Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, March 27, 2015

Mama Said


Mama said there’ll be days like these, there’ll be days like these my mama said…” The Sherilles


My mama talked in idiomatic riddles. She’d use them to confuse, chastise and constrain my younger brother and me. Life was confusing enough without adding to it. I internalized many of them, but understood few. Young boys have a strange learning curve.

I once had a friend, Jack, who went broke. I say “once” because he has now moved to an ethereal address. In order not to repeat his mistakes, he compiled a list of do’s and don’ts, memorized them and taped them to his desk. It was sorta like his Ten Commandments. Always wondered if adultery was on his list.

I didn’t need reminders. My mama had drummed wisdom into my head by different means. Suffering was the principal one. I list some of the contexts here in hopes they will resonate.

Our home had one bathroom. The lid was always up. Once, in the dead of night, a blood-chilling scream pierced the house’s silence. Mama had fallen in, if you know what I mean. Next thing I know she had me by the throat, “I’ve told you till I’m blue in the face about that lid,” shouting hysterically. “I’m fit to be tied.” My brother escaped the encounter, feigning a bout of bubonic plague.

Our back screen door was warped. I was bad about not closing it. Flies and gnats would slip in, and have a grand old time in the kitchen. “Fed up,” she said, “Son, a word to the wise…you’re skatin’ on thin ice.” Well, wise was not yet in my vocabulary, and in August where was the ice? Didn’t make sense.

My brother and I once climbed atop the convertible and fell through it. We instantly understood the mystery about thin ice. “Boys, I’m about to whip you within an inch of your lives.” We understood whip, like in beat, but not the inch part. Maybe the last half breath, but an inch? We understood better about inches when daddy got home and pulled off his belt….size 34.

Young boys learn good habits slowly. My mama was fond of saying, “Son, I’m giving you fair warning…I’m going to lay down the law to you.” Mama’s idea of fairness didn’t correlate with mine. It was less a warning than a threat. She seemed to know that a stout stick would drive the foolishness out of young boys. That was her law.

In today’s world Family and Children’s Services would have seriously reprimanded my parents for child abuse. In those days, had it been possible, my mama would have voluntarily called the Sheriff and had us relocated with a foster family. The phone system was handled by Polly, the operator. The whole town would have known about the child exploitation before nightfall. Party-line gossip, you know.

Another conundrum I faced was mama’s comments about daddy. “Your father’s working his fingers to the bone.” I would examine his fingers when he came home, but I never saw a finger bone. It always troubled me. She’d add, “Boys, you should be ashamed of yourselves.” Guilt and shame were atrophied emotions in boys. But pain and suffering? That’s another matter.

Often we’d “get up on the wrong side of the bed.” We could never figure how she knew the difference. Same was true of her favorite, “Son, you’re getting too big for your britches.” How? I hadn’t gained a pound in years.

We learned early that bad things happen “when we bit off more than we could chew.” Especially when she added, “Just wait till your father gets home.” The meaning of repentance became clear, “as plain as the nose on your face,” mama would say.

Once in a blue moon” I’d be accused of “cutting my nose off to spite my face,” usually for silly nonsense. My nose did “get out of joint,” but I never once attempted surgery. Homework always prompted the comment, “It’s plain as the nose on your face,” while whispering to daddy, “That boy’s in over his head.”

She had many more, like, “having a heart to heart talk,” or, “get off your high horse” and “for the life of me.” Mostly she only listens now, having changed addresses herself about several years ago. She’d be proud that her wisdom lives on.

So, “if you know what’s good for you,” remember Mother’s Day is coming soon. Make your mama proud. They’ll be happy to see each of us all again and tell us to “wash your hands before supper!”

Bud Hearn
March 27, 2015




Friday, March 20, 2015

The Leaves Let Go


It’s March, the month when The Great Silent Voice speaks, “Time’s Up…release without remorse.” As if on cue from The Conductor, the Let-Go Chorus responds.

**********

We live on an island along the Georgia coast. Last year’s leaves from the water oaks have run their course. Their grip on the Great Mother relaxes. One by one, without complaint or coaxing, they began their short but final journey ‘home.’ Mission accomplished. Their job is over. Now freed from work, the transients collectively head south for their permanent retirement.

For a brief few days the oak Titans stand naked and exposed. Their spindly skeletons stretch skyward, communing with the winds. Redwing blackbirds give stark contrast to the sky as they bark orders from the branches.

Sunlight shines profusely onto the ground below. The Great Silent Voice speaks again, “Make haste, my small children.” The vegetation undergrowth immediately springs into life. Somehow it knows its hour in the sun will be short.

Nature is consistent, operating a highly organized process. It makes all appointments on time. Hard on the heels of the leaves’ departure, small green nubbins, barely discernible to the eye, begin incipient life. Almost overnight the oaks emerge clothed, garbed in their new wardrobe.

But back to the fallen leaves, those that now become compost for the sandy soils below. The Great Silent Voice softly speaks again to these fallen workers, “Sleep on, rest easy. You have served well. It’s time for another to bear the burden. To cling beyond your appointed time would render you a dull, lusterless relic of the past ~~ a tragic antique of a bygone season. For you to remain would retard the growth and defile the clothed majesty of the forest Monarch.”

