridge that they could actually feel it swaying and rollicking in the wind.  To the chagrin of the bridge designers, it was nicknamed, “Galloping Gertie”.   The engineers claimed there was nothing to worry about, as the bridge had been specifically designed to withstand sustained winds in excess of 120 mph.  This is equivalent to what we would today call a Category 3 hurricane.

As you may know, or may have guessed by now, that was not the case.

Many of the locals who regularly crossed the new bridge enjoyed the “thrill ride” of feeling their own cars, and watching the cars in front or behind, rise and fall with the undulating road bed when there was even a gentle breeze.    Privately, the engineers who had designed the bridge were becoming more and more worried.  The Toll Bridge Authority contacted Civil Engineers at the University of Washington to study the problem and devise a solution.    In the late summer of 1940, the engineers revealed a plan to stabilize “Gertie”, with the addition of curved steel plates and beams which would be added to the sides of structure.  This plan was accepted and the fabrication of the curved plates was begun.

None of them could know, though, that one of the most spectacular engineering failures of the twentieth century was imminent, and the plan to install the stabilizing plates would never come to fruition.

If you can remember back to the start of this very long story, back in “Part One”, I wrote about the newsreels we saw at the Liberty Theater on those Wednesday afternoon Summer Matinees back in Mexico, Missouri. One of those old newsreels we saw was the film of the epic failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge … the collapse where a relatively unremarkable wind took down the big suspension bridge known as “Galloping Gertie”.   Watch a newsreel of the bridge collapse here:

Newsreel Footage Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse

As I watched that film, and even as I saw it occasionally through the ensuing years, shown sometimes in physics or mechanical engineering classes, I did not know that there was a connection between that epic engineering failure and my little hometown of Mexico, Missouri.

For you see, the last man to attempt to drive across the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, “Galloping Gertie”, on the day that it collapsed, November 7, 1940, was none other than Mexico boy … journalist and wordsmith … Leonard Coatsworth.  And the only casualty that day when the bridge fell was his daughter Gerry’s little dog, Tubby.

On the morning of November 7th, 1940, Leonard had planned to travel with Ethel over to their house in Arletta to do some routine maintenance to their getaway cottage, and to begin the yearly process of “winterizing” it to withstand the upcoming Pacific Northwest winter.   At the last minute, Ethel decided to stay at home in Tacoma.  So Leonard, in their 1936 Studebaker, with Tubby riding along like a chauffeured aristocrat in his usual back-seat position, headed out towards the Sound and the fateful, last-ever attempt anyone would ever make to cross Galloping Gertie.

By mid-morning, the winds had kicked up a bit, and were blowing with gusts up to about 42 mph, racing through the Sound.    It was right at 10 am when Leonard paid his toll and drove west onto the bridge.   As he passed the bridge’s east tower, bridge span, and the road-bed began to suddenly sway and twist rather violently, in a fashion that Leonard had never experienced before in his many bridge crossings.

Leonard’s Studebaker on the violently twisting bridge

The bridge was tilting as much as 30 feet back and forth, to one side then the other.  It was impossible to drive.   With Leonard still behind the wheel, the car slid back and forth, was tossed about, and eventually slammed into the opposite curb. Driving was impossible.   Leonard realized he simply would not be able to cross the bridge, and decided to abandon the car and get off the bridge and wait it out.   He got out of the car, and attempted to remove Tubby from the backseat.

The little dog was frightened and highly agitated though, and uncharacteristically snarled and snapped at Leonard.  He decided that the safest thing for Tubby was to let him remain in the back seat until he could return to the car and get them both safely across to the other side.

Leonard began to try to get himself off the bridge.   He would stumble a few steps on the violently undulating structure, then be thrown unceremoniously to the pavement like a rag doll.   He crawled, stumbled, and dragged himself along as best he could, holding on to the curb at times for dear life.  He was tossed into the air more than once.  In the occasional few moments of relative calm between lurches of the structure, he would be able to crouch and run a few steps, then the bridge would twist and buck, and he’d be thrown to the ground again.

Leonard with pants torn and shoes scuffed.

Reaching the toll plaza eventually, Leonard collapsed, bloody, shaken, bruised and battered. Pants torn, shoes scuffed.   There a small crowd had gathered, watching the twisting bridge with fear and wonder.  Leonard’s had been the last car through the toll booth on either side.

Ever the newsman, Leonard went to a phone booth in the park at the base of the bridge, and called the Tribune, who immediately dispatched a photographer, Howard Clifford, and a reporter.   On the way to the bridge, along Sixth Avenue they passed a large, bright billboard advertising Pacific National Bank as “secure as the Narrows Bridge”.  As they were in quite a hurry to get to the bridge before it collapsed they made a note to themselves to photograph this billboard on their return.  But by that time they pass that way again later in the day, they found that slogan had hastily been painted over and removed. It was no longer the message the bank wished to convey to its investors…

Back at the toll booth entrance to the bridge, as others continued to gather to watch the bridge, the undulating and twisting continued for the better part of an hour.  A couple of film crews arrived, which is why we have the amazing footage still today of the collapse.  Footage which gets shown and re-shown and analyzed in Civil Engineering classes to this day.   One of the men who showed up when the reports that the bridge was in serious and potentially devastating oscillation was F. Burt Farquharson, the Professor of Civil Engineering that had come up with the as yet unrealized plan to stabilize the bridge.   He and Clark Eldridge, Chief Engineer for the Toll Bridge Authority watched helplessly with sinking hopes for the bridge, unable to do anything at all to stop or quell the motion.  In a moment when the bridge was relatively calm, Farquharson ran out onto the structure, against the protests of those standing by.   Perhaps with the mindset of a typical engineer, he simply wanted to see the twisting structure better up close, in hopes it would further inform his opinions of what might be done to stabilize it in the future.

He made his way out as far as Leonard’s Studebaker, and heard the highly agitated Tubby still in the back seat.   Farquharson tried to retrieve the dog, but Tubby was scared, and ended up biting the engineer’s hand, drawing blood.   With the bridge starting again to sway and creak and make dangerous sounds of structural stress, the engineer decided to leave Tubby and get back to safety himself.

The Collapsed Bridge

Just as he was clearing the towers and back to a safer point, after nearly an hour of violent motion, the bridge was simply unable to withstand the stresses and it spectacularly began to break up.  Huge parts of the superstructure and the road-bed twisted and fell to the churning water 190 feet below.

Plunging to the water along with the bridge was Leonard and Ethel’s 1936 Studebaker.   Inside, sat Gerry Coatsworth’s beloved pooch, Tubby.   He was only casualty of the day.

Continuing on the phone with his newspaper, Leonard dictated a story in a shaky voice, having made no notes, composing simply off the top of his head, borne of his lifetime of experience as a wordsmith.   It begins, “I saw the Narrows Bridge die today, and only by the grace of God escaped dying with it. …”

The story was printed in the paper the next day, and would be picked up and reprinted in newspapers around the world.

Story filed by Leonard Coatsworth, November 7, 1940 just after being the last driver to attempt to cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. 

I saw the Narrows Bridge die today, and only by the grace of God escaped dying with it.

I have been near death many times in my life, but not even in my worst experiences in France did I experience the feeling of helpless horror that gripped me when I was trapped on the bridge this morning.

Before starting over the bridge I had driven underneath the approach to watch the motion. The undulations were more rapid than I had ever seen before. This, however, was the only difference I saw from other times when a strong breeze was blowing.

I drove on the bridge and started across. In the car with me was my daughter’s cocker spaniel, Tubby. The car was loaded with equipment from my beach home at Arletta. Not until I reached the first towers did I realize something was terribly wrong.

Either just as I reached the towers or just as I drove past them, the bridge began to sway violently from side to side. This was something new in my experience with the bridge. Heretofore, the noticeable motion has been up and down and undulating.

Before I realized it, the tilt from side to side became so violent I lost control of the car and thought for a moment it would leap the high curb and plunge across the sidewalk of the bridge and into the railing.

I jammed on the brakes and got out of the car, only to be thrown onto my face against the curb. I tried to stand and was thrown again. Around me I could hear the concrete cracking.

I started back to the car to get the dog, but was thrown before I could reach it. The car itself began to slide from side to side on the roadway. I decided the bridge was breaking up and my only hope was to get back to shore.

On hands and knees most of the time I crawled 500 yards or more to the towers. Across the roadway from me I became aware of another man, apparently crawling and then running a few steps in a crouched position.

My breath was coming in gasps, my knees were raw and bleeding, my hands bruised and swollen from gripping the concrete curb. But I was spurred by the thought that if I could reach the towers I would be safe.

Finally, my breath gave out completely and I lay in the roadway clutching the curb until I could breathe again, and then resumed my tortuous progress.

Those who stood on the shore and watched the bridge in its death agony still have no conception of the violence of the movement felt by one out beyond the towers. Safely back at the toll plaza, I saw the bridge in its final collapse and saw my car plunge into the Narrows.

I saw Clark Eldridge (Toll Bridge Authority engineer), his face white as paper. If I feel badly, I thought, how must he feel?

And always through the back of my mind ran the thought – why did I not save my dog? But I know I would have lost him on the way in.

With real tragedy, disaster and blasted dreams all around me, I believe that right at this minute what appalls me most is that within a few hours I must tell my daughter that her dog is dead, when I might have saved him.

There is an off-leash dog park now in the shadow of the new bridge, same location as the old bridge, and it has been named in honor of Tubby.  There is a plaque there honoring the frightened Spaniel who plunged to his death that fateful November afternoon.

After the bridge collapse and the notoriety he gained therefrom, Leonard returned to the life of a respected newspaperman in Tacoma, and to the life of a family man with Ethel and daughter Gerry.     Leonard Coatsworth lived only to the age of 61, passing in November of 1956.

Leonard’s Obituary:

November 26, 1956.   Tri-City Herald, Tacoma WA.    – Leonard B. Coatsworth, who retired June 30 after 34 years’ service with The Ledger and News Tribune, died at his home here Sunday. He was 61. Coatsworth was a correspondent for the old Daily Ledger in the Montesano area in 1921 when the paper brought him to Tacoma as an assistant city editor. He later became city editor and was news editor of The Ledger when publication was suspended in 1937. Coatsworth then joined The Tacoma News Tribune staff, serving at various times as copy reader, news editor and editorial writer. He won national prominence in 1940 when the first Narrows Bridge collapsed. Driving to his summer home at Arietta, he was caught on the twisting span and made his way back to the Tacoma end of the bridge on his hands and knees. His copyrighted story of “Galloping Gertie’s” collapse received national attention, and he was flown to New York to appear on a nationwide radio program.

So there you have it.   As I said out the outset, I have been fascinated … obsessed really … with Leonard’s story for quite some time. I’m not exactly sure why.  Certainly the random fact of his experience with the Narrows Bridge, being a hometown boy, is what drew me in initially.  But as I found more and more clippings, it got more and more interesting.  It allowed me to glimpse him through the years … from a young boy experimenting with wireless radio in the earliest days of that medium, to an avid Boy Scout, in the earliest days of Scouting, to his incredible hike with his friends from Mexico to St. Louis, to his growing expertise as a debater and orator, to going off to college and pulling the “photo prank” and his experiences at my alma mater Mizzou, to his joining Chatauqua, joining the army and meeting Ethel and their love for one another, going off to the First World War with her photo in his pocket, seeing some of the deadliest and most devastating hand-to-hand warfare ever and treating those wounds as a battlefield medic, to returning home to his true love Ethel, and on to the bridge collapse and poor little Tubby, and beyond.

Maybe many … or even most…. lives are that remarkable when you unpack them?  I don’t know.   But I do know this:  The idea of Leonard and his friends Morris Dry and Minter Bragg and all the others walking the streets of my hometown, Mexico, Missouri, and seeing some of the same stores I remember as a child, visiting the same railroad depot, playing and camping in some of the same woods, fishing in the same lakes …. Somehow that just makes me happy.   The idea that they were there doing those things a full sixty years before me gives me some kind sense of comfort about the continuity of things.    And the idea that Leonard’s nephew was there for me in my moment of need…. to loan me the 50 cents I needed to get into the cool darkness of the Liberty Theater on a blistering day, to “be a kid” on a summer afternoon …. That makes me smile from the inside out.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey through my childhood in Part I, and through a bit of Leonard’s life in Part II.   As I said at the outset, I draw no particular parallels, other than the fact that we grew up in the same place, at different times, and both had grand adventures.

So here’s to the adventures of childhood.   Here’s to the neighborhoods and towns and cities that made us who we are.   And here’s to the ordinary moments of life.  Moments that when viewed in the rear-view mirror turn out to be not so ordinary at all.

And here’s to Tubby.

love,
John

 

July 31, 2021
by John Shouse
13 Comments

two boys … one town (part I)

At the outset, I have an admission and a confession:   I will admit that I have been obsessed with telling this story … these stories … for a long time now.  I will confess that I don’t understand all the reasons why that is so.  I would work on it, then put it aside for long periods of time.   I told some friends from my home-town about it, and they started to laugh about it and call me …… well … you’ll meet *that* guy in Part II.  It has taken me a long, long time to come to a point where I have felt the following two stories (blog posts) were ready to share.   I don’t know that I’m finished with this yet.  I may never be completely finished with it.  

What follows is written in two parts, and yes, both parts are rather lengthy.   This first part weighs in at over 9000 words.   The second part is longer at a little over 10,000.   Nevertheless, I really hope you find it intriguing enough to stay with.

Together, they comprise a look back at two different boys who grew up in the same place, but at two different times in history.

The place is Mexico, Missouri.

The first of those boys is me.

The other, you’ll meet along the way if you stick with the story.   He isn’t related to me.  But I find his story utterly remarkable, and I happened upon it entirely by chance, and the more I learned about him, the more fascinated …. And yes, obsessed … I have become.   At this point, I may be the world’s foremost expert on his life.   Everybody needs a hobby.

I hope that in some small way, you are as struck by some of the more intriguing aspects of his life as I have become.  As far as this first part that is about me, I can only say that while it may or may not be interesting, it is at least a partial narrative of my life growing up as a kid in a small town.  Too, it’s a bit of a look at something that I’ve felt for a long time.  That is, that “moms and dads” are often largely (and perhaps luckily) clueless about the adventures, wanderings and shenanigans their children find themselves involved in while growing up.   Actually, I think that was likely as true about the other boy decades ago, as it was about me.  And I hope above all that either one or both of these stories gives you reason to think back on your OWN remarkable life …. your own wild and crazy beautiful life …. and to remember your own amazing stories of childhood, and how you were formed by the people, places and events you experienced in those wondrous times.

My obsession with this all began with the discovery of a random historical fact, to be revealed later. It fascinated me.  In searching out additional information on the other boy, who lived in a completely different era than the one in which I grew up, I was struck over and over along the way by more than a few parallels between his story and mine.   This led me to wonder about the “power of place” we experience as kids, and how much our roots shape who we are and who we become.

As I learned more about him, I recalled many things about my own childhood.   I could imagine him as a young boy, walking the streets of Mexico, Missouri.  Going into the stores on “The Square” for penny candy, where the merchants all knew his dad and his family.   I envisioned him walking the halls of the schools of his day.  Sitting in class and dreaming of the world out beyond the classroom window. I could imagine him going on “adventures” around town in the surrounding countryside with his friends.  In fact, some few of those adventures of his are recounted here.  They certainly are, at best, due to the lens of years only vague hints of the more grand and extraordinary adventures that he might have had.  I could imagine him sitting around his family dinner table with mom and dad, brothers and sister.   I could imagine him listening to his mom and dad as they visited with neighbors, talking about the issues of the day. (taxes, advancements in science, transportation, politics, foreign wars, the rapid expansion of the town with new construction and new neighborhoods, and a burgeoning fire-brick industry).  I could imagine him going to church and being seen by folks there as “a nice boy”.  I could imagine him seeking out books and magazines from those downtown stores, and from Audrain County’s Carnegie Library, which of course was MUCH newer when he was a kid than it was in MY day.   I did almost every one of those same things too, including spending a lot of time in that same beloved old library.

Now, I am not suggesting that his story and mine share any mystical connection, or even that they are really all that parallel.  In fact, I’m certain there are far more differences than similarities.   But we did grow up in the same small town and walked the same brick streets. We swam or fished in the same lakes. He was a precocious kid.  I’ve been told that I was a precocious kid as well.  He loved to make people laugh.  I spent too many of my school hours concentrating on doing the same thing.  He did science experiments.  I did science experiments.  He was a boy scout.  I was a boy scout.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to draw too many conclusions.

Most of all, I just hope that both stories are somewhat entertaining, and that you enjoy reading my musings.   If you make it through either or both parts, I’d love to hear your thoughts.   Thanks.

When I was a boy in the early 1960’s in Mexico, Missouri, summers were always a time of great adventures. For a young boy with an active imagination, the next adventure was literally always right around the corner, or just down the street.  In talking about memories of childhood, my many old and new friends from Mexico agree on one thing … it seemed to be, in many ways, very nearly the perfect place to grow up.  Wherever you’re from, I hope you feel that way about your town too.

The Mexico of my youth was a town that was big enough to not be tiny, and yet small enough to not be the “big city”.  For those of us who lived in town, it wasn’t exactly rural, but we all had good friends from school and maybe even relatives who were growing up on family farms.   It was much more than a wide-spot in the road, but still small enough to know you would at least recognize many of the folks walking the sidewalks downtown on Friday night.  And nearly ALL of us seemed to go downtown on Friday night. Friday was the one night each week when all the stores stayed open late.  Friday night downtown was as much a social event as it was an opportunity for “shopping”.

Mexico of my youth was big enough to have a fairly large number of small, independent grocery stores scattered around town (probably close to two dozen at one point), and also a couple of “supermarkets”.   One reason for all the small markets in local neighborhoods was that it was relatively rare that a family had two cars in those days, and many women did not drive, nor work outside the home.   So it was not uncommon that when “the man of the house” was out in his role as breadwinner, some women would do the family shopping by walking to the nearest neighborhood market, picking up groceries and walking home with them.    Of course, this abundance of small markets in town meant that neighborhood kids had plenty of easy access to places to go for candy, sodas or treats.  Often on the way home from school, but also as part of a typical summer day’s rituals.    For me it was either Smiley’s Market, right across from my elementary School, Eugene Field, or Quisenberry’s Market a few blocks closer to town, or the West Side Market which may have been geographically closer, but in a neighborhood I didn’t frequent that often. We had cultural lines then too that were seldom crossed … even in a small friendly town.

There were a thriving and diverse group of downtown merchants, including a handful of big department stores … big by Mexico standards anyway.  We had our share of the “chain” stores, FW Woolworth, JC Penny, Montgomery Ward.  But the majority of the merchants were home-town, local folks.  One of these stores … selling primarily clothing but also furniture, and “dry-goods” was a real marvel and a treat to go into.  Fredendall-Wilkins.  The thing that made a treat out of any trip when I was about eight years old to Fredendall-Wilkins with mom for a stiff, dark-blue, too-long pair of brand-new Levi jeans was their method of handling money.   They had this amazing trolley system with little metal cash boxes that zipped around through the store.    So when mom paid for the purchase the clerk at the desk where you were standing would put her cash into a little metal trolley-car, attach it to the moving system of cables, pulleys, brackets and braces and ZOOM, off it would go zipping around the store.    It would eventually make its way to the mezzanine level (also the location of the millinery department (Lady’s Hats). It was called “The Frances Horton Hat Shop at Fredendall-Wilkins”.   I never knew who Frances Horton was, but I do remember the women walking out with big round hat boxes.  Or seeing those boxes in some friends houses, stored on an upper shelf in mom’s closet.  And seeing those hats on “church corner” on Sundays, as families would arrive or exit the three church buildings on those corners. (the Phone Company was on the fourth corner).    But I digress … back at Fredendall-Wilkins, the accounting office was also on that same second level too.  So the little trolley car of cash from the point-of-sale would zip around the store and into the accounting office window.  I’d wait below with mom, with my eyes glued on that window, until a short time later a hand would emerge, attach the trolley-car back onto the cable where it would again zoom around the store, clickety-clackety, clickety-clackety …. then descend right to the correct desk where the clerk would open it, hand mom her change and a hand-written receipt, and we’d be on our way.    It always amazed me that the little trolley car always knew exactly where to go.    Years later as an engineer, I looked that thing up online, and I believe I found the company that made it (Lamson Cash Railway Carriers of Syracuse, NY), and read how it worked (coding pins).   Such was the power of fascination it held for me.    If you’ll recall that other boy I mentioned back a the outset …   well, Fredendall-Wilkins opened, with that new-fangled cash-carrier system when he was about eight-years old.   His dad’s business was just a scant block away.  It isn’t hard to imagine how much of a fascination it might have been for his inquisitive mind as well.  Of ALL the boys his age in town at the time.  But I get ahead of my story here ….

