The Flight of the Phoenix

By Bobby Neal Winters

Going back to revisit the movies of your youth is a dangerous pastime. Sometimes you discover that a movie that you loved wasn’t actually very good.  But there are other times too.

I’d remembered The Flight of the Phoenix with James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Christian Marquand, Ernest Borgnine, and Hardy Kruger as just another desert survival movie.  It is a desert survival movie, but there is something else there that I see now but had missed as a youth. It is not just a man versus nature story, but a man versus man story in a more subtle way.

As the movie is from 1965, I will not worry about spoilers.  A plane crashes in the desert; the survivors build a new plane from the wreckage of the old (hence the name Phoenix); they fly it to safety.

That paragraph describes the movie exactly as I remembered it.  The fact that it was a story inhabited by well-drawn characters eluded me.

The thread that unites them is they are all flawed, broken men.  Richard Attenborough plays the alcoholic navigator of the doomed plan.  Ernest Borgnine is suffering from what we would now call PTSD.  Jimmy Stewart is a burned out pilot whose best days are behind him.  Hardy Kruger is an arrogant engineer.

The movie begins on the ill-fated plane.  The pilot (played by Stewart) has not done due diligence in the aircraft’s upkeep and neither has the alcohol navigator.  They are taken off course by a dust storm, but as the radio is broken--and had been broken at the time of take-off--and are forced down hundreds of miles from even the tiniest outpost of civilization. 

They wait for rescue but that is for nought as they are too far off course.

Then the engineer announces they can build a plane from the parts of their craft that are still salvageable. 

This is not met by as much enthusiasm as one might expect.  It may be because the engineer is German; the rest of the survivors are American, British, and French; and the second world war is less than two decades in the past.

Or it may be because it wasn’t the pilot’s idea.

This was a surprise to me.  I’d remembered Stewart as someone who played the same sort of affable character over and over.  As the pilot of the downed plane, he’s not particularly affable; he’s not positive; he’s not nurturing; he’s not supportive.  He’s not even a good man, much less a hero.

And the engineer doesn’t make it easy either.  He’s arrogant, impatient, and hard-driving.  He and the pilot don’t like each other at all.

The only thing that keeps the tenuous project alive is the desire to survive and the efforts of the alcoholic navigator as a diplomat.

In the end, they survive, but only after the blood sacrifice of two of the more virtuous characters.

It’s been two weeks since I rewatched it, but it has been on my mind often during those two weeks.  The image it presents of broken people who don’t like each other being forced to work together to survive strikes me as a model we should examine.  

Maybe we should make them watch it in Washington.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

The God of tiny little things

The God of tiny little things

By Bobby Neal Winters

When my kids were young and my wife was teaching Sunday School, they taught the kids a new song.  It was supposed to go, “My God is a great big God / Big enough to save me / Big enough to keep me.”  I had some reservations because the last line seemed to deny free will.  I needn’t have worried.  The children learned the final couplet as “Big enough to save me / Big enough to eat me.”

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, they say.

Perhaps the quasi-Calvanistic turn of the last line shouldn’t’ve bothered me as much on the emphasis on “Bigness.”  God is big in whatever sense that is meaningful for God, but God is also small.  While a God that is big enough to save us is comforting to a small child who feels so vulnerable in the world, the world is saved by small things.

This morning I am sitting on my new patio.  My wife and I build it one paver at a time.  It is sitting on a bed of sand.  I am sitting under an oak tree that my middle daughter brought home in a plastic cup from the second or third grade.  It is shading me with its leaves, each of which only measures a few square inches.  The tree itself grew to its current height bit by bit over the course of two decades.  Each of its cells is a tiny universe unto itself that we are only beginning to understand.

Without the tiny cells, the tree is nothing and I am being burned to a crisp in the mid-morning sun.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about my landscaping.  My latest efforts have been built over the moldering remains of what I attempted 20 or more years ago.  The results are much better this time.  What has happened?

Well, I’ve gotten better at landscaping.

This is not because I’ve laid a lot of pavers over the decades.  I have not.  My early efforts at shaping the earth into a place more agreeable to me were not so successful as to encourage practice.  Instead, years of frustration combined with prayer (and I consider writing to be a form of prayer) have created a certain reserve of patience within me.  

Patience is the reins upon our spirit that keeps us from rushing ahead too fast.  Patience allows us to map out paths within our world.

And patience, as is fitting, is not built overnight.  Patience is built tiny bit by tiny bit as we receive God’s grace through the things we do.  God exists within the tiny things.

We have the means of grace that the church has mapped out, and I am not for a moment saying anyone should abandon those. But through prayer and the tiny things you do during the day every day, God’s grace can change you.

Neither am I saying that God isn’t as big as the largest supercluster of galaxies.  He is big enough to save you; He’s even big enough to eat you.  But He’s also small enough to do what needs to be done.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

The Last Trip

 The Last Trip

By Bobby Neal Winters

In 2019, August of that year, the month in this town that if you haven’t taken a vacation yet, then it’s not going to happen, my family took a trip to Colorado, and we took my wife’s mother along.  Of all the trips I’ve ever taken, all over the world, four continents, eight countries, etc, that is the one I am most happy of.  I’m not happy because it was so much fun--and it was--or because I saw some cousins I hadn’t seen in a while--Hello Jan, Ed, and Judy--but because my mother-in-law Janet was on it.

