Livin' Small

I’ve sat and wondered what is happening to the world today. Of course I started googling my thoughts in short phrases to see if I can capture an inkling of what I’m feeling. I came to something I’ll have to hash out a bit here.

You’ll have to read Lamentations 3. The whole chapter will require deep meditation. I would dare say as you read you will see today’s world flash before your eyes.

Let me see if I can explain something here. God’s judgment is not subject to His execution. Think about it. The laws and principles of the Bible never once really condemned a man. Condemnation comes from man’s breach of the laws and principles of God. God set forth His ways and they are immutable. They can’t be changed. Any deviation from them creates chaos and anarchy.

Take gravity for instance. It’s a law created by God. We are pulled to the earth. It weighs objects according to its density and thereby the object can either be lifted or moved accordingly.

Say you want to fly. You want to fly without the assistance of devices. You just want to fly. What judgment do you get if you stand on a cliff and jump? You will suffer the consequences of gravity. God didn’t pass judgment on you and make you jump. You jumped because your mind was set to think wrongly about the effects that would come with jumping and now on the way down reality sets in that death is your judgment if the cliff is a very high one.

God warned his people of the judgment of breaching His law. He didn’t make anyone do anything. If people listened to God they would not suffer from the consequences of disobedience. All sin is based on man’s disobedience. Not God’s wrath. His wrath comes from the consequences of the breach of His law, which He warned us about. He wants us to live in a harmonious life free from chaos and anarchy. If we agree to that there is no threat of His wrath. Simple enough.

Now. The conversation Libby and I had was concerning today’s world issues. May I delineate something here first. The world is defined as an order and arrangement of life people live in, such as governments. The earth is the planet upon which we live. I’ve heard people mix these two terms up alluding to one as the other. In the Bible it is said this world will pass away. It’s saying that this world’s governments will become null and void in the judgment time of God, but the earth shall remain. My comment to Libby about today’s world was this. Chaos and anarchy is fast becoming the thing of the day. People are becoming more emboldened to allow themselves to speak evil of others to the point that violence against another is becoming more prevalent.

With this in mind I have concluded this summation.  The situation we have today is going to inevitably implode on its self. Evil cannot grow and subsist in itself. Evil is a negative influence and cannot reproduce on its own nor ever will. We watch evil seemingly expand in its nature, but it can’t grow but just so much on its own momentum. Just like the tyrannical leaders of history who fell from within, all this we see today will fall likewise. Those of us who follow Gods promise will watch from the side as they die from their own derision. Then we that are left can rebuild and see the new heaven and new earth come to being. Matthew 24:38-41.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said white people don’t understand what it’s like to be poor and live in the ghetto, in response to a question about the candidates’ racial blind spots.  – Huffington Post.

Fact: Most poor people in the United States are white.

According to Census figures in 2013, 18.9 million whites are poor. That’s 8 million more poor white people than poor black people, and more than 5 million more than those who identify as Latino. A majority of those benefiting from programs like food stamps and Medicaid are white, too. – The Root.

The racial privilege status of white trash makes them unattractive to the media because being penurious and pale-skinned is not respectable. While poor minorities are viewed with dignity and sympathy (as they should be), the same doesn’t apply to Caucasians. The white working class is, as Baptist minister Will Campbell put it, “the last, the only minority left that is fair game for ethnic slurs from people who would consider themselves good liberals.” Since the Progressive Era, the U.S. government has made it a goal to forcefully equalize society between races, classes, income scales, and gender. But to Campbell, “poor whites have seen government try to make peace between various warring factions but they have not been brought to the bargaining table.”

The result is pockets of despair in many parts of the country, most predominantly the South. And while it’s true that poor whites have always existed in America, the callous disregard for their difficulty we see by blue bloods in the Acela corridor is new. People like Kim Konzny have been stripped of dignity and left to fend for themselves without the assistance of the media or Washington elites. Unlike impoverished blacks who hold tight to faith and community, they are without an honorable sense of identity. If they cling to the Bible, they are seen as brainless, flat-earth bumpkins. If they somehow succeed in getting out of the trailer, they are demonized and told they’ve earned nothing because of “white privilege.” If they try to stick with their own kind, they are called neo-segregationists.

