I received the following notice with my mail: “Dear Customer, the Postal Service depends on you to meet postal requirements regarding delivery and collection of mail to curbside boxes. Please keep the full approach and exits to your mailbox clear, as illustrated in the examples below. Removing trash cans, snow, vehicles, and any other objects from the area allows the carrier to deliver your mail safely and efficiently without exiting the vehicle. Your cooperation in this matter is sincerely appreciated.  Thank you. Your Postmaster.”

To explain: our house in on a small court with limited parking and space. It has a one car garage with a short ramp leading down to the court. The mailbox is located right beside this ramp. It has been since the home was built in 1973. I always enter the house through the garage, which often has some project going on as it did when the Postmaster sent me his notice. So I park my car in front of the garage, which means the mail carrier has to get out of his truck and walk several steps to put mail in the box. I have been doing this for 21 years. There have likely been a lot of different postmasters during that time.

I wrote the following in response to the Postmaster’s letter.

“Dear Sir or Madam: I am the homeowner in receipt of your message requesting that I park my car at least 30 feet away from the mailbox so the carrier will not have to get out of his truck to deliver our mail. Since the box is located at the entrance to our garage this would mean that I cannot park my car in front of my own garage, as I have done for 21 years now. Instead, you want me to park away from my house and walk in, so that your carrier will not have to walk a few steps from his truck. Even though I am the customer here, you want me to take many extra steps so the carrier will not have to make even two or three. For me, this is an example of why the U.S. Postal Service is in the trouble it now is. I remember when letter carriers walked to homes and to mail boxes, and even walked up to your front door. The FedEx and UPS delivery people gladly negotiate any traffic or parking on our court and come right up to my door with their parcels or letters. None have ever left them down at the street so they would not have to get out of their trucks and walk some steps. If I meet them at the door, most smile and wish me a nice day. I am treated like a customer they appreciate. The Postal Service is near bankruptcy today, not just because of email, but because of its lack of customer service, which your letter to me perfectly illustrates.” 

While I was still forming this letter to the Postmaster, our handyman Theo came by to clean the fall leaves out of the gutters. I asked him about moving the mailbox and showed him a location away from where I park. The price was very modest and he expects to take care of it in a week or so.

I should not be getting more complaining letters from the Postmaster. My feelings about the matter remain unchanged.

I am guessing I was twelve or thirteen at the time. My father was teaching summer school at what was then the Appalachian State Teacher's College in Boone, North Carolina. Dad and mother and I lived in an apartment on the second floor above the student center. My activities included tennis, exploring Howard's Knob and other nearby mountains, fishing trips, playing trumpet in a summer band, and working on my Boy Scout merit badges.

Our family attended the local Presbyterian church, sometimes had Sunday meals at the Boone Hotel, and often went for drives along the Blue Ridge Parkway and other mountain and country roads in this beautiful region of Western North Carolina. "Going for a drive in the country" was a favored activity of our family, which I enjoyed then and still enjoy. We would stop at small country stores and I would usually get an ice cream or popsicle. Sometimes we would play "count the cows" as we drove, and I would try my best to win. Our apartment had a fire escape which provided my favorite entrance and exit. I remember these as happy days. But there is another memory as well.

I sometimes attended meetings of a local Boy Scout troop. I remember the scout leader as a working class mountain man who rode a Harley Davidson motorcycle. He was plain spoken and somewhat arrogant. I never liked him much, but I did like it when he offered to take me for a ride on his motorcycle. And not just a short ride. He said he needed to go to a distant town and I could go with him. I asked my parents if I could do this and they said alright.

The scoutmaster picked me up as promised and I got on behind him and we rode through the country. It was thrilling. I wished my friends could see me. We got to wherever he was going and he talked with whoever he had business with. When it came time to head back he asked me if I would like to drive. I did not know what to think or say. I told him I had never driven a motorcycle and did not know how. He assured me that it was easy and he would help me and teach me and everything would be fine. He insisted and I finally agreed.

He started the Harley, put me on the big seat in front, and got on behind me. Starting out, he basically drove the thing with me in front, but once on open road be showed me about the controls and gave me the handlebars. At first he helped with driving, like a piano duet, but I soon caught on and was able to drive without assistance. It was then that he brought up the subject of sex, asking me if I knew about girls, if I ever saw one naked, and if I ever played with myself and did it feel good.

