THE GOSPEL

 I have always been somewhat of an introvert throughout my life, especially around people I do not know very well and in social situations.  When I was young I followed the close friends that I had in these situations in interacting with people and was able to pull it off pretty well.  These few friends were easily able to act in a very normal way in groups of people and I just followed their lead in conversations and such until I felt comfortable with what I was facing in a particular moment.  My elementary school school friends, Doug, Mark and Phil allowed me to walk across these social land mines as I progressed.   During my High school years it was Ronnie, Scott and Larry as well as Debbie that filled this requirement that I had in society.  All of these friends may not have realized I was using them as a shield during these moments but I was.  They were good at being social while I was not.

After I met Barbara, she took over that role.  Barbara was as extremely outgoing as I was extremely shy, unsure of myself and very hesitant about putting myself out there for the world to see.   My whole life has been one of hiding the real me to anyone that I did not know very well, protecting myself from being judged by the world concerning my social awkwardness.  Barbara made new friends and her friends became mine.  Barbara participated in social events while I tagged along for the ride.

After Barbara died I found myself left on my own.  My social interactions were restricted to family members, both immediate and extended.  I was fairly good interacting with people that were mine and Barbara's friends, well mainly Barbara's friends that were mine my default, but even in those situations I feel like I was holding back, slipping into that shell that I hid in as a child and young adult.  I became detached from a lot of those people without Barbara to be a social buffer for me.  I simply did not, and still don't know how to interact smoothly in a social confrontation.

After Barbara passed I reconnected with an old friend of mine.  Lisa had lost her husband a few years before I lost Barbara.  We have been hanging out together and are pretty close friends.  Lisa and I are both a little gun shy when it comes to people one or the other of us do not know.  She has become a big help in my tiptoeing through those awkward situations with her friends and I helping her in situations with mine.  We compliment each other fairly well.

Lisa and I cannot be with each other all of the time though because of events going on in her life and things going on in mine so each of us still have a lot of times where we find ourselves on our own to deal with these situations. I think she is making progress while I am still stumbling through each day.

I started noticing a change in my personality over the last several months to a year concerning how I interact with people.  As most of you know I do have a severe anxiety problem that I have been working on for several years.  Now I am trying to deal with it on my own.  The change in this part of my personality is something like this.  Someone starts to talk to me and I respond.  I respond but with a little bit of anxiety thrown into the mix.  I seem to start off ok I think, but soon I notice my voice and actions becoming more animated, I start talking faster and when asked a question at this point my answer turns into this long roundabout way, throwing in facts that are not related taking a long time to say very little in a voice where I cannot control the volume, the speed or make any sense at all.  After one of these encounters I find myself back in the house thinking about what I had said and how I responded and to be totally honest, I feel embarrassed.  I feel ridiculous like I made a total fool of myself.  I end up beating myself up over it telling myself "stupid stupid stupid".

I feel like it hit a new high point of embarrassment lately.  I have decided to return to a church that has been a very important part of my life in First Baptist Grandview.  Barbara and I had left the church in the mid to late nineties because we both felt the church, and the inner politics that come with it, were heading in a complete opposite direction than where we felt a church should be headed.  Let me interject an aside here:  We were wrong to do so.  It showed we had given up on the church and instead of fighting to make changes and corrections, we ran away.  There are members of the church still there that had faith and stayed and pretty much got the church back on track,  I truly admire these people from my past.  It could not have been easy but they did it and now I am going back to a much stabler church than the one I left so many years ago.

Okay you say.  What does all of this have to do with The Gospel?  I feel like I have not given my Christian testimony on this blog which is bad considering how long the blog has existed.  My social awkwardness and my anxiety as of late has brought me to the realization of the changes going on in my mind in how I deal with talking and explaining and people looking at me like I am an out of control idiot.  I feel like I am seen as obnoxious to these people who I am meeting at the church as they try to get to know me.  So here it is.

Dr. Mike Nelson came to Grandview quite a while after Barbara and I had left.  He came to the church when it was at a critical point as far as Grandview saw the church and I believe the church had been damaged.  Not because of the immediate predecessor to Dr. Nelson, but because of the actions of some of the members.  What I have seen in that church is a healing process that has taken several years.  Dr. Nelson has put into place things that the church had lost.  He has led a tweaking of the church constitution, which is badly needed and in reality, a bit more Biblical than the one written so very long ago.  The church is growing under his pastoral leadership.

One of the things that has changed is the way in which the church takes in new members.  Back in the old days, when I became a professed Christian and church member at the ripe old age of ten or so, all a person had to do was go forward during the invitation hymn and profess their faith and belief and ask to be a member of the church.  The pastor would ask the church, more or less, "So, what do you think?  Do we accept them as a new member?" and the church would say "Sure!!" and that was that.  A new Christian and a new member of the church.  It was this approach that led to the situation that made Me and Barbara decide to leave First Grandview.

Dr. Nelson has put into place a format for membership that I feel every church should have.  The prospective member starts to attend the church and begins to be a part of it, just like the old days, but then the changes come.  Dr. Nelson has established a "New Members Class" or seminar in which you meet with other potential members in a class and Dr. Nelson leads a discussion with the group into what the church believes, how it stands on individual faith, belief and character.  After completing the class Dr. Nelson has a meeting with you individually.  He asks a lot of questions concerning your faith, the path that your life has taken over the years, and your over all testimony as to how you came to be a Christian.  During this time it also gives him a good understanding of who you are and allows him to get to know you on a personal level.  If there comes up questions in his mind as to whether there may be a problem, he takes it to other leaders in the church to discuss.  If there is a problem, you are made aware of what it might be so you can work on that part of your life.  If there are no red flags, then he presents you to the church for membership, the church knowing you have been fully vetted.  I see this as cutting off a lot of future problems that could arise down the road, as it did way back in the 90's.

This is where my anxiety kicks in. I started attending services.  Then I started attending Sunday School classes.  My new social personality slipped in and I talked, well like I described earlier.  Then I decided that I was being led back to this church so I signed up for New members class.  Oh my, I felt like my anxiety kicked into second gear when I would try to talk.  I would end up going home trying to figure out how to control my anxiety while in these situations.

Then came my individual talk with Dr. Nelson.  I felt like it was a disaster.  I talked about myself and how I had been raised in the church.  I talked about my family, my parents and my siblings and how active we were in the church.  I talked about how at 10 years old I understood what it meant to be a Christian and had been baptized.  Then cam the married years.  I told him about Barbara and all of her children's choirs she had created over the years in the churches we had attended.  I told him about how I helped Barbara by playing the piano for her kids, how that had turned into playing piano for an adult special needs class and eventually playing for the Children's Church service every week.  I spoke of my years as a deacon at the church.  My introduction to church politics and how that had been a HUGE eye opener for me as far as the church was concerned and how that eventually led me and Barb to leave First Grandview for another church.

At the end of our talk, he observed that I had mentioned the Gospel several times and wanted to know what I meant by the Gospel.  What did I think the Gospel was.  I gave a short quick answer that, in my mind, does not suffice in describing the Gospel.  I told Dr. Nelson that earlier in my life I would probably quote John 3:16 to describe the Gospel but since that time I had discovered 1st Corinthians 15.  We discussed that chapter of the Bible and then the talk was over.

Since that day I have given it a lot of thought.  What exactly IS the Gospel in my belief.  Here is my answer:

The Gospel is the Bible taken as a whole, both Old and New Testaments,  I believe that when you study The Book you can find not only God, but Jesus the Son throughout the entirety of it, again both Old and New Testaments.  The Gospel is The Word Of God, written by men who were told what to write by God.  Many people say inspired by God and I think that works as well.  It is a book that explains to us that God is The trinity, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. It is a book on how to live life, a godly life.  It is a book on what God expects of us and a book of God's incredible love for each and every one of us.  It is a book that explains how each and everyone of us are flawed because of the fall of man in Eden and that we can never live up to God's standard.  It is a book that tells how God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to teach us and much more.  Jesus was born to a virgin, conceived to be pure and without sin by God.  Jesus was the ultimate Sacrifice to God by God to atone for our imperfections, or sins.  It is a book that gives us hope and assurance that Christ acts as our intermediary between us and God so that our sins are forgiven.  It is a book that tells how Jesus, after being Sacrificed was taken back into Heaven through the Ascension to sit on the right hand of God.   It is a book that tells of God then sending the Holy Spirit to fill our lives and helps us on our journey towards what God wants us to be.  It is a book that saves us from eternal damnation to an eternal life in the Presence of God.  It is a book that tells us that the only way to be forgiven and saved is to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to earth, was sacrificed and rose from the dead to make it possible for God to forgive us of our oh so imperfect lives.

