A single candle

On the evening of April 28th, an F3 tornado barreled its way through a large portion of Lincoln County, Tennessee.  Two human lives were lost.  Animals perished.  Property was destroyed.  When it swooped northward from the Big Cut area and crossed the Elk River, it had its way with the Gray Farm, now divided into two parts between my brother and myself.  It took thousands of trees - old growth trees, trees that were standing when the farm was established somewhere around 1840.  It wiped out every fence line.  It looked like a bombing scene from a war movie.

They say that anger is rooted in either hurt or fear or both.  My anger springs from a deep sense of hurt, not for myself, but for "the farm."  That acreage is not an inanimate object.  It is much more than trees and river and pastures and woods.  It is much more than a farmhouse and some barns and sheds.  It is a member of the family.  And it was brutally raped by a funnel cloud that made its way from the sky and found things to destroy on the ground.  The farm was beaten and raped and left for dead while that ugly blast of wind continued north and chewed up more beauty, more innocence, and harmed more lives in its path.

I am very capable of hating that tornado.  I'm very capable of being angry at the entity that we refer to as Mother Nature.  There was a Chiffon margarine commercial in the 70s that reminded us that it's not nice to fool mother nature.  It pictured a smiling middle aged woman dressed all sweet and chiffony with a wreath of flowers in her hair.  Everything is hunky dory until the insufferable wench discovers that it's not butter that has made everything taste so nice, but rather margarine.  When she discovers she has been fooled, she unleashes her wrath at everything within reach.

Well, Mother Nature, you won the battle with your little F3, but you didn't win the war.

I've spent way too much time mourning the loss of leafy beauty that has taken almost two centuries of creation.  I've over-comtemplated how two centuries of growth can be taken out in two minutes of rotating winds.  I've gazed at 180 acres of devastation through brimming eyes for too many days now.  It's time to stop mourning.

It has been said many times that it's better to light a single candle than curse the darkness.  There's also a parable in Matthew about wheat and weeds.  Simply, an enemy comes and plants weeds among the good wheat seed in a field.  The workers ask the owner if they should pull up the weeds.  The owner responds that to pull up the weeds would destroy much of the wheat.  A better plan is to let them grow together until harvest time and then the weeds can be gathered and burned and the wheat can be harvested.  It's a matter of whether we place our thoughts and focus around the wheat or the weeds.  I need to choose the wheat.  I need to light a candle.

Today I hope to start healing as the land heals.  A track hoe and a bulldozer are slowly but surely gathering the devastated remains in piles. When diesel fuel is applied,  the piles become pyres.  When you are right upon them, the flames are huge and the heat is immense.  But, at night, when you sit on the back porch and watch the piles continue to burn, the distance diminishes the size of the flame.  If you're far enough away, it glows like the light of a candle.  We will light several candles and one day, in the not so distant future, corn rather than wheat will spring from the cleared fields.  The trees will be gone for generations but the beautiful rolling contours will be visible until the trees return.  Many years will have passed and I can only hope and pray that others will continue to love the farm as I do and that they will spend the appropriate amount of time loving and nurturing the land.  I sincerely hope they will see the wheat and light a candle.

Weathering the weather

It's on, folks!  Tornado season, at least in the Twister Belt of the United States, is here.  And if the states of the Southeast are in the buckle of the belt, then I'm pretty sure the little county in Tennessee I sit in is the prong.  There's about five or six counties in central northern Alabama bordered by three counties in southern central Tennessee, and Lincoln County sits squarely between the other two.  And Fayetteville is pretty much dead center Lincoln County.  Yep, I'm pretty certain that we are the prong.

I suspect that all media programming this evening will be interrupted by solemn looking and speaking men and women with huge radar screens of reds and yellows and purples and they will be talking about supercells and hooks and vertical wind shear.  In fact, the most likely scenario will be that weather alerts will be interrupted by five minute segments of regular programming.

