Change Can Be Infectious

September 21^st marks the Autumnal Equinox.  If you’re a nit picker, it officially happens at exactly 8:30 a.m. on the 22^nd.  At that precise moment length of day is the same everywhere on the planet from the poles to the equator. 

Summer ended quickly.  I was picking peppers and tomatoes in shorts and a tee shirt in the garden on a hot Monday and by Friday a forecast of temperatures in the 30’s had me bringing house plants I’d nurtured on the shack porch since spring inside.

For all the awfulness of the pandemic it was a beautiful summer.  My garden got me through it in many ways.  It got me out of the house and into the country, concentrating on plants rather than political turmoil and violence.  It was only a six-mile drive, but it shook me loose from my tightly controlled Covid affected existence.

I tracked the weather and rainfall.  I tended each plant like it was a friend.  They became just that.  And my friends rewarded me in a big way. 

I am sad to see summer end because the garden ends with it.  But change can be infectious.  I resist it at first but at some point, I welcome it like a hot meal on an empty stomach.  Fall?  Not so bad.  Fall offers new things.  You have to find them.   

With the need for heat clearly coming to the shack, I cleaned the ashes out of my wood stove, buffed it off with steel wool, and put a coat of black polish on it.  I brought out brown paper bags for starting fires and checked my kindling supply.  I would need to split wood into small sticks.  There were things to do.

I trimmed up a couple logs with the chainsaw and brought them inside to serve as chopping blocks.  I’d been thinking I needed two, one for the kindling cracker and another for splitting wood with the cleaver.   I put them side by side and tied them together with rope.

As I worked on that I kept looking at the fan that got me through the hottest days of summer.  I decided to keep it out a while.  We may have a few hot days yet in store. I’m wearing a flannel shirt.  That happened fast.  Next, I’ll take the screens off the windows.  Where will I stow that new screen door?  Or do I leave it on?

Four days before the Vernal Equinox I worked the primary election.  It was St. Patrick’s Day, March 17^th, which always in my mind marks the start of this whole damned Covid mess.  Ireland closed the bars for St. Patrick’s Day.  That is how cautious that country was, how much its government sought to protect the health of its people.  I worked the election without a mask.  At our precinct polling place in the Lion’s Club we wiped off the pens people used.  Some brought their own.

We swiped the plastic tables of the voting booths with paper towels and sanitizer.   We had little or no idea, in those early days, what we were doing or trying to prevent.  Touch seemed to be the thing.  We had our groceries delivered and invariably got things we didn’t want.  But primarily we were scared of the virus on surfaces rather than in the air.

Weeks before that primary election we went on an eye care mission to El Salvador.  While we were departing, making our way through O’Hare, there were people wearing face masks which seemed odd.  When we came back, we feared officials in the San Salvador airport would take our temperatures and not allow us on the plane. 

Arriving in O’Hare in the wee hours of an early March night we never imagined that would be the last time we were in Chicago for seven months now and counting.  Our two kids live in Chicago.

We love the city.  We used to go there often.  My wife would find good deals on hotels through the internet.  Together with the kids we would explore a bottomless well of restaurants with creative menus and food we rarely found at home.  We’d see movies that we knew would never come to our small town.  We’d listen to music, fitting ourselves into crowded bars like The Hideout, listening to bands on the way up, and staying up later than we ever did at home.  Being in the city made us feel young.

We’ve not be back since that long flight from Central America in March.  We have chosen to stay home and be safe.   Our kids encourage us to do just that.  They worry about us and for us.  We were surprised at how much. 

We saw our son for the first time in months sometime in April.  He had  tested negative for the virus and showed up on the patio in a mask with no intention of staying the night or eating a meal.  We were all very tentative at first, even with our own family.  He wasn’t sure if his sister, our daughter, approved.  She had not yet felt she should have contact with us.  Our son was recently unemployed.  Life was not easy in his Pilsen apartment, surrounded by sidewalks and streets.  He enjoyed our yard, the one he grew up in.  I think he’s gained a new appreciation for his hometown. 

He’s working again, downtown until they get him set up to work from home.  He tells us he doesn’t think we should go back to the city yet.  Downtown, he reports, is eerily empty.  The Loop hotels we love are at low ebb.  Lots of restaurants are closed and now with the weather changing, their outside seating is going away. We fear more of them will close.  The movie houses are closed.  There are no new movies anyway, and bands have not had a live gig since God knows when. 

Our daughter, who with a partner owns her own business (that has survived, much to our surprise, owing to their hard work) is even more cautious about exposing herself to the risk of infection now.  She is pregnant with our first grandchild.  When she and her boyfriend told us, while her Mom and I sat together spaced apart from them in the backyard, we broke the rules, closed the gap, and hugged them.  Cried all over them as I remember.  Life has a way of going on, whatever the obstacles. It is wonderful to see their joy and celebrate new life for our family, amid the fear and death that surrounds our country.  It makes us forget for a while.

They come down more now, as does my son and his partner.  We cook out on the charcoal grills, spending most of our time outside.  They believe life outside the city is safer, more controlled.  We’ve convinced them, I think, that we remain careful.  They now come back home and relax.  They think it is great to get out of the city.  Little do they know their visits are a lifeline for us.

It was bad during those first few months.   No one quite knew what to do or how to behave.  It was foreign and uncomfortable to be cautious with neighbors and friends.   But still we isolated ourselves.  The days dragged.  I was consumed by the news and the grim specter of public health policy being viciously politicized.

My wife and I became more and more emotional.  She was scared I would catch the virus and die.  I was afraid she would be consumed by fear and lose it.  We were scared for each other and those we love.  We still are, but we’ve learned to cope.

It helped immensely when things loosened up, even just a bit.  The YMCA let its members back into the pool under strict conditions.  We could reserve a lane for 45 minutes to swim laps.  The locker rooms were closed at first, with no place to change.  We walked in wearing our suits and when our time was up pulled sweatpants over damp suits on the pool deck and walked out wet.    

I didn’t know how much gaining access to the pool would mean to me.  A bad leg now prevents me from walking for exercise.  Lap swimming has been my go-to work out for years.  It came just in time.  Not only did I get my heart rate up again for an extended period each day, it gave me somewhere to go, something new to look forward to, a daily challenge.