We fall short on a daily basis in God's eyes.  Many times a day.  None of us are perfect.  It is impossible.  We are human.  God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the Trinity, Three in One.

The Gospel is the entire Bible.  Every word of it given to us by God for us. It is a Book that should be taken seriously and studied and to learn from.  To gain knowledge and wisdom.  I do not believe any man can understand the Bible totally.  There is so very much in it. 

That might sound a bit ... disorganized of an explanation, but that is how my mind works these days.

So, to me that is what The Gospel is.  It is what I believe and what I hold dear.

ENTRY NUMBER 499

Like ENTRY NUMBER 498, I will not be posting this on Facebook so I can pretty much say whatever I want without offending anybody.  More or less, as the mind speaks my fingers put down the words.  I was pretty pleased with ENTRY NUMBER 498 so let's try it again.

 My neighbor Sally turns 86 years old next month.  She is a petite lady rising above the 5 foot mark by about 2 inches.  Her mind is sharp.  She has a friendly and helpful personality.  You have to be careful though because she can also be a fiery lady as well.  She and her husband, Bob, moved into the house across the street back in 1996, good neighbors the whole time.  Bob passed away about 15 years ago and it seemed that Sally made the transition pretty good although it was difficult for her.

Sally is independent.  She is strong and does not like to ask for help although she readily gives help when she sees a need.  During the time when Barbara's health began to deteriorate, Sally, along with my other neighbor Charlene, kept a close eye on Barbara.  Barbara was as much of an independent as Sally is.   During the time when Barbara was still able to drive and able to accomplish things with difficulty, Sally was there.  Barbara would come home from grocery shopping and start to carry a bag at a time to the front porch where she would then carry a bag at a time into the house.  Sally would come over and talk Barbara into letting Sally carry the bags from the car to the porch so Barbara could carry them into the house.  As Barbara's health worsened, the more help our neighbors gave.  I am lucky to have the neighbors that I do have.

Sally, as I said, does not like to ask for help.  She has begun to acknowledge that at her age, she does need help here and there but that doesn't mean she likes to ask for it.  A couple of weeks ago I received a call from Sally asking me if I was busy.  The light bulbs in Sally's garage door opener and her overhead light in the garage were burned out.  Her garage door would not open.  I went over and replaced the lights and Sally pressed the button to open the garage door.  It would not open.  After looking at her door I discovered it was locked.  Somehow Sally had accidentally locked her garage door. I walked her to the door, explained what was wrong and showed her how to unlock the door if it should happen again.  As she was walking me back through the house and thanking me, she slowly broke into tears.  She expressed how she felt so alone and didn't know how to do things.  I told her that her, Charlene and myself were there for each other.  That's what friends and neighbors are for.  We lean on each other.

What I want you to take from the telling of that event are four things.  First, of course, is that Sally is very independent.  Second is that she feels vulnerable as she gets older.  Third is that the lady loves to drive her car.  That is not a bad thing.  Not yet anyway.  She is sharp minded.  She is a good driver and she knows her limitations while driving.  For example she does not drive on the highways.  She knows that her reflexes aren't what they use to be and so she stays on the side roads and never drives far from home.  The last thing is that Sally like a routine.  She does not like change or things that take her out of her comfort zone.  She does not like surprises. This leads us to what happened last Friday.

Last Friday morning Sally had gone to the DOV to renew her drivers license.  While she was there something happened that had never happened to her before.  She failed the eye test..  The lady at the DOV gave her a piece of paper to give to her eye doctor when she went to get glasses.  The paper was a sign of Sally getting older.  It was a paper that the doctor would tell the state if Sally was fit to drive or not.

She showed up at my front door shortly after noon that day.  She was anxious.  A wrench had been thrown into her day to day machinery and she did not know exactly what to do. At the DOV they had given her the name of an eye doctor that is approved by the state who was located in Belton.  To Sally, Belton might as well be a hundred miles away.  She did not know the town.  She wasn't sure how to get there and she certainly did not have a clue as to where the address of the eye doctor was located.

I did my best to calm her down and we talked about what had happened that morning.  I would make sure that we got this taken care of.  I had nothing else to do so I would drive her to Belton for the exam.  We called the phone number and made an appointment for Monday afternoon. After telling her not to worry and giving her a pat on the back, she headed home.

Saturday morning Sally called me again to make sure I hadn't forgotten about Monday's eye exam.  Her anxiety was building and I think she was a little scared that she would not be able to drive anymore.  The way I figured it, she was driving around the neighborhood without any problems so the adjustment to her eyes would be minimal.  That seemed to calm her down a bit for the time being.  I would not hear from her until Monday.

I had told Sally we would leave around three on Monday and so a little before three I stepped out of my house to find Sally walking up my driveway.  I smiled at her and she told me to let's get this over with and off we went.  It was a long appointment.  Sally is a talker and loves to tell stories to people.  I imagine there was a lot of story telling going on during her exam.  She came out of the exam with the paper the doctor had signed telling the state that her eyesight, with corrections, would allow her to drive safely.  She picked out some frames and we headed home with a much relieved Sally.

She insisted on buying me an early dinner on the way home so we stopped at Freddie's and got some pattie melts and fries before heading back home.  Sally was happy.  Today she mailed the paper to the state and now all she has to do is wait for her new glasses before heading back to the DOV for her license and her day to day routine returning to normal. 

Having good neighbors is important.  I am saying that from my perspective.  Me having good neighbors is important and I have two great neighbors, Charlene and Sally.  The three of us are single and live alone.  Sally losing her husband several years ago, Me losing Barb in 2018 and Charlene just lost her husband last July weekend.  We are the same the three of us and each of us need help from time to time.  I put a couch and a chair in the dumpster Charlene had rented last fall and Sally put a microwave and some boxes in the dumpster I rented a few weeks ago.  The theme between the three of us is that we are all in this together and we watch out for each other.  

Good neighbors are hard to find.  I am extremely lucky.  You get a good neighbor, help them.  It is indeed a rarity to have such fine ones.

It is 10:30 pm tonight.  It has been overcast but a nice temperature most of the day.  When I went to the store to pick up my prescriptions, a lady who was walking just in front of me into the store informed that it was a nice day but we would pay for it with storms tonight.  I did not ask for her weather forecast, she just offered it to me.  It is nice to have people feel relaxed enough in this day and age to talk to strangers like that.  It felt good.  She was right though.  Thunder, lightning and rain have arrived in Kansas City.

I like the rain.  I like the sound and the smell of it.  The only problem with rain, especially when accompanied with thunder and lightning is getting Dutch outside to do his business.  He doesn't mind the rain but the lights and the sounds make him rather skittish.  Tonight he will more than likely sleep close to my bed during the night as if I could protect him from it.

This rain is also a good thing for my dogwood tree.  It was one of my gifts from Dit-MCO on the occasion of my retirement.  They gave it to me as kind of a replacement for Barbara not being able to be there.  It was a thoughtful gesture and one that I very much appreciated.

Life is marching on.  I was thinking about that this morning as I sat quietly by myself eating oatmeal for breakfast.  Life does not stop and soon I will be a memory just as Barbara, all my grandparents, my sister, my dad and all those aunts and uncles as well as many friends have become.  Just a memory that will fade to obscurity as the generations come and go.

Going to school for the first time.  Playing baseball, then football and finally basketball and making the school team.  That first kiss from Valerie, who is now herself but a memory.  Time with Debbie and meeting Barbara then marrying her.  Working for dad and finding my place in the labor force. Meeting Ronnie for the first time and all the fun we had discovering music together to spending time with Larry and all the evening in the church parking lot playing basketball.  Seeing Brett for the first time and bringing home as my son followed by raising him on Beatles tunes.  Watching Barbara leave this world and telling people at my fathers memorial service in Alabama about my dad.

Memories.  We hold onto them as much as we can.  We lose a lot of those memories over the years due to time or age.  My dad was starting to lose his memory when Barbara died.  Barbara adored my dad and I think dad kind of like her as well.  To be honest dad "kind of liked" me too.  That was dad's answer all the time.

Me: Love you dad

Dad: yeah well I kind of like you too

It brings an unusual smile to my face these days.  I don't smile much anymore.  I am thinking that maybe I am forgetting how to smile.  What about a laugh?  Almost unheard of coming from me.  My sense of humor is fading like the memories.  I look at this world, in these times we find ourselves and I don't think there is much to laugh about.  As Americans we are divided and there is almost a hatred among the people of my country.  I remember studying and observing the fight to desegregate our country and it feels like just as we are right there. I look around and see that re-segregation is on the rise and moving fast.  The strange thing is that the very people who fought so hard to integregate the country are leading it back into segregation.  It saddens me.

I do not understand America anymore.  Hell, I don't think I even understand human beings anymore.  Everything seems to be upside down and sideways inside out.

