A Legacy of Division... How I will remember the Obamas

     There is no photo to accompany this post because quite frankly the image of Barack Obama will forever haunt me as a once loyal Democrat that voted for his presidency twice and lived to regret it.

     Seeing him now only reminds me of how easy it was to be duped into believing he would have all of America's best interest at heart and that somehow he would find a way to more unite our country after the bad taste that was left in so many mouths following the George W. Bush era. What we got on return for our investment of trust in him was a more divided nation than at any time since the American Civil War! Sadly, after all of the hope, this is how he will be remembered by many that trusted him to do better than he was clearly capable of doing.

     When I look back on his tenure as the most powerful person in the world I can only come up with one thing that has happened under his watch that had a positive effect on the majority of us; the cost of gasoline tumbled to an affordable price for everyone that needed it. As far as many of us are concerned the only benefactors of his presidency has been foreign governments, the lobbyists that delivered wealthy investors who funded his campaigns, attention seekers  and anyone bumming a free ride or demanding clemency from being held accountable for anything.

      I saw a popular sway in American values and expectations under the Obama regime by people who identified themselves as Democrats and it was as if they were all holding matches to fuses with intentions of burning down most of the traditions that were struggled for, bled for, and have lasted more than 200 years that identified us as the strongest nation in the world. Not a perfect nation, and certainly one (like all others) that could stand a tune-up from time-to-time, but not one in dire need of turning us all against one another until we either fix everything at once or go to war with ourselves.

     That is what happened in the 2016 election; we went to civil war against those that saw our country differently than we did or wanted it to become something we didn't want. The fuses were lit to pit everyone that stood for ideals that were traditional America values against everyone that either never respected them at all, or felt strongly they were no longer good enough. In our zeal to rise above prejudices and protect democracy for all we found ourselves wallowing in the gutters of hate-filled rhetoric, pointing fingers of blame and sacrificing decency and civility to one another for believing what we believed.

       For us Democrats that felt disenfranchised by the failures and lack of concern for the whole country at the national level as well as by other Democrats within state and local party ranks it was not a difficult decision to break away and cross the lines that divided so many. We looked at and listened to who the Democrats had in mind to succeed him when it came time for Obama and his flock to vacate the White House and we heard loud and clear the other side. For me it was a first: never before did I ever consider trusting the Republicans with my vote and making it count for anything that would be in my best interest, but this time it was the Democrats not them that convinced me that I should.

      In the end it came down to a handful of choices; two major party candidates that didn't seem to even belong in the same country (let alone be trusted by half of it to lead it back to grace and prosperity) and a few power-hungry renegades who identified themselves as neither Democrat nor Republican; none of whom seemed smarter than a fifth grader, and each of whom could have caused nothing but chaos and further discombobulation within our already fragile and vulnerable borders.

     The Democrat's choice to assume responsibility for leading us in the post-Obama era was a woman that sported what amounted to a hateful chip growing from both shoulder blades. Her rhetoric against traditional America was as condescending and laced with as much racial divide and content for men and women that longed for being treated with respect for their sacrifices as Mr. Obama fostered and cultivated during his two terms. In many ways she came off as sounding evil and certainly more dangerous to the whole of the country than he.

     In the final debate between her and the Republican nominee she railed against and questioned his patriotism when he suggested a wait and see attitude when asked if he would accept and support the process we have always used to select our presidents, and when it was over it was her and her followers that wouldn't go away quietly. Instead they protested vigorously and called for others to protest; they promised (and are still promising) total disruption of the results. They spent and wasted tens of  millions of dollars on futile recounts, hoping for a miracle that would further change how we choose our leaders from a fair process to only something fair for them. In short, the entire world saw the new Democratic Party that I and apparently many others warned was festering before our very eyes during the Obama era.

     I will remember President Obama not only for his many failures and weaknesses, but equally important for what he was  able to accomplish; disruption of the old Democratic Party and how he led a national movement to redefine what it stands for, a wider racial divide since the 1960s, his promise for affordable health care for all Americans that left me spending more than a third of my income for insurance premiums and oh yes...lower gas prices. The idea that choosing the first African American president would unite us more and break down racial barriers that existed before him proved just the opposite and if he is an honest man he will claim the lion's share of responsibility for that.

     When he said he wanted to be the president for all Americans he must have changed his mind sometime near the end of his first term when his focus shifted from all to only those making the most noise. His "squeaky wheel gets the grease" policies were carried out and paid for with higher taxes for businesses and working Americans that supported him and received nothing in return but made to feel double-crossed. And in the end, at this time for him to go, he has shown only low-class surrender of his powers by mocking and criticizing the man selected through due-process to replace him, while promising nothing to aid in facilitating changes that have potential to be positive for more people than he was able to deliver.

