Sheep and Goats

Category: The Sheepandgoats’ Family

  • Clamdiggers – Didn’t Prostitutes Wear Those?

    In the early 1960's, if you wanted to be cool, you wore clamdiggers. A blip in the adolescent fashion world – did they last more than a season or two?  They were, nevertheless, a necessary item. See, they weren't shorts. And they weren't full pants. Neither were they jeans. No, they were sort of cotton, light green or blue, if I remember, with a stripe down the side. They reached to the shin and were secured by a rope, not a belt.

    I had a pair or two, so everyone thought I was cool, an opinion I could not elicit otherwise. I returned the favor to other clamdigger kids. But then summer vacation came and the family went down to the farm. The dairy farm, where my Pop's "roots" were, way out in God knows where, where they knew nothing of being cool and cared less. My hillbilly uncle takes one look at my clamdiggers and says: "Hey, how come you’re wearing pedal pushers?! Those are girls pants!"

    They weren't pedal pushers, for Pete's sake! He couldn't see that? They were cool clamdiggers!

    Of course, the fashion/ fad world, relatively speaking, left kids alone back then. Nothing like today where youngsters are targeted by every stylistic hustler.  So parents, as parents have always done, as I did when I was a parent, dig their heels in. No kid of mine going to dress like……whatever the offending style is! And some of them really are offending,  sordid in origin. The really low hanging pants, for example, the pants that hang so low that if you do a crime, the cops will instantly catch you, since you cannot run with these pants, find their inspiration from the prison world, were some guys are frequently called upon to drop their pants for unsavory reasons.

    So parents take their stand. And probably over-take it, in some cases. And the young people chafe, as they always have. Like this one, who, after noting a respected sister in another congregation has a body-piercing wants to know:

    "could i rightly get pierced? ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY NOT. god, i can't even wear an anklet without someone going… 'you know, prostitutes wore those.'"

    HA! Yeah, it is sorta that way. Don't “look just like the world,” and  don‘t “stumble people,” and "he who is faithful in small things is faithful in large," but you don‘t want to cross this line into an  area where people learn to judge by outward appearance. .

    I've been there and I've got kids who've been there. There may be some mild hypocrisy to it, at least in its extremes.

    I suppose, if absolutely necessary, a person can always do one or two of those small things and then, if people cluck about it, say yes, they admit it, they‘re not all that great of an example, rather than try to "out-righteous" everyone. People will probably move on. (but, alas, maybe they won't) There is a difference between what is important and what is relatively trivial. Of course, I'm not recommending this, but it's an option, and it beats chafing to such an extent that one leaves the congregation,which has happened, as may happen in this case: “Life is just not worth living under restrictions we all just need to break free!!!!!!!!!!”

    Unless you're living with your parents – in that case I guess you really can't, or shouldn't, but that time will pass soon enough, and then you can do it if you want. You may not even care about it by then.

    Or maybe you can view things like that woman did in "The Scarlet Letter," Hester Prynne. "Letter" is the story of a woman who’d borne a child out of wedlock, fathered by someone she would not name. Those Puritans made her wear a scarlet letter “A” (standing for adulteress) for the rest of her life. We all had to read that book in high school. Nobody liked it at the time, as with anything that is rammed down your throat. Later, though, some of us came to think it was pretty powerful. Nathanial Hawthorne’s short stories read like the “Twilight Zone” of his time

    Said Hawthorne about his heroine Hester Prynne: "People who think the most bold of thoughts have no difficulty conforming to outward norms of society." It fits. (the reverse is also true) Jehovah's Witnesses think some very bold thoughts, decidedly different from that of the pack. Conforming to outward norms is not a big deal for many of them.

    Still, older ones know that a lot of things they once insisted upon but which their parents opposed eventually entered (not necessarily for the better) the mainstream. Like rock and roll.

    I know it’s only rock and roll
    but I like it.                                 Rolling Stones

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    Tom Irregardless and Me     No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

     

  • Pop Goes to the Movies!

    Pop hadn’t seen a movie in thirty years. We had to act. No one should be so culturally deprived. He would, no doubt, thank us later.

    Oceans 11 was playing at the time. At the theater, we kept darting Pop sidelong glances.

    Afterwards came the verdict. Pretty violent, he began.

    Seconds later: Pretty loud.

    And why all that cursing? Why is there so much cursing?

    And These guys aren’t cool! You think these guys are cool? Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin (the original Oceans 11), those guys were cool! These guys aren’t cool.

    No point trying to argue. We realized we’d chosen the wrong film.

