In Cars

In 1967, my brother was in the army and owned a 1965 Plymouth Belvedere. The Belvedere was a pale yellow 2-door, a 'hard-top' they called them back then. The car had a powerful V8 engine that, I was told, was balanced and blueprinted. I guess that is car-talk for a good engine that is not usually available at the dealer. It was not a fancy car, no electric windows, kind of plain interior, and no fancy wheels. In fact, it had hubcaps. I can remember my brother stomping on the gas pedal and smoking those stock tires, creating a cloud of acrid white smoke. I thought that was pretty cool, but what did I know? I was only 12 years old.
My brother volunteered to go to Vietnam in 1968. He said he was tired of the bureaucracy of the army and thought getting into the war would be better. I was too young to question his thinking, but at the time, sounded reasonable. Before he left, he drove the Plymouth from his army post in Massachusetts to Lubbock and we got to spend a few days with him before he shipped out to the 'Nam. His plan was to leave his car at our house and my sister Barbara could drive it while he was on the other side of the world.
The day came when it was time to take my brother to the airport and see him off to the war. We all piled into his Plymouth, can't remember if my dad drove or my brother. In those pre-9/11 days, airport security was non-existent at the Lubbock airport. There was not a ramp at the only gate, just a door to the runway and you walked right up to the airplane and climbed those rolling stairs into the plane. Well-wishers could accompany the departing person right up to the airplane. After my brother's plane took off, we all piled back in the car for the short drive home. I can only imagine the fear and anxiety my parents were experiencing, seeing their son leave to fight a war and possibly never seeing him alive again. Rest assured, my brother came back alive, not suffering any physical injuries.
While he was overseas, my sister drove his car to school everyday. To a high-schooler, this car was uber-cool, not a run-down jalopy most students drove at Lubbock High School. My sister was very careful with my brother's car, kept it clean and was very proud of the pale-yellow Plymouth.
One day after school, my sister was leaving the school parking lot when another student was backing out of a parking space and hit my brother's car as my sister was driving through the parking lot. My sister was devastated. She was very worried about my brother's car and what my brother might say when he learned about the accident. It was decided that my brother would not be told of the accident while he was in Vietnam. The car got fixed and you couldn't detect that the accident had ever happened. My sister might get away with this, I can almost bet she thought.
My brother returned from Vietnam a year after he left, still in one piece. We all met him at the airport. We watched him exit the plane and walk down the steps and greeted him. My sister started crying and blurted out, "I am so sorry, I wrecked your car!" Leonard looked very surprised and said, "What?" She then went on to tell him the story and he didn't seem upset. I guess after being in a war zone for a year, a wrecked car doesn't seem so terrible.
My brother had that car for several more years. After Vietnam, he was stationed in San Antonio and would often drive to Lubbock in the Plymouth to visit us.
We still talk about that car, it's super-performance, and the wreck. Seems like just a side-note now to all of the other events in our lives.

Movie of the Month

Saw the movie "127 Hours" today. Interesting movie, not totally entertaining, probably won't rent the video when it goes to DVD. Mostly I wanted to see "127 Hours" because it took place and was filmed near Canyonlands National Park close to Moab, Utah. I have been to Moab the past two summers kayaking down the Green River, which cuts through Canyonlands N.P. It's beautiful country there, deserts and canyons, with a cold river running between the canyons. I love that place, the wilderness is awesome there, no cars, no cell phone signals, and amazingly pristine. I could go on and on about how beautiful it all is, but I won't, words just wouldn't be enough. Anyway, the movie is about a cocky young man who decides to live life wrecklessly and go climbing into a very narrow slot canyon by himself. He falls down into the bottom of one slot and a dislodged rock about the size of a big beach ball falls and pins his right arm. To make a long story short, he finally cuts off his arm after 127 hours and manages to climb out of the canyon and gets help. Another failure was he never told anyone where he was going. File a plan and stick to it. I am not spoiling the movie for anyone, this is a well-known true story. To tell you the truth, I would have died down in the bottom of that slot if that had happened to me, I would not have had the fortitude to cut off my own arm. Some people are just wired differently. I was a tad squeamish during the arm-cutting sequence, actually putting my hands over my eyes to shield them from the...blood. Fortunately, the bloody scenes were short. There is more to the movie, you will have to see it for yourself. Two things learned from the movie: Never hike alone and always carry a very sharp knife. Maybe a bone saw too.