Listen.  I'm not trying to minimize this.  I just think we all did a lot better when we knew a lot less.  I know that tornadoes do a ton of property damage every year, all over the country, and that many people lose their lives to them.  But having to sit and listen to weather men and women...excuse me...meteorologists...induce their audiences into a frenzy of fear seems counterproductive.  Especially if you consider that the chances of a particular house in a tornado prone area has only around a one in 10 million chance of being struck.  (Please don't hold me to my statistics.  I'm not a statistician, as my close friends will tell you.  But I do consult several choices before reaching a conclusion.  Thank you, Google.)

When I was a kid, I barely remember how much information we received about violent weather.  Of course, that had to travel via Pony Express and then, later, telegraph, so that's understandable.  I'm pretty sure that I simply consulted my parents or grandparents as to their opinion, and I don't really remember anyone freaking out or being even mildly concerned about it.  There was a great deal more conversation around what weather had occurred the day before than what weather would occur later in the day or tomorrow.

But...

... if I put my cavalier attitude aside for a moment and look into facts instead of the vacuum of my skull, I discover enough information to cause a few beads of sweat to trickle from my armpits.

 On February 29, 1952, an F-4 (207-260 mph winds) struck Fayetteville, Tennessee and was on the ground continuously for seven miles.  It destroyed 139 homes, wreaked major damage to 152 more, and took two lives.  One hundred and sixty-six people were injured.  This was the 4th tornado that followed more or less a similar track over a 100 year period.

On April 29, 1974, two F5s slammed into the Fayetteville and surrounding area, taking six lives in Tennessee and destroying over 1000 buildings.

In all, around 40 tornadoes have toggled the prong of the Twister Belt since 1890.

Uh...that's about one every three years.  Looking more closely, there have been 15 since 2000.

So, listen...instead of me sitting here on the south side of the house and typing away at this keyboard as the sky turns to heavy lead all above me,  I'll cozy up to the TV and find me some really wise meteorologists to spend some time with.  With my wife, the leashes for my dogs, and a fully charged iPhone with a flashlight app.

You see, Toto, we aren't in Kansas anymore.  But we are in Tennessee, right square in the doggone prong of the Twister Belt.  And that's close enough for me.

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Update:  11:28 p.m. CDT...a large tornado touched down in Kelso, TN this evening at around 8:45.  The family farm of 175 years took a direct hit.  Early reports from Ryan and Callie Hardiman, our co-farmers, is that the buildings didn't suffer a great deal of damage...just some fallen trees.  However, and this is in the dark of night, it appears that the land...the trees, the fields, the pastures, the bottom...was devastated.  Many head of cattle and calves are unaccounted for.  I try not to be angry.  I try not to be hurt.  I try to put this in the perspective that there has been a lot of devastation over the past couple of days with more on the menu tomorrow.  I try to put it in the perspective that lives have been lost.  I try to be thankful.  As soon as first light appears tomorrow, Geri and I will try to make our way to the farm.  We believe our domestic animals are fine.  We believe that there is superficial house and barn damage that can be repaired.  We fear for the cows and cattle.  But I most am dreading the moment my eyes first encounter the devastated land, the century old trees cut down to trunk size or completely pulled up by their roots.  I'm dreading gazing upon the ravaged beauty of "the farm," a sight that has brought me many years of joy and peace.  And I will probably be angry.  And more than sad.  I'll just try to make it short and not wallow in it.  And get busy trying to put things back together again.

Damn tornadoes.

He's back!!!

Okay...so I'm down to zero page views today.  I was wondering how long it would take for people to stop checking in to see if the lazy, retired guy had posted anything on his blog.  Man!  You are so right!  I am really starting to get this lazy thing down.

But, let's back up just a bit.  Last week I dedicated four whole days to manual labor at the farm.  And I'm talking some tough labor.  With Geri as my number one assistant.  We pulled up ten shrubs that had been rooting for 10 years and replaced them with rock.  Little rocks, medium rocks, big rocks.  Rocks from 50 pound bags (called river rocks and egg rocks) along with rocks from our fields.  In fact, a total of 24 bags of rocks and probably 75 miscellaneous rocks from around the farm.  Looks pretty darn good if we must say so ourselves.  And I discovered several muscles I didn't know existed.

So, Doug...if you do a little manual labor, then the rule is...the law states...you can't write a sentence or two in a blog.  Gray's Law of Nothing Matters.  Well.  Maybe.  I guess I could have typed for a minute or two..  I just chose not to.

