merry christmas to all

Not For Kids of Any Age

and so were you naughty or nice and should santa mark that with an n or n ?

     Thinking of Christmas when I was a kid and one story keeps coming to mind when my cousin found out there was no Santa.

     Well to put the whole story into context I need to start at the beginning remembering the best I can as I was probably was only 5  when this all happened . Christmas was coming and my brothers told me about how Santa wasn’t really real as we sat around and discussed Christmas coming.

     The next chance I had to discuss this with my cousin, he flatly refused to discuss the idea that Santa wasn’t really real and that he had been to the North Pole and had visited Santa Claus and that they had pictures to prove it. Being only a year younger than myself, he seemed to have irrefutable proof that Santa did exist and he was getting quite irritated by my talk. Not believing me and what I had to say he confronted my brothers who basically told him the same thing that I had just told them and the fight was on.

      He screamed it wasn’t true and that we were liars, he had proof there was a Santa clause and that he was going to get his dad to prove it. He told me uncle, his dad and soon my uncle was visiting mom and was soon advising her on what her kids were up to, saying things like there was no Santa and that the story was made up.

      Fortunately the fight ended there as mom advised my uncle that if that was the worse they did then maybe it wasn’t all bad. Considering the fact that if he was willing to believe in the Santa Claus story then he really better watch him when he became older and went to school as there was a lot worse things kids would tell him in the future .

      My uncle trying to get my cousin to continue believing in the magic of Christmas treated us all to a slide show of my cousins visiting Santa Claus in the North Pole. Apparently they had visited a place where they called the North Pole and had a Santa Claus you could visit in the summer when he wasn’t so busy and had time to sit around and talk to kids as his elves were busy preparing for the next Christmas. It looked convincing seeing they had pictures with him and all, but still the seed was already planted and slowly we lost the magic of Christmas a little bit more each year as the magic was soon transferred to our parents, who found it more a hassle to make everyone happy as we grew older and to give us what we wanted.

    Some years our parents would  hit it right and gave us lasting toys like the Tonka trucks with lead paint you could stand on, or your sisters full size baby doll you could rip the head off when she became a brat and wouldn’t leave you alone. These toys were replaced by more practical gifts such as clothes and radios as we grew older into our teens. The only magic that was left was wondering where they stored the gifts we were going to get as it seemed they were nowhere to be found but would suddenly appear Christmas morning and under the tree was always full.

     Years later mom and I had the discussion of where they kept the gifts as we always looked to see if we could find them searching everywhere including in the attic where I have never been since or care to, as it wasn’t easy to access in the first place. Anyhow the last secret was finally revealed and that was that mom would buy a little here and there and knowing we had prying eyes would leave them at my aunt’s, then dad and her would visit them when we thought they were Christmas shopping and would pick them up and bring them home on Christmas eve leaving them in the car till all was asleep then they would place under the tree.

       And magically we would get up in the morning and they would be there, and much to our relief as we surely felt that Santa had finally giving up on us, if there had been one. Not having found any gifts and as we grew older we figured mom and dad were tired of being hassled by the thought of making everyone happy and had finally gave up on giving anyone anything.

       Thankfully this wasn’t the case and still gives us something if nothing, and that was memories to cherish forever such as those I have related to you today. I am sure you have your own good or bad, but still you can hardly think of Christmas without thinking how special one or all of them might have been to you or someone you gave something to, and it made your Christmas unforgettable. Cling to that thought that is the magic of Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year -kev

the art of aging

The Art of Aging

     As if I have anything to do about aging or perpetuating life, and if I did I would have made millions and would probably be dead by now from fanciful eating or greed of others for what I have, or maybe it would be from lavishing myself in such a comfortable style that soon I would no longer exert any effort to afford myself those things in life I need but instead rely on others to provide them for me.

     Instead my life is a constant struggle, sometimes not easy and this mostly by my own design. having earlier in life thwarted any attempts at trying to make it easier, instead when I was younger, would laze away the hours and my youth in ways that was self-destructive in terms of imbibing myself with whiskey, weed and wild women, when i should have been setting my nose to the grindstone so to speak and working to provide myself with a better way.   

     I would have moments of lucidity where I would work and think of my future but it hasn’t been till I was older and my body began to think in terms of maybe I will become an old man, that I began to become scared of who and what I am as a person heading down an uncertain path. But by then the chain of events that make me who I am were already in place.

