A Dixie Carpetbagger

If my dear papa were still alive, he’d be 73  years young.

I get to celebrate by taking a couple of finals… but, seeing as it was my father’s dream for me to finish my education, I’ll just treat them as a memorial to him.

Genes or environment? Who’s to say. It’s both, it’s neither, it’s something we can only watch in wonder. But whether they are like us, or simply their own person, we see something in them. — Brigid

This weekend, I began the slow process of catching up on yardwork and getting the place ready for winter.  At one point, I sat down to sip some water and looked down to check that my bootlaces were still snug… and I stopped, stunned.

I saw my father.  The perfect crease running down the insides of my work pants (2 o’clock on the left, 10 o’clock on the right), the way I looped the laces over the grommets, even the particular scuff marks on the toes, made when you ride the clutch just so on a machine.

I saw my father… I do all these thing, and have done all of these things… but in an instant, I saw all the little touches and tricks he showed me.  I saw the things I’ve begun to do– some of them without thinking about them– to emulate and honor him.  The way I’ve begun to set tools in a certain order in a toolbox, the way I’ve begun to chuckle more, the way I’ve begun to stand up for myself and others more…

I saw my father.  I realized I’ve begun to do that particular “thousand yard stare” he used to do, when he began thinking of “the old days.”  I’ve begun to have silent times, when I just think, with no music, no noise, no talking around me.  I saw the way he brooded over things, planned and plotted and moved things into position just so… and the way he (almost!) obsessed over some things.  I see the paternal streak in me, that has now fully matured– it advises, it recommends, it suggests… but it doesn’t attempt to control.

I saw my father.  I see now the urge he felt to have a family, to build something that would outlast him.  I see the passion he felt towards his sons, what he wanted for us.  I hear his cautionary warning: “she’s nothing like my mother!”  And I understand what he meant…

In all this, I saw my father.

The are times in all of our lives when we have to acknowledge that things around us have been set up just so.  The majority of those times, it’s because we have just walked into a divine ambush, and the deer-in-the-headlights look on our face perfectly mirrors our inward surprise.  We all know a situation we’ve been in that fits the bill– you make a snap decision to go to a new restaurant, and you run into an old friend you haven’t seen in years.  Or you decide to take an alternate route and enjoy the scenery, and you come upon a motorist that needs your help.

I’ve been in two of these situations recently.  First one was all related to my getting back into dating– I was having second thoughts.  I’m busy, I don’t want to go through this rigmarole again, and… then every single song relating to dating begins playing.  The old country songs that deal with bad breakups and ex-girlfriends and new relationships, pop and rocks songs… all of them, in strings.  Some of these songs haven’t been on the air in years… and suddenly, they’re on the radio constantly.  Message received– get out there, or you’ll never get back out there.

Then I read where Miguel lost his Feline Overlord and companion of 18 years.  That got me to thinking about how long it’s been since I was oppressed under a little furry paw.  So, just to look, I went to Petfinder and typed in my zip code… and the first two kittens were named Ruger and Sig.  Yep, not exactly subtle, but pretty certain that’s a bit of a sign The Wolf’s Lair is about to have small feline paws scampering about.

Well, at least I’ll have someone to cuddle with, one way or another… (chuckle)

My family came from a diverse set of places on this Earth– if I were to turn over enough stones, I could claim relatives from Scandinavia, Mongolia, the river valleys of Germany, the mountain slopes in Northern Ireland, and the highlands of Scotland.  I do claim these relatives, and I claim their legacy… and their legacy was a search, a struggle to find a free land.

I am an American.  Why would I wear the oppression my ancestors bore as part of my identity?  Should I wear the scars my German ancestors gained from the Romans?  Or perhaps the ones gained by my Irish ancestors under the care of the British?  Or should I simply leave off all hyphens, prefixes and suffixes and say that I’m from here?

(H/T I Own The World)

Weer’d's wife will be going into surgery sometime tomorrow– give her your prayers and thoughts.

I had to do something this weekend I hate doing.  I had to bury a family member.

Coming from an older family, I have to do this every so often.  My maternal grandmother, then my father’s father, then his mother, then two of my uncles, with other family members sprinkled in between.  I swore off funerals, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I would send a card, flowers, and visit the family, but I couldn’t bear another funeral.