Leaves don’t argue. They instinctively know that new life requires them to move on. They’re innately schooled in photosynthesis, knowing that when their green morphs to brown, their ability to synthesize food is terminally impaired. They’ve become useless and, unlike some of us, they know when to say, “Enough.” Sad, but true.

If oak leaves could think, would they have a self-esteem problem? Would they look around and see billions of other leaves, then say, “Of what value am I, one among so many, and a little one at that?”

If the Mother Tree could answer, it might say, “If not for each of you, I could not exist.” Is this answer sufficient to solve a self-esteem problem? One wonders. After all, there is a time and a season for everything.

Perhaps to assuage the hearts of the fallen leaves the Titan might say, “Consider the acorns, my children. They also have to let go, to die and drop. They know that unless they fall onto the earth and a squirrel buries them, their life comes to nothing. They must die to live.”

The breezes carry the whisper of the Great Silent Voice as it speaks tender assurances to the leaves. “As you were not anxious in the day of your birth, be not anxious in the day of your demise. Well done, good and faithful leaves.”

**********

Possessing even a small degree of mysticism, it might be easy to smile in contemplation of a leaf’s final ‘Let-Go’ ~~ its one and only, its first and its last. How noble an act!

And you know what? I’ll bet the final drop is an exhilarating and incredible journey home. I look forward to my own noble experience.

Bud Hearn
March 20, 2015

Friday, March 13, 2015

Blessing the Doorknob


The ‘blessing tradition’ fires up every Sunday. Southerners bless everything. If you didn’t grow up here, you wouldn’t get it. But we’ll bless you anyway.

**********

It’s Sunday morning. I sit at the breakfast table. The yellow egg yolk spreads slowly across my plate. It creeps towards the grits, the bacon and the butter-laden, jelly-coated sourdough toast. My tongue licks the air with anticipation as my fork prepares to feed it.

Just before the egg touches my lips, The Voice whispers, “Did you bless this egg?” Can’t get away with much on Sundays.

What’s the big deal about blessing things? Isn’t a simple heavenly nod or a wink sufficient to evoke divine approbation? Does The Voice also have Ears? Must we constantly recite benedictions? Conscience is a Dictator.

I’m reading an article about Harley Bikers, so-named the Sons of Abraham, charter members of the Fat Tire Association. Following Washington’s egalitarian theme, they need invocations for their medicinal fundraiser, ‘Herbs for Everyone.’ A local church has offered to bless them.

Southern blessings come with a cost…the sermon. Refreshments are required to survive most scriptural expository. A full belly helps. Bikers usually fit that profile.

Southern religious convocations are all about food. Fundraisers are a close second. It’s a holdover from the past when pot-luck suppers and food on the grounds identified a typical Southern Sunday.

These church feed-bags morphed into annual, week-long campground ‘revivals.’ Congregants are stupefied after hours of outside messianic preaching and blessings. The gastric food overloads offer relief. If the ecclesiastical pontifications couldn’t save you, the food would. Either way, you couldn’t lose.

The Sons of Abraham arrive for refreshments, endure the homilies and finally get to sit on their machines. The ‘Blessers’ make their rounds, laying hands on their bodies and their bikes. They solicit heavenly beneficence upon both, including fundraising success. The article is silent on the accounting of contributions. Money, after all, is fungible. Weed is ubiquitous.

Blessing oratories are common in Georgia. Nothing’s exempt when entreating The Benefactor for favors and convivial accords. My grandfather, named Pop, was a ‘prayer warrior.’ His finest hours occurred during large Sunday family dinners. Starving family members suffered through his appeals.

His particular talent was recalling in minute detail the sequential ancestry of most menu items. He blessed each ancillary food group that was related to the specific item being venerated.

My grandmother was quick of wit and sharp of tongue. She could slice someone up one side and down the other while simultaneously suturing the incision. She always anointed the wound with the benediction, “Bless their little heart.”

We ate a lot of ham. Pop fondly beseeched The Hearer to reward the departed pig, always called by name, its extended family, the corn that fed it, the sausage that it made and the pickled pigs feet he kept for snacks in a glass jar at his office desk. It spoiled my cousin’s appetite. She later became a leader of the Vegan Movement.

One Sunday he got into a ‘blessing swoon’ and drifted off the trail. He got lost on a dissertation that included a theological thesis on the value of door knobs. The blessing might still be ongoing had my elderly aunt, named Sister, not fallen asleep. She woke as her face fell into the squash casserole.

From that time on the blessing mantle fell to my father, a man short on words but long on appetite. From him emanated the most succinct invocation of all time: “Good food, good meat, good Lord, let’s eat.”

Today, supplications tend to be shorter, often just pictures, Instagram’s, texts and on-line appeals like, “Holy Moly, look what dropped into my lap.”

Public entreaties that employ the laying on of hands are politically incorrect. Exception is made if hands touch only head and shoulders, nowhere else, and then not without a witness who records the entire ritual on a body cam that’s admissible in court.

We’ve come a long way from the days of indiscriminate blessings. The Rewarder has to sort through billions of requests. One wonders how much gig memory storage the computer has.