As an aside,  a possum update.  There is no possum update.  Haven't seen hide nor hair of the critter in a couple of weeks.  Haven't seen any signs of him cleaning up the cats' leftovers.  Saw a dead one in the road near the farm but it was too small to be "him."  Speaking of dead possums in the road, when it comes to roadkill, there's a solid 50/50 chance it's going to be a possum.  We've all seen other animals...tons of them...but if we're going to be honest with ourselves, possums dominate.  If roadkill was a casino game, the house would have the possum.  And knowing how the casinos like to stack the odds, they would probably make the armadillo a house bet also.  Sort of like the zero and the double zero on the roulette wheel.

Speaking of critters, we've saved a couple since we last talked.  Another bird, a robin this time, thought it would be fun to commit suicide by slamming full speed into our picture window (yes, it is a picture window and yes, they probably don't make them anymore, and, yes,  if they did, they certainly could find something more exciting to call it than a picture window).  Geri provided healing touch for several minutes and I provided a bird house with a nice open front porch for it to recover in till the point it was ready to fly away.  Much to our cats' chagrin.  The other was a baby bunny.  I flushed it from a nest doing some manual labor - there's that term again - around the house "in town" and of all the places it could run, it headed straight toward the swimming pool.  Right under the fence and straight into the pool.  Wham, bam, thank you Sam.  Of course, it didn't know there was a pool there.  I mean, who would stick a pool in the middle of a perfectly good yard.  I was preparing to shuck shoes and pants and hit the 50 degree water but, luckily, it swam around the edges (trying to find a place to pull out) and I was able to reach in and scoop the little son of a gun out.  A few minutes in the sun drying off and some human encouragement and it was as good as new.  I relocated it to our back pasture and wished it a happy Easter.

Well...enough of this!  While I don't have a lot to say right now, I've got a couple of blogs starting to bubble.  One happy...one sad.  Both necessary.

As for all you readers who are heading into the sunset:  Shane! Shane! Come back, Shane!

Tempus fugit

Prescript, April 4, 2020:  I wrote this blog piece six years ago, almost to the day.  I could have never imagined the world I inhabit at this moment with all of you.  I couldn't have imagined that for many of us, it's like the movie "Groundhog Day."  We wake up each morning and COVID-19 is still with us.  We are under a Safe at Home order and the stark impact of the change that is occurring in our lives still settles upon us.  Well, maybe I should speak for myself.  It hasn't settled upon me. Though most days appear to be reruns of the days prior, I suspect that all of us may be more than ever aware of the ticking clock.  Not just those with mechanical hands that sweep across their faces or digital seconds that fall quickly away, the modern version of sand through the hourglass, but also that clock inside. A tightly wound coil at birth that slowly uncoils toward that common inevitability of human existence.   The President of the United States, in his daily press update today, said we should brace ourselves for "the toughest week" to come and that there will be "a lot of death."  Maybe not the words I would have chosen to present the scenario for which we should be preparing, but it got my attention. On one hand, I find that time has never been such an excruciating forbearance   On the other hand, time has never been a more precious and delicious blessing.

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Time flies, as they say.  Though "they" have it wrong.  "Tempus fugit" is Latin for "time flees."  Actually, Virgil actually said, "fugit irreparable tempos" which means "it escapes, irretrievable time."  I like that better.  One added word, deeper meaning.

Time flies and we fly along with it.  How fast, you ask?  Well, much faster than I'm comfortable with.   We have these things we call a day that can sometimes feel like a lifetime.  Then there are those days that pass at whiplash speed and we ask "where in the world did this day go?"  Imagine this.  If you were to suspend in space above the equator, maybe tied to a rope attached to the edge of the moon,  you could spend twenty-four hours watching this big blue and green ball make one complete rotation. Watching 25,000 miles of changing geography pass below you.  Sort of paint-drying boring until you realize that the speed of the rotation is just over 1000 miles per hour.  Now that kind of changes your perspective, doesn't it?