Having a mother-in-law was not what TV had led me to believe.  Bewitched, which was my main source, misled us with Endora. (Although looking back as an adult, I find I have more sympathy with Endora and Maurice than I would’ve thought.) Janet, my mother-in-law, was a warm, wonderful person.  She never turned me into anything.

We invited her to go with us any time it was remotely likely--to the movies, to dinner, on vacations--and sometimes she went with us, and she was never any trouble.

So I am happy she decided to go on that vacation to Colorado with us, but that’s not the last trip I am talking about.

The last trip was at about 11 o’clock at night on the last Sunday of April 2021.  She’d been in good, solid health through Christmas Day and we’d celebrated together as much as the CDC would allow.  We got a call the next day that she was having trouble breathing.  She didn’t want us to come over because she was afraid she had COVID and didn’t want to expose us any more than she already might’ve.  She just wanted us to call the ambulance because she didn’t want to be any trouble.

We called the ambulance and then went over to guide them in.  What follows is a blur.  She was in the hospital for a month; she was released into hospice; Jean took care of her with the help of family; she began to get better and was released from hospice.

Things were definitely looking better, but then came the last weekend.  Friday things were kind of iffy.  Saturday things weren’t good.  Sunday things were definitely taking a turn for the worse.  

She was in tremendous pain.  Jean was dosing her with morphine, but she held out against any thought of going to the hospital.  

She didn’t want to be any trouble.

I’d gone to bed early as is my habit.  About 11pm I got a text from Jean: “...I think it’s time to go to the emergency room.”

I texted her back and went to her mother’s house.  I don’t remember putting my clothes on, but I suppose I did. We got her in the car and headed out.  

The most direct route from her house to the hospital is not the smoothes.  It goes over those brick streets the local residents are so fond of.  I went up to 4th Street and then over to Rouse, but I had forgotten about all of the construction.  It was dark; we hit every bump; and she gasped every time we did.

At some point, and I don’t remember exactly where, she said, “Thank you for being so good during all this.”

I knew at that point she thought it was her last trip with me.  

And it was.

Since that night, I’ve avoided that route as much as I could.  I’ve found other routes from here to the hospital with smoother roads, less construction, routes that wouldn’t’ve taken much longer but where she wouldn’t’ve experienced as much pain.

I’ve seen images in the distance that lit up recognition for her in my head, but of course when they resolved into detail they were not her.

Last Thursday, I drove Jean to the mortuary, she paid the bill, and we picked up Janet’s cremains.  I put her in the back of my car this time and we retraced some of the same path.  This time in the opposite direction with much less hurry.

We brought her home.  It wasn’t any bother.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

 

Things I’ve Learned

 Things I’ve Learned

By Bobby Neal Winters

Before I start on the things I’ve learned over the years, let me say that the chief of these is that I am not as smart as I think I am.  So, if you want to tell me that after you’ve finished reading the list, you can keep it to yourself; I already know.

Problems are best dealt with at the lowest level possible. That is where the relationships are the strongest. That is where most of the work has to be done.

If the lowest levels are left on their own, that brings corruption.  The lower-level units need to be connected with each other and have good communication.  They need to be accountable, and there should be a mechanism wherein they can share solutions with each other.

There will be plenty of problems anyway.

Jealousy is a massive waste of time, energy, and emotion. Other people’s achievements are there to be admired.  We should use them to inspire us.  We should praise them highly instead of trying to minimize what they’ve done.

The biggest barriers you face fit nicely between your own two ears.  “I can’t” just can’t do it.

Everything comes at a cost. It might be planning; it might be hard work; it might be time; it is likely a combination of all three.  It might also be your soul. Some things just aren’t worth the price.

Nobody got to where they are alone.  Everybody is born into a family, and some of those families have money. Some men are great because they’ve got a wife that takes care of all their basic needs for them, and this allows them to go out and be the “Great Man.” 

If you know someone who never seems to be able to keep a good job, but always has a nice vehicle, then it is either credit or an inheritance.  

There are some people in positions of power who are like a tortoise on top of a fencepost: They have no business being there; they don’t really want to be there; they can’t do anything; and they sure as hell didn’t get there on their own.

You should floss.

Yes, everyday.

If you are in a country where you don’t have a good grasp of the language, you can get what you need if you don’t mind being embarrassed and can mime.  You might not want to do this for toilet paper.

If you are in a country where you don’t know the language, speaking English slowly and loudly and waiving $20-bills works.

You shouldn’t worry too much about petty embarrassments.  People are so self-involved that, while they might laugh, they are soon so absorbed in their own problems they forget whatever you may have done.

Even in the light of that, try not to do anything spectacularly stupid on a slow news day.

Tip.

I hope you are all off to a fantastic summer.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )