A Metaphor made Manifest

By Bobby Neal Winters

Last Wednesday I was either teaching or in a meeting every hour from 9am until 4pm.  My 4pm meeting was a half-hour telephone call, and then as I drove home I got a call from someone who had missed my 2pm Zoom meeting.

My schedule was tight. There were no gaps, no cracks.  Every event flowed exactly into the next.

When I’d gotten the last of my schedule done, I went to my garage and I cut dovetails.

That’s what I’ve been working on lately: I am learning to cut dovetail joints by hand.  I will forgive you for not knowing what dovetails are because one year ago I didn’t know what they were myself.

I’d heard the word dovetail.  I have even used the phrase “that dovetails nicely,” but when I did so, I was a fraud.  I didn’t feel it. I didn’t have an appreciation for the phrase.  I didn’t know from whence it came.

Now I do.  I don’t know that makes me a better person, but I do feel a bit more...smug.  That’s it: Smug. Smugness is what I am feeling.

Let me now transition from being smug to being pedantic. The two dovetail as it were.

A dovetail joint is a way to join two pieces of wood together. If you have an old chest of drawers, open one drawer a crack and look how the front of the drawer is connected with the sides. If you see the wood on the corners of the sides fan out into something that looks like birds’ tails (dovetail) the drawer has been made using dovetails.

The joint consists of two pieces.  One one piece, has the eponymous dovetails and the matching piece has the pins.  The idea is that you cut the pins so that they mesh so tightly with the dovetails that a thin layer of glue will barely fit between them and not much else. The flaring out of the dovetails helps hold the pieces together.

Tightness is the name of the game, so I cut them with a Japanese dovetail saw.  The saw is very thin so that it has a very small kerf (look it up). Japanese saws cut when you pull toward you rather than when you push so that they don’t bend in a tight kerf.

One marks the dovetails in a very particular way.  It is almost ritualized, and that word “almost” might not belong there.  There might just be different denominations of dovetail cutters.

You can measure with a ruler and divide the end of your board that way.  The folks on YouTube sometimes deride that as being too mathematical.  The alternative is to use dividers, which are similar to a compass, to mark the ends of the dovetails.  I find this much more satisfactory, and, ironically, much more mathematics.  It harkens back to Euclidean geometry and constructing geometric figures.

You learn this process by watching someone else do it, but you don’t really understand until you do it yourself.  Let me rework that last clause: “until you do it wrong yourself.”

When you do it wrong, thinking that detail didn’t matter, you get to the end and...ssss...there is a gap.  The joint still functions, but it’s not as beautiful as it was in your head. You see the reason it was done that particular way.

Your wife will look at it, and say that it’s beautiful. But you know what it’s supposed to look like.

This semester my Wednesday schedule at work fits together as tightly as a very finely crafted dovetail joint. It all consists of talking to people and listening to people.  Paying attention. Taking notes. Making promises. Trying not to make promises.

I begin to suffer from a malady I call “too many conversations.”

I’ve been a part of too many conversations during the day.  I start replaying some of the conversations in my head, and they are never the conversations that went well. Words swirl in my head like sawdust in a shop vac.

The ritual of marking, measuring, and cutting focuses me.  I am no longer in a world of words whirling in my head.  I am in a realm of things. The world of reality. It is a good world; a solid world; a world that is just better somehow.

In this world, I can see the mistakes I make and work to fix them.  An ugly gap? Fill it with epoxy resin. The wood is not even?  That is why God invented random orbital sanders.

The dovetails aren’t perfect.  Well, they are never going to be, but they will be better next time.

My central task these days is making a cabinet of drawers for my shop. I am using cedar pickets from the fencing section of Home Despot [sic] for the drawers.  They are cheap and they smell nice when you cut them.  Good for practice.

The wood is, however, horrible for this purpose.  By this I mean it is very soft.  It is very hard to get a tight fit and very easy to break and make it ugly. But it’s good for practice, and I am the only one who I need to please.

The stack of drawers in my cabinet is a history of my introduction to learning dovetails. The latest is better than the first. You can stack them from bottom to top and see the difference.

It all fits quite nicely.

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. )

So you want to live forever

 So you want to live forever

By Bobby Neal Winters

You can remember someone who is no longer living but whose life has had an effect on you. Their existence has continued after death. To me, this is just the plain truth.  I am sure there are those who are learned that could rip that logic apart, but I am just going to let them.

My mother’s family were town people.  They were small town people, but they were still town people.  My father’s family were not.  Town people come into contact with more people than country people do. Hence the name “town people.”  My mother’s family knew more of the little things that get you through the day.