I realized how sedentary the pandemic had made me when I swam my first lap.  That day and for weeks after I felt like a loaded barge going upriver.  But slowly I swam faster and farther, filling my 45 minutes with more and more laps.  I’m back to where I used to be and beyond.  I added Saturdays, which I never did before.  I thank the YMCA for taking the risk of making the pool available to the community and to me.

Summer helped.  My wife and I took day trips, driving on two lane roads mostly, going to small towns and out of the way uncrowded attractions.  We reacquainted ourselves with the refurbished concrete Native American chief that stands in Lowden State park looking across the Rock River valley near Oregon, Illinois.  On the way back we stopped at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie looking for a herd of bison that never showed. 

At home we fed the birds and ourselves almost too well.  When the restaurants first opened we tried them but it didn’t seem right.  Occasionally we get a carry out but for mainly we trade off cooking.  It became a big focus.  We’re going to have to stop that at some point, not the home cooking, but at least the size of the meals.

Something unexpected happened.  Our church, Open Table UCC, stopped worshipping in person and went online using Zoom, the interactive group video program.  I was against it.  We are a small congregation with a church building much larger than we need.  I thought we could space out, practice social distancing as they say, and safely continue.  We would have to change the way we behaved, but at least we could be together in person.

Turns out the danger of this virus is not so much transmission by touch but breathing the same air in a confined space.  We would be unable to sing.  Choral singing is an especially effective spreader of this airborne virus.  Being together for an hour and a half as we do at church simply posed too big a risk.  So, like many other churches we took to flat screens and mouse clicks in our homes.  We are apart but digitally together.  We lost some people along the way who did not have, or preferred not to make use of, the technology.  But we also picked up people who can now participate long distance.  We’re doing fine.

I have been amazed at how good and how meaningful those services have become.  I don’t think I’ve missed a Sunday morning online with my faith community.  We stumble with muting and unmuting ourselves, but we have learned to present beautiful music by pre-recording it.  Our pianists give us solo instrumental pieces, and some four hand performances as well.  We have talented musicians in our congregation, and they have teamed up to bring us a woodwind trio, a flute duo, a number of songs with guitar.  Is it live music?  Not quite.  But it’s so good to hear.

We sing hymns, led by talented song leaders, but we can’t hear each other.  Zoom cannot seem to put us all on the same time loop.  Any type of responsive reading or shared singing through our individual microphones is an audio disaster.

I belt out the hymns alone in the shack.  I imagine standing next to the fellas in the back row of the choir, straining to hit the notes those who can read music hit, if even a tad late, and loving the sound,  the harmony, when we all get it right.  It doesn’t work, but I think of it anyway.  Being part of a choir again is a stubborn longing.  We won’t be singing as a choir, or as a congregation, for a while I’m afraid. 

But we’re together. And the part of the church service where we share joys and concerns has become more heartfelt than ever.  We’re all going through a lot it turns out.  And we don’t seem as reluctant now to admit it to each other.   We see more keenly that we need each other very much.  We don’t experience community the way we used do, but community proves once again to be critical to our collective well-being. 

The same thing happened with our poetry group.  We switched from in person meetings to reading and discussing poems on Zoom and didn’t miss a beat.  We meet for an hour and a half monthly and are sad when our time is up.  I think it has become, like church, more important and more valued than we realized before we were forced to separate.

If someone were to ask me how we made it through the pandemic so far, I’d say we found new ways to maintain what is most important in our lives.  I dread cold weather and the coming of winter.  But I’m no longer worried  life is going to be awful.  I have worries mind you, but I know now by experience that those closest to me will help me keep my head above water.  No one is going to drown.  We act as each other’s lifeguards.

I hope you've experienced that too.  I think we're going to make it.

The Fate of the Buick

There is a fine line between a good old car and a beater.  My 2006 Buick Lucerne is teetering somewhere on that line.  It’s sad.  Having given up so much in 2020 I hate like hell to give up my Buick. 

There are cosmetic issues, but they are not bad at all.  One day while leaving my garden I jumped in the driver’s seat with something sharp in the back pocket of my bibs and caused a small slice and a puncture in the leather.  Four inches of appropriately colored tape on the driver's seat will not only hide that tear but keep it from spreading.

Near the grille, which required replacement after an unfortunate incident in Pensacola Florida on my 2018 road trip, some paint is flaking off.  It creates a relatively small raft shaped patch of black primer in a veritable ocean of Sea Foam Green.  No biggie there.  I love the muted green color of this Buick.  After a number of beige and white LeSabres it’s distinctive.  Easy on the eyes.

And it has original equipment chrome wheels.  That’s not all good. During Illinois winters the salt corrodes the chrome finish near the bead of the tire and causes the tires to leak air.  My local independent garage guy has ground them down twice in the past three years after I report slow leaks.  This last time they reported an expansion of the problem.

“How were they this time?” I asked while writing the check.  Those guys really should charge more.

“About the same.  But the right rear rim has a tiny crack.  It’s not leaking air now, but it will.  They don’t get better you know.  Sooner or later you’ll have to replace that one at least.”

“How long you think?”

“Can’t tell.  I’d say maybe a year.  Depends on how hard you hit the potholes this winter.”

“Think I could find one to match the rest?”

“Yeah, you’re probably talking about a junk yard.  But they're out there.  More all the time.”

“That sounds good.”

I had asked them to put their computer on the check engine light that keeps coming on.  It used to be intermittent.  I always figured it was a loose gas cap.  Usually happened when the tank was almost empty.  But for the past month it hadn’t gone off at all.

“What did your machine tell you about my check engine light?”

“Two codes popped up.  Both had to do with transmission speed sensors.  I wrote the numbers down on your ticket.”

“Transmission?  I’ll be damned.”

That was both good and bad news.  When I back out of the driveway, get the Buick out on Caton Road, and drop it into drive I get this hesitation followed by a clunk.  Occasionally I’d feel a little slippage when it shifted.  But not always.  It bothered me some, but then the Buick had just turned over 150,000 miles.  I think we should cut old cars a little slack.  Same with old people.  But I worried that the transmission was crapping out, which is terminal for an old car with little value.  But if it was just sensors, maybe that tranny has more life.

“Can you replace those sensors?”

“We don’t do that work.  I’d suggest you go to the dealer.”

Car worries can eat at you.  I minimize them as much as possible.  My older brother, who is a good mechanic, used to worry about my attitude toward cars.  He was once riding with me in one of those beaters and heard a suspicious engine sound.