In addition to the locally owned businesses in town with familiar neighbors working and shopping there, even the chain stores in town were managed and staffed by local folks.  We knew many of the merchants in town by name, and when you went in a store with your parents, the odds are pretty good the merchants knew you too.   They were your neighbors, your fellow-church goers, and their kids were in school with you.

We had four public elementary schools (Eugene Field, Macmillan, Hawthorne, an Garfield.   Garfield was known in the pre-integration sixties of my youth as the “colored school”) which fed into the one public Junior High, and then into the one High School.  There was a K-8 Catholic school that fed into High School as well.    And many, many small (typically one-room) country schools that also fed into Junior High or High School.

There were many, maybe even a majority, of our neighbors and friends whose families had been Mexicoans for at least two or even more generations, and few people ever seemed to move away … so it was not simply our hometown, but a place where many of us felt extraordinarily rooted.

Mexico, Missouri was, quite simply, a GREAT place to be a kid growing up.  Like many of my friends, my world was as big as the limits of how ever far I dared to ride my bike without alarming my parents … and with each passing year, my pedal-powered range would grow just a bit, and the adventures that came with that expanded range would get correspondingly bigger.

As I said before, I was mostly seen as a “good kid”, and yes … I think I was.  I know I was.  I helped old ladies with chores.  I did responsible things that responsible kids are expected to do.  I was in Sunday School at the Methodist Church almost every week.  Now, I wasn’t there as much as my friend Rob.  Rob … we called him “Robbie” back then … had a string of “Perfect Attendance” pins stretching down the entire length of his lapel.  It was most impressive. Nobody beat Robbie for Sunday School attendance.   Even so, I was there far more weeks than not, and eventually become one of the “Acolytes” (candle-lighters) for worship service after Sunday School, and then one of the go-to “Bible Bearers”.    That is, for Sunday worship, I held the big gold-leaf bible out majestically in front of me on my outstretched hands, and carried it down the aisle, ahead of everything (even the American Flag and Methodist flags) and placed it lovingly upon the altar-stand, and opened it to the passage that the preacher would use that day … that he had carefully bookmarked for me with a big velvet bookmark to match the colors of the liturgical calendar.   Like I said….. I was a “good kid”.  That does not mean I didn’t find my share of adventures that were just a bit beyond the “good kid” envelope.   Some were so far out of the envelope as to have completely lost sight of the mailbox.

One of the things I always enjoyed was the time I’d spend with friend or two “down at the track”.  That is, the railroad tracks.  It was so much fun to be there, in and around the local railroad passenger depot and the freight switching yard.   Sometimes we would just sit and watch the trains coming and going, the freight cars switching tracks, or adding and releasing cars. In my mind, if I just close my eyes and think about it, I can still hear the sounds as those big cars would bang together, hitching, un-hitching, squeaking, groaning and straining to move as the locomotives pushed them around.   I can remember the smell inside the train station … the smell of old well-worn leather seat chairs, a few pew-type wooden benches around the walls, the tile floor with tiny hexagonal tiles and the grime and dirt of years pushed into the corners by a janitor’s mop or broom, and reams of the carbon paper that were used for tickets and other official railroad documents.  And of course, the smell of tobacco.   Smoking or chewing was a de-facto part of life at the train station.  Everywhere else too.

There was an old cracked and discolored porcelain bubbler at which we could snag a cold gulp of water to relieve the parched throats that had come from the frenetic peddling of our bikes the 5 or 6 blocks from home, usually on a hot summer day.

More magically, there was a coke machine there in the depot, just calling out to me, if I was lucky enough to have a dime. It did indeed seem like magic, because when you put in the coin and pulled the lever, there would be the sound of gears whirring and motors buzzing from deep within the bowels of the machine. It would bump and shake and grind and growl, and when it stopped, you knew it was time to lift the vertical sliding door on front.  There, inside, just behind that door would stand a glistening, dripping bottle of ice-cold Coca-Cola, with fine wisps of water vapor swirling around it.  If I was TRULY wealthy on any given day, I could also take advantage of the adjacent snack machine to buy a small bag of salted Tom’s Peanuts to dump into the Coke.  Don’t ask me why, but odds are if you’re close to my age or older, you did the “Peanuts-in-the-Coke” ritual too.

However, our adventures at “the tracks” were far from limited to inside of the depot.  Often times we would play under the nearby “Overhead Bridge”, where US Highway 54, the main road that went through our town, passed over the railroad tracks.  This was long before the days of the current “bypass” that worked to isolate our town from hurried travelers on the highway, (as has also happened with countless other small towns across America).   It was even before the modern and wide “Green Boulevard” (an inside the city-limits “bypass” of the downtown, of sorts) that was built not only to ease the route for the big trucks passing through town, but also to provide additional ease of access to “The Plant”.    It passed right in front of A.P. Green Refractories and Firebrick Company, the town’s largest factory and number-one employer.

So before Green Boulevard, the “Overhead Bridge” got basically ALL the traffic that was passing through Mexico from north to south or vice-versa.

Underneath the bridge (or somewhere in the overgrowth nearby) was a place where the transients (or to use the word that was current then … hobos), would often crash for the night while waiting for another freight train to come through to take them to parts unknown.    I also hopped one of those freights with a friend one time … and rode it to the next town, where we had to jump off when it slowed down just a bit … but that’s another story for another day.

It was always fun when my friends and I would find the empty whiskey, beer, or wine bottles that were strewn in the area probably MOSTLY by the hobos, but possibly by some locals.  Who knew?  There were often quite a few of them. Sometimes we would sit them on a rail and throw rocks at them to break them.  But just as often, we would toss them up as high as we could against the concrete bridge abutment, and then laugh and cover our heads with our hands and scatter as the glass rained down around us.  Yes, our mothers and our teachers and Sunday School teachers would have been appalled … the nice girls that we were starting to notice and flirt with would have been appalled … but fun is fun when you’re a boy of nine or ten.

We would put pennies or dimes on the tracks and wait for a train to roll through give you a nice shiny paper-thin souvenir, assuming you could find the coin afterward, which more often than not, you couldn’t.  Still, I did have my share of train-flattened pennies in a little box in my dresser drawer.   Never put a nickel on the tracks though.  Everybody knows that a nickel might DE-RAIL a train.    Some kid told me, and I believed him.   He’d seen it happen.

Other times we would pedal our bikes up to the top of the big nearby mound of coal that fired the power plant that supplied electricity to our town. The coal pile was immediately adjacent to the bridge and the tracks.    Zooming down the coal mountain at breakneck speed, we would slam on the brakes at the bottom and fish-tail to a stop, raising huge clouds of coal dust which would choke anyone in vicinity. The coal dust would get in your eyes, and generally turn your ankles, lets, arms, neck, face … any bit of exposed skin … as black as a blackbird’s wing.  It was also turning our clothes black, but kids don’t notice those things.  On those “coal pile” days, I would usually try to find a garden hose somewhere to spray off the worst of the grime before going home, or better yet, a creek to “bathe” in.  There was a creek on the Green Estate that more than once was the scene of one of those impromptu “baths”.    Otherwise, I’d risk certain wrath from mom, who had an uncanny ability to read the telltale signs of the grime I was covered in, and know exactly what I’d been up to.  “Please tell you me you haven’t been down at the tracks again!!”

I think moms just come pre-equipped with some kind of sophisticated “dirt radar”. For example, my mom could always tell the difference between dirt from the lake, dirt from the ball field, dirt from the clay pits (being a brick town, there were clay pits EVERYWHERE), dirt from a construction site, and dirt from the railroad tracks.  All dirt was bad.  Railroad dirt was EXTRA bad.   And she always knew.

One of my buddies who accompanied me on those trips to “the tracks” was Marty Hamilton.  Marty was my age, also went to school with me at Eugene Field Elementary. He and I were in the same class each year from Kindergarten all the way through Sixth grade.  We were also in many of the same classes in subsequent years as well, including band.  When I recollect my adventures from those years from third or fourth grade up through our time at Hardin Junior High School, Marty is in many of the most vivid memories.

Of all the adventures to be had “down at the tracks”, I always thought the best thing there were the passenger trains.

It is not lost on me that I am a part of the last generation of small-town kids to remember these grand old powerhouse diesel locomotives regularly rolling through town … with Pullman cars for passengers, dining cars, and mail cars, and always the red caboose bringing up the rear.  It was just mesmerizing to watch the man who had the coolest job I could imagine…. the Conductor … in his crisp uniform, starched white shirt, and conductor’s cap, making sure tickets were punched as the passengers exited or boarded, and then to hear him singing out “Allllll …Aboard” as the train prepared to leave the station.   I get goosebumps all over again now just imagining that call.   Some kids wanted to be firemen or astronauts or policemen.   I remember wanting to be a Conductor.

Mostly though, I wanted to be ON that train.  I wanted so badly just to get on that train and see where it would take me.  Every single time I was down at the tracks, and saw the train pull out, I imagined I was on it, watching the station and eventually the town, fade into the distance.  Every single time.  No telling how many times I stood outside the depot and watched the train pull out, chug down the tracks, and disappear into the distance.   I didn’t get on my bike and ride off until the train was out of sight.

In the early 1960’s we were still close enough to WWII that some kids had fathers or uncles who had fought in the war. Some even had grandfathers who had fought in WWI.  And of course, we had those great old TV shows for reference …. Combat!, Rat Patrol!, etc., and plenty of comic books and movies.  So when we played “army” there were never any doubts:  We had the Germans or Japanese conveniently available to abuse as the “bad guys” they were … because that’s just the way it was.

When you played with your little plastic army men, the green ones were “good guys” … Americans.  And each one was a potential war hero, leading his platoon to liberate a village, or ready to jump on a “potato masher” grenade tossed by some stinking Nazi soldier, and sacrifice himself to save his company.

But the GRAY ones were German, and the TAN ones were Japanese. Evil. Sinister looking. Expendable.  Yes, VERY “expendable”.

Not only did we kill these guys without remorse in our mock combat, we also didn’t mind eliminating them quite literally.  By blowing them up with fireworks, melting with a magnifying glass, flaming them into a mass of foul smelling goo from a lighter-fluid fueled “napalm” inferno, or seeing them wash away in a garden-hose-assisted tidal wave.

What can I say?  War is hell.  Especially if you’re gray or tan.

Another thing we did regularly was ride our bikes to the “Lumber Company”, also down near the railroad tracks, and right across from the depot. I can still remember the smell of the freshly cut wood, with sawdust scattered everywhere. In the back, where the lumber was cut to order for their customers, there was a big scrap pile of odds and ends, and the men who worked back there didn’t mind if we kids would come in through the back entrance on our bikes (as long as we stayed out of their way) and help ourselves to scraps from this heap.

I can remember many, many times riding down there, filling the basket on my bike with interesting-looking lumber scraps, and riding home to create something essential for one of our adventures.    I used that wood to build countless “battleships”.   That is, a few blocks nailed together into a very rough semblance of a battleship, scaled for those little plastic men.  Or an aircraft carrier.  Or a PT boat.  On the decks of those ships, those plastic army men could fight epic naval battles (in the “sea” of the gravel driveway).   Alternately a small block of that wood, with an even smaller block on top, with a large spike nail angled out of this top block would become a tank. Tanks could (and often would) mow down legions of Germans (gray) or Japanese (tan) by plowing right over them, no need to even engage the cannon.

Or I would use other pieces of that wood to make “bridges” which could easily be blown up (kicked to pieces) to prevent the Germans from accessing some critical and strategic piece of land or a munitions factory. (My pile of firecrackers).  As the culmination of the day’s warfare, blowing up a bridge might entail soaking the lumber in gasoline or lighter fluid, then tossing a match or even a firecracker onto it.   Then I’d rain down a barrage of gravel on it as it burned.    General Blackjack Pershing (like me, another famous and brilliant Missouri military leader) had nothing on me.  But had my MOM found out, she surely WOULD have had “something on me” … or shall I say, something on a particular PART of me.

I also was able to salvage enough scrap lumber of sufficient size and length from that big heap of wood at the Lumber Co., to cobble together the start of a framework of a tree house.   Seeing my efforts, my dad (the best dad ever) helped by getting the “REAL” lumber for the floor. But the “ladder” up the tree, and at least some of the supporting truss-work, etc., I built with the scraps from the lumber company.   We built that treehouse, way up in a mulberry tree on the edge of my parent’s garden in the back of our back yard.  I can remember helping with the nailing and measuring and getting everything ready so that dad could install the flooring… which he did by liberating some old electric motor shipping crates from A.P. Green, where he worked in the Electric Shop.  Mom made him install a railing for “safety”.  He very likely might also have gotten some of the supplies from my “lumber company” down by the tracks.  Another of my friends from those years, Johnny Beebee, who lived right around the corner from me, had a tree house back there already, across the fence in his back yard … adjacent to ours.

Our plan was to build my tree house close enough to his that we could install a rope swing to go from one to the other.  This plan worked pretty well too… right up until Johnny B. fell out of the swing while trying to dismount from the tire onto his treehouse’s platform. He fell the 10 feet or so to the ground and dislocated his shoulder.  The shoulder on his pitching arm.  The fact that this put a severe crimp in his Little League career and may in fact have ended his slow but sure march to become the next starting pitcher in the rotation right after Bob Gibson … Gibby… for our beloved St. Louis Cardinals, did not make his folks very happy.

My Cub Scout pals

Johnny Beebee and I were in Cub Scouts together, with our blue uniforms and yellow neckerchiefs.  His mom and my mom were the “Den Mothers” for our Cub Scout Den.  We also had Monroe Smith, Ranny Trainor, and of course Marty Hamilton was there too.   There were other boys in our Den too, but their names escape my memory now.

When time came for us to transition from Cubs to Boy Scouts, Marty and I were in the same troop.   Troop 36, sponsored by the Christian Church. My Methodist Church did not yet have a troop, though they would get one only a year or two later.   Along with Marty and I were our friends Monty Safford, John Rolfes, Louis Whittaker, & Mike Neill.  We had older kids as well, including Lon Ellis, who was a year older than the rest of us and was just the coolest guy ever.  If there was something new and cool and exciting, it seems like it was always Lon who knew about it first. There was Jerry Potts and David Sublette.  There was Bill Adams, whose dad Harold … “Mr. Adams”… was our Scoutmaster.  Bill, though several years older, was another one of the “cool guys”.   And there was Marc Jarvis and Neil Enslen who were two of the neighbors on my block.  They were both four years older than me.  Neil was the first Eagle Scout I ever knew, and I really looked up to him, because I had seen the dedication and commitment it took to reach that level.

Our scout adventures were just so much fun.   We went on many, many campouts all over the area, including many at Mike’s dad’s farm.  Mikes’ dad Holoway …. “Holly” … was our County Assessor.  The Neill’s had a farm out on Route FF, with rolling hills, and a small stand of woods.   Our scout troop often had overnight campouts in the woods on Neill’s farm.   One year we even held a winter campout, scheduled against the better judgement of many of the mothers, in the face of an impending snowstorm.  Still, we all just bundled up really well, and faced the cold.

As soon as we made camp on that snowy afternoon, we were all encouraged to get out in the woods and gather plenty of fallen branches and sticks and logs for firewood to keep the bonfires blazing overnight. Then, with the work done, we decided to have our fun.   Many of us had brought sleds along. When the big white fluffy flakes started falling, it packed in nicely around the base of our tents, and actually provided some “insulation” after a fashion.

Even though the snow got to a depth of about a foot, it wasn’t as cold for camping as you might think.  Of course we made a variety of snow “forts” in preparation for the obligatory giant snowball fight.  Then, later that night, I have an extremely vivid memory of sledding down hills in Mr. Neill’s farm fields with a group of my fellow Boy Scouts in the full moon light.   One boy was speeding down a hill at breakneck speed and sledded right into a barb-wire fence.  I remember our group running down to where he was and helping extricate him from the tangle.

He got some lacerations from the barbs, including at least one across his face.  I have tried, but simply don’t remember the Scout’s name that hit the fence.  There was a lot of blood, and I have this vivid memory of red drops in the white snow in the moonlight.  With so many vivid memories of that trip, I’m kind of surprised that I simply don’t remember the name of the scout who got injured.

Later, wet and cold and half-frozen, we all assembled back by the campfire. We warmed ourselves with nearly boiling hot beef bouillion sipped slowly from tin cups.  The “prescription” was:  Take a tiny steaming sip, and as you swallow you can feel it warming you all the way down to your gut.  Take another.  And another.  Soon you were feeling warm all over, standing in the moonlight in the snow with the flickering light of the campfire casting shadows on the surrounding tents.

A roaring fire, crackling and spitting and popping, since some of the wood was wet from the snow, sparks flying in the air, maybe a dozen nearly frozen boys crowded around sipping the life-giving broth.  There we were, miles from town, surrounded by snow, by other boys and our scout leaders, and by a small settlement of tents scattered about.   Laughing and telling stories. It’s hard to imagine a grander adventure for a boy.

Then as the time for retiring to our tents drew near, crawling back through the tent flap, careful as possible not to drag in any more snow than necessary, taking off boots, sliding into sleeping bags, and stripping down to just long-johns.  Making sure we had a dry change of clothes stowed in the foot of the sleeping bag, so as to be warmed by our body-heat for morning.

When morning came, I wriggled into the warm clothes from the foot of the sleeping bag, then into my heavy winter coat, and along with other scouts who were also emerging from their own tents, came out into the bright white winter world, to gather again around the roaring fire with Mr. Adams and Holly Neill and a couple of other dads who had gone along, to a hearty breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and hot steaming oatmeal.  And scalding coffee from a small campfire percolator.

Here is a fact that is not up for argument:  Breakfast, expertly cooked over a campfire on a cold wintry morning is the best breakfast in the world.

Back in the “real world”, back in Mexico, Missouri just a few miles down the road, on normal mornings … even in winter …. I’m guessing that few if any of us kids were coffee drinkers.  But standing in the middle of the woods in a foot of fresh-fallen snow all around, EVERYBODY is a coffee drinker.  It was SO good.

As scouts from our “Great Rivers” Boy Scout district in that age, on our uniforms we wore a leather slide on our belts with two dangling leather lanyards.  On the lanyards we would string a pair of matching colored beads.  The assorted colors signified different things.

A fair-weather, “blue skies” campout was a simple pair of blue beads. Most scouts had lanyards mostly full of blue beads.  A campout with significant rain earned you a pair of gray beads.  If there was a tornado warning …. (Yikes!!) … you got black beads. Black beads were NEVER intentional.   When we would hold a district Scout-O-Rama with other area scout troops so that families could come and see you demonstrate the skills you’d learned, you earned a pair of yellow beads.   By contrast, a “Jamboree” where you competed against other scout troops, was good for a pair of bright red beads. And finally, Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico was the source of a pair or hard-earned pink marbled beads.  Very coveted.

