Hard Times

 Hard Times

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve had a couple of weeks where I’ve been whipsaw between the two imposters triumph and disaster. It’s not just me either.  COVID, though it seems it might be winding down, has left destruction in its wake.  It’s left us in a precarious age.  

But it is a rare event that does nothing good. If nothing else, these times have made me think back on the life my father led.

My father lived in a house with a dirt floor when he was a boy. He remembered at least one occasion when there was sleet falling and he was playing outside without any shoes because he had none. His family sharecropped, but then they left that life to follow the oil boom as it spread over Oklahoma.

He was out and out of school for a while so he could work in the oil field too.  Then he just dropped out so he could work as a day laborer in the oil field full time.  This continued until  World War II broke out.  He was then drafted and half a world away from home for a few years doing his bit in the war.

He knew hard times.

He did his best to protect his children, my brother and me, from hard times all his life.  He followed us around lest we dash our foot against a stone. He would say, “Watch me. Learn what I am doing.  I won’t always be here.”

He was trying to prepare us for hard times.

And he did, but not in the way he thought he was.  He was trying--with very little success--to teach specific skills.  What he truly taught was much more important.

He told stories about himself, about things that happened while hunting, about things that happened in the days of the old boom, and very rarely about things that happened in the war.

My brother and I loved the war stories.  

One theme that I remember being repeated: “Don’t just lay [sic] there and die.”

That is basically the advice they give you in active shooter drills. Humans have what is called the fight or flight response. That really isn’t the best name, because it leaves out one alternative: freeze.  Our instincts have been set with three ways to deal with fear:  

We can run.  Running is good when you can outrun the danger. (Though I am very fond of the joke, “I can’t outrun the bear, but I can outrun you.”)

We can choose to fight it out.  Even if we lose, we can make them pay for their meal.  We can slow them down while our offspring get away.

But we can also simply freeze.  This works if you are a tiny creature that has brush to hide in, but if you are big and out in the open, it turns into what dad said, you just lie there and die.

Times have changed since Daddy’s day.  Hard times look different now.  I really don’t know what he would’ve made of COVID or the changes associated with it.  But I think the attitude that we don’t just “lay there and die” is a good one.  Running is not always cowardly; fighting is not always brutal.  They are not mutually exclusive: You can run while you are fighting and fight while you are running.  

Don’t just lay there and die.

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. )

Lost

 Lost

By Bobby Neal Winters

How can a man be born when he is old?

It is a question that comes echoing down to us from history.  Nicodemus asked Jesus, and Jesus gave him a good answer.  I suspect Nicodemus had some idea of the answer, and if so Jesus would know that.  Sometimes smart people ask the questions they know the answer to already as a test.

This is a piece of scripture I am very familiar with.  Since I grew up as a Baptist, I am doubly familiar with it.  It has taken me until now, after years of contemplation and years of study, to understand it.  Maybe.  Maybe I understand it.

There is a word, an adjective, that is applied to a lot of things: Lost.  It can be applied to objects. I lost my wedding ring a year ago, and I’ve not found it yet.  It still exists.  It’s still out there.  But my direct connection with it has been severed. I don’t know where it is.

“Lost” can also be applied to people.  It takes on different nuances when applied to human beings. Sometimes it means the lost person does not know where he is.  Or maybe that should be put, he knows he is “here,” but he doesn’t know where “here” is.  And the “here” where he is at is not the place where he wants to be.

There was once a young man who left his family with some of his daddy’s money.  He spent it all and wound up wallowing with the hogs, eating their food.  He was in a place where he didn’t want to be.  He knew where he wanted to be, but only had hope that he could get back there.  He had to move himself to the place where he might be found.

That is the difficult thing.  Swallowing the pride.  Admitting not only that you are not perfect; admitting that you are wrong.

This is especially true when you are old, and when you’ve been wrong in the same way all of your life.  In my perennial favorite Christmas story, Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol,” Marley’s ghost has a long line of bank boxes chained to him.  Marley was lost and died that way.  He had his old way of doing things chained to him.  Had he changed his ways while he was alive, the bank boxes would’ve been removed from him.  But--listen to this bit--he loved the bank boxes and didn’t want to let them go.

So he didn’t.  He kept them. Now he has them. Forever.

Change can be gradual.  I love the change and small dedicated effort can make. The mighty oak tree I see out my window has grown from a tiny acorn over the years with only air, water, and sunshine.

But we had to plant it in a new place for that to happen.  A squirrel had planted it up against the house.  The only thing for it there was eventual death. We dug it from the ground; it died to its old place; we planted it in a good place; it was born again.

It is straight, tall, and a blessing to all.

To become what it could be required a drastic change.

It was easier for the tree than it is for a human being.  My wife and I did all the deciding.

People are harder. When they are lost, they often won’t admit it.  It’s the world that is wrong.  Everyone is wrong but them.  They create a tiny hell for themselves, but they believe it is the whole world.  And they will work to drag everyone else into it with them.