“You hear that?  That could be your tappets.  Maybe your lifters.”

I didn’t know what either of those were.

“You doin anything about that?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I turn up the radio.”

That was years ago.  As I matured, I learned to take car maintenance more seriously.  I plan to make more solo road trips in this green Buick and I want to take care of it.  The Lucerne is not a beater and I don’t want it to turn into one.

Besides, there is nothing worse than breaking down far from home and putting yourself at the mercy of unknown mechanics.  To say nothing of being stranded somewhere on the road without a car.  Although, if you were lucky enough to find yourself in a quirky community it could be interesting.

 

I called the service department of a local dealer.  The guy who answered the phone was snobby.  I asked what the cost would be of replacing those sensors and he wouldn’t let me finish reading him the code numbers. 

“It’s $140 to look at it and then we give you an estimate.  We don’t accept anyone else’s diagnosis.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

I took the information from my go to garage to a new place that just opened up.  Young guys.  My son had some work done there on his hybrid Ford and they did a good job.  They look everything up on their IPhones.  I started with one mechanic and another got interested.

They both studied their phones for a while, consulted each other quietly, and finally told me they didn’t want to work on it either.  They didn’t work on trannys enough to be comfortable with the job.

“I called the dealer and didn’t get very far.”

“I wouldn’t go either there if I were you.  There’s two places we take trannys to that do pretty good work.”

One was in Aurora and the other closer.  I went with the close one.  The young guy warned me about the place I chose.

“They do good work, but they have so much of it they don’t seem to care how they treat their customers.  So, if they get ornery with you try not to take it personal.  They may not, but then again they may get a wild hair and say something that pisses you off.  Just warning you of the possibility.”

“Are they expensive?”

“No.  That’s why people put up with them.”

The Buick and I found our way to their driveway which was crammed with vehicles.  There was a woman behind the counter, on the phone, arguing with someone.  She didn’t look up at me.  When she did, she looked perturbed.  I started to tell her the story of my transmission and the code numbers but she stopped me.

“I’m just behind the counter help.  Wait till I get you a mechanic.”

All the mechanic wanted to hear was the number of the codes and the year and make of the car.  He went to some greasy books under the counter and began flipping through one. 

“What’s the engine?”

“Six cylinder.  Three point eight liter.”

“Good engine.  Don’t know why GM stopped making it.”

Everybody says that.  He studied his book some more.

“I haven’t worked on one of those in a long time.  But seems to me GM put Caddy transmissions in some of those Lucernes.  If it’s a Caddy transmission, it’s too tight of a fit to get into the side panel and we have to drop the tranny.  “That’s… (he looked back at the book)... rated at 13 hours of labor.”

“How much is that?”

He gave me a scary number.  I gulped.  The end of my relationship with the green Lucerne flashed before my eyes.  I got a sinking feeling.

 That’s a lot of money to drop into a Buick that’s 14 years old.  How many miles?”

“150,000.”

“Yeah.  Up to you, but you might want to think that one over.”

“How you gonna know if it has a Caddy transmission?”

“I have to get it up on a rack and take a good look at how much room I have to work.”

“Can you do that now?”

“Don’t have a rack.”

“Do you charge for the estimate?”

“No.”

“When can you look then?”

“Best way is to bring it some morning you don’t need it.  Call first.  We’ll take a look, you leave it, and we fit you in.”

“In the same day?”

“Maybe.  If it works out.  Maybe not.”

“And if you can replace the sensors without dropping the tranny?  How much you think?”

“About half that.  No guarantee you know.  You ask us to replace the sensors we do it.  If that solves the problem great.  If not, we did what you wanted.”

“I know.”

Turned out they did replace those sensors without dropping the tranny.  The Buick feels better now when it shifts.  I think I’m past the crisis.  It was close.

 

Deciding the fate of a vehicle you treasure is a serious matter.  I don’t name my vehicles or talk about them as if they have feelings and desires, but I definitely have relationships with my cars.  I drove my Dad’s pickup for a while when I got back from Europe and was broke, but aside from that I paid cash for all my vehicles, and they have all been cars.

I bought my first car at 16, with money I made baling hay and shelling corn.  After I got married my wife and I made payments on our family vehicles, the little Ford station wagon, the Dodge vans, etc..  But I always had an old car for myself. 

There were times I didn’t have much cash and as a result I drove cars that weren’t very good.  They were beaters to begin with.  I got a job at DCFS that required a lot of travel and soon after that the car I was driving, a Chevy Impala with a lot of unpainted bondo on the side panels and very bad tires, blew a head gasket.

The guy that hired me for the job, Jim Tapen, sold me his Ford Torino.  It was a stick shift with a Cleveland 351 engine, dual exhaust, and bad rings.  It used a lot of oil.  He was disgusted at what the dealer wanted to give him for trade in and sold it to me cheap.  I later sold it to a client for $37.50, half what I paid for it, with the stipulation that if he sold it, he should charge the next buyer only half that, $18.75.  I doubt that car made it to another owner. 

I usually knew who owned each one of this string of Buicks I’ve been driving for 25 years because the guy I bought them from often sold them new or nearly new to their previous owner.  I hate buying cars.  I hate the haggle, the posturing, the salesman going to talk to his manager, the threat of walking away.  I prefer to buy cars like I buy groceries.  Pick them up and pay for them.

When I met Jerry Trost, he had already quit drinking and was a foster parent for our agency.  He always said exactly what was on his mind and thought a lot about his role raising someone else’s kids.  He and his wife took foster parenting seriously.  He thought about the natural parents and how they felt.  I like people that think about others, and I liked Jerry a whole lot.

I don’t know how many cars I bought from Jerry.  But when I thought I needed one I’d call him with an amount I wanted to spend.  Often, he would urge me to spend more but usually I stuck with my budget.  Sometimes weeks would go buy and then I’d get a call from Jerry with a car he recommended and I’d buy it.  It was a great arrangement. 

Once when he was working at a car lot in Streator, he found a 96 LeSabre for me during a time that I was very busy at the agency.  I told him I’d be down to look at it when I could. 

When I didn’t call him back after a few days he offered to have his son Jason, who was working with his Dad at the car lot then, bring it up to Ottawa for me.  Jason came up after 5:00, I was still at the office, and came out to look at it. 

