Explaining the Unexplainable.

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. The lovely Miss Beverly and I are newly returned from a wonderful vacation in the Seattle area. We took the occasion of our Nephew’s graduation to spend a few days looking at Seattle and its environs. It is a beautiful place. It appears that they sent all of their rain to the Midwest so things were quite dry during our visit. One thing that weighed heavily on my mind was all of those mountains. We went east on I90 into some mountains. I just kept thinking that these mountains want to crush me. My people held deep foreboding that nature was out to kill us. We were thankful to get out of the Smokey Mountains and just decided that the flat side of Indiana would suit us just fine. It appears that those irrational fears still brood in the ancient part of my brain.

 One of the side trips took us to the island of San Juan. While there, I got a powerful sunburn after I fell asleep on the beach while watching for Orca’s to appear before my camera. Note to reader: watching for Orcas can be powerfully boring but the resulting nap can be quite blissful. Just remember the sun screen.

While visiting the San Juan Island, we found that it was the site of the Pig War. It wasn’t actually a war so much as a kerfuffle. It stemmed mostly from a bunch of diplomats saying close enough during the negotiations over lines drawn in the waters between a bunch of arid islands and British Columbia. They left the details to the devils on the ground. It appears that one of the British Governments lackeys did not believe in the old adage about fences and neighbors. So he let his pigs roam around San Juan Island and said pig was turned into bacon when he dug up one too many of an American farmer’s potatoes. One thing led to another and we sent 66 solders under the command of General Picket to tell the British to stay off our island.

This happened in 1857. San Juan Island is a dry piece of dirt on the backside of nowhere. It is dry because of atmospheric affects caused by mountains and ocean storms interacting to cause a rain shadow. They receive approximately 19 inches of rain a year. For comparison, we have received 19 inches the past 19 days. Anyway; it was decided that these potatoes and that potato scarfing pig were something to fight over.

Almost: the powers that be decided to send George Picket from Virginia to San Juan Island to protect our potato growing honor. No shots were fired. Cooler head prevailed and we got to keep the island. It struck me as surreal though. George Picket went from Virginia to Oregon. He did not fly. I cannot imagine. I suppose that he was the closest general stationed in the Oregon territory so he didn’t have to make the trip all at once. Still can you imagine being that far away from home to fight over a pig? I cannot.

Can you imagine that six years later he was being tasked to have his troops march across Pennsylvania pasture land to certain slaughter at Gettysburg? It is good that we are not omnipresent or omniscient. It would be too much some days.

While I was out in the great Northwest contemplating these great existential thoughts, the world was going crazy. I thought that the editors at the Onion had hi-jacked my mainstream news feed. By the end of the week, I was sure that the world had gone crazy.

Here is a rundown of the news highlights. The white woman who identified as black until her parents outed as being white. An elephant escaped from a circus in Germany and attacked and killed an elderly man who was out for an early morning walk in the pre-dawn hours. The nudist hikers in Malaysia who caused an earthquake because they exposed themselves on a holy mountain.

And finally, the Russian man who expects to have his head transplanted on a “donor body” within the next two years. Come on now. You have to be pulling my leg. Actually, the lovely Miss Beverly has assured me that the head transplant has been proven to be a hoax.  That sure is a buzz kill. I was kind of hoping that it was possible. Just put my noggin on top of a 7 footer’s body and viola I have my NBA contract. Talk about your identity issues. Bruce could have become Caitlyn without all of the muss and fuss of hormone treatment. In fact, if you were to find the right person you could have a two for one swap. Just like a Mr./Mrs. Potato head.

Such a breakthrough would answer so many questions. Where does the soul reside? Nature or Nurture. I learned it. I was born that way. You go Mr. Russian Dr. Frankenstein.

Speaking on answering the great spiritual questions of our time. What were you naked people thinking taking your clothes off in front of the Great Spirit Mountain? I know you weren’t thinking. You had walked a good long distance with people of the opposite sex in a foreign land. The opposites were reasonable attractive and being millennials, used to starring at your own belly buttons considering said bellybutton’s proximity to the center of the universe, you figured what the heck. I don’t want to be all repressed. What can getting naked hurt right?