I want simplicity to make a comeback.  I want critical thinking to become a thing again.  I want the Constitution of the United States to stand for something.  I want to see a return to true ... TRUE ... freedom of speech in this country.  Without that, this country means nothing.  That is what makes The United States so special.  The right to a free and open exchange of ideas.  We do not have that anymore.  The public square has been dismantled.

I think, at the moment I am typing this, that I am kind of glad I won't be around to see the path this country is headed down and where it ends up.  I truly believe that this country, this Democratic Republic that has proven itself, in my mind, is the greatest country in modern history.

My heart is truly saddened by what I have seen happening to it.

Enough for ENTRY NUMBER 499 in this blog.

MUSIC IS A PHOTO ALBUM OF THE MIND

There are many forms of art.  There is sculpture, painting, writing, fashion.  They all have their special qualities.  You can read a book and the story may or may not stick with you.  A book may effect your life in some way as it can change the way you look at things and the way you think.  A painting or sculpture can either overwhelm you with it's beauty or simplicity.  Film can live in your mind for years and if it is a good enough film, may even stay with you the rest of your life.  But one form of art is like a time machine taking you back in time to certain moments in your life.  That art form is music.

Music is magical.  Music marks special events in our lives that stay in our memories forever.  A special moment occurs in life and chances are there was a song playing in the background.  After that moment in time, every time you hear that song, chances are you will be taken back to that special time. More than any other form of art,  music lives within each of us.

I have told some stories on this blog about music and the events surrounding when I heard that song.  Sometimes it is an event that is occurring the very first time you hear a song.  Other times you could hear a song many times but at some point something special was happening when that old song was being played.

I can look back on so many times that a song came along and is forever branded in my mind with an event.

One of Harry Chapin's last albums was entitled "Dance Band On The Titanic".  Whenever I hear that song I get a picture of Ronnie and myself sitting on the floor of his bedroom shortly before he left to join the US Army.  Ronnie had picked up about three albums that night and songs from all of those albums bring that special night when we sat and listened to new music without much talking.  It was a special evening for us.  We had spent most of our teen years listening to music together either at his house or mine.  We had discovered a lot of music together, but this night was different.

I hear Chapin songs off of that album or Jackson Browne's "Running On Empty" Album and I am immediately in Ronnie's room.  Shag carpet on the floor.  The music not to loud.  Reading the liner notes of these albums only talking between songs debating on which song was best so far.  We spent half the night listening to those albums.

When I hear the classic IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA I am taken to an earlier time with Ronnie in a different house.  At that time, he had a big console stereo in his room that really brought out the bass as the song was played.  It was seventeen minutes of hard rock and roll that made no sense what so ever, but we loved it and when I hear that song, again I am back with Ronnie playing air guitars and keyboards as the Iron Butterfly go through the excersize of stretching a rather monotonous rift out to those seventeen minutes.

One Saturday afternoon I went to visit Larry.  As I walked into the house, I heard Johnny Cash for the first time that I remember.  "I hear the train a comin', It's coming round the bend....." went the song and Larry's dad was sitting in his chair tapping his foot and ignoring me as I entered his home.

The first time I heard Led Zeppelin's fourth album was at a party of one of Barb's friends.  We were early to the party and I had just bought the album that day.  I put it on the stereo and as the girls prepared for the party,  Larry and I sat and listened to one of the all time greatest rock albums ever produced.  Then suddenly in the middle of the second song on the first side, I heard a sound that every audiophile hates to hear.  "Rrrrrriiiiiiippppp" as the tone arm was removed from my brand new album and then I heard "We've Only Just Begun" by the Carpenters start to play.  I get a picture of Larry's face as he looked at me in shock probably mirroring the same expression I was giving him.  Whenever I hear those two songs, that picture pops into my head.

I wrote earlier in the blog about going to see the Allman Brothers Band and walking around the concourse as a the song "Midnight Rider" was being played.  The picture I get in my mind is Larry and myself looking at each other with that same shocked expression that we had the night of the Led Zeppelin incident.

I get a picture of seeing my dad sitting and listening to Jimmy Dean sing on our old mono record player.  Whenever I hear Jimmy Dean or Jim Nabors I get that same picture in my mind of dad sitting there enjoying the music.  He didn't sit and listen to music that often because he was always too busy, but when he did sit and listen, he would sit still with a hint of a smile on his face as he enjoyed the music.

There was an old old song called "Barney Google" that I had learned to play on the piano.  My Grandma Clark was over at mom and dad's one Christmas in which I had gotten Brett some of those glasses with eyeballs attached to coils so the eyes would swing around while he wore them.  I called them his Barney Google glasses and told my Grandma this.  Before I knew it, my grandmother was singing along, not missing a word and tapping her hands on her thighs while tapping her feet.  She had a HUGE smile on her face as she belted out the song,  She was almost to the point of laughing as she sang that old song.

One year, somebody gave my grandfather a music box that played "Somewhere My Love".  I have a very clear picture of him sitting in his chair listening to the music box puffing on his pipe with a far away look in his eye.  He loved that song among many others.  I have lots of snapshots in my mind of grandpa listening to music.

Another very clear picture was when my aunt Sue and myself were about seven years old.  My great aunt Margaret was chasing us around the house with her arms out stretched singing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" over and over again.

When I hear "The Missouri Waltz" I see my sister sitting at the piano playing it flawlessly and making it sound so beautiful.  It doesn't matter if it is Marching Mizzou playing the waltz, when I hear that song a picture of Elaine sitting in the living room playing it pops into my head.

When I hear Bread's "Baby I'm A Want you"album I find myself upstairs at grandma and grandpa's sitting with my aunt Sue playing a game of cards.

When the song "Then Came You" enters into my head, I remember one evening when Barb looked at me while it was playing and telling me that it was our song.  I am not sure WHY it was our song, but to her it was, and that was important.  Over the years it has indeed became our song and a picture of her looking at me when we were so young and the look in her eyes as she told me.

I could go on and on with examples.  Some more recent than others.  Springteen's "Human Touch", McClean's "Crossroads",  oh and of course Three Dog Night's "Joy To The World".  That song has over the years became a sort of secret joke between my mom and me.  I use to play it on the piano or play the record constantly and she swore she couldn't stand it.  Personally, even though she still swears she can't deal with the song, I think she has come to like it because of the picture that is in her mind when she hears it.

Music effects us all differently.  Most songs we hear are forgotten, but those special songs that serve as bookmarks in our lives, stay with us forever.  I believe everyone has a musical photo album in our minds.  Enjoy that photo album.  It brings more of your life back to you than anything else.

I know I enjoy my musical photo album and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

MIDNIGHT RIDER RIDES ON BY

I think that a little background needs to be explained here before I get into the story so that you can appreciate what I was feeling at the time.  It involves a band that made a new sound and became a band like no other.

Duane and Gregg Allman were raised in Florida eventually moving to Tennessee and landing finally in Macon, Georgia.  Their father had been murdered when they were very young so the boys were left to fend for themselves.  They picked up on music and older brother Duane became one of the best known studio guitarists around.  He would hang around the recording studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama playing for anyone he could.  You can find his sounds on albums by Wilson Pickett, Eric Clapton and just about anyone else who came to Muscale Shoals to record and that was a lot of musicians that came through there.

Meanwhile, Gregg was learning how to play the guitar himself and wasn't too bad.  He didn't compare to his brother but he could hold his own.  In the mid sixties, the brothers began trying to put a band together themselves.  They went through a lot of names with a lot of different personnel before settling into The Allman Brothers Band.  It was a big band.  Two lead guitarists, Duane being joined by Dicky Betts, Gregg had learned to play the organ, they had jazz pianist Chuck Levell , two full trap drummers, a percussionist and a few horns.

They began playing the clubs in the southeastern part of the country and developed a sound that no one had heard before.  It was a mix, a true mix of blues, country, jazz, soul, and rock.  Each song had elements of each of these sounds.  Before long the Allman Brothers Band was a staple in the south selling out halls and clubs everywhere they went.  They weren't well known in the rest of the country though and so they recorded their first two albums.  The albums sold hot in the south but was basically ignored everywhere else.

Then they came across an idea.  People were coming out in droves to hear them play live.  Could it be that they were better live than in studio?  ordinarily this would be a definite no.  You can do things in the studio that you can't do live, but it seemed that this band did not have the energy in the studio that they could bring up live on stage.  They decided to release a live album and see what happened.

"The Allman Brothers Band - Live At The Fillmore East was released in 1971.  It became a best seller almost over night and worked it's way out of the southeast and into other parts of the country.  It was a live album that would soar to the top ten within weeks.  They had found their niche.