His hands moved down to my crotch and he began to unzip my pants. My hands were glued to the handlebars. I was confused, afraid, embarrassed, and wishing to be somewhere else. I feared crashing the motorcycle and I feared resisting this man, even if I knew how. He pulled out my penis and began stroking it, asking me if I had ever measured it and if I knew how long it was. All of these details are as vivid in my memory now as they were then.

Eventually his fondling produced an erection. Then we came into the edge of town and he quit and zipped me back up. That was all. I do not recall that he tried to take me anywhere or do anything else. And I don't recall him warning me not to tell about this, although you would think he might have.

I never even considered telling my parents. Although he was a college professor with a PhD, my father was a mountain man as well. Had I told him this story there would have been immediate repercussions. He would have taken me to confront this man, to accuse him face to face as my father listened with growing anger. I was a shy young boy with a deformed large foot that kids made fun of. I mostly avoided girls and confrontations. I kept everythig to myself.

I did not go back to Boy Scout meetings for a long time. Why I went back that one last time I can't remember, but I remember vividly what happened when I did. The scoutmaster saw me come in, looked surprised, tried to remember my name and couldn't, and his greeting was: "Hey, do you still have that hard-on?" There was a sense of his accomplishment in the tone of voice.

He said this in full hearing of the other boys. Thinking back on it from an adult perspective, I can only assume that his attention to me had been practiced with other boys of his troop. Some, at least, perhaps all.

Thankfully, I was not scarred for life by this experience–nothing even close. I rarely think of it except when reminded by something like the Penn State accounts. I put it in the category of bygone shame. And probably more people than we imagine have such a story to tell, if only they could or would.

Shame is long lasting, at least in my experience. I can still feel embarrassments I experienced long ago, even though my rational self declares that I should "get over it" and "move on." This explains why victims of sexual abuse are reluctant to share their stories, much less to face their abusers. 

The family farm he came back to was a few miles from the Tennessee River in the eastern part of the state. He was a liked and likeable man with a lot of friends. He mostly wore overalls except on Sundays when he did dress up some. He worked the farm his father had worked, raising cattle, hogs, corn, hay, tobacco, and various fruits and vegetables. He had built the house himself from timber that grew on his own land. This included mature trees of walnut and cherry. He had build every piece of furniture for his home in the wood working shop in the basement. The walnut gun cabinet in my downstairs now was built there also.

Farm work slowed down in the winter months after the tobacco was brought in, cured, and sold. That's when he took to the road. He had converted a used hearse to carry the tools that filling stations need. He would start out loaded and be gone for a week or two at a time. He was such a likeable, friendly man that the station owners looked forward to his return and put off buying things they needed so they could buy from him. If the station had changed hands, he promptly made friends of the new owners. He was the kind of guy that even if you had only known him briefly, it seemed like you had known him all your life.

He had an inventive, inquisitive, always-learning mind. I came to his home once and found he was raising a family of squirrels in the back yard. He had found a nest of orphan baby squirrels and built a home for them. The home had numerous rooms, devoted to sleeping, meals, and recreation. He was fond of watching them run inside the spinning exercise wheel he constructed. When the babies were grown, he opened the doors and watched them run away.

One day he decided he wanted a boat. He wanted a large boat to take his friends out on, several families at a time. They sell boats like that, of course, but he decided to build one himself. He had never built a boat, but he was a good welder (having done that for the Navy) and he believed he could figure it out. He read a lot about boat building, drew up his plans, built a large shed to build the boat in, bought a lot of scrap metal and other things, and began to lay the hull. He also build a wagon to haul the boat to the river with.

It took him two years to build his boat. As the boat took shape, word spread around the community and people came around to see it. He was somewhat like Noah in the Bible because there was no water in sight of his house and people wondered if the thing would ever be finished and make it to the water. When people joked about his boat he smiled and joked with them.

But his boat was no joke. After he finished and launched it the boat looked factory made. Be bought himself a white shirt and pants, and a boat captain's hat, and took all his friends out just like he planned.

