Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Keeping Your Mouth Shut

Arnold is an old friend of mine. He’s an alcoholic. He calls himself “a dumb drunk.” Being a dumb drunk is how he’s stayed sober for 25 years. I learned a valuable lesson from him. I re-learned it again this week.

I spent the week as a pro bono instructor for the Southeastern Writer’s Association, a venerable group that puts on workshops for writers, both professional and novices. For the second year I was asked to lead classes in “Inspirational Writing.” The maxim, “the blind leading the blind,” comes to mind. But it’s fun to stumble around, and instructive as well.

About all most untrained writers can do is admit the truth…we’re all beggars. All we can do is tell other beggars where we found something to eat. We pass on what we know. That’s about all I could pass on to this group of talented writers, and admit the truth to myself…my buffet makes for slim pickin’s.

Several years ago I was asked to be a yoga instructor. Imagine, the aged instructing the youth? What was I thinking? Dumb is a too kind of a word to use. Yet I persevered in spite of the snickers and whispers, and I got pretty good at yoga. Humility has its own rewards. But I grew bored with yoga and moved on…before they discovered how dumb I was.

A daily dose of truth is healthy. And Arnold’s story has allowed me to take myself less seriously. Let me pass it on to you, best I can remember. Maybe you can find a morsel of truth in it, too.

Arnold was in and out of the hospital often. Sober one month, soused the next. An insidious cycle. Being a drunk is a hard habit to break. His last stay was for 30 days. Towards the end of that time his body replaced the alcohol with anger. He seethed, and one day he snapped. It happens.

He stomped down to the director’s office to air his grievances. Before he could speak, the director became the inquisitor. “Sit down, Arnold, what’s on your mind?” Arnold said, “Your program for alcoholics stinks. I have some suggestions.” Calmly the director said, “Very well, Arnold, but first let me make some observations.” Arnold listened.

The director spoke. “Arnold, you’re a self-made man, right? Own your own business, possibly a millionaire, right? Drive a Cadillac, right? Have a beautiful girl friend, money in the bank, and good friends, right?” What could Arnold say but, “Yeah, right.” Then the director dropped the bomb that exploded Arnold’s ego. “But Arnold, you know what? You’re a drunk, and a dumb one at that. But if you’ll keep your mouth shut, you’ll be the only one who knows it.” Fighting words to Arnold, but the truth, and he knew it.

Arnold was reborn, a new man. He appropriated a new name for himself… “a dumb drunk.” Sober now for 25 years, he leads classes at an AA chapter with his new message: “I’m a dumb drunk…and so are you!” This is the harsh truth that keeps him on the wagon, and it’s his message of sobriety that he passes on, day by day.

Instructing writers this week brought home a sobering truth. Maybe I should keep my own mouth shut a lot more, and listen…after all, there’s a reason for having one mouth and two ears. Res ipsa loquitor!


Bud Hearn
June 24, 2010

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Shrinkage ... Shrinkage ... Shrinkage

All we are is dust in the wind….” Kansas

Shrinkage…it happens. I know what you’re thinking…that scene in Seinfeld where George experiences the ultimate consequence of frigid waters. But that’s just the tip of the shrinkage iceberg…read on.

Shrinkage is a fact. My wife, Carolyn, and I were dining at a local restaurant. We ordered the same entrĂ©es. They arrived, monumental portions, lapping over the sides of the plates, enough to feed a small army. We gorged ourselves and finally called it quits. “Too much, we’ll share next time,” she said. The owner came by, reminding us we can order a child’s portion. The “child’s portion?” Has age finally shrunk us back to puberty? Heaven forbid!

More. I spent my week’s allowance and bought a huge box of cereal. Their multi-colored bulks, like so many faux, back-lot Hollywood movie sets, line the shelves, each seeming to promise something substantial. I opened it today, took out the contents. The inner cellophane bag was about one-third full…what a fraud! Shrinkage again, including the contents of my wallet. Who ever heard of buying air? Cereal is either on the endangered list or being rationed these days. I’m voting for see-through boxes!

Government is all for shrinkage, of course. Haha. Your money! It’s the poster pinup for obesity. The Beltway is straining to contain its bulging belly. No shrinkage there. Its rapacious appetite is laying waste to our cash crop. We’re shrinking day by day. Have Dust Bowl days returned?

Everything is shrinking. Take technology. Remember 1945 and Dick Tracy’s two-way radio? Now the i-Phone. Or the first computer, with 20,000 vacuum tubes, that filled a warehouse? Recall your first transistor radio? It rolled out in 1954, in time for Elvis. How about GA Tech geeks, the geniuses who transcended the slide rule for the hand-held calculator? The Go-Dawgs crowd remains in the Dark Ages, unable to even master the ruler.