     Even the First Lady refuses to leave quietly or with any resemblance to grace or dignity. Saying that because her preferred candidate lost the election she now knows what it feels like to not have any hope is a back-handed slap in the faces of people everywhere that really have known hopelessness. It is a punch in the gut to hungry and homeless people that never found a way out of despair under her husband's presidency; it is a kick in the groin to everyone forced to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet, and to sick people who cannot afford to see a doctor or anyone that was forced to file bankruptcy because they went when they needed to.

      Her comments about knowing what hopelessness feels like when the servants that have served her for eight years are gone and when there are no highly trained Secret Service agents there to protect her and her children any longer is salt into the wounds of every family that lost someone who was murdered in some ghetto in America that she and her husband all but ignored and were left to become dirtier and more dangerous. It probably tightened the tourniquets and heightened the mental anguish of every wounded veteran now struggling for decent medical care for what they went through to keep our country safe, and for every college kid drowning in tuition debt it probably left them wondering why they even went to school in the first place.

      Michelle Obama leaves her perch in high society a woman as defiant and stained by arrogance as her husband, and it is fair to attack her; the long honored tradition of keeping First Ladies immune from verbal prosecution for the failures of their husbands went by the wayside when she inserted herself as a voice and believing she spoke for the majority of the country. The immunity from scorn left her as it did when it no longer applied to Mrs. Clinton when she too insulted half the country.

      When Mrs. Obama took the low road to mock the newly elected president and everyone that supported him she stood like a soldier defending what she believed was the good that came from her husband's time in office and she believed she was echoing popular sentiment. But sometimes soldiers lose the fight even when they believe it is the good one and they get knocked down. If she is truly a brave soldier (as she has poised herself to be for the past eight years) she should have expected all the cannon fodder coming her way since she invited it with bold remarks, but if she can't it only proves how alike she and her husband really are.
   
     Many of us see him now as only a bitter man that was so caught up in his own ego and protecting what he believed was a proud legacy that he tarnished it with a patina that should never be removed; to be left for all to look back on as a lesson in the principles of democracy. His idea of democracy and that of what remains of the Democratic Party has shifted from what many of us knew it to be before they turned truth into prejudices against what they call being politically correct.

    There can be nothing politically correct about anything they accomplished or hope to accomplish when it leaves tens of millions of people feeling frustrated and hopeless but it seems that was their goal all along. The evidence showed up when America kicked him and his hand-picked would-be successor to the curb and finally said enough is enough.

     Many of my fellow Democrats took back any respect they once held for me when they discovered that I supported a  promise to restore America to something that will once again resemble what made it great in the first place but I am okay with that. The  friends I lost through all of this can and will be replaced, and all of us will keep believing in what we choose to believe in. What didn't completely destroy us will be our only hope to endure with any chance of ever coming back together.

     I extended faith and trust in Barack Obama and I will remember him as a president who let me down. Walking away from the party he led, that of my parents and grandparents before them was made easy by those that have done all they could to cast out the old faithful and replace us with people that never believed in what we did. In his wake will be two very different countries, both pretending to be united but still divisive, and they will be represented by more than two political parties. The Democrats that shifted their support to Republicans are already proving that it needed us to keep alive and protect all that we hold dear, and we needed them. In this, the aftermath of eight years of division, Democrats working with Republicans are on course to becoming the only truly democratic party we have.

     The old Democratic Party will keep trying to reinvent itself to become more and more attractive to younger generations and to various minority groups and millions of immigrants regardless of where they come from or whether or not they have our country's best interest at heart or their own agendas to weaken it. It is an act of clever awareness and resourcefulness on their part to keep fielding candidates that can hopefully restore their power and effectiveness over the masses.

     For them it is only about numbers and they have done the math. However, what they were willing to sacrifice came at a cost  just as unaffordable to them as Barack Obama's health care plan that was successfully shoved down everyone's throats. In the end the math was right, but the sum of it all was not in their favor and it left them even angrier at America than they were when they launched their revolt against traditional American values.
 
     That to me is this president's legacy.

    Our parent's Democratic Party was dismantled and sold off sometime between 2009 and 2016, but those of us with strong traditional Democratic roots are replanting in a new political garden now; forced to re-seed but finding more space to grow within the Republican Party.

    Maybe what we really need now, instead of a third party is new names for both major parties.

