Exhausted Ray

There is something about that late December sun my friend.
Something that seems spent, weak it's days of life to end

We laughed about your days in Seattle
A glimmer of hope in this early winter gloomy battle

Of heart and soul in changing winds yet to come
In New Year's tide.

The stillness of my forlorn office
Becons another year has expired, here's hoping old habits have died.

A simple piece about the essence of the final week of the year! In my office at work a lot of life is lived as I travel anywhere in the nation alone on my computer searching for new accounts! But, a good friend stopped by to visit and check in, last Friday, the final work day of the year. This piece is a narrative about good people in a world that is increasingly losing them. It is a story about how the world goes still after the pomp and circumstance of an over commercialized holiday season of noise, joy and bustle. It reflects the spiritual exhaustion of a year of emotion good and bad. It reflects the quiet but peaceful death of a year. What better symbol than a weak ray of sunlight trying to warm a solemn  office room peering through a window! What better hope than to have a consistent friend in a world of upheaval and in a time of calendar change. Happy New Year as to hope for a future of better things.

What This Year's Christmas Has Taught Me

A Christmas bonus is something in and of itself. It is an indication you are doing a good job! It is an indicator your hard work has paid off. Juli, a gentle eyed blond from right outside of Tampa Florida came to me as a gift in disguise five days before Christmas Eve. She worked for a credit loan company. Through contacts she was looking for a cheap place to stay as she was traveling through her assigned territory of Alabama and Florida.  Being Christmas I willingly obliged knowing I could use the extra money on rent. After she arrived on Wednesday we explained pleasantries but due to our schedules we never really spoke aside from me recommending places to eat. We did not get a chance to converse! She did bond with my dog quickly though.

Then Thursday night arrived and I got a chance to hear her story. You see,  Hurricane Irma had ravaged her neighborhood and her home had caught fire killing both of her dogs. As she relayed this I could understand why she was so tolerant of my rambunctious jagg'd terrier! She absolutely spoiled her. It was as if time stood still and nothing else mattered to her. I could see in her eyes, her facial expression and her inflection that she was so much more appreciative than she may have been, than say, this summer.

The following morning, as I was backing out of the driveway, I scraped against her Alamo rental car. After using an assortment of colorful language, I jumped out of my car as visions of my fleeting Christmas bonus danced in my head and flushed down the toilet. Gathering myself I could still find solace in believing she had bought rental insurance at the airport! Two hours later she confirmed she HAD NOT. Of course as we say down South, I got to carrying on, hollerin' and raising a mild ruckus in my office behind closed doors to myself. Before she left she requested the opportunity to walk Marnie! Knowing the healing she needed how could I not allow it.  Of course she texted me a photo and it was good in focus. That being,  it made me focus on what is important what is lasting, what is noble, what is eternal. The meaning of it all really hit me as she assured me her regular insurance would cover it! Calling my agent it appeared mine would to. I could end my song and dance and act like an adult again.

But, even if insurance had not covered it, and who knows it may not, Julie taught me so much in just an amazing two days. Almost tearing up throughout the day I finally realized what a blessing she was! As she is now back with her family, there is that chance that she may never cross my path again. But, she taught me a lesson I always know but always forget! That people matter. That mercy matters, that empathy matters, that material, reputation and STUFF do not! Julie, you will rebuild again soon. But, don't you know that you have already completed my foundation. One that is prone to rot during such a consumerist time of year! You gave me this year's best present. Merry Christmas Juli. Merry Christmas!

JCB

The Late Film Director John Hughes & His Relationship To My Family

John Hughes was the master at taking the mundane and making it spectacular.  When you watch his movies, his characters and the setting of the stories he was trying to tell, you soon see it could have been anyone, anyplace in America.  New York City is a place that most people have in their family tree.  As peculiar as it sounds, it has never shown up in mine.  As my brother and I have done family tree research with a fine tuned comb of knowledge and research apparatus (him to find names for his four boys and me because it is an escape) going back a couple of hundred years we have found cities like Boston, Philadelphia, DC and Baltimore but NOT one iota of NYC.  Heck, I even had my father's uncle live down in Miami for a time.  Virtually, every major city on the east coast shows up in our family bibles and chronicles but that big gapping hole in the form of a GIANT APPLE never has existed.  New York state is even represented in the form of Syracuse on my father's dad's side but still no NYC.  When you talk to most people they can eventually trace NYC back into their life story in one form or another. I grew up around families here in Alabama that could claim that.  As a source of pride my brother and I stood out.  For we had CHICAGO instead.  We had the mundane, we had John Hughes' Illinois as OUR HERITAGE.

One day my father's dad, born and raised in Pleasant Hill, Illinois sat down and told me an amazing story about perseverance.  You see, there was a city called Fort "Something or the Other" I forgot the name because now it does not exist in our modern times.  The speculators that were looking to build this great city, Fort "Something or the Other" were competing with my ancestors for the next great city in Illinois.  My grandfather's family chose to build up an old French and Indian settlement that was considered "swampy" full of insects and just plain STUNK!  The settlers laughed at the team of investors and speculators that my family was a part of.  They said you are wasting your time and you are foolish.  As fate would have it, the settlement my relatives and some other families had faith in became CHIGAGO and the other project CEASED TO EXIST!