I got in the driver’s seat and Jason sat beside me.  I checked the mileage.  Just over 100,000.  Perfect.  The price of a used car drops like a stone after 100,000 miles, and well-made cars like Buicks can be driven for much longer.

“Does it have the big V-6 Jason?”

“Yep.  Three point eight.  They’re bulletproof.”

“That’s what your Dad says.”

It was clean.  Looked like someone had taken good care of it.

“Does you Dad know the owner?”

“Yeah.  Just sold him a new Buick.  Sold him this one new too.”

“One owner then.”

“Yep.  Always changed the oil.  Takes good care of his cars.”

“You know I really wanted leather seats.  Or at least vinyl.”

It had cloth upholstery.

“Dad told me that.  He said to tell you not to be that picky with a car this good.”

I paused.  Started it.  Revved it up.  Shut it off.

“What do you think?”

“I’ll take it.  When can I get it?”

“You can have it right now.”

“Really? How you getting back to Streator?”

“Guy I know at the car lot here in Ottawa is going to give me a ride back.”

“Just like that?  You were pretty sure I was going to buy this car then.”

“Well that’s the way you and Dad do it right?”

“Yeah it is.”

“Dad says to come down to Streator in the next couple days.  He’s got the paperwork going now.”

“I’m going to Springfield day after tomorrow.  Is that soon enough?  I can come in early.  What time does he start?”

“He’s the first one there.  Just tell him when.”

“You want the check?”

“No.  Give it to him when you see him.”

Everyone should be as lucky as to have a friend like Jerry.  I called him with car questions, he called me with social work questions.  He sponsored many people in AA and tried to find help for them.  We commiserated about the effects of substance abuse on families.  We talked about our kids and his grand kids.  He saw humor in situations that weren’t always funny.  Social workers love people with that quality.  Social workers can’t get enough humor.  Jerry seemed to know that.

For a while before the recession my agency took donations of used cars and gave them to low income clients.  I took every car anyone wanted to give us and immediately called Jerry for an evaluation.  He decided if and how much we needed to repair those cars to make them safe for people to drive.  Then he would find the lowest repair price, often leaning on the mechanics for a favor, or explaining why they ought to give us a deal.  We paid very little to make those cars whole.

We gave his sister’s car to a single mother with a bunch of kids that worked fast food.  She lived on the South Side of Ottawa and used to walk across the bridge to her restaurant job on the North Side.  We would tell each other when we saw that car around town filled with her and her kids.  I gave away that 96 LeSabre while it still had some miles left to a woman who had gotten her kids back after drug treatment.  We felt good about that one.  Heck, we felt good about all of them.

Once in a while Jerry would look at a donated car, declare it a beater, and tell me he was going to junk it out or “make it go away” as he said.  I always took his advice.  Some people you trust implicitly.

Jerry died of a heart attack this summer.  He was alone on his motorcycle on a nice day headed to a delayed Father’s Day celebration/Grandpa visit at his daughter’s house. Got his Harley off on the shoulder, laid it down, then laid beside it and passed away. 

Turns out that green 2006 Lucerne with the bulletproof V-6 is the last Buick Jerry will ever sell me.  And I’m just not ready to give it up. 

Dear Abby

 

I haven’t written a blog post for over a month.  My last entry was a comparison of coronavirus deaths to those killed in Vietnam.  It was written just after the number of Americans lost to the virus in six months were double those Americans killed during our country’s twenty-year armed conflict in Southeast Asia.  And now America is racing to triple that war’s deaths.  I expect that to occur sometime in October. 

Usually when you can’t or don’t write it is because you have nothing to say.  In my case, there is way too much. I have a long list of things - a piece on the Polio epidemic of 1951, current political protests versus those of the 60’s and 70’s, not to mention presidential politics or the struggle to figure out how to educate young minds without putting lives at risk. 

Then there are issues that fear about our own mortality has pushed off the table.  Drug overdose and suicide deaths, our shameful treatment of immigrants, the looming loss of constitutional rights and personal liberties.  I wish Dear Abby was still alive.  I’d write her a letter. 

Dear Abby,

I need help.  I’m afraid my country, the land I love, is turning into a fascist dictatorship.  What can I do?

(signed) Disillusioned Hippie

Abby was pretty straight forward.  I think her reply would be something like this.

Dear Disillusioned,

You may be a downcast old hippie, but if you are referring to the United States, which I think you are, your country is not lost.  Among the many nations of the world you are still among those who enjoy free and fair elections.  Here’s what you do.  Work tirelessly to convince friends, family, and your community to vote in the upcoming election.  Then go into the voting booth and cast your vote for those that respect the separation of powers your democracy is built on.

You remember that scheme.  You had to know it to pass your civics test.  It was dreamed up in the 1770’s.  It is all there in your constitution.  Three branches of government;  executive, legislative, and judicial, share equal power.  Your vote in November should be for not only a president who has not and will not usurp power, but also for senators, representatives, and judges who will do their jobs to create policy for the president to follow. 

In the USA nobody knows how you vote.  You and everyone who is registered to vote can do the right thing when marking your ballot, then say whatever you want to those who argue about politics after its over.  It is still a free country, as long as you exercise your right to vote, believe that it counts, and elect those who share your concerns and values.

Did you forget this?  You know, old hippies across the country are beginning to slip.  Have you taken a memory test lately?  Try to Remember these five words; Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.

Don’t despair.  Get busy instead.

(Signed) Abby

 

I’ve decided today that until I sort things out and get busy on the keyboard, I will share this Dave in the Shack space with a guest writer.

She is the young person from my church, Open Table, who was the catalyst for our vigil for social justice after the murder of George Floyd.  Her name is Corinne Francis and she is a fourteen-year old high school student.

I wish she could vote.  I think politically active young people like Corinne, hungry for social change, will have a real impact on this country.  I hope they realize it takes a lifetime of vigilance to keep this country moving towards its goal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

It’s a long haul.  Just when you think your country is moving down the right path you have to get all up in someone’s face and assert your rights all over again.  I hope she knows that.  I think she does.  And I hope when she is old like me they give activists of her generation a better label than “old hippies.”

Here’s how my fourteen-year old friend feels about the America she lives in now.