Write On

      Before there was social networking where now anyone can be expressive and tell the world just who they are and how they think only those we saw and who saw us in the flesh on a regular basis really knew much about us. What they might have been curious about they would have needed to either observe or learn through conversation. I think back to the people that were in various ways special to me, and especially all that made my own life richer or fuller by really knowing them and it occurs to me they would have just been other people had it not been for the time and effort we invested in one another to accomplish what has mattered so much.

     As for the ways people come to know each other on social networking sites; it is only through watching a few sentences or images on a daily basis that one or the other posts, but at best it is only a glimpse into who they truly are. Nevertheless, it is a thread for many that tethers them to people they admire and some they hope will admire them for what they believe either sets them apart from others or makes them similar in ways perceived admirable. 

      In that regard we can all become authors of personal stories that tell a world of strangers who we are and tales of adventures we have taken or will take, that without social networking few outside our inner-circles would know or care to know.

     Most of the folks I interact with in Cyberland are people I really don't know and very few that know me. As for what they know about me...well, like them, it is only those selective sentences and images of a much more complex person that I am willing to share that describes who I want them to believe I am, and almost always only what I think are my best qualities. The darker and less appealing aspects of me isn't often on display for others to judge; only what I can easily defend or anything not so important that it should matter one way or the other to anyone.

      In various incarnations of what I want others to know about me I have been a radio announcer, a cop and most recently a writer. If I am skilled at this craft or if I was in the other two has always been for someone else to decide but whatever anyone's conclusions may be it really doesn't matter because I have always chosen paths that were personally satisfying and that tested me in ways I was curious enough to experiment with.

      This blog and the books I have written are the true medium for expression for me.

      In the old days, before the internet and other venues that allow us to speak out or simply empty what is in our heads for others to see about all that was available were newspaper or magazine forums such as letters to the editor or talk-formats on radio that allowed listeners to call in and vent or just weigh-in on a particular topic. But shortly after we entered the 21st Century that all changed and so did many's willingness to expose who they truly are. It went from a willingness to a desire or an obsession for a lot of people until eventually too many learned too much about them!

     So whether it is places like Facebook, Twitter or any other method available to dole out words that convey what is on our minds, the cyber world has created an abundance of writers who have discovered like I have just how easy it is to impart short stories or share personal abbreviated biographies that tell others who we are, what we think and what our goals and hopes are.

      There is no bottom line to this post beyond pointing out what should be obvious; most of what we all write is meaningless to anyone besides the people who already know us! That is unless we take those first few words or sentences to a full paragraph and then another and then another until it all comes together to tell more complete stories and really exposes who we are.

       Every time someone writes a blog, sends a text message, or a tweet or only responds in writing to something someone else says they launch new experiments that test their own writing skills even when the may not be doing it on purpose and even if they don't know they are doing it. What is important is it feels right at the time, and it leaves us with a feeling of confidence that we could tell someone something whether it matters to them or not, or only because we feel a burning desire to get something off our chest.

      http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rickminerd

  

       

      

    

     

Journey to Christmas

                                            

   Another's faith or what Christmas means to them isn't anything I dwell on beyond what this time of year represents for me. When it comes to my personal belief and the coming of Christmas each year I guard that very closely and never do I feel any urgency to explain it or  all  the reasons I celebrate the season.

    I have had the good fortune my entire life to enjoy all that Christmas brings while being surrounded by people who understand that; and when I watch or listen to debates over why some celebrate it as I do or why others do not, nothing has ever changed my interpretation of seeing religious images depicting the first one, nor what commercialism and capitalism has turned it into and continues to profit from.  For them it is Black Friday's that can linger for a month or more and other clever marketing schemes to restore bottom lines that didn't perform as well as they might have hoped from January through October.  

    But I am also okay with that because we all have to make a living somehow and most of us enjoy believing we are getting bargains and great deals even if common sense tells us differently.  Buying and selling more commerce during the weeks leading up to Christmas is how we celebrate what has been depicted in Nativity displays longer than any of us have been alive; we only honor the tradition by keeping it going year-after-year. 

    We buy it, wrap it and then hope the recipient believes as we do that we did good! Some of us worry that we haven't done enough and when that happens we offer condolences to ourselves that it was the thought that counted and we hope the other person shares that sentiment if they were disappointed! It happens to me every year but I don't dwell much on that either.

    The merry wishes for everyone we care about to have a happy Christmas and to be able to celebrate in ways that bring them joy and comfort not only at this time but throughout the coming new year is wrapped in garland, tinsel, bright lights and song regardless of what is beneath the tree or donated to people we don't know, and if we mean it when we say it that should suffice when the other things we do or say don't.