John Hughes' films most always were filmed and set in CHICAGO or Illinois.  Even as  a boy in elementary school my brother and I would watch films like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" with bursting pride.  For we felt like John was telling our story.  The settings were not fancy Park Avenue or anywhere in NYC.  John was a master at making the unassuming MAGICAL.  CHICAGO and ILLINOIS are just that, when compared to other places in the world.  Suffice it to say, in the early 90's when the CHICAGO BULLS won all of their championships my brother and I again let everyone know it.  It was especially gratifying that we had close friends who's family was from the NEW YORK CITY area. It was especially gratifying that our BULLS beat their KNICKS in the Eastern Conference finals so many times during that decade.  And believe me WE LET THEM KNOW IT!

Flying to the West Coast in April of 2009 I was assigned to O'Hare as a layover. Two months prior my Illinois grandfather had been called home at 92 years old.  As the captain told us we were over Illinois some tears welled up in my eyes as I looked down into the green foliage of some unknown community.  As we landed and I touched Illinois soil in Chicago for the first time, it was sentimental.  Yes, a year or two later I went through that same airport on the way back from Ukraine and even had a border line temper tantrum filled, snowed in layover visit last December on the way back from sunny LA in Midway.  Even Chicago style hot dogs could not make that lonely filled evening of sitting up all night and watching old t.v. shows on You Tube better.  Yes, alone in an empty airport with nothing to do but vent and wait on a flight back to Birmingham, AL. So unassuming and mundane.  Almost, the type of plot and setting of a JOHN HUGHES MOVIE!  SWEET HOME CHICAGO, BABY DON'T YA' WANNA GO?  WHO NEEDS NEW YORK, WHEN GREATNESS IS ALREADY AT HAND?

The Orange & Black

LYING SO WARM AND SECURE IN THAT BLADE OF GRASS

SKYWARD VIEW, I THOUGHT ANYTHING 

WAS POSITIVELY POSSIBLE, IT WOULD ALL LAST

GULF STATES STEEL

PUKED AN ORANGE NIGHT

INTO YOUR FACADE

OLE JOHNNY BOY 

WAS THE KING OF THE BLOCK

US YOUNG BOYS IDOLIZED

AS THE SOUND OF CAR ENGINES PLAYED

THOSE WARM SUMMER 

AUGUST NIGHTS

MELTED INTO SEPTEMBERS PAST

I ALWAYS THOUGHT AMERICANA WOULD LAST

TUGGIN' MY FATHERS PANTS 

WHILE HOLDING MY MOTHER'S GLANCE

I JUST ONE MORE CHANCE

TO SEE THOSE TIGERS TOUCHDOWN DANCE

I NEVER THOUGHT THE BLACK & ORANGE

WOULD FADE

AS I PEER OUT MY OFFICE WINDOW, INTO OBLIQUE ADULTHOOD

I NEVER THOUGHT OLE' GADSDEN HIGH, WOULD CEASE TO EXIST ONE DAY

* piece of work based off of a feeling of nostalgia as I listen to old 80's music that takes me back to boyhood.  The neighborhood I would ride my bike to meet friends in was a mile away.  My friends older brothers would invite us to play tackle football and we would take the pride of being tackling dummies.  On those old dusty warm southern summers although we hated the beatings we would idolize my friends brothers who were  5 or so years our senior and at the local high school, Gadsden High School.  Historically, one of Alabama's most dominant schools academically and athletically. It was nothing for major colleges to come to town to see our boys and give 'em a scholarship with some going on to the pros. Or our girls to go on and become home coming queens at the local universities.  Boys from as far away as Mobile would seek our girls for dates. Or our bands to be regular attendees in New York's Thanksgiving parades.  Our high schools, Gadsden, Litchfield and Emma Sansom were the place of dreams and legends.  As a boy my parents, both alumni. would take me to games and on the way there the communities steel plant would have it's furnace tapped and it would emit an orange glow into the sky right behind the school and football stadium.  An orange glow into a black sky was fitting since that was the school's colors. All I would dream about was one day being old enough to attend and seek that stadium glory as an athlete and walk those halls as a student.  And as I did so for one year that dream faded quickly as I transferred to a private church affiliated school in a town just south of Gadsden due to rampant drug use among students at GHS.   I needed a more steady and productive environment. The school's building was modernistic and had architecture like something one would see in the San Francisco area.  In 2007 the city decided to combine all the high schools into one new school with a separate identity.  Rivalries and good times were immediately lost.  But, never fully gone as they live on into those burning images of all us who when hearing a song, recalling a name go back to one of the best times of the human experience, that being the 1980's and 1990's.