Then tragedy happened.  A few weeks after they released the Filmore  album, Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident.  The band took a little time off then made a small tour off of the Filmore album.  They were starting to get known and arenas and clubs outside the south were starting to fill up to see this great live band.  They followed up the Fillmore album with an double album called "Eat A Peach"  They included a lot of the Filmore recordings that weren't on the Filmore album plus a few new studio recording.  While Eat a Peach did not get the success that the Filmore album did, it did make it to the top ten as well.  The Allman Brothers Band had established themselves as one of the best live acts around.  Today, forty years after the Release of "Live At the Filmore East" it is still considered one of the best live albums ever released and is the cornerstone of the Allman Brothers Library.

They went back into the studio in 1973 and recorded what I think is their studio masterpiece entitled "Brothers and Sisters"  At the same time Gregg Allman recorded a solo Album called "Laid Back" which is still regarded as his best solo effort.  He re-recorded some songs from the first two albums along with some standards.  And that brings us to the story.

I had become acquainted with the Allman Brothers when I purchased "Brothers and Sisters".  This album was full of great songs, all having that country, rock, bluesy soul sound to it.  It had become such a unique sound that it had acquired it's own genre.  .They called it Southern Rock and in the years to come many many bands would come out of the south influenced by the Allman Brothers Sound.  After hearing and loving Brothers and Sisters, I went out and got a copy of Laid Back.  I was totally in love with the music of this band.

One song in particular caught my ear on the Laid Back album.  Midnight Rider was a tune from  the second studio album that they had recorded.  Gregg re arranged it and recorded it and it was perfect.  Gregg had a rough gravelly slow blues type of voice and Midnight Rider was meant just for that kind of voice.  Dicky Betts had a twangy country type voice and his big hit that came from these two studio albums was a song called Ramblin' Man.

One day I was reading my copy of Rolling Stone when they reviewed both albums.  They got good reviews but the reviewer ended up by saying something to the effect that if you REALLY want to hear how good this band is, get the Filmore East album or better yet, go see the band live.  They would blow your socks off.  And so that is what I did.

The Allman Brothers came to Kansas City with the Marshall Tucker Band in the spring of 1974.  They were going to be playing at Royals stadium and I immediately told Barb that we were going.  One of my best friends, Larry, had grown to love the southern rock sound and he wanted to go as well.  No problem.  He would probably enjoy it more than Barb would anyway.

Barb found herself facing the fact that she was going to be going to a concert of a band that she did not know that much about and she would be alone with Larry and myself.  I guess she decided she wanted some company as well because before we knew it, she had set Larry up with a blind date to go see the Allman Brothers live at the stadium.  Larry agreed to take this blind date and so we set out on a lovely evening to see one of the best live shows ever.

The Stadium was pretty full as The Allman Brothers took the stage and opened with Statesboro Blues.  Now rock concerts in the seventies pretty much served as a full out smoking pot party.  I had been to them before and they never seemed to bother me.  It wasn't bothering me on this night either nor was it bothering Larry.

Now I'll admit that the haze of smoke that hung over the stadium that night was pretty heavy.  There wasn't any wind to blow it away so it just hung there over the crowd.  I will concede that point.  It ended up being too much for Larry's blind date to handle though.  To the shock of me and Larry, this blind date wanted to go walk around the concourse for some "fresh air".  Some fresh air at an outdoor concert????  Not only that but right in the middle of the Allman Brothers set?  I was stunned and Larry was shocked but the date insisted she needed to get out an get some air.

And so the four of us got up and walked outside the stadium.  The sound was muffled out there and you could barely tell which song was being played .... until the opening strains of Midnight Rider began.  I looked at Barb and she hadn't noticed.  I looked at Larry and he HAD noticed but what were we to do?  We had this girl who obviously did not appreciate southern rock and we were just walking around the outside of the stadium while THE song was being sang by Gregg Allman.  I could here his bluesy voice off in the distance.

We continued to walk and then well after Midnight Rider had come and gone we returned to our seats.  It wasn't the same though.  I had missed my opportunity to see Gregg Allman at his peak sing his best song.  To say I was disappointed is understating it.  To say I was a little ticked is more like it.  Well maybe a little more than a little ticked.

I survived it though.  I did get to see the greatest live band of its time perform and really just missed a few songs, one of which happened to be Midnight Rider.  As Barb and I went through life and we got our son, I began to teach him appreciation of music.  Of course one of the groups he learned to appreciate was The Allman Brothers Band.  It became a habit with me each time that Midnight Rider came on the radio or on my tape deck or wherever, I would ask Brett "Did I ever tell you about the time I missed the Midnight Rider?"  After a few years of this Barb would sigh every time the song came on because she knew what was coming next. "Hey Brett, did I ever tell you about the time I missed the Midnight Rider." and even though he would answer in the affirmative after several years of hearing the story I would tell it to him again.  I still do as a matter of fact.  He finds humor in it now and so does Barb.  Well she sees a little humor in it, not as much as Brett and myself do though.

So that was the one and only time I saw the Allman Brothers.  That was the one and only time I heard the distant strains of the Midnight Rider.  But I will never quit telling my son about the night the Midnight Rider rode on by.

Midnight Rider - Gregg Allman

Well, I've got to run to keep from hiding,
And I'm bound to keep on riding.
And I've got one more silver dollar,
But I'm not gonna let them catch me, no,
Not gonna let 'em catch the Midnight Rider.

And I don't own the clothes I'm wearing,
And the road goes on forever,
And I've got one more silver dollar,
But I'm not gonna let them catch me, no
Not gonna let 'em catch the Midnight Rider.

And I've gone by the point of caring,
Some old bed I'll soon be sharing,
And I've got one more silver dollar,

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the Midnight Rider.

LAST TIME DRUNK

One of the rites of passage in our culture is when we reach the legal age to drink alcoholic beverages.  In the state of Missouri that age is twenty one.  When a person reaches said age, it is a cause for celebration for some reason.  Usually a night out on the town is planned with friends to go to a nice eating establishment with a good bar.  The newly inducted drinker has a duty to get drunk on his butt for the first time legally.  This doesn't mean he has not been extremely drunk before this night but this time it is legal to get plastered and make a fool of yourself. 

I had been married nearly two years before I reached the legal age of being a public nuisance by the means of alcohol.  When I turned twenty one we did not do the obligatory party for everyone to watch me get drunk.  My twenty first birthday passes quietly with out much fanfare.

I had been drunk several times prior to entry into the Missouri Drinkers club but had kept low keyed about it.  Most of the time when I did drink it was either a beer, gin and tonic, or Beam and coke and were consumed within the confines of my house.

My major drinking buddy was Larry.  He was a year younger than me.  That was one of the main reasons we didn't go out in public on my twenty first birthday.  Larry would not had been able to drink and all the fun would be taken out of it.  So we continued to drink at home.

Every once in a while we would take our Japanese customers from the office out to drink after work.  I was asked a lot to entertain these major customers for the company.  We would take them golfing with a whole cooler of beer on the cart.  We would take them to a local Gentleman's club in Kansas City, Kansas once in a great while.  Our Japanese brethren loved to drink and loved to get drunk, especially when we were paying for it.

During my early to mid twenties I acquired quite a taste for the booze.  Not only did I enjoy drinking, but it tasted pretty good to me.  usually I would not drink to excess but accidents do happen and every once in a while I would find myself drunk.

I don't mean to be bragging about my drinking.  I wasn't proud of the times I would over drink.  On the other hand it didn't really bother me very much either.  Getting drunk was one of those side effects that often comes along with the act of drinking.  One thing I can say is that I never got so drunk that I got sick from drinking.  Well there was this one time when I did get sick from drinking to much.  It was either drinking too much or eating too much or a combination of the two, I am not quite sure.

Larry was coming over one Friday night to spend the evening and watch some television and have dinner.  It was in the late seventies or early eighties and cowboy fashion was the rage since the release of "Urban Cowboy"  Larry and I put on our cowboy hats and went out to pick up dinner.  Dinner on this night was going to be several burrito supremes and tacos from Taco Bell.  The drink to wash these delectable foods down was going to be a hefty amount of Jim Beam mixed with coke.

Jim Beam and coke was a pretty tasty drink.  The sweetness of the coke offset the strong hard liquor taste of the Beam and seemed to balance things out very nicely.  It was so tasty you could drinka lot of it and not realize how drunk you were getting.  That is what happened that night.

We began downing the burritos as though we hadn't eaten in a week.  Those burritos were tasty as well.  Filled with hamburger and refried beans us all of the extra condiments that added into them made them go down as easy as the Beam and coke was going down.  And so it was that we engourged ourselves on the burritos and the drinks while watching a football game.