“I was never taught the story of John Lewis in school. I wasn’t formally taught about the Freedom Rides until eighth grade, yet by the age of eight I knew about how George Washington supposedly cut down a cherry tree. I knew that Roosevelt inspired what we know today as the teddy bear. I knew about how William Howard Taft got stuck in his own bathtub. All of which were stories old, rich, powerful, straight, cisgender white men. I was taught about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Both are incredible people with incredible stories. Both changed the world for the better and put their lives and safety on the line for it. However, they both were big names. Big, grown-up people doing big things.

But I never knew about the Boy from Troy. I never knew about the child who would preach to his chickens, whose first peaceful protest was refusing to eat one of his avian congregants when it was picked out for dinner. I was never taught that John Lewis started doing sit-ins as a student at the age of seventeen. I didn’t know about SNCC, Greyhound buses aflame at the hands of white supremacists, Bloody Sunday, or the protests for black voting rights.

I learned about John Lewis from a trilogy of comic books, called March.

I learned the truth. It wasn’t dumbed down, it wasn’t glorified, it wasn’t sugarcoated. It was bloody, it was violent. I was disgusted. I cried. There were some points where it just got to be too much for me. I had to put it down and come back to it later. Three years later, they’re among the best books I’ve ever read. John Lewis taught me to get in the way. He taught me, as a young farmer’s boy, as a seventeen- year old student sitting at a lunch counter, as the twenty-three year old speaker at the March on Washington, that you are never too young to stand up. Even after his death, he’s speaking to young people. We can redeem the soul of this nation. Even if we’re teenagers. Even if we live in a tiny town. Even if we feel a little helpless at times.

Maybe it’s time each of us got in a little good trouble.”

                -       Corinne Francis

 

Captivated by Numbers

We are seeing a lot of graphs these days.  Graphs portray numbers visually.  They represent facts and suggest trends.  With a graph you can see the measure of some slice of reality, what has happened and what is likely to happen next.  Graphs have become part of our language and our thoughts.   “Flattening the curve” means more today than it ever did.  When you talk of deaths caused by Coronavirus, flattening the curve means saving lives by reducing lives lost to the pandemic. 

Since March, I have been glued to the news.  I have not paid this much attention to media coverage of world events since the Vietnam War over fifty years ago.

While the war was far away in Southeast Asia the conflict affected me directly.  American men were dying in Vietnam.  I was fast approaching draft age, and at age 18 I would graduate into the highest risk category of all.  Young men my age were being forced into the military, sent to Vietnam, and killed.

Today’s threat to Americans threatens all humans on the globe.  Coronavirus does not discriminate between who it attacks, but the most at risk of dying from the virus are older people.  Ironically, at age 68, that puts me in the high-risk category again.

My kids remind me of that all the time.  They quiz my wife and I about our behavior and scold us if they think we are taking undue risk.  They worry about losing their mother and me to this disease.
      

As if fear and grief can be represented by numbers, human beings measure horrible threats by counting deaths.  Raw data, in this case the number of lives lost to the pandemic may act as a rough indicator of harm, but it fails miserably at representing the damage radiating from each soul ripped from us prematurely.

Needless death traumatizes families, caregivers, faith organizations, and whole communities with lasting effect.  Yet our data driven world persists in finding one number that matters most.  My most watched scorecard these days is the daily number of Coronavirus deaths in America.  They roll up like dollars on a TV charity telethon tote board, or numbers on the dials of old mechanical automobile odometers. 

   

Every time a writer (including me) puts up an aggregate number of deaths there should be a disclaimer that goes with it lest our humanity gets lost in the math.  Maybe this.

The reader is asked to remember that these numbers are made up of individual deaths.  Each by itself, one piled on top of another, represents a call to the deceased’s spouse, parents, extended family, friends, lovers, classmates, acquaintances.  Each death results in shock, grief, an obituary, funeral ceremonies if allowed, lifelong trauma, and a lessening of our humanity.  The effect of those deaths is not singular but exponential.

 

We now believe the first person died in America from Coronavirus on January 25, 2020.  At least that is when we started counting.  On April 28^th, 94 days later, 58,947 were dead from the Coronavirus. On that day, the pandemic in America eclipsed the 58,319 deaths we suffered in Vietnam.  Numerical fact.  That number has been tattooed somewhere in my brain for some time now.

On April 29^th, the very next day after the pandemic in America exceeded American deaths in Vietnam, Jared Kushner, the President’s son in law, said this to Fox News.

“This is a great success story, and I think that’s really what needs to be told.”

I am posting this on July 7, 2020.   As of yesterday, 132,573 Americans had died from the pandemic.  It continues and will continue to grow.  Our country has now lost more than twice the number of Americans killed in Vietnam and is, I’m afraid, on its way to tripling that awful number.  The curve has not flattened.  I don’t think “success story” will be among the words used to describe this time in America’s history.

Can we compare lives lost in a struggle with a rampant virus to deaths in a political armed conflict?  Let me give it a try.

The arc of American deaths in Vietnam occurred over twenty years.  The first American died as a result of the Vietnam conflict in 1955.  Injuries which caused the last death occurred in 1975.

“Flattening of the curve” was not a concept I recall discussing then.  We just wanted the war to end.  During five of those twenty years, 1966-1971, 47.5% of all the deaths over 20 years occurred.  That is a total of 27,717 American young people killed, primarily young men, up to 30% of them drafted.  Countless more enlisted to avoid the draft, trying desperately to take some control over their future.

 

It had better be damn important, whatever the event in question, to risk such an outcome, to suffer that amount of sheer human loss, don’t you think?

I did a little research and asked my son Dean, who is studying data science, to take the data I found and make a graph of Americans killed in action in Vietnam by month during those five years.  A graph like the ones we see so often today about the Coronavirus pandemic.  

 

We have for years touted that we strive to make decisions “based on data” while then continuing to do what is politically or economically expedient.  Data is supposedly considered, but too many decisions are still made based on intuition.  Hunches are played, like bets in a casino, with the most important of matters.  Life and death being one.

I think we were powerless to stop this virus entering our country, spreading through the population, and killing vulnerable people among us.  What was in our power was to minimize it through effective leadership, sound policy, and the wise use of resources.  What we had hoped to see, as time went on and we learned more about the virus, was deaths going down.  Flattening the curve would save lives.

 

We had a lot more control of the fate of our soldiers in Vietnam.  During the month of January 1966,

196 Americans were killed in Vietnam.  I was 14.  The American public would not see another monthly death total that low until I was 20, in October of 1971, nearly six years later.  How did America allow that to happen?  And why?