    The past is history and can no longer offer me any physical nutrient, but instead enlighten me with mental and emotional sustenance as a predictor  of where i am going as a person. As I head into another birthday and I reflect back on the past year, I have the opportunity to once again wonder where I am headed and if I have a chance to steer my course through the rough seas of life as the waves toss you around or am I merely a passenger on the Titanic just looking to switch seats to get a better view of the iceberg of death looming over the horizon.  

     I admire those people who are the same age as me and who have their life arranged in ways that every possibility of how it is going to turn out is so predetermined that nothing is left to chance. For me chance is my best friend as well as fate and destiny, as it seems I am no longer in control as fate and destiny have left little chance for me to proceed in any other way.

      Is that so bad? No not really as I am not going to allow myself to wallow in self-pity as I go forward or lament in what I have done wrong that has lead me here, instead as I grow older I see that even if things were prearranged and so tidy that I left no other option but to grow old gracefully, then life would come along and set me straight.

     Heart attacks and strokes would befall me or perhaps a major disease or perhaps an accident may have taken me out early as is the case with some I have known for years.  I have surpassed my real dad’s age when he died of alcoholism and an ill mind, and I am creeping up on my grandpas age when he as a perfect as a man as I have ever seen was taken away at the young age of sixty five. I am or will be fifty eight tomorrow, just seven years short of his full life.

      So what is the art of aging?  The art of aging is waking up in the morning and being thankful for another day. The pain associated with moving is just a reminder of how thankful one should be that it isn’t worse. You are much better than those that have passed before you and surely much wiser than those that still have a life to go. You have learned to accept things as opposed to someone who has contemplated suicide which was always an option to you but you choose to never accept because you always had options and life was one. You choose to live and that is what brings you to this point.

      It is learning to accept those things which you have no control over and yet striving to change the things you can. It is learning to wonder in lessons nature has to offer us, as it is nature that offers insight as to where we really stand in reality. What we perceive from a human point of view is quickly distorted when we look at nature and really see how small or how large an impact our lives really have on the scheme of things.

      We are told and taught in our early years how important our human lives are but that in an instant we can be swept up and incinerated as we lay with our dreams at night in the security of our home. Our lives left in the rubble of ashes. Yet we know how our emotions can spill over to cry over a lost animal as much as if we lost someone so dear to us. Learning the hard way to accept loss in our life as it becomes much more frequent as we become older and cling to those things we hold dearest.

    And finally accept that we and the world would be much better off to be gone and pass with dignity, if we are not able to take care of ourselves and instead rely on others clinging to the hope that life will again be better for us someday. It is at this point that  I hope they pull the plug and celebrate my life in a way to remember those moments when I may have did good and forget the wrong I have done in life. That the rights will far outweigh the wrongs and that this will be my legacy only to last in the minds of those that will remember me.

     This unfortunately is the art of aging.  The end to a means. The acceptance of the finality we have so pressed upon ourselves from our birth. My time is coming but I hope to hold the wolves away from my door for many a day to come if only to step outside and breath in the dew of another new day. Happy Birthday to me.

here i go again , more of the same?

Are Ohioans Anal by Nature?

      Continuing in my sarcastic remarks  about Ohioan’s and our apparent obsession with the subject , I seek to discover just what it is that blinds us so much to the obvious that we hold dear to ourselves our right to stand behind something we know is obviously wrong by all means. And just what am I referring to and that is the corn hole game .

     Reminded of the true meaning of this word corn hole and what lead me to the conclusions I am about to impress upon you and hope that soon we get our heads out of our past and present  a new beginning of denial.  I reflect back to some off my earliest teachings from my siblings and my dad and remember this little ditty they seemed to relish so dearly in their minds  and I will try my best to post it as best I remember:

             If I had the wings of an eagle and

             And the balls of an ugly baboon ,

            Then I would fly to the top of Mt. Everest.

            And corn hole the man in the moon.

      This tune surely pre-dated any corn hole game and must have been popular among males, as surely my family repeated it several times and for some strange reason like the song ‘Lollipop’ , it suddenly pops out of your brain and you wonder just where the hell you had that hid . And for what reason would it resurface today. The reason it is here today and the reason for the blog featuring anuses while not trying to make one of myself is to logically explain how wrong on some levels is this game of corn hole and totally blind we are to its real meaning .