I don't remember who was playing that night and to be honest I don't remember if I enjoyed the game.  I have a pretty good idea that I did enjoy the game although I have no real knowledge of enjoying it.  We ate and drank through out the game before Larry left for home.  To me he looked well enough to drive but then again, my judgement was not the greatest at that late hour of the evening.  I would have thought my dog was in good enough shape to drive that night.

After Larry left it was left to Barb to clean up the kitchen and the remains of the feast that had taken place that evening.  I sat in my chair with my head buzzing and feeling pretty good.  I am sure that I was talking to her the whole time she was cleaning up but I couldn't say for sure.  By this time my mind was gliding along in cruise control and whatever it felt like saying or doing , it said or did.

Barb went to bed after the cleanup and I sat up with the dog a little while longer enjoying the results of the small party that Larry and I had experienced.   Soon I felt myself wandering off to sleep so I decided to go to bed, where Barb was already sound asleep and resting well until I announced to her that I was coming to bed now to her.

I lay down in the bed and closed my eyes. I was exhausted from the evening but it turned out that closing my eyes was the worst thing I could do.  The second I closed my eyes I felt the bed start to slowly rotate in a circle.  It was either that or the whole room was spinning about the bed.  It could go either way and it doesn't really matter if it was the bed spinning or the room. The fact is it was making me extremely sick.

My stomach began to churn and I felt like something may be coming up before too long.  I worked hard on keeping everything on my insides but there came a point when it wasn't possible anymore.  Suddenly I sat up straight and leaned my head over the side of the bed.  Burritos came pouring out of my mouth mixed with the smell of beam and coke.  The first surge of vomiting stopped and I got up and made my way to the bathroom to empty the rest of the contents of my stomach,

I am not sure how long I was hanging over the toilet but it seemed like forever.  Finally I felt like I was well enough to go back to bed and so I made my way very slowly towards the room, afraid that moving too fast might cause another vomiting excersize.

When I arrived in the bedroom i saw my dear wife.  She was tired.  She was sleepy.  She was on her hands and knees cleaning up the initial mess that I had create after my evening of over partying.  I told her I would finish cleaning it up and she looked at me with a look in her eyes that said "you wouldn't be able to handle it right now."  She was right.  If I had tried to clean up that mess I would have made another mess on top of it.

She calmly to me to get in the bed and try to get some sleep.  The bed was still spinning but not as bad as it had been before.  I eventually fell asleep while Barb was still cleaning up the mess.

I felt horrible about her having to do that.  I apologized  and she accepted and said it was okay.  It was over and done with and in the past.  She just wished I would be more careful with my drinking in the future.

From that night on I kept having the mental image of her down on the floor and cleaning up that mess.  I determined that I would never witness that again.  I pretty much quit drinking after that night and now it has been about twenty five years since I had a drink.  I have not been drunk since that night.  I have made plenty of mistakes in my life but none in that special close way that effected her the way cleaning up vomit does.

I think I did right by this mistake.  She may have had to clean up vomit here or there from either Brett or I, but none of it was because of liquor.

MEETING LENNY BRUCE

Once upon a time, long long ago, there were places where people would congregate to watch movies under the stars.  The screens were huge an it was a little difficult for the projectionist to focus the image of the film very sharply.

People would drive to these theaters and park upon little hills that resembled speed bumps.  The people would park their cars in an arc around the huge screen and park the car on the hill so that they could see the screen sitting back in a comfortable position without the rear view mirror getting in the way.

They were called drive in theaters.  At one time I can remember approximately twenty to thirty drive in theaters in the Kansas City area.  As the popularity of the drive ins grew, some of them added a second screen.  This would allow you to watch two movies at one time.  The problem was you could only listen to one of the movies.  There were poles sticking out of the ground every where that a car could park.  The speaker would be taken off the pole and hung on the window of the car.  It had a little knob that controlled the volume.  The sound quality was horrible.  You could get better sound from an AM radio then you could from one of these speakers.

Sometime late in the last century the popularity of the drive ins began to fall off.  They would soon try all kinds of things to keep making money.  One of the drive ins in Kansas City began to show X-rated movies.  It was a drive in theater that was located in what use to be Fairyland Park, a very popular amusement park long before in Kansas City.  A place where families use to go to all the time to ride the Wildcat roller coaster and other rides and would stay for a movie was now an adult film house under the stars.  They were able to get away with it because the screen was hidden back in the woods in the midst of lots of trees.

Other drive ins began trying to bring back the younger set to their screens.   They began showing films that had run through the new multi-screen theaters that were going up all through the suburbs drawing the movie watchers back inside.  There were advantages to going back inside to watch movies.  The seats were more comfortable, you didn't have to deal with rain storms that would blur the screens and, of course they were air conditioned.

Still there was a certain magic that the drive ins had and young people.  You could take all the snacks in with you that you wanted.  You could expect a little privacy when you were with your girl.  You could talk back to the movie when you were with a lot of friends or not have to listen to others talking back to the movie in other cars.

The biggest draw to the younger set was the midnight showings of old cult movies.  One of our favorite theaters to show Saturday night midnight flicks was the old 63rd street drive in.  They would come up with some of the strangest movies that you had never seen and probably would not see again.  They showed the classics of course like "Reefer Madness" and the like along with lots of shorts. among these you would likely be able to see the Three Stooges on the big big screen.

It was at the 63rd Street Drive In where I first met Lenny Bruce.  There were several of us in the car that night.  Mike was driving while Larry, Barb and myself rode along.  When you went to a midnight showing, you had to wait until the regular movie goers had left after watching the feature.  The entrance to the 63rd Street was long and it was steep.  Mike had a car that did not have a parking brake and so as we waited to get into the drive in, we had to put rocks under the back wheels to keep the car from rolling back down.

We finally made it into the theater and before long the midnight cult movies began to be shown.  This particular night would be a night that would add to my lifetime philosophy in a very big way.  They started off with a couple of shorts followed by a so called "Feature" film.  Then the moment I would long remember happened.

It was an animated short called "Thank You Masked Man".  It was a satirical look at the Lone Ranger and Tonto.  It was meant to be funny with a little bit of shock value.  I watched it and I enjoyed it a lot.  Larry and I began to quote some of the lines on a routine basis from that day forward.  As the credits for the little cartoon rolled I noticed a name that was given credit for writing, producing, and all of the voices in the short.  The name was that of Lenny Bruce.  It was the first time I had heard of Lenny Bruce and the first bit of his that I had heard and I liked what I had heard.

I did not go looking for more Lenny Bruce material after that night but I never forgot it either.  Then Dustin Hoffman did a film called simply "Lenny".  I read the ads about the film.  The story of one of the modern ages tragedies.  The story of a philosopher for the ages.  The story of Lenny Bruce and his trials and tribulations.

I went and saw it on it's first run.  Hoffman brought Lenny Bruce to life in one of his better performances.  In the film I heard more of Lenny's routines for the first time.  He had fought the system for freedom of speech and freedom of thought.  Between my first introduction to him back at the drive in and the eye opening film that told what Lenny was all about I became very interested in him.  When I heard George Carlin say that his main influence was Lenny Bruce, I became a fan.

Lenny and I share a birthday. We were both born on October 13.  Lenny was born 31 years before I was.  He died on August third when I was ten years old.  Lenny's intellect and philosophy spanned the generations though and it still does.  He fought for constitutional freedoms that were promised but suppressed.  Thanks to Lenny Bruce we were given George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Sam Kinison and Kevin Smith.  Doors were opened and doors were walked through.

The 63rd Street Drive In still is there but there is no screen and there are no movies shown.  It is a swap and shop on the weekends now.  But the old sign that use to light up the night still stands indicating that it is indeed still the 63rd Street Drive In.

Still today when I drive by the 63rd Street Drive In on my way to the office, I often think of the night I met Lenny Bruce for the first time.

DISINTEGRATING PANTS

For me, there is nothing quite as satisfying as seeing Kansas University clobbered in some sporting event.  It is especially sweet when their basketball team goes down to a lesser foe, of which there are many.  However, I will bask in the warmth of watching their football team get hammered or their baseball team getting run off the field.  I am not sure why I enjoy it so.  Perhaps it was because I was raised from an extremely early age that Mizzou was the greatest thing in college sports.  Grandpa use to say that "Nothing good ever came out of Kansas" and I guess that has stuck in my brain.  My Uncle Jack and Aunt June both attended Mizzou and wore the black and gold proudly.  At any rate, one could say that I was far from being a KU fan and continue holding that belief to this day. (MIZ-ZOU).

The people who lived behind us were neither Kansas nor Mizzou fans.  They fell somewhere in the middle by being Oklahoma alumni.  Every Saturday Mr. Eddie would fly a bright red Oklahoma flag on his flag pole.  If the team lost, he would sadly go out and fly the flag upside down for the remainder of the day.

