Christmas 2004

It was a good Christmas.

Wife and kids drove to Tennessee on the 22nd to spend the holiday with parents/grandparents. I stayed home until Christmas Eve, then drove eight hours from Pennslvania to Tennessee. The weather was dry, roads were clear, traffic was light; a delightful drive.

Wife drove my Jeep (her old Suburban began protesting just before the trip.) I drove a rental (Hertz, full-size Buick, $20/day, unlimited miles, sweet deal.) I returned today, they will return after the New Year.

The visit was nice. I behaved myself; easier now that I have made significant changes in my life (spiritually speaking.) All are well.

On the way back I detoured into the southern Virginia mountains and visited Aunt Betty. It was the highlight of the holiday. Aunt Betty lives alone in a rustic cabin that some might call primitive. I call it wonderful. Few other cabins boast a gazebo elevated above the roof by a central supporting pole, or a private pond filed with fish. Her outhouse was replaced this year by an indoor composting toilet, much more convenient in winter. Running water is gravity-fed from a spring, The inside walls are planked in lumber salvaged from old barns. Her bookcase is filled with titles spanning a spectrum from novels to quantum mechanics.

Aunt Betty came to the mountains years ago, in a converted school bus with her children. The chidren grew and scattered. Aunt Betty stayed in this place that has become a comfortable refuge. She reads, visits, corresponds with friends and family, lives in the company of dogs and makes a life that suits her.

She is my connection to family; my father's sister, my baby-sitter from years ago when I was too small to remember. She tells me stories about my father as a boy, my mother as a young bride, my grandparents as real people rather than the icons they became in my memory.

We visit like people did a century ago. We share coffee and conversation, watch sunsets and moon risings, enjoy each other's company and silence.

I love my Aunt Betty. I would love to tell you more about her, and I will.

I hope that you all had a Merry Chrstmas and will enjoy a happy and healthy New Year.

Roads

Roads fascinate me. I don’t mean just highways built for automobiles. I am fascinated by the very concept of a public way by which people may travel from where they are to wherever they want to be. The road is the ultimate symbol of freedom in America. We each are free to strike out upon it to seek our fortunes, to hit it if we feel unwelcome, to mosey on down it when the mood strikes us. The road carries new people into our lives, entertains us with the view of a world passing by our door and offers a welcomed route of escape from imminent danger.

Certain public ways are special to me; most special is the Appalachian Trail. I was a young boy when I first learned that a continuous footpath ran 2,160 miles from Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia. I immediately resolved to one day walk its entire length. While I have yet to complete the trek I do manage to hike at least some portion of the trail when my travels happen to intersect its course. Each visit to the Appalachian Trail seems magical and I often feel the urge to continue hiking, leaving the world and its problems behind for others to solve.

The Lincoln Highway was America’s first trans-continental road, conceived in 1913 specifically with automobiles in mind. It was designed to connect New York and San Francisco with a well-graded gravel roadway. Early motorists, forced to navigate muddy and unmarked, single-lane tracks once they strayed from local streets, could at last venture to travel from coast to coast with a reasonable expectation of completing their trip. In the years that followed, numbers rather than names designated federal highways. The original route of the Lincoln Highway today is comprised of portions of US 1, US 30, US 530, US 40 and US 50. US Route 30 passes within 20 miles of my home.

The DuPont Highway runs north and south through the state of Delaware and was the worlds first divided highway. T. Coleman duPont offered to build the road in 1908 and donate it to the citizens of the state. Conceived as a broad transportation corridor consisting of parallel one-way paved dual-lanes, gravel farm service roads and rail tracks, the road was completed as only a single-lane paved highway in 1924. The state did not want to assume the cost of maintaining such an ambitious project. Delaware soon led the nation in highway construction and in 1933 the DuPont Highway was finally widened into a dual highway. Today it is known as US Route 13. Much of my boyhood was spent in towns along or near its path.

Traveling the Pennsylvania Turnpike was a twice-annual ritual as I accompanied my grandparents to Minnesota to spend the summers at their lakeside home. It was like no other American road; cloverleaf interchanges, roadside picnic tables, modern service plazas with restaurants, gift shops and gas stations, exciting passages beneath mountains through long, lighted tunnels. The tollbooth attendants wore crisp uniforms and were always courteous. I imagined that working in the tollbooth must be the greatest job in the world; meeting so many nice people on their way to exciting places. Today’s typical interstate highway is more modern, but turning from a narrow road onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1951 was like being rocketed into the future.

Hiking any trail through the wilderness fires my imagination. I am conscious that my footsteps follow in those of Native Americans who hunted and lived for generations on the surrounding land. I am reminded of the pioneers who struggled through dangerous and unknown terrain in search of safety and a meadow that they could claim as their own. I imagine the wild creatures that preceded man by millennium and blazed these pathways by instinct between sources of water and food. Wilderness trails are like time machines, transporting me to a world that existed before man had need even to invent the word “progress.” Alone on a trail I do not always feel comfortable but I always feel that I have returned to a place where I belong.

