I
leave the store and take a short cut through the woods that are located behind
the store. I’m looking for a Presbyterian church that’s been in operation in
this area for over a hundred years. Coming out of the woods, I step onto a paved
road. In the near distance I see the church. It’s a pair of white frame
buildings, one of them includes the sanctuary with Sunday School classrooms in
the back. The other building turns out to be the Fellowship Hall. The church is
surrounded by Southern Live Oaks, all of which have Spanish moss hanging on
them. It’s a lovely setting. There’s a one-lane dirt road going up a hill
behind the church. It leads to the cemetery. I walk up the road. A hurricane
fence surrounds the cemetery. There’s a gate but it’s unlocked. I spend a few
minutes strolling around and reading the gravestones. The Civil War, as well as
World Wars I & II obviously played a prominent role in this community. I
pay my respects and head for my next destination.
Next
stop is a pecan grove about two miles from the church. I don’t count the number
of trees in it but there must be somewhere between fifty and a hundred in the
grove. It’s not harvest time so it’s only me and the squirrels in attendance.
The trees are indifferent to its audience and continue doing whatever it was
they were doing in the first place.
Departing
from the pecan grove, I go a mile and a half to a property containing a
one-story house with a large, spacious veranda curling from the front to the
northern side of the house. The side part was facing a muscadine grape orchard. There
was also a barn and a fenced area connected to the barn. A couple of horses
were milling around inside the fence. A man and a woman were sitting in rocking
chairs on the veranda.
I
asked, “How are your muscadines doing?”
“Good
so far. A few weeks yet before we can pick them.”
“That’s
a shame. I was hoping to buy some from you. Nothing quite like the taste of a
muscadine grape.”
“I
know what you mean. Anything else we can help you with?”
“No,
just wanted to see how things looked.”
“Did
you once live here? We only bought the place five years ago. It was pretty
rundown at the time.”
“You’ve
done a great job restoring it. And, no, I never lived here, but I know some
people who did. But that was long ago.”
“What
were their names?”
“John
and Sarah Hodge.”
The
man looked at his wife, who shook her head, “Sorry.”
I
responded, “Nothing to be sorry about. I had remembered something John had said
to me, and the memory of what he said made want to see this old place again.”
“What
did he say?”
“He
said, ‘We can’t change the truth, but the truth can change us.”
The
day was still young and there was still more to see and do in 1957. At least
that was my presumption.
Let
me tell you a story – a story of two ages – two ages of man. Both ages start
with the letter C, and information is the key to both. The first age is an Age
of Confusion and it’s filled with bad, poor quality information. The second age
is the Age of Clarity and it will be saturated with good, high quality
information. Which age would you prefer to live in?
My
tentative belief is that form is finite, and substance is infinite which means
in some form or another we are immortal. But if we are immortal, how much of
the endless time that we are immortal, are we aware of it? It pays to be
conscious. The rest of the time we’re working for free.
Is
duality of the mind, i.e., talking to ourselves essential to intelligence?
Inner conversation is where creation begins. Internal dialogue means
self-awareness, self-consciousness, and consciousness. Don’t let anyone tell you that's it’s selfish for you to want to exist. Existence is the default
position of Reality, and Reality is the default position of the universe.
Reality comes first but that’s not hard for Reality to do. Reality literally
has no competition because nothing is really nothing.
The
Vertical is usually higher than the Horizontal but where they meet, they are the
same.
God
calls the weak of the world. The weak are the majority. There’s power in
numbers.
The
story line that gets the job done will be the one that is recorded for history.
Corollary:
If the purpose of A is to prove B, and if A does prove B, why is C also needed
to prove B? A should always be at the lowest limits possible – else the upper
limits of B will never be known.
You
can’t be involuntarily moral – morality is a choice – choice implies freedom.
It’s
the same year but I’ve transitioned from a flattish to a more rolling hills
type landscape. I’m walking south on a two-lane paved rural highway. Ahead of
me, the road goes up and down and straight for as far as I can see. When I book
behind me it does the same. I continue walking for about a mile when a car
pulls off the road directly in front of me. It’s a silver 1947 Studebaker.
Two-door, streamlined, but with noticeable dents on all parts of the car. I
walked up to the passenger side of the car. The window is down. A friendly
voice says, “Hey, bud, would you like a ride?”
I
start to decline but then I think this is not a bad idea. I open the door and
get in.
The
man’s name is Rob. He says he’s headed for Newton, a small town a little
farther down the road. Says he’s going into town to buy a few necessities. I
find out later that Jim Beam is one those necessities.