It’s a lose-lose for poverty-stricken whites searching for solidarity. So instead they anchor their life to cigarettes and booze. They are taught to hate themselves, to think that life in a dirty, dented trailer is all they should expect, and to not have a stake in their future because the rest of the country doesn’t want them. – from an article by Rod Dreher in the American Conservative.

So. I’ve posted parts of article from both the left and the right.

But, let’s look at it from where I came from.

I was born to a poor dirt farmer. Jimmy Rowe subsisted on a 63 acre piece of land of which about only 15 acres was farming land. His dad Colie had probably the same ration of total acreage and farm land. My uncle next to us had less than that. My mom’s dad was a preacher. He didn’t own land. He was given a place to live most of the time and moved often.

I didn’t see running water from a pipe unless I went to town and on a regular basis till I started school. I didn’t live in a house with running water till I was ten years old. That’s right. No bathroom. We had an outhouse and a johnny pot for the cold nights of winter when we dared sit on its cold rim in the back room by the back door. There was no privacy. Dad had enough ingenuity to drive a pipe down through the kitchen floor next to the wall for a shallow well and built a cabinet around it and put a hand pump on it. We kept a quart jar of water on the counter to prime the pump so we didn’t have to go to the well like my grandmother did on my mother’s side.

This woman was a hard working woman who raised seven children and lost another to an accident with a horse. She did things that most people likely wouldn’t do today. Living a simple life with little or no money, because preachers didn’t make the big bucks you see being pulled down by the mega ministries today.

My granddad was a simple preacher who knew what it was to do the Will of God. He wasn’t in it for the money and I don’t think most honest preachers are.

I heard talk of how he would spend his own money on gas to go a long distance to preach and get only enough of an offering to maybe get him back home. He never complained that I knew of in the open. It wasn’t something to talk about.

The house I grew up in was a two bedroom with kitchen, living room and a back room that led out the back door. Washing was done in a tub washer with a wringer that I can tell you about from personal experience. It’s pretty rough on tiny five year old hands. I got my fingers caught in it and by the time my mom got it stopped it had almost eaten my arm up to my elbow.   I was skinned up pretty bad. But we couldn’t afford a doctor so we doctored it up with mecuricrome, gauze and tape.   My brother caught his thumb in the car door one time and instead of waiting for mom to open the door back up he jerked his finger out and pulled the end of his tiny thumb almost completely off. What did we do for medical care? Washed it off and stuck the end of his thumb back on, wrapped it up in gauze and antiseptic and believe it or not it had enough attached to grow back on. Now a days if a kid so much as sniffles we’re off to the ER.

In the sixities my dad branched out and leased farm land to increase his income on tobacco. What did it get him? A trip to the hospital from exhaustion and some of those summers drowned crops from too much rain or scorched dried crops from the lack of rain. But he did perservere and built us a house with running water and a fuel heater instead of the wood burning stove we used in the old house to heat all of it.

I woke up many mornings in that old house during those cold winter mornings with my eyes glued shut from the oozing goo that came from my eyes in the cold. I almost went deaf from a mastoid infection, but thanks to my mom she saw to it come hell or high water I went to a specialist and got my ear drums punctured to drain the infection. We didn’t have tubes back then. I don’t know how it got paid.

My brother Danny was born with a cleft palate. He had no roof in his mouth. Thanks to our local doctor we got into a study at Duke and they took him in as a subject for experimental surgery to repair his mouth for free if we agreed to allow them to use his progress with the medical community. Elsewise he would have been a young boy that was bullied and picked on probably on through his entire life. He couldn’t talk otherwise.

This picture is one of my granddad and his family. My dad is the young man to his right with his two sisters to his left. Grandmother here is wearing her typical gardening hat. The picture was in their “money crop”, tobacco.

It was the once a year thing at the market when we had money to spend. Most of the year it wasn’t much of a time you could have a dime to spend. Budgeting was something of a laughable word. There was nothing to budget. We lived on the tobacco money to pay up the bills that were created during the off season. The rest of the year was hog killings for meat, deer hunting for more meat. Gardening was a major effort to have vegetables to can. Freezing food? Are you kidding? If it couldn’t be cured, stuck in a salt barrel or dried in a smoke house we didn’t have meat. The only fresh meat would have been at the time the hog or deer was killed for we could spare a chicken from the coop. Vegetables were put in quart jars. Beans, beets, peas and anything else that could be put in a jar and sealed up for later was done with care. Grandmother milked the cow and made butter from the fat skimmed off the milk. I watched her many times making butter. She had a mold that she would pour the butter in that had a flower carved in the inside so that when it hardened and you pulled the cup off of it there would be that little flower on top. Oh, by this time we had a Fridgedaire. My grandmother had also traded in her wood burning stove for a gas burning one.