They were huge Oklahoma football fans and had complete season tickets every year for both road games and home games.  As they aged and started going to the games less and less they started offering me tickets to the games that were close to home.  One year I would get tickets to the Mizzou-OU game and the next year I would be the beneficiary  of Kansas-OU tickets.  Even though I never saw a game where Oklahoma lost it was still fun to travel to Lawrence or Columbia to see a ball game.

I can't remember which year it was but I do know it was a year that the Eddie's offered me tickets to see Oklahoma play Kansas.  It was a no brainer as it was every year to accept the tickets.  Barb didn't feel much like going and so I called my friend Larry to see if he wanted to take the trip.  He was more than willing.  Later in life, Larry would actually attend Kansas and become a Jayhawk lover himself.  He is close enough of a friend that I don't hold it against him though.  After all it is not his fault he was brainwashed while he attended the University.

Larry arrived at the house and we prepared old blue to transport us to the game.  When we got into the car something went wrong.  Old blue did not want to start.  It seems that his battery had run down over night.  I wasn't going to let anything keep old blue from running or keep me from going to the game so I went and bought a new battery.

Simply put, brought the new battery home.  Took out the old battery, installed the new one and headed out to Kansas.  It was a nice drive.  The weather was perfect for football.  The sun was shining and the temperature was in the sixties.  To make the day even better, both Larry and I knew that this was going to be an ugly display that was about to happen on the Kansas campus.

The first quarter went as we expected.  Kansas unable to stop Oklahoma with the football and unable to move the football against that huge Oklahoma defense.   The second quart was going pretty much the same as the first until I looked down at my jeans.  I noticed a small hole a little above the knee.  MY leg was itching just a little but I didn't think much about it at the time.  Halfway through the second quarter I looked back at my jeans and the hole was almost twice as big as before and a second hole was beginning.

It was then that I showed the holes to Larry.  He shrugged and said what's going on?  I knew what was going on.  It was called battery acid from old blues old battery.  We were coming down towards halftime and the left leg of my jeans now had one large hole and three others beginning and growing.  The right leg of the jeans had two holes starting already.  It was going to be a race between the end of the ball game and the end of my jeans.

At halftime I went to the restrooms and tried to rinse off what was left of my jeans with some cold water and paper towels. I knew that with my pants soaking wet I would not have to worry about any girls making a move on me.  It looked rather disgusting actually.

As the third quarter progressed I started to actually lose bits and pieces of my pants.  I was able to just touch a bit of denim and it would slide off with my hand.   Most of my thigh of my left leg was open to the sunlight and the right leg was catching up.  I began to wonder at the end of the third quarter whether I would be departing the stadium in my underwear or not.  This was beginning to be a rather embarrassing situation.

I have no idea what went on during the fourth quarter that day.  I don't know how bad Oklahoma ended up destroying Kansas by. My whole concentration was on my jeans.  Every time a piece of denim would float to the concrete under our bleacher Larry would let out a little giggle.  I was not giggling however.  Larry wanted to know if we were still going to stop for a bite to eat on our way home.  Nope, didn't think so.

The game finally ended and I left the stadium looking like I was wearing a pair of clam diggers instead of my big bell Levis.   It was a long trip home.  While I was driving I could feel more of my jeans flaking off.  We passed up where we were going to eat because I had this fear that half way through the meal they would kick us out because I wouldn't be wearing pants.

Barb greeted us as we arrived home.  I got out of the car in my new pair of shorts.  Barb was in shock.  What had happened to my jeans?  I proceeded to tell her about changing the battery in old blue and how I had stupidly rested the old battery on my thigh when I pulled it out before replacing the new battery.

She must have thought she had married an idiot.  As a matter of fact I think she may have said something to that effect.  Through all of this I never blamed old blue for my stupidity.  It wouldn't have been fair.  Then again, I never blamed old blue for anything that went wrong as long as I owned it.

CLARK COFFEE GENE

I love coffee.  It is by far my favorite drink.  I drink it up from sunup to sundown and past that sometimes on until the time I go to bed.  The caffeine doesn't seem to effect me that much.  I can drink a cup of coffee right before going to bed and be asleep within thirty minutes and sleep through the night.

I recently found out where I got my love of coffee from.  When my coffee maker broke down last week, I got a plethora of condolences from cousins and aunts on my fathers side of the family.  I hardly heard a word from my mothers side.  The cousins on the paternal side were so sympathetic and discussed their own love of coffee at length over several posts on Facebook.

When I bought a new coffee maker over the weekend and posted it on Facebook, the cousins came out in full force once again from my dad's part of the family.  They wanted to know details.  They wanted to know the brand and the features that the new coffee maker had.  Then they went into their own love of coffee at length over several posts.  I thought back to Grandma Clark and remembered that she use to drink coffee a lot while my Grandma Hill never ever drank coffee.  My dad drinks coffee a lot like I do while my mother will not touch the stuff.  It is pretty easy to come to the conclusion that my dad's family gave me a strong coffee gene and I can truly say I am glad they did.

My love of coffee did not have a love at first taste happening.  It was a process that took a few years until I truly found that I was meant to be a coffee lover.  The first taste of coffee was on a camping trip with Scott, Ronnie, Larry and a few younger kids when I was about fourteen.  Ronnie's dad had taken us to Swope Park to spend the weekend in a concrete shelter that looked like a teepee.   It was a fun weekend although some not so fun things happened that weekend.  The event that directly effected me had to do with Scott.  Yes, this is the same Scott who melted his Rolling Stones album and had teased a bull until he had to jump an electric fence to save himself.  Needless to say Scott had a fun reputation and I always enjoyed having him around.

On this camping trip he had brought with him a brand new pellet gun that his dad had gotten him.  It wasn't a rifle type gun but a hand gun and the pellets were big.  That night we were goofing around in the concrete shelter when Scott discharged the gun towards the floor.  It ricocheted off the floor and up to my arm.  Luckily it was just a flesh wound as the pellet went on by my arm to his the side of the enclosure and do a couple of more bounces before landing.  I was in immediate pain and did not hesitate to let my comrades know that I had been hit.  Meanwhile Scott was looking for the pellet figuring it would be good for another firing if it wasn't misshapen too bad.  He had asked me if it was in my arm and when I said no, he immediately left me to look for the pellet.  This was a case of Scott having his priorities in place.  Meanwhile Ronnie and myself went outside to look at my arm.  There was a big red welt on it and the arm was numb for the most part.  Ronnie decided I would be okay and I agreed.  We went back in to give Scott a hard time for firing the pistol inside.

Ronnie's dad was an Air Force man.   He was probably the most physically fit man I had been acquainted with during my lifetime.  He ran several miles every day and lifted weights.  Ronnie had picked up on this from his dad and would become a member of the cross country team at school as well as have a set of weight in his bedroom that he would work out with while I sat on his bed listening to music.  I was not much into being in shape in those days, or any days since then actually.

Before we bedded down for the night, Ronnie's dad asked if anyone wanted to get up and run with him in the morning.  For some stupid reason I volunteered.  At six o'clock the next morning I was shaken awake by the father of my best friend.  He was ready to run.  He started to perk a pot of coffee up giving me time to get dressed and to wake up before we started out jog around Swope Park.

To this day I think it was the longest I have ever ran.  We ran around the old lagoon.  We ran over to the soccer and rugby fields.  Swope Park has many little roads leading hear and there.  Finally I noticed we were heading back towards the campground and so I kept up the pace.  As we came to the camp ground entrance I noticed the old man wasn't turning in there.  He was heading up towards the zoo!!!  that was another four miles at least.  MY mind said No, don't do it and I complied.  I told Ronnie's dad I would catch him later and dragged myself up to the campground.

When I got there, Ronnie was up tending a fire.  He asked where his dad was and I just waved my hand in the general direction of the zoo.  Ronnie was really kind at this point.  I remember his exact words that morning.  "Hey, don't worry about it.  Very few men can keep up with dad."  That was a nice thing to say and it did pick up my spirits a little.

Back to the coffee now.  Ronnie's dad came jogging into camp about thirty minutes later.  As he poured himself a cup of coffee he asked us if anyone else wanted a cup.  SURE I heard myself saying. There was something deep down inside that told me I was a coffee drinker.  It was some of the worst coffee I have ever had.  It had been made in a peculator over a fire.  Some of you may remember what peculated coffee tasted like.  Not very good.  Add the bad taste to it being my first cup of coffee and I had a tough time getting it down.  I felt like I was going to vomit it back up after I had drunk half of a cup and so I slipped behind the shelter and quietly poured the other half out.  When Ronnie's dad asked me if I wanted some more I politely declined.  He smiled and I knew that he knew.  Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and I did that day.  Ronnie's dad didn't say a word about it though.  That whole family was classy.