I was a struggling young college student at the time. This man took a liking to me and did a lot to help me along. He did things I had no way to repay, and I moved away indebted. Some years later though, I did do something for him.

I had taken up flying and owned a small, fabric covered, two seat airplane. I took off one day and flew up the Tennessee Valley to his farm, diving down low over his house until he heard the noise, came outside, and waved. Then I circled around and landed in a field nearby. He came running up, delighted to see me and amazed at someone landing a plane in his cow pasture.

The man had been born and raised on this land, in this community with his friends. But he had never seen it from the air. And there's nothing like the view of the land you get from a small plane flying low. He folded into the back seat and up we climbed into the sky. Then we were looking down on the tops of trees and the never-seen views of the landscape fitting together. There was his house, and the barn, and the shed where the boat was built. We circled low around and found the church, the country store, the homes of neighbors and friends, the river nearby. People looked up at us, close enough to wave. 

And then I began to climb, circling above his land. The farm diminished and took its place among the neighbor farms, and those diminished and took their place as a patch county. Higher we climbed until his county became a small, unbounded part of the greater Tennessee Valley. We studied the river winding, and how the towns lay, and which town was which, like astronauts or angels. And it was wondrous to my old friend.

All life was wondrous to him, the man from Saint Peter's Room.

The store keeper's teenage daughter was at their home next door. The country store was downstairs and the family lived upstairs above it. She was out in the back yard beside a dirt pile the size of a small truck. She with a heavy digging maddock and swinging furiously, desperately at this pile. A rather pretty girl who had "gotten herself" pregnant with a high school boy. Neither of them had wanted this, nor had his parents or hers, nor had their churches, or this small farming community. Nor had I, their young college student part-time pastor.

I have wondered what may have given this girl the idea of that digging. Maybe an experienced girl friend, maybe a magazine article, maybe even a whispered suggestion by her own mother. Whatever it was, she went at it as if it were her last hope in life.

I did not understand at first. It took my wife explaining. We watched from our window her desperation. Trying to dig her way out of the mess she was in. By herself, because the boy was in no such dilemma. After all, the baby might not even be his. No way to prove it, on way or another.  And he is mad with her because he says she is trying to put the blame on him. Just leave him out of it. His is finished with her.

Abortions were illegal in those days, but miscarriages were not. Abortions were illegal, but they were selectively available, everyone knew. If you were wealthy and could afford to travel far away, you could purchase a reasonably safe abortion. You could say you were going to visit some relatives for awhile, or travel, or work overseas for a few months. But if you were poor, and the dirt pile didn't work, your choice was to put yourself in the hands of an illegal abortioner and risk the consequences. Half of all maternal deaths resulted from illegal abortions in the first half of the 20th century. Approximately 1 million women used illegal abortions each year in the 1950's and 60's, even though the procedures were unsafe and life-threatening. 

About 60% of today's women live in developed countries where safe abortions are available. According to the World Health Organization, the death toll from unsafe abortions in the rest of the world is about 70,000 annually. That is 23 times the number killed in the 9/11 attacks, and that is every year.

It is easy for the older men who make laws to sit around and decide what choices the store keeper's daughter should have or not have. They are not in the clutches of her dilemma and they do not have to live with her choices. They can say what her obligations are and then walk away from them like the high school boy has done. They can even sound moral and sanctimonious about it.

My heart went out to that poor country girl, and still does.

When I was a young boy in elementary school, there sometimes were fights on the playground at recess. Usually it was two boys. Occasionally two girls would get into a fight and this drew great interest from the boys, but it was a rare event. Anytime there was a fight the other kids quit what they were doing and came running to form a circle of interest around the scrappers. There was cheering and commenting by the ring of spectators. It never lasted long because once it got to this point a teacher or principle would come running and break it up.

There was no peer pressure that discouraged these fights, as they provided a welcome diversion and usually resulted in no harm whatsoever. But there was an unwritten rule about fairness. A big boy was not supposed to pick on a little boy. Such a boy was said to be a "big bully" and in need of being "taught a lesson." The big boy should pick on someone his own size. The big kid might win the fight, but he always lost out in the playground court of public opinion.

