Stewardship

However you interpret the Bible or whether or not you even believe it to be true, you have to admit we have fallen short in our role as earth’s stewards. Sitting here, writing this, looking at pictures, trying to get a “grip” on what I’m seeing; I just cannot fathom what we humans have done. There’s no one to blame, if you drive a car, own a refrigerator or have any “normal” existence at all, you use oil. I guess that means we’re all at fault for the disaster facing the southeastern coast of America.

My fear is that this tragedy, like others in recent times, will go by the way and lessons to be learned will be lost. Dad use to have us pile into the car and take us to the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. The road that led us there was unpaved and narrow, with only a few places to park without getting bogged down in the sand.


And oh, that sand! Sand as white as snow…so white it would hurt your eyes and water, so emerald blue you could see thirty feet down. There were sand dunes as high as buildings with sea oats and wildlife scurrying about. We’d run up the dunes, slide down the other side and there it would be…the gulf... beautiful, pristine, our playground, and a wonderful gift from mother earth. We would be the only people for miles around as we rode the waves and played in the white sand. Somehow we thought it would always be there. I realize now it may not be there for me anymore and probably not for my daughter and her children. Mom still lives there…hope the fumes don’t affect her health, I heard the EPA is checking for toxic levels.

I grew up with an author named Thornton W. Burgess who wrote fables in the early 20th century. His stories were about Sammy Jay, Longlegs the Heron and others who lived near the Smiling Pond and Laughing Brook and had varying opinions about Farmer Brown’s Boy…their human. If the dolphins and sea turtles of the gulf could speak, I wonder what they’d say. “We saw you coming, watched from the sea as you began your assault on our home. We wondered as you took away the dunes, replaced them with towers so you could stay longer, look farther, drink harder and enjoy our home. We cried as you took our bounty, our sons and daughters for food and sport and left us with cigarette butts and beer cans. And we mourned as you drilled, knowing one day we would have to leave. When God placed us in the Garden we were blessed by Him. He entrusted you with naming and caring for us. You have betrayed that trust.” And they just might be right. I think that one of the lessons of the tragedy in the gulf is that we are entrusted; we do have responsibility whether from God or nature. That our actions with regard to the “little people” of the planet be they fowl, fish or mammal, have consequences for us and them.

I’m speaking of the wildlife of course, those little fellows that scurry when we come, don’t understand and just want to enjoy the life they have with us as the creatures entrusted with their care. I grieve for the turtles, birds and fish that will wash ashore, covered in something they didn’t understand. The tragedy of the gulf lies in each of those creatures we failed to protect. We humans have a way of coming out on top…sometimes…this time it may be different, but we’ll probably find someone to pay, someone to fix it, someone to blame . Call me crazy but I still cannot figure out why people insist on mistreating their dogs.

Lighting a Fire

I passed a turtle on the road the other day and couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking trying to cross a four lane road at zero miles per hour. It seems with the armadillos there’s enough road kill out there to feed half of Detroit. When you’re my age everything tastes like chicken anyway. But that turtle trying to cross the road makes you wonder, unless you understand that he really wants to get to the other side. If you watch carefully you’ll see him duck his head about the time you reach him. Obviously some higher order thinking skills here or why duck when a two ton car about to turn him into buzzard buffet passes by. Yes, you have to wonder what gets that turtle fired up enough to try to cross the road. I would guess it’s one of those basic needs we hear about. Sort of like a politician’s need to be re-elected again and again. Some of us are turtles and take a little more time crossing the road (some become the armadillo) and others get there fairly quickly, like a squirrel for instance.

It’s the fire we’re sometimes missing, the fire that burns in the turtle’s belly and moves him across the road. When I read about some of our schools I want to ask, where’s the fire and who’s got the matches? I don’t give a rat’s rump about scores on a test. Also, I’ll let you in on a little secret, not all our kids are going to find the fire in college. Another apparently little known fact is that some aren’t even going to college. Where did we get this idea that all fires are lit in college anyway?! If I were a high school administrator I think I would find a way to ask my faculty a couple of questions at the end of each year. “How many fires did you light this year and how many times did you become a fire extinguisher?” Those are the important questions. If you want to pay on merit (a good idea if they can get the fire extinguishers out of the buildings) find out who’s lighting fires. As a parent I would be asking the administrator, “Who do you have lighting a fire under my son/daughter?” Not, “uh excuse me Dr. Doolittle, can you tell me why Tabitha can’t score high enough on the SAT to get into UGA?” The answer to that is as plain as the deer in the headlights look on Doolittle’s face. Tabitha is sitting on marble and her rear end is as cold as that armadillo that wasn’t fired up enough to cross the road. Tabitha will glow like a roman candle whenever someone lights her fire, be it teacher, parent or maybe somebody at church.

There are fire starters everywhere so why have we put ourselves in this box of can’t strike anywhere matches when it comes to our kids? It’s time we began to develop children where we find them, stopped trying to push college for every child who enters the first grade, renew a since of gratitude for those people who can fix stuff that breaks around our houses and put some money in teaching vocational skills again. Every time my toilet breaks I’m wondering what course I slept through at Georgia Southern that taught us the intricate workings of the commode. The answer is always the same…none.