Then there's this.  The earth's rotation is the snail of intergalactic speed.  The poor old tortoise.  Consider our trip around the sun.  Takes what we call a year.  That's 364 1/4 days anyway you tilt it.  And that can feel like several lifetimes, depending on what kind of year you're having.  Although earth is a mere 93 million miles from the sun, its orbit distance is just under 585 million miles, which means we're zipping along at around 67,000 miles per hour.  That's way faster than a speeding bullet and well beyond the talents of Superman.


Have you ever wondered why we don't feel this?  I mean, they're mind-boggling speeds.  Agree?  Mr. Einstein would say it's all relative and ask you to think about when you're moving along in a car on a perfectly smooth road at 60 mph.  You don't feel the movement.  Unless there is an acceleration or deceleration.  So, since the earth's rotation and orbit is at a perfectly constant speed, we don't feel the sensation of movement.  And I know that you hope and pray as much as I do that we don't have any sudden accelerations or decelerations.  That would mark a big day in our lives.  The biggest.

I won't go into the fact that our solar system is moving within our Milky Way galaxy at the rate of over 40 million miles per hour and that our galaxy is moving through the universe even faster than that.  That's not really what I wanted to say anyway.

I just wanted to talk about tempus fugit.  Time fleeing.  When my father was in his last days, as he lay in the hospital bed for the last time, the sand in his hourglass down to a few precious grains, I went to his side and asked if there was anything I could get him.  Was there anything he wanted.  Anything.  His answer will stick with me for the rest of my life.  His head slowly turned toward me and with his eyes searching mine,  he said in a quiet voice: "Time.  I want more time."

I couldn't give him that.  But in those words he gave me a gift.  I should engage in that gift more often than I do because it's simultaneously profound and simple.  We need to take advantage of every second we have on this hurtling planet.  We should grasp every hour, every day as we are flung through space, and life, at breakneck speeds.  And if much wiser folks than me say that time flees, I need to believe them.  And I need to chase that time with every ounce of strength in my body and with every thread of my soul.  I need to chase it so hard that it's constantly looking over its shoulder and wondering who in the hell is that wild-eyed lunatic on its heels.  Time can fly or flee all it wants, but I'm not going to sit idly by and watch it disappear over the horizon.

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Postscript, April 5, 2020:  I don't know that I'm going to "brace" myself for the coming week.  I plan to rise every morning and thank God for another day, enjoy my time with my wife, laugh at and take care of the discarded cats we rescued fourteen years ago from the side of a narrow, dirt road, call or text or email a few friends and family, and do those things that I believe will keep us secure, safe, and healthy.  I will pray.  I will let the sun hit my face, the breeze pass over me, and all those spring-crazed birds fill my ears with music and lift my heart with joy and hope.  And I'll tell you what I will not do.  I will not allow fear, manmade or virus-made, to enter my life at any level.  To spoil a single second of the time I've been gifted.  The coming week will pass.  This pandemic will pass.  Time will pass and, yes, as Virgil says, that passing time will be irretrievable.  But if we don't waste a second, that's okay.  Before we know it, life will return to whatever level of normal this speeding world will tolerate. And time will move on.

 Tempus fugit.  

Free at last

Today, I had a sense of freedom that I haven't experienced very often, if ever.  Perhaps it was just all the planets and stars aligning.  Perhaps it was the first really spring feeling day in southern Tennessee.  Perhaps I just got caught up on my sleep.  Finally.

Who knows.

Regardless, it was a good day.  A simple day but a good day.

Gorgeous ruled the farm this morning.  And I actually accomplished something on my physical "to do" list.  Burn barrel duty.  I got that baby up to 451 degrees Fahrenheit and demolished around 150 pounds of paper.  Accumulated for over ten years.  For anyone interested, the secret of burn barrel success is to vent it and stir it often.

I vented it with my .22 lever action.  Since I'm apparently not going to get another shot at the possum (his nickname is now Grey Ghost since I can't seem to ever catch him cleaning up the cats' leftovers), I thought I would fire a few rounds at the virgin burn barrel.  Caused the cats to head for cover for about thirty minutes, but the vent system worked perfectly.

Headed home smelling all smokey and gave Emerald and Baylee a nice workout on their leashes.  They have a great fenced in area, replete with pool and hot tub, but they tend to spend their free hours on the couch.  So we traversed 4.8 acres of the 5 with them, knocking some ell-bees off Baylee and off me.

