Except for that one place…

By Ken Welborn

Record Publisher

Like just about everyone else, I am older than I used to be. I can remember when things were simpler, slower and, generally speaking, less dangerous than they are now. I talk about the good old days, and quite often tell stories about experiences that happened long ago. Something I know that the faithful among you will never believe or understand is that periodically my vaunted memory is called into question.

When that happens, I am truly cut to the bone.

After all, I have chosen to live by the words of my mother, Cary, who often said, in her own, inimitable way, “If Kenny says it, it’s so!” Well, today, I want to recount to you a story about something that happened to me in Savannah, Ga., that has never happened to me before.

And, I have my wife, Laura, as a witness.

I have written before about the trip Laura and I took to Georgia last June. Of all the beautiful places we visited, Savannah was the most beautiful, the most interesting, had the best food and was the most fun.

Except for that one place.

I’ve told you before about “The Hunt.” The Hunt, as I hope you recall, was to find a set of brackets for a glass shelf to match the ones we saw in our room at the Crane Cottage on Jekyll Island. We were told it was futile to search, that “…those things no longer exist,” but search we did, and had a positively wonderful time doing so.

Except for that one place.

We were in the Riverfront area of Savannah. In addition to the beautiful buildings, cobblestone streets, and historic monuments, there were lots of antique shops in that area. It was a browser’s paradise — we had a particular item to search for, but got to enjoy looking at a gazillion other neat old things in the process.

As we perused though one particular store, I happened to notice a laminated page from an old Sears & Roebuck catalog. Through the years, I have always been fascinated by the things that appeared in that catalog. At one time, you could actually order a car from Sears, or even a house.

And that is what had caught my eye that day — an ad from a 1904 Sears catalog for a two story frame home — to be delivered by railroad car, with the pieces all cut out and ready to be put together on your lot.

“Look at this, Laura,” I said as I picked up the laminated page.

It was sitting behind a glass dish on a glass shelf. When I picked it up, it stuck to the dish and caused it to turn over on the shelf. It made an awful noise and almost fell, but I, being incredibly agile, was able to catch the dish as it overturned and replaced it with no harm done. After finally showing Laura the ad, we moved on, and after about 15 more minutes, left for the next store.

We had been in the other store about one minute when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and saw a rather stern-faced woman glaring at me. She curtly informed me that I had broken something in her store, and insisted that I return with her to clear things up. I politely assured her that I had not broken anything, but in the interest of avoiding any misunderstanding (and her insistence), I agreed to return to see what she was talking about.

When Laura and I walked into the store, a lady at the front counter immediately held up pieces of a tea glass. Now — let me get this said. Savannah is 400 miles away, and if I had done anything wrong I would confess it now. But — I hadn’t — I didn’t — I swear. Now, the tea glass was from the same booth, but I had never even seen that glass, much less broken it. Well, the aforementioned stern-faced lady marched us back to the scene of the crime, all the way insisting that she heard the racket when I broke the glass. I continued to politely explain the story of the laminated ad sticking to the big glass bowl, as my explanation as to where the noise actually came from.

I went through that scenario two or three times, with the lady sitting on the floor testily picking up shards of glass, and even more testily not buying my story.

I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to try once more. Summoning all my patience, I drew a long breath and in my most conciliatory tone I asked the lady to please look up and let me show her what had happened.

She did and I did.

“Ma’am,” I began slowly, “this laminated Sears ad caught my eye and I wanted to show it to my wife who was standing behind me. I picked up the piece of laminate…”

That is as far as I got.

That ad stuck to the dish again, only this time there was no catching it. It flipped over and, as it hit the shelf, it broke into two chunks, and went on to break through the glass shelf on which it had been resting. Then, as I watched — mortified — and the lady covered her head with her hands, the dish proceeded to crash through the three shelves below it.

Pow!

Pow!

Pow!

After what seemed like an eternity, the noise subsided. When I opened my eyes and looked down, the lady was sitting in a virtual sea of broken glassware and shelving.

I could feel my face turning beet red. When I looked around to Laura, she was as white as a sheet.

I mean, what do you say?

Nothing — and I do mean nothing — like this had ever happened to me. I have been looking for treasure for over 30 years, and have never been accused of even breaking a teacup.

And now this.

