Moving

Over the last couple of years, a number of my friends have moved – some a mile or two, others six or seven hours away. The reasons for moving are varied: new jobs, foreclosures, marriage, family obligations, and other reasons. I’m trying to gauge if this recent spate of relocations is any greater than any other periods of comparison. I don’t know.

I recall my big move. I accepted a job with Ducks Unlimited in 1993 that required relocating to the greater Memphis area. As I had lived in Southeastern Michigan from age four, this was a pretty big change. Hell, it was a huge change.

Leaving: I sold my little house on the Huron River near Brighton, Michigan to a couple I met accidently one evening at the Whitmore Lake Tavern. I had owned that house about six months before accepting the Tennessee job and had spent most of that six months swinging a hammer and flailing a paint brush. I had added a wall, replaced a ceiling, upgraded the bathroom, and remodeled the master bedroom – oh, and thanks to my buddy Scott, changed the doors. Did OK on the sale.
 
Didn’t do nearly as OK leaving Mom’s the morning of the drive. . .fortunately, the tears cleared by the time the expressway loomed.

Arriving: after two months in a hotel, I moved into my log cabin one county east of the Memphis area. The home was on three wooded acres, had a pond, and a seventeen mile commute to the office.

Oh, did I mention the neighbors?

I took possession of the house the first of May and had all the carpets cleaned and the interior scrubbed prior to the delivery of “my stuff.” The “stuff's” arrival was mid-week and, because of the winding driveway, the movers had to hand-carry everything from the road – probably a 75 yard haul. The weather was kind that day and I had remembered to have plenty of cold beverages to share with the movers.

Maybe two hours into the process, a couple – about 20 years my senior – walked up to the porch (I have to brag on the porch – it was fifty feet wide, had ceiling fans, and the previous owner left me her oak rocking chairs). Chuck and Joan introduced themselves and Joan eased into one of the rockers – Chuck chose one of the porch posts and did the characteristic lean that included tucking his thumbs into his belt. I was simultaneously welcomed and eyed up.

Before I share the conversation, I fast forward 3 months to a visit by my mother and aunt. Sheila and Alice arrived mid-afternoon at the cabin and immediately began cooking. You see, when one’s youngest son (and nearly youngest nephew) is out in the wilds of Tennessee, filling his freezer is a necessary (and, absolutely welcome!) act. The freezer was soon filled with pot pies, rolls, soups, stews, and other flavors of love.

What we didn’t know, however, was that this very afternoon, the FBI was in the neighborhood searching for the body of a missing woman. Martha “Doe” Roberts had disappeared from her home in August, 1992 (months prior to my relocation) and her family received a ransom demand of $185,000.

The FBI agents were dragging ponds in my neighborhood looking for Mrs. Roberts. . .and were at the very next door house when down-the-road neighbor Charles Lord (not Chuck of Chuck and Joan) admitted his crime (seems he had debts that matched the ransom sum) and showed where he had hidden her body – under his garden. I can only imagine Mom and my aunt’s reaction had there been a knock from the feds wanting to drag the pond! (I also remain very grateful for never receiving any tomatoes from Mr. Lord's garden).

As an aside, Mrs. Lord quickly divorced her murderous husband and moved after an estate sale where I secured a couple of lamps and a shovel – I try not to over think the shovel.

Back to that arrival. Chuck was a fellow who didn’t waste any words. After some introductory pleasantries, Chuck got down to business.

“Where y'all from?” he said, without accusation.

“Michigan.”

Chuck snorted “huh” and leaned quietly.

A couple of minutes later: “Y’all got any poisonous snakes in Michigan?”

“Not really,” I replied not wanting to get into the whole Mississauga Rattler explanation.

Chuck again snorted, “Huh.” A minute or two passed.

“Well,” he started with an enviable dialect befitting Faulkner. “I ain’t trying to scare ya none – but don’t go a-reachin’ where you ain’t been a lookin’.” Joan nodded.

Tennessee has its share of Water Moccasins and Copperheads – and my rural home with its pond was a location of high potential for both species. Chuck’s admonition was proven true after encountering a nest of young Copperheads while removing a stump. After all, he had announced that arrival day that “the wife killed a big-un in my garage.” Joan had also nodded to that fact.

I imagine that my many friends who are relocating will meet their own neighbors and find bits of advice well worth heeding. I, for one, cling to the practical genius of “don’t go a-reachin’ where ya ain’t been a-lookin’.”


Source of image:  http://blindgossip.com/?attachment_id=36205

It's true! It's true!

“Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on

Robert Duvall as "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird

raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained - if you ate animal raw,you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

As kids, we all heard and contributed to a hundred myths about “that neighbor” or “the ole’ lady down the block” or “the cheerleader from the rival school.” I remember talk that a school custodian had at some point served jail time . . . or at least, should have.