Between those two dates, monthly deaths rose steadily.  1967 began with 403 deaths in January and ended with 486 in December, with more Americans dying each successive month than the last. That steady monthly increase would continue until the worst monthly death toll of the war, April of 1969.

In April of 1969 I was three months away from graduating high school.  Early in May, we learned that 543 Americans were killed the previous month.  And then they began to drop, agonizingly slowly, finally falling below 200 (ironically to 196) in October 1971.  To see the rise and fall of Americans Killed in Action in Vietnam during the worst five years of the war (Jan. 1966-Dec. 1971) look at this.

 

America’s role in the Vietnam War started under Dwight Eisenhower in 1955, grew during John F. Kennedy’s almost three years as President, expanded and peaked during Lyndon Johnson’s five years, continued during Richard Nixon’s five and a half years, and finally ended under Gerald Ford on April 30, 1975. The graph above represents the worst five years for American deaths.

The President in office for the majority of those awful five years, and thus responsible for those deaths, was Lyndon Johnson.  He expanded the war, increased the draft, sent more American young men to Vietnam, began heavy aerial bombing campaigns, and trusted his generals and the Secretary of the Department of Defense, Robert MacNamara, when they assured him they were about to gain the upper hand in the conflict.  “Light at the end of the tunnel” was LBJ’s catchphrase.  As Johnson’s presidency went on, that light grew dimmer and dimmer.

So how was the curve flattened in Vietnam?  Americans, led by young people, protested the war and opposed Johnson and his Democratic administration.  The human price paid for success in Vietnam, always ill defined, finally became too high for Americans to accept.

    

Large and sustained protests took place across the country against the war and were coupled with relentless reporting by journalists on the reality of the situation in Vietnam and the decisions made by the Johnson Administration.  The real tragedy is not that America lost the war, but how long it took to bring it to an end.

Lyndon Johnson, facing likely defeat, announced he would not run for re-election as President.  At a bloody convention in Chicago where protestors, largely students, were beaten mercilessly the Democrats selected Hubert Humphrey as their candidate.  Republican Richard Nixon, claiming he had a “secret plan” to end the war, became President in January of 1969.

The Vietnam War continued throughout Nixon's presidency, which ended on August 9, 1974 when he was abandoned by the Republican party and resigned facing certain impeachment. His Vice President and successor, Gerald Ford signed a peace agreement and ordered U.S. troops out of Vietnam on May 7, 1975.

It took five years and two months for the war come to an end after Nixon was elected on the promise of bringing the troops home. During that time another 14,000+ Americans died in Vietnam.

The outcome of the war following America’s final withdrawal was the immediate reunification of Vietnam.  North Vietnam took over South Vietnam almost the day the United States left.  That result would likely have taken place regardless of when America decided to leave.  Why did we wait so long?

How many Americans died needlessly in Vietnam?  You can’t calculate a number.  But you can mourn their loss.

The number of Americans lost in Vietnam, 58,319, is a number I keep in my head.  When I walked into work the morning of September 11, 2001 and learned the World Trade Center’s twin towers were on fire, and soon to collapse, I asked my staff how many workers those office buildings held.

“Why are you thinking of that?” one asked.

“Because we lost 58,319 Americans in Vietnam.  If we lose more than that today it will be America’s worst tragedy ever.”

As it turned out 2,996 Americans died on that day.

In Korea, America's death count was 36,574.

I kept a running count, updated weekly, of Americans killed in the Iraq War on my office door at work.  Iraq was another conflict I believed unnecessary and misguided.  That number ended at 3,836.

America’s intervention in Afghanistan cost the lives of 2,372 military personnel and another 1,720 civilian contractors for a total of 4,092. 

The Vietnam War was America’s most deadly conflict since World War II, taking from us 58,319 Americans while accomplishing little if anything.

How many Americans will die needlessly during the Coronavirus pandemic from a lack of effective leadership, the absence of sound policy based on data and science, and the poor use of resources by our government?

You cannot calculate a number.  But you can mourn their loss.

And like America's reaction to lives lost in Vietnam, you can guarantee those responsible for these needless deaths pay a heavy political price for their ineptness.  

Keeping Vigil

I signed up online to take the 4:00-5:00 a.m. time slot at my church’s 24-hour vigil against racism because I’m up then anyway.  I have this moveable hour or so when I wake up, for no particular reason, and think about all kinds of things.  Sometimes it’s the worry hour, sometimes the planning hour.  Whatever it is I rarely get out of bed.  My goal is to get back to sleep if even for a little while.  Usually I succeed.  I thought I might as well be awake downtown than lying in a bed on Field’s Hill.

It’s pretty quiet downtown at 4:00 a.m.. After the transition from the family who began at 3:00, I checked in and reviewed the rules, which I always consider suggestions.  The organizers agreed to have an Open Table congregant there at all times, we were to direct and inform visitors how to handle bathroom use, call the cops if something went wrong, etc..  Everything was covered.  Although the event was put together quickly, we had over 120 people committed to keeping vigil with us, either in person downtown or virtually at home.  I had never participated in a protest quite this organized.  

I was at the opening ceremony held in the park across the street Monday June 8^th, and I would attend and play a part in the closing ceremony June 9^th, but it was that hour in the dark beginning at 4:00 which proved to be most meaningful.  I was personally moved and didn’t expect to be.

Ten minutes after arriving it was just me, and a quiet man sitting on one of the lawn chairs behind me who had been there since the vigil began.  It was me that asked, at an Open Table organizing meeting in preparation for the event, what one did when they kept vigil.  I learned from our pastor the event was intended to Acknowledge, Amplify, and Act to end racism in our country and beyond.  Our presence is our testimony.

You could pray, you could simply be silent, and you could respond to questions from visitors if asked.  There was chalk for creating art or leaving messages on the sidewalk.  There were candles those attending could light and leave on the steps of the church.  But the event was not about activity.  It was about presence.  It was about standing up and showing the community exactly where you stood.

Our church is on a busy street, Columbus Street in Ottawa, which is also Illinois Route 23, but it wasn’t very busy between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. Monday morning.  I stuck my rosary in my pocket before I left the house.  It seemed a perfect time to pray.

The rosary takes a while.  It always settles me down, getting through all the prayers, remembering which comes next.  The task of rote recital tends to push out the clutter in your mind, but it does not tax it so much that you can’t think of other things as you pray.