I get it. While in Seattle, the lovely Miss Beverly and I hiked up a really big hill to see a beautiful Alpine lake. The setting was beautiful. I do not believe that I have ever seen water as crystal clear.

The sun was shining. The day was calm. We were sitting there communing with nature and several millennial coeds come traipsing down the trail. Confronted with such beauty one blurted out “which one of us are going skinny dipping first?” Luckily, there was a reasonably attractive young man nearby to assure said coed that he could happily provide moral support. Unfortunately, creepy 52 year old man was standing at the shore. I suppose that is the best reason for we middle aged people to stay active. Getting up off the couch maybe the only thing standing between us and violent mountain spirit cataclysms.

I do have a bone to pick with the great mountain spirit. Why don’t you get all exercised when hundreds of thousands of people come to your shores to participate in the sex trade? There are thousands of trafficking victims who could use some righteous indignation that registered on a Richter scale.

Speaking of the earth shaking, how would you like to be the 70 year old guy out for a pre-dawn morning constitutional? Suddenly, you feel the earth start to shake as a full grown fugitive elephant comes around the corner and takes “aggressive action against” you. That is what the authorities were trying to figure out. Why did the elephant take “aggressive action against the man?” That and how did it escape?

Aren’t the two intertwined? Obviously, the man had been a lover of circuses when a young child, but he was a mean and nasty little child. He had heard that elephants were deathly afraid of mice. So he went to the circus with a mouse in his pocket. When his parents and the elephant trainers weren’t watching, he would take the mouse out of his pocket and taunt Babar mercilessly. The elephant was a young elephant at the time and could not escape his bonds at the time.

However, elephants have tremendous memories and the ability to gauge the changes in human voices and appearance that attend the aging process. Now 60 years later, he is big and strong and  he sees Fritz. Sees the sneer on Fritz’s face as he recalls the diabolical fun that he had tormenting Babar in his youth. Babar remembers. Overhears, Fritz say to his grandson, “Let’s go home. It’s late. I need to get up early for my neighborhood watch shift over on Maple Street.” When his grandson throws a fit, Fritz promises that they will bring a mouse tomorrow night and they can have fun “teasing that big brute.”

Babar calmed down and made his plans. I think that you can fill in the rest of the story from there.

That is why I am here: to help make sense of a weird and whacky world. I hope that I have simplified the complex.

“But wait Roger. You haven’t explained the white woman who thought she was black until her white parents outed her.”

I am sorry. You can’t explain crazy.

Take care.

Roger

30 years ago?

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine, thank you very much. The lovely Miss Beverly

and I are on the cusp of our 30^th wedding anniversary. Very cool. Yes, 30 years ago tonight we were in the basement of the 1^st Brethren Church of North Manchester looking at coveted slides of younger versions of Roger and the lovely Miss Beverly; eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. At the time I was wondering, why my mom was making such a big deal over eating Original Recipe in the basement. I was wondering, why the red checked table cloths, the candles, the family photos on the tables. My mom was a pioneer in wedding décor overkill—she really would have loved Pinterest. This was all just too much hassle. I thought, “Just get me through the next 20 hours or so.”  

30 years ago we were stopping by the farm where my soon to be brother in law, Mike was volunteering his sleep time to stay up with the roasting pig to marinate and turn it until it was done.

Maybe when you read this; 30 years ago Bev and I would have been stopping by the park amazed at all of the work that the friends were going through for this hog roast/square dance/reception in the park. The McDonald’s orange drink machine was set up. The roast pig was coming through the door; the outside crisp and juices oozing through the cracks, the smell heavenly. Or maybe the cake was being delivered, anticipation growing over whether there would be cake smashing or kindness at the cutting time. Over there, under a tree, you may have seen a freshly cleaned horse tank half full of ice water and 100 watermelons because that is what $100 would buy you when your dad gave you a $100 bill and told you to go to the wholesale vegetable depot and buy some watermelons in 1985.