Then my dad died.  Not exactly an optional funeral.  Not only did I have another funeral to visit, I needed a suit– which isn’t “off the rack” for a guy my size.  So, in the middle of all the preparation, I had to visit a tailor.  I was looking for something I probably would never wear (or want to wear) again.  What I came out with was the most perfect suit I’ve ever worn… for one dollar.  You see, I took a paid week of vacation off from my job, and they– without me knowing it– gave me back the vacation time on the sly.  One perfect suit– one dollar.

This weekend, I pulled The Suit out of the closet.  Oh, I wear parts of it (usually just the slacks and shirt) every now and then, but only for funerals do I wear the entire thing.  Pulling it on is almost a ritual– from the dress dress hose (calf-high like are worn with kilts) to making sure the handkerchief is tucked into the breast pocket (and make sure another one is tucked into the right hip pocket…) to the dress boots I always wear.

The Suit came out of storage for my cousin.  The son of a Baptist minister, he was a WWII SeaBee, who would not speak of his time in the Pacific.  The only thing missing from his service was a reference to the Navy’s prayer for burial at sea.

“… looking for the general Resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; at Whose second coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the sea shall give up her dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto His glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.”

——-

Other families are pulling out their suits today.  One of the pro-liberty crowd is absent– straightarrow has passed on.  The man was almost ever-present on gun blogs, always sharing a bit of his wit in every comment.  To some, he was blunt– I just thought he was honest.  Allow me to quote something that was quoted over at Weer’d's–

…our concept of freedom and liberty, not exactly the same things, has been so diluted in our modern citizens that they really have no mental capacity to deny their emotional training, at the hands of government, to see clearly what has been lost.

Even though the intellectual capacity may exist in its raw state, the spirit needed to question oppressive authority is all but dead in a great many of our people. Many of them being too young to remember liberty are not aware that what we now have hasn’t always been so. By the time they gain enough wisdom to listen to their elders, their elders have died, taking with them the ideals of liberty and rugged individualism that made and kept this country great for many many decades. Until modern media simply overwhelmed truth and history. –Straightarrow

Here’s to absent friends.

Via Jennifer, a prayer request.

Requests for prayers:

Bob S.’s wife has cancer, Dr. Lott just got out of the hospital, and Weer’d's wife has a visit with the doc.

Support requests:

Tam and Roberta X have a tree trying to go all Entish on them.  Just under a grand (!!!) to take it down.

Linoge, talking about his experience with a contractor-

Feel free to contact me directly for the full, sordid story, but to say that we were not satisfied would be putting it very mildly.

Yep, sounds ’bout right.  I worked as an engineer (designed truss systems) in the housing industry for over four years.  One thing you can count on– if you’re not careful, your contractor will screw you.  For examples, I’ll give you two horror stories.

First, one that I got to experience.  Contractor had no luck with choosing an electrician, so the house he built burned down.  Twice.  It burned, he rebuilt it, it burned again, and he rebuilt it… again.  I don’t know if the third time was the charm or not, because I left my job right after Attempt #3.  (The home owner must’ve been a Monty Python fan…)

Two, my aunt and uncle’s horror story.  They wanted to move back to the area after their 20 in the military was over, so they chose a family friend to build their house… which went about as well as you would expect it to.  The foundation isn’t level, the cabinets are weird, the bathroom is non-standard, and the vent hood on the stove vents… nowhere– it has no duct attached, it just sits on the underside of the cabinet.

This is the same contractor that “accidentally” connected the toilet in one house to the hot water heater… which was cranked to the highest setting.  You can imagine what happened when Mr. John Q Homeowner sat down on the can to christen his new home…

Beyond these little gems, I have tons of stories, not including the ones about delivery drivers…

Friends will visit you in jail.  Real friends will be in the cell with you.  Your brothers’ real friends will burn up phone lines at 2 in the morning to get you out of jail.

Like his older brother, this kid can get in the damnedest trouble.  As in “wrong place, wrong time, stupid look on your face” trouble.  (sigh)  Well, good thing I was up… lemme go make coffee.

I feel for the kid.  The back seat of a cruiser’s not comfy… err, or so I’ve been told.