Philmont is a national Scouting destination in the high country of New Mexico.  A typical trek at Philmont takes a group of scouts out into the wilderness for twelve days and covers 55 to 60 miles. I never went, but I had several friends who did, and everyone that I knew of who went to Philmont considered it a life-changing experience.

However, perhaps even rarer than the pink marbled beads were the WHITE beads we earned for the snow campout.

As Scouts we would sometimes go on trail hikes.  As part of our regular progression through the ranks, we were required to do some hiking.  We would often go on ten-mile hikes around Mexico… often out on the gravel roads around the city, past farms and fields and woods.  We hiked out past the railroad trestle, which local legend said had been the scene of at least one early hanging from the last century… and was also supposed to be haunted.   In the light of day, it didn’t seem scary at all.  But it would be many years before I would venture out that direction alone, and certainly not at night.   When I did begin to venture out there later in my high school years, the only “haunting” was from other kids my age or older, who saw the trestle as a dandy moonlight party-spot.

In addition to the ten-mile hikes we took around town as scouts, our troop went on a few longer hikes, in the twenty-mile range or slightly longer.  We went to Illinois to hike the Lincoln Trail, near Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace in Springfield.  We hiked the Moniteau Trail, over in Howard County.  The Moniteau Trail at that time was about twenty miles and included crossing a small river over a scout-constructed “monkey bridge”.   A monkey bridge was a swaying bridge with three main ropes, bound together in a triangle with a lattice of ropes.   It was sort of a “Jacob’s Ladder” contraption, where you walked across the river balanced on one lower rope, while holding tight with your hands to the other two ropes which were a little over waist high.  It was a tricky maneuver and had to be taken one careful step at a time.  We had a couple of scouts who did not make the crossing successfully and plunged into the river below.   But the fall wasn’t far, the river underneath wasn’t terribly deep, and nobody was injured. Except for their pride.  The worst part for those who fell was facing the rest of a long, difficult hike while soaking wet. Especially wet feet in wet boots.   At the end of the twenty-mile day, I remember being exhausted, and how much my feet hurt.

But I also remember that my own dad was one of the dads who drove over to Howard County to build a campfire and cook a fantastic meal of burgers, beans, etc., for the weary scout hikers as we slogged in from a grueling day of hiking.   It was just a simple burger, but it was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, and I was so proud that my dad was one of the ones there to greet us.  It felt so good to get to ride back home with him afterward and talk with him and the other boys in our car about the day’s adventures.

 

One of the best things by far about Mexico when I was a kid growing up there was the Liberty Theater.  First opened in 1920, what a grand old lady she was.  In Mexico, there had at one time been several movie theaters … the Orpheum, the Sosna, the Rex, the Liberty, etc.   But the Liberty was the true gem and the only one of these palaces still standing and open for business during my childhood.

With its lit marquees of chasing lights flashing around and the hanging letters assembled to spell out the title of feature playing inside, the excitement would build as we stood in line, before we even got to the ticket booth.  Once inside the front doors, all of your kid senses were bombarded at once, from the feel under your feet of the lush carpeted lobby, to the blast of cool air-conditioned air, which was instant and startling blessed relief for the horde of sweaty kids streaming through the doors. Then there was the snack bar with the sound and smell of freshly popping corn.  And, the balcony (always a little mysterious… where the older kids sat, and who knows WHAT they did up there). Once you went through the swinging doors on either side of the snack bar, there were three inside main-floor sections of seats facing an immense silver screen, with heavy dark red velvet drapes on each side.  The end seat of every row had a dim light aimed down onto the aisle floor, to show you the way to your seat so that you did not stumble in the dark.

I would be remiss here not to go back and share a word about that snack bar:  it was simply world-class… loaded with fresh popcorn dripping with butter, Sno-Caps, Milk Duds, Slo-Pokes, Jujubes, Tootsie Rolls, Boston Baked Beans (that’s candy folks, not actual legumes), Red Hots, Now ‘n Later, Mike & Ike, Hot Tamales…if it was sugary, chocolaty or had the potential to ruin your teeth in any way, they had it..   I was a Milk Dud kid.  Five and a half decades later, I still am.

At the end of the school year, we kids could purchase a strip of movie tickets, 50 cents each, to see a movie each Wednesday afternoon over the summer break.  These were seldom the “first run” movies from those years, but often movies that had been released a few years before.  I think we had such classics as “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes”, and “The Swiss Family Robinson”, etc.    But we also had some cheesy B-movies … but we kids loved them all. Maybe as much for the sheer delight of being out of the hot sun and into the cool darkness with a load of our friends as for the movies themselves.

I remember one, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars!!”   I’m not sure why that particular one stuck in my head, but a few years ago I searched it out, and was delighted to be able to find it on DVD.  I am sorry to say that it wasn’t quite the cinematic tour-de-force I remember.  I must admit though, in watching it, I was completely transported back to those Wednesday afternoons at the Liberty, Milk Duds in hand, sitting wide-eyed in the glow of the screen with a couple-hundred excited and noisy kids.

On those Wednesdays, before the movies began, they would show either cartoons, or one of those “old-timey” serials (Flash Gordon or some Western short), or one of the old Movie-Tone newsreels with Lowell Thomas or some other serious-sounding narrator. The German bombing of London and other highlights of World War II, Lindbergh’s flight, Babe Ruth’s march to home-run glory in the 1927 season, the Hindenburg, disaster, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.  Those were all subjects that we saw on those news-reels in the moments ahead of our feature film on those Wednesday afternoons.

I guess the idea was to give us kids a notion of what going to the movies had been like for the kids of our parent’s generation, because those things weren’t current news at all, but usually stuff that had been current 20 or 30 or more years ago. (For perspective, when I was 10, Babe Ruth’s epic ’27 season and Lindbergh’s flight were a mere 40 years in the past. Much like the 1970’s is to us now.)  Still, to me those newsreels were often one of the best parts of the afternoon.

On one particular Wednesday afternoon, when I was about ten years old, I dutifully rode my bike to the Liberty Theater for the day’s movie.  I parked it in one of the bike racks that have vertical rods to hold the front tire, along with the mass of other kid’s bikes. No need for bike chains, nobody worried about stolen bikes.  I took my place in line.

As I approached the ticket booth that day after probably ten minutes of standing in line, I reached into my pocket for my ticket and realized with a sinking feeling that it wasn’t there!   Oh no!  I realized in an instant that I’d left it at home.  Worse, I didn’t have the two quarters to simply BUY a last-minute ticket on my own.  This was a disaster of epic proportions!

My friends were going to get to see the movie in the cool air-conditioned air, eat the Milk Duds, and keep their eye on the cute girl across the aisle or a couple rows over.  Meanwhile, I was going to be stuck outside in the summer heat by myself!

I decided in an instant that there was nothing to do but frantically ride my bike the six blocks home, grab my ticket, and pedal hard the six blocks back as fast as I could.  So, I grabbed my bike and started out, pedaling as hard as I could.  I realized within a block or so there was NO way I was going to make it there and back in time. Just not enough time.  Certainly not before the cartoons and newsreel started, and most likely not even in time for the main feature movie.  Crap!

Then suddenly, like a shining beacon on a hill, there, across the street from where I was …. right by the railroad tracks across from the train depot, was “my” Lumber Company!   They knew me in there, right??  They KNEW me!  I mean, I’d been helping myself to their scrap lumber for years!   I’d built (and destroyed) BRIDGES with their lumber!  I was a regular!

I whipped my bike up to the lumber-yard front office door, jumped off and ran up to the front counter, where in one breathless outburst I asked the man standing there, “Excuse me sir I left my ticket for the movie at home and I don’t have time to go home and get it and I was wondering maybe if I could borrow fifty cents??”  The sentence came out in about a second and a half.   The guy looks at me, doesn’t say anything for a minute, smiles, and says, “I’m sorry … what’s the problem?”.     I repeated, just a bit slower. But only a bit.  “Excuse me sir I left my ticket for the movie at home.  I don’t think I have enough time to go home and get it.  I was wondering maybe if I could borrow fifty cents??”

He looked at me.  “Fifty cents?   Well, I guess you’re going to have to talk to the boss-man about that”, and he points over his shoulder with his thumb to the office behind him, where a man was sitting behind a desk, bent over some paperwork.   I gulped and walked back there and knocked on the frame of the open door.

The man looked up at me and asked, “Yes, son? Can I help you?”  I stammered a bit this time as the gravity of this course I’d chosen began to set in.  “I… um… I left my movie ticket at home, sir.  And, …um, there’s no time to ride back and get it before the movie starts … and I was wondering if …. if maybe I could borrow fifty cents?”    He sat back and sized me up with a studied gaze and asked quietly, “What’s your name son?”   The thought never crossed my mind back then, but it was a small town, so the chances were always going to be darned good he’d know my family.   “John Shouse, sir.”

He smiled. “Are you Dorsey Shouse’s boy?”

Recognition!  This might work out after all!

I smiled. “Yes sir, I am”.

He smiled back. “Fifty cents you say?  Well, sure, why not?  I expect you’re good for it.”

He reached into his pocket and I heard some change jingling. He pulled out two quarters and handed them to me.  I thanked him, raced outside, hopped on my bike, and made it to the movie just in time, and another Wednesday afternoon of escaping from the real world in the cool air, low lights and shared wonder and magic of “The Movies”.

I don’t remember what feature was showing that day.  It didn’t matter.   I was inside, with my people.

As soon as the movie let out, I knew exactly what I had to do.  No time to dilly-dally with my friends.  I sped the six-blocks straight home, got a couple of quarters, and rode my bike back to the lumber company and paid off my first ever official “loan” to the man who’d reached in his pocket and financed my movie experience.

I had asked for the loan, got the loan, had the benefit derived therefrom, and paid it off in full.  All in less than three hours after spontaneously initiating the transaction.

And all the collateral I’d needed was my dad’s good name.

I suspect that for the man with the pocket full of quarters, it was not really that memorable of an encounter.  He probably chuckled to himself, and never gave it another thought.

But for me, for reasons I don’t fully understand even now, the whole episode is one of the most vivid memories from my childhood years.

The man, who loaned me the money, though I didn’t know his name at the time, was Alan Coatsworth.

 

I don’t get back there to my hometown as often as I’d like, or as often as I probably should.  I do still have family there.  I still love Mexico.  I love the town, and how it and my experiences there as a kid helped to shape me into the person I’ve become.  I am so glad to have grown up in what was a far simpler time.  No matter what else happens or how Mexico of today has changed, the Mexico of my youth will always be indelibly etched in my brain as “my hometown”.

The “ordinary” moments of our lives… the ones that don’t necessarily register at the time as being so very important in helping to shape the people that we eventually become… those moments are so precious.  Keeping them alive through stories, by sharing them with family and friends, is a joyful part of my life.

Those moments are so very precious indeed, and especially now that I have a few decades of wear and tear, and now that I’ve had kids of my own who have experienced adventures of THEIR own.  I find myself hoping that even though I know full-well that I will never know the depth and breadth of their own adventures, I want to believe that they had experiences to powerfully shape their own lives.

Thanks to the advent of the internet, email, and “social media”, I am also enjoying the newfound camaraderie of folks who also grew up back in Mexico, either a few years before or a few years after I did.  Some of them I did not know back in those days.  Some I only knew by name without having any real relationship back then.  But we do have a relationship. Like it or not, we have the relationship that comes from shared history….  We share a powerful sense of place, even though that place has changed in so many ways.

We call Mexico, Missouri home … and the majority of those people from there whom I have connected with do so proudly. No matter how far we may have wandered, no matter what sort of experiences we may have had in the intervening years, there is a camaraderie and bond from having the same hometown.

From having walked (and pedaled, and then cruised) the same familiar streets and country roads, from having shopped in the same familiar stores, and having attended the same familiar schools and gone to the same familiar churches.  From having spent the same familiar Friday nights at the football field or walking the downtown sidewalks on the night when the stores stayed open late.

Some of these newfound friends also enjoy reminiscing about their own adventures and memories of growing up there.  Childhood and all those memories, as well as the later experiences and memories associated with coming of age in a small town, are something I hold so dear.   More dear than I could possibly express here in a few pages.

From time-to-time I have wondered (and I wondered this even as far as all those years back then when I was a kid) … if kids of other generations in the past had as much fun as we did?   Now I know the answer is yes, of course they did.

To be sure, every generation has things which make it unique.  But as I talk to folks who shared the streets of my hometown, who pedaled through those neighborhoods or walked those sidewalks, it should come as no surprise to know that having grown up in the same place, even if it happened in different eras, has worked to shape so many of us in such profound ways.

I am so glad to be able call Mexico “home”, and I will always feel a special bond with those can do likewise … and in some sense, I think there is a special bond with ALL those who recognize and cherish the notion that growing up in their own “time and place” has worked to make them who they are.

I think I always knew that I wasn’t destined to remain in Mexico forever.  I do remember daydreams as a kid about growing up, moving off and changing the world from some other place in the world as a scientist or engineer.

Like so many others, I did grow up and move off.  Though, I’m not so sure how that “changing the world” thing has worked out.

But hey, it could still happen!!  Right?

If you’ve stuck with this all the way to the end, you are amazing.   Thanks.    I hope you like Part II.    I don’t know *when* I’ll publish it, but I promise it won’t be *too* long.

Thanks for playing with me.

love,
John

 

 

July 9, 2021
by John Shouse
0 comments

what if it was up to us?

The world feels broken.

Too many people seem to be disconnected from what truly matters.  Neighbors mistrust or even just dislike their neighbors.  Meaningful and productive dialog about important matters between people who hold differing views …. well, that seldom happens.  It’s brittle.  Push too hard on any source of conflict or dissonance, including with those we ought to be closest too, and it just seems like stuff is gonna break.  There’s no resilience, no “give” in our way of being in the world.   It feels like something has changed.  Not just changed, but changed for the worse.

The world feels broken.

I feel that way myself too much of the time.  You too?

Too many of us spend our days doing the same things we’ve always done, and we go about that routine without really having a clear understanding  of the “why” behind our daily grinds.  It’s not that there is no meaning to be found.  There certainly is.  But even when things are good, even if we are fortunate enough to have found love and centeredness and balance in our own individual or family lives … there is a strong sense that the world around us is reeling out of control.  No?  Surely you feel it too.

I’m talking about the big-picture here.

It feels like too often we search for “meaning” in the wrong things.  Too often we measure success or happiness using a flawed metric.

Some of the best minds of our generation are spending their days trying to perfect methods of getting people to click ads.  Some of them are paid extremely well for it.

What if we paid them to grapple with the issues around enlarging people’s lives?   What if the value we assigned to their work came not from their ability to add to the wealth of companies or the billionaire CEO’s that employ them, but from their ability to add to the well-being of our society?

What if rather than click-throughs, they were charged instead with finding ways to eliminate poverty and hunger?  What if we tasked them with creating actionable campaigns to seriously address the biggest issues of the day.  Protecting our environment.  Empowering the marginalized.  Reinventing our flawed educational system.

What if we decided collectively that our greatest gift to the planet, to the future, to our children … would be if we learned to take seriously the self-inflicted problems we have created through the decades of our unsustainable way of living in and on this world, and learned to not only START the process of reversing those trends, but to accelerate that reversal?

Trannquil RiverWe will not do this in a grand, sweeping, easily implemented “solution” that fixes everything. Not with an “aha moment” kind of solution that changes the planet and our society overnight.   Certainly no such solution exists.

But changing course and making a serious effort to head-off the enormous problems we WILL see in OUR lifetimes in the near future is do-able.  Not easy.  But do-able.

Whatever that looks like, it starts with each of us.

What is it that you think would be an antidote to the malaise?   Being more content?  Balance?  Happiness?    How do you think we get there?   None of these things are conditions for the future ….   That is, none of these depend upon external factors.   “If only *this* would happen, I would be happy!”  “If only I didn’t have to worry about *that*, I could find contentment”  “If only I didn’t have so many competing priorities, I could feel more balanced.”.  If only.   That’s a flawed way of looking at the world, but it’s a trap into which we ALL fall from time to time.

Rather … Happiness, Contentment …. ALL those things are attitudes for the present.   They are decisions that each of us make, each morning as we face the world. Today I will live THIS way.  With practice, we get better at it.    What helps with that practice is to choose to be the kind of person who looks for the good, celebrates the ordinary moments, and practices gratitude.   Every day.   So notice the good.  Be joyful in ordinary moments. Speak your gratitude out loud, or write it down.  These are not radical ideas.  But they are practices we all struggle with.

We can’t accomplish our “wildest dreams”, unless we dare to have some pretty wild dreams in the first place.  What if our wildest dream was a kinder world, where poverty and hunger did not exist?  What if our wildest dream was that each of us celebrated nature, worked to protect the planet, and practiced living gently upon this earth?   What if our wildest dream was that our truest work was to connect with the best part of ourselves, to give that part voice and the empowerment to act from those impulses.  Every day.  In every situation.  That’s a pretty wild set of dreams.

Historian Rutger Bregman, in his excellent TED Talk entitled, “Poverty isn’t a lack of character, it’s a lack of cash”, says that:

“If history teaches us anything, it’s that there is nothing inevitable about the way we have structured our society and our economy right now.  Ideas can and do change the world.  And particularly in the past few years, it has become abundantly clear that we cannot indefinitely maintain the status quo.  That we need new ideas.   ….. It’s not enough to know what we’re against.   We also need to be FOR something.   Martin Luther King didn’t say, ‘I have a nightmare’.    He had a dream!    So here’s MY dream.   I believe in a future where the value of your work is not determined by the size of your paycheck.  It’s determined by the amount of happiness you spread, and the amount of meaning you give.  I believe in a future where the point of education is not to prepare you for another useless job, but to prepare you for a life well-lived.“

What if we could break the cycle of mindless consumption?  What if we challenged ourselves to push the boundary a little each day on living more centered and engaged lives? Lives more engaged in enlarging the lives of those around us?  Lives based on kindness, and giving, and compassion, and actually DOING what’s right, right here we we are.   What if we spent less time doomscrolling, and more time out in nature?  What if we each took time each day to read things that lift us up, that fill our souls to the brim and even to overflowing, with love and concern for each other?

What if we ALL felt, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr challenged us, to feel the Fierce Urgency of Now?

What if more people believed with certainty in their hearts and minds that THIS age we live in must be different?

What if each of us came to truly believe that by MY voice and actions, I could BE that difference?  What if YOU believed that?

What if we actually ELECTED more people to public office who gave a rat’s ass about making the world a better place for ALL of us?

And most especially, what if we put some of those brightest minds to work, not trying to increase the click-through count, but for the PURPOSE of finding a way to instill a collective mindset that YES, we CAN do better, live better, more responsibly and more holistically?     And in the process we can actually change the course of history.

In his book, “Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey”, James Hollis says that “Our souls are calling us to an appointment with life.

What he’s saying is that we ALL have to ask ourselves, “Why am I here? And in service to what?”    The problem is that the world stands ready with ALL kinds of bogus answers to these questions, and the circumstances of our individual lives can easily lead us down false paths that do not serve to help us each answer those questions authentically.

Seth Godin says the most effective marketing ALWAYS distills down to a simple seven-word message.  “People like us do things like this.”

While I believe he’s spot-on with that statement, there are two BIG problems with this when you try to apply it to “How do we change the world?”    If we were, say, (as marketers) to try to develop some sort of campaign to actually change the world.