He’s
been working in a plant all his life. His usual routine is to work all week,
get paid, then get drunk on the weekend. Surprisingly enough, his wife has
stuck with him through the years. He must have some compensatory qualities.
He’s
a funny guy though and when not wasting his money on alcohol, he’s very frugal.
At
one point we reach the top of one of those rolling hills I described. He puts the
transmission in neutral and turns the engine off. We start coasting down the
other side of the hill.
I
asked, “Why did you turn the engine off?”
He
replied, “It saves gas which saves money.”
“Won’t
that mess your ignition up?”
“Who
cares. I can get another one for pennies at the junkyard. Install it myself.”
I
could only say, “Well, yea, I see what you mean.” I didn’t know enough about
the intricacies of gas consumption to try to convince him what he was doing
didn’t really make much difference when it came to saving gas and money. But he
though it did, which was all that really mattered.
When
we drove into Newton, we went straight to a white cement block building located
just off the main street. It had a big red dot on the outside wall signifying
it was a liquor store. I was about to tell Rob goodbye when he told me to wait
in the car for him. He came back in a few minutes holding a brown bag in his
hand.
When
he sat down in the car, he asked me if I wanted a swig. I told him no thanks.
He
replied, “This is Jim Bean’s finest. Jim and I go back a long way and he’s
never let me down.”
I
wasn’t about to say anything corny like “Jim may not let you down but aren’t
you letting yourself down?”
As
it was, I suggested, “Why not wait until you get home? The Missus might enjoy
having a nip with you.”
Rob
laughed at the suggestion but said he would consider it. Under the
circumstances, that’s probably all one could ask for.
I
said thanks for the lift to town and got out the car. Rob drove off with smoke
coming out of his exhaust. In another universe, Rob might be Animae Magnae
Prodigos. In this one, he wasn’t quite there yet.
I
decided to give Newton the once over. It had a small college by the same name a
few blocks west of downtown. I walked around the campus. I got the impression
fall semester was about to start. I saw a few students, but it was mostly
maintenance crew hard at work preparing the grounds and buildings for the
oncoming onslaught.
I
bought a couple of hot dogs. Added onions and mustard. It was a warm day but
pleasant. It should be a nice evening. I saw a sign on the side of a phone booth advertising
a movie playing that night. It was a movie made in 1955. I had heard about in
my later years. Had wanted to see but never got around to it. Here was my
chance. The movie was playing at a drive-in. In the 1950’s, movie drive-ins
proliferated in many parts of the country. By the early 21st
century, there were a handful left.
I
had a problem, though. I didn’t have a car, but I was determined not to let
that stop me. I went to a hardware store and bought a lawn chair. I’m taking a
chance here that lawn chairs were not an anachronism in 1957. If they were,
let’s just say I bought a light portable chair of some kind. This era (I’m pretty sure) was before
Daylight Savings time, so it was dark around 7 pm. When I got to the ticket booth,
all the while holding my chair, the clerk just looked at me, nodded, and took
my money. Maybe I wasn’t the first to walk-in to a drive-in.
The
movie was ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ starring Spencer Tracy. Even though the Tracy
character has a bum arm from fighting in World War II, he’s still able to beat
up bad guys Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and Robert Ryan. It’s a great movie.
The
next day I get a job in the peach orchards. It’s a bigger than normal harvest,
and temporary help is needed to make quotas. I work there for three days then
move on.
Ancient
Israel was by no means a democracy, but one thing was true. Everyone was equal
under the law. The king wasn’t above it and the beggar wasn’t below it.
We
live in a superimposed reality. Someone who is not observable is observing us.
We establish the reality of things when we observe them. For us to be part of
reality, we have to be observed also. In a sense, it’s a shared reality, but
one is looking at a one-way mirror and the other is looking through a window.
We can only see a reflection of ourselves, but our observer can see us through
the window.
The
search for God is essentially a search for self – at least the part of self
that connects back to God.
As
I begin to enter into a building containing a book store I wanted to visit, I
stop and look up into the sky. I see silver airships appearing and disappearing
in rows, three deep and four wide. As twelve airships begin to fade, another
twelve airships take their place, and so on. I stand mesmerized. What does this
mean? Are we being invaded? Are they a threat?
No
answers are forthcoming. There are no historical records of such a thing
happening in 1957. 2057 is another story. But my time period of doing
reconnaissance is roughly 1920-1970. Someone else will have to explain the
silver airships.
The
vision itself fades.