    For me the journey from Thanksgiving to Christmas is all of the above with a few side-bars; they include the approach of winter, which for all of the challenges and hardships it can create is still my favorite season. I enjoy seeing snow and walking in it and I am reminded of the joys of sleds and ice-skates when I was young and unbreakable if I crashed on a hill or lost my balance on a frozen pond. 

    The older I get the more frequently I am reminded that either of those mishaps would likely be a death sentence for me now, and why I have enough sense to no longer own skates or a sled! But I wish I could and if I did I would probably risk come-what-may at least one more time in my life because that is another side-bar to my own joys of the season. The memories that refuse to ever fade of a world that somehow didn't seem as cold in winter as it does now. 

    This is when I miss everything and everyone that is gone more than at any time of the year, but it is also when things happen or people show up that remind me of them. The Saturday evening before Christmas I and others around me wait on our porches (regardless of the weather) for total strangers that make up an impromptu choir accompanied by a horn player to come-a-caroling; it is a tradition that started years ago and for those few songs they sing in front of one house to the next we all seem to know each other.

     Glad tidings of musical joy that only happens once a year but well worth the wait!

    The other homes and businesses around me are decorated for the occasion and the area becomes the images we see in our mind's eye when we hear those sentimental and time honored melodies, and when the week ahead comes and goes we will wait another year, and when it comes we will complain about some who jump the gun and begin preparations too early. I do that too; I might see a Christmas tree in a window before Thanksgiving and wonder about it myself even when my own tree may already be up by then. But then a few days or a week passes until once again everyone is back in the spirit!

    In a sentence, that is what the season is about for me, spirit, and our personal reasons for feeling it.

    I won't be in church on Christmas Day, but I will watch with hope and enthusiasm the Pope's message on television on Christmas Eve just as I have in years past. For me that is what will be left of a season full of anticipation, culminating when the last one leaves our 59th consecutive traditional family gathering (in the same house) that night. I watch them put on their coats and we hug, wish one another Merry Christmas and one by one they go and I wonder if we will all be able to do it again next year.

    Then it is only me, seeing and hearing what the crowd that has gathered in St. Peter's Basilica came there for. The family will be gone and I'll be in a room where hours before they all took time from their busy schedules to journey home for awhile. The tree will be still be lit and the outside lights will stay on until morning when the 11 month wait will once again commence for the next one.

    It is within these pauses in the journey to Christmas Day that I try to take in and savor as much as I possibly can, more this year than last year, and more then than the year before because as life goes and age will have it no one can be sure how many more we will be allowed to take. Too many of my peers won't have another one and all of us could be trudging through our last. 

   That first journey to Christmas shown in the photo above might have been something like that for Mary and Joseph; anxious and needing to get where they were going, but perhaps uncertain of what lie ahead.

    Safe travels, and Merry Christmas!

Moving the Clock Forward...

   This post will certainly disappoint my narrow minded liberal friends, but as most of them have known for a very long time disappointing others has never been a problem for me when first they disappoint me! That is what they have been doing in recent years with their soft on crime attitudes, their zeal for attention getting and all of those guilt trips they have been inviting me go on with them that I refused to book. 

    It is no secret (if anyone was paying attention) that our teachers in the middle 20th century were liberal minded people that encouraged their young flocks to listen to them, to our parents, and to abide by the golden rule. Those liberals also led us to believe that it was wrong to either burn or otherwise desecrate the American flag but instead led us to pledge allegiance to it every morning with one hand held against our heart. They encouraged if not insisted that we love and honor our country instead of speaking out against it or flat trashing what it stands for every time our government becomes new people that don't always hold with the same truths as the one it replaces in each election cycle or when it isn't focusing only on us.

    My teachers even led us in morning prayer before the start of class although that too ended before I finished elementary school. But I know they were all mostly liberals because education in America seems to attract mostly liberal thinkers especially in public schools systems. If you know a teacher or someone that sits on a school board I would wager heavily that person uses mostly the left side of their brain when they speak. 

    (More now than ever before!) 

   Liberal thinking in the 21st century has totally redefined an entire national political party and changed how it defines democracy. I hold to what I was taught and what made sense to me when I was learning from them a half century ago and I reject most if not all of their redesigned platforms that only make life easier for boxes of people instead of everyone.

   My liberal friends that don't understand how I stayed in the middle when they kept tilting further and further to the left do understand something they and I can agree on; a population in America that has more than doubled in size since then, thus twice as many hineys to kiss to remain popular and that many more to persuade if that is what you want. It is what liberals do; it doesn't make them bad people, it only makes them an angry and rarely satisfied lot. So they take out their frustrations on people that don't understand them or anyone that refuses to allow them to be the only voice in a room by orchestrating and participating in demonstrations and heaving insults at everyone who doesn't subscribe to the literature they read. 