The first problem is deciding that in our campaign, we can’t work to a “normal” sort of scale.   Because“us” means ALL of us.  It has to.  It has to.   All means all.    And there simply is no “bully pulpit” to reach and persuade ALL of us at once.   So we each have to do whatever we can individually, and to spread it to the best of our own ability, within the bounds of whatever our own scope of influence allows.  And trust that it will catch on, and scale.

And the second problem is deciding that “things like this” should NOT just be about getting in on the next trendy piece of detritus.   “Things like this” means enlarging the lives of others. It means being kind.  It means looking out for others, and taking small, ordinary moments to live connected lives.

It means choosing to become an unstoppable conduit of love to the world.

“Things like this” means realizing deep inside that we … that YOU … have a tangible and actionable responsibility to both those around us and to the future.

Let THAT be your very reason for being.

The enormity of the task ahead … the task of challenging EACH of us to create better, richer, fuller lives; and thereby, in the process creating a better world … cannot be under stated.  Blue Ridge TrailI’d like to believe we can do it.  Not in spite of its difficulty.  But rather, BECAUSE of its difficulty.  We are people who rise to the challenge.  We sometimes forget that.  We forget that we CAN impact change.  History has shown the opposite.   And it has shown that when we are motivated by fealty to the common good, that power is at its highest potential.

It’s not about rainbows and unicorns and tripping tra-la-la through a wildflower covered meadow with all of us joining hands to sing “kum-ba-yah”, and feeling self-satisfied, patting ourselves on the back about how “woke” we are to the problems around us.   Rather, it is about the hard decision to do better. (each day) To feel better. (each day).  And to live better, more responsible and authentic lives, and to know that by doing so we do change the world.

Again, Dr. King ….   He believed that “The Time Is Always Right To Do What Is Right”.

On February 6, 1968 in his speech in Washington, D.C., “A Proper Sense of Priorities”,  Dr. King concluded with a poignant observation:

“On some positions Cowardice asks, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks, ‘Is it right?’”

And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

So again … what if we engaged the best minds of our generation in finding ways to convince us that EACH of us can make better choices about how to positively impact the world within our own reach?  No matter how big or small that reach might happen to be.    What if they grappled with ways of motivating each of us to choose to live richer, fuller, more balanced lives?

What if the world wasn’t broken?

What if we just needed to be better, act better, and live better lives?  What if the responsibility of knowing that and working for that was up to me?  And what if it was up to you?

It is.

love,
John

June 8, 2021
by John Shouse
2 Comments

the best part of who I am

Born in 1923, my mom would have been 98 today, June 8.  I am pretty sure the photo I’ve included here is the last picture I took of mom and dad together, not long before his death.  I do wish I had more photos of her, particularly as a girl or a younger woman, but she was notoriously averse to having her picture made.   Mom & Dad

I miss so much about her. I miss her stories, her laugh, her love of family. I miss how she’d look at my dad. I miss the way she’d fret and fuss over planning and preparing family meals when all my siblings and their spouses and kids were getting together for holidays.  And oh my goodness, she was a GREAT cook.

I miss how, when my dad would make a mildly off-color funny remark, she’d look at him and scold “Dorsey!!”. (But how I knew down deep she was laughing with the rest of us.)

I miss the way she’d “go shopping” and never buy anything for herself, but come home with bags of stuff she’d bought for “the kids”.

I miss the way she’d work the garden with dad each year, grow a ton of terrific veggies, and give most of them away to old folks and shut-ins that they knew.   Even in the years when they themselves were old enough where they could have been the recipients of such kindness, they STILL kept a small garden and gave much of it away.   Once, when she was already in her 80’s, I remember visiting and as we pulled in the driveway she was in the little garden, picking tomatoes for “the old lady around the corner”.   I had to smile.

Years later, after dad died and when the dementia started to take her mind, I loved how asking her to tell stories from when she was younger or taking her on a drive through the Callaway County hills where she was a little girl could bring her back to us for a few blessed moments at a time.

She loved so unconditionally, and was always my biggest ally and my biggest defender.  Always.

But she also knew how to hold me accountable when that was needed. Like the time when, along with a fellow ne’er-do-well neighbor boy, as kids of about 7 or 8, I raided a neighbor lady’s garden.  We ate her baby carrots, tomatoes, and peppers, literally right out of the garden.

The irate neighbor insisted on punishment, and kept telling mom, “I want you to whip him!”

Mom looked her in the eye and told her in no uncertain terms that I would work to pay her back for the stolen goods, but any decisions about punishment beyond that, she would make herself. I didn’t get “whipped”, but I did have to do a serious amount of lawn work for the older lady, mowing (with a manual push-mower), raking leaves, etc. for her.

I remember the loving kindness she lavished upon her own mom, my grandma, when dementia stole her mind away.  Mom was always so sweet with grandma Sampson on those visits to the nursing home, holding her hand, singing softly to her, stroking or brushing her hair.

And I remember mom’s gentle comfort for me on those rare occasions when sorrow and tragedy hit our family.

I so vividly remember the one time years later when I really seriously screwed up, with potentially life-changing implications…. I was scared that I would be such a disappointment to both mom and dad.  But they were both there for me.  I especially remember mom in that difficult moment, literally right beside me.  Not to protect me from consequences, but to let me know I was loved, to help think things through, to talk about it honestly, and to point out the choices I had available to me, and to assure me that I didn’t have to face things alone.

Happy birthday mom. Thanks for the love, the lessons, and the laughter.

A lot of the best parts of who I am are because of you.

I miss you and think about you every day. I really wish I could pick up the phone and call you sometimes.

love,
John

May 18, 2021
by John Shouse
2 Comments

the dance of what is

It is unsettling and unnerving to realize you have everything you want, or at least easy access to it … and so little of what you need.  Hmmmm.    What DO I need?

Is there a more relevant and urgent question?

Of course, the answer to “what do I need?” is different for everyone.   But even getting glimpses of what it is can be elusive.  Too often we get caught up in ephemeral nonsense, and just miss it … or more common perhaps, fail to even give it any consideration at all.  Sometimes we trip over it and fail to recognize it.  Complicating things of course is that it also evolves throughout our lives.

Now true enough, for some, what they “need” remains at least somewhat stable.  While for others it’s marked by big shifts through the years.  Yet all meaning and purpose lives therein.

The adventure, the quest to identify and embrace those needs and the meaning that they ought to bring … well, that IS the journey.  And yes, truly, the journey IS the destination.  That sounds trite and trivial.  But the shock… the sudden realization … the transformation … the Zen moment of satori … that comes when we understand and integrate “journey” and “meaning” is one of those inflection points where lives change.  Isn’t it?

That understanding is a weird combination of compass and barometer and rheostat.  At once pointing the way …. instilling urgency and intention to embrace what is … as surely as we also embrace what is to come.

However, maybe more so now than at any other time in human history we live ever just a whisper away from losing perspective on the difference between what we want and what we need.  In part because having what you WANT (as opposed to what you need) can bring comfort for a time, satisfaction for a time, even a sense of fulfillment for a time.  But not really.   We get dulled to what is important.

Thomas Merton said, “The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds ….  Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we can see, we cannot think.”

Merton was surely on to something.   The world we live in excels at the generation of the rubbish and clutter of which he spoke.  But the housecleaning does NOT require permanent monasticism.  But I believe it does require retreat.  Or rather, I’ll just posit that retreat is a dandy facilitator.

While in some ways I am no closer at 63 than I was at 18 to succinctly articulating my needs, I sense that I am closest to whatever that is when I am in the mountains.  Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.  Too long away from the centeredness I feel there is a sure prescription for malaise.

Blue Ride Parkway, Summer 2020

The Blue Ridge, with Brendan Shouse, 2020

I know with the sureness that comes with decades that when I hear wind in the trees of the woods, the musky smell of simultaneous new growth and abundant decay, and hear the gurgling sound of water rippling over rocks, I am filled with wonder and contentment.  And peace.   When I see the mist rising in the morning over the trees, the sun beginning to burn through, all is right in my soul.

That I so seldom experience these things leaves me unbalanced and of out-of-step with myself.

I do not believe there is magic involved. Nor is there an “answer” waiting to be found if only we look deep enough and exercise enough rigor in our analysis of things found in wild and remote places.   It’s just that when you are there, you are a part of “what is”.

A part of what is. The illusion of separateness fades.  If we are very lucky indeed, and with practice, it sometimes even disappears.

Sun shines, rivers run, and there is a symphony of light and shadow and sound and aromas that can, if we let it, carry us forward not as navigators but passengers …. no… as participants …. first this way and then that, towards the inevitability of both the journey itself, AND the present moment in all its ordinariness and grandeur.

The dance of what is, is now.  And there is only the dance.

Harry Middleton says in his extraordinary book, On the Spine of Time: An Angler’s Love of the Smokies:  “Human beings come equipped with something called vestibular sensors, which are located in the inner ear.  They give us balance, keep us level, if not level-headed.  Mountains are vestibular sensors on a grander scale, absorbing the world about them, struggling for balance.”

I need to get out.  I need to tramp through the wild places.  I need to let them carry me on to wherever it is that I am headed.

I am headed home.

love,
John

January 5, 2021
by John Shouse
2 Comments

… or all the seas with tv’s

We all know the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Good advice, sound wisdom.

But I’m starting to really get aggravated with the fact that we seem to be living in the OPPOSITE reality. “It’s broke. Sorry, you CAN’T fix it.”

I asked around if one of the electronics techs at my place of business wanted a non-functioning flat-screen TV that I had several years ago.  We are techs here.  Engineers and techs.  We KNOW how to build things, and how to “fix things”.   But the prevailing feeling in our culture has become, it’s just not worth the effort.   So one of my guys here when asked if he wanted the dead TV said, “Nope. Might as well pitch it in the ocean!  New ones are just too cheap.”   Never mind that the nearest ocean is quite a drive from Nashville.

If you DO go out to the county landfill… (and who wouldn’t want to?) …. you’ll be astounded by the furniture, appliances, and former “big ticket” items on the piles there.

Our “throw-away” culture really bugs me.  You too?

The Example

I grew up with a dad who could literally “fix” almost anything. I can’t tell how many times I saw (and helped when I was old enough) him tear into a TV, a radio, a refrigerator, a washing machine, furnace, …. a car engine…. , with only a screwdriver, a voltmeter, a selection of wrenches, and good old ingenuity. We “fixed” things back then.   And he came by that naturally.   His dad, my Papa Shouse was a resilient and resourceful guy.   A blacksmith by trade, he also had tools and knew how to use them.   I remember a conversation with my dad once in which his dad said, “Son, the prices of pretty much everything just keep going up and up and up.  You mark my words, one of these days you’re going to see that it takes a whole wagon-load of cash, just to go to the grocery store!”    A wagon-load of cash.   I’ve never forgotten that.

But it’s not the COST of buying new things that make fixing broken things desirable.  It’s the satisfaction you get from the feeling of being just a little self-sufficient.   It’s a good feeling, and worth pursuing.

The Problem

I’m no auto mechanic, but I know how an internal combustion engine works. Even with newfangled gizmos under the hood like fuel-injectors (bye-bye carburetors), EPA emissions controls, and unitized assemblies …. it’s JUST not that hard a concept to master. But the cars are NOT made for shade-tree mechanics to work on these days. I grew up going to the auto-parts store, buying spark-plugs, coming home, putting the proper “gap” in them with a feeler gauge (the right gap was printed IN your owners manual then … not any more), and installing them. Swapping out the plug cables if you needed to. Replacing the distributor cap or rotor if that’s what was needed. Cleaning the points. You just *did* these things. Hell… I don’t think I could even GET to my spark-plugs anymore. Too much crap in the way. Do modern cars still HAVE distributor caps?  You’d practically have to drop the engine to do even many minor repairs these days.    And even if you know WHAT you’re looking for, and sorta have access to it, often things are assembled and fitted together these days so that they require specialty tools to even get to them.

In college I worked for a local shop as a TV repairman. No fear (other than roaches or spiders) of going out to some stranger’s home, plopping down behind the TV in their living room (or bedroom…. I have stories), taking the back off the TV and digging in to whatever the problem was. And dammit, I was GOOD at it too. I had the shop speed record for swapping out a picture tube in a full-size TV. No small feat.   I wrote a blog post a while back about those experiences, and some of what I learned from them.  It’s called:  the television repairman.

The list goes on. We just “fixed” things then. But today we live in a disposable culture.  It’s getting worse year by year.  And with each newly broken item you pitch, the next “pitch” gets easier and easier, until even for old “fixers” like me … it just becomes the norm.

There IS no actual “job” anymore for an out-call TV Repairman these days, because those damn things are NOT designed to be fixed. Either it works or it doesn’t. When it stops working, buy a new one, and take the “dead” one out to the BOPAE facility. (Batteries, Oil, Paint, Antifreeze, Electronics). In Franklin, it’s on Century Court off of Columbia Pike. If you go, tell Ryan I said hi. Yes, I’ve been there more than once.

Ice maker.

Not too many years ago, when we were living in Bellevue, our Ice Maker in the fridge stopped working. I could hear it running, and there was ice IN the unit… the rotor that pushes the cubes out and dispenses them into the tray just didn’t move. How big a problem could *that* be? I emptied the freezer, stuck my head in with a flashlight to see how it mounted, and realized the ice maker could easily be pulled out. I took it out and took the cover off. There was a plastic gear in it that was stripped. I took it out and looked at it to figure out how it worked. I took the unit to my desk and using a bench power supply, applied voltage to the motor and verified that the ONLY problem was the stripped gear. Next day I went to “NAPCO” over off of Elm-Hill Pike. (National Appliance Parts Company). Armed with the old gear, the full part number off the tag of the ice maker unit, and a helpful desk clerk at the warehouse, I got a replacement gear. Went home, installed it, and voila…. ICE!!! A year or so later, when the unit stopped working again, I checked and found the motor had gone bad. The price of a replacement motor was only a few bucks cheaper than an entire new unit. So I bought a new ice maker, installed it and all was well.  AND I put the defective Ice Maker on the shelf in the garage, in case I ever needed to use it for spare parts.

I saved it, because THAT’S what you do.

I still remember wincing a little when time came to finally throw the old, non-functioning ice maker away when we got a new fridge, and I no longer had need of the “spare parts” unit.

Cut to Now.

In the last few weeks, the Ice Maker in our relatively new refrigerator stopped working.   It would work fine, then it wouldn’t.  It would work fine for a while, then it wouldn’t.   Intermittent problems are big challenges to the diagnostic skills of even the best technical mind.   I watched it, played with it, thought about what might be happening.  There was occasionally a “wet spot” under the accumulation tray that would freeze, or it would leak water down into the in-door dispenser opening.   Hmmmmm.     The ice maker that is in the main chamber of the fridge that makes the ice for the door is our ONLY ice maker.  Some over/under fridges have a secondary ice maker in the freezer compartment. Ours does not.  So when it stopped working, no ice.

Finally, even though I was still in “diagnostic mode” Janet insisted on just calling a repairman, because she “needed ice”.  That hurt.  But I swallowed my pride and agreed.  It cost $110 JUST to get the dude to come to the house.  Before he even got the screwdriver OUT of his tool kit (assuming he has one).  YIKES!!!   When she called me to say he was there, and had determined that the problem was that the heater element that releases cubes was “stuck on”… preventing the ice from freezing during those “stuck” cycles …. I thought “DAMN!!  A bad relay.  I know relays. I literally know relays inside and out.  I have relays in my desk at work that I’ve taken apart JUST to see how they work.  I’m 99.73% certain that only thing that could be causing it to “stick” on intermittently is a relay in the sealed unit. Electronics either work or they don’t.  But electro-mechanical components can be notoriously finicky in failure mode. Intermittent problems are sometimes more the norm than the exception. (Trust me, I did phone support troubleshooting for my company’s customers for many years.  I know how to guide people through solving technical problems, armed only with a hunch.)  So I’m confident in the diagnosis.   But here’s the deal.  Even IF I could buy the relay (doubtful it would be easily acquired) with the intent of fixing the unit myself, the icemaker unit is NOT designed to be easily taken apart.  That was one of the first things I looked at.   (duh!)

So the OPTION …. Was either a new refrigerator (have you seen the prices on those things??), OR to have them replace the icemaker.   So we’re getting a replacement ice maker ordered and put in.  At a cost of over $500.  For ice.   $500 for the convenience of ice in the door of the fridge.   Talk about your wagon-load of cash.

It’s times like these when I have a strong sense of my grandpa looking down from above and saying, “$500 for ice?  The boy’s an idiot”

I’m no idiot.   I’m just living in idiotic times.

August 5, 2020
by John Shouse
7 Comments

two years. two years, and a lifetime.

The following was written and posted on social media by my son, Brendan Shouse.  Most of you probably know that Evan has a twin.  Some will know that Brendan started out college as a Fine Arts major (Blacksmithing and Metalworking at the Appalachian Center for Craft at TN Tech.) Some know that after two-year’s into that major, he realized that his REAL passion was in the helping professions … and that realization set him on a journey of self-discovery and transformation that has been remarkable and inspiring to watch.  You cannot imagine how immensely proud I am to have witnessed and been a small part of that journey.  Brendan has not lived a charmed life. His struggles have been real and deep.  He has traveled some dark roads, and experienced things about which I cannot even guess.  This piece talks about how his profession and his particular job have changed him.  I wish there were adequate words for me to say just how much this piece means to me.  He is a hero.  That’s a term that’s tossed around all too easily, especially these days.   But I mean it literally.  He is a hero to me.

In a few short days, I will officially have been employed in the healthcare field for two years. Time has a way of flying by whilst simultaneously slowly crawling along. If you had told me two and a half years ago that I would be working in the social services department at a skilled nursing facility and working with long-term care residents, I probably would have laughed out loud. I had not intended to be here…But God has far better plans than I ever do (or ever will), and my life is unrecognizable (in the best possible way).

In my day-to-day job I have the honor and privilege of talking to patients one-on-one. Among other responsibilities, I get to interview patients and ask a relatively brief set of questions regarding mood and cognition. Nothing fancy. Nothing spectacular. Nothing glorious. I get to listen. People are absolutely fascinating when you actually listen to the odd things that they say. We are funny creatures after all. But this job has changed who I am and how I see the world. It has strengthened my faith and my resolve to improve myself. I am more present both mentally and spiritually than I have ever been.

I have been blessed immeasurably by my job and by the people that I get to work with every day. I am going to sound cliché for a moment and say that I truly work with some real-life heroes. The men and women that I work alongside appear to rise each morning with new energy and are driven to help sick people get well. I see people each day who are actively looking to comfort and heal. Whether it is a friendly smile, a short conversation, holding someone’s hand, sitting with someone who is confused, or just gentle reassurance, they do it all.

I would blatantly be lying to you if I said that there aren’t some difficult days. Sometimes there are extremely hard conversations with patients and their families. There are times when someone who was previously living independently starts to realize that they will need long-term care. There are times when conversations about hospice need to occur. There are times when God calls that hospice patient home. None of that is easy; it takes emotional fortitude and unparalleled resilience.

One of the most important lessons that I have learned (and there are many valuable lessons that I have been fortunate enough to learn), is that a single person can change the very fabric of reality. Sometimes people get bogged down with a nihilistic grief and think things like “what is the point?” or “does any of this really matter?” or “what the heck am I supposed to be doing?” and I think that I have stumbled upon a solution of sorts… Make the world a better place. Start small. Start so small that nobody notices other than yourself. Do something kind for someone without the expectation of recognition. Be present. Be humble. Say thank you when someone helps you, even in the most minor way.

You, yes you, have the potential to be an amazing force for good. Your actions change the world. Not in some silly theoretical way. Your actions are meaningful. They matter. You matter. Start today. Fix things that need fixing. Take the necessary steps to mend a damaged relationship with a friend or loved one. Let go of a destructive habit that is keeping you from being the best possible version of yourself. If you see an opportunity to love somebody well, for goodness sake take that opportunity. You have absolutely no idea the ways that your life can change for the better…and the coolest part? As it turns out, you bettering yourself is quite beneficial to everyone around you.