I am intrigued by the short stretches of abandoned road I sometimes spy paralleling my travel route. They are victims of obsolescence, snippets of once important and well-traveled roadways that lost their value when greater speeds dictated a need for wider lanes, shallower curves and higher banking. Sometimes these orphaned paths assume a new role as extended driveways to houses that once sat near the thoroughfare but now are set well back from the new route. Some lucky few homeowners gained possession of a private bridge, originally built to carry commerce and travelers between communities but now crossed only on ones way to school, work or the grocery.

What I like most about roads is that each one is an invitation to explore. I enjoy coming upon a road and being almost surprised as my hands turn the wheel unconsciously toward the new path just because I find something interesting in the way it curves down into the trees. Or, perhaps a sign suggests that changing course and going that way now will lead me to something of interest.

Any road that ends at a stop sign is a public way, a path I am free to follow if only I want to. I love to mosey on down the road on a Saturday morning with no destination in mind. Every intersection becomes an opportunity for adventure. The paths I choose seldom disappoint me. It seems to matter little whether I turn left or right. If I show any preference it is, like Robert Frost, to take the road less traveled.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Late one Christmas Eve I took a break from arranging gifts under the tree and drove to the convenience store for cigarettes. It was cold and late and I was anxious to finish assembling plastic toys and attaching decals. The kids would be up early to discover what Santa had brought them. My warm bed was calling to me.

As I returned to my car an old man in a worn coat approached me in the parking lot.

“Excuse me sir, could you spare a couple of dollars?” he asked. He surprised me; I thought the police had cleared the panhandlers from this part of town.

“No, I can’t” I replied and reached for the door handle.

“I’m hungry sir, I’m a veteran, please…” This one was bold. Usually these people took no for an answer and moved on quickly. I ignored him, got into my car and prepared to start the engine. He remained at my door, just staring. I rolled down the window, annoyed.

“Look, I don’t give money to strangers on the street. You move along.” That should have been the end of it. But he stood fast, staring at me through tired eyes from under the dirty brim of a ball cap. I wasn’t about to let this guy intimidate me. I returned his gaze defiantly.

“It’s Christmas…” he said softly, then slowly turned and walked away.

I was irritated and turned out of the parking lot to start for home. But his words were haunting; it’s Christmas. A sense of shame crept over me like a cold draft under my jacket. Driving home to my comfortable house I wondered where he was headed. Perhaps to find a fence as a windbreak against the cold while he made his bed on the ground. I remembered a story my mother once told me of passing a longhaired tramp on the street and wondering to herself if that was how God might choose to reveal himself to the world.

Just ahead the Western Sizzler Steak House was open for the holiday. My car seemed to turn into the parking lot on it’s own. I asked the waitress to do me a favor.

“Look” I said, “a man will come in here in a minute. I want you to give him whatever he wants. Make sure to include dessert. Anything left over is yours as a tip, OK?” I handed her a twenty and wrote my phone number, asking her to call me by midnight if he didn’t arrive.

I found him a block away, leaning into the wind with his collar pulled up around his face. He looked warily in my direction as I stopped the car and motioned him over.

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier. I want to give you something.”
He stood at the curb silently.
I continued, “The restaurant back there is holding a meal for you.”
“I didn’t ask you for a meal” he protested.
“Would you let me do this,” I asked, “please?” I extended my hand through the open window.

He hesitated, but then his eyes softened and he accepted my handshake. “Thank you” he said, “Merry Christmas to you and to your family.”
Merry Christmas to you, too,” I replied and drove away. In the rearview mirror I saw him watch me until I turned the corner toward home.

The phone rang just before midnight; it was the waitress.

“Didn’t he come in?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s here now, still eating. I just wanted you to know he arrived OK and is enjoying Christmas dinner. In fact, the cook and I made up a box of food to take with him tonight. We didn’t want him to be hungry again in the morning.”
“Did I leave you with enough money?”
“Don’t worry about the money,” she said, “you left plenty. I just wanted you to know that your friend is here, and to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

The next day my family gathered to open presents. I have forgotten what was under the tree for me that morning. But I will always remember the unexpected gift a lonely stranger gave to me on Christmas Eve. He gave me my first heartfelt experience of gratitude and humility.

In this holiday season I remain grateful for the abundance of blessings in my life, and humble in the knowledge that I have not earned them. All my blessings are but gifts of God’s grace.

Another Year

Today is my birthday. I am going to make a special effort to be easy on myself today.

I feel fine, despite the impression my previous post may have given.

I think sometimes that my real problem is self-pity, not depression. I am self-centered and selfish by nature and self-pity is a tactic I use to wallow in myself. It's a problem, I know, but I am working on it.

More later...

Blue Christmas

Last Sunday our pastor spoke about the depression that some people feel at Christmas. I am glad he brought it up. I feel not only depressed during the holidays but guilty as well; guilty about being depressed. It was comforting to know that I am not alone.