The Letter

I sent my dad a letter just a week or two before he died in 2008. He never received the letter, and with all of the activities after my dad's death, I had forgotten all about it. In the letter was a clipping from the Dallas newspaper about a very old pistol that was very rare and therefore very valuable, and sold at an auction for well over $1 million. Attached to the clipping was a yellow post-it note, I had asked my dad if he any guns like this laying around. I knew that he didn't but I thought he would enjoy reading about the pistol since one of his many hobbies including collecting guns and he also knew just about everything there was to know about firearms, old and new. My dad could tell you how many grains of gun-powder every bullet contained and the velocity of the bullet, the length of the barrels, when the gun was made and when they stopped making them. How he remembered all of those details, I will never know. Just goes to show how obsessed we get with our avocations.
My dad died on February the 22nd, 2008, and on February 22nd, 2009, exactly a year after my dad died, my mother called me and said a letter that I had sent to dad arrived that day. At first I didn't remember the letter so I asked my mother to open it. She told me what was inside, the clipping with the post-it note, and then I remembered. My mom questioned me about absent-mindedly sending this to my dad but I had not done that. The letter had been circling the post office for a year and just happened to be delivered on the first anniversary of my dad's death. Mom kept the letter until the next time we saw each other and she gave it to me, and I still have it. The letter doesn't have any sentimental value, my dad never touched it, never read it, never knew about it, but the fact that it got lost for an entire year and then got delivered exactly a year after his death, that says something to me. I am not superstitious, don't believe in ghosts, but what is this? When I tell someone about this, I don't get "Wow, that's bizarre!" responses. I get shrugged shoulders. I think if someone told me this story, I would be a "Wow!". Maybe they are not as taken aback as I am because it is not their dad, they have no connection to the events. I'm going with that, it will make me feel better.
I'm going to keep that letter.

No Fumar!

Through my great and benevolent company, I am involved with Meals on Wheels. I started volunteering with Meals delivery because it seemed like an easy way to help others and also to get to know some of my coworkers a little better since I would be delivering those meals with them. My delivery days happen about every two months and on a Thursday. It's a small amount of time to give, takes about an hour to deliver 10-12 meals in southern Irving, an older part of town. Mostly elderly people but there are a couple of younger recipients on my route that seem able to work for a living and capable of cooking meals on their own, but it is not up to me to decide who gets the meals and who doesn't. This used to bother me when I first delivered meals but I have since just let it go, I don't know what those people's lot in life might be. Duane is my partner delivering Meals. Duane is a long-time employee of my company, he is a manager of a department , and a good guy with a sense of humor. The first time I delivered Meals with Duane, he drove, and I got motion sick and barfed during the delivery. I am easily sickened by erratic driving, and Duane's driving certainly qualified as erratic. Delivering Meals entails driving around neighborhoods and in and out of driveways and making a few u-turns, so you get an idea of how one might get car-sick during the delivery. After that first delivery with Duane driving, I am now the driver and Duane is the navigator. The Visiting Nurses Association coordinates the meals, they give us a list of people and their addresses and a copy of a Mapsco address grid to help us find the houses. We pick up two large ice chests at a church in central Irving, one contains the hot meals (a 3-compartment plastic tray containing a mystery meat, vegetable, and a dessert) and the other ice chest contains individual plastic bags of a half-pint of milk, bread, and eating utensils. The people get these types of meals delivered Monday through Friday, just at lunch, but they are on their own for meals on the weekends. It's really not much of a meal, I couldn't survive on that one meal, but hopefully these people are provided additional meals by friends or family the rest of the time. Some of the people like to talk, we might be the only person they get to talk to all day, so we get to hear all about their lives. I always ask how they are doing, if they are feeling okay, and if they need anything. I cannot do anything for these people myself, but I could pass along to the VNA any needs that the old folks might have. I hope I make them feel like someone cares a little bit about them, they are not forgotten.

Today, at the last stop of the route, we delivered two meals to an elderly couple living in an apartment with four or five chihuahuas. When I rang the doorbell, the dogs went bonkers, an all out barkfest. As I stood there, I could smell a strong odor of cigarettes coming from somewhere. On their door was a note telling visitors, in Spanish (NO FUMAR!) and English, NO SMOKING. From inside, I heard a voice say "Come on in!". I have spoken to this couple before, they never came across as being unstable, so I felt comfortable entering their apartment. When I opened the door, I was hit with a wall of cigarette smoke. Maybe they were okay with their own smoking but didn't want any additional smokers in their apartment. There were three people in the apartment and all three were smoking. The gent in the wheelchair was smoking with an oxygen canula in his nose. That was a odd sight, a person needing oxygen to breathe but puffing on a cigarette at the same time. I asked them the same questions I asked the others, are you okay, how are you feeling, and do you need anything. Obviously they didn't need cigarettes. The guy in the wheelchair with the canula in his nose said he was a born-again Christian. He said he had been wealthy two different times in his life, the Lord had taught him how to make money but had not shown him how to spend it, and now he lived on social security. He went on to say how grateful he was for us to bring him meals, he was grateful for a roof over his head, and grateful for the shoe (note: singular) on his foot. I looked down and for the first time noticed he indeed only needed one shoe because one leg had been amputated just below the knee. I said something stupid like "Yep, you only need one shoe!". After that, I started walking toward the door and quickly spouting exit words like "Well, all right, take care now".

You never quite know what you will see when you enter someone elses world.