Whence cometh the urban legend? The hook recovered from the door handle or the restaurant employee who hunts pets? Those city sewers are full of alligators; cats suck the life out of infants; Mikey from the Life commercials died of an overdose of Pop Rocks. Where do we get these things?

Oh, and don’t forget – never flash your lights at an unlit car at night – it’s a gang ritual . . . and Bill Gates will send you thousands of dollars if you forward a certain email.

Why do we invest such energy in these tales? Do we have some inner need to believe the odd and occult? Is there an innate gullibility (see the Nigerian who needs you to hold $20 million for him) that makes us – at the best – a sucker for a good story? Or is there an awful naiveté that will send dollar after dollar or share private information to strangers?

And don’t get me started on certainties fed by “what I read on the Internet.”

I’m the biggest fan of sitting around the campfire telling scary stories or getting lost in a Stephen King novel (though, so far, I’ve a quibble or two with 11/22/63). I am easily amused when I discover that I’ve bit on a tall tale. I am, however, saddened when myths become part of our national Zeitgeist . . . when our political leaders disregard facts and truth in favor of reelection advantage or to usurp the status quo . . . and when we are so intellectually lazy that we depend on comedians for our news and commentary.

I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who is truly dumb. I’ve met people who choose not to know, or who, too willingly, accept spoon feeding (from both left and right hands) or simply are so self-absorbed that they don’t realize that others have needs, news, or notions.

Folks, it’s a guarantee that over the next 10 months, we’ll be fed line after line and myth after myth . . . I, for one, plan to be skeptical even of trusted sources or comfortable opinions. I invite my friends to do the same . . . let’s leave the urban legend (and the spin!) by the campfire.

The Nobel Prize makes for unlikely bedfellows

Two individuals for whom I have admiration express a very similar set of values and hopes in their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches; this despite what arguably are backgrounds on opposite sides of the tracks.

William Faulkner (1897 – 1962) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1928 – 1968) both won Nobel Prizes. Faulkner won his in 1949 for Literature and King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 (the youngest ever to be so lauded). Faulkner spent most of his life (from age 4) in Oxford, Mississippi where his rearing was shared among his mother (Maud), his maternal grandmother (Lelia Butler), and an African-American caretaker named Caroline Barr. Faulkner was influenced greatly by these women in ways that have been cause for many biographies and literary criticisms.

King was the middle child of Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King and, by reports was a precocious child who doubted the bodily resurrection of Christ (at age 13) and skipped both ninth and twelfth grade of high school to enroll at Morehouse at age 15 (eventually earning his doctorate from Boston University in 1955 – although, there have been challenges to the authenticity of his dissertation).

The public celebrations of these two gentlemen are familiar – Faulkner, a prolific author of novels, short stories, poetry, essays, a stage play and screen plays – and King, the driving force for civil rights gained through Gandhi-inspired civil disobedience and his unmatched gift for oratory. Both were artists and both profoundly affected culture.

My cursory research hasn’t unearthed a record of their ever meeting. I would guess, however, that each likely was aware of the other at some point.

We are approaching our national day of honor for Dr. King – a recognition well earned.

Years ago, as part of my scrambling to pay for college, I served as chauffer/bar tender/waiter every chance I could. Rev. Ralph Abernathy was invited to speak at Hillsdale College and I was fortunate to be his driver. Abernathy had assumed leadership of the SCLC Poor People’s Campaign and led the 1968 march on Washington, DC after Dr. King’s assassination. While driving from Hillsdale, MI to Detroit’s Metro Airport (95 miles), Abernathy recounted the early days of the civil rights movement and his relationship with King to this wide-eyed college student. This was as close as I ever got to Dr. King.

While living in Memphis, TN, I took a “road-trip” to Oxford, Mississippi where I toured the “square” (the downtown) and took in the beauty of the Old Miss campus. I also wandered the grounds of Rowan Oak – Faulkner’s home. I admit to picking some leaves from one of the Magnolia trees that are still pressed in my edition of The Sound and the Fury; as close as I ever got to Mr. Faulkner.

You know, let me recant. I believe I’ve gotten even closer to both gentlemen through their words – specifically their Nobel acceptance speeches. Each expresses a hopefulness and belief in the human spirit that I wish more people acknowledged. Rather than let me prattle on, let me offer their words:

From William Faulkner ‘s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1950:

[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1964:

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I’m proud of these American laureates.






Sources for this blog post:

Martin Luther King - Acceptance Speech". Nobelprize.org. 15 Jan 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html

William Faulkner - Banquet Speech". Nobelprize.org. 14 Jan 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Faulkner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.  
 
http://imagespublicdomain.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/dr-martin-luther-king-jr/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Faulkner_1954_%283%29_%28photo_by_Carl_van_Vechten%29.jpg