Truth is, as she gazed up at me, the woman looked kind of pitiful. I didn’t know what to do. Should I start helping pick up the glass? Offer her my hand to help her up? Apologize? Run like a scalded dog?

Then, I was saved. Since there were no more shelves or merchandise to hinder my sight, I noticed that the metal standards holding all that merchandise and shelving was loosely tied to a round post with the tiniest piece of ribbon you could imagine.

“Why,” I exclaimed, tugging at the ribbon, “…this was just an accident looking for a victim.”

The poor soul on the floor continued to sit, with a look that was one part horror, one part numbness, one part anger, one part frustration, and six parts disbelief. I did the only thing I knew to do, I continued to point to the flimsiness of the shelf standards. After what seemed to be forever, the glass lady spoke.

“Okay, just leave.”

“Go on.”

“Please.”

As I was struggling to come up with an appropriate reply, Laura decided we had better get out while the getting was good. She tugged at my shirt hard enough for me to get the idea and we soon beat a hasty retreat into the beautiful Savannah sunshine.

Since that day, I have kept my hands next to my sides and firmly in my pockets.

 

 

 

Yearning for Community

By Jim Strawbridge

Communities in the true sense barely exist anymore.  Individuals and families, who share common basic values and goals, and who partake in each other’s joy and griefs, where each know the other by name, history, weakness and strength seem but a distant memory.  Rapid technological advances and cultural changes have pushed our society to its limits, and beyond.  Whenever a culture changes faster than its people and institutions can’t adjust—phychologically and socially—there results a breakdown in that culture’s shared value system and the result is widespread dysfunctional behavior, such as addictions.

Small towns like where I grew-up in  were special.  People could call all the dogs in town by name and it was near impossible to walk home without someone stopping to offer a ride. There was a charm and orderliness about it all; a sense of community.  It was a place where lemonade stands, not crime, were on every corner.

In the present highly individualistic society, we increasingly lack the support and security of extended family and the feeling of community.  Addictions provide nonthreatening contact with others and numb our feelings of insecurity.

It is no fluke that the “self-help” movement has been so successful in nurturing the recovery of countless alcoholics and drug addicts.  A crucial aspect of self-help programs like Alcoholic Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, overeaters Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and countless others is the sense of community; that sense of extended family that exists.  This camaraderie is something for which many people in modern-day American society seem to yearn and do not experience as the nature of our society changes.  The desire for “community” is one of several basic human desires deeply frustrated by modern American culture.

“This drive for community,” writes Philip Slater in The Pursuit of Loneliness, “is the wish to live in trust and fraternal cooperation with other people in a total and visible experience.”

So it is not only that we lack the skill (and sometimes the courage) to face our problems but also that our families, social institutions, and communities are failing to provide us with the emotional and social support necessary to muster courage.  Having sufficient emotional, physical, and social support in our lives brings out the best—the heroic—in any of us.  Knowing that we are not alone as we take the courageous step to confront our personal demons is important.  Moreover, knowing that even if we fail to successfully resolve them, we won’t be abandoned is equally important.  This, undoubtedly, gives us greater access to our courage.

Increasingly, individualism is another factor that frustrates our desire for community and leaves us more vulnerable to addiction.  Our economic system rewards individual performance rather than cooperative effort. As a result each person functions as an independent, isolated ‘self’ whose survival and success depend on his own resources.

Consequently, we are set against each other, our trust and mutual reliance’s crumbled.  We feel we cannot count on anyone except ourselves, and this creates deep feelings of alienation and insecurity.  We are led to feel that if we don’t make good, we will be ostracized, appear as unworthy, and left to flounder on our own.

This “each man for himself” orientation is often called “rugged individualism” or “survival of the fittest,” and it is the philosophy upon which American society was founded.  If each of us is expected “to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps,” the implication is that we should not expect any help from others.  Consequently, to be in a position of weakness or neediness is looked down upon.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the correlation between our  growing insecurity, our yearning for community, and our growing vulnerability to addiction.

One of the secondary payoffs of addiction—also an underlying attraction—is that we get membership and acceptance in the community of other addicts.  The gambler enjoys the camaraderie of the “game” with other gamblers. The drug addict usually interacts with a steady flow of people with whom he gets high, buys from, or sells to.  Many an alcoholic remembers enjoying—in the beginning—the sense of belonging felt in the bar or at parties with other drinkers.  For the workaholic, office relationships often provide a sense of community.