**********

But here I sit now, the fork poised at my lips with the egg yolk dripping from it. I ask for blessings but get hung on the Eternal Conundrum: “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg.” To be safe, I bless both their little hearts.

Somewhere in the distance I hear a choir singing Blessed Assurance, just as my tongue tastes the huckleberry jam.

Bud Hearn
March 13, 2015

Friday, March 6, 2015

Intimation of Spring … an Odyssey


Wayne jams the brakes of the old pickup. It swerves sideways and skids to a stop in the soft sandy back road of Atkinson County.

What the…?” I yell.

Look,” he shouts. “There, through the oaks. See ‘em?”

Barely visible through the undergrowth thicket is a pair of black, accusatory eyes. They glare at us as though we’re rogue grave robbers, desecrating the sanctity of places occupied by ghosts.

Let’s check it out,” Wayne says. Wayne Morgan is an autodidactic photographer. His ideas are slightly twisted, but he has a country boy’s eye for the unusual. We’re a perfect pair.

A foreboding, windless silence grips the timeless place. Its forgotten past is captured in suspended animation. The morning sun dances through the trees surrounding the former home place. We walk up a barely discernible driveway carved into the red Georgia clay.

In the clearing sits a derelict structure. It’s bleached from years of unrelenting sunlight. Decay picks at its bones. It appears as a whited skull. Peering from it are two hollow and blackened holes. Like empty eye sockets, they add surrealism to the marred relic. Hoary beards of Spanish moss hang from large oaks like a descending mist. The scene evokes a gothic sense of dread. We stand in stunned silence at the discovery. Nothing moves.

We’re here by chance, where most photographers and writers find themselves. We aren’t lost, maybe confused. Country dirt roads always lead somewhere, even if to nowhere special, which is exactly where we wanted to be. Nowhere special is where the exceptional is found. That’s what we were looking for…hints of spring.

Atkinson County is basically nowhere. Nothing much has happened here since Bill Atkinson was governor in 1894. It’s a perfect place to find genuine evidences of spring.

The artifact before us is a ruined vestige of the tenant farming era. We take turns imagining its former occupants. On the rotting porch sits a moldy velvet sofa. Beer cans and broken glass surround it. The sofa appears to be alive. It crawls with vermin. We move inside.

Debris litters the floors. Remnants of broken furniture, ravaged by scavengers, lay broken throughout. Shards of glass lay scattered on the decayed boards. The faded wall paper drips from the walls. Mildew is everywhere. Nothing useful remains except memories.

We sift through old papers yellowed with age. One’s a postcard from Miami. It pictures palm trees and is addressed to Waldo Winslow, Sandy Bottom, Georgia. Its terse message, barely legible from water stains, reads, “Waldo, I’m not coming back. I’m sick and tired of the cold and picking tobacco and cotton. You can take those 80 acres and…”

Nothing more is legible. It’s signed “Goodbye. Your wife, Yolanda.”

Can’t much blame her, you?” Wayne says. “Hard life here. Heck, those palm trees look inviting to me, too.”

I guess,” I reply. “But I sorta feel sorry for Waldo. Wonder what happened to him?”

I glance through the black eye. Half hidden in the privet shrubs is a weathered marble tombstone. “He’s still here, Wayne. Look. See?”

Yep,” he says. “He’s here to stay.”

We walk through the dark hallway. I pick up an old Prince Albert tobacco can that’s rusted shut. Inside something rustles softly. I pry the top open and look inside.

Wayne, here’s what we’re looking for, right inside this PA tobacco can.”

Standing in the sunlight, we empty the can’s contents. Scattered in our palms are dried yellow daffodils like those found pressed between the pages of old books.

What do you make of this?” Wayne asks. But he knows, even as I do.

Waldo had saved some daffodils from another time. Must have reminded him that even though winter slays, spring resurrects. They apparently nurtured his hope that better times were coming.

Guess Yolanda wasn’t convinced,” Wayne sighs. “They don’t compare to palm trees.”

“Let’s give ‘em back to Waldo,” Wayne says. We scatter them beneath the tombstone on the sunken clay indenture that held Waldo’s dust.

So long, Waldo,” Wayne says, uttering what might be the shortest eulogy in history. He slips the Prince Albert can into the back pocket of his jeans.

Standing among last year’s leaves, we know what Waldo knew. That fallow fields will soon explode with new life, and birds will sing again.

Wayne’s Nikon shudder clicks and captures the moment. We turn and walk back into today.

What did you see?” I ask.

“Look closely,” he says.

Around the base of that wretched skeleton of a house myriad shoots of green were springing from the ground. Hundreds of daffodils emerge, their yellow blossoms bursting in the sunlight.

There’s today’s evidence of spring, Bud, just what we’re looking for. Mission accomplished.”

With a smile and a high-five, Wayne grinds the gears and the truck lurches forward, speeding down the dirt road to somewhere.

Intimations of spring are everywhere, even in Prince Albert tobacco cans. It’s a good day to be alive.


Bud Hearn
March 6, 2015

Photography courtesy of Waynemorganartistry.com