We’re reading articles that tell us the sky is darn sure falling if the governor cuts the budget for higher education. Well, there’s somebody out there all fired up about fixing toilets and sinks who isn’t all that concerned about the governor’s budget. I’ll bet ol’ Sonny himself needs a toilet fixed now and then. Don’t get me wrong, studying art literature and history is time well spent but when you think about it you can read about these things. Teach your child to read and he or she will always be able to “study” art, literature or history. Take pride in that child of yours who wants to learn a trade instead of attending college. Ever ask yourself why scores are considered so important to school folks? It’s simple…they can be measured and compared. Fire, on the other hand, is something beautiful to watch but difficult to measure.

Memories of Wheel Life

I don’t know what all the celebrating is about with regard to New Year’s. It usually begins with a headache and memory lapses for some and a new tax year for others. For me it’s a subtle reminder I’m one year older and there will be thousands of new cars on the road I will not be able to identify. Cars have become like birds and evergreen trees, they all look alike to me. Used to be you could I.D. a car from a mile away and most folks were known by what car or truck they drove.

You could also come pretty close to guessing their “well-off quotient.” Gone are the days when people were identified with what they drove, like Old George Roebuck down in Statesboro, who drove a green Ford pickup truck in the winter as a basketball coach and the same green truck in the summer as a house painter for 20 years. Coach Roebuck, a community icon, always recognizable by his green Ford truck.

Then there was Lew Cordell in Milledgeville, who always drove Cadillacs, even when his “driving” days were over. He had two and when he wrecked one he’d just pull the other one out and steer it until the first one was fixed. Of course, their vehicles were paid for.

Nowadays, a lot of us drive cars we either can’t afford or have no intention of paying off. Some still borrow a ride.

Early on, I always had to share a car with my brother because neither one of us wanted to work hard enough to have one for ourselves. We shared three different cars during our growing up period; one being a ’59 Chevy Biscayne, three on the column and light enough that if the battery went dead, (which it often did) you could start it up by getting it rolling, jumping in at the right time and popping the clutch. You’d have that thing started before you could say help. I took Anita fishing in that car, somewhere down in Kathleen, got stuck in a mud hole and never saw her again. I don’t think we even took any bait now that I think about it. I loved that ’59 Chevy, no seatbelts and big ol’ seats.

When my brother and I didn’t have “our” car, we would borrow one. Jim Dooley, a roommate at Georgia Southern, had a ’56 Buick Special, big ol’ “thang” with fins, a big ol’ steering wheel, and big ol’ seats. Gas was 32 cents a gallon, and if you filled it to the quarter mark you were considered full of gas. Did I mention the seats? I borrowed that car on a spring night and picked Barbara up for a trip to “the lake” where I shut the lights out prematurely, hammered a guy wire, started a fireworks display and sent the campus of Georgia Southern into the dark ages for the remainder of the evening. Barbara soon took up with somebody who had his own car.

The following fall I borrowed my Aunt’s green ’58 Studebaker in Knoxville, Tenn., after hitching a ride with Mike Channel from Warner Robins. Carol and I were going to the Maryville College football game. My aunt failed to tell me the Studebaker’s heater only worked on odd days and that Friday happened to be the 16th of November. Carol never wrote me back after that but I believe those seats were a green plastic vinyl and colder than a well digger’s derriere in the Klondike.

So as the New Year arrives I’m thankful for my family, the fact that I can still recognize most of them by their old cars, and for these nice heated seats I found in my “new” ’06 Solara.

The History of Debt

I was talking to a friend the other day who was concerned about our country’s debt and that we seem to be borrowing loads of money from the Chinese. I said, “Doesn’t worry me in the least, friend. You see, I understand the history of debt, borrowing and such.”

Now, for what it’s worth (probably not much), here’s my opinion on the debt “crisis.” Debt was probably introduced around 2000 B.C. (before credit) in the garden when a rib was borrowed from Adam and given to the creator of all debt — the woman.

This is not to say that the woman was at fault but she simply began, refined and took debt to a level probably not envisioned by Solomon himself. This process took eons and began with the invention of the shoe and crude jewelry.

Shoes and jewelry, quality be dashed, rendered the woman helpless around the time merchants were invented. Since this was before the time of plastic, which has greatly enhanced the woman’s ability to increase debt exponentially (a word I have never understood but know it’s a lot of something), debt didn’t grow much initially.

It took the invention of the purse to fertilize the womans’ ability to increase debt as she found a place to store and hide what she bought.

Mankind has always borrowed, shared wealth and shown an amazing ability toward greed, but recent developments have taken this to the next level.

I’m reminded of the archaic practice of cave dwellers seen dragging women around by their hair. There seems to be an opinion out there that says, “what’s mine is mine and what’s your’s might be mine too if I can figure out a way to make it happen.”

Was this borrowing, sharing or just plain ol’ greed? The invention of the plastic card, which occurred around the time divorce and palimony were invented, jump started the debt we know and love today.

The card had a two-fold effect on people, decreasing their I.Q. while destroying their ability to remember what it was they charged. So at this point in time we really have no idea how much money we owe, nor do we care.

The inventors of the plastic card realized early on that if they sent it via mail we would use it. Now we see millions of Neanderthals spending money they do not have.

Am I saying here that our plastic card dilemma is only the womans’ fault? Of course not.

Men are occasionally seen making purchases, but more often than not, they are buying for women. Most men find using the plastic card boring. It’s the exchange of cash, real money that gets men excited. We see these exchanges taking place almost every day on the street in downtown Macon, as men barter their way to a healthier lifestyle. No I’m not worried about the debt, but our creditors might be another story.