My wife will be taking the kids to Tennessee to visit with her parents again this year. I will stay home, as usual. I will miss them but somehow it is better that they gather together to celebrate and leave me here to tough out these few weeks on my own. I won't isolate. I will make the rounds of friends and spend time at the 12-Step club house.

I remember enjoying this season as a boy, but the experience has been an unpleasant one for all of my adult life. I don't know why. I am bothered by the atificial feel of the cheer I encounter in public. Stores play tired old tapes of Christmas music. Shoppers bump into each other at the mall and stand impatiently in lines waiting to hand their credit cards to the clerks. Lamp poles are draped in decorations that seem more generic every year.

See what I mean? With this attitude it is better that I not be with the family, tucked in the corner like an emotional black hole, sucking the good holiday spirit right out of the room.

I'm not writing this to invite sympathy. I'm just working out my feelings by acknowledging them in writing.

I think I will not put up a tree this year. I just want to arrange the manger scene on the mantle. That will help me to focus on the real message of Christmas. And I will go to church on Christmas Eve to spend the evening in quiet celebration and contemplation.

And, I will sincerely wish those around me a very Merry Christmas.

Wheels

My first car was a 1950 Studebaker Champion. Dad won it in a raffle in 1959 when I was fifteen. He seldom drove it. It sat in the driveway waiting for me to earn my driver’s license the next year. “Someday that car will be all yours,” my Dad would say. Oh, be still my heart, I would think to myself. The streets were filled with shiny new tail fins and chopped & channeled custom rods. My friends daydreamed about bolting Holly carburetors onto V8 engine blocks and cutting rows of louvers in their hoods. I had nightmares of driving into the student parking lot in what could pass for Flash Gordon’s escape pod. The Studebaker was a design “ahead of it’s time”, in 1950. It featured a big round bullet-nose that looked like the air scoop of a German buzz bomb. The old-fashioned windshield was assembled from two flat panes joined by vertical chrome molding. By contrast, the rear window was a continuous wrap-around wall of glass. The car looked like it was designed to cut through the air at the speed of sound, backwards. Unfortunately, the old Studey was in fine mechanical shape. I abused it at every opportunity, hoping it would die on the side of the road. It did, eventually. A friend and I were on our way to meet two girls for a blind date when the engine threw a rod right through the oil pan. It happened while climbing a steep bridge. I had to back down in the face of oncoming traffic while my friend sat on the trunk lid frantically waving cars around us. It sat beneath the bridge for three weeks until a neighbor helped me tow it home, pulling me behind his pickup with a 12-foot chain at sixty miles an hour. In it’s final year the once-proud old Studebaker sat behind our house, serving as home to a pair of adopted stray dogs. I saw a car just like it recently at an antique auto show. The owner said it was worth thirty thousand dollars; unbelievable.

The first car I chose and bought myself was a used 1963 Volkswagen. What a great car! It was nearly unstoppable, like a Jeep. In the winter I enjoyed driving after the first snow before the plows cleared the roads. With a running start you could punch through a two-foot drift, throwing snow up and over the sloping hood. But, in winter the car’s inadequacies became evident. The six-volt electrical system didn’t have much muscle to turn over the engine in freezing temperatures. You had thirty seconds to get it started. After that, you needed two friends to push you up to speed so you could pop the clutch. Also, the heater and defroster were powered by warm air diverted from the air-cooled engine. It was always cold inside the car in winter. I carried a scraper in the glove compartment to clear ice from the inside of the windshield. I had to breathe through my nose while driving; exhaling onto the windshield caused the glass to instantly frost over.

My first new car was a 1969 Buick GS California, a plain two-door sedan pretending to be a muscle car. I bought it as a gift for my first wife. We walked into the showroom and I said, “What car do you want?” She said “I like that yellow one, it’s pretty.” I told the salesman, “Don’t bother wrapping it, we’ll drive it home.” My wily skills of negotiation were surpassed only by my propensity for being a dork.

The only other new vehicle I ever bought was a 1987 Ford Econoline van. I purchased it at wholesale price and had a friend build it out with a custom interior. It had a straight-six engine and a four-speed manual transmission with a floor shifter. I enjoyed that van. It carried the family all over the country. I wore it out and eventually sold it in North Carolina, replacing it with a 4-wheel drive SUV in preparation for the move north to Pennsylvania.


I drive a Jeep today, a Grand Cherokee, bought used and subsequently upgraded with a replacement engine and rebuilt transmission. It is a good truck and just what is needed in country like this where snow can be significant.




As a boy I had a love affair with cars, like most young men do. But, over time I have come to view them as little more than a means of transportation. All I ask of a car or a truck now is that it be dependable and that its appearance not be embarrassing. Some people seem to view their cars as an extension of self. They select their vehicles to project a personal image or a statement of their values. I wonder how others judge me when they see my car… No, on second thought, I don’t wonder at all. In fact, I don’t care. I am what I am and I drive what I drive. The most significant connection between me and my car is right there in the driver’s seat, where the cushion molds itself to the contour of my bottom.