    Lord of the Rings was playing. Let’s show Pop what movie makers with computers can do today! But I started to worry during the film. I liked it well enough the first time around, but now it seemed repetitive. Midway through the movie, I heard snoring.

    “Hey, Pop,” I shook him, “we don’t have to sit through this if you don’t want to.”

    Huh?…what…it stinks? He replied.

    He groused all the way home. And what about Gordon? That dragon came after Gordon and they just left him in the cave! How could they do that to Gordon?

    It was Gandalf, not Gordon.

    What can I say? Some people just don’t like movies.

  • Violet in the Old Folks Home. A Dirty Trick

    They like Violet at the nursing home. She's good natured, always says "hi," and doesn't complain. She's lived there four years.

    Once she presided over her own country farmhouse kitchen table, peopled with family and neighbors. Though they might not get along in all contexts, the table bonded them, cementing various degrees of familiarity, love, and dysfunction. Over the stove hung a plaque that read "Kissin don't last, cookin do"

    Uncle Vic thought it a great joke when I "got religion." Over cards, he would challenge "you're prayin against me, aren't you Tommy? I'll bet you're prayin against me." I was only praying he'd take his turn.

    Violet lived for years in that farmhouse after Vic died. Then she lived with one daughter, then another. When she got so she needed round the clock care, the daughters didn't know what to do. She fell a few times – no small matter for someone in their 80s. About that time she entered the nursing home. One daughter or the other visits her nearly every day.

    Pop comes over from Rochester, 300 miles away, to visit his sister a few times each year. "Charlie, it's so good to see you! And Tommy, what a pleasant surprise!"  On a pleasant day, we wheel her out to the front walkway, where she remarks on trees and greenery and family history. "Gram will be so disappointed that she missed you," she laments. "Violet, Gram's been dead for years," someone says. "Oh yeah, that's right," and she resumes contemplation. That's how it goes. She freely mixes several generations, some living, some dead. Sometimes we correct her, and sometimes not.

    She used to caution as the afternoon wore on "It's getting late. You'd better be going." Lately she's been including herself. "It's starting to get late. We ought to be going." "Violet, you're staying here. You live here now." "Oh that's right," she says.

    "So who's cooking tonight," she observes after a bit. "Do you want me to cook?" Pop again explains that the home will cook, the home in which she lives, but she's not so sure anymore.

    "Well, we should be going Vi," he says. "Okay, I'm ready, let's go" "You're staying here, Vi. You live here now." "Not me," she says. "You do," Pop says. "You have a room here, for several years." "I know, but I'm not ready to go just yet."

    She gets progressively resistant, then alarmed, then pleading, then angry. "Well, that was a dirty trick!" she charges. "I wouldn't have come with you if I knew you were going to stick me here!" In the end, the staff wheels her back.

    That evening, sitting at the cousins' own long kitchen table, a table that Violet rarely sees now, Pop wonders aloud how tomorrow's visit will go. Maybe it will be unpleasant. "No," the cousin says, "she will have forgotten all about it." And it turns out just that way.

    Until the end of the visit. After initial maneuvering, Pop and the cousin tell Violet we have to be going. But isn't she going too? "Oh no, you're not sticking me here!" she snaps at us. But the nurse distracts her. "Violet, we're having vanilla cookies with dinner tonight. Would you like to have a couple now?" "No thank you," she says. "I'll just wait till dinner and have mine with everyone else."

    They all want to go home. But none of them will.

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    More on Joe in the books GoWhereTomGoes, and Tom Irregardless and Me.

     

  • To Joe Jeanette

    They buried a great fighter today,” reported the Jersey Journal. “….a warm friendly man….we shall not see his like again in our time.”

    Well, not exactly today. It was July 7, 1958. But he was family. So we keep track.

    Boxing experts called it the most inhuman fight ever staged. Early last century, in 1909 Paris, Joe Jeanette [Jennette] slugged it out with Sam McVey for 49 rounds. Jennette pounded Sam into the canvas 11 times. McVey returned the favor 27 times. Nonetheless, Jeanette triumphed, for when the 50th round began, McVey refused to budge, crying “this man ain’t human!”

    They were four of them: Joe Jeanette, Sam McVey, Sam Langford, and Jack Johnson. They were heavyweights. They were black. They were evenly matched. They mostly fought each other. White boxers rarely fought blacks, and so the World Heavyweight Title was a white title. But one of the four, Jack Johnson, tailed and taunted world champ Tommy Burns around the globe. Finally, in Australia, 1908, Burns agreed to a match. Jack thrashed him soundly and so became the first ever black titleholder. Thereafter, Johnson himself refused all challenges from black fighters.