   It is the central reason they failed so poorly in the 2016 national elections; they simply misjudged too many by labeling them incorrectly and believing no one would put up a fuss like they were doing. Words like homophobes, sexists, racists, misogynists and other unflattering names for anyone that doesn't share their thinking became their cadence; their candidates repeated them in every media interview and public rally before their adorers until it became normal to add them to their own lexicon because it made them feel smarter or part of something bigger than them. 

    Name-calling became their pass, or code words to belong to what they believed was a majority; a place they believed they would be surrounded by people that would coddle them when things weren't going their way and make them feel safe if someone that could do it were to come along and hold them responsible for something. 

   They staged loud rallies and the media cheered them on with guarantees that if they stayed loud enough there was no possible way they wouldn't win. They came to rely on surrogates operating away from schools and classrooms acting as TV teachers; people like Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Whoopie Goldberg and an endless faculty of famous others fed them more and more reasons to believe it until calling someone on the other side deplorable morphed from just being trendy to a full blown battle cry! 

      But then, like a bolt of lightening from the Heavens realty slapped them across the face with such great force many were sent reeling or just to their knees sobbing, some so in disbelief they threatened to disrupt everything the new president had in mind; to disrupt the country itself if necessary and draw deeper lines of division in the sands that separate them from other Americans whose biggest faults were not agreeing with them.

    He is not my president! They continue to shout it as if believing those of us that are eager for a new direction in America will join them in their protest and discard our own concerns and give up our own hopes to accommodate them. None of us will of course and about all we can really do for them from here forward is tell them where they can buy Play Doh, or where they can go to get some donated to them and who serves free hot chocolate.

    All that can be promised to them for the next few years is what they already received as a payoff for their other demonstrations; more blow back in their faces as the result of what they caused to happen; a new president that stands for everything they were against and will likely never understand.

    We move the clocks forward again on January 20th. My liberal friends who are disappointed and unwilling to adjust theirs can stay behind and think up new demands or more clever ways to insult people, or they could just pinch their noses and drink the Castor Oil.  

Did You Receive My Text?

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     It isn't often that someone will ask that question of me but it has happened a few times over the course of the past decade or longer. I am not sure when texting became something others came to rely on as mainstream communication but it hasn't yet happened to me. When it comes to that unseen silver umbilical cord that prevents them from ever being out of reach of anyone that knows their phone number I am simply not interested in that connection of being found or finding others. 

    When fingering smart phones became the obsession it has for nearly everyone I know or see walking, sitting and even driving I was already a year or more in the rear-view mirror of the rest of the population who quickly embraced the ease of allowing one another to send all of those important messages they share to reach them in an instant. So I have missed out on being able to tell anyone that might be curious where I am, what I am doing, what I plan to do or simply, what's up?

     Now, I am not mocking anyone that has made texting as much a part of their lives as breathing, eating or taking in water, and it isn't my intention to heckle anyone for adopting that strategy to accommodate the needs of someone else, or to communicate their own needs and interests to make easier their busy lifestyles or to remain busy when it is required for them to be; I am merely sharing another example of why I am happy to be left out of something I don't need.

     Rarely is it important for anyone to know where I am or what I am up to but there was a time that wasn't so. It was before I retired in 2005 when I was actually expected to be accessible to more people at more times than I really wanted to be. Retirement gave me the freedom to play cat-and-mouse with anyone I chose until most people grew tired of that game and eventually gave up wondering or even caring. Were I to focus my skills on being an ardent texter that might change and I would have less time to myself and probably more to worry about than I want as I see that as one of the possible consequences.

     But in those years I frequently write about as the best time of my life; a half century before smart phones and feeling like shit more often than I would prefer because of aging and all that comes with it to worry about there was a simpler form of texting our mothers used when they needed us for something or had something very important they felt we should know right away. If we were someplace where there was a telephone they simply called us; if we were home with them-same thing! They didn't need to send us a message if we were in another part of the house, all they needed to do was raise their voices to a decibel loud enough to be heard.

     If we were somewhere close by in the neighborhood; same thing.

    But the argument is still good for anyone that wants to put it forth, that back in those days neither our parents, nor anyone else could reach us 24/7 minute-by-minute if they needed or only desired to. It's enough to make some wonder today how we ever managed to get anything done or even survive! But somehow we did and there are more like me than those people might want to believe that has never texted someone or received one. Most are probably much older than me or too young to be able to understand a keypad, or have stayed too poor to ever afford the technology, but there are millions out there who manage to get by and are okay without it.

     I have lived to see the future, and here waiting for me was "Big Brother!"  

