I want to complain.

Look, I don’t complain a lot. As a matter of fact, you’ve never heard me complain in a general forum like this. We get and do enough of that so I figured we didn’t need to hear some middle-aged guy start ramping up about a bunch of stuff, but there are things—
Like chocolate. When I was growing up, you ate chocolate anyway you could get it with the staunch knowledge that it WAS going to make you fat and your skin break out. Now, it’s suppose to be good for you and has nothing to do with your acne. That now is genetic.
Another is mayonnaise; the sixth major food group in the line of Williams men. We kept our mayo on the second shelf up, just to the right of the sink, right next to the peanut butter. We opened it, put some on our bread (we always used spoons, never a knife) and put the lid back on and then back to its nest on the shelf. Only when I got married was I told of the vast error of my ways. Now, the FDA has come out with a report that refrigeration for mayo is not needed. To this day, I count this dietary formula for the strength of my white blood cells.
Whatever happened to the “family doctor?” When I was growing up, we all went to one guy. Now, actually for decades, we go to an internist if we’re over 18, a pediatrician if we’re under 18, women go here, men go--, I don’t know. One guy. Of course, his wife eventually died of undiscovered breast cancer. Hmm
When was the last time you got CPR certified? Now, its 32 compressions and forget about putting your lips on the poor smuck. We’ll just beat on his chest until help arrives. Last week it was 15 compressions and 2 breaths. Before that it was 2 rescuers. Geez.
See what I’m saying? Look, I’m not asking a lot. Just get your tail down to the Coffee Shed just off of Route 9 near the Berinth Avenue exit and take a left. The coffee (no lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, etc) are going to be there. Consistency, that’s all I’m asking!!!

End of the year teacher's story

Carol Ferguson was wrapping up her room the week after school let out for summer. She had been a teacher for thirty-nine years, the last thirty-three in this inner city high school district and at this particular school. When she told people how long she had been there and just after their gasp, she would comment “Well, I have changed rooms over the years.” What she didn’t say was the last twenty had been in this particular room, tucked away in one of the older wings. Now, at the end of her career, Carol Ferguson found herself trying to find a place for the lifetime of memories, most of which she knew she couldn’t take home. It was time for Carol Ferguson to make room for the new teachers and time for her to rest. Carol Ferguson struggled with the idea of whether it had been worth it.

She walked the room as if lost. She would start packing a box then flitter to another part of the room. She would bog down with opening a book or a file and finding something that she hadn’t looked at for years, in this case, a file with cards from students. She would linger over their words and pictures. Carol Ferguson would then smile and again wander the room, trying to find a place to put the old treasure. She had until the end of the week to clear out. A new teacher was transferring in and wanted to get keys and move in before they got too deep into summer. It was at this point Carol Ferguson heard a knock on her open door.

“Hello,” the old man with the cane said. He was about seventy but looked older with a hunched back and a long mustache. A well worn hat covered his head.

“Hello,” she said.

“Are you Carol Ferguson?”

“Yes, can I help you?”

The old man shuffled a few steps into the room before he spoke. “You don’t know me. But I needed to see you.” The man paused for a moment.

“Would you like to sit down?” she offered but the man held up his hand.

“No, I can’t stay. I just needed to see you.” There was another pause. “Thirty years ago, you had my kids. They was one behind the other in ages,” the old man slowly started, a tinge of southern drawl hung in his voice. “Two boys and a girl.”

“What were their names?”

“It ain’t important. What is important is what you did.”

Carol Ferguson had a flash of worry. Fear, quickly swept over her; as if this man posed a violent threat and that she was going to pay for some mis-deed from years past.

The old man’s voice began to break. “You see, I wasn’t around much when they was growin’ up. I wasn’t around at all, by choice, I guess. Their mother raised them as best she could and they were ripe for the pickin’ if you get my meaning. They could have gone either way. I hadn’t seen them since until last year. They found me and we all got together and,” he paused again and caught his voice. “It’s something now. Really something. I needed to come tell you because when we was talkin’ they said one thing that got them through and that they remembered for, well, until now, was their high school teacher, Mrs. Ferguson, giving them the will and the courage to believe. One’s a contractor in Chicago, one’s a writer for a magazine in LA, and the girl is a teacher in the South Miami. They all said between momma and you, they made it. I just came here to tell you thank you for saving my kids.”

The two stood for a moment and neither spoke. The old man shuffled in his turn and left the same way he came in. Carol Ferguson walked over to her desk and sat down, still holding the treasure in her hand. She opened the file and a card fell out. She picked it up and opened it, noticing it was signed by three kids-two boys and a girl.

Carol Ferguson closed the file, laid it on her desk, and began to cry tears of joy.