    Hopefully you have not went out and purchased your game of corn hole for Christmas and conveniently placed it under your tree, but if you did, and if the package is not opened perhaps you can take it back maybe citing skid marks as a reason for return. First wait till I explain myself .

    I have 2 Wikipedia references for you to pursue on your own and see what the website has to offer in terms of an explanation of corn hole with the same spelling. I use Wikipedia quite often and it does give a liberal view of what a subject is bout. So the first has to do with the use of corn hole as a game. This at some point will say that it originated in Ohio . Anyhow you can read the link and understand this to be true to their best ability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornhole

    The second definition comes from the same source and offers a completely dark definition of corn holing as it refers to the use of corn cobs and reaming the hole after defecating. I am not making this stuff up folks. Read for yourself :

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cornhole

        I have noticed that although one of these sites is Wikipedia and the other or latter is Wiktionary. Meaning I guess the real definition.

      The similarities of the game to anal penetration are eerily similar as you toss your bag at the rim of a hole . Come on folks don’t you see the obvious correlation between the two. Could imagine the laughs when a guy near misses and he says,” wow could have got that in there if they had a little hair on it!”

    If this game isn’t played at a church nearby you then I couldn’t imagine why. This is about a dirty old man game thinking as I have ever seen. And I am proud to say that I never bought into it and tried to save my friends from playing it and perpetuating the myth.

     It seems as if they had in mind of indoctrinating young kids who love the game with the idea that corn holing is good. I am not advocating one way or another but at same time doubt that if I had kids I would want them to play the game thinking it is ok. Let’s wake up here and rename it if you like it, but anything besides corn holing.

     Our kids are subjected to sexual innuendos all the time thinking this is the normal way of life.

    I know again I have stepped into a grey area better left unsaid , but with the bad rap Ohioan’s have been getting lately for our obsession with f- words , maybe this is really something we had better leave alone and not claim honors of being the first to invent. Corn holing has been around for centuries and is nothing I want to be associated with. The only reason I chose to speak out against now is how incredulously ignorant we have become with our anus colored glasses on. Not really seeing the game for what it signifies. I feel it is time to get our heads out of our proverbial asses and speak out against the game and find the perpetuators of this ruse and expose them for what they are. Michigan fans. 

why cant things be simple again?

The Aftermath of Yesterday’s Blog

     After posting my blog yesterday and as if on cue I suddenly run out of data on my data plan with T-Mobile. Coincidence, quite likely, but still I am not sure. I couldn’t go nowhere and on the 11^th of Dec. I had bought a 5 gig package that was supposed to take effect as soon as my last package ran out. It didn’t start and I couldn’t go nowhere on the web.

       Already feeling the pangs of frustration I search for my address book and dreaded climbing on the rollercoaster of automated phone answering messages that are designed to prevent me from harassing a live customer service representative. Lord forbid I go straight to the source. Scrolling through my options I fail to hear, you have already paid for your service and I am sorry for the interruption.  Instead I am left with no option but to go straight to technical support. After entering my password and verifying who I am and my account information , the live lady on the end of the phone informs me I have used up all my data , 5 gigs of it, and that I actually had went over . I informed her that I just bought it on the 11 th and that there was no way I could have used that quick.

    At this point she proceeds to inform me on how to use my mi-fi and that I need to turn it off when finished and that other people may be using it as well as programs like Apple downloading will use quite a bit of data in a short time. . I inform her I live in the middle of nowhere and if they are close enough to tie in to my puter and steal signal then they’re trespassing

     I asked her at this point. But 5 gigs in five days, come on. My puter, if left on constantly and down loading all of Apples content would never be able to achieve that kind of down load capability. And besides in the last week before this I had to get technical support to see what was wrong with my download connection because I wasn’t receiving anything. And now I am receiving too much. You mean you fixed it that well. I highly doubt it. Again I asked her to check and see if I still had data available to me , and she said I didn’t and went back to the spiel about turning off my puter and down load connection when finished surfing on the net. At this point she was treating me somewhat like I was some kind of a pervert and that I was constantly streaming porn and that was the reason I had no internet service.