It was at school where I did learn to love coffee more than anything.  The special education class at school sold donuts and coffee before school to raise money for their special needs.  It was there that I found out that one of the best things in the world was a fresh glazed doughnut with a newspaper and a cup of coffee.  Larry and I use to walk to the school every day.  We would arrive about forty five minutes early and sit with some of our other friends in the cafeteria eating doughnuts, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper that we had gotten from some randomly picked front yard on the way to school.  (never said I was perfect).

Then the final leap into coffeehood.  I went to work for my dad the summer I was sixteen.  We arrived and dad went upstairs to brew a pot of coffee which he brought back down to the shop for us.  Well, at that time he brought it down to the shop for himself.  As I picked up a cup and poured myself some coffee, dad got this inquisitive look on his face before asking "What are you doing?"  I answered that I was getting me some coffee before starting to work.  He didn't know I drank coffee and I don't think he took it very seriously until by the end of the summer, I was drinking almost as much coffee as he was.  Nowadays, He doesn't drink as much coffee as he use to, but he always has a pot ready to brew when I go over to lunch with him and mom.

It is that Clark Coffee Gene and I have a fairly strong dose of it.

BASKETBALL BIOGRAPHY

To be honest, I am having some writer block issues.  This piece was written in an attempt to bust the wall in my mind down and get me to writing again.  Not only writing, but writing well.  I know I write a lot about baseball, but I truly do love basketball as well.  I spent a lot of my life with a basketball in my hands. 

So read on if you dare and please have patience with me as I try to find my voice again.

I have played basketball forever it seems.  It was the source of one of my youthful rebellions against my father and his love of baseball.  The first organized team I remember playing on was as a child on a church team.  Mr. Barker took a team of kids from the church and got us into a league.  There is one old black and white photograph that I remember seeing of that team.  We were lined up on the sideline with Mr. Barker waiting to take the court.  I am not sure how old I was when I played with that team or how good we were.  I have a feeling we didn't win a lot of games.

The next time I played organized basketball was in the fifth grade.  Coach Madison held intramural basketball for the boys.  He gave each of the teams a name from the NBA.  Our team was called the Royals.  I had never watched much of the NBA on television.  First off they weren't on television that much and even if they were chances are it would not be watched on a television in our house.  The Royals played in Cincinnati and would soon move to Kansas City and become the Kings when I was a little older.  I would soon have season tickets to the Kings as I grew older and I still keep an eye on them even today.  I find it a little ironic that I played for the team that I would become a fan of years later.

I played intramural for Coach Madison again in the sixth grade and again I was on the Royals.  I was improving in my skills on the court by this time because my sister had gotten her basketball goal put up on the house so I was getting plenty of practice.  As I remember it, we won the intramural championship my sixth grade year.  There were a few players on that team that I would end up playing the next three years with.

Seventh grade found me in another intramural league.  They did not have an official seventh grade team but the coaches used the intramural basketball of the seventh graders to scout for try outs for the eighth grade team.  It was important to make a good showing in the intramural games so that the coaches would keep half an eye on you next year.  Coach Madison also let me come back to the elementary school and help referee the fifth and sixth grade intramural games.  After the games he would play some "horse" or a little one on one with me giving me even more experience that would become vital.

Trying out for the eighth grade team was very competitive at Smith-Hale   The school was younger then the other two junior high schools in the district but had already built a firm foundation as a basketball power.  I soon became aware that I would have to step it up a bit if I was going to make the team.  All it took was one crazy practice and I was guaranteed a spot on the team.  There had already been three cuts in the tryouts and we were coming close to the final cut.  Suddenly on this one day I got a burst of adrenalin like I had never felt before.  I got the ball to the left of the key and then my body went crazy.  I drove the lane to the hoop with a zone defense on me and took a shot to the nose.  I didn't make the basket but it impressed coach Mitchell.  I heard him asking who that was that just did that.  It was the kind of basketball he wanted to see.  My nose was bleeding and after a couple of more trips up and down the court the blood began to show up on guys jerseys.  Coach stopped play to find out who was bleeding and when he tried to take me out of the scrimmage I became adamant that I was okay and I was going to stay in.   He made me sit down anyway.  He would never see that power basketball from me again but he knew it was in me somewhere.

That knowledge helped get me on the freshman team the following year.  The previous freshman coach had moved up to coach at the High School and so Coach Mitchell moved up with us to coach us at the freshman level.  I firmly believe the only reason I made that team was because coach Mitchell knew what I could do if only I would and he kept expecting it to burst forth again.  It never did except for one time against Ervin when I was running the ball on a fast break and got tackled from behind.  I crashed my knee into the hard tile floor and must have cracked something.  My knee was never the same after that and still gives me problems to this day.  We were a good freshman team and kept the reputation of the school's basketball program intact as we beat up on the other teams on our schedule.

After that I pretty much quit organized basketball.  I decided no to try out for the sophomore team at the high school and so began my pick up game career.  I would spend afternoons and evenings at the church playing ball with Larry and whoever showed up to play.  

One weekend the school held a three on three fund raiser that would be played for twenty four hours straight.  It was my junior year and Barb had become a part of my life and that included the basketball.  So she found herself sitting in the school bleachers at two o'clock in the morning watching Larry, Jerry and myself get beat badly.  It was the first of several three on three events I participated in.

As I began working at the office we discovered that we had a lot of basketball players in our department.  We were all young averaging in age in our mid-twenties.  We would get together once in awhile on holidays and play basketball.  We had contacts that would allow us to rent a gym cheaply and soon it became a tradition to play at least on Good Friday every year.  One year four of us entered into a three on three league from the office.  We were extremely small compared to the other teams in the league and were soundly defeated every time we played.  It was good though and was fun.

One year Kansas City held a three on three tournament on the streets of downtown.  There were hundreds of basketball hoops set up in the streets downtown as teams from all over came to play in it.  It was a double elimination tournament so we were able to play at least two games that weekend.  Barb once again followed me to a strange weekend of three on three basketball.  I would like to say this about Barb.  For as much time as basketball took away from us, she never held a grudge against the game.  I don't think she fully appreciated the game but she knew I loved it and supported me in it.  She liked to see me have fun I suppose.

As I grew older and our son joined our family, I drifted away from basketball and back towards baseball, where I should have been all the time anyway.  Brett went with me on several Good Friday games and he began to learn how to play.  Along with baseball, he tried out for the high school basket ball team when he was a freshman and made the team.  He also made the Junior Varsity when he was a sophomore.  He wasn't flashy or super fast but he had the drive to play the game hard and gave it a hundred percent every time he stepped on the court.  It took a lot of guts for him to try out and play basketball and as proud as I was of his baseball career, I was equally proud of his dedication to basketball.

Then one evening he challenged me to a game of basketball in the back yard which I took him up on.  We were playing to ten, must win by two and he was shooting the ball pretty good that night.  We were tied at eight when he took a rebound and as I bit on his fake and went flying he let the shot go.  I landed on a tire I had in the back yard that had flowers planted inside of it and I went down.  Brett continued to make the shot giving him the lead by one but I wasn't getting up.  I had a sharp pain in my foot and could not walk on it.

I went to the doctor and discovered I had broken my foot.  Six weeks in a soft cast would do the trick.  My foot never came back though and much like my knee reminds me everyday of what happened to it.  When I saw the doctor he lectured me on remembering that I wasn't eighteen  anymore.  He was right.  Age had caught up to my basketball playing days.

Brett and I never finished that game from the night I broke my foot and we probably never will.  It was the last time I played a game of basketball, one on one or otherwise.  Between the knee and the foot as well as carpel tunnel syndrome which zapped the strength from my wrists, I had to leave basketball behind me.  It is kind of special though to keep in my thoughts that the last time I played was against Brett.  That is special and makes that unfinished game something that the two of us will always share together.

Well, that is a very abbreviated look at my life with a basketball.  If you made it this far, congratulations and thanks.  I love knowing my pieces are being read even if they do slip every once in awhile.

Hang in there with me.  My writing will return I am sure.

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED HORSE

Starting in my sophomore year sometime, I began to gather a group of kids up at the church parking lot almost everyday to play basketball with Larry and myself.  The kids were usually younger than us making Larry and me the stars of each team.  We played through the summers and through the winters taking a snow shovel along with us to scrape off the court if it was covered in snow.  Not a lot stopped us from playing ball.  On my first wedding anniversary I found myself at the church playing ball with the kids not realizing the importance of that particular day.  Basketball was foremost in my mind when I was younger and when I had free time, I was at the parking lot shooting baskets.