Never forget--those things good

The old man and the old woman walked slowly down the sidewalk in the park along the Marina Waterfront. He, with his cane and she, holding his arm, their strides almost heal to toe; their posture with a noticeable lean forward. They were dressed for the chill the bay breeze always brought, with tweed overcoats, hats, and scarves. She wore black gloves and a green scarf to accent her blouse that couldn’t be seen and he with formal dress of slacks, a dress shirt, and tie but on his head, a Forty-niners ball cap his grandson bought for him and on his back, a small backpack. Both wore brand new white Nike’s.

They found their traditional bench and so began their sit for an hour or so as they looked out towards the water, towards Sausalito. They enjoyed the walk down from their apartment where they knew they were going to spend the last stage of their lives together. They were close to their two daughters and son, grandchildren and great grandchildren. They had a close family and received calls or visits from one of the group every day. They loved those times but cherished these, when they could lace up each others shoes-bending over that far was too hard to do themselves, and walk down from Mason Street just south of the cable car turn-around to this bench and sit with each other. Sometimes they would walk back and other times they would call a cab. They never called their family for a ride.

They would sit for the hour, watching the ships and the joggers along the sea wall, the tourists taking pictures, the foreign voices as they walked by. Often, the old man and old woman would sit and not say a word. Fifty-four years of marriage caused the old man and old woman to be able to read each others thoughts. Words were spoken-love words were spoken, but the best of those words were said with the eyes and heart. He would point with his cane at the passing ships or points of interest without speaking; she would nod and smile, while still holding his ungloved hand.

It was 1944 when the old man and old woman met. She was a twenty-year-old nurse at the Alameda Naval Air Station. He was twenty-five and in the hospital for burns and shrapnel when his Corsair was shot up over Saipan and his return to his carrier was ‘a little bouncy’ as he would sometimes recount. She became his nurse and knew him when he was at his lowest. They first became friends. As part of his therapy, a day trip was planned with several patients into the city and this park, only at that time, it was a gun emplacement. He sat in the open air of that bay, just he and his nurse, and for the first time, he felt life might be worth living. The two never left. She would later talk about his ‘chocolate drop’ eyes and he would write home about this woman of amazing grace and compassion. His warrior spirit never left. When you get old, your spirit doesn’t leave, it just makes room for other parts of your life, eventually adding the spirit of husband, father, mentor, lover, and now, in the final chapter-trusted council, wisdom, guardian of those things good.

It was time in their walk and in their sit. The old man reached in to the small backpack he had taken off just before he sat down and pulled out a thermos and two cups. He poured his bride some of the fresh brew, always leaving room so she didn’t burn her lips or spill, and then he poured himself a cup. And so they sat some more. Silent. Vigilant. The warrior and nurse.

Friday morning, tomorrow, come and sit. Share a story of your warrior days or of those times when bones weren’t brittle and the breeze was cool on your face. Coffee and sacks are free. In the Coffee Shack at about 7:15

Arg, me matey's!

For a six-pence, Charlie “The Pin” Gunter, would beat up anyone you wanted along the wharfs of Kingstown Bay in the Grenadines. He would peg-leg himself up to the unsuspecting, looking as though he was begging for alms and when the victim was distracted by The Pin’s odor, Charlie would drop his mahogany leg, and club them with it, turning them into a senseless ball of goo on the rolling docks.

He then would collect his pay, and wander the pubs telling stories of the days when he was young and sailed as an ensign with His Majesty’s Fleet with the “good Admiral Sir Eland Barrington.” He would flop on a chair and gather the crowd while pinting the ale and slapping backs. No one believed the Pin, called that for the pin, Charlie said, was shot through his neck during a little skirmish the fleet had while on patrol with the rough and tumble pirate, “Long Slim Jim.” The story went that as he was a young ensign assigned to the forward gun batteries on His Majesty’s Balfour, a thin and nimble frigate, when an incoming round from one of Long Jim’s deck guns filled with chain, nails, and dowel pins, one of which stuck in Charlie’s neck. Not wanting to get blood all over his uniform, Charlie stuck his finger in the small hole and continued to call correction to his gunners.

So, at the tables or at the bar, the aged man with the wooden leg led the pub in story after story of sea fare and glory, all the while, his victims-almost all, woke up some hours later with a cleaved skull and empty wallets.

For a six-pence, you too, can come down to the docks tomorrow morning and have a pint or two. Some fine Ethiopian or Colombian black, imported just for you on the tramp steamer, Valhalla, will make port at dawn. Give the swabs time to unload its gullet and prepare a sampling of exotic foods and spices for you heartless wretches.

Don’t forget to fly your ship’s colors on your doors tomorrow, colored with crayons, each have to have a name. The attire tomorrow? Piratey.

Good old days with fire

To the right there, is a good example of having too much fat on your steak when your grilling on Saturdays. It also applies to the weekly coffee story below. Enjoy.

Remember your birthday parties when you were younger? There was a time when, in my youth, a change took place from pinning tails on donkeys to a higher form.