You wonder about grandmother and granddaddy’s home?

This is what my dad’s family grew up in. It was still being lived in at the time of this picture. It had a big bedroom that the sisters slept in, granddaddy and grandmother slept in a small room and dad’s room was a built on barely big enough to put a bed. It was heated by a wood stove, but it did have afterthought power. That means it didn’t come built for electricity. It was added in when power became available. The drop line from the pole looked more like an extension cord than a full fledge power line like we see today.

But you know. There I am squating down in the yard with a great big grin, not knowing what poor meant. White privilege was not a consideration. It was called pulling up your boot straps and getting on with life.

I’m so tired of sniveling people today complaining about somebody having it better than them. We grew up knowing where we were and if we wanted better we went out and worked for it. We didn’t ask for hand-outs.

You want to know something? Back then there were Corvettes. They were for what we called rich people. I saw my first one when I was about twelve or thirteen. I fell in love with the car. I knew then I could only dream about it. Now, this is only for example. You want something back enough. Create a dream. Live that dream. Make that dream something you consider a goal. Feel it.

Finally at the age of 56 years old, I finally saw that dream become a reality. I never lost the dream. Through my walk with God first and foremost, a failed marriage, loss of faith, rekindling of faith and now a wife I can walk hand in hand with who loves to be close to me and touch me and call me her own and not tell people she married me because she felt sorry for me.

White privilege. There may be such a thing for someone, but not most Americans. There are a multitude of Americans out there within our borders that still suffer from poverty. Bernie Sanders, you’ll go to hell for that statement. I do understand my place. I earned it. It wasn’t given to me. I came from poverty and I know what it is. It’s detestable, yet at the same time I didn’t know I was poor. I still had a smile on my face as a young child, because that’s all I knew. When I grew up and had my own children I worked long hard hours to see that they didn’t have to live like I did. Privilege? No. What we have was earned. Bernie Sanders, what you want to do is falsely reward people with something that’s mine that they never earned nor learned the value of.

I always wanted to write things that would speak to people in a positive way, but I’ve found over the years it doesn’t always work out that way.

Seems people have this thing between my written or spoken words that reinterprets what I write or say.  It’s like their little translator like they wore on Star Trek was on the wrong frequency.

I’ll admit that I can write controversial subjects, but it’s all me.  My “discretion” button gets turned off.  I’m reaching the age of the curmudgeon I suppose.

Today was a day of reflection.  I’ve not felt well and it has brought me to a down-time day.  Time to rest and think.

First and foremost, I must assure my connection to God.  That statement alone can raise eyebrows on the unbelieving folks.  I’m quite sure there is a higher power to help people like me to fjord the rushing streams of life that keep us from crossing to the other side of situations and put them to rest.

I’m solid in my relationship with Libby Lewis Rowe.  I know every light spot and dark corner of her life as she does with me.  I am totally satisfied with her.  I know her baggage and what’s in it.  She knows mine and unfortunately we find occasion to open one another’s bags and find ourselves dealing with it, but we also know how to put that stuff back in the bags and put them away.

I’ve seen her niece, who looks strikingly like Libby.  I see pictures of her and her new beau and can’t help seeing the stark likenesses between us four.  I only hope she and her beau can continue to grow as Libby and I have been able to.

Libby’s daughter seems to have found the one man who creates an impression on her that has kept soundly making impressive comments.  He appears to be a man of character and knows her needs.

I only wish my sons could be open enough with me to understand I don’t mean them harm or division.  One speaks to me in guarded ways that won’t allow me to fully enjoy his company.  The other doesn’t speak to me at all.  It’s been over seven years.

It makes me sad.

I have to say this year has had life altering changes.  First I sacrificed the opportunity to retire this year because of things I heard God say to Libby and me when leaving River Of Life one Sunday morning in June.  The effects of what WE heard brought about two things.  I had to bow to judgments in my divorce decree to do what was necessary to bring about the fulfillment of the latter, that being once the former was completed Libby and I were able to get married.