   At this point I am thirty minutes into the call and still no success but a verbal ripping of my anus as she tears me a new asshole about my web usage. After all if I didn’t use it by a certain time then I would lose it so what are my options. Besides if I don’t use it she has no job.  Being from Ohio and being accused of dropping f- bombs all the time I did my best and said forget it , you are not listening to me , I have already paid, but will pay again as I am becoming increasingly frustrated with you as I try to restore my service . Please re-up me so I can get back online and check my usage and see if it is true that I used that much in the last few days. She checks my account and says that I have to add more money to my account in order to buy a new pass. I said ok and she says she will transfer me to another department to achieve this less than miracle.

   I dread being rolled over into a new department and recanting my story again. But alas I am given time as I hear the automated message come across the phone and say all our operators are busy and your call will be answered in the order it came in. if that was the case I should go to the head of the line but no I start all over again listening to some irritating music drone over my phone in a continuous loop until I can’t stand it no more. I place it on speaker go get a cup of coffee which I really didn’t need and checked the time. At this point I am 45 minutes waiting and still no service. Finally I hear through the speaker the welcoming click of someone finally answering the phone. I hurry and take off speaker as they say we must have bad connection. I really don’t want to lose this person at this point and assure them that I can hear them quite well and that it must be their phone.

     Again I go through the whole spiel about how I should have data left and that I can’t surf or do anything as T-Mobile has my puter locked into their screen and it isn’t letting me do anything. I mention that I should have a data package that was supposed to take effect as soon as the last one was completed. And that I am unable to do anything with my puter in regards to using the web. He tells me that I still have data left and that I need to use it before I can get another data package in fact I have .19 mb of data. In my mind I quickly surmise that may be enough to go to Facebook and write f---  T- mobile, they suck. And quickly toss the idea out of my head. He tells me he can’t re-up me until I use all my data. Again I tell him I can’t do anything, so he has to pass me on to his supervisor and again I am on hold at this point I am 50 minutes and still no service. And again a more annoying loop of music designed to further drive the demons in my head to a frenzy.

     At last as I sit patiently beside my cell phone wondering if the battery was going to hold up and that my call was not going to be dropped , and how many words start with f and end with k will I use if this kind person is not able to help me. Finally she comes on and again I recant my story again as if I am being grilled by the FBI about some major crime I committed and in essence all I am trying to do is get my service back on.

      Again I receive instructions on mi-fi usage and that I should try and curb my activity on the internet to make sure that this never happens again. At this point I wonder if I woke her up and she was just pissed at me for taking up her precious time. I said, do what you have to do to get my service back on, I am getting pretty tired of this as I am now an hour and 10 minutes into a call that should never have happened in the first place, she has none of my debit card information available so I have to run through my house and find my wallet and leave the phone hoping she doesn’t hang up on me while I dig through my wallet and find my card. We go through the whole process and finally I am able to make a payment and then she says she can reset my data but she can’t re-up me for a data package as I need to go back to customer service and get my data package.

     In the old days you used to pay for something and just get it. The old hardware man would slide it across the counter and you may even get a joke or two he heard from other satisfied customers. Now a day it is all quite different. The runaround is designed to infuriate you to the max. As if they know there is some Ohioan out there, that is at his tipping point and that maybe with a little nudge he will go off with the f-bombs and you can quickly hang up the receiver and rather than listen to him rant.

    Again with the annoying music and for stimulation they added ‘That due to heavy call volume your wait will be extended and if you want that you could call back later when they aren’t so busy.’ Wow, do they really think I am going to lose my place in line and go through all this again. I am reminded at this point of my first haircut and how the barber had no ears. It scared the hell out of me because I thought he practiced on himself when in reality he had no ears because he was in a fire in their house when he was a kid, and it burned his ears off. I imagined I looked like he did at this point, as I am sure my ears were melted to the side of my head as I waited for another voice to come back on. At an hour and twenty minutes finally I hear another voice on the phone and again I tell my story and the history of what I have been through thus far and I am feeling proud of myself as I am getting quite good at retelling it. She assures me that with the payment that my new data package will be in place and everything will be up and working in a few minutes. Then it is snag time again. As suddenly a five gig package, supposedly a complimentary was given to me and that the 2.5 gig package I had just bought would be wasted if I purchased another package now.