Larry had a deadly outside jumper and I was good from within ten feet with a hook shot that seldom missed.  I based my shots on that of two ball players that I watched on television consistently.  Lew Alcindor (Karrem Abdul Jabbar) and Jo Jo White were my idols along with Larry Drew.  These players were pure shooters and I felt like I did a fairly decent job imitating them.

When the kids weren't around to play, Larry and I played one on one a lot.  It was a pretty even game most of the time and it gave us a chance to polish up on our already awesome skills.  We were good and we knew it.  We could take the ball and drive or pull up with fade away jumpers and hit them well over fifty percent of the time.  When we played one on one we went at each other with everything we had.  There was no sluffing off when we played.  It was a matter of pride for either of us to beat the other in a sweat filled game.

It was one of those afternoons when we were playing one on one and wearing each other out when we saw a figure dribbling a basketball come walking towards the court.  We were both in our early twenties and we had control over that court anytime we wanted it.  The kids around the place knew that we would let them play eventually if they arrived during a game of one on one.  As the figure grew closer to us we stopped for a second.  It was someone we had never seen at the court before.  It was a girl dribbling that ball and she looked to be about a junior in High School.

She arrived at the court and watched us play a bit.  When we got to a stopping point and sat to rest she began shooting some short shots and layups.  We began talking to her and found out she was a sophomore at the school.  She loved basketball she told us but she seldom had anyone to play with.  Larry was the one who offered ourselves up to her.  He asked her if she wanted to play a game of HORSE and after she thought a bit she said sure, why not.

HORSE is a game where you have to match another players made shot.  If you miss the shot you receive a letter beginning with "H" and continue until you have all the letters to spell horse, then you are out of the game..  We shot around a bit with her as she warmed up.  I swear I didn't see her put up anything outside of ten foot and both Larry and I were feeling pretty confident when we began the game of HORSE.

We let her shoot first and she did a simple layup with the left hand.  No problem for me and Larry and we duplicated her shot.  She then began putting up some small jumpers from the ten foot range.  Again no problem.  None of us were missing any shots at all.  She went to running underhand layups which again did not cause either of us to gain a letter.  She was playing it safe to keep control of the ball I figured.  As long as she did not miss a shot, it was her shot that had to be duplicated.  It was starting to look like it was going to be a long game.

Then it happened.  She calmly set herself up about twenty five feet from the basket and let it fly.  The ball fell through the hoop with a swooshing sound indication it hit nothing but net.  A perfect shot. Larry and I looked at each other.  It could have been a lucky shot but no matter we had to match it.  Larry matched it with no problem while I clunked it off the front of the rim.  She moved around to the side of the hoop and let fly a twenty footer that again swished through the net.  Again I missed and earned the letter "O" to add to my "H".  Larry hit this one as well but I was thinking we had been had.  She stepped back to about thirty feet out and again threw up a perfect shot.  I missed again and Larry joined me this time.  The rest of the game she stayed out between twenty five and thirty feet pumping in jump shots like the hoop was twenty feet wide.  I don't recall every hearing one of her shots hit the rim.

It did not take me long to be put out of the game when I earned my "E".  Larry was closing in fast on me though.  He was making better than fifty percent of the shots he was matching to hers but sooner or later, Larry would roll one of the side of his fingers giving him another letter.  It wasn't long before she put up a tremendous thirty five foot shot that Larry clunked off the back of the rim earning him his "E" and ending the game.

She thanked us for letting her play and started to walk off.  We wanted more information on the school girl who had just kicked our butts.  Turns out she was a ball player on the girls junior varsity team at the high school.  She was a guard that had been working on her shooting to try to get a starting spot on the team.  Neither me or Larry could understand why she wasn't starting and she explained that there was a girl on the team, a senior, who was a really good shooter.

It caused me to shudder thinking that girls were getting this good at basketball.  She had whipped us and whipped us good.  I talked to Larry that evening about possibly hanging up my sneakers after that embarrassing display against a high school girl.  Not just a high school kid, but a girl.  She never came back to play that I remember but I know if she had, I would have done everything I could to get her on my team to play against the guys.

A valuable lesson was learned that day and one I try not to forget.  No matter who you are, there is always someone better, sometimes it is even a girl.

LARRY IN TRACTION

Larry is a good friend of mine.  We met through church activities and became very close because of what we had in common.  He was almost two years younger than me but just a years difference separated us in school.  He was a big kid standing almost six feet and two inches and had a broad stocky body that made him a fairly good commodity on the pick up football and basketball games we would play with other kids from the neighborhood.  He wasn't a real fast person but quick enough to shove his way down the lane in basketball or dump a defender from trailing him in football.

We walked to school together everyday of our high school years.  We would leave early and arrive at school about a half hour before classes start to have some donuts and coffee that the special education class sold in the cafeteria every morning.

The build of Larry's body gave him problems.  His back was not very flexible as long as I could remember.  It never stopped him from throwing up a beautiful arced jump shot from twenty feet out though and he would hit them with tremendous consistency.  He seemed to always walk with a little hitch in his step as his back refused to flex enough to make his motion smooth and easy.  Still he never complained and kept attacking life on a daily basis.

There came a time during his sophomore year that the back finally gave out.  I am not sure if it was a slipped or compressed disk but suddenly the pain began to increase in his back.  He reluctantly went to the doctor to see what was going on and to his horror the doctor said he would have to be off of his feet for about a week and in the hospital.  This was going to throw a big wrench into our summer plans of playing basketball almost every night.  My girlfriend, Barb, would welcome the news in her own subtle way because it meant that I would have more time to spend with her instead of spending time on the asphalt of the church parking lot shooting hoops with Larry.

When Larry entered the hospital he was but seventeen years old.  The drawback to this was that he was put on the pediatrics ward of the hospital.  Not only was Larry confined to the hospital, he was confined with a bunch of little kids that took to wandering around and visiting with other kids during their stay at the hospital.  To make matters even worse, Larry was to be in traction for that week.  He was bed ridden with a series of ropes and knots attaching his back to some pulleys at the foot of the bed with weights hanging off the end of them.  It was not a very comfortable situation and not surprisingly, Larry was in a rather sour mood during this week of traction in the hospital.

I went to visit Larry a few times during that week in the hospital and during the time I spent there several kids would wander in the room.  Larry knew most of them and had made friends with the little ones who found Larry to be a nice man who happened to be the biggest and oldest person on the ward.  Most of them would come bay just to tell Larry hi and then leave to continue their socializing rounds among others more their age.

On The Saturday before Larry was to be released from the hospital I went to visit him.  As we were sitting there watching some baseball on the television a new kid walked in.  Larry had never seen him before and neither had I.  It was clear he was a patient at the hospital because the little six year old was wearing a robe and slippers that looked like they belonged to his dad.  HE was the kind of child who liked to ask questions and he began string questions together one after another.  What's your name?  How old are you?  Why are you on the kid's floor?  The questions kept coming at rapid fire speed and was starting to irritate both Larry and me as the kid continued his interrogation.

Larry and I began to drop hints that maybe the kid should be back in his room.  The nurses could be looking for him.  What if his mother came to his room and find him not there.  We tried everything but nothing would dissuade the boy from continuing his questioning.

Then it happened.  The boy was standing at the foot of the bed while I sat in a chair up next to the head of the bed where I could talk to Larry and see the television.  We saw it at the same time.  The kid reached down and picked up the weights that were pulling on Larry's left side.  Both Larry and I processed the situation at the same time and came to the realization that something very bad was about to happen.  We were both trying to get the words out of our mouth's to tell the kid to leave those weights alone when he looked at us and asked, "What are these for?"  As the word "for" left his lips he dropped the weights.  Larry's reaction was almost instantaneous.  He was expecting the pain, had prepared himself for the pain in that extremely little space in time but when the weights crashed down and stretched his back further than ever intended, Larry let out a yell.  I jumped up to lift the weights to relieve the pain a bit but it was too late.

The kid was startled by Larry's reaction.  He stood there for a second as Larry first yelled, then started cursing between deep breaths that his body had been shocked into.  The last I saw of the kid, he was leaving Larry's room, walking slowly backwards and trying to figure out what had just happened.  A nurse came in and I explained what had happened.  Very calmly she told Larry not to worry, it probably didn't do much damage to which Larry responded with a few more choice words.  He was definitely in pain.

We never saw that kid again and the incident did not extend Larry's stay in the hospital.  The nurse was right in the fact that it had not done any damage to what the traction had set out to accomplish.  Larry's back was more flexible after that and he moved with more of a swagger instead of the old stiff walk I grown accustomed to seeing him with.  After that shock of pain, I never heard Larry complain about pain again.  I guess nothing he would feel in the future would ever compare to the weights being dropped to stretch out his back for an instant.

Larry looked for the kid when he was discharged, but apparently the kid had gotten well, or had fled to another jurisdiction.