In the summer of 2018, I made a solo road trip in the Buick through Alabama on the Civil Rights Trail.   I came home and began to blog about the experience.  I wrote 13 posts in all, beginning on 3/29 and ending on 7/26/19.  They are still there if you scroll down far enough. 

Most of the writing summed up my times in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma where I followed the paths walked by the Civil Rights leaders Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, along with Governor George Wallace and Eugene “Bull” Connor who blocked their way.

By visiting historical sites and museums I learned vivid lessons of racism in America that took place when I was a kid on the farm.  Some of it I had watched on black and white television.  I stood in the park in Birmingham where dogs were set on children and protestors were knocked down by fire hoses and rolled down the sidewalk.  Racism in America is a long and extensive story.  None of it made it into my textbooks at school. I was amazed at what I discovered.  I knew the awfulness of it in a fashion, but it didn’t hit home till I saw it up close.    

I followed my observations on that trip with basic history and facts from Wikipedia and more in depth reading other various other internet sources.   The history of racism in America is all there, but its buried away from white America’s consciousness.  Personally, I don’t think white people want to know.  I wrote so many posts on racism because I wanted to shine the small light of Dave in the Shack onto the injustice I discovered as a 67-year old white American Yankee.  I found it hard to stop writing about it, but I did.  I lost readers steadily as the posts piled up. 

I moved on to other topics.  And then racism coupled with violence, as American as apple pie, slapped me in the face again with the murders of Amaud Arberry and George Floyd.  Now it seems impossible to move on.



While I prayed the rosary, I bowed my head and closed my eyes.  When I finished, I looked up at Washington park, the Ottawa main square directly across from Open Table church.  In the middle of the park are statues of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, and on a wall facing the park a mural of them debating.  They commemorate the first Lincoln Douglas debate held in the park on August 21, 1858.

The big issue of the debate was the question of extending the right to own slaves to the western states about to be formed.  Lincoln, a Republican, was solidly against the proposition, representing the views of many who called themselves abolitionists, proponents of the abolition of slavery.  Douglas was a Democrat who was opposed to the federal government making that decision.  He favored states be autonomous and free to make their own decision on slavery.  He feared abolishing slavery, or even preventing its expansion, would lead to civil war.  The issue was the morality of slavery, the ultimate subjugation of black people, and the country was divided.

Lincoln and Douglas were vying to be elected to Congress as senator from Illinois.  Lincoln lost his bid for the Senate, but became a national figure by representing those who favored the eventual abolition of slavery.  He was elected President in November of 1860, and took office in March of 1861.

Eleven states seceded from the union almost immediately after Lincoln took office.  America’s Civil War began in April with the siege of Ft. Sumpter.  Lincoln eventually presided over the Union Army’s victory when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox on May 9, 1865.  He was assassinated 37 days later on April 15^th of that same year, at age 54, not quite seven years after speaking out in the park I was gazing at in the middle of the night.  He was both elected president and assassinated for putting his belief that slavery was wrong into action.  

The church behind me, Open Table, was established as a Congregational church in 1840.  Congregationalists in the mid 1800’s predominately favored the abolition of slavery, though each congregation was autonomous and fiercely independent. Owen Lovejoy of nearby Princeton, a Congregational minister in that community, was a prominent abolitionist in Illinois and a friend and early supporter of Lincoln and the Republican party.   No doubt he was across the street listening to that debate.  The history of the struggle for black equality has deep roots in America.  I felt as if I was still standing in the middle of it. 

The Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the civil war did not achieve equality for black people, nor did the 13^th ,  14^th , or 15^th amendments to the constitution, the Federal Reconstruction Act following the Civil War, or the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1875, 1957, 1960, 1964, or the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Legislation hasn’t created black equality because discrimination based on color is baked into the very fiber of America. It is systemic and pervasive.  Racism is rooted in our hearts.  At least it has been.   

The vigil I participated in was conceived and carried out by a 14-year old member of our church.  She felt she, and we, had to do something.  We supported her. That is how we will reach true racial equality in our country.  Young people, both black and white, will demand it.  And I believe they, along with awakened Americans of all ages, will accomplish it.  Young people and their unabashed rejection of discrimination against the LGBTQ community led us to embrace the federal approval of gay marriage.  I think they will succeed in defeating systemic racism where other generations have failed. 

As I looked into the park I considered the many lifetimes devoted to bringing racial equality to America, from Harriet Tubman to Abraham Lincoln, from Martin Luther King to Ta-Nihisi Coates, each with an intense desire to affect change, but frustrated when it was not achieved.  Then a bird began to sing.

Birds don’t know the time, but they sense the coming of the dawn.  And when their day begins, they celebrate with song.  I’m not often outside when the birds begin to sing.  Sometimes I’m awake in the house and hear their songs faintly.  But usually I don’t notice, or I’m asleep.  Standing across from the quiet of the trees in Washington Park, more birds joined in and their song formed an early morning choir. 

When I was young, I would occasionally stay up all night.  Those were typically good nights, so good I lost track of time.  When the birds sang, I was surprised.  My thoughts often ran along the lines of “oh no, I have to be at work in three hours.”

Now that I'm older and for the most part much more sober, I find the sound of the birds a blessing.  I think you and I, led by the good young people of America, are on the brink of a new day.  Listen for it, be supportive, don't lose hope, and for God's sake don't sleep through it.  It is going to take all of us to make this happen.

Digging Thistles

I was fortunate to be given space on an organic farm to plant a row of vegetables.   The farm is six miles from my driveway.  It has buffer zones separating it from the flat Illinois corn and bean ground around it.  One of the big crops on the organic farm this year is sunflowers.  That stand of flowers is going to be beautiful. 

The plot where my row is planted is part of a large garden that I would call a truck patch.  Big garden with rows of all kinds of vegetables.  I would show you a picture, but my row is embarrassingly crooked.  Next year I’ll use a string. 

I have forty plants.  Four kale (two Red Russian, two long leaf), twelve tomatoes (plums and slicers), and twenty-four peppers (serrano, habanero, cayenne, poblano, Thai hots, various others).  They are in full sun.  My hosts supply saved rainwater for watering from tanks connected to the gutters of their big metal shed.  A long hose stretches to all parts of the garden.  It is a great system.  We’ve had lots of May rain, so the tanks are fairly full. 