    Was Jack Johnson the greatest of the four? Or was it his tenacity, hounding the white establishment until he got his shot at the title? One can make a case for any of the four. “Many experts believe Joe [Jeanette] would have eclipsed all fighters…. if he had not injured his right arm early in his career,” said boxing writer Jack Powers. Jeanette himself gave the nod to Sam Langford. And it was Sam McVey that went the 49 rounds with Jeanette in Paris. Of course, Jack Johnson captured the title.

    “If you want to know which was the toughest of the lot, I’ll tell you,” Joe said in a later interview. “It was Langford. Jack Johnson? No, sir. Not Johnson. Look, I fought them both, not once but many times. Sam would have been champion any time Johnson had given him a fight. There is no question about it. I wouldn’t wonder if Sam could have beaten any man that ever fought….Johnson was a good fighter. No mistake about that. Very clever, and he could hit, too. But Sam would have taken him. I know. But Johnson wouldn’t have any of us after he won the title. Smart man. He was plenty scared of Sam. I don’t blame him. I was too. Boy, how that boy could hit. Nobody could hit like that.”

    In 1906, Joe Jeanette married Adelaide Atzinger, a white woman from a modest farm family in upstate New York. She was my great aunt, so I know the history.

    They wed in secret, for her family never would have agreed to it. Back then, one did not marry outside one’s race. It was not done. Afterwards, our entire family was ostracized in the community, as if they were all complicit. Adie’s sister Mary was so harassed at school that she quit in the eighth grade and found work in a silk mill. She made $2.50 a week.

    Soon such sentiments died down among the local folk. People liked Joe. He carved himself a respected place in the community. But it was not that way with strangers. Years later, his light skinned daughter Agnes would bring home dates to meet her folks. Some would take one look at Joe and disappear. She and her brother Joey later married, but neither couple had children. They wanted to spare kids the same prejudice they had faced.

    As for the rest of the family, we read about Joe the fighter, but we remember Joe the man. Uncle Joe retired from boxing in 1918 and went into business. He’d made serious money from fighting, and his wife, by all accounts, could squeeze a nickel till the buffalo yelped. He built a three story brick building, which still stands, on Summit Ave in Union City, New Jersey. It sported a gym on the second floor, a garage/showroom on the first, and three apartments. For a short time, Joe housed all my relatives: Gram and Gramp on the top floor, my great uncle and aunt on the second, he and Adie on the first. Union City later named a street for him….Jeanette St. It runs behind the building.

    Later in his career, Joe turned to renting limousines. He always liked fine cars, and the first car Gram ever saw, which scared the wits out of her, came at her piloted by Joe.

    By the time my father was born in 1921, Gram and Gramp had bought a nearby farm. As Pop grew up, visiting Joe and Adie was a big deal. Times were hard then financially, and you never knew when Joe would spring loose with a quarter! Pop would wander up to the gym…Joe didn't mind…and slap around the punching bag.

    Ron Howard’s 2005 film Cinderella Man includes scenes from Jeanette’s gym. Much was cut from the final movie, but appears in the deleted scenes segment of the DVD, with Ron providing voiceover commentary. Actor Ron Canada played Joe.

    Joe was a warm, animated man…a favorite with all the young cousins. “Look at the birdie!” he would cry, looking up. They’d follow his gaze, but it was a trap! As if still in the ring, Joe would move in quick with a tickle, much to their delight. When Gram came down with the Spanish flu in 1918, Joe would visit every day to read her the newspaper. He died at home in 1958, in his 52nd year of marriage. “They buried a great fighter today,” said the Jersey Journal, quoted at the outset. “Jennette was a warm friendly man to his intimates….we shall not see his like again in our time.”

    In the innocent naiveté of children, my cousins…their lives overlapped Jeanette’s by about ten years…didn’t realize Joe was a black man. Nor did they think he was a white man. He was just Uncle Joe. But one day they saw black people in the newspaper, the caption said they were black people, and they looked like Uncle Joe. Yes, their mother confirmed, Joe was a black man. But it made no difference to them…why would they care?

    Older relatives, though, witnessed Jeannette’s lifelong fight against racism. He fought it with graceful dignity, aided by his amiability, his boxing and business sense, and no doubt the fact that he could pound the stuffing out of anyone had he taken it into his head to do so. Gram, a stolid farm woman, was sensitive to racial injustice throughout her life. And Pop imagines the day when nobody cares about their roots, and when people intermarry so commonly that it can’t be told who’s who. Then, he figures, racism will end.

    It’s family history. Because of it, I was raised in a home where racist remarks were never heard. I was slow to imagine that any white family might be different.

    Here is an update to the story.….……

    More on Joe in the books GoWhereTomGoes, and Tom Irregardless and Me.