After a shower, lunch.

After lunch, Walmart.  (Hey, don't act like you don't go to Walmart.)  I have to admit that I've become one of those old guys I used to simultaneously pity and snicker at...the ones that you see pushing the carts while their old lady (I'm pretty sure Geri doesn't read my blog) pulls things off the shelves.  Now here's the tie-in to the burn barrel story.  I stopped by sporting goods to replenish my .22s.  Haven't bought any in about four years. Guess I haven't been watching the news.  Not only did Walmart not have any .22 shells, they don't expect any for several weeks and only a handful at that time which they will sell in 20 minutes.  Gee whiz, when did us idiotic human being start hoarding .22 shells? He said after Sandy Hook.  Afraid the government is going to ban ammo.  Okay.  I get it.  But what the hell am I supposed to use to put vent holes in my burn barrels?  Or shoot at and miss malicious marsupials.

After Walmart, we went to a couple of cemeteries and walked around.  Saw some great-great and great relatives.  Or at least their final resting places.  Does one good to visit those silent cities every so often.

Finally, home.  With the feeling of freedom as alive as it was when I awoke.  So, for all those people who ask me how I like retirement, which is everyone all the time, the answer is I love it.  I don't think I like the word "retirement" however.  For right now, "self unemployed" will do.

Good Ole Days

The Judds did a song called "Grandpa" some time ago and it's been covered by many artists since, with the Isaacs doing a particularly good job.  The premise of the song is a familiar one:  a nostalgic look at the past and how we, as common folks, conducted ourselves in days gone by.  There's nothing wrong with nostalgia, just as there's nothing wrong with sentimentality.  Of course there's editors and critics and just ordinary citizens who give sentimentality a bad name, pronouncing it unfit for writing, reading, and just general human consumption.  I say, "Screw you," and that sentimentality has its place in literature, music, art, and, doggone it, even commerce, if you can squeeze it in.  And nostalgia is definitely a first cousin to sentimentality.

But let's get back on point and that is "the good ole days."  And Grandpa.

Unfortunately, neither of my grandfathers was real keen on sitting around and reminiscing about the past.  They likely didn't have the time or didn't want to use the time to chat with their curious grandson about how things used to be.  Might be a darn good reason for that also.  See,  I doubt that things were all that great for either of them growing up.  Lots of hard farm labor.  From the time either of them was old enough to walk, they were old enough to work.  My paternal grandfather was one of eight or nine kids - I lose track - two of whom were boys.  Probably not what his dad had in mind, given that one of the reasons you had big families back in the day was to support the labor pool.  The hard work must have "took," though, because I seldom saw Pa Gray when he wasn't working.  During my lifetime, he was a grocer, and a farmer on the side. It was up at at 'em at 5:30 every morning, come rain or shine, open the general store, sprinkle kerosene on the floor before sweeping it, take out the trash and burn it, stock groceries, wait on customers, and browse an article or two from Progressive Farmer or Readers Digest or the Grit when the store was empty.

If that wasn't enough, when he went home in the spring and summer days for his hot, fresh lunch, he would eat between garden work, having not one, but two, gardens going at the same time.  And at least four or five days a week, he would jump into his old '52 GMC and go "across the river" to the farm and check on the cattle.  We're talking seven days a week.  Fifty-two weeks a year.

My maternal grandfather ran a milk route.  Getting milk to your refrigerator in his days was a little more involved than it is today.  His job was to run his country route in his rattly stake body truck and visit all the farms that had milked any number of cows that day, pick up the heavy milk cans, and deliver them to the local milk plant for processing.  Bordens, in this case.  As his sons grew up and were able to help they did.  Hard, back-breaking labor, weather be damned.

I say all of this not because I don't think that either of them viewed their lives as something less than the good ole days but rather because I don't personally see it that way.  I'm sure that my hindsight isn't that acute however.  It's just when I think of my labors, mostly behind a desk, in front of a computer, or out of an air-conditioned vehicle, what they did appears to be much tougher, and for much less compensation.  Looking at it another way, which sounds harder?  Hoeing 20 sixty foot rows of vegetables under the hot noon sun or walking thirty feet to retrieve something from the printer?  Heaving a hundred pound milk can onto the back or pulling data for a report?

