Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
I’ve come to think of this post as one where you come for the music and stay for the conversation—so feel free to drop a note. The diarist gets to sleep in if she so desires and can show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Join us, please.
This is a story of how I have coped with the chaos that has swirled around me since New Years Day.
That day my 83 year old mother shattered her ankle. She was sweeping snow off the back patio. She has a hard time with carpet. So I spent the day in the ER and two months helping her get through the physical therapy. She’s fine now, back to work at our local high school. Dad is dying of cancer that he refused to get treatment for. My sister and brother are going through divorce, depression, monetary hard times etc.
But since that day, I have felt like I am in the eye of a maelstrom of madness. My life is relatively stable, but everything and everyone I love is in upheaval. I have done what I can to help, but I found myself exhausted emotionally. And that’s when I made a decision.
"Because sometimes the only way you can feel good about yourself is by making someone else look bad. And I'm tired of making other people feel good about themselves!" — Homer Simpson
No. That’s not it, but after two paragraphs, I figured we needed a laugh.
I decided to go on a goodwill tour. I was going to go to places that I had lived before and re-live a time (the 90’s) that wasn’t absolute insanity. And I was going to do some good along the way.
It started by taking my first cousin with me. His wife had died on the operating table a month before, at the age of 47. The thought of rolling down the highway with the wind stripping the ugliness away appealed to both of us.
One main goal was to finish something that I started long ago. Back in 1991 when I was a junior in high school, grandpa was getting towards the end of his life. I approached dad with the idea of the three of us doing a road trip. Grandpa though it was a great idea. There were some things that he wanted to do before the end. One of those was to find his grandfathers grave in Tonopah, Nevada. We did. He died in 1902 and the tombstone was just a piece of tin stuck on a board in the pioneer cemetery. Years later, dad had a real tombstone made but never delivered it. All these years later, it was up to me.
And now for an appropriate musical interlude.
Now, my cousin was from the other side of my family. He never met all the cousins I have up in Utah or Idaho. This would be the first time that two big chunks of my youth collided. We set out and watched the sun come up in Navajo land. The towering cliffs, the bright colors of the sand and rock, the timelessness of the land was already perking me up. There’s a magic to the land that can be heard in the wind. Most times it’s the only sound you hear. And it reminds you that no matter how things might seem in the rest of the world, somethings never change. It’s as close to eternal as I’ve ever felt.
So we made it to the town in Utah where the last three generations of my family have been born and buried. I spent time with loved ones that I have seen too damned little of in my adult life. I wanted to say more about how I felt and what they meant to me growing up. But it was kind of awkward and I felt self-conscious about just barging into town, picking up a tombstone that had been stored in a barn for years, blabbing my heart out and leaving. After leaving town, I realized, that’s the whole point knucklehead. You should have done that. Clearly I needed to get better at this.
Now for a song about links of our life. Some good, some bad. But I got lucky and found a video of a show that I was at 5 years ago. Ah, the little things...
If you have ever traveled from central Utah to central Nevada, you know not to look for a Starbucks. Or a McDonald’s. Or a gas station. It’s 411 miles of nothing but the opportunity to talk. It’s a fine line of trying to keep someone cheered up and also drive home some points about doing a better job of living. You see, my cousin has WDS. So, we rolled the miles away talking and laughing and singing. At Tonopah I was finally able to complete the mission that started long ago.
Next up was Oregon, where I lived for years. After taking some new roads and seeing new parts of Nevada and California, I dropped my cousin off with his sister in central Oregon. By now I had a plan of what I wanted to accomplish.
I stopped by a painting company in Eugene that I worked at 24 years ago. They are a top notch company that did a lot of custom work, especially stain and lacquer jobs in the huge spray booth at the company offices. I worked in there a lot. They also did prevailing wage jobs for city, state and federal properties. I loved those. They paid more than twice what I was earning just a few shorts years before. It was because of that job that I was able to buy my first vehicle.
As I had hoped, the original owner was still in the office. At 74, he is working to turn over operations to three employees that plan on buying the business from him. We talked for an hour, catching up on current events and direction of the company. But what I went there to say, I could tell really made him smile. And that was the point.
I thanked him for the chance to learn so many angles of the painting trade, how he taught a 20 year old kid what it was like to comport ones self with professionalism and seriousness. I told him that my time there helped me to continue on being the best painter I could be, moving up to crew leader, foreman, sub-contractor and eventually bidding my own jobs. I made sure he was appreciated, and by something he did years ago. His life’s work was meaningful and influential, even if he didn’t know it at the time. I could have sworn I could see tears of gratitude forming in his eyes. I made someone feel better. And that made me feel better.
After saying goodbye, I drove around town to see if anything I did was still around. Sure enough, I found the sculpture in above photo standing proud. That made me happy, so I went to my first favorite bar to soak up some more old times.
To set up the next chapter, I have to fill you in on my goals back then.
I was working on a mansion on the shore of Lake Tahoe the summer before I went to Eugene. There I met and talked to the finish carpenters that were installing all the great wood work that I was then staining and lacquering. Boy did I want their job. Great pay, less work than what I was doing. And it fit into my plan of making custom fish aquariums and furniture.
Fast forward to 1998. I had bopped all over the country, working and playing. But I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was tired of the feast or famine times in the trades. I wanted to improve my standing. I wanted to make art. I decided to go back to school.
No one would hire me to build cabinets or furniture if I didn’t know how to build a box. So no on-the-job training was happening, I had to pay someone to teach me. Or did I? I found out there was a Job Corps campus right on the central coast of Oregon. They would pay me (not much), house me, and feed me and teach me to build a box. All I had to do was agree to their zero tolerance policy, give up my freedom and live in a room with a bunch of teenagers. After agonizing about that stuff, I decided it was worth the sacrifice.
All these years later, I wanted to go back to that campus and talk to the kids and motivate them. I always wanted to show up and donate one of my aquariums to the campus as a thank you. Well, that didn’t happen. But I could motivate some kids that are thinking they’re in a place they don’t really want to be in.
I showed up and checked in at the office as a visitor. It was clear that they really enjoyed having an ex-student show up after all these years. The director of the center got me caught up on all the changes. I asked him if I could speak to the carpentry school, he asked if would speak to the whole student body. Since they didn’t have any large assemblies scheduled, I stuck with the carpenters. After lunch and an active shooter drill (welcome to the 21st century) I went down the hill to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters training center. I met the new instructors and proved to them that I was a student there. They were excited to have me give a pep talk to the kids. It was a kick to see that the group was more racially diverse than in my years. They were seemed more focused and mature than the kids I was in school with. They kept eye contact with me and truly seemed to be interested in what I had to say.
I told them about the pitfalls they faced when getting out. I admonished them to go the extra mile in school, that this was the time to learn as much as they could before they had to get a job and learn things the hard way or the wrong way. They were impressed when I told them that with in a year of my graduating, I found myself as a foreman in a furniture factory who was able to hire my friends whenever needed.
I could see their eyes widen when I told them that because of what I had learned in that very room is directly responsible for my owning a house with a rental apartment in the back, my own truck and having a great job on a salary. All of these kids came from poor homes, most likely broken, and are yearning for more out of this life. I might have been the first one to tell them that they can do it, because it happened to me. I was in their shoes, not some adult that they have to take their word for.
I’d like to think that they are now a bit more motivated to learn, work hard and eventually succeed. I know I felt better by helping someone else out. And that’s what I learned all over again, helping others helps me feel better.
So, if you find yourself freaked about these days and have the time, go over to a special needs center and give them some of your love. Do a little mentoring. Teach a kid to read well. If you’re down, lift someone up. I bet ya find your smile.
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?