Working in social services has allowed me to meet countless interesting individuals, all of whom are unique and valued by our Creator. I have been blessed with the opportunity to love some genuinely special and wonderful people, some of whom have passed from this life to the next. Keep your eyes open for when you are “in the right place at the right time”. Evaluate that closely and then chase that at every chance you get.

Thank you for taking the time to read some of the ramblings of a guy who is genuinely happier than he ever could have imagined and more importantly a guy who is content with the life he has been given. God bless you guys and girls 😊
– Brendan

August 2, 2020
by John Shouse
5 Comments

wholeheartedly … here I am

Here, just a few minutes into my 63rd birthday, I only have one wish.

I wish to live wholeheartedly.

I wish to live wholeheartedly, with authenticity, presence, and intention.

Living and loving wholeheartedly requires attention to the details of life, including … ESPECIALLY including … the “ordinary” ones. It requires an intentional cultivation of ordinary experiences.  It requires a heightened awareness of ordinary things in such a way that soul is nurtured and fostered through experiencing and embracing them.

Ordinary?   What do I mean by that?

Maybe it’s a commitment to seeking real moments of connection with the world around you, and especially with those around you … including both loved-ones and strangers.  The nature of the connection is different depending on the situation, of course.  Regardless, such connection is possible.  But ONLY possible when rooted in authenticity.   Living wholeheartedly means to be rooted in authenticity and bolstered by passion.

Maybe such connection to the “ordinary” comes on your morning routine of alone time with a book, or in meditation, or exercise.   Or, maybe it’s just taking delight in a quiet walk or the shape of clouds on a lazy afternoon, or the sound of rippling water in that stream you love, or the smell of fresh growth in the garden, or the way the first (or last) shafts of sunlight look breaking through the trees.  Maybe it is planning (and shopping for) and preparing a meal. Maybe it’s your (literal) cup of tea or coffee, and moments of Zen-like flow in the preparation of either.

Living wholeheartedly is certainly about being intentional in listening to those around you, hearing their words …. Even the unspoken ones.  Looking them in the eye, making genuine connection, listening to their hearts, and letting them know that, yes … I am here.  I am here for you.  In this moment … this moment between you and me …  I am HERE for you.   Here I am.    And I value “us”.   I love us.

I believe that you can make that kind of connection, at least at some level, with anyone.  With anyone you know, or with anyone with whom you interact.  A store clerk, or wait-staff at a restaurant, etc.  With all those people you encounter in the “ordinary” moments of your life.   It is certainly possible and desirable to make that kind of connection with the people you interact with most regularly and more deeply.

It is interesting (and sadly ironic) that when we reach out for “help” because we are experiencing difficulties in embracing the richness of life … whatever those difficulties may be … that the “help” we are offered often ends up focusing only on crises or specific problems or dysfunctional patterns.  Of course it does. Because the one hurting has this glaring “need” that is so (seemingly) obvious in the present moment.

But maybe the truest “help” would be gentle encouragement for a return to a fuller experience of and appreciation for the “ordinary” things in our life.  Maybe the surest way to “help” ourselves is to earnestly search and to find the one (or ones) who help you see the truths revealed in the joy of ordinary moments.  That journey to wholehearted, passionate living may just be the most important adventure we can ever be on.   It may be the greatest gift given or received…. To ourselves or others.

Thomas Moore, in “Care of the Soul” says that “The word passion means basically “to be affected,” and passion is the [therefore] the essential energy of the soul. The poet Rilke describes this passive power in the imagery of the flower’s structure, when he calls it a “muscle of infinite reception.” We don’t often think of the capacity to be affected as a strength and as the work of a powerful muscle, and yet for the soul, as for the flower, this is its toughest work and its main role in our lives.”

Yes. Passion.

If passion means “to be affected”, I am glad for, and rejoice in my capacity to be passionate … deeply affected by … the things around me.  No regrets.  I choose with intention to view this as a strength.  And yet, such passion brings with it vulnerability.

Learning to embrace and understand our own vulnerability without fearing it or denying it is the work of a lifetime.   Sometimes it is the most difficult thing in the world. Living wholeheartedly means opening ourselves up to the pain that such passion can sometimes bring. Because sometimes things go off the rails.  Sometimes we are the cause, sometimes it is out of our control.  Sometimes we end up in a rabbit-hole … either of our own device, or by following one we love down one of their own.   Of course, sometimes we reel out of control.  We reel out of control precisely because we have chosen passionate, wholehearted living.  We reel precisely because we crave connection, and we crave the passionate experience of love, loving-kindness, and connection to our world and those we care about most.   We reel because we have chosen to be those people who are capable of being affected deeply.

I have allowed myself to be hurt … even hurt deeply …. by things out of my control.   But each time, I have come out on the other side.  Perhaps I was scarred and battered, but I emerged.   Sometimes diminished.  But sometimes stronger and better and more resilient.

Living wholeheartedly can be devastating.  But it also can be incredibly rewarding.

I choose passion.  I choose to be affected by things, even knowing that sometimes it will hurt.   Sometimes it will hurt seemingly more than I can bear.  I know that sometimes I will fail miserably.  I may even fail more often than I succeed.  But I choose with intention to experience the magic of “us” when we connect.  Because connection is all there is.   And because the rewards so clearly far outweigh the risks and the costs.

I choose wholehearted living.

Bring it.  I am here for you.  Here I am.  And I love Us.

love,
john

February 25, 2020
by John Shouse
3 Comments

with mixed emotions

I’ve had really mixed emotions about making this post, but finally decided to say something.

Finally decided to say something now because just in the last couple of weeks I’ve had at least  FOUR different incidents where folks have sorta tentatively said something like “looks like you’ve lost a lot of weight”, and then they’ll hesitatingly ask me “is everything ok?”   This has happened both with people I see regularly, and with some I haven’t seen in some time.   A best friend pointed out to me that if I’ve had that many people actually ask, it’s at least *possible* that I’ve had a lot of others who noticed and simply didn’t think it appropriate to say anything.

So let me say clearly:   I’m ok.

Two Johns

two faces

The pictures below are from a few years ago (left) and from a couple days ago (right).   I’m amazed at how different my face looks.   I’m now wearing pants that are TEN INCHES less in waist size than I was wearing about a year ago.  And a suit jacket size that is at least 6 or 8 inches chest size smaller. Shirt size is 2 inches (or more) neck-size smaller. So yes, I’ve been wearing out the sales buying new clothes.  And I’ve given a BUNCH of nice pants/shirts to the thrift store.

Yes, I’ve lost a lot of weight. I don’t know for sure how heavy I was at my peak. But it was far too heavy.  I do know for sure I’ve lost over 80 pounds. Maybe over 90?  Probably over 90.   The number on the scale this morning was the lowest I’ve seen in forever.  Pretty sure I weigh less now than I did in 1983 when I got married.

Now, this loss obviously didn’t happen overnight, just as the weight gain didn’t happen overnight.   I’ve lost it over perhaps 15 to 18 months or more?  I’m around 6′-3″, so I can carry some weight … but I was just far too heavy.   I’ve seen group photos taken at disability community events in the last few years where I was like, “Geez.  I look like a giant compared to everyone else.”

I’m not on a “diet”, or any particular kind of regimen. I know me, and I KNOW that any kind of “plan” or “program” would be a miserable failure. That’s not me.  So I’m just trying to be smart about what, when, and how much I eat. And exercise. I’ve been trying to do some “work” of some kind anywhere from 4 to 7 times per week …. trying to do at least a few miles per day on either the treadmill or recumbent bike, and a few other things.  Yikes.  How did this happen?    Actually, I’d missed a few days in a row recently …. but last night got back on it again, and it felt really good just getting out a few miles.  (Who am I?  This isn’t “me”.  Hmmm.)    Mostly just trying to be active, getting my heart-rate up, and sweating some.  With some good tunes in my ears.  Makes me feel better. Lord knows feeling better is something I’ve needed.

I was never a runner, nor will I ever be.

If you see me running, you better run too, because some kind of bad juju is coming up fast behind me.

You know that food and cooking and eating tasty things either at home or out on the road has been a big deal for me. Still is.  In some ways now more than ever.  I’m actually finding real joy in cooking again, planning meals and shopping for them again too. But (I think) the days of stopping on the way home to get a stress-induced double cheeseburger or a couple of street tacos or whatever… are behind me. Stopping and doing that, THEN going home and making supper. I was doing that a lot.   A lot.  And then too often, I’d have a bowl of ice cream or buttered popcorn late in the evening, or a bowl of cereal before bedtime.  Stupid.  Just plain stupid.  Self-medicating with food.    I’m simply not doing that at all.

These days I eat pretty much whatever I want…. with a keen eye to trying to be really, really smart about what, when, and how much.   And balanced.  If I have a big meal one day, I’ll at least try to balance it with a healthy salad next meal.  And I’m loving my very delicious and healthy smoothie almost every morning.   Not nearly so many Cracker Barrel breakfasts or drive-through sausage biscuits.   I don’t do fast-food.  Not crazy militant about it, I just don’t care for it.  I had a fast-food sandwich recently because I was in a rush, and felt like crap all afternoon afterwards.    I don’t do soft-drinks, other than just once in a blue moon.  Don’t have a taste or a craving for them.   Now, there ARE some things that cry-out for accompanying carbonation.  But my indulgences there are few and far between.   A really good Root Beer now and then (Virgil’s, or Bundaberg) is a real treat.

I’m going to be the first to tell you that the “Rate” of my weight loss seems to be faster than the “Effort” I’m devoting to it should account for.    That did cause me some concern.  But I do regularly see my doctor, a guy I really trust and have seen for over 30 years.  I asked him about it in December, and after the blood-work and other evaluation, he’s happy with what’s going on.  And no tests (so far) have shown anything too out of whack for a guy my age.

Here’s where the “mixed emotions” comes in.   Please, know that I am NOT looking for pats on the back or “attaboys”. Really I’m not.    So don’t.    Actually, I really kinda just don’t want them.   I’m just a little tired of the tentative “are you ok?” questions.

I want to be around for a long time.

In many ways I feel better about my life and the love that surrounds me than I have felt in a long, long time.

Let me say that again….  “I feel better about my life and the love that surrounds me than I have felt in a long, long time.”

There are specific and personal reasons for this that go beyond the weight loss.   Yes, I do still get in a major funk from time to time. Probably more than I should.  But when it happens, I usually …. usually…..  know the reasons.  And I do know that, largely, they lie outside of my control. And that helps.  It doesn’t fix things.  But it helps. I know it’s pointless to worry about things beyond my control.   But most importantly, I’m not self-medicating with cheeseburgers, tacos, sausage biscuits, and obsessing over big steaks.

I do have periods of nuclear swirl. You too, I bet?

It’s ok.  We all do.

The important thing is not the swirl itself, but what it leads you to.  Do I let it get my psyche circling the drain?  Not so much….  I’m getting better at choosing to be intentional about my reaction to the dark times, and NOT start that circling.  Like the Slaid Cleaves song says, “Will your darkest hour write a blank check on your soul??”   Nope.     So I think I am learning, after more than six decades of life, how to ride it out, deal with it, honor it for what it is, and see it through to the other side.  And the “other side” is always better.  Some people are slow learners.

But for the most part things are really good in my head and in my heart.

Really good.

And for those of you who have played a part in that let me just say that I love you.

– SSS

January 14, 2020
by John Shouse
0 comments

time … blessed time

I wrote this several years ago as a post on Facebook.  Was reminded of it again this morning by a friend, and decided it needed to be here.

Everything changes the day you finally realize that yes, there really IS enough time for the most important things in your life. Really. There is. You don’t have to “make time”, or “find time” … you just have to “spend time”.

Here’s the clue: You’re spending it anyway.  You’re spending it anyway.

So spend it wisely.

Wisely.
Intentionally.
Passionately.
Lovingly.
Wholeheartedly.

Spend it on the most important things. Do it. Don’t let yourself get to a point somewhere near the end only to have to look back and say, “I really wish I had spent more time __________”

It’s YOUR time, and the blank is yours to fill in.

Whether you choose to step boldly into a wholehearted and intentional way of being or not, most likely only YOU know the answer. In either case, YOU have to live with the consequences of your choices. Choose wisely, so that when you look back with tear-filled eyes they are tears of joy and gratitude, and not tears of regret for lost opportunities.

How many people do you think will look back in years to come and say, “I really wish I’d spent more time on Social Media”.  Or “watching TV”.  Or “reading mindless fiction”  Or “eating crappy meals and junk food”.  Make every choice count.

How many people will look back in years to come and say, “I really wish I hadn’t been so kind to people.”  or  “I think I spent too much time being pleasant to be around”. or  “I really wish I hadn’t expressed gratitude and love back when I had the opportunity with someone who’s gone now”.   Right. Exactly none.  No one will say that.

Is there someone you need to embrace and tell them you love them? Embrace them.  Tell them.

Is there something you need to write down and save so that it will be there in years to come for others who come after you to read? Write it down.

Is there someone with whom you need to make amends? Make amends.

Is there some activity into which you need to throw yourself more fully? Throw yourself into it.

Is there a “Thank You” that needs to be said, or a gratitude you need acknowledge and express? Express it.

Seize the day?  Hell no.

Seize each moment.

Seize your life.

And know that as Brian Andreas wrote, “Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life”.

Love Grove #10

Love Grove #10 by Jonas Gerard

Find your courage, lift your voice and make your time here count for something. Make the people in your life feel richer for having known you. Not only the people who are “in” your life. Most especially those people, of course. But also the people you meet casually and who are then gone. Store clerks, service providers, waitresses and waiters, bank tellers, grocery baggers, etc. You never know how much just a little eye contact, or a smile and a kind word might mean to someone who is silently struggling.

Is such a wholehearted level of kindness and intention and engagement possible?

Well, we are human after all, and nobody will ever get it 100% perfectly right ALL of the time. But each of us can live more wholeheartedly and kindly and fully on the planet than we currently do. Each of us can start each day with the goal of making the world better for our passage through it.

I may never love you as perfectly as you deserve to be loved and uplifted. I’m not the one who can do that. But I can try to let whatever measure of love I can summon shine through so you can see it. And to try to do it better today than I did yesterday. And better tomorrow than I did today.  I can make the effort.

I can make the effort each day to let myself be an unstoppable conduit of love to the world. To let that be my very reason for being.

Is it easy? Well, no, but it’s probably easier than you think.

Do you have the time?  Why, yes!

Yes you do.

love,

John

 

December 16, 2019
by John Shouse
0 comments

remarkable, strong, and funny

My mother-in-law, Janet’s mom, passed away in the early morning hours of December 5, 2019.  Though she had been in hospice care for a full year, the end was really remarkably quick and peaceful and merciful, and for that we are grateful.  Just as I had made remarks at my own dad’s funeral and later at my father-in-law’s funeral, I spoke at June’s service as well. It was my honor to do so.   Following is the text I prepared for those remarks.


June Pearl Esmon …. Born June Pearl Shouse.     Wait a minute ….  Shouse?     As we pause to remember June here this morning, I probably need to tell this story that I’ve already told at least a few times in the last several days.    Yes, my mother-in-law’s maiden name is the same as mine.   And not a common name either, like “Smith” or “Jones”, but a peculiar, Germanic sounding name …. Shouse.

Back in 1977 when Janet and I first met, she told me that her mother’s maiden name was Shouse.   I hardly believed her, because the ONLY Shouses I knew were those in my own family…  My grandpa Shouse and his brothers.  When she insisted that she was “a Shouse”, I accused her of picking me out of the phone book.   Still not sure that she didn’t.

I did not know that in parts of Tennessee …. Maury County and Hickman County in particular … the name Shouse was relatively common.    So, we initially just chalked it up to coincidence.    Many years later, with the advent of tools like Ancestry.com and the popularity of amateur genealogy efforts, did we learn the truth.

In 1736, a German miller named Johann Adam Schauss …. S-C-H-A-U-S-S … along with his wife Maria and their two sons Freiderich and Phillip left Europe and sailed from Rotterdam to the New World.  They landed at the port of Philadelphia, and settled a short distance north in Easton PA.

Phillip, as an adult, moved south and his descendants eventually settled mostly in North Carolina. Friederich stayed in Easton, and like his father became a miller. They both also changed the last name, as so many immigrant families did, to a more “American” sort of spelling.  Shouse. My lineage of the Shouse family is directly descended from Friederich, through his son Jacob, who was born in Easton in September of 1764.  Phillip’s North Carolina branch of the Shouse family eventually began moving west, settling in TN, and June (and of course, Janet) is descended from that branch.

So yes, Janet and I are true “kissing cousins”.   We are seventh cousins.  Johann was our Great great great great great great great grandfather.

June’s mom and dad, shortly after they married, moved from Tennessee to Southern Illinois and settled eventually in the little town of Bluford, just outside of Mount Vernon.   June was born in 1927 to Earl and Grace Shouse, their only child.

She met Lloyd … a lanky, handsome, athletic boy with an unruly shock of red hair (and a bit of a temper) who was one grade behind her in school.    Lloyd was the “double cousin” of a girl in June’s class, Vivian Esmon.    What’s a “double cousin”?  (You didn’t know you were going to get a genealogy lesson today, did you?)    A “double cousin” is what happens when two brothers marry two sisters.   The resulting children of each respective marriage are cousins, of course…. But cousins on BOTH their mother’s side of the family AND their father’s side of the family ….   “double cousins”.   Lloyd’s dad and Vivian’s dad were brothers, and their moms were sisters. Lloyd always felt Vivian was more like a sister than a cousin. They were very close through Lloyd’s whole life.    And Lloyd’s sister Maxine, whom June lovingly called “Max” in her little diary was also one of June’s friends.

Now, I’ve got to say something right here.   And I don’t want anyone to mis-understand what I’m saying.  Because I loved my mother-in-law, and I knew … I KNEW ….  that in her best moments she was an intelligent, well-spoken, engaging woman with a sense of humor.   And I could see the love that she had for Lloyd and for her family and her grandkids.    BUT … after Lloyd’s passing and particularly in the last few days, I have grown to a new appreciation of what an utterly remarkable, strong, funny young woman she was.  And that was at a time when young women were mostly NOT encouraged to be remarkable, and strong, and funny.

For those of you …. Most in this room ….. that knew Lloyd and June over the last few decades, you know how much of a “force of nature” Lloyd could be at times.   So it was an easy observation to see June somehow as being in Lloyd’s shadow.   To think of her as a bit timid or quiet.  She was anything but.  So, I’d like to paint a different picture of June.  A side that some of you may be surprised by.

After Lloyd passed away in April of 2018, and we began going through all of Lloyd and June’s things in preparation for her eventual move to the nursing-home facility at the Meadows  we found a number of their high-school yearbooks.   As it turns out, Lloyd was likely a good student, but he wasn’t apparently very interested in getting involved in student issues or extra-curricular activities.  Basketball.  That was about it.    On the other hand, June was quite a popular and involved young lady!   She was on the Student Council at least couple of years in High School including her Senior year. She was the Secretary of the Sophomore Class, and Vice President of both the Junior Class and Senior Class.  She was on the Yearbook staff , and the student Newspaper. She was an officer in the Girls Athletic Association. She played saxophone in the marching band, and the list goes on.  In her senior yearbook, she had one of the longest lists of involvements of any of the students.   Now, it’s true that Senior year there were only 6 students, all girls … being a very small town … and many of the boys having already gone off to WWII or to work on the Railroad.     Nevertheless, June was extraordinarily involved and a bright student.