When I was a teenager, I was sometimes embarrassed by my mother. No, it’s not fun to say, but my mom had ‘consumption’ issues that, in the early seventies, were unpredictable. Having a house full of the most important elements to your high school identity, when your mom was on a binge, was fully avoided at all cost. Younger birthday parties were fine but that season in my mom’s life happened to coincide with my teenage years and as we can all attest, a child, in their teenage years, goes legally insane when anything happens.

My father had died when I was fourteen and my brothers and sister had moved out years before so it was just the two of us. She was really a great mom-with one massive flaw. During the day and a sizable portion of the nights, she was fine, but on some nights-wow. So a birthday party-at night-with my friends-was out of the question. I told her why. She actually begged for a shot at it. Believe it or not, she was actually turning the corner. We talked and came to a mutual game plan. A party of just my guy friends, over for dinner-a big dinner-steaks, potatoes, you know-real food. Stuff that made teen age boys forget about girls and beer was anything that has the word ‘T-bone’ in it. Thus, “Festival” was born.

Festival was the annual birthday celebration that lasted for several years, eventually moving itself to North Mountain Park and the ramada you see next to the water tower, just above the National Guard base on Seventh Street. The boys would gather and grill steaks and eat beans, filling themselves on soft drinks and beef. Alcohol was never needed when you had cows to eat. Teenage boys, with full bellies of good food, were content and not overwhelmed by any other desires, at least for a while. There was a cake in there somewhere but if memory serves, most of that was used in a food fight. As a significant part of the annual celebration, the birthday boy would climb the hill behind the ramada to a craggy outcropping a few hundred feet straight up, light a road flare, let out a god-awful ‘war cry’ and run down the dark, cactus invested, razor sharp hill holding the 1500 degree road flare up so all could see. The idea was to make it down without falling, setting the mountain on fire, or making any form of late night news. It always seemed to work, other than the one time he set his hair a blaze with a piece of molten ember from the flare falling onto his skull. Mom was always so proud-of the party-she never knew about the pyrotechnics.

Festival has gone by the wayside along with the yellow leisure suit. But tomorrow morning there will be coffee and snacks, the food of middle-aged ‘Festival’ goers. Come and enjoy. If you’re there before the sun comes up, and if you listen quietly-facing north, you can hear the war cry of the festival revelers of the past. Don’t try it yourself. At our age, we’ll throw a clot.

Morning

Every Friday at school, I make coffee for the staff. I've been doing it for a few years as a way to bring people out of their caves and get them to mingle a little with others as well as just to enjoy a Friday morning. Teaching, especially teaching high school students is tough-real tough. It was kind of a way I got to minister to others. Free or real cheap coffee and snacks before school. Well, I started with just a quick announcement the day before, giving people a head's up that in the morning, there would be a nice snack for them. Those announcements grew from a sentence or two to full blown short stories. So, to stay in the tradition of Coffee Friday, here is an example and from now on, you will also be privy to the blessings of a good cup of joe.

Gus Timmerson was a cowboy. He had been a cowboy for seventy-two years, ever since he could ride the Morgan his papa gave him when he was four. He could saddle the horse on his own at 5. He won his first junior rodeo with barrel racing at 12 and was on his first cattle drive the year before. He married his high school sweetheart who was also the apple of his young eyes in grade school, which was the same two room school house in that remote part of eastern Montana. They had four children together and just a year before this writing, Gus Timmerson, buried his wife from an extended fight with cancer. Now, in the backyard of his years on Earth, a history of two broken hips, a broken arm, the blizzard of ’86 that almost took him and his herd, all the things that life had thrown, and at a time when most would find the rocker on the porch of that back yard a comforting thought, Gus Timmerson was going back to school to get his college degree in, of all things, Modern Art.

Gus Timmerson loved to draw and paint what he drew. Wherever he was on his 1900 acres, either on horse or in his Ford truck, Gus kept a sketch pad with him. He would draw whatever he saw, simple things, and common things. Things most of us miss-he saw. At night, he would sit either on the front or back porch and have a fine, aged drink, his border collie, Mindy, laying at his feet, and looking at something that was finding its way onto his paper. One of his grand children suggested college one day and the idea stuck. It had taken him ten years, the first of them at the community college and the rest he would make the hour trip into Billings.

So, on a cool spring day, Gus Timmerson walked down the aisle of the University of Montana at Billings in a black robe and a mortar board, underneath were a pair of well worn jeans and cowhide Ropers.

And when his name was called as he crossed the stage, the legacy of Gus Timmerson, his four children, sixteen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, were the loudest of all.

It’s never too late. Coffee is free on Friday-Coffee Friday. If you don’t drink coffee, it’s never too late to learn how. Oh, yeah, snacks and tea are also available for you tenderfoots.