Leon Wurmser, writing about addictions, calls this a “pseudo-community” and notes that, ultimately, it is unable to fulfill our need for real community.  One’s “drinking buddies,” he contends, are not so very different from the rat race they substitute for, chasing largely superficial goals and equating happiness with acquisitive success of one sort or another.  Whether our goal is acquiring goods or acquiring drugs, we are looking to something outside our self to make us feel whole.  We’re looking for a community.

Within such a “club,” there is little sense of unconditional acceptance or trust; one’s mask or image must be maintained.  People are still usually judged according to quite superficial criteria, and the shared goal of getting high (or gambling or shopping) can hardly be expected to sustain one with a sense of meaning and purpose over the long haul.  For a community to be supportive, it must provide a shared value system of a higher order (some sense of purpose and meaning) and provide a sense of security, a sense of community to its members.

As mentioned, a major reason for the success of self-help groups is that they also provide fellowship, the security of a community of supporters.  What these groups provide that the pseudo-community of other active addicts cannot is unconditional acceptance of the real person on the other side of the mask, the person with weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

This sense of acceptance from others provides for many the first true sense of community, of connectedness, of belonging—security—based on one’s intrinsic worth.  The power of that sense of community cannot be underestimated.  It is the atmosphere in which one can begin to let down their masks and give attention to mending their lives.   As one recovering alcoholic put it, referring to the self-help group he attends, “They know who I am, and they still accept me.  I think this is one of the major reasons I have been able to change.”

 

 

Why do they hate us so bad?

By CASEYANNIE

While doing the ironing this week, I came up with some points to ponder about this Arab thing going on around the other side of the world.  You all know how dangerous it is to give me time to think.

What kind of things have we done to those folks that they hate us so badly?

Okay so we had to go through them to reach the Germans in WWII.  So folks when you see two armies coming at you get out of the way or join one or the other of them.  So you lost your country when you would not fight for it.  That is called “spoils of war.”  Seems you could have seen it coming since you are so wonderful at remembering a slight that happened several thousand years ago.  It was not just us who took that tiny sliver of land and gave it back to the Jews.  It was the world who did it.  Think the problem started with the mentality that says to always sue the guy with the deepest pockets.  So then you start to whine and wail and tear your shirts and send your youngsters to bomb things, burn our flag in the streets.    How is that working for you?  Getting anywhere with it?

There are 5 million Jews in Israel and there are 10 times that many who profess to be Palestinian.  Several times you have been offered compensation including choice land and all kinds of perks but you refuse and here come the bombs again.  Israel has almost a daily bombing from you equivalent to Oklahoma City.  Do you really think Americans would take that?  No we would not.  We would have you pinned to the ground and crying uncle in a heart beat without even calling in the army to help.

You started fooling around with a people who had finally had enough and needed someone to fuss at big time.  But you waited until they had turned your beloved desert into productive land and done all the hard work to build towns and infrastructure then you wanted it back.  Just like a kid who has tossed a toy into the toy box and then suddenly remembers it and wants it back but someone else is playing with it now.

I know this is not something that you want to deal with but yes we do need your oil and that is about all there is there that we want.  We are not out to change your religion nor are we after your women nor your camels.  We will pay you a fair price for the oil folks but will not allow you to dictate to us about our God or your tendency to kill large numbers of people and call it a holy war.  We both have  the same God.  What part of the Bible confused you?  Would you like it explained to you in simple terms?  What part of “thou shalt not...” confuses you?

You thought you had it made and that we were not paying attention when you bombed our people or our ships or took our people hostage.  We asked you nicely to stop doing those things.  You wept and wailed and talked about how we were evil and then went out and did it again and again. Like children who break into tears and scream, “I hate you,” and run to their room and slam the door. Then when we pick you up and spank your hands you start kicking and fussing.  So I think it’s about time you had a time out.  Now go sit in the chair and don’t speak or move until we tell you to do so.  Nope, nope, back on that chair and turn off the television.  Your picture was ruined by the blood spilled on it and they decided not to use it on the air.

If there is anyone who can explain this to me please email me at caseyannie24@yahoo.com