     Just when you think you have seen the light they blind you. Apparently I had to use the 5 gig package now and save the 2.5 for later. Confused, well so was I and so I agreed to use their so called 5. 0 gig complimentary  package and then I could hold my 2.5 gig in reserve , until she told me of the snag involved which amounted to an approval that may take anywhere from 2 -24 hrs. to approve.          

      Wow,again. At this point I choose to not drag myself any further through their muck and mire and to just let it go through and see if everything will go as they say. Besides they have already shown how helpless you are after all I spent an hour and a half of my life on the phone trying to get something I already should have anyhow. I mean I doubt if any business will give anything away if they don’t think you already have a right to it. Their complimentary package was probably them realizing I had already paid for service and that it was lying in wait. In fact when I returned to the computer to check I saw that the 5.0 gig package I had bought on the 11^th was now active. So it wasn’t really complimentary and that for the last hour and a half I spent trying to get what I had already paid for was a mistake they conveniently hid behind a complimentary package.

     My head was reeling and my ear was flat, my phone battery was on its last leg and finally I was able to hang up and the customer service rep I last talked to promised to call me today to make sure that I received my data package. That never happened. But through it all, I mentioned frigging once but avoided the four letter version.

     Now in conclusion if you are confused and dazed, then you must know what it is like for me and a bunch of other Ohioans to go through this for most everything you have to purchase over the phone. The voices in my head come from the monotonous bleating of the call waiting music. Undoubtedly much better than Virgin mobile as theirs is a cross between aggravating and just downright slam the phone down to avoid ear piecing cries of help from some lost poor singer who was probably the son of an executive there at Virgin.

     It would be different if this was a once in a lifetime event but it seems as if it is monthly or at least every time you need service from these folks. Why can’t you just pay and get service. Or if you already have paid and have it in reserve then get what you paid for. Simpler is better. No wonder the phone companies want to shift their customer service overseas as it costs too much to do it here in the U.S. Four customer service reps and an hour and a half to get what I had already paid for. F--- T-Mobile.

     As an after note and before I finished editing of this the customer rep who said she was going to call back and make sure I had service finally returned the call an hour and a half after she was supposed to. Again I could feel the tension begin to rise as I talked to her but still avoided using the f- word directly on her. And I just love it when they tell you to have a good day after all that. 

what the f--- are they talking about?

Ohio Potty Mouth capital of the World?

Ohioans with F-bomb guards in place

       Or the least likely place to pull some crap without someone voicing their opinion. Well to say the least I am mad as hell they are picking on the buckeye state again. Now we have dual titles according to an article posted in National Public Radio regarding our lack of regard to the English language. That the f-bombs drool out of our face and onto the world in a haphazard manner. This is not totally true. Also they mention about how we are the landfill capital of the world. And even though I sit now in the growing mountainous shadows of two of the biggest in the state I tend to think of those in other terms also.

     Apparently the utility companies have been keeping good records but promoting lousy service and Ohioans have been more than free with the lip as we wait for service that never comes. is it our fault that someone in India has a hard time answering our calls while Ohioans stand in the cold waiting for our industrial jobs to come back home to us. Not to mention the numerous telephone jobs that were sent over seas . Kind of frustrates a person when you try to talk to a foreigner while calling America online for service.

    You will need to read their article in facebook leads to see just what the f--- they had to say about us. Here is the link: http://n.pr/1cuquNh

    I like to think of Ohioans as the least likely spot to pull a bunch of shit they try feeding the rest of the world.  Crimineze , see there I was just trying to clean up my act, by choosing a more appropriate word  and now the dictionary doesn’t even recognize that slang in Ohio and asked for a spell correction. Knowing that surely it could not have come from someone born here as it is totally inappropriate for us, as if my word program has spell correction tied to the gps coordinates of my puter.  If you have a product send it to Ohio for field testing and we will surely let your service department know what is wrong with it and what you can do with it in short order after you give us back our money. So what is wrong with that?

     I mean you East Coast states have been sending us your trash knowing full well that we would take it. We know what trash is and we like to see it in the dump trucks heading into our landfills, heck it keeps half my family employed quite nicely. But when you give us trashy service and expect us to pay for it, how can you expect any less from us but a chance to ease our frustration as we see fit. Trash talking is something we know well, so that when someone is trying to feed us a line of crap about how great their product is, we have the expertise to put them in their place.