Getting married was something that we both wanted and it was a joyous occasion and it grew beyond our expectations with many people in attendance.  I appreciate those who saw fit to come celebrate our wedding.

All that lead up to that day was positive and it was a God inspired happening.

Another happening was I received my Medicare Card.  Awe, you say what of it.  I say it’s not the card so much as it is the milestone it represents.  Being sixty-five years old is unheard of for the men of my family tree.  I suppose I took after my mom’s side of the family on this note.

A full week of vacation away from home with my bride in October was stupendous.  We traveled to Tennessee and spent a week in a somewhat run down resort, but it proved to be a wonderful home base to travel out from.  Libby got to visit the Bush Bean Museum and Cafe where we ate some Pinto bean Pecan Pie.  As you begin to make a face at that, let me tell you this is some really good pie.  You need to try it.

The Jack Daniel’s Distillery and the small town around the corner were most interesting.  I’ve seen small stills before, but never one that was 45 ft high.  Of course we bought a couple of bottles of that alcoholic elixir.  We’re not big time imbibers of alcohol, but they did say one of the bottles we bought was full of liquor that was good for cooking with since it is infused with honey, pecans and pralines.  The other is simply a good sippin’ whiskey.  Gentleman Jack still sits most nearly full even three months after purchase.  I’m not a big sipper.  By the way, the county Jack Daniels distills in is a dry county, so they can’t sell liquor on site.  But they can sell bottles, which they do.  They just consequently contain liquor.

We also tried Tennessee’s versions of BBQ in Knoxville and other areas, but primarily we visited Sweet P’s in Knoxville.  Along with that BBQ we added “Greens n things”.  It consisted of collards, black-eyed peas, pintos, carrots and celery.  Pretty good stuff.  We also made a trip to an art museum and the old 1982 World’s Fair site and went to the observation deck in the big gold ball that overlooks the city.

We spent some time in Nashville in the heart of Germantown the first day we were in Tennessee, but it was a little disappointing. Turns out it was more of a craft show with a little German flavor thrown in.  But still we were there.

Our Monday was spent driving to Bowling Green, KY to walk through the assembly plant for GM’s best.  Corvettes all along the line made for fascinating viewing to see how they are put together and tested after assembly.  We also ventured over to the National Corvette Museum and looked at the history of the Corvette and mourned over the loss of the ones of greatest value that fell into the sink hole.

With time left that day we drove down the road a bit and visited Hidden Cavern.  We took a tour inside, which would not have been a place for those who are claustrophobic.  In order to get inside you had to ride in a boat while bent over completely to keep from hitting your head on the ceiling until you were completely inside the massive room inside.  The entire floor of the cavern is waist deep in water.  In a made-up story by the owner of a former nightclub in the entrance of the cavern it was supposed to be the hide-out of Jessie James and his gang after a bank hold up in a nearby town.  It was all a fabrication to draw crowds to a failing night-club once A/C had been invented or something like that.  You see, the reason the nightclub was so fabulous was because around 1900-1915 A/C had not been invented and the cave presented a constant temperature of somewhere in the low 60’s year round.

Most of all Libby and I got to meet with Jonathan Edward Baker, a relative of mine who pastors a church only thirty minutes away from our home base.  We went to church there that Sunday, the day after we arrived in Tennessee.  We spent Sunday afternoon with him and his wife talking about old times with family.  They are a very nice couple and hope them the best in their ministerial endeavors.

So far as the vacation goes I’ll close with this short but very meaningful event.  I also have family living in Clyde NC and also a minister of the Baptist faith.  Bruce Cayton was nearing the end of his life, but still very much active at the time, so we asked to stop and visit for a spell and I’m so very glad we did.  Bruce was a very charismatic man.  Libby took to him instantly.  I so enjoyed the moment we spent with him and Patsy as well as his sister Delores and her husband who were visiting as well.  He passed away this past Sunday.  What heaven gained was the loss among a dwindling crowd of men and women whose words do not fall to the ground.

I can’t say the year was mundane in the least.  We have spent our first entire year in our new home.  Just that.  OUR home.  Libby and I have no intrusions of our pasts in this home.  We create our own memories here not tethered to previous life experiences.  It was a joy to go out this past spring to see what might pop up around the yard.  Gardenia blooms, Azalea bushes in bloom.  Tons of Elephant ears along the ditch banks.  That among other delights of spring made for a wonderful summer here.  We started our first garden together and the end of season left us knowing what the ground in our new garden loves to grow best.  Hopefully the coming spring will honor us with a more bountiful crop next year.  We have plenty of birds and squirrels to sit and watch from our front porch in the bird feeders and bath.  All this while the American flag flies proudly from our porch.  I’m very proud of our country, or what it used to be and hopefully will get back to.