June went off to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, leaving Lloyd back in Bluford to finish his senior year in high school.    Yet, they remained connected and we have at least one picture of Lloyd visiting June there in Carbondale.

They were married in Bluford on April 11th 1948, and began their married life living in an upstairs bedroom of June’s parent’s house, that they had fixed up in the days and weeks before the wedding.

Now, our daughter Emma shared with me a little pocket diary that June kept from 1948, it’s truly amazing to read her short 1 or 2-sentence entries that she diligently wrote down each day.  So many of the entries end with “had a good time”.   During this time June’s dad Earl was in a TB Sanitarium in St. Louis, and times were very hard and lean for June and her mom, Grace.   June worked at National Auto Parts in Mt. Vernon to help her mom make ends meet.

I want to share some entries here, so you can get a sense of the remarkable young woman June was…..

  • From Monday January 5th:  Went to work, bought a bible, Max came up and washed my hair for me.  I took her to Play Practice.
  • From Saturday January 10th:  Met Max, Libby (Lloyd’s mom) and Lloyd in town.  Libby and Max and I went to the show. Saw “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”.  It was good.  Went skating with Lloyd.Skating.”Skating” … That’s roller-skating.   Lloyd and June as kids, and later as a young married couple were excellent roller-skater.    Seriously, several times a week there’s an entry that says “Went skating with Lloyd, had a good time.”     I wondered about this.    Then it hit me.   As a good Church of Christ girl in the 1940’s, June knew that dancing was a sin.   But put wheels on those feet, and suddenly all is ok!
  • From Sunday February 8th:  Lloyd came up and we went down to his folks for dinner. Went to the show. Saw “You were Meant for Me”.
  • From Monday, February 9th:  Didn’t do anything.  Messed around. Nadine came over and we looked at Movie Magazines.  Lloyd called, went to bed early.
  • From Saturday February 14th.  Came home from work about noon. Lloyd came out. He brought me a pretty valentine. Went down to his house for dinner, and listened to the radio with his folks.
  • Wednesday March 3th:  Got a new coat, a new blouse, and a new dress. Max washed my hair.  Went skating and won a prize for being the best dressed.  Had a good time.
  • Sunday March 14th:  Went to church with Gatley’s.  I was baptized at 3:30 pm.  Lloyd and his folks took me in.  Max washed my hair.
  • Thursday March 18th:  Played Basketball.  Some of us girls played the High School girls. Lloyd and I listened to the state tournament on the radio.
  • Friday March 26th (getting close to wedding day):  Lloyd and his granddad built a closet upstairs for us. Mother and I fixed the blinds for the bedroom, went to bed pretty early.
  • Monday March 29th::  Seen about my cake.   Lloyd came up and painted.  I got Lloyd’s ring. It is awful pretty.
  • Saturday April 3rd:   Worked till noon, Lloyd met me and we went to Mitchell’s and bought a mattress and rug.  I worked upstairs, then Lloyd and I went skating. It was fun.
  • Monday April 5th.  Lloyd came to town and bought his suit.   I went along and picked it out.  He and Max came out to the house, and we moved my things upstairs.
  • Saturday April 10th.  The gang at the National had a party for me.  Gave me a GE Iron and Iron and Ironing board.  Max and Lloyd and I picked up the punch bowl and the cake.
  • Sunday April 11th.  Went to church.  Lloyd met me there.  We were married at 2:30 by brother Gould. We had a reception at the house at 3:30,  It rained all day.  Went down to Libby’s for supper.
  • Monday April 12th:   Lloyd called into work at 8:00am.  Went to town with his mother and got a mirror from Mitchell’s.  Bought some records.
  • Friday April 16th:    Lloyd and I didn’t get up very early.  We had a chivaree.  There was a big crowd here. They threw Lloyd in the lake.

It’s really just priceless reading these entries and gaining a vision for the life that Lloyd and June began to build together as newlyweds.   I love that so many of them end with “it was fun”, or “had a good time”.

Lloyd finished his schooling and became a high school principal there in Webber Township where Bluford is located.    Dwight was born in 1950, and Janet in 1959.   A couple of years later, Lloyd left education and went to work for the ANPA in New York city, and the young family left their familiar Bluford roots and moved to New Jersey, where June became a housewife to a businessman that commuted each day from the suburbs into the big city.   A move to Miami a few years later, where Lloyd worked for the Miami Herald, and then to Nashville in 1969 where Lloyd and June and Janet would settle in Bellevue and become members of the Bellevue Church of Christ, just a little over a year after that congregation’s founding.   Dwight was in college at SIU Carbondale.

June was diagnosed with what was then called manic depression in 1971. June was always very open about her mental health struggles, and friends would sometimes seek her out when they or a loved one were dealing with depression or what is now known as bipolar disorder to seek advice or talk about issues that she’d experienced over the years.  And this was at a time when mental health issues were often kept quiet in families, and not often talked about openly.

When we were cleaning out their condo at the Meadows as June was preparing to move into the nursing home, we found dozens and dozens of books about depression and mental health, dating from shortly after the time of June’s treatment, in which she had highlighted passages, made notes in the margins, or tucked away hand-written notes.  Some of these had reminders to “share with” someone in particular.    It was obvious she took the notion of learning and “paying it forward” very seriously.

When Janet brought me home from college at Missouri, I think Lloyd accepted me into the family maybe a bit before June did.   For a long time, she referred to me in the third person.    At the dinner table, she’d look at Janet and ask, for example, “Does John want more green beans?”.   Janet would laugh Janet’s signature laugh and say, “I don’t know, mom.  Why don’t you ask him?”    I’d smile and play along.  “Yes, John WOULD like more green beans”.     This became a running joke.    June did grow to accept me though, and we had as good a son-in-law mother-in-law relationship as I could have hoped for.   She and Lloyd were extraordinarily kind to Janet and I, and helpful when our kids came along.  We loved spending time together with them.

I was struggling for how I might adequately characterize the kind of grandmother June was, when my daughter Emma solved that for me by writing the most remarkable tribute the other day.   She asked me to read it, because this is truly a deeply emotional moment for our kids, who loved “Mimi June” unconditionally.   So these are Emma’s words:

Truly some of my very favorite and earliest memories are my Friday nights I’d spend at Mimi and Grandpa’s house. At the old house.  From the time I was little I had just the best routine with Mimi – some of it even carried over into when I was older and would spend the night at their new house. I LOVED looking through her things – she had so many more “lady” things than Mom did and it all seemed so fancy and sophisticated and from another era. While she was doing things in the kitchen, with her permission I would have the best time testing out her makeup, trying on her jewelry and scarves and dresses, looking through her boxes of photos and mementos. She’d call me “Digger O’Dell” and sweetly scold me to put everything back in its proper place. I was so spoiled – I had my own bedroom in my mom’s old room in their house but I can barely remember sleeping there ever. I always slept in Mimi’s bed with her. I don’t think it was because I was scared to sleep alone – I just loved spending time with her. Once she’d finish in the kitchen with whatever needed to be done, Little Emma and Mimi would watch TV together in her bedroom as she got ready for bed. 20/20 with Barbara Walters and all the ABC shows of “TGIF” like Family Matters, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Full House. We’d get in her bed together, say our prayers out loud, and then fall asleep to a cassette tape of her favorite hymns. I LOVED these nights so very much.

Mimi and Grandpa’s marriage is so very sweet to me now, being married myself. I always thought it was so funny and sweet and weird how they would poke fun at each other, push each other’s buttons – but there was never any doubt that they were devoted to one another, and would do ANYTHING for each other. I hope TJ and I still have so much fun and love and humor in each other’s idiosyncrasies when we have been married 70 years.

After Grandpa died, Mimi was a lot less happy for a whole lot of reasons. But I was still frequently amazed and delighted when I saw her on a good day and she would deliver cutting and smart remarks about politics which I had never heard her do (a few months ago CNN was on and she told “That Trump – he’s such a butt” and I died laughing and told everyone I knew that my Mimi had said that!) and sharp and sweet recollections from her childhood and history with Grandpa. I really loved hearing those stories from her – I don’t recall Grandpa talking much about his childhood or adolescence or own life really. But she was willing to share a lot about what she remembered about her own life.

She was one of the sweetest and most persnickety people I’ve ever met – one of a kind and made me laugh a lot, sometimes on purpose and often not – and I’m so grateful she loved me so much and I got to know her for 30 of what I think were her best years.

Thanks Emma.  That was beautiful.  There’s not much that I can or would choose add to that.

She had a similarly close and wonderful and powerful relationship through the years with Brendan.   And she loved Evan too … and worked diligently reading books and articles on autism so as to understand him better and what our family life might be like.   She loved him so much that she kept him and our family on the prayer list at the Bellevue Church for well over a decade.

She and Lloyd, of course, made it to 70 years of marriage.  Remarkable.   And shortly after his passing we realized it had become necessary for her to move up to the nursing home at the meadows.  But she stayed alert and lucid and engaged on most of our visits out there several times per week, right up until the end.

Our lives will be very different without her presence.   But the comfort of experiencing and seeing her life well-lived, for over 92 years right up until the end, is something we all will always cherish and learn from.

I don’t suspect Janet and I will be buying roller-skates any time soon.

But to end so many of the entries in our own daily diaries (or Facebook posts) with “had a good time” is something we can all aspire to.

 

–  John

I also want to add here as a postscript, something that Emma wrote about her brother Evan and about her taking the loving care to inform him about his Mimi June’s death and what the funeral, etc., would look like. And about his being a comfort to her.   I had this out on Facebook, but posting it here will help ensure that it’s easily findable in the future…. and it is SO worth sharing.

From Emma:

I originally posted a version of this in a group for siblings of folks with disabilities but – my friend group is wider than that … and even those of you I know from the disability community may not know much about who my autistic brother Evan really is, and I want more folks to know and love Evan and people like him. People who have beautiful and funny and endearing gifts that are sometimes hard to see unless you invest some time and care and energy.

My grandmother passed away at the end of last week. That day, I went out to let one of my two brothers – Evan – know about it. Evan has autism and significant communication and behavior challenges, and lives in supported living with 24/7 staff. It was clear when I told him that she had died that he understood (she had been ill and in declining health for a long time; but we are all still sad as we grew up close to her and our grandfather, her husband – they were wonderful people). He made a brief sad expression, covered his eyes, and reached out to touch my arm. By typing on my laptop, I described what the visitation and funeral would be like and asked him if he wanted to go, while also saying it was his choice and he did not have to come if he did not want to. He typed “yes” to say he did want to go to both services. He did so well during both occasions (though there was a HILARIOUS moment where he completely and loudly destroyed a plastic water bottle during a quiet family-only prayer by the preacher 😂 – which, honestly, was a welcome bit of humor for me.)

During the funeral, he sat next to me – I was clearly sad, and crying a bit – and throughout the entire service he kept holding my hand and putting his arm around me and leaning his head against mine. He sat through the service, perfectly quiet and calm – and helped ME feel calm and less sad. ❤️

So often, people underestimate Evan and people like him. People talk about how people with autism or other significant disabilities don’t have the ability to fully understand feelings or empathy or social cues. They only talk about what support people with disabilities need – and not the gifts and strengths our loved ones with disabilities have to offer us, and the support they give us – the reciprocal roles of every family. My autistic “nonverbal” brother with a label of intellectual disability – who, unfortunately, very few people take seriously as an adult with something valuable to offer – made my grief easier … with no words at all, just by being present and aware. He continually amazes me with his emotional intelligence and empathy – skills we all can benefit from learning. I wish more people in our communities appreciated the real gifts folks like Evan have to offer – not as an act of charity or kindness, but because our community is richer when everyone is able to be at the table to contribute.

 

 

July 29, 2019
by John Shouse
4 Comments

a chili dog for the king

The details in this story are almost entirely true, except for those that aren’t.  No names have been changed, because there would be no point.  I can only say this:  I have been keeping this story inside for a long time, and for reasons I’m not completely sure of, NOW …. in the smoldering embers of National Chili Dog Day …. seems to be the right time to tell it.

He looked at me through those dark shades and said the words I’d been waiting almost six months to hear.  “Call the airport kid, and tell ‘em to gas up the jet, I want a chili dog.”   By now I was used to the routine.  `The King’,  (or as his Mamma used to call him all those years ago in Tupelo, “Elvis”), was used to having whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, we were about to embark on a personal odyssey that would change the course of my life forever.  For me, this trek for the perfect tube-steak would be the culmination of the strangest six months of my life.   It had all begun innocently enough, late one night about six months earlier at Smitty’s Better Burger in Memphis, not far from the Graceland gates…


I was just out of college, looking for work and not having much luck.  That night, the same as I did once each week, I treated myself to a much needed over- indulgence at the best 24 hour diner in town.

“I’ll have a triple smash-burger with cheese, be sure and put one slice of cheese between each pair of beef patties and one on the top … that’s makes for a total of three pieces of cheese.  Save the raw onions, I need mine grilled.  Go heavy on everything else, including lettuce and tomato.  Give me a double order of your shoestring cheese fries, and a chocolate shake, extra thick.  Oh, and bring me a large glass of ice water.”  The waitress glared poison darts at me.  “So, ‘the usual’ hon?”    “Yep”.

From the booth behind me I heard a voice that I’d know anywhere.   “Hey kid, I think you got her “all shook up” with that order.”  It couldn’t be HIM, could it?  I turned and saw `The King of Rock and Roll’ sitting alone behind what can only be described as a mountain of cheeseburgers.   Looking him square in the eyes, (not an easy task, considering the eyes were not only behind all those cheeseburgers, but also hidden behind dark shades with flashy silver frames), I delivered the same line I had been delivering in one form or another for years.  “Maybe so Mr. Presley, but food is too important to just eat it without thinking about it.”

 

“Well, you sure do seem to know a thing or two about cheeseburgers.  Why don’t you join me, kid?”

I couldn’t believe it.  Here I was a poor kid of twenty-three, just out of college with no job, knowing that the meal I had just ordered would cut my net worth just about in half, and I was about to share some fast food with the man who was one of the wealthiest entertainers ever, and arguably the most recognizable person on planet Earth.  I got up and slid into his booth across the table from him. I had to marvel at not only how he put away the burgers, but also how he did so with the larger-than-life panache that just confirmed everything I thought knew about him.  He asked, “Where you from, kid?”   I replied I was from a small town in Missouri he’d likely never heard of.   “Try me” he said.   I replied I was from Mexico, Missouri.   “You mean the Firebrick and Saddle Horse capitol of the World, Mexico Missouri?”, he asked with a sly grin.

I asked how in the world he knew that?   He said “I lie in bed at night and read atlases for fun when I can’t sleep.”    Say what you will about Elvis, the man was a geographical savant.   “How about that!”  I exclaimed.   “I do that too!”  He flashed a smile and gave me a little approving nod of the head.    We made geographical small-talk until my food arrived.

concept photo of a large pile of cheeseburgers on yellow background.

As I dug into my own mound of meat and cheese, I was vaguely aware that he seemed particularly fascinated with the way I savored each and every succulent mouthful as if it might be my last bit of food in this life.  And like I said, I’ve never seen anyone who could put away cheeseburgers like Elvis.  So, over the next hour or so, more to his credit than mine, we talked about a little bit of everything and a lot about food, especially the greasy fast food that we both liked so much.  We talked about tacos and pizzas we’d eaten, and where the best shakes could be found. And the subtleties of New York cheesecake.   I think we could both tell that we had formed an instant, though unspoken bond.  We had become blood brothers of cholesterol.  Fat-gram friends.  Cheeseburger chums.

When the waitress came around and asked if everything was okay, I lavished praise on the burger and fries, but had to admit to her that the shake was just a little too thin to suit.  Now, obviously impressed that I was sitting with Elvis, and in a total reversal of the surly attitude she had shown me earlier, she offered to make another.  “That’s okay, the kid doesn’t need another one.” Elvis interjected.  I gave him a quizzical look.  He explained, “I just got a commercial shake blender for the house.”

“Cool,” I said, “you mean one of those big restaurant jobs with the stainless steel cups?”  “That’s right,” he said, “why don’t you come back to Graceland with me and I’ll make you the best chocolate shake you ever tried to suck through a straw.”

When we finished our feast, Elvis left a couple of Franklins for the waitress, and we left together.


It was well after midnight when we pulled through those big iron gates of Graceland in his shiny brand new Cadillac convertible, but the place was lit up like Fort Knox.  Well, at least he could afford the electric bill.  We went straight to the `Jungle Room’, Elvis’ favorite spot to unwind, and he got behind the bar and proceeded to make two of the biggest, thickest, chocolatiest shakes that had ever been mixed.  He turned on the TV … reruns of “Leave it to Beaver”.   Elvis said, “You know, that Eddie Haskell just slays me.”   Go figure.  We sat there into the wee hours, watching TV and enjoying the shakes.  All the while, we continued our food discussion, talking about the best of the best of the best diner and greasy-spoon fare. Just two gluttons for the grease.

 

The irony was palpable. Me, as relatively insignificant as a grease spot, and him, the King “Greaser” of them all. Unbelievable.  I wished that my college buddies had a picture of this.

 

When the swinging tail, shifting eye Felix the Cat clock on the wall indicated it was approaching 3am, I figured it was time to leave.  “Mr. Presley, that was absolutely the best shake I’ve ever had, and it’s been an honor to share a burger with you, but I guess I’d better be getting on home so you can go to bed.”

 

“Well kid, I’ve enjoyed talking food with you. It’s not everyday that you find somebody who understands the joys of burgers and good food the way you do.   Here, take these,” he said tossing me the keys to the new Caddy, “She’s yours.”

 

I was speechless.  I had heard that he gave these away all the time, but I was stunned. After a few moments had passed I was able to mutter, “Thanks, but you see, I’ve got this 1964 Ford Falcon that belonged to my Mom.  I’m really fond of it.  I appreciate the offer, but why don’t you just keep the Caddie, or give it to someone who really could use it.”  I handed the keys back.

 

What was I saying?  Here he was offering me a car worth more money than I’d ever seen in one place at one time, and I was turning him down.  “What do you do anyway, kid?”  I guess he thought I must be either independently wealthy, crazy, or both to refuse his offer.

 

“Actually, I don’t have a job.  I’ve had some really good interviews this week though, and I hope I’ll get an offer in a few days.”  It was a rather large lie.  I had no serious prospects at all.

Now he was curious.  “What kind of job are you trying to get?”

“Well, I … I just got out of college with a degree in geography.” I stammered, staring at the way my shoes sank in his thick shag carpet.  Being geography major is not the sort of thing that typically makes a person’s chest swell with pride.

“So you’re a college boy, eh?  I never had much use for college boys, but I’ll admit that I like you.  Kid, I’ll tell you what, how about if you stay here at Graceland.  I’ll have a room fixed up for you.  You’ll get a salary that’s more than fair and you can be my personal geography advisor.”

I must confess that I really did kind of like the way he called me “Kid”, but again, I was momentarily speechless.  Finally I mumbled,  “Mr. Presley, I just don’t know what to say.  I guess `Thank you’ would be a start.  I’ll take you up on your offer. But first, tell me what a man like you needs with a personal geography advisor?”

He chuckled. “Are you kidding?  I’m not offering you a free ride son. Your job is to crack open the old Rand-McNally and study that sucker.  I want you to know that atlas forwards and back, inside and outside. And I’m not just talking about roads and towns.  If I want to know where the best place is in the whole USA to go for grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches in the middle of the night, you had better be able to tell me.  If I want the best biscuits and gravy that money can buy, I don’t want to spend two days trying to find them.  I want YOU to have the answer.  It’s going to be hard work, but I think you’re the right one for the job.  Hell, kid… I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody so right for this job.  So kid, YOU tell ME …. do I need a geography advisor or what?”