    Had texting existed when I was a lad my mother would have been able to keep tabs on me at all times and she probably would have! I wouldn't have been able to experiment with life as much as I did during those impressionable years when there was so much out there to learn about and sample. Had texting been available to her I would have had to lie to her more than I did, and everything I did that I enjoyed doing but probably shouldn't have would have been cut short or changed somehow, and had that happened I wouldn't have grown to become the man I did. 

     Whether or not that would have been good or not could be kindling for a great debate!

   That photo that accompanies this piece is yet another form of middle 20th Century messaging and anyone that lived through that time gets it. It didn't matter where we were or how far away from shouting distance or if there was no phone around to call us; we knew what it meant! For anyone too young to understand it there is the ease of texting someone that might know; that is, if you know someone from my generation who has and enjoys the means of doing that.

I Am The Real Santa Claus

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     After years of leaving them wondering I guess it is about time for me to come clean; but for more than four decades I really had them going! That first Christmas with my son when I became a rookie dad back in 1971 was pretty easy to fool him because he was just 4 days shy of being three months old. I don't recall what he received from the old man that year but I am sure it was as inexpensive as it was special. Probably more so for me than him but what matters here is it was the beginning of a legacy I have rarely spoken of until now. 

    Another dozen years would pass and more kids would arrive until I had a gaggle of them by 1983 and it wasn't long after that I decided to talk to my doctor about a procedure that would halt my reproduction capability because quite frankly, those kids were becoming more and more expensive day-by-day and when Christmas rolled around each year I struggled to stay out of the poor house! He suggested the equivalent of what women call having their tubes tied. It sounded like the right thing to do so I consented to have mine tied!

    Thank God the procedure worked because over the decades that would follow I never again had an oops, not again moment. I will turn 65 midway through the next summer and to this day I remain firm that I don't want to ever have another one and I have made it clear to my wife that if she wants to have more kids the best old Santa can do for her is get her a boy-toy for Christmas. So far she hasn't gotten back to me on that and it is probably best for us both that she hasn't.

    But back to the kids we do have; when they were very young I would put on an outfit every year that I knew they would instantly recognize as their very favorite person when Christmas was near and they fell for it the first few years. Nevertheless, as they got older I could tell they suspected it was really me behind that beard but still they went along with the charade. (Perhaps just to humor me.) 

    Eventually I would hear it from all of them that they always believed it was me in the red suit but until now I never came close to admitting it, because for whatever the reason, we parents want our kids to believe in Santa Claus for as long as possible. It is why I put on the suit; to reinforce that belief that contrary to what others might tell them someday Santa is a real guy and they saw him in their home, they spoke to him and gave him a list of Christmas wishes and he usually came through. 

    I don't know if they ever really knew the truth because like I said, I am pretty sure I had them going well into their adult lives, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they told their own children of those Christmases long ago when they would see the real Santa Claus and how mysterious it was that he knew so much about them when he showed up to prove he was real.

    An old man once told me that we eventually reach an age when clearing our conscience of deep secrets can be like a heavy load we can finally set down; "leave us feeling cleansed and liberated"  he promised. That was several years ago and now I am the age that old man was when he said it. The kids were right all along, but if I was right all of this time that I had them fooled until now it doesn't mean my kids are slow; it only means they resisted letting go of memories that were as fond for them as they are priceless to me.

     

My First Mustang

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    Okay, it wasn't a car and it was only mine for the few minutes it probably took for the photographer to lift me into the saddle and then aim his camera. But for that brief moment in the saddle I was riding high even though my butt couldn't have been more than a few feet off the ground; as you can see, the horse was pretty little! 

    But then again, I wasn't the tallest cowboy on the block either but thank God I was that age when being one and allowed to play with toy guns was not only okay, but also encouraged by parents! It must have been, for why else did my mother and every mom of every boy I knew buy us so many for Christmases and birthdays? We got pistols that fired caps and because nothing was projected through the barrels no one got hurt when we aimed them at one another and pulled the triggers!

   If a kid of any age were to do that now a police SWAT team would arrive and the entire neighborhood would go on lock-down.

   Somewhere along the time-line between then and after I grew into adulthood playing cowboy stopped being acceptable behavior and photographers with pony's stopped showing up in front of people's houses. It happened when toy manufactures were pressured by the politicians who were pressured by a new generation of moms to outlaw the making of toy guns without a red tip on the barrel to identify it as not real. 