My dad learned a lot of these things and he kept the ones he thought were smart.  My mother’s younger brother, Tommy, wore glasses.  He taught my dad that it’s not a good idea to put your glasses down lens first on any surface because they would get scratched.

My mother’s mother always said that when you are washing a sharp knife to never let it go.  You pick it up; hold it the whole time you are washing it; rinse it, again holding it the whole time.  You only put it down when you put it in the drainer.

Dad was fond of both my Uncle Tommy and my momma’s mother.  He learned those things, and whenever he taught them to me and my brother, he mentioned where he’d learned them.

Wearing glasses myself, I still lay them down face up religiously. On those rare occasions that I do dishes by hand [we will pause here for my wife to chuckle], I never let loose of a sharp knife. (I think that particular one could be raised to a higher level by a Mafia Don or some such, but let’s just let that one go.) 

But my point is what these people taught my dad still affects me. And, because I’ve shared this with you, they are still teaching.

This could be a point where I could digress into the value of teaching.  It would be handy to do because my Uncle Tommy was a grade school teacher who taught the Navajo in the Four-Corners region of New Mexico.  But my mom’s mom wasn’t, and in any case, Tommy didn’t tell my dad about how to handle glasses as a teacher but as a friend.

Dad learned from them because he liked them.

While as a teacher that is something I might like to keep in my mind, it is something everyone might do well to remember. It is not a crime to position yourself in such a way that people like you.  

And I don’t mean that you have to be a pushover. You can exercise kindness without letting people walk all over you.

There, I said the word: Kindness.

You can be kind.

You can be kind, but sometimes it’s quite an exercise.  Sometimes it requires capturing the flow of events and slowing them down so you can get a handle on them. There are times in conversations when you need to delay what you say so that you can understand what has just been said in order to edit what you are going to reply.  That was quite a long sentence; you might want to read it again.

And there are times when a good editor just marks a blue pencil through everything.

Kindness goes beyond niceness.  There are wicked, wicked people who are “nice.” Kindness has a spine of love in it.

Love: there, I’ve said it.

If you’ve only watched movies, you likely don’t know what love is.  Love is not a state you fall into.  Love is a choice. You can choose to love people.

We can’t always choose our feelings, but love is not a feeling. I was going to write that love is wanting the best for someone, but let me be more careful.  It is a consequence of love to want the best for someone. 

We are to love our neighbors; we are to love our enemies.  That is quite a spectrum there.

It was the love of my Uncle Tommy and my Grandma Byrd that caused them to want to teach my father these small things. He felt that love and returned it, so he was able to let himself learn from them and pass it on.

These were only two of the things he learned from them. There are other things we learn unconsciously.  We absorb things just by being with them.  And we pass them on as well.

We learn love; we pass on love; we live forever in love.

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 Bacon Grease Gospel

By Bobby Neal Winters

A short time ago, my wife made us some BLT sandwiches. Well, as I don’t eat iceberg lettuce, mine was a BT sandwich, but I digress. There was bacon grease leftover in the pan afterwards, and by morning it had cooled and congealed.

Every morning, I fry myself two eggs.  I usually use vegetable oil, but there--right on the stove top--was the congealed, nitrite-full fat of the bacon-beast.  I took a big spoon and ladled it out into the cast-iron skillet that I use to fry my morning eggs.  I was, of course, careful to miss the kitty footprints that were in it; there are always kitty footprints in it.

The results were delightful.  I was able to stretch out the bacon grease for a few mornings.  

Life is good.

Many of you are shocked. You are saying that he has fallen off the weight-control wagon. That I have backslidden.

No.  Not yet. Not because of that.

Whether you gain or lose weight depends upon the number of total calories you consume.  There might be other reasons you shouldn’t eat bacon fat, but this is not one of them.

Every group has its own type of fat.  Our Mediterranean brothers and sisters have olive oil; the dairy farmers in Wisconsin have butter; the Jewish community in New York City has chicken fat,schmaltz I think it’s called.

Bacon grease is the fat of my people, and we are a People who know about fat first hand.

On my mother’s stove there stood a Crisco can.  The one thing that I never saw in that Crisco can was Criso.  The store-bought Crisco was always quickly used up--for what I don’t know--and the can was then put to permanent use for storing bacon drippings.

You fry bacon; you eat it; you save the drippings in the can. After the grease was used, it was alway carefully retrieved.  At least as much as hadn’t soaked into the food was retrieved.  So some of it was used over, and over, and over. One might wonder whether it would eventually polymerise or develop into a living thing.  One might wonder, but one oughtn’t if one wants to sleep well.

You might have a nightmare about the contents of a Crisco can terrorizing and isolated Oklahoma town like the movie “Tremors” or something.