Jewell asked, “Who will save your soul, if you won’t save your own?” 

How can a man be born when he is old?

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 Carpenter's Hands

 The Carpenter’s Hands

By Bobby Neal Winters

In taking up woodworking, I’ve stepped into a new world.  No, new is not right, the world is not new, it is old, but it is different.  There’s a different language, different customs, different things to learn, but they are old things for the most part.

Man is a tool using animal. We use tools to do things, but we use tools to make other tools.  We’ve used this ability to leverage ourselves out of the mud. And to talk about our tools, to teach others how to use them, we’ve created words. Words have been some of our most important tools.

As I sit here, there is a tool called a “wheel marking gauge” that is just to my left hand.  It is a device to which I was happily ignorant as little as a week ago, but having learned of its existence I had to have one.

As you might’ve guessed, it’s a measuring device.  It can be used for a variety of applications, but when I first saw it on YouTube it was being used to make a mortise and tenon joint.

I had heard of a mortise and tenon joint in the past, but until recently that phrase was just a collection of syllables. These are words that come into the English language through Old French. A mortise is a hole and a tenon is a projection you put into a hole. What were two separate things, are now one.  Something new has come into the world.  

The mortise and tenon joint is a way that you join two boards together without nails or screws and maybe not even glue. The tenon must fit very tightly within the mortise, and, as a consequence, measurements must be precise.

As I typed the word measurement, the image of a tape measure popped into my head, so I figured it might have yours too.  I need to knock that thought out of both of our heads.  The type of measurement needed for this is much more exact than can be accomplished with just a tape measure.  

In transferring the measure of the mortise to the board out of which you are going to cut your tenon, you can’t use just a tape measure or ruler or anything that would cause you to write down a number.  There would always be rounding off, and you would always be wrong.

Because of this, they need a wheel marking gauge. You can set the device to the exact size needed on the mortise board and transfer it directly to the tenon board without changing it to a number in between.  The wheel gauge I have does have measurements calibrated on its axis, but you would never need to look at them when you are transferring the measurements.  They are there for other needs.

Having praised the wheel marking gauge, let me say that not everyone uses them.  There are those who’ve made their own measuring device that works in a similar way. It's made mainly of wood, but with a single nail through it to do the marking.

There are two breeds of woodworkers on the internet: The Power Tool folks and the Hand Tool folks. The hand tool people use very sharp chisels to cut their mortises and sharp Japanese saws to cut their tenons.  The hands of those who do this are rough, but amazingly skilled. There is something there to be admired.  

It makes me want to do my woodworking better. It makes me want to be a better writer.  Heck, it just makes me want to be better.

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. )

What We Are, We Are

 What We Are, We Are

By Bobby Neal Winters

When I was in high school, the father of a friend of mine had heart disease.  He was a good man, as is his son, and the community circled round them in love.  There was an event to help defray expenses, and a part of that was an auction and a cake walk.

One of the prizes was a poster of a setting sun with a cutting from Tennyson’s poem Ulysses in the background.

I am not a poet, nor do I read much poetry; I get my fix on poetry through song lyrics; but Ulysses captured me. I either bid on the poster and bought it or I won it at the cakewalk, and the poem has been my boon companion since that night. 

For those of you who may have grown up as an ignorant Okie like me, Ulysses was a hero of the Trojan War.  There is an ancient poem called the Odyssey which recounts his adventures/misadventures on his voyage home.  I don’t know any more about this than the Classic Comics that Mr. Gantt kept in his English Classroom, but that stuck with me. I often recite the portions I’ve memorized in my head, and I revisit the poem itself from time to time.

It has been a companion on my journey. There are days when I alternate between it and Reba McIntire singing Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy.”

I’ve not been as bold a soul as Ulysses. My adventures have been of a different sort.  I have gone many more places than that Okie boy at the cakewalk would’ve believed, but most of my adventures have been of a different sort.

I like to learn things. I’ve learned how to calculate the positions of planets in the sky. In doing that, I got started on learning the Python computing language.   In learning the Python computing language, I discovered that when computer programs get big, they become hard to keep up with so I began learning how to organize them better.

At some point, I wanted to learn about robots and electronics. In doing the deepdive on that, I learned about the Maker Movement and all of the associated free resources on the internet to learn how to do things. 

Connected with that, I learned how to set up a simple home solar charging system.  Connected with that I began a project to set up a homemade, backyard weather station which is now on hold because of...weather.

Now I am learning woodworking.

None of this is like spending time with the Lotus Eaters or being captured by Cyclops, but, as Bobbie Gentry would say, “I ain’t done bad.”

Looking back on it, it seems kind of random because, well, it is.  But this is a connection. That connection is me.  I’ve learned things; I know the things; I think about the things; I share them with you.

The poet Dante I am told put Ulysses in hell, and I am sure he had his reasons. But this one fragment of a poem by an English aristocrat inspired by an ancient poem about a character from the Trojan war--which may never have happened--has had an effect.  It has been a chord in a string of random colored stones that has brought them together in a necklace.

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. )