    Personally I would have hated having to play with something like that because I wanted every piece in my make-believe arsenal to look real, otherwise the other cowboys on the block wouldn't have taken me seriously when I aimed one at them and barked a command to either surrender or fall down and play dead if it was there turn to lose. Hard to imagine now, but back then kids took turns losing and we were okay with that! Toy guns with red tips? That Mustang in the photo might as well have been the broomstick I rode before the photographer showed up! 
     
    But back to the moms that raised boys who either weren't taught properly or simply couldn't develop common sense, or were just born with violent tendencies and desires to pick up real guns to get what they wanted or to get revenge for something; maybe it wasn't the mom's fault as much as it was the whole of society for making them believe that kids of any age needed coddling and more parental guidance for everything they do. 

    I believe that is what happened and why a world that expects and demands we all be politically correct has become as dangerous and irresponsible as it has. Too many parents stopped teaching responsibility and too many encouraged kids to only be kind to one another and never mutter offensive words even if their only intent is to re-enact their heroes. 

    In our case it was guys like Hoppy, Gene and Roy. Television and movie actors that we wanted to grow up and be like and none of them were bad guys. To us they were on the right side of everything and they shot the bad guys, and at the end of every show a cool theme song played that identified their characters. 

   Maybe that's what we wanted, our own theme song, or only allowed to form our opinions and be allowed to think for ourselves and use our imaginations.

   We wanted to be like those guys and it was okay. But when that new generation of moms replaced the old ones that saw things differently they may have secretly wished their sons were daughters instead. They began raising boys they didn't trust to make good decisions or comprehend right from wrong and they picked out different toys for them to play with.

    Toys like soft-cuddly purple dinosaurs and sponge balls; toys that both boys and girls can play with together; they encouraged them to only laugh and be happy because they wanted them to believe that is how it will be someday out there in the real world if everyone could just form a circle and sing Kumbaya instead Paladin. They handed them Fruit Roll-Ups instead of allowing them to eat what they really wanted or be allowed to chew on a piece of grass that some dog might have peed on.

    They monitored everything they ate and everything they watched on TV and they encouraged their sons to watch the Disney Channel because it was pure wholesome family fun and no one there was ever mean, and they forbid them from turning on the Western Channel because it promoted meanness and violence and surely would turn them into bank robbers or serial killers.

    Those kids eventually grew up, and after being denied a chance to let their imaginations wander into any territory that may be dangerous many of them bought or stole real guns because they were too old to play with toys; they slipped off the leash their parents tried to keep them on and by then they were too screwed up to comprehend the difference between playing and acting out years of suppressed aggression. 

    The world was a better and safer place to grow up in when we weren't such an uptight society and before we stopped allowing kids to be kids; before we brainwashed so many of them to keep believing in the Easter Bunny until they get married. 

    That pony was just a prop on that day and millions of kids all over America sat on one just like it during that era. We played with cap-guns for the same reasons our parents bought them for us, because we could be trusted to know they were merely playthings and because there were fewer reasons to want to really kill our friends. 
   
   We played cowboys and Indians and we never thought of it as an insult to an entire race of people even though in reality it was. But we didn't do it for that reason because it was never drummed into our heads that it might be. We did it because we weren't taught to believe everything we did probably offends someone somewhere. 

   Those moms that bought into believing toy guns would certainly lead to wanting to play with real ones make it nearly impossible for some my age to talk about how much we enjoyed life when we were small, but I do, and I do with less remorse or guilt than many believe I should feel and I am not ashamed of that either.

    It's not that I am a harsh or uncaring man, although I wouldn't need to wander very far to find many that would judge me otherwise. No, I am neither of those things; I am just a guy that grew up when boys could be boys and toys were just toys, and maybe a little ahead of my time if we only focus on this time. 

    As for those toy guns with red tips to indicate they are only toys; I wonder if I paint the tips of my Glock .40 caliber, or my Smith & Wesson 9MM red it would make them look harmless. The thought of that should scare everyone! How many of those red-tipped guns are really only make-believe replicas? 

    How would anyone really know for sure? Maybe those are the guns that should be restricted or outlawed, or maybe we could ban everything that looks like a gun and replace them with whistles.

    Somewhere on Capital Hill surely a liberal law maker is drafting legislation. God help us, and forgive me Lord for my sins of youth when I pretended to be a cowboy and left a few friends lying in the grass for the buzzards in my backyard... even though they all got up and walked away when I wasn't looking. 

    As far as I know all of them somehow managed as I did to turn out okay.  In spite of what some now regard as faulty behavior or poor upbringing most of us became law abiding, good, and productive people; albeit our stubborn resistance to changes we think  helped make the world a crazy place sometimes and us a more dangerous society.  