     And to me it seems much easier to do what you say and provide us with good service so our calls would not have been necessary in the first place. Let alone the residual f-bombs directly associated with your frail sense of humor. We are a proud bunch that has to save their money to beat off the cold winters and grey days. Getting poor service is no excuse for expecting civility here in the heartland of America.

     Now then to address the second part of the article alluding to us being the landfill capital of the world. Yes we are displeased with our politicians and their ability to stuff their pockets while letting the landfill company’s lawyers write the legislation that allows out of state garbage to come here and spoil our natural resources. We are not happy with it at all , but then again half my family is employed by these same landfills.

     What I am unhappy about is that we are not charging you out of state people more for dumping on us. Maybe if you had to live in the shadows of dual Mt. Trashmores you may appreciate our sense of humor more, or lack of it as the case may be. Besides when throwing adjectives out to describe a certain place you reveal a little about yourself in the process. Left to your own devices you would soon flounder in a sea of garbage as you never know when to quit producing it. In an effort to prop up your profits you devise ways to keep people from stealing your shitty products and encase a dollar item in a theft proof piece of plastic that wallows in our landfill for years. You do this without any hesitation or worry because we are so eager to accept your trash here, or at least our politicians are. Your efforts at reclaiming amount to throwing it in the trash to let some other person pick through it separate those things you deem unworthy but are in reality recyclable. The rest of what is left is sent to Ohio and our landfills.

     I see them as a potential energy source in the future as we will once again be visiting and tearing apart our landfills to utilize the rest of what is left there as we deplete our natural resources in the future.  We will burn in incinerators the refuse the east coast has so conveniently provided us with, and then the fumes from our garbage plants will waft upstream and blanket the East Coast , giving them back the same they sent us.  And when you raise your arms up in uproar we will merely tell you to go f---  yourself. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. 

days gone by

Another Family Member has Passed

     My uncle Wayne Kiser has passed, and will be missed by all. He is on the right side of the pic above standing beside his wife and my aunt and mom’s sister Fran Kiser. This is an old pic of them I just wanted to share due to the people who are included on the pic but who are no longer with us today.

       My grandma is pictured in the center and she eventually passed when she was 94 years old. My dad who is behind my mom on the left side of the pic was 86 when he passed and the same age as my uncle. My dad and mom being, Denzil and Florence Malott.  My grandma being, Ines Yockey , and then my aunt and uncle, the Kisers. Hard to believe there are only my mom and my aunt who are left now. The older family is dwindling.

    My uncle Wayne had a good long life and has left behind besides his wife, my cousins Daryl and Brenda.  Sorry I have no other cousins named Daryl, by the way referring to the Bob Newhart show with my cousin Daryl and my other cousin Daryl and my other cousin Daryl.  Wayne was an avid radio fan and once owned  two roller skating rinks , and uncle Wayne and aunt Fran used to enter roller skating figure championships and did quite well when they were younger.

      The funeral went well as most funerals go or as well as one can be expected to go. After all someone has to die to have one and unfortunately it is a family event where you reconnect with love ones you have a rare chance of seeing. We reflect on the lost one’s life and his accomplishments and then lament about how we should get together more often than just funerals.

      We mentioned where we used to have a family reunion in Cambridge, Oh. annually for years until due to dwindling appearance it was discontinued. It was every year on father’s day we would meet and families would bring their best fried chicken and grandma would have groundhog and noodles. Everyone would dress up in their nice clothes and hop into their late model gas guzzler and head for Cambridge park. We as kids would play on the swings and pretend we were driving the old fire engine and then go swimming in the wading pool. We looked forward to catching up on all the events.

     The last one I went to had a kind of humorous event associated with it that makes me think our relatives mat have a second life. I had decided one year that I was going to attend the reunion and represent our family as no one else was going to be able to attend. I arrived and as soon as parked my truck I noticed an old basset hound. He was a little porker of a guy who was very friendly and greeted me at my truck door. I received a less than favorable greeting from members of our extended family of whom plenty I had not seen for a while and them the same for me . I was soon asked if I sure I had the right place.   I assured them that yes I was as the sign stated a descendant of the Yockey’s and Ines was grandma and after being assured of my credentials was allowed to bring my donuts and pies to the table and was more warmly invited. Whereas my friend the basset hound was soon making his way around the family seemingly introducing himself to everyone and being generously accepted.