There’s more. The camera. From a tri-pod box to a speck in a pair of sun glasses. Who’d have believed it? Even listening devices, which have gone from large microphones to instruments smaller than a shirt button. Shrinkage is on a roll, and Bluetooth is listening. You may be bugged and not even know it.

American appetites are not shrinking. Obesity rules. Hormones and steroids in food and bodies are the culprits. Like blimps, Americans are swelling to mammoth proportions. They resemble comic book caricatures or professional wrestlers, Flintstones and Simpsons. The largest boy on our high school football team probably weighed 180 pounds. Today that wouldn’t even make the cheerleader’s squad!

President Blow Hard, the White House windbag, has been shrinking a deep-water dilemma, too. Oily water. He’s learned they don’t mix. He seems to become more diminished daily in his response. Shirking is a synonym of his shrinkage.

BP, meanwhile, has shrunk by about $90 billion. European pensioners are starving. It’s now chained to the public whipping post, being flogged and castigated by sinless Congressmen for its transgressions. Talk about hypocrisy! Never mind the fat-hog oil binge Americans are guzzling. No shrinkage there. Ah, truths are lies, and lies are truths. Shrinkage always casts a shadow of blame.

But back home. Did you know a Shrink Demon lives in your closet? It can shrink clothes while they hang there. It happens. We blame the cleaners, but we know the truth. And did you know that your whole body shrinks? Gravity is the criminal here. I was once 5’ 11”, but I’ve lost an inch…where?

So here we are, sitting at the foot of the Crux of Shrinkage. Its most ghastly consequence is the shrinkage of our own Relevance into a Sea of Indifference. Don’t deny it. Once we were important, and all that goes with it…now look at us, mere shadows of our former selves. Don’t gloat, ye who have not yet arrived…you soon will.

The entire matter of Shrinkage was summed up by my articulate wife in a lively discussion of politics. “You have one vote, that’s how big you are!” Pretty small in the grand scheme of things, right? It was further brought home by my factotum who said, “Bud, get to the ultimate conclusion of shrinkage…dust unto dust.” Dark, a grim perspective!

Shrinkage … it happens. Embrace the “child’s portion” and at all costs avoid frigid waters!

Bud Hearn
June 17, 2010

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Foley Chain Gang

“…(watermelons) are what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took, we know it because she repented.” Mark Twain


It was June, 1955, watermelon season in Foley, Alabama, then the melon capitol of the South. Prodigious quantities of enormous melons were brought to market in this gnat-infested crossroads of South Alabama known by some as Hell’s Waiting Room. Weeds wilted, asphalt melted and people swooned in a dull stupor in the stifling heat. I was there, involuntarily.

My cousin, Sonny, and I had been conscripted (enslaved) by my uncle for 2 weeks of forced hard labor at the railroad depot in Foley. We were 13 years old. It was Grandma Mimi’s fault---she sold us down the river, claiming we were unmanageable. So Uncle packed us up and we left the beach house. “You boys need some education in discipline, so you’re going to get acquainted with watermelons.” His smirk morphed into a wicked grin.

I’d always loved watermelons, but the job in Foley dulled my lust for ‘em. Folklore has it that watermelons removed freckles, moles, and leprosy, should anyone have these conditions. I wasn’t acquainted with leprosy, but zits and freckles I had in abundance. Maybe? So, I ate a lot of watermelons.

We knew it was gonna be bad when we rolled into Foley. Uncle was a produce broker, and he was cheap. He put us up in a cheesy roadside lodge. AC? Forget it. One window, no fan. He lounged in comfort in the Holiday Inn next door. After work we’d hang out of the window, trying to breathe, or by the pool. It had dingy green water and algae growing on the bottom. The sign read, No Swimming, Contaminated Water, but like other rules, we ignored the warning…13 year olds are impervious to all things nuclear!

Do you know the education you can get at such a motel? Plenty. It was a strange place. Men and women came and went at all hours…we seemed to be the only kids. We wondered why. One evening we found out. We were probably voyeurs, but at 13 we were unfamiliar with the concept. At least the experience made the window and pool more tolerable. We couldn’t wait to get back to our posts every night for more “education.”

Our job was to unload flat-bed trucks of watermelons into broiling hot boxcars from dawn to dusk. Temperatures hovered around 800 degrees F. The Cannonball melons weighed at least 300 pounds, or so it seemed, and we were slow in the loading process. Farmers complained. So Uncle recruited two hobos for the chain gang, paying them with half pints of 4 Roses. They worked like demons. After a couple of sips so did we…13 year olds can’t be trusted!

But we screwed up. It was bound to happen. Each melon was supposed to have a yellow “Certified” sticker on it. But the process was laboriously slow. A hobo said, “Boys, lookie here, they’s a short cut.” Music to our ears. So, we pasted only the top rung of melons with “Certified” stickers. Who’d know, we reasoned...13 year old logic is flawed! The irate Yankees in Chicago began calling. Uncle’s scam had been detected. He got hot about it! It cost him plenty, too, promising folks “certified” melons for just plain ole field melons. And we never found out what deal he’d made with the Sheriff.