  • Hitchhikers and Hoboes

    If I had a dollar for every mile I hitchhiked, said the old guy, I wouldn’t be working.

    Used to be if you wanted to go anywhere, you hitchhiked. Perfectly acceptable, cheap, safe way to get yourself around. You met people. Sometimes you made lasting friendships. The old guy still gets Christmas cards from the person who drove him cross country after his Navy discharge. A complete stranger from whom he‘d hitched a ride.

    It’s good to remember things like this, because with some people you cannot make the point stick that our surroundings continue to deteriorate. “Not at all,” they flick back cheerily, “it’s just that we hear about bad things more! Better news media, you know, more outlets and they all thrive on bad news. If it bleeds, it leads!"

    This is exasperating, because we know full well things are worse. Not that we’re “wet blanket” people, of course, but worsening world conditions are a Biblical sign of where we are in the stream of time. So you don’t obsess about them, but you ought not put blinders on either. Yet people only remember what’s gone down in their lifetime and young people haven’t lived long, don’t read much, and don’t believe geezers. So you have to tell them about hitchhikers.

    Nobody hitchhikes today. You’re risking your neck. And if you try, no one will pick you up. They’re risking their neck. Time was when we saw a stranger and were naturally hospitable. Now we’re naturally cautious.

    and because of the increasing of lawlessness the love of the greater number will cool off.          (Matt 24:3)                     

    And what about hoboes? They’re as good as hitchhikers to make your point.

    Keep away from hoboes, Gram told Dad as a kid. They’re shiftless. Consequently, every chance he got, he would run off and hang with the hoboes. And they were shiftless, but they were also harmless. Not drug addled crazies, like today. Not desperate characters who’ve fallen thorough cracks and social nets. Times were simpler. They were educated men, often, who simply chose not to mesh with society. They were  friendly, harmless, camping out in the woods. And when it was time to move on, they’d hitch a ride on a freight train.

    A days work would carry them awhile. They’d  rap on the door, ask for a meal, sit on the back step and dine, thank you very pleasantly, then make a mark on the house so others would know where they could get  a free meal. Don’t leave anything unlocked, of course, but if you did, they wouldn’t clean you out. They’d just take enough for a day or so.

    Trailer for sale or rent
    Rooms to let…fifty cents.
    No phone, no pool, no pets
    I ain’t got no cigarettes
    Ah, but..two hours of pushin’ broom
    Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
    I’m a man of means by no means
    King of the road.

    Third boxcar, midnight train
    Destination…Bangor, Maine.
    Old worn out clothes and shoes,
    I don’t pay no union dues,
    I smoke old stogies I have found
    Short, but not too big around
    I’m a man of means by no means
    King of the road.

    I know every engineer on every train
    All of their children, and all of their names
    And every handout in every town
    And every lock that ain’t locked
    When no one’s around.

    I sing,
    Trailers for sale or rent
    Rooms to let, fifty cents
    No phone, no pool, no pets
    I ain’t got no cigarettes
    Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom
    Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
    I’m a man of means by no means
    King of the road.

    Lyrics by Roger Miller

  • No, Virginia, Douse the Firecrackers

    Virginia O’Hanlon asked her Dad if there really was a Santa Claus, and Dad wasn‘t sure he wanted to lie to his own child. So he did what parents have done since the beginning of time when they’re stuck. He passed the buck.

     

    Why don’t you write the newspaper, he advised. If they say it’s true, then it is.

    Editorial page      The New York Sun      September 21, 1897

    "Dear Editor–I am 8 years old.
    "Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
    "Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it's so.'
    "Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
    Virginia O'Hanlon
    115 West Ninety-fifth Street

    Probably, Virginia’s old man was hoping the paper would do what he was too chicken to do….tell his daughter the truth. Instead, they cooked up some sentimental answer that folks gush over to this day.

    But sometimes you have no choice but to pass the buck. Like when my own son started pestering me about fireworks, for example, harassing me day and night. Do you think I could persuade my own child that fireworks were not legal in New York State? Not just dynamite, but also cherry bombs and even ladyfingers. They are illegal. You can’t blow them off in New York. Yes, they are legal in some states, but New York is not one of them. Tired of arguing with a boy who showed every sign of becoming just as pigheaded as the old man, I sought a way to pass the buck.

    Talk to a cop! What a brilliant idea! I drove to the area police station. Were fireworks legal in New York State? No, they were not. What about ladyfingers? No they were not. What about on holidays and special events? No, that made no difference! What about…..LOOK, said the cop, you got a listening problem?! NO means NO.!! Now if you want to break THE LAW, go right ahead, but we’ll be coming after you!! All that was lacking was for him to draw his gun!