Someone also mentioned I should say that I got back a replacement from my youth.  I bought a 1955 Chevy.  What a car.  All the hot rod street car one could want.  It has a 350 small block .40 over, TH350 trans with Ford 9″ rear end.  All wheel disc brakes with 18″ wheels front and 20″ wheels out back.  Love this car second to the Corvette of course.

I sit here on the porch presently as it rains knowing God has all things in hand no matter what men might try to alter.  I also thank God for our neighbors.  They are good people.  God-fearing people who are as I when we think of this country and our faith.  May God bless them richly in the coming year as well as you who reads this.

2016?  Who knows what it will bring.  I just know I want to see it through with the joy God has given us in my heart and a beautiful woman at my side I can call my wife.  Hope your year will be prosperous as well.

No matter what people may think

No matter what people may say

My life is what it is today.

Not what it was yesterday.

Paths in life all lead to the same.

A last breathe, a last sight,

As we go off into the night.

So when that day comes about

And you know your heart is right,

No apologies, no regrets.

I’ve lived, cared and loved.

Made mistakes, yet not really,

Because all of life’s events

Are what brings us to that place.

Right or wrong is not the point

It’s the condition of the heart

That God did anoint.

All I ever need

Is a smile from her

All I ever want

Is her love eternal

All I ever care

Is for her best

All that ever matters

Is for her to be with me.

All that is

Is in her

Then I’ve seen God

His gift to me.

Ever been to the DMV? Of course you have. I had what I figure was my second visit in about eight years. I avoid the place with a passion. I do my tag renewals via online since it’s inception. I even got my license renewed online this past September. Wooo Hooo! Okay I digress. My trip yesterday was necessary. I went there and found a mortgage company had bought the upper floors of the building and had blocked off all but a few parking spaces for DMV visitors. That left people parking willy nilly around the lot. Then the usual entrance had also been blocked off by this mortgage company, so now you have to find the new entrance. Once done and inside I take my number and wait. . . and wait. . . .and wait. Then it’s my turn. I’m told my paperwork was wrong. Now folks I’ve done this before and never have I been told I’d done it wrong. They even tell me that the lack of information on the paperwork was in essence my committing a misdemeanor. Oh really? I”m not given to committing crimes, so I left to fix my paperwork. I was told when I come back they would give me the luxury of not having to take a number, but to go directly to a window on the end and I would be helped. So I went away, got my paperwork fixed and came back a little over an hour later and went to this particular window. With one ahead of me I watched as a customer began to get angry with the person working at the window. Seems the state owns the credit card processing machines at the window cannot be used for the notary fee. Alas there is an ATM within feet of the windows. So the man angrily gets his minimum $10 for the $5 fee. He asks will they at least give him back his charge for withdrawing from their ATM. The anger in this man escalates to a very loud and boisterous level until the person working the window next to the window he is running on and he effectively tell her he wasn’t talking to her and he didn’t want to talk to a supervisor, who BTW is Mr. Hargett. He was standing there watching the whole time and not interjecting anything into this argument. He could have put a stop to it, but he didn’t. My assumption is he’s passive agressive and left his women to fight for him. But it didn’t stop there. This guy was practically jumping up and down and then a voice in the back of the room raised up and told him to speak his peace and leave. He turned towards this voice and said he wasn’t talking to him either. The man reiterated his words and by this time someone else told him it was time to shut up and leave. Then a customer (woman) at the window on the other end turns to him and tells him it’s time for him to leave. Even the crowd was about to riot on his butt. He was in fact done, but had continued his argument by asking were they going to charge him $10 more so he could leave. Okay. He finally left and it was my turn at my window. Even though my experience wasn’t pleasant I turned it into a better experience and told the woman I actually had a $5 bill to pay my notary fee! HA! We had a laugh and I got my tag and left her with a smile on her face and a I was happy as well I don’t have to go back for at least a few years. Or maybe, just maybe I’ll go back to see if I can witness another uprising in the DMV. Observance of the public can have an amusing side.