     We had dinner and grace was said by my late uncle Dewey, which was the last time he attended as he was my grandma‘s brother and he was 94 at the time. He too would pass that next fall. After dinner and everyone was feeling the effects of being gorged by all the food, and we all would just sit around and catch up on how everyone’s life was doing. Some would play games and talk, some would go for a walk, return, and eat some more and maybe grab a piece of pie.

      My friend the basset was making his rounds and people would slip him some food and he would play with the kids and acted like he was right at home. When everyone was called to come and take pictures. Mr. basset moved to the front of the line and had his picture taken in front of about 50 family members. In fact since I was taking pictures he ended up in more pictures than me that day. I was feeling kind of envious of the attention Mr.  basset hound was being given until I noticed that after the pictures I watched him turn and leave as other family members were starting to do, and he headed up the hill straight for the road. He stopped at the edge of the road and waited for a car to pass as he looked both ways, and then he went across the road. I was worried he might get hit and yelled out to everyone

      I said,” Hey there goes that basset hound. Doesn’t he belong to anyone here?”

      Then everyone turned and looked at me and said. We thought you brought him. He arrived when you did. Nobody could remember him before you showed up someone said. Everyone turned and looked at the dog as he was nearly out of sight as the old basset plundered off his belly a little closer to the ground but with the same intense drive it seemed as when he arrived. He was on a mission and seemed to know what he was doing. We all started laughing as it seemed as if an old relative had returned from the dead and knowing full well what father’s day meant and had returned to get a good meal and to catch up on life’s comings and goings. Then with the day running short left not being able to say a word, but instead leave everyone wondering if there is life after death.

     There are rumblings of a reunion again. In ways I kinda like what we had, and that was tradition. A party just isn’t the same as when it is a family event structured like we had it. Even with dogs being allowed, whoever’s they were.  It is still better than waiting for a funeral to get everyone together. 

corporal punishment! are we better off?

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child

        Having suffered several beatings myself from my step Dad with a belt, I was never fond of Ben Franklin or his sayings. But then again Ben Franklin may have had full good intentions at his time and maybe a rod would be better than what some people I have witnessed used in my life time. This is a story of a beating I witnessed years ago not of myself , but of a friend of mine who I might say needed beat once in a while, but never to the extreme I saw his dad beat him that day.

     Some of you may remember Tom Gottsman who lived in the Bowmandale area and was a member of our Bowmandale gang unofficially, but still he was from here and at times he was the butt of a lot of poor jokes. At times he could be a real dufus, the slang definition meaning a cross between a fool and a goof, of which Tom was both at times.

       He prided himself on how many whacks he could get in Mrs. Finley’s class in the 5^th grade, having achieved 56 in one year. He would act up in class purposely just to get the teachers attention, one time hauling a girl into the closet in the room and closing the door and groping her. For this act Tom was eventually given a couple of day’s expulsion from school. This didn’t deter him and in fact only made him more determined to act out even more having nothing to lose. Nothing was out of bounds for Tom except when he went home.

       His Dad was a mean one. An old school kind of guy whom I had met on a few occasions but for the most part avoided, as i had enough of my own Dad doing his fair share of justice and I needed little help from Tom’s Dad in that area so we just avoided him. Tom would tell us stories of how his Dad would beat him and that how his Mother would do little to stop him or could even think about doing such. Still Tom never seemed to learn much from all those beatings as he still would go and do the craziest things without thinking once about what the outcome was going to be. He was a dufus and only in a way Tom could possibly be.

     It seemed the teachers just passed him along as he was kind of hopeless and in those days, you wouldn’t see a counselor or a school psychologist, instead you would possibly receive time off from school or a letter from a principal saying how ill-behaved your child was and that you needed to take the situation in hand before it spiraled out of control.  The school would allow paddling but would never try to understand Tom as if anyone really could at times. We lived in a different time back then. Now they would just pump the child full of Ritalin, have him see and army of psychologists and then buy him an assault rifle to shoot small animals as a relief for his hidden anger towards his parents and school officials, while encouraging the parents to adopt a hands off attitude toward the ill-behaved child.