Who could argue with logic like that?    A quick handshake, and it was a done deal. We never even talked money.   Didn’t have to.

So here we were, six months and who knows how many thousands of gluttonous miles later, about to embark on what for me promised to be the trip to end all trips.  The Queen Mother of Junk Food Junkets.  I’d been dropping hints for a couple of months that we should make this trip.  See, I had always considered the greatest of all possible culinary delights to be the Great American Chili Dog.  Not just any old “chili dog” you might whip up without a thought.  No, the Great American Chili Dog has to be prepared just so, and you have to start with the right ingredients. Not everyone has the wherewithal and common sense to do it correctly.  But before I get too far ahead…..


On the way to the airport in the limo we quaffed root beers and popped M&M’s and Cherry PEZ by the handful.  In the car were Colonel Parker (the man who unleashed Elvis on the world), Elvis, myself and a handful of `hangers on’ that occasionally made these trips with us.  By now Elvis was so used to leaving the arrangements to me that he never really gave a thought to where we were going.  He would name the menu, and I would name the destination.  So I guess that when the question came up, it was the first time he had really given a thought as to where we might be going for Chili Dogs.  “So, where are we headed kid?”   “Chicago” I said matter-of-factly.

 

Someone gasped.  Nobody said a word.  I noticed that the Colonel was wiping a few drops of perspiration from his forehead.  Elvis had his eyes closed and if I didn’t know better I’d have sworn that he was fighting back tears, and maybe even moaning a bit.  I got the idea that I had said something very wrong. Very wrong indeed.  The silence was thick enough to spread with a spatula.

 

Finally Colonel Parker spoke … very formally, it seemed.   “Elvis,” he said, “will NOT go to Chicago.”

 

I would later find out that there had been some very heavy unpleasantness involving Elvis, a cadre of tiny circus clowns, and a nude volleyball game in a hotel room in the Windy City after one of his shows a few years back.   He was definitely a man of strange and powerful passions.   For now though, I was flabbergasted.  Chicago was the undisputed fountainhead of frankfurters.  I had to think of something and think of it quick.  “Uh, well, uh, ….. Atlanta.  There are chili dogs in Atlanta.”  That’s all.  I had no idea what I was saying.  It was silent all the way to the jet.

 

When we touched down in Atlanta I excused myself to the restroom, and quickly found a pay phone and called a second cousin of mine who lived there.  “Hi Stan, how’s everything. …. Uh huh.  Look, I don’t have time to explain, but this is really important.  Where do I go for the best chili dog in Atlanta? …. That’s right, I said `chili dog’.”  I got the directions to a diner downtown near Georgia Tech.  Stan said it was iconic.  We got in the rented limo and headed into town.  I said a prayer.

 

At the diner, everything appeared copasetic.  Colonel Tom went inside, found the owner and flipped a fist-full of C-notes.  The guy cleared the place out for us.  The last thing we needed was a bunch of gawkers while we tried to savor our dogs.  From the smell and the look of the place it was obvious they knew how to sling hash. I hadn’t been in a place like this since Varsity year in college.  In the words of `The Bard’ it was  “… just all eat-up with atmosphere”.  (No, Shakespeare didn’t say that. Bard Hawkins, an old college buddy used to say it all the time.  I’m not really sure what it means). On the menu, at the top of the Hot Dog section, were those sacred words….  “We Proudly Serve Vienna All Beef Wieners”.  The first hurdle was cleared.  I breathed a small sigh of relief.

 

The owner himself waited on us.  “Elvis, this is an honor.  What’ll you have, what’ll you have?”  The King flashed that famous half-grin, half-sneer at the two waitresses who were busy swooning behind the counter.  “Tell him kid” He said.

 

“Bring us a couple of Chili Dogs with cheese and onions” I said, “just the smallest smear of mustard, with Cheese fries on the side and a Frosted Orange.”  While we waited, Elvis fiddled with the toothpick dispenser.  I nervously tried to keep an eye on the preparation of the feast that was going on behind the counter.  A guy with a huge belly covered with a dirty white T-shirt and even dirtier apron, (a planned part of the ambience no doubt), opened a pot and with a pair of tongs reached in and pulled a once beautiful Vienna All Beef Wiener out of the water.  It was pale and wrinkled and had split open from the excess heat of the boiling water. The actual process that split our dogs wide open is called osmosis, which involves the movement of water across a selectively permeable membrane … but that’s another story.  Trust me though… it’s no good for hot dogs.  Then he reached into a plastic bag and pulled out one of those little hot dog buns like you buy in an eight-pack at the grocers on the Fourth of July.  He plopped the dripping dog onto this tiny cold bun and reached for a squirt bottle of bright yellow mustard.  Soon the dog was swimming in yellow goo. Next, out came the container of two-day-old minced onions that he spooned onto the goo.  I was aghast.  I could feel the blood leaving my face. When he dipped a ladle full of what was obviously canned chili and beans onto the wilted wiener, I slumped on the bar stool and put my head in my hands.   BEANS!  For God’s sake, beans.

 

Elvis, always astute, glanced at me and realized this wasn’t going so well.  “Hey kid, this isn’t what we’re looking for is it?”  he sort of half-asked, half-declared.  I just shook my head.  He had the Colonel give the guy another C-note for his trouble and we split.   I’ll bet the guy still tells that story to his unbelieving buddies.  Nine hundred bucks for 15 minutes worth of “Cooking for the King.” … who never even ate a bite.  Not bad work if you can get it.

 

Back in the air, Elvis spoke to me again for the first time since leaving the diner.  “Don’t worry kid, it’s not your fault.  Where to now?”   I was sick to my stomach.  “D.C…. Washington D.C.”  There’s no telling where in the world that answer came from.  I had dated a girl named Katie from DC for a while in college. We had spent a very enjoyable spring break there.  To the best of my recollection, while we did some pretty weird and kinky things that week … (let’s just say I’m not welcome at the Library of Congress any more) …. none of them involved chili dogs.  That’s probably just because we didn’t think of it at the time.

 

When we touched down at the airport, I once again excused myself and went looking for the pay phone.   “Hello Katie, … yeah it’s me.  How’ve you been? ….  Yeah, I know it’s been a long time.  … I’ve missed you too, babe. A lot.  Listen, I know this seems odd, but I need to know where the best chili dog in DC can be had. … That’s right, I said `chili dog’.”    She had the name of a place.  Of course she did.  “Is it really good, though?”  O asked.   “Have I ever steered you wrong when it comes to wieners?”    “YES!!!” I said.  “And thanks for that, by the way.  But now I’m talking about hot dogs!”

 

Soon we hopped in another rented limo and headed for Georgetown.  At the address Katie had given me, we found a posh little eatery that had “Trendy” written all over it.  Elvis gave me a doubtful look.

 

“Let me go in and check it out” I said.  Once inside, my heart sank.  This was unmistakably that worst of all possible eateries, …  Posh, Upscale, and Snotty.   The Maitre’d approached and looking at me somewhat askance asked, “May I help you?”   “A dear longtime friend recommended this place for your chili dogs.  May I ask how you prepare them?”  From the way he bristled at my question and took on that slightly superior air that the Maitre’d in a Posh, Upscale, and Snotty bar always has, you could see his response coming from a mile away.

 

“Sir I assure you that we use only the finest ingredients in all of our dishes.”  This was more than I could stand.  The accumulated frustrations of my previous twenty-three and a half years burst forth and I grabbed him by the collar and proceeded to shake him for all I was worth.

 

“LISTEN YOU PISS-ANT PIPSQUEAK, I’VE GOT THE KING OF ROCK ‘N ROLL WAITING OUTSIDE IN THE LIMO AND HE’S LOOKING FOR THE BEST DAMN CHILI DOG MONEY CAN BUY.  NOW ARE YOU GONNA TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DOGS, OR AM I GONNA HAVE TO STOMP YOUR SKINNY BUTT, RIGHT HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THESE STUPID  FICUS PLANTS?”

Obviously, I was a little keyed up.     As every patron in the restaurant looked on, the Maitre’d unfolded this tale of woe. –  “Well, sir, we take an oversized grass-fed beef frankfurter and split it in half, then grill it over an open mesquite flame.  We then serve it over grilled gluten-free Texas toast with a generous helping of Jalapeno & Black Bean Chili. It is lovingly topped with crumbled Mexican Farmers Cheese, and garnished with fresh organically Cilantro.  We serve it with side of sweet Spanish onion chutney.”  I sat down in the floor and began to sob.   He went to call the cops.   “It’s ok” I said.  “I’m leaving.

I returned to the limo.  “Holy cow, kid you look awful.” Elvis said.  “So, do their chili dogs measure up?”  “No way, Mr. Presley.  I wouldn’t serve what they called a chili dog to my worst enemy.”  From somewhere in the deep recesses of my memory I recalled hearing that in Cincinnati, they don’t put beans in your chili unless you ask for them. It was a long shot.  “Let’s go to Cincinnati,” I said.  On the way to the airport, I took out my address book and erased Katie’s number.

I didn’t know anybody who actually lived in Ohio and I hoped it stayed that way, so when I got to the pay phone at the airport I excused myself, found the Yellow Pages, and looked under W for Wieners.  There it was. Wally’s Wienie World.  I dialed.

“Wally’s Wienie World.  This is Wally.  Can I help you?”   Good.  The Top Guy.

Not that it has anything to do with this story, but you should ALWAYS try to deal with the Top Guy.  Good advice in life, regardless of the circumstance.

“Hello, I’m from out of town.  I was just wondering if your Chili Dogs were any good.”  Best not play my trump card, my `King’ card if you will, too soon.  “Best in Cincy.”    “Beans? I asked.   “Only if you want ‘em!”

Enough said.

At Wally’s we parked the limo, got out and briefly admired the view of the Skyline, and went in.  Wally took one look at Elvis and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he almost wet his pants.  “Elvis!” he exclaimed. “… I mean, Mr. Presley, … uh, uh, what can I do for you?   Have a seat, … or a booth, … or a stool… or whatever you want”

Elvis was so cool. (Of course he was cool, he couldn’t help it.  Hell, he DEFINED cool every day.)   “Chill out, Wienie man.  We just want some dogs.  The kid here will fill you in on the details.  We’re tired, we’re hungry, and we’ve come a long way and like I said, we just want some dogs.”  Elvis looked at me so I ordered.  “We want some chili dogs, please hold the beans, with plenty of cheese and grilled onions, small slather of mustard.”

Wally pulled the buns out of a warmer on the steam table.  No poppy seeds, but at least it looked hefty enough to be acceptable.  He threw some sliced onions on the grill, and they started to gently sizzle.  What a wonderful sound.  And in a second, the sound was followed by a wonderful aroma as well.  Things were beginning to look up.  When he pulled a nondescript, gray, shriveled up wienie out of the steamer, my spirits sank somewhat.  But the chili looked really good, not ONE bean in sight, and there WAS that mound of finely grated cheese sitting nearby.  This might be okay after all.  Wally expertly assembled the component parts and sat them down in front of us.

Never judge a book by its cover.  It was all I could do to swallow that first bite.  If someone was seriously trying to pass this stuff off as chili, then they had a very warped sense of humor.  I will never be able to prove it, but I think Wally had been putting tablespoons sugar and cinnamon (!!!!) in his `Chili’.  It was sickeningly sweet.

Elvis and I each managed only a couple of bites before we both called it quits.  We just sat there.  He was the first to speak.  “Hey wienie man, this ain’t what we’re looking for.  I appreciate the effort, but your dogs just don’t cut it.  Colonel, give Wally a Cadillac.  Let’s go kid.”

Back in the jet Elvis looked at me and said, “Where to now kid?”  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  He wanted to go on!  It was just unbelievable. It was like some sort of weird, recurring nightmare.  As for me, I’d had just about enough of this Hot Dog Hopscotch.  I just had to broach the subject one more time.

“Mr. Presley…  Elvis,” It was the first time I’d ever called him by his first name.  ” … I know this is painful but I have to say it.  If you want the best Chili Dogs, you have to go to Chicago. It’s as simple as that.  We can jet around the whole damn country, but we’d be wasting our time.  There is only one Holy Land of Hot Dogs, and that’s Chicago.  If we can’t go there, let’s just go on back to Graceland.  You’re paying me to know where the best of everything is, right?  I’m telling you.   It’s Chicago for Hot Dogs.  In the past six months, have I ever steered you wrong?  Even once?”

The Colonel and the rest of the entourage were pale as ghosts.  Nobody knew quite what to say.  Except for the dull roar of the jet engines, it was quiet for a long, long time.

Then, very softly, Elvis uttered a single word.

“Chicago.”

We flew on in wordless, reflective silence.  Who knows what personal demons (or clowns) The King was facing down.    I figured it would be into the wee hours when we landed. When we touched down I was the first to speak up.

” Hey boss, let’s do this right …just you and me, no entourage.  Just like that first night at Smitty’s.  And let’s skip the limo. You need to experience a Chicago cab ride.”

Outside on the sidewalk,  I flagged down a cabbie.

“Hey Habib…Where is the best late night Chili Dog in Chicago?” I asked, already expecting his answer.

“HA,” he laughed, “’Best Chili Dog’ indeed!  Those are fighting words in Chicago, my friend.  You ask twenty cabbies, you get twenty different answers!”

I insisted, “What about YOU though?  What answer do we get from YOU that won’t steer us wrong?”

He smiled.  No hesitation.  “That would be Freddie’s Famous Franks.  Hold on..”  He stepped on the gas.

Twenty minutes and nearly two hundred narrowly averted traffic accidents later, we pulled up in front of a small cinder-block building with a twenty-five foot fiberglass hot dog on top and a flashing neon sign that proudly proclaimed for all the world to see that this unlikely spot was the “Home of the Chicago Dog”

“I like it already.”  Elvis said.

I paid the cabbie, heavy tip … an ELVIS-sized tip … and we went in.

The aroma was surely as close to heaven as I’ll get in this life.  We sat at the counter.   There on the menu above the grill were those same sacred words we had seen all those miles ago in Atlanta.  “We Proudly Serve Vienna All Beef Wieners”.  I felt my pulse begin to quicken. I whispered to Elvis.  “I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

The waitress gave Elvis kind of a funny look, but I guess she decided it couldn’t really be him.

“Yeah?” she demanded.  Not, “May I help you gentlemen?” Not even “What’ll ya have?”  Just “Yeah?”

Her voice gave me the bona fide heebie-jeebies.  It made my skin crawl – like fingernails on a blackboard. Like a freight train locking up the wheels at ninety miles an hour.  Like a car crash you hear before you see it.  Like a…. like a waitress at the best damn diner you’ve ever been in.

“Two chili dogs with cheese and onions and mustard.  Two orders of cheese fries, and a pair of ice cold root beers.”  I knew that was all I needed to say.   When she sat the dogs down in front of us a few minutes later, I knew instantly that Pavlov was right.  It took all of my concentration to keep from drooling on the counter.  When the mixture of aromas rising from these steaming wieners hit me I think I almost passed out.

Damn.  This was it.  THIS was the real deal.

Words simply fail to describe the taste of that chili dog.

  • A hefty bun, sturdy enough to take being warmed on the steamer and still stand up to the combined weight of Hot Dog, Chili, Cheese and Onions.  Poppy seeds are pretty important, but not mandatory. Sesame seeds are for quiche-eaters.
  • Vienna All Beef Wiener – steamed.  Not boiled. For God’s sake, absolutely NOT boiled. 
  • A quick swipe of good, slightly spicy mustard.
  • Good hot, thick, meaty chili.  Use plenty. No beans.  Beans are for cowboys.  Not too spicy, not too bland.   Absolutely NOT sweet. (Sorry Wally)
  • A mound of finely grated cheddar cheese, not “cheese sauce” Grated in-house.
  • Onions sliced thin, not chopped or diced.  Grilled gently until they begin to caramelize to a beautiful translucent golden color with just a hint of brown.

Elvis was clearly impressed.  “Looks great kid”, he said diving in.   I did likewise.  After a couple of bites I glanced over at Elvis.  He had a large mouthful of the stuff and was leaning back on the stool with his eyes closed.  I think I heard him moaning softly.  There was no need to say a word, so we ate on in silence.  When we finished, he ordered us each another one.

As we pushed back from the counter, he summoned the waitress over. “Thanks baby, that was great.”  He handed her two C-notes.  For the first time, it dawned on her that this was REALLY Elvis.  She looked at the bills and passed out in a heap on the tile behind the counter. …

Later, back on the plane, the Colonel asked Elvis how it was.  “The kid’s really outdone himself this time Colonel. He’s shown me some good food before, but this was great.  I’m ruined for ordinary hot dogs from now on.”

The sun was shining gold on Graceland when we pulled through those big gates again.  Inside the mansion, I bid Elvis goodnight.  But he stopped me.

“Kid, I know I threw you a real curve today. Thanks for standing up for your principles and forcing me to go to Chicago.  You taught me a lesson.  Getting the best of anything in life isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort.  Hell, I should know that.  But I’d forgotten it and you reminded me.  And another thing, life’s no good unless you’ve got the courage to face your demons.”  He was squeezing my shoulder  “That was the best chili dog I ever ate.  Period.   Sleep tight.  You done good, kid. See you tomorrow.”

“Thanks Mr. Presley.”,  I stammered.

So there you go.  At least `The King’ wasn’t disappointed.  But was he right?  Sure, the chili dog was undeniably the best ever.  Maybe it was made somehow even better by the effort it took to get to it.  Sort of like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  But was it really worth it?

I just didn’t know.

But what I do know is that I suddenly realized I was on an emotional rollercoaster and felt like I needed off.

I worked for Elvis for only two more months.  In those two months we made only one more trip.  San Antonio for tacos.  It just wasn’t the same anymore.  Something had changed.

When I quit, I told him it was because I knew that I had been to the mountain.  I had seen the other side.  I had gazed upon the Promised Land.

There is an old Spanish proverb that says “Talking of the bulls is not the same as being in the ring.”    Well, after the chili dogs that night at Freddie’s, my life should have been richer and more fulfilled.  But somehow it just wasn’t.  I felt diminished, less whole than I did before.  I knew that no culinary experience would ever measure up to that trip to Freddie’s.  It was all just “talking of the bulls”.

Elvis said that he understood.  And you know, I think just maybe he really did.  We parted friends, but I never heard from him again.

I’ve never eaten another chili dog.

It sure is hard to believe, but that was over forty years ago.

 

You know Elvis’ story.     He’s dead.

 

I always chuckle when I read about some beautician seeing him in Akron, or some auto mechanic working on his car in a side-street garage in Biloxi.   Because I know that IF he were still alive, he’d be in Chicago, at Freddie’s, sucking down some suds and chomping on chili dogs.

 

As for me, well, I moved to D.C. and married Katie.   Went to work for the government as a “free cheese” administrator.

 

I tell myself I’m helping to make the world “a better place.”

 

Katie opened a health food restaurant in Georgetown and feeds our kids tofu and bean sprouts.  I still drive my mom’s old ’64 Falcon.  But I’ve got a shiny 1973 Cadillac convertible out in the garage with just 37 miles on the odometer.

 

Every now and then when Katie and the kids have gone to bed, I’ll fix myself a chocolate shake, go out and sit in the Caddy with the top down, and listen to  “Don’t be Cruel” on the radio and think about Elvis, and Freddie’s, and the best damn chili dog that money can buy.

June 15, 2019
by John Shouse
1 Comment

my dad: master of worms

Father’s day.    I have so many incredible memories of my daddy, and all the ways he showed his love through kindness, acts of service, wise advice, and time spent together.   I’ve written a lot here about some of those times and many of those memories.  He was a very special man, and I’m still trying to be like him and falling short.

Random memory this morning, brought on by a picture sent me by a friend.