I submit that the saving of bacon grease is at the very least educational and at most a means of grace. 

We learn not to waste: the pig died for us to have the bacon, so it is a duty upon us to put it to as much use as possible. We learn the accumulation of small things builds up: a piece of bacon only has a small bit of grease in it, but over time you can fill a whole Crisco can. We learn to postpone a celebration: it takes a long time to save up enough to fry something big, so you’d better learn to wait.

My marriage is a mixed marriage.  I married out of the bacon and into the butter. Though her parents had lived in Oklahoma long enough to learn the good of bacon grease, they had not learned the discipline of saving it. Try as I might, I could not convince my wife to begin it on her own.  When I tried to do it, I was banished from the kitchen for “starting with frying four pieces of bacon.”

If we’d saved our bacon grease, I wouldn’t have had to.

Well, yes, I do get the point.  You can have bacon grease; you can eat fried foods.  But it is all in amounts: Portion size and frequency.

I can get away with two fried eggs, and even two fried eggs every day, but fried chicken--especially the chicken fried in bacon grease like Momma used to--one has to separate those occasions far from each other: Sundays? Birthdays? Humans setting foot on Mars?

We need to get beyond the superstitious thinking that some foods are magically good and some foods are cursed.

Bacon grease is not cursed.  It is blessed,but with a blessing that requires its controlled use.

The Catholics advise a controlled use of meat during lent. Perhaps there could be a similar but more stringent control of bacon grease: Only between 6 and 7am on weekdays and 7 and 8am on weekends.  (If that seems a little specific, it’s only your imagination.)

It’s something to think about.

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. )

 Sugar and Attention

By Bobby Neal Winters

I will be turning 60 soon.  Very soon. I’ve learned a few things. Among these is that there are some things--and maybe most things-where it is not about all or nothing.  It is about finding the right measure. Right measure is not even right.  It is about finding the right path.  As examples, let’s take sugar and attention.

Sugar and attention are a lot alike.  They both should be treated like controlled substances.  They are addictive and once you get hooked...

Well, trouble can follow.

I will begin with a confession that I am a sugar addict.  I have a sweet tooth as big as Texas.  The simile would be better if Texas were made of chocolate, but then I would probably have been found dead a long time ago with Fort Worth dribbling down my cheek.

Nutritionally, sugar is complicated.  You don’t actually have to eat sugar to live.  It does occur naturally in some foods, like fruit, for instance, but you don’t have to eat sugar.

But--and here is where the word complicated is justified--your body has to have it.  That may confuse you because I just said you don’t have to EAT it.  You do have to HAVE it. Sugar is your source of energy.  Your body makes sugar.  Your liver does it. Your liver makes it for you from the other foods you eat.

But you don’t have to eat it directly.  When you do eat it directly, you get a quick boost.  I don’t need science to tell me this.  I learned it on my own. Eating candy while I drive will keep me awake better than caffeine. Caramel M&Ms are perfect for this.  They are like crack cocaine to me, though I don’t know that for sure.

Since I began my weight loss program last year, my consumption of sugar has gone way, way down.  I don’t remember the last time I even put sugar in my tea. I’ve begun to use it more like medicine.  Last week I was falling to sleep at the wheel as I drove back from Oklahoma, so I stopped for Caramel M&Ms and they perked me right up.

But this is a slippery slope because the addition is real. It’s been a week and the Caramel M&Ms have been calling to me ever since.

As I said above, attention is a lot like sugar: We have to HAVE it, but the way we receive it is important.

This following example may sound brutal, so consider this as a trigger warning.  When I was a little kid, I was with a group where there was a group of younger children playing along with the adults looking on.  One of the kids fell down and did the equivalent of scraping his knee.  My grandfather, my dear Grampa Sam, told the rest of the adults present: “Don’t pay attention to him or he will cry.”  They didn’t pay attention to him, and he didn’t cry. 

I’ve been in similar situations where the child has begun to cry and the adults pretended not to see, and the child quieted himself.

This might not be strange to you, but I’ve been living in a social circle where every boo-boo is immediately kissed and every tear is immediately dried. This has an effect, and time will tell us what it is.

Clearly there are times when we must immediately pay attention to our children’s pain--a bone sticking out of a leg is a pretty good clue--but if you give more attention than a “boo-boo” is worth, then that is a net reward. We get more of whatever we reward.  

One could call the amount of crying that is beyond what is warranted by the name “drama.”  If you reward drama, you get drama.

There are things we should reward with attention. When my daughters were younger, they took part in music for a short time. (They were fired by their teacher, but let’s not go there.) We went to music contests.  The children played their pieces; stood and took their bows; received their applause.

It occurred to me that for a talented young person, this would become an entitlement. It then occurred to me that the same thing happens to academics. Work hard, do good on a test: Get rewarded with attention. Work hard, write a good essay: Get rewarded with attention.

Work hard and perform well: Get attention.  

In the right measure, this is good.  You should be rewarded in the learning process...in the beginning.  But there has to be a time of transition to something more mature. You have to transition from working hard to become excellent so you can receive the reward for the excellence to the point where the excellence is the reward itself.

My model for this comes from the movie “Babe.”  After a remarkable performance, the trainer says, “That’ll do, Pig.”

Addiction to sugar can lead to obesity and diabetes.  Addiction to attention can lead to narcissism and all other weird quirks of human behavior that I don’t have space to go into.  Those of us in academic administration like to call it “job security.”

I am dealing with my own sugar addiction by giving myself rules for when I can eat sugar.  I can eat one cookie in the church parlor right after church, for example.  I can eat one regular-sized bag of Caramel M&Ms if I am falling asleep at the wheel while driving.

The attention thing is harder.  The “that’ll do, Pig” level of attention is not for everyone.  It is an area where I’ve more questions than answers, but I can at least share my ignorance with you.

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. )

My Trip to the Nations

 My Trip to the Nations 

Or

Of Rivers and Indians

The sun has burnt the ground and bleached the earth. Since mid-June, the rain we’ve received has reminded me of the water mother used to sprinkle on her ironing.  It’s only been enough to provide steam.

I got the call on Friday.  My brother, who has been ill this week and tested for COVID twice, was taken to the ER by an old neighbor, a friend, a spirit-sister. Not COVID. 

It’s an infection of the foot.  In his bones.

I was to have gone to a choir dinner with a 70s theme that evening, but it was not to be. We made our apologies; saddled up the Honda Ridgeline; headed south.

Jean and I have been making this trip for more than thirty years.  Three decades.  We’ve done it with a single small child; with two small children; with two children and their kid sister.

And now by ourselves.

I’ve long been cognisant that Baxter Springs, Kansas was the first cowtown, so my mind shifts to cattle drive mode about the time we cross into Oklahoma. What would it’ve been like to drive a herd of cattle up this way?  In the movies, it’s all about crossing rivers and Indians.

My brother texted me as we made our way down.  He first says they are going to amputate his leg.  Then his foot.  

We cross the Arkansas in Tulsa.  It is a shallow creek compared to its normal self.  

At about the same time we would’ve been at the choir dinner, we stopped for provender in Stroud, getting corn nuts, peanut butter crackers, and iced tea.  We pass the Sauk-Fox Casino south of there without undue interference: they only make us slow to 55 for a couple of miles.

We pass the Seminole casinos as we enter and leave their territory as well, crossing the North Canadian and South Canadian respectively.  Like the Arkansas, they are a tiny fraction of their normal flow.

We arrive at the hospital at 8:30pm and make our way through the halls to my brother’s room.  The signs say masks are required, but I don’t put one on.  They still let me in.  Things are lawless down in the Nations.

My brother is not alone.

Friends are there with him. More than friends: a sister and a brother from another mother.  

We’d all been neighbors 40, 50, 60 years ago.  We know things about each other that only siblings know. We know them; our parents knew their parents; our grandparents knew their grandparents.  And before that, the place we lived was not a place.

Some things are stronger than blood.

My spirit sister had taken my brother to the ER when his “COVID” turned out not to be COVID.  

They are going to have to amputate.  We don’t know where.  Still don’t.

When bones get infected, it’s difficult to cure the infection even when the patient is not diabetic which my brother is.  Where they make the amputation will depend on where the infection ends.

My brother lives alone.  Well, alone with his dog.  

Whatever happens, brother will not be able to take care of his dog for quite a while.

In the room the doctors come and go, but nobody is talking about Michaelangelo.  They are talking about pockets of infection in the metatarsals.  Options of mid-foot amputation versus below the knee amputation. General surgeons versus orthopedic surgeons.

It is becoming more and more apparent that nothing will happen until Monday.

We need to drive our herd north.

We go to brother’s house.  It used to be my house, my parents’ house.  It was the last house built by my mother’s father. He was 72 when he did it.

We retrieve my brother’s dog, Billy.  He is a clinically insane Boston terrier, but maybe they all are.

We then drive our herd north.

Before we cross the North Canadian, we stop for chicken fried steak--one of the local delicacies--at a place called The Catfish Roundup. It’s within spitting distance of the Seminole Casino, but we are not molested.

We arrive home at 6:30pm with our new charge and find a place to put him after letting him run around in the sunburnt grass and the baked earth.

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. )