Admittedly our playground was no perfect place. There were kids there who got satisfaction from pushing other kids around and would fight if given an opportunity. There were kids who would avoid a fight at all costs, even the cost of being taunted and made fun of. What fights there were occurred only occasionally. Most kids were welcome spectators if a fight did develop, but otherwise they wanted nothing to do with fighting.

But despite its imperfections, our playground did have its principle of fairness, and this usually served to protect the weak and helpless from the dominance of the strong.

Now we are long departed from these playgrounds. We now find ourselves in a "grown up" world. But our world, even the "civilized world," largely fails to provide protection for the weak and helpless. Large and powerful nations pick on small and helpless ones, with no shame at all. Dictators pick on dissidents among their own citizens, even with deadly force. States attempt to balance their budgets by picking on the meager salaries and benefits of school teachers, while protecting the powerful interests who stand to benefit. At the national level, the first targets for reducing costs are the social programs that benefit the poor, the sick, the children, the students, the wounded veterans, the homeless, the mentally ill, the bankrupt, the home foreclosed, the birth defected, the forgotten elderly, the incarcerated, the drug adicted, the disabled.

If you read the Bible, it is quite clear that Jesus would side with the weak and helpless in such discussions. But, strangely, his professed followers largely do the opposite. The Christian church aligns itself with the wealthy and powerful. It upholds a success mentality which assumes that the more God likes you the more he rewards you in dollars and cents. Then you can add to your riches by exploiting those he obviously does not like as much as you. God justifies the means to worldly success for his chosen ones. What a deal that is!

[Yes, I know the preceding paragraph is unfair to humble Christians who reject this mentality, work for low wages, and do much to help the poor. It is sad that the public face of Christianity is not their face. On the school playground, they would be the bullied, not the bullies.]

The economic mess we find ourselves in was not caused by school teacher salaries being high. It was caused by the greed and abuses of the powerful in collaboration with a political system that gave them free reign and shared their profits. These bullies have paid no price for their abuse, and now propose to cover their losses by continued abuse of the victims.

I had my teeth cleaned and checked the other day. They checked out great. You appreciate this news while sitting there in the bright lights with all the machines and shiny steel things ready to go to work.  My dentist gave me the good news in his own philosophical way: "If the country was in as good a shape as your mouth, we'd be a hell of a lot better off." I didn't argue.

At home in the bedroom I have a sock drawer. My sock drawer had gotten so full of socks that sometimes I had to mash them down to get the drawer closed. There were socks in that drawer I have not worn for years and would probably never wear at all. There were socks I would never think of putting on because they were buried in the bottom of the drawer and out of sight. It is winter and there are people who have no sock drawers and can use some of mine. So I dumped the whole drawer-full out on the bed and sorted. I put all the socks I don't wear and don't need in a bag for the Salvation Army. The others I sorted into colors and categories. Then I arranged the keeper socks neatly back in the drawer.

The socks in the drawer are now just one layer thick. I can open the drawer and see everything I have. In the past, I could only see the ones on top, and it was confusing and uncertain when I tried to dig down into the lower layers to find something.

I have less socks than before, but it seems like I have more socks than before. I have more socks that are visible and usable. Less socks means more socks.

There are other places in the house where the same thing would probably work. The closet in the hallway filled with coats and hats and gloves. The stuff on the shelves in the garage. There are times I go out and buy something when I know there's some of it somewhere in that garage, but it's easier to buy it new than to do a search. Less stuff in the garage could mean more stuff I could actually use.

Since I only have one home, tackling these issues can at least be confined to a single location. Others are not so fortunate. Sen. John McCain was famously asked in an interview how many houses he and his wife Cindy own, and he did not know for sure. According to Politico the correct answer was eight.

What does one couple need with eight houses? What did I need with so many socks? We could surely do with less. 

Where I grew up in the South we had an expression about "enough to make a grown man cry." It was usually heard in a humorous or self-deprecating way. Someone got his tax bill and said it was "enough to make a grown man cry." Not that he actually did cry, you understood. It might be used when a son-in-law quit his job, when a wife spent too much in the beauty parlor, or when the football team lost on a last-minute fumble. 

It did not seem to an observer that the accident on Sligo Creek was enough to make a grown man cry. Some kids out riding around might have laughed at the man. Most people likely failed to notice, or noticed and thought little about it.