As an organic farm, there are of course no herbicides, pesticides, or chemicals of any kind.  The ground is enriched by pelletized chicken manure from an organic chicken operation.  I like the concept, but when you are up close to an organic plot you quickly see the difference between the neighbor’s corn and bean fields.  Weeds.

Modern herbicides do a frighteningly thorough job of eradicating weeds.  Weeds were a fact of life on the farm I grew up on.  There were all kinds of weeds we knew by name and fought annually; butter print, ragweed, giant ragweed, lambs quarter, foxtail, pig weeds, thorny pig weeds, jimson weed, goose grass, bull nettles, horse weeds.  The list goes on and on. 

At some point in the sixties my Dad bought a sprayer, actually just a cart for two fifty-gallon drums with booms and small sprayer heads.  He was never comfortable mixing and handling the cans of expensive liquid weed killers.  He mowed weeds before they went to seed, and cut them from the beans with weed hooks, but what he liked best was digging them up by the roots.  Especially the thistles. 

Canada thistles could grow to be the size of small Christmas trees.  At the very top where a star would go a purple seed pod formed.  If and when it opened the seed would scatter in the wind.  I always thought of that line from the Christmas poem “and away they all flew, like the down on a thistle.”

Canada thistles were the bane of my Dad’s existence.  Well, that may be a little dramatic, but he hated them.  I don’t think he ever blamed the Canadians, but he was always on the lookout for fields where farmers let them go to seed.  He believed there should be a special place in hell for those farmers, and he was determined not to be one of them.

And so, on our farm we dug thistles.  It was a job always waiting when it seemed there was nothing else to do.  Dad taught me how to dig thistles in great detail, telling me about the plant..  He studied things like that.  He was most intent on getting thistles out of the pastures.  They could be easily seen there.  And Dad would never use chemicals where the cows ate grass.  It had to be done the old-fashioned way.

Some part of weed control was related to what the neighbors thought.  Yes, weeds rob crops of nutrients from the soil and its true they sometimes shade crops from the sun, but they are also a blemish on a farmer’s reputation.  Dad wasn’t having it.  Especially when it came to those damned Canada thistles. 

We strode out to the pasture, each with a spade, and approached an invading thistle.  Dad began explaining his personal technique for combatting thistles. 

“You gotta think of thistles like icebergs.  The most dangerous part of them is below the surface.  That’s why we dig them instead of cut them.  Cutting thistles only sets them back for a while.  Digging them gives you a chance to kill them off for good.  It’s the roots.  All about the roots.”

He jammed his spade up close to the base of the thistle and drove it deep in the ground with his boot.

“Good to dig thistles after a rain.  The ground is softer.  They come up easier.”

He pried down on the spade handle, using it like a lever to lift the thistle up.

“Watch that dirt around this thistle.  If the dirt begins to lift and the thistle stays put, like this, you’re not deep enough.  You want to get under it.”

He pulled the spade out and reset it on the other side of the thistle, this time jamming the blade in deeper.  He pried it up again.

“OK, see how I’ve got the whole thing coming up?  That’s what you’re looking for.  On a big thistle you many have to use your spade all the way around it to get it to lift.  But that’s what we want.  The goal is getting the root out without snapping it off.”

He pried some more and then lifted the thistle up and out with a big dirt ball around the root.

“Look at this.”

He hit the dirt ball with his spade revealing a long white tap root with smaller roots and tiny white root hairs branching off.

He knocked the dirt off the root completely and scraped it back into the hole where the thistle once stood.

“Leave it out in the sun to dry out and die.  If you dig it out and leave it lie there with the dirt on the root it will re-root itself.  Especially if it rains.  I’ve seen it happen.  It sends down roots, curves its head up toward the sun, keeps on growing like nothing happened.  There’s a reason there are so many of them.  They’re damn tough.”

“But if we dig ‘em out good we get rid of them, right?”

“Well, we knock them back considerably.”

He didn’t want to tell me he’d been digging thistles his whole life.  Canada thistles are a weed you can control to some degree.  But without chemicals you can’t defeat them.  It is impossible for every root hair to come up out of the ground when a thistle is dug.  And then there’s the problem of those downy seeds.

“So, we’re going to have to do this again next year?”

“Yeah, most likely.”

That realization dampened my enthusiasm for thistle digging considerably.  It was hot out there.  Digging, stooping, slapping the dirt off those roots was hard work.  And monotonous.  I looked across the pasture at the job before us.  There were potentially days and days of thistle digging ahead. To make things worse, that first day turned out to be a teaching day for Dad, a learning day for me, and the last day Dad helped me dig thistles.   From there on out it was just me. 



That’s what I’ve been thinking about since the day I put my plants in the ground on the organic farm.  There’s a lot of thistles out there.  After that first day I put a spade in the trunk of the Buick, along with a hoe.  There used to be golf clubs there.

I went after the big thistles first.  They were on the edge of the plot where the ground had not been tilled.  They had long roots, probably from being mowed rather than dug.  It was hard to stop.  I wasn’t sure how long it would be before they went to seed, but I wanted to get ahead of them.

I’ve been going out every morning.  I say I’m going out to check on my plants, but to be honest I go out for my sanity in equal measure.   Most days it is the only place I go.  I haven’t put gas in the Buick for three weeks.  I water, prop up plants that are leaning, pick blossoms off the tomatoes and peppers.  It’s too early to make fruit, I want big healthy plants first.

When I am satisfied my plants are in good shape, I turn my attention to the thistles.  As my plants grow, benefitting from the sun and the rain, so do the thistles.  I’m getting tiny thistle sprouts in my row.  I’m nipping those bastards in the bud.  I attack them just like they were big, get way under them, pry them out, break the dirt off from around and inspect the root to see if I got all of it.  Sometimes I dig deeper trying to find and destroy pieces of root I might have missed.  It’s a little obsessive I agree.  But it feels good.

When I’m done, or tired, I sit on the edge of the trunk with the lid up, have a cup of coffee from my thermos, and look around.  I listen too.  There’s a lot of birds out there, especially in the buffer zones.  I check out the conventional farmers around me.  Sometimes I finish the crossword puzzle.  I try to keep my phone in my pocket.  It’s a nice part of the day.

I last dug thistles fifty years ago.  Dad, if he were alive, would be 111.  Yet sometimes when I’m out on that farm it feels like he’s with me still.