 I'm not saying that we're soft.  Wait.  Yes I am.  We're soft.  And it's easy for us to romanticize the "good ole days," make a point of being nostalgic, and just generally reeking with sentiment over the past.  What I think is truly valid here is that any day is a good ole day.  Any day that we're blessed with the ability to enjoy life and our surroundings and other people is a good ole day.  Any day when we have the ability to equal or surpass our potential as homo sapiens is a good ole day.

I'm not a grandpa, won't ever be a grandpa, but I can certainly hope to have as full of a life as my grandfathers did.  Pa Shug, my maternal grandfather, passed early.  However, looking at all the pictures of him grinning and holding up 40 and 50 pound catfish, I'm pretty sure he squeezed life for all it was worth.  It wasn't all milk cans and dusty country roads.  Pa Gray lived into his early 90s and was a grocer and gentleman farmer between 60 and 70 years.  I never heard a complaint fall from his mouth.  He wasn't sick a day in his life and his worst habit was chewing the end of a Roi Tan or Prince Edward cigar and maybe having a snort or two on holidays.

So Grandpa - either of them -  didn't feel compelled to tell their curious grandson about the good ole days but I was at least smart enough to take note of what was going on at the time.  And possessing enough kiddie wisdom to file it away in my brain for further consideration down the road.

  Now, Grandma...that was a different story.

All Spaced Out

Shakespeare might have written:

Alas, poor Pluto, we knew him Horatio; when he was a planet full; though tiny icy sphere he had pedigree in the Heavens.  Though flung furtherest afar, a simple dot, a flea on Neptune's knee, nonetheless we paid homage to him and his five moons.  Now, Horatio, he dons the dress of the dwarf, a cuckolded planet, a plutoid if you dare, while us poor mortals who once claimed nine, must now make do with eight.

Sorry, Will.  I know you could have done a much better job giving notice of Pluto's ignominious delegation to a dwarf planet.  I'm not certain why we felt it necessary to strip Pluto of planet status.  You'd think the guy would have been grandfathered in after all these years.  Let's face it, he'd been around since 1930 and we were all quite content as fifth graders to triumphantly name him last as we recited the nine planets in our solar system.  Maybe it's just me, but there was something magic about nine.  (I've always been partial to anything divisible by three.)  Eight planets and the sun just doesn't do it for me.  And honestly, he was one of the easiest to remember in order of distance from the sun.  I always got hung up around Neptune and Saturn.

But I digress.

What we did to Pluto would be akin to removing Doc from Dwarf status just because he was the only dwarf who had a name that didn't describe a disposition or mood.  The original Snow White movie was released in 1938, so Pluto had seniority on Doc.  I happen to think that Walt Disney had better judgement and a much higher degree of emotional intelligence than the International Astronomical Union.  He knew that "Snow White and the Six Dwarfs" would be a day late and a dwarf short.  (Oooooh...that was bad...real bad.)

That said, Pluto will soon have a visitor.  The space probe New Horizons will reach Pluto in 2015.  July 14, 2015 if all goes as planned.  Interestingly, New Horizons was launched in 2006, just before the IAU decided to embarrass Pluto, and has zipped along at the pace of just over 36,000 miles per hour since launch.  Sort of a long way and a short time to get there, at least from the perspective of our 13.2 billion year old galaxy. I wonder if NASA had waited a few months to when Pluto was canned as a planet if they would have spent those billions of dollars to visit a plutoid.  I wonder if maybe they might have had New Horizons dip and weave through the belt of Saturn, do a quick flyover of Neptune, and then pull a u-ey and head back home?

We will never know.  I think it would be great if the probe got to Pluto and discovered that though it was small, the dwarf formally known as a planet had more character than Venus and more spunk than Mercury, hidden attributes to the point that it deserved to be reinstated to full planet status.  A formal apology would be issued by the IAU guys and NASA would be exonerated in its decision to send a probe about three billion miles to inspect a chunk of dirty ice.

I think that would be neat, don't you?  Exactly what the Doc ordered.