So our job changed, but we had another week of incarceration. He put us in the potato packing plant. It was a nasty place, full of flies, vermin and rotting spuds. We packed potatoes and sold culls to the few unsuspecting passer-bys. We soon got bored with this job. We amused ourselves by catching the fat flies in mid-air and stuffing them in coke bottles…13 year olds are most creative when bored, which is often.

One day Uncle came by before dawn, looking grim. Maybe his past had caught up with him, or his patience with us had run out. We never knew. He put us on a Trailways bus back to Port St. Joe, FL and to Grandma Mimi. We hated to leave our motel, and looked longingly as the bus passed it.

Grandma was happy to see us and we promised to be good boys and not to give her heartburn. But what good are the promises of 13 year olds? We returned to our old ways soon, but never forgot our experiences in Foley. Yes, we missed our motel window and the grimy pool, but we were thankful for the education.

I alone survive to tell this tale, so it’s without rebuttal. I never forgot Foley, but hope never to have to repeat the experience. Foley is for passing through and passing on!

Watermelons remain the fruit of angels, “Certified” or not! Uncle, RIP.

Bud Hearn
June 10, 2010

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Have You Seen My Glasses?

For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Mark 8:36-37


Days often begin at my house with a question. Today it was, “Have you seen my glasses?” my wife asked, even before I’d poured my coffee. Sleep-drugged, I sarcastically replied, “Where did you leave them?” Such provocation is not good in the early mornings!

So we began searching for the lost glasses. Women are not logical like men. Ace Hardware sells glasses for $ 3.99. Men love hardware stores, so why not have a couple of dozen pairs lying around? No big deal to lose a few. We looked everywhere. No luck. Without coffee, it’s hard to even find yourself, much less glasses. It’s inhumane.

I soon gave up this frustrating game of hide and seek. Not her. First, rip the bed apart. Nope. Then rummage through the trash can. Not there. Try the washing machine. Only wet clothes. The longer the search, the shorter the temper. Caffeine deprivation will do this.

I began to think of creative hide and seek games with her glasses. Men are perverse like this. Should I hide ‘em in the fridge next to the beer? Men spend lots of time in refrigerators. Maybe the dirty clothes bin? How about the make-up drawers…one could lose a body in there without detection. Or in my pocket, placing them on the table in plain view at the appropriate time. I could be a hero, even without coffee. Get it?

We lose things all the time. Once I lost my glasses, finding them on my head when I got into the shower. I’ve lost a lot of other things, too. So have you. I once had a photo of myself on the beach, looking pretty buff. I was 48. Somehow the picture vanished from the table as the buff disappeared from my body. “Have you seen my picture, who moved it?” I asked. “Not me,” was the reply. Not-Me lives here. “But it was a picture of my finest hour,” I protested.

I recently found my ‘finest hour picture’, used as a book mark. I was humiliated. “Who put my picture in this book?” I demanded. Don’t-Know lives here, too.

John is a friend of mine. He was at UGA on a swimming scholarship. He kept a picture of himself, Speedo and all, emerging from the pool looking Olympian. He lost his head over a woman, married her but lost the scholarship. Love will sometimes distract a man. Good wives overcome the temporal benefits of a swimming scholarship.

Paul, my brother-in-law, RIP, lost his hearing. He searched for a cure but found none. We thought he’d found a good women, though. When he’d visit he was always calling out, “Hello Dolly, Hello Dolly.” We later discovered he was trying to see if his hearing had returned.

Most of our generation has lost youthful appearances. Age tends to be an enemy of youth. We’re looking in a lot of places to find Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth, but alas…even King Tut ended up dust. We keep on lookin’.

My friend Wayne, has good advice for finding lost things. “Simple,” he says. “Just retrace your steps and you’ll find it where you left it.” Sounds like a plan, but who can even remember where they’ve been? You and I should stick to real estate, Wayne. It can’t be lost, unless it’s financed. But that’s another story.

Our nation appears to have lost things too. In the inordinate pursuit of wealth, security and possessions, we may have misplaced our collective soul somewhere along the road most traveled. Can we find it again? What steps must we retrace to get out of the ditch and back on the road to sanity?

But back to my wife’s question, “Have you seen my glasses?” Were they found? Yes. Where? In the cabinet with the washing detergent, exactly where one would have expected to find them! This is encouraging to us, individually and collectively, we who have lost our treasures. Keep looking.

It’s proper to end as we began, with a question. So I asked myself, “What would I give in exchange for my own soul?” And you?

Bud Hearn
June 3, 2010