     Back then it was up to the parent to dish out the justice needed to keep your child under control. Tom’s Mom wasn’t able to help at all in this area and instead left it up to his dad who would come home from work and without knowing the full extent of toms misdeeds would commence upon beating Tom senseless about his body with his fists. Tom was about 14 at the time a little older than me as he was put back a few years because of his poor grades until the teachers felt they needed to rid themselves of him. It seemed that mainly all Tom needed was someone to pay attention to him, and by acting out it was his way of getting that attention. Another time off from school and another bad beating from his Dad and Tom decided he was going to run away from home as a means of escaping the almost daily beatings he was receiving from his Dad at that time.

    So Tom not knowing where to go to avoid the beatings, he ended up in Bowmandale park which was at the end of our lane, where  he set up a tent and had food and a radio and was living in some comfort for a couple of days. My brother and I would visit and share some food with him we had brought from home. Tom didn’t bother trying to go to school and only wished that he was older so that he could go to work and finally rid himself of his Dad and his heavy handed way of life, never once thinking about modifying his behavior to prevent the beatings from happening. After a couple of days of his Dad and Mom not knowing where he was, they became real irritated with Tom as he would slip into his house and steal what he needed to survive when the family wasn’t home. They knew he was around but just didn’t know where.

      Somehow, someone squealed and I think it was his sister Rhonda with whom  Tom shared information with to frequently, and then one day while my brother and I  was visiting Tom in his hidden little tent city, we hear his Dad ‘s pick up come spinning his wheels into the park creating a cloud of dust we could see through the briars hiding Tom’s tent and at this point my brother Jim and I decided we needed to go out the back door so to speak and we were off through the briars and just over the hill where we laid  down quietly and looked back ,  as we watched Tom get the beating of his life.

     His Dad never once said he missed Tom or asked him anything instead he commenced to pounding on Tom, with his bare fists, and all the time calling him a son of a bitch, while telling him he would never pull a stunt like that again, then he started kicking him towards the truck and away from us where we laid unable to help Tom except to hope it would all be over for him soon. His Dad was relentless with the pounding, forcing Tom to the truck and yelling obscenities along the way. Tom never returned a hit instead had his arms over his head to deflect the blows aimed at his head and face.  No person or child should ever be treated that way and yet in the end I think it was Tom that was fighting for his fathers and mothers attention that started this in the first place. They had gave up on Tom years ago as a hopeless case that only understood one thing and that was correction in the form of hitting or paddling in an effort to conform him to meet their standards.

     After a couple of days of healing Tom returned to school and it wasn’t long before his family took off and moved back to Missouri  after that incident, his Dad having been offered a chance to run a dragline in an area where his parents were from, so he took the job offer and moved the family away.

   Years later Tom returned and I was able to visit with him. Somewhere along the way he had grown up some, having married and bought a farm to live on in the Missouri area. It all seemed to make things ok with him and I was glad in some ways to have visited with him seeing things finally turn around for him.

    Seeing Tom get beat that day was something I would never forget. Sure Tom was a dufus and sure he acted out but I think he needed someone to try and understand him and I doubt he ever received that while living at home. Maybe after he had been out on his own and no longer needed his parents help or wanted it that Tom finally manned up as they say. It would be a little hard to believe knowing Tom that he would ever be the stable person he claimed to be when he visited me, but in the end hope for Tom’s sake it was all true.  Still I hear of parents beating their children and it sends chills down my spine when I think of what I saw that day. Never having kids myself, but instead step children I can remember back to days of their punishment for acting out and how myself seeing Tom get beat eventually ended up having an effect on me and how I treated my step kids.

    My ex would tell horror stories of how the kids were and how I needed to beat them when I came home. I would spank if I saw them doing something wrong, but to just hit them at someone else’s word because she couldn’t control them was beyond me. She would even go so far as to threaten the kids with what I was going to do with them when I arrived home. Eventually I had enough of all that and refused to punish the kids at all and eventually breaking up with her. I was not going to be her means to an end. She was not going to make me into one of those Dads kids love to hate. And hopefully I never was.

     Still in today’s society we still hear of abuse of this kind and it always has an effect on me. I can understand parents trying to control their children but at what cost is it to their child’s psyche that beating is going to accomplish. Still at times I think back to paddling and corporate punishment in schools and remember, we were in fear of being the one singled out to receive the paddling and I am sure it prevented a lot of things from happening in the first place. I wonder if things are better now that they have abolished paddling in schools altogether. After a couple of school shootings I often wonder.