    Elated, I skipped home to grab my son and return. Yeah! Tell the boy what you just told me! Scare the everlovin daylights out of him!

    But Joe Friday wasn’t there!! Instead, it was jolly Officer O’Malahan! Well….he patted my boy on the head, with a twinkle in his eye, just be careful, and don’t set them off too much!!

    Thanks a lot, copper!!! If this kid grows up to be a pirate, I’ll know who to blame!

    991AB8D0-FBE9-4A60-BDD3-3CCD0D9EF2C9

     

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  • iPop Cleans the Basement

    Need a tube for your TV set? Or a ribbon for your typewriter? How about the inner gears for your Super8 movie camera? Any of these things might have been yours for the asking had you been with me over the weekend.

    Once or twice in this blog, I have written about Pop. But I have not yet written about iPop.

    Inlaw Pop is one of those guys, indispensable in any neighborhood, who, if you have a broken anything, he can come and fix it for you. And do you need an impossible-to-find part for your busted doodad? Not to worry, he has one of those in his basement! For many years now, no one has put any piece of junk out on the curb without iPop fetching and squirreling it away in his basement, in case he needs it someday. Many things that would otherwise be broken are not broken because of iPop.

    All this is well and good until there is a flood, and there was one of those last week. iPop lives just outside Buffalo, which endured a freak October snowstorm. Two feet of heavy wet snow fell on trees that had not yet shed their leaves. Everything came crashing down, taking out power & telephone lines. Sump pumps stopped sumping, and basements backed up with water.

    iPop’s basement is a psychology Skinner rat maze; 3946E043-0481-4EA4-B68C-038477C0A58Dyou thread your way gingerly through mounds of junk. Family members converged to survey the flooded damage. It wasn’t pretty. Everything had to come out. Only then could you clean and disinfect the floor. Hopefully, many earnestly prayed, it would stay out! It would never return. Instead, it would find it’s way to the dump where, some surmised, it should have gone in the first place.

    The project was touch and go. I brought up a load of crud and carted it to the curb. iPop eyed it uneasily. His daughter brought up a load of crud and carted it to the curb. iPop brought up a load of crud and put it just outside the door.

    “Hey, why are you taking out stuff from the top shelf?” he cried in alarm as I walked past him with an AMC Pacer fuel pump. “It was on the floor,” iPop, I replied. “It’s fair game. You’ve probably got two or three just like it still inside and you’re getting them confused.”

    It’s all outside now. And the floor is clean. But we won’t really be home free until the rubbish trucks have come and gone. Until then there is the very real possibly that he will haul all the stuff back downstairs and in a few years, we’ll have to shovel out the basement all over again.

    Ah, well. If it happens, it happens. Small concession to make to the guy who gave me my wife.

    And if he doesn’t? Then he’s got a cleaned out basement, awaiting new stuff.

    Every branch…not bearing fruit he takes away, and every one bearing fruit he cleans, that it may bear more fruit.     John 15:2

    photo: Wikipedia: File:Hemet Maze 49×49 grid.png

    the bookstore

     

  • Pop Goes to the Doctor…Sort of

    Pop is 85 years old. He’s in perfect health.

    He attributes that perfect health to the fact that he never goes to a doctor. Not since World War II. When we got him to agree to occasional physicals, it was a major victory. But he only did it so as to be on someone’s radar screen, in case he ever needs an insurance gatekeeper.

    During those physicals, the doctor suggests this or that pill. Pop ignores it all.

    Doctor: Actually, we don’t have any blood work on you.

    Pop: That’s right, you don’t. Pills

    …………………………

    The Bible writer Luke was a doctor, whatever that meant back then.

    “Luke the beloved physician sends you his greetings, and so does Demas.” – Col 4:11)

    He writes, not unkindly, towards his own profession:      “And a woman, subject to a flow of blood for twelve years, who had not been able to get a cure from anyone, approached from behind and touched the fringe of his [Jesus’] outer garment, and instantly her flow of blood stopped.” – Luke 8:43-44

    Yes, doctors had done their level best, but it hadn’t been enough. She hadn’t been able to get a cure from anyone.

    But look what happens when the gospel writer Mark, not a doctor, relates the same event:

    “Now there was a woman subject to a flow of blood twelve years, and she had been put to many pains by many physicians and had spent all her resources and had not been benefited but, rather, had got worse. [!]

    a) put to many pains

    b) spent all her resources

    c) had not benefited; had gotten worse.

    Mark and Pop would have gotten along well together.

     

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    Tom Irregardless and Me              No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash