Thanksgiving 2012

Over the past week or so, I have been spendin' most of my spare time over at my father-in-law's place in Clifton.
Clifton is an old neighborhood near downtown Louisville- old two and three -story houses. I'm guessin' most are gettin' close to a hundred years old. Some have been converted into apartments, with long sets of stairs and small landings zig-zaggin' along their sides, supplyin' entrance and egress to the less fortunate not on the first floor. Some are still single-family, housin' young couples who enjoy the urban vibe or older folks that have amassed many years in their respective dwellings. A number of small restaurants and bars are within walkin' distance, as well as grocery and drug stores, quirky little shops... Cool spot.
Mike and Evelyn had been shoppin' for new kitchen flooring and had settled on a vinyl plank product- peel-and-stick, four inches by three feet, faux wood pattern. I had a couple friends at work that had recently used a nearly identical product and they were quite satisfied. I had taken some measurements, told them what they would need, then offered to put it down and replace the trim. Evelyn refused to let me do it for nothin', so I agreed to do it for a couple hundred bucks and some Guinness. The toughest part would be makin' from scratch the transition pieces where the new floor would end and the old floor began. But that would be the fun part. Also, they were havin' people over for Thanksgiving Dinner, and I wanted to get as close to done as I could, wanted it to look nice for 'em.
One afternoon, I pulled up all the base trim, gettin' lucky and not breakin' a single piece. Over the next couple evenings, they had given the existing vinyl the big cleanin', and the plan was to go right over the old vinyl with the new.
Sunday, I got to work layin' the new flooring- it was goin' well and it was lookin' good. By Tuesday night, all that was left was the completion of the transitions. I had picked up a number of small pieces of red oak and some flat-head brass screws for this. I would ease all the top edges of the oak, use the thicker boards to reconcile the height difference, then cap it with the thinnest pieces, coverin' the edge of the new flooring. I already had stain and polyurethane. Perfect.
I took the oak blanks home with me. After work on Wednesday, I would work them down with a sander, stain and seal 'em, then head to Clifton where I could cut it all to length and get it in place. By the time company started rollin' in on Turkey Day, the floor would be in great shape. (Baseboard paint touch-up would have to wait until another day- not enough time.)
I left work at two o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, usin' two hours of discretionary time, allowin' me to get a slight jump on the sandin' of the oak. I had forgotten: the red oak was hard as freakin' stone. Even with my head start, I was losin' time. And this was my last day before the Holiday.
I hustled through the sandin' then stained all the blanks and set 'em on an old sheet inside the rear gate of Angela's old 2003 Town and Country.
(This was a good vehicle. Two hundred plus mile and still in fairly good shape- ran well, decent gas mileage, radio was good and the heat and air still worked. It had hauled my people to countless ballgames, family get-togethers, birthday parties. We used it to move the two oldest off to college, traveled together to Florida, the list goes on...)
The stain could dry on the way to Clifton. I would put a coat of polyurethane on 'em as soon as I got there, caulk the baseboard and quarter round while that dried, then get to cuttin' and placin' the oak. Good plan, with no time wasted. I headed out for the final round. It was eight o'clock. It had already gotten dark.
I made it to Mike's, gathered the oak from the rear of the van, and headed in to begin the execution of the plan. I laid out the blanks across two sections of two by four in the basement floor, Black Friday sale ads spread beneath to catch the overspray. I shook the can of polyurethane for a minute or so, coated the nine pieces of stained oak, then moved upstairs and used a wet scrap of an old tee shirt to run the painter's caulk along the trim.
After the caulk was run, I checked on the sealed blanks- they were ready. I immediately set to work cuttin' and fittin' the thresholds. Slow and tedious. There were five spots, and each had different measures. By the time I had completed the last, it was three o'clock Thanksgiving Morning.
Mike had put a pillow and blanket on the living room couch. After midnight, I had told him I would stay and catch a few before I headed home. I loaded all my hand tools, my old beater chop saw (that weighs around sixty pounds and is over twenty years old), and my work backpack into the van. This took three trips. The night was clear and still. It wasn't even cold. Cool, but not cold.
So, at three thirty Thanksgiving Morning, standin' on the sidewalk in Clifton, I decided I would break for home. Wake up in my own bed in a few hours, shower, head on down to Dad's place. I made one last trip into the house and pulled the Guinness carton from the kitchen 'fridge. It held only two bottles, but I had a good idea that the garage 'fridge at home didn't hold much more. No cause to leave 'em here. I locked the front door behind me as I left.
The thirty minute or so trip home lay before me. At this point, I had been up for about twenty-two hours. This had been a crazy busy week, and it was gonna be good to get back to the house. My house. I made my way down Frankfort Avenue and circled 'round to I-64. Up and on and runnin' East. Home in thirty.
I recall comin' over the ridge about a half mile or so from the house. It would be across the creek bridge, around the last bend, and into the straight stretch that passed by the drive. A right turn would drop me off onto the drive and up to the house.
I didn't make it.
You know how you hear those stories about people managin' to crash close to the house?
At around fifty miles an hour and four hundred yards from the house, I fell asleep.
As best as I can tell, blowin' through the woven wire fence did not awaken me. Crossin' the drainage ditch that passed under the road and across the field at a roughly ninety degree angle did. A couple feet deep and about four feet wide, this ditch was just a tiny bit more than the ol' Chrysler could clear cleanly. As the front of the van caught the far side of the ditch, a whole lotta stuff happened in an instant: both front wheels were sheared away, air bags deployed (and, yeah, they do kinda smell bad), and I took the first lick to my head. It was then that I woke up- to an incredibly compartmentalized car crash. The doors had sprung, which had, in turn, lit the interior lights. The headlight buckets were gone. So, after what was, I suppose, about a five second nap, I found myself a participant in a Wreck in Progress, devoid of exterior lighting.
For all the lack of visual input beyond the cabin, it was still immediately obvious that me and the Chrysler were partners in far more than takin' out a few mailboxes. With each successive jolt, I was pitched upward, hard, and the top of the van was pushed down a tiny bit more, to meet some part of the top of my head. I remember thinkin' that this vehicle was definitely gonna be a write-off, and couldn't help but wonder what my physical state would wind up bein'. If I got clear at all.
But, in true car crash fashion, it was over as abruptly as it had begun. The van had completed three complete end-over-end flips and had covered around four hundred fifty feet "off road".
There I sat. Upright. The remaining two wheels on the ground. Headlights gone, dome lights on, radio still playin'. The airbags hung from the dash like giant, wilted Mornin' Glory blossoms. The top of the cabin only a few inches from the top of my head. The lone piece of glass was the windshield, crazed and jammed into the deformed, pinched-down hole in front of me. All other panes had broke rank, disintegrated and scattered.
I forced the sprung driver's door open enough to squeeze my skinny-ass out. Shoes were on my feet, wallet and snips in my right-hand hip pocket, my phone still in my left, front. My right hand is completely covered in blood, but, after all, I'm takin' thinners. This ain't nothin'. I've seen worse than this.
I drag out my phone and flip open the cover. My glasses are gone. Bars? Couldn't tell ya. I can see well enough to choose the dial pad and dial home- recording. Somethin' to the effect of "middle of nowhere, coverage sucks..." Somethin' like that. I shuffle around the Chrysler's lifeless carcass, continuing to try and get through to the house. Finally...!
Hello? I've crashed the shit outta your van. I'm close. Turn left off the lane, I ain't far...
Are you drunk?
No....!
I mill around the vehicle- it's a debris field. Wasn't nothin' left inside but me and a shitload of broken glass. I assumed I had dropped into the ditch, then rolled the Ol' Gal a couple times. But I can't find no blacktop.
I hear a car comin'. Can't be Angela- I'm close, but still too soon. I move close to the van. Don't wanna get tagged. In seconds I'm gonna have a grip on where the road is. I watch as a car comes around the bend and passes me by. Damn! I ain't even remotely close to the road! Gotta be a hundred feet away, at least.
The next car is Angela. She passes me up, but backs into the space in front of the gate I had just barely missed. I head that way- passin' tools, car body parts, wheels, and make my way through the ditch and up to her car. I have her point her car lights down toward the "scene", and I manage to locate my work backpack that holds my pad and my laptop, along with all my other day-to-day tools. I also spot and retrieve one of the two unopened Extra Stouts that I had plucked from Mike's 'fridge earlier.
Home. The plan was to get some shut eye, then on to Renfro Valley for dinner. Instead, I wash the blood from my face and hands, change my shirt, and Angela drives me to the hospital in Shelbyville. (Angela picks up extra hours here, part time, and the place is small, so the comfort level is quite high.) I call the sheriff's office on the way- fell asleep, just me, interior lights on, out in a cow pasture, highway 148, around the fourth mile marker.
CAT scan and some poke around and questions and I am pronounced Lucky as Hell. Deputy Kennedy shows up and we cover the necessary details. (A good man.)
Angela takes me home. The worse thing I come away with is a funky bloody left eye. That, and some knots on my head, general car crash soreness. But, my eyeglasses and the spare vehicle are no more.
We scratch our original Thanksgiving plans of scatterin' in different directions and, instead, Angela makes a grocery run. The two from Lexington show up, and we pull a fifth chair from the desk in the living room and we all sit around our tiny kitchen table and have Thanksgiving Dinner together. Just the five of us. Just us. Hours before, in the blink of an eye, I questioned my own survival. Now, here we sit.
Thanksgiving?
Yep. I'm thinkin' this fits.

Fish

No Free Lunch

I happened to be privvy to a conversation the other day, (post-Presidential Election) and it got me thinkin'...

It started out innocently enough- someone statin' that they felt that the teachers in our public school system were underpaid and how much they appreciated them and the work that they do. Another person commented that they felt the teachers were overpaid and failed to do the job with which they are tasked.

(Obviously, both of these statements are generalizations. One would assume that each of these folks may have intended for some quantifier, such as "most" or "some" or "many", to be implied. Nothing is absolute, right...?)

The first person responded with what seemed to be an attempt to clarify what I had felt was a very straightforward statement, appearin' to be startled by the coarse response from her friend.

I watched and listened, both fascinated and shocked as the conversation quickly took an abrupt and bizarre turn.

The second person then continued with a string of comments in rapid succession. The first proclamation- that the food being served to her children during school lunch was positively inedible and that (I ain't makin' this up), it was all the fault of Michelle Obama. Yeah, that Michelle Obama. Pretty sure the only Michelle Obama you know of. The President's wife.

Her friend countered, politely, that the meals at her childrens' school were actually not bad for cafeteria food, and that the cafeteria personnel were quite creative when it came to the menu and preparation of the food. She added that during her volunteer opportunities there, she had, relatively speakin', enjoyed what was served.

But the cap was off the bottle and had been tossed away.

Next, her friend countered that some children weren't even required to pay for their lunch and, via some obscure logic, she posited that this shortfall in the revenue stream lowered the quality of school meals for all, and that it wasn't fair that her children should have to "suffer" because the parents of others could not pay "their share." Ultimately, this stream of thought devolved into the proclamation that this group of unfortunates was not her problem. I don't recall much beyond this, other than that it was basically more of the same. Thankfully, the conversation burned out quickly. Me? I was havin' a tough time gettin' past this irritation with hungry children.

When my family moved from Indiana to Brindle Ridge, Kentucky, Rockcastle was one of the poorest of all one hundred, twenty counties. I was in third grade and I remember clearly on that first day of school, Mrs. McKinney (a woman I fondly recall as a beautiful, dark-haired twenty-somethin') called roll, then immediately followed it by callin' for a show of hands from all the kids present that were gettin' "free lunch." This was typically around one in four of the kids in my class. I also noticed that these same kids had the three cent cost of mornin' milk break waived. Three cents. Three. If I am not mistaken, the cost of lunch was twenty-five cents.

This concept of "free lunch" was a new one for me. Near the end of the first week of school, I had to ask one of my classmates why he didn't pay for his meal. I remember him explainin' to me, in as few words as he could, that his family did not have enough money for him to pay. I wasn't a dumb kid, but the thought that someone couldn't afford what was literally this small amount of change never entered my mind. Maybe the fact that there were no fat kids in Mrs. McKinney's third grade class should have tipped me off. That, and the fact that the room was filled with worn shirts with stick arms hangin' from the sleeves, and pants that were worn at the cuff, but were now too short to cover the tops of their socks.

In 2010, 17.2 million U.S. households (14.5 percent/approximately one in seven) were "food insecure." Food insecurity is defined as "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways." This can lead to malnutrition. It is also estimated that at least thirteen million of our country's children go to bed hungry every night, or about one in four.

Malnutrition has been shown to affect cognitive development among young children and can affect school performance in children of all ages, as well as contributin' to a host of other health issues. Research shows that with hunger comes more frequent sickness and therefore higher health care costs. It can alter the brain architecture, stunting intellectual capacity and a child's ability to learn and interact with others.

I'm not gonna say that everyone should volunteer regularly at their local food bank or homeless shelter, or that everyone should make it a point to make regular contributions of time or money to organizations and agencies that work to combat this problem so that the world would be a better place. I think this goes without sayin'.

But, I will say that I personally find begrudgin' a hungry kid a decent meal borders on despicable.

So, when you sit down at the table and pick up your fork and spread your napkin in your lap, you should remember the people that, at that same moment, are doin' without enough food to eat and sustain their bodies and keep them in a reasonably healthy state. And, at the end of that good meal, when you have eaten all you cared to eat and have pushed away from the table, satisfied and lethargic, remember that many of those hungry are children, and are in that situation through no fault of their own.

If you feel that your taxes are too high, don't bitch about the small portion that might allow a skinny grade school kid to focus on his or her schoolwork, rather than the emptiness gnawin' at their gut. It's actually quite ugly.

Fish

James S. Fish, U.S. Army

This is somethin' I put together for Dad a couple years ago. I had spent several years either askin' to "borrow" old pictures of his Time in the Service, or siphonin' 'em away when he wasn't watchin'. I had posted it a while back on the Facebook, but I thought I would drop it out here. Used the cheesey Windows Movie Maker, which I knew nothin' about. I thought the scannin' of all the pictures was tough, but my ignorance and lack of experience with the process proved to be far worse. I had chosen the music years before, when I had first thought of doin' this. Turned out okay. Dad was stunned when I queued it up on his DVD player. He was a litlte misty when it was over. Then he asked for all his pictures back... Fish

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=z1SOtSUBgVg&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dz1SOtSUBgVg