I thought much about it, but did nothing except wait until I could pull around and drive on. I did not stop and introduce myself and offer assistance. In other words, I did the same thing everyone else did but with different feelings. Today as I replayed this scene in my head I wished that I had stopped and tried to help.

It appears to be the case that the suffering of others is concerning to some people and not to others. How do people get to be one way or the other?

Is it our upbringing? But if it were, how do you account for the fact that children raised in the same home by the same parents and educated in the same schools have totally different feelings?

Is it our religion? I think not. Religious people can be as selfish and uncaring as anyone else. In fact, in the story Jesus told about the man robbed and beaten on the road to Jericho, the religious people passed on by him, and it was the pagan (a.k.a. the "good Samaritan") who stopped to help.

Is it our heredity? I know there are researchers who propose that something in our genes causes us to be generous or selfish, liberal or conservative. But my mother was more caring and my father less so in these circumstances, and I am descended from them both.

It seems like more of a choice to me. But where does the will to make such choices come from? Self preservation is certainly a powerful instinct, and to spend our resources helping others, or even caring about them, is to divert something that otherwise could have served our own needs. It seems to run counter to "natural" tendencies. If there are plausible arguments for the existence of God, this could be one.

The Goldfinch is an exceedingly cautious bird.  Those who come to our thistle feeders have a predictable habit of turning to look behind them.  The timing seems to be in their nature, because all Goldfinches do this just alike.  Seed . . . seed . . . look around . . . seed . . ..  And so it goes, and so it goes.  The Goldfinches obviously do not wish to become casualties.  I wonder if they are nervous and fearful, or if this is just a monotonous habit.

I have observed through my binoculars (or long ago my rifle scope, sorry) the cautious behavior of groundhogs.  Like Goldfinches, they also have a predictable pattern.  Their routine is head down and graze . . . sit up and look north . . . head down and graze . . . . sit up and look east . . . head down and graze, etc.  They will sit up and look for trouble four times, facing four directions, and then repeat on and on.  Also they will always keep track of the direction to their nearest groundhog hole.  When startled, they know exactly which direction to run.

Another bird does it differently, and that is the Chickadee.  The Chickadee is also a very cautious bird, but the strategy is totally different.  The Chickadee sits in a safe tree nearby, picks a good time when the coast is clear, swoops in to the feeder and immediately grabs a seed, then gets the hell out.  The Chickadee takes his prize to the shelter of a well-leaved tree, sits on a sheltered limb, and eats it there.  If all went well the bird will return again and again, but always making and entire round trip for one tiny seed.

You wonder how great is the threat to birds.  We know there are cats around.  And sometimes raccoons come for food, which an unsuspecting bird might become.  And there are snakes, and there are the predator birds we call raptors.  I am not sure what else.  It appears, though, that bright as their colors may be and sweetly though they may sing, life is dangerous for the birds and caution is needed.

But the Grackles don't seem to believe that this applies to them.  The Grackles just swoop in like they own the place, take all they want, stay as long as they please, and never look over their shoulders.  Maybe nothing would want to eat a Grackle?

Wrong.  We were sitting on the deck one afternoon.  Out of the sky fell a hawk who smacked a Grackle dead in one stroke and only a puff of black feathers left behind.

I guess no matter how you choose to face it, there are no guarantees.

I was hiking on a lakeshore trail in a nearby state park. Ahead was a small wooden bridge across a stream. Several good steps and you would be across this bridge. But crossing it on this early morning, I noticed something that brought me to a stop. Someone had written something there. I imagined it to be the hand of a young boy. But instead of "fuck you" or "parents suck" it was something strangely different.

"I love you!"

As I walked on, I began pondering this message. It was not addressed to anyone. Usually you would expect a name attached. "I love you, Mary!" Or Jane, or Sally . . . someone with a name.

Was the boy shy? Did he want to leave the message anonymous, so he could point it out to any girl he brought and claim it was to her? Or could his love have been for another boy, and no girl at all? Or was this message more of a wish than a reality? He felt love, but his love had no name to attach to?  Or could he have just been happy on a bright, sunny day and in love with life and with everyone?  I kept wondering because there were all these possibilities, and no way to tell for sure about any of them.