My dad did not care much for fishing.  But he didn’t mind cleaning them after they’d been caught, and he certainly LOVED to eat fried fish, rolled in seasoned cornmeal and fried up crispy.  In fact it may have been his favorite thing ever.    I remember one time after I had already moved to Nashville, he and mom and Janet and I went to an Olive Garden (I know), and he looked in horror or disgust at the menu (dad was NOT a pasta guy) and asked the waitress .. “do you have fried fish?”.    Bless his heart.

So mom and I fished, and dad enabled us.   Drove us out to my sister’s farm, where we could fish in a neighbor’s lake.  Or out to one of the lakes around my hometown.   Or over to Marshall Diggs conservation area between Martinsburg and Wellsville, or to Little Dixie lake near my PaPa Shouse’s farm.   I had my trusty old Zebco 303 and a Zebco 505, both of which I had bought at Gibson’s with money from my paper route.   Mom had a bizarre looking Great Lakes Whirlaway enclosed reel and rod combination ….. a big bulbous plastic thing  on the end enclosing the reel and line) that she got from saving Top Value trading stamps from the grocery store.  I remember the day she got it at the Top Value store in Columbia (oddly enough, one of my favorite places to go with her …. To look at all the cool stuff you could get for “nothing” just by saving stamps!).

After we got back home to Mexico, we went out that evening so she could try it out, fishing from the bank at Lakeview.  I thought it looked weird, and was skeptical.  But she caught some catfish and a nice perch or two that very night.   Which dad cleaned, mom fried, and we all ate.   Along with hushpuppies, of course.

In order to supply bait for all that fishing, we needed worms.  Nightcrawlers.  Red wigglers.  In  coffee can or an old oil can with moist dirt.    We could go out to the C&A lake to the bait shop there and buy a can, which we often did.   Or, we could go out to the garden and turn over a few shovels of garden soil, and dig through it to collect the worms.

Dad did that digging faithfully, to make sure mom was well-wormed for fishing.   Er… well-supplied in worms.

However, dad was ALSO at least two things that add relevance to this story:

  1. He was clever.
  2. He was an ELECTRICAL man by god, and that COUNTS for something in this world.

So he started thinking.    Those worms are in the ground.   We need them OUT of the ground for fishing.

Hmmm.

He took a long iron rod and attached an electrical wire to one end.    The other end he hooked up to a VARIAC.  That’s a variable transformer to adjust the voltage.    Then we’d go out to the garden, take a small sledgehammer and drive the iron rod about two feet down into the ground and run a long extension cord out to the VARIAC.   Turn the contraption on, and start to crank up the voltage.   Not too high…. You don’t want to fry the little critters.   You just want to encourage them that the suddenly electrified soil is NOT the place to be.    The VARIAC would hum and start to give off a faint whiff of ozone.   As you cranked the voltage higher …. Higher ….  There would come a point where the magic happened.

Those worms would almost literally SHOOT out of the ground.  I swear you could almost hear them screaming.    Before long you’d have a few dozen big, plump, juice nightcrawlers wriggling around on top of the soil.

Just pick them up, put them in your oil can and with some loose garden dirt, and go fishing.

At some point, dad realized that there were more worms ON the ground than we needed for that day’s fishing.   As word spread among the various neighbors who also liked to fish, they’d occasionally come by with a forlorn look and sheepishly ask:  “Hey Shouse.  Any chance you can fire up that contraption and get me some worms?  Me and the missus are headed over to the lake after supper.”

And dad would gladly oblige.

Pretty soon he realized that a good strategy to always have plenty of worms on hand quickly, was to start a worm bed in our cool-dark basement.

So he found an old washtub on legs, rigged up a drainage system with a second tub underneath and some fine holes in the bottom of the upper tub, and filled the upper tub with soil and coffee grounds, etc.    And in went all the “excess” nightcrawlers. 

Before long we had hundreds, if not thousands of big, juicy prime nightcrawlers in that washtub.   And dad only had to drive the rod into the ground and bring out the VARIAC periodically to replenish the stock.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.

That may be true.   But the FATHER of invention may just be my dad and his electric worm rod.

Love you and miss you dad.

Wish I had some of your worms right now, so mom and I and her big old weird rod and reel could head out to Lakeview.  To get you some fish to clean and we could have one more fish-fry.

love,

John

April 24, 2019
by John Shouse
0 comments

dad to dad podcast

A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast interview with David Hirsch, whom I met last year. David is the founder of the 21st Century Dads Foundation, and the Special Fathers Network (SFN)

SFN is a “dad-to-dad” mentoring program for “fathers raising children (or adults) with disabilities.”

I an grateful for the opportunity to be interviewed by David, and I am really just incredibly pleased with how it turned out after editing.  As I listen, I realize that there were several aspects of some of our conversations that the editor wisely left on the cutting room floor.  But as I said, overall I am just really happy with the “as posted” podcast.

I even get to talk about Mexico, MO and growing up in the “Firebrick and Saddle Horse Capitol of the World”.  And by the way …. I DO talk about my family and our son Evan too.   😉

I’ll warn you ….. It’s long, but I hope some of you will listen and find some things of value in here.    And please share if you’re so inclined.

A big, big thank  you to David and his team at the Special Father’s Network!!   I’m looking forward to a long partnership in reaching out to and mentoring other dads.

You can either choose to stream the podcast, or if you’d prefer to download and listen offline, that option is also there.

Here, below, is the podcast link, or just click on the photo:

Choosing Love

https://www.spreaker.com/user/specialfathers/dad-to-dad-52-john-schouse?utm_medium=widget&utm_source=user%3A10360376&utm_term=episode_title

Share widely!!   And leave a comment.

love,
John

 

 

April 12, 2019
by John Shouse
0 comments

so many decisions, so few words …

I may be prouder of this blog post than any I’ve ever posted here.   And I didn’t even write it.   Written by the the best big sister my guys could ever have, the incomparable Emma Shouse Garton.   It’s an article on Supported Decision Making (SDM) that just appeared in the latest issue of Breaking Ground, the magazine of the Tennessee Council on Developmental Disabilities


My Brother Does Not Speak, but Supported Decision-Making Can Still Work

by Emma Shouse Garton, Communications Director
Tennessee Council on Developmental Disabilities

Author’s note: This article is printed with the permission of my brother, Evan. After writing it, I read it aloud to him and then, by typing, asked him if it was okay for this article about him to be in a magazine that lots of other people will read. He typed “yes”. Thank you to my Council colleague, Ned Andrew Solomon, for encouraging me to “practice what I preach” in this article by allowing my brother to choose what is shared publicly about his life!

My brother Evan is 23 years old and loves the outdoors, swimming, animated movies, listening to music and collecting all things medieval – you’ll rarely find him without a trusty figurine of a knight in shining armor, complete with a sword and steed. He enjoys hiking with our parents and watching movies with his twin brother Brendan. He also enjoys showing off his impressive knowledge of movie trivia when we play online quizzes together. He has an infectious smile, an incredible memory and a keen perceptive sense of how others are feeling.

Evan also has autism, and experiences many barriers in communicating with others using verbal and written language. He completed his school transition program in May at age 22 and for the past year has been living in his own apartment in Franklin with the support of a provider agency called Capital City, which is funded through Medicaid waiver services from the Dept. of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

Evan does not speak very often, and when he does, it is sometimes difficult to understand him or it may not be the most accurate representation of what he wants to communicate. Often he may repeat the last thing or choice someone has said to him when he is asked a question. While he can read words, type words and write words, he very rarely does this independently to communicate what he is thinking or feeling or wanting. When he is able to type or write to tell us information, it’s usually single words or short phrases in response to a question, not proactive communication to tell us something he wants to say.

Over Evan’s lifetime, our family and his teachers, therapists and other professionals have tried all kinds of assistive and alternative communication devices and strategies. None of these technologies or programs has resulted in a reliable way for him to really communicate with us – yet. However, we know from observation that his receptive language is strong and he understands a lot of what is said to him, about him or happening around him – much more than many people realize. He taught himself how to Google things he is interested in and does this frequently, which is another way we get a glimpse into what he enjoys. He is very expressive and it is easy to know, after spending some time with him, how he is feeling about where he is and what’s going on from his body language, actions and facial expressions.

Using Supported Decision-Making to support Evan

“Supported decision-making” is a model that allows people with disabilities to make as many of their own decisions as possible. At the Council, we have been working for the past few years with many partner agencies (including Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, Disability Rights Tennessee, The Arc Tennessee, Family Voices of Tennessee and STEP, Inc.), to educate families and others about this best practice in helping people with disabilities live self-determined lives. While we often talk about supported decision-making as an alternative option to try out before assuming conservatorship is needed for people with disabilities, we fully believe that supported decision-making can and should be used even within a conservatorship. Supported decision-making is any set of practices or strategies that give people with disabilities the help they need to make their own decisions, rather than having others make choices for them, and instead of taking this person’s rights away. So, while my parents do serve as Evan’s conservators (and I am listed as his co-conservator), we try to find ways to support Evan – even with his significant communication challenges – to make as many choices about his life as possible.

How Evan communicates choices & preferences

One typical way we try to find out what Evan wants is to write down, often on a white board or paper, a short list of choices for him to pick between by circling or pointing to his choice. Sometimes, I will type a question for him on my notes app on my phone and give it to him; depending on the type of question, he will often respond independently and appropriately with a couple of words. Other times, this method doesn’t quite seem to “click” and he’ll just hand the phone back to me. If it’s an important question, I will then try to find another way to present the information to him and do my best to get an answer.

Based on my understanding of my brother, these things are important in understanding how to support him in making choices:

  • If needed, start with basic information about the topic in simple language
  • Provide choices for him, write those down and read them aloud, so he can process the information both in an auditory and visual way
  • The temperament/attitude of the person talking to Evan – he responds best when someone talks calmly, quietly and patiently, giving him time to respond
  • Creative thinking! If one way of writing things down or asking him verbally doesn’t work, is there another way to phrase the question? Show him choices (photos or objects he can point to)? What haven’t we tried?
  • Be observant! Body language and facial expressions communicate a lot. If Evan refuses to engage with the choices I provide, or seems distressed, maybe he doesn’t like ANY of the choices I provided, or feels confused or frustrated by the question. Maybe he needs a break and I need to rethink how I’m offering the information and asking the question.

Supporting my brother’s decisions in planning meetings

From a recent planning meeting for Evan

For many years, my family and Evan’s teachers assumed that because of his communication and behavior challenges that he would not be interested in attending his IEP meetings. But a few years ago, we began inviting him to join us at the beginning of the meeting, and offered him the written option every few minutes to “stay” or “leave” so he knew that he had a choice. Sometimes he stayed for the whole meeting, wandering around and listening, or sitting at the table with a fidget toy. Other times, he’d choose to leave to go back to his classroom pretty quickly, and the team decided to meet without him, hoping that we would make decisions in his best interest.

He’s now had a few Individual Support Planning (ISP) meetings – kind of like an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) at the adult level – where we practice the same thing: assume that he should and wants to be there until or unless he wants to leave. This is a work in progress; maybe at some point, if we are really “meeting Evan where he’s at” the whole team can take some breaks, have some snacks, meet somewhere more comfortable than a conference room, do some preparation with Evan beforehand about things we plan to talk about, and really support him to feel comfortable enough to participate as much as he is able, with no decisions made without him unless absolutely necessary.

One way that I’ve tried to help Evan participate in these types of meetings is by sitting beside him with a pen and pad of paper, and trying to write down and “translate” some of the complex topics that we discuss into plain language, while offering him a chance to weigh in if he wants to and is able. This is not a perfect system – it’s hard to really know how much he understands and if I’m succeeding in giving him enough information to form an opinion and make a choice.

This past spring, we held our first meeting with Evan’s Vocational Rehabilitation counselor to discuss employment goals and we tried something new. I noticed that while the meeting opened with the counselor talking directly to Evan, because he did not verbally respond, soon the entire group (our parents, his support staff and other professionals in Evan’s life) began discussing potential employment options that they thought seemed best for Evan amongst themselves. Evan sat at the table, looking bored. Sitting next to him, I tried to quickly take notes in plain language and create choices for him on a notepad so he could weigh in, but the conversation was moving fast. I think we were both getting frustrated.

I noticed there was a large whiteboard in the room, so I stood up and asked if we could pause while I wrote on the board for Evan. I wrote “If I had a job, I would like to work at … “, and “If I had some money, I would like to buy…”. We started brainstorming aloud together about possible types of jobs or workplaces, and I kept a list on the board. Evan leisurely paced around the room and every so often would come by, take a marker and circle some items on the board. We talked about the possibility of finding him a job that would let work outdoors, maybe at a state park – he wrote “park” on the board, which seemed to indicate he liked that idea! Again, it wasn’t a perfect system and looking back, I know we can do better by explaining various options more clearly, being more patient and having a more organized process.

Supporting someone like my brother to make decisions effectively requires some forethought and commitment on behalf of everyone involved in the meeting to “listen” to someone who has not yet figured out the best way to make himself “heard”. It’s my hope that we’ll continue to think creatively as a group about supporting Evan in these ways not only in formal planning meetings or doctor’s appointments or job visits, but in the small daily instances where he could be exercising more choice and control in his life.

Ensuring my brother’s ‘voice’ is heard

As family members, we have spent a lot of time speaking FOR Evan, because we have yet to truly figure out consistent ways to support him to “speak” or communicate for himself and decisions do have to be made in the meantime. I’m learning more and thinking more about how to make sure he feels involved and included in these conversations about his life, and that he truly knows we care about his voice and feelings first and foremost. I’m learning that modeling this for others in Evan’s life – family, friends, professionals and strangers alike – is powerful and makes a difference in the way that they hold conversations in front of him, and how they interact with him. I’ve observed that he seems more engaged and interested and willing to tolerate being at these planning meetings for long stretches of time when someone is doing this sort of support and accommodation for him.

Since learning about supported decision-making, I have grown even more committed to ensuring that Evan’s wishes, dreams and desires are the guidepost for all that happens in his life. It is critical for all of us to find ways to listen and support him in learning about options, so he can have as much control over his own life as possible. After all – this is what each of us wants and expects of our own life.

– Emma Shouse


Janet and I are constantly inspired and humbled by the fierce dedication and unfailing love Emma has for her brothers.  And with Evan in particular, for her resolve to making sure that we ALWAYS “presume competence” with him, in everything we do.   

March 6, 2019
by John Shouse
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getting it wrong, but doing it right

I wrote this some time ago and posted it on Facebook.   A friend’s post about McKay’s Books today reminded me of it, and I decided to post it here on TheVeryStuff.com.  

In the past, I have thought about and written about what the qualities are that make a great bookstore. This is serious stuff. There’s nothing like some good uninterrupted time just wandering and browsing in an amazing little bookstore for just putting things right with the world.

A leisurely trip to a really good “book space” is my surest cure for the blues.  Sad that so few good bookstores exist anymore.  Davis-Kidd was one.  Joseph-Beth in Lexington was one.  The old Mills bookstore in Hillsboro Village was one … though I’ll admit that the fondness of my memories of the place may exceed the reality of the space.  La Lumiere in Jackson, MS is truly a hidden gem.   A little place in downtown Chicago near the river that I was in a couple years ago, but whose name escapes me now. Left Bank Books in St. Louis.  Elliott Bay Books in Seattle.   Kramerbooks in DuPont Circle in Washington DC.   Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C.   The list goes on.  Powell’s in Portland, City Lights in San Francisco, etc.     With all due respect, Parnassus in Nashville… the joint venture from Karen Hayes and Ann Patchett is *almost* there, but not quite.  I can’t quite put my finger on it.   I really have wanted to love that store .. but somehow I just don’t.   It’s probably six or seven years old now, and I still hold out hope  that one day I will truly love that store.   I’m willing to say that if I had visited Parnassus in another city on a business trip, I may have loved it more.  But being in my backyard, maybe I’m holding it to a higher standard?   I just don’t know.

The point though, is that there are several recognizable features that are common to good “book spaces”.   In no particular order, some of the qualities that make a great bookshop are listed below.   A great bookstore should have a preponderance of these qualities.  It’s probably not necessary for a store to have ALL of these things, but it ought to at least have MOST of them.

  • Well organized, well categorized selection of books.   That should go without saying.
  • Lots of little private nooks and crannies to disappear into for some uninterrupted time thumbing through whatever catches your eye, piques your interest.    This is paramount.   A good bookstore must have “spaces” that just sort of surprise you when you stumble upon it.
  • Well lit, but not OVERLY lit. The lighting is so important in creating a welcoming space.  It should be natural, comfortable and inviting. Dark stacks in unvisited corners? Ack!  Glaring overhead lights ? Double Ack!
  • A knowledgeable, helpful staff. A kind and empathetic staff. A staff that makes you feel like a valued part of their clientele, and motivates you to want to come back. When you do come back, they make eye contact and give you a genuine, heartfelt “Hello! Welcome back.  Great to see you.”
  • Integral to the importance of staff… I’d say “History”.   There should be a connection to the community. You get the feeling that at least *somebody* there is a lifelong resident of your town, and can talk knowledgeably with you about local color.
  • Comfy chairs, plush couches scattered about through the store in unexpected places, where you can sit and take a more in depth browsing through the titles that speak to you. (along with a sign gently reminding you to re-shelve whatever you’ve decided not to buy this trip.)
  • If you ask for a specific title, they can tell you IF they have it, where it’s shelved, offer to help you locate it, and offer to order it if they DON’T have it.
  • A nice selection of “Staff Picks” that changes each time you go in.    It’s comforting just to know that the staff are readers.  And that they have varied tastes, and aren’t afraid of suggesting something that’s a little “out there”.
  • A handy cafe or coffee shop tucked away in a corner where you can plunge right into your purchase over a stellar cup of coffee and maybe a muffin, pastry, or bowl of soup.
  • A place that becomes a hub of community. Where you know you’re likely to see a friend or acquaintance. Maybe at a special event. A lecture, a songwriter night, or a book signing.
  • A place that actually HAS author events. From small relatively unknown authors, to the big names out on book signing tours. Local flavor talks and special events.
  • Whatever time of day you go, it’s a little busy, but almost never *too* busy.
  • A great selection of over-stocks and cheap clearance books. Not the typical “This is the junk we couldn’t sell” section.
  • Compelling children’s book events. Nothing feels better than a good merchant that encourages young readers. Important!!

Those are just some of the things I think go into making a great bookstore.

Given the opportunity, I think I could do that. Make a great bookstore, that is.  Give me the financial backing and the time & space to make it happen, and I think I could open and run one of the world’s truly great bookstores. Yes I could.

McKay’s Books – Nashville, TN

I’ve been in enough bad ones, and enough good ones to know the difference in my bones. I understand why it is those kinds of great local shops are quickly vanishing, and who really knows what bookstores will look like 10 or 15 years from now? Thinking about it makes me sad.

Anyway, I said all that to say this:

Given the above criteria, why is it that this place pictured here, McKay’s Used Books, CD’s, and DVD’s …. .which meets absolutely NONE of my criteria listed above …. Why does this place make me so happy? Every time I go, I find something (or some things) that make me sort of give a little yell. I actually laughed out loud at two of my finds tonight. One of them I actually hugged. I found a Jerry Jeff Walker DVD, just him and his guitar, 22 songs. For $2.95. I found a mint-condition hardback anthology of short stories by southern authors. For 75 cents. I found a Kevin Gordon CD that I didn’t have. 45 cents. I got another pristine copy of Harper Lee’s 50th anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird (for my office)… $2.50.

Against all odds, and in spite of all the stuff they do “wrong”, I love this place.

McKay’s, I hope you’re here for a long, long time.     But I’d like to have a talk about the lack of nooks and crannies.