Four Simple Notes

On Memorial Day in Neptune Park on St. Simon’s Island the masses huddled with one accord in the declining light of another day.

Under a brilliant blue sky the sun’s last dazzling rays of the day refract from the dappled gun-metal grey waters of the Atlantic. With this backdrop, and like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, four Marines from King’s Bay stand ramrod straight, holding side-by-side two enduring symbols of America: The Stars and Stripes Flag and the blood-red Marine banner.

The occasion is “Taps at Twilight,” an island tradition held every Memorial Day in remembrance and in recognition of all Veterans of military service, living and dead. Each branch of the military is recognized by the playing of its unique marching music and the standing recognition of the Veterans. The collective soul is stirred.

Spectators sit orderly in rows, the very old and the very young. All have come to celebrate a time of remembrance for the occasion. Soon the Marines march forth, Posting the Colors under the fading shadow of the flagpole. A wreath of colorful flowers, not unlike the faces, heads and clothing of the spectators, precede a bagpiper, followed by the precise marching of Marines down a yellow-marked corridor. The crowd is silent, absorbing the essence of the procession.

Our group of 16 always arrives a couple hours earlier, setting up picnic tables under the shade and shadow of a sprawling oak tree. An old-fashioned picnic is unfolding, itself a remembrance of days gone by when towns were smaller, life slower, and time was available for such frivolity.

There’s fried chicken, covered by a red and white checkered cloth ~~ casseroles and sandwiches, snacks and sweets. Honorable mention goes to the pineapple, tomato, chicken salad and pimento cheese sandwiches…all, get this, with mayonnaise on “light bread!” It returns many, if not most, of us to school lunch buckets, memories of simpler, and perhaps more tasty times.

In a land teeming with the crosscurrents of individual freedoms, such an occasion is one of the few “connecting points” in our culture that unites us, irrespective of everything divisive. We are Americans today, celebrating together something that is bigger than our individual selves. For a few hours we lay aside our self-interest and enjoy the collective spirit that connects us.

Meanwhile, the band plays on. With salutes or with hands over our hearts, the National Anthem is sung. After a lengthy prayer, appropriate for a nation born in 1776, Brig. General Thomas S. Vandal from Ft. Stewart offers up his stirring remarks.

The sun sets in the twilight’s last gleaming as the Marines Retire the Colors. The evening turns more somber. The student JROTC from Brunswick High School proceeds slowly down the esplanade to the flagpole. The flag is lowered, folded and stored for the night. The tall flagpole stands naked as its golden dome pierces the graying sky. A mournful trumpet begins to sound out the four simple notes of “Taps,” Lights Out, or Gone the Sun…the call that ends the soldier’s day. In the distance its fading echo descends gently upon the day’s declining minutes.

As we had arrived, so we depart. Chairs folded, picnic tables closed, food (very little is left!) repackaged, good-byes said. Individuality has returned, yes, but not without a renewed sense of our collective Greater Purpose and our individual roles in it.

Four simple notes close the day… four simple notes renew the morrow. Like death and resurrection, tomorrow’s bugle call is Reveille, also played with four simple notes to the accompaniment of a cannon’s retort. It is a rousing “get ‘em up” tune as the naked flagpole is again clothed with the greatest symbol of freedom in the world…a resurrected American Flag.

So, on four simple notes a new day begins, even as our old day ended. Both remind us of our unity in spite of our differences and the power of our national pledge… “…one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

If you were there, you know. If not, remember … “E Pluribus Unum.”

Bud Hearn
May 30, 2013

The Island Experience

What a dumb title. But it’s what she wants. Who? My editor. It starts with a phone call.

The caller ID flashes her name. I hesitate, utter my favorite expression, “Oh, joy” (not really, but, well, you know the word). “Hi, what’s up?” I ask.

“Your time’s up,” she shouts. The panic in her voice pulsates through the wireless. It pierces my ear. “Deadline’s in two hours, and here I sit, staring at a blank page where only your name appears.”

“So?” I say.

“So? Is this all you can say? Why do you torment me like this? You’re always late with the articles. I have a magazine to publish. My job’s at stake.”

“Writer’s block, honey. I’m out of ideas. Got any suggestions?” I ask. Her rising blood pressure vibrates my cell phone. I picture her, squirming, sweating and ripping my picture to shreds. Sadism is sometimes a satisfying experience.

“Ok, ok, write something, anything. Try ‘The Island Experience’. It’ll please everyone. But give me some words, any words, make some sentences. Do it NOW! Or the only thing your name will be on is a granite headstone.” she says. I hear the hyena of hysteria, wailing in the wings.

“‘The Island Experience?’ Are you nuts? The subject is too subjective. Too many opinions, pros, cons. Who can say? One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

“Whatever! Write something. Hurry.” I laugh. “Calm down, we’ll get there. Two hours is an eternity for a writer. Help me out with some ideas.”

“OK. The beach, everybody loves the beach,” she says.

“Of course, never thought of that. By ‘beach’ you mean the strips of sand that disappear in high tide and where parking is plentiful if you show up at 4:00 AM? Should I mention the boom boxes blasting out Jimmy Buffet ad nauseam? Or the football-tossing teens kicking sand on greased-up bodies? That what you had in mind?”

“No, no,” she says. “It’s not THAT bad. The beach is beautiful, picnics, nice people, lots of children, fun for the whole family. But she whispers, “Don’t mention the parking issue or teenagers.”

“Fun for the whole family, you say? That’s a joke. Nothing’s fun for the whole family. Have you ever had the Disney experience?” I mock her.

“You have a point. Leave that part out. Write about the sunshine. That’s a real draw.”

“Ah, yes, the sunshine, that broiling mass of celestial gas that scalds flesh, melts asphalt, fries skin, boils eyeballs and scorches tiny children who scream in restaurants and make dining experiences a living hell? Yes, now here’s a real island experience for sure.”

“Stop it, stop it, your neurosis are acting up again. Write about the beautiful marshes. They soothe people’s nerves, refresh their souls and revive their spirits.”

“Of course, the marshes. Lovely idea. Are you referring to the ubiquitous bug-infested golden reeds, breeding ground of gnats and into which small pets mysteriously vanish? Aren’t they why the Spanish, Jimmy Oglethorpe and the Wesley brothers fled the island? Am I on to something here?”

“You’re on to something, alright, on your way out!” I hear the high tide lapping just below her nose.

“How about I mention the outdoor sauna…humidity? It’s medicinal, makes us sweat. Sweating’s a good thing. It’s a substitute for exercise.” I feel the writer’s block lifting.

“Absolutely NOT,’ she shouts. “The Chamber and Visitor’s Bureau discourage that aspect of