However, I vote for the bright, sunny day.  A day with an exclamation mark beside it.  A day when love was an overwhelming feeling that had to be written down, even on a bridge.  A day when it was free and unbounded, including all the world and the entire human race.

I know this sounds like nonsense.  I know such writing was not placed by the head of the local chamber of commerce, kneeling down on those boards in his business suit and tie.  It is nonsense for sure to him.  This is the work of a child, we assume.  It must have been a child, we assume.  Thus we make it childish and foreign to our practical lives.

Sometimes on televised football games the camera shows a person in the end zone holding a sign saying "John 3:16"–the location of a verse in the Bible.  The person wants us to get a Bible and read that verse.  He believes it will do us some good.  Perhaps it will for, if I recall correctly, this passage begins "God so loved the world . . .."  So in this theology it is god-like to love the world, but that is in theory.  It seems that the majority of god-fans don't see it that way.  Their god loves their particular portion of the world–their country or tribe or religion or ethnic group, or whatever.

Speaking before a fundraiser for his political party, Newt Gingrich recently declared: "I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous!"  In this view it is every country for itself, and may the best country win.  Or it is every race or language group for itself.  Or it is every social or religious group for itself.  And so we always at war, one against another.  So it goes, and so it goes.

Human love, if we have any, tends to narrow down, not broaden out.  We love only certain classes, races, political persuasions.  We love children and relatives only if they behave themselves and treat us as they should.  We certainly would never love an enemy.  Our loved ones are the loving ones, meaning those who love us.  Thus does love amount to no better than a practical selfishness.

I know the author of the inscription didn't have all of this in mind, but it's what I think about every time I cross his bridge.

Adirondack Shelter

The park lies astride two lines on the map: the Tennessee/North Carolina state line and the Appalachian Trail.  The trail held the most interest to me.  Along the trail there were camp sites with rustic Adirondack Shelters like the one pictured here.  They were made of logs and very solid.  They were open on one side and that’s where you built your fire and did the cooking.  A good spring was always nearby with cold, running water.  If I could add up all the nights I spent in these shelters it would be measured in months.

As boys, our scoutmaster taught us that staying in these shelters was both a privilege and a responsibility.  He said that the next hikers behind us might get in late or arrive in the rain.  We must leave some good dry wood and kindling.  We must leave the place clean.  And some left-over canned food would be a good idea too.  We must think of those who would come after us, and we must leave things for them as we would like to find them for ourselves.

Being a serious and thoughtful young man, I took these instructions to heart.  I felt satisfaction when I left a shelter in good order.  I felt guilt if I did not.  I rarely failed to leave things the best I possibly could.

I have hiked in and found shelters exactly as I would have left them, and I have found them trashed and without a stick of dry wood.  On those occasions I would wonder what kind of people had left things in such a mess.  Had no one ever told them about their responsibility?  I supposed they must have been from somewhere far away.  People who had not been raised right.

We pulled into such a shelter late one day in a solid downpour.  We were tired and soaked and cold and looking forward to a warm fire.  As my buddies huddled and rested, I went back out in the rain with my double-bit axe.  Across on the ridge I found a dead chestnut tree.  I knew there was dry wood inside.  I chopped and chopped and brought back logs to split under the shelter.  After considerable effort I got a hot blaze going.  The next party would find a nice stack of that wood all ready to go.

Why do I think back on this and feel that same kind of guilt as crude oil floods the Gulf of Mexico from an exploded oil well off the coast?  The fact that we are drilling for oil a mile deep and far out to sea highlights the fact that we have already plundered all of the underground oil that is easily within our reach.  We are going for the last of it, no matter the cost or the consequences.  For those who come down the trail behind us there will be none left, but who cares?

I once pulled into an Appalachian Trail shelter and found that people needing firewood and unwilling to climb the nearby ridge and fell a dead tree had taken apart and burned the entire outhouse, excluding the seat.  The seat sat oddly by itself in full view of the world.  Like the mountains in West Virginia that are stripped off to get the last of the coal and then left behind as so much waste.

Waste is the word for it.  The land, the trees and plants, the air and water, the buried resources, the wild living things that fly and run and burrow–we are wasting it all.  Those who come after us will surely wonder what sort of people could have done this.