No Glitz, No Glory

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     Nearly 60 years ago my family settled into a home on the south side of Columbus, Ohio in a typical blue-collar neighborhood. Back then there weren't many upscale houses around, only some that looked a little nicer than ours and very few that presented better curb appeal than them!

   Throughout the years the neighborhood and those close by progressed into one of the nicest in the city; many of the properties that could be bought in the 1950s for around $10,000.00 and some less than that are now fetching anywhere from a quarter million dollars to beyond a million is some cases. 

    My parents who passed away in the late 1990s would gasp in disbelief if they knew that the house next door to ours recently went on the market for $649,000.00, but there has been a steady stream of potential buyers showing up to check it out each time the owners host an open house so I am guessing that it will sell for something near their asking price.

    Five years ago that home was purchased for under $150,000.00 but since then it has been transformed into something that looks like it was built yesterday in a posh neighborhood somewhere other than the south end of Columbus. It has become the norm around here; homes that 25 years ago could be had for 40 or 50 thousand dollars that were built before or shortly after the turn of the century and still looking very much like they did in the mid 1900's being gobbled up by investors and remodeled from basements to attics, and in so doing updating and changing everything the original builders hammered in place.

    I suppose it makes sense (to them) to want to live in one of the oldest and most historic neighborhoods around, but only if they can be comfortable and impress their peers, even if the cost is removing and replacing a lot of its originality and original charm.

    These old houses that surround ours now would not be recognizable to our old neighbors that have since died or moved away, albeit the shape on the outside and where they sit. Gone are all of the old rusty chain-link fences that separated yards; instead now high privacy barriers with electronic gates, and even most of the grass has been replaced by decorative rocks, gravel and meticulously laid patio pavers intertwined with mulch surrounding fancy ponds with gentle waterfalls. 

    Signs identifying the alarm companies that protect these properties are as abundant as door-bell buttons and it is all lit-up with security lighting strategically placed that functions to illuminate anyone with nefarious intentions while allowing everyone else to be able to gaze at the beauty even at night!

    Home owners park their BMW's, Infinity's and Lexus vehicles on the same well-lit brick streets where my dad parked his 1956 Ford in the dark and where horse's and buggies and Model-T Fords before that once sat, and they come and go with absolutely no idea of how this area looked fifty or so years ago. 

   That is, unless they look closely at our house!

   After my parents passed away I came home and purchased the house I grew up in with every intention to live out what is left of my own life in the one structure that feels more like "home" than any other, anywhere on the planet! I did not want a fancy house or one in a neighborhood unfamiliar, I wanted this one; the only place on earth that could remind me daily of the best years of my own life and the people I can no longer see, talk to or touch.

   I wanted to be able to hold onto something that others allowed to slip away when they left home and found themselves in places and in circumstances that made it impossible for them to ever really go back.

    In the twenty years that I was able to do this I have resisted the temptation or any faux pressure to try to keep up with the Joneses by also renovating or simply changing everything about my little patch of ground or the wood-frame house that has comforted and protected my family since the Eisenhower era, and for that reason it probably looks like something of a sore thumb to the people that never knew us or the others that were here before them.

    Don't get me wrong; I don't live in a run-down shack, and through the years everything has been kept clean and what needed repaired has been, but there is nothing fancy or otherwise impressive here; just a typical old house that was built in 1904 that has been treated with appreciation and pride of ownership as a classic original automobile would be! There is an old saying "things are only original once."

   I have resisted knocking down interior walls to transform it into an open-floor plan as the trend has become around me; it is still an old house with small rooms shaped like boxes and there is still only one bathroom in it. Every room in it could become a better and more functional living area with modern updates but I like them the way they are and I still need a lawn mower!

     In other words, I have kept Mom and Dad's old house the way they preferred it and were comfortable in for decades. I treat my house as they did; fixing things when they break, keeping it as original and as neat and tidy as they did, and with respect for the labors of the builders and what they accomplished (without power-tools) more than a century ago.  

    In this regard mine is one of the very few left around that can boast of something those costing hundreds of thousands more cannot; it is one of the last virtually unmolested original properties still close by and given its occupant is now the longest residing person on the block its character is fitting.

    When my friend and neighbor whose family occupied a house three-doors from mine since 1917 passed away a few months ago it left my family as the only one still here that was when we were the new kids on the block and only their house and one across the street still looks like it did back then. 

   No, my home is not very impressive to anyone seeking a palace or a mansion in this old south end and visitors wouldn't be nearly as impressed by it as they would be in the home next door; but it might be someday. When I am gone, and the last family member leaves, and when someone that wants to reside in a historic location with the means to spend what it would cost to erase a century of pride and nostalgia comes along I am sure it too will will depreciate in character.