Maybe at the time you read this, 30 years ago, I would have been sitting on the church steps waiting to get changed into the tux, talking to my Uncle Stanley on said church steps, or listening through an open window to the bridesmaids laughing while getting dressed in the side room to the sanctuary. The day would have been warming up, getting hot for an early June wedding, decisions being made way above my pay grade to keep the sanctuary closed up tight until just before the ceremony to “keep the morning cool in and then open the windows right before the ceremony to let the little breeze there was in to keep us as cool as possible.”

Thirty years before your reading of these words, my best man, Craig Huss (Hip-pie) and I would have found the masking tape to spell out HE  LP on my left and right shoe soles to be revealed when I knelt down to wash the lovely Miss Beverly’s feet during the foot washing ceremony; a ceremony that was scandalous for my side, (Grandma Nannie was rumored to have whispered, “didn’t she wash her feet before the wedding?”) and perfectly normal for the 1^st Brethren cultists, who practice foot washing at holy communion.

In other breaks of tradition, I would have been getting my first sight of the Lovely Miss Beverly carrying a bouquet with daisies, and more daisies in her hair for pictures before the ceremony. And her seeing me in my tux with yellow tie and yellow cummerbund; ridiculous in hindsight, but hey, we looked smoking back then. We were bound and determined to get the pictures out of the way before the wedding because there was pig and watermelon to eat in the park and squares to dance in the shelter.

At the time of your reading, thirty years earlier, the lovely Miss Beverly would have been walking down the aisle. Roger Callahan, our campus minister, would have already taken the handkerchief out of his breast pocket to dab at his brow. Jim Miller, the lovely Miss Beverly’s youth camp minister would have been cool at the side.

Maybe your 30 year flashback would have been Roger saying that he paused when he heard that we wanted our wedding scripture to come from a lamenting prophet; Jeremiah; all doom and gloom Jeremiah. How do you craft a wedding message from a lamenting prophet? But He had a plan for us, a plan to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future. And after describing a lot of bad stuff, “therefore build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” Then Roger read to us a small excerpt describing marriage as a lifelong conversation, knowing the other person is there even in the silence; until one day, the silence signals an end. There were the vows about purified gold through fire. There was the small town noon fire siren going off during the lovely Miss Beverly’s memorized vows that she never remembers hearing. There was the kneeling for foot washing, the small titters for those who could see my shoes, and suddenly we were husband and wife.

If you read this around 2:00, we would have been standing on a side walk under a big shade tree receiving hugs, well wishes and firm handshakes from loved one from near and far. There we are in the back of Hip-pie’s convertible Chrysler Lebaron, top down, and riding on the backseat back rest to the park like it was the 500 parade.

How could 300 people eat that big of a pig that fast? There was the uncomfortable explanation to my Grandmother and Great Aunts that we would not be opening the presents at the reception. There was too much eating and celebrating to do. Plus we had to square dance. I can still see three very sour expressions in a row right in front of the gift table. Bev and I still chuckle when we use the phrase “the judge’s stand”. Maybe you remember seeing them smile at the dancers.

By now 30 years ago, the rest of the afternoon was a blur. There is dancing, refilling friend’s glasses with beverage, more pictures, a little angst between my dad and cousin about who was going to drive 2 hours home for the evening milking and how late that milking was going to get done (dairy farmers). Three hundred people can eat an entire pig in about 30 minutes flat. Its remains looked like a skeleton pulled from the Amazon during piranha season. However, they can’t eat one third of a watermelon apiece. What was I thinking? But they can take them home with them so maybe you remember one rolling around in your back seat on the way home.

The shadow’s getting longer, changing out of wedding clothes, walking over to the green Camaro, finding the “honeymoon night survival package” from the Faulkners, and driving off to a small apartment in West Lafayette, suddenly married.

All of that 30 years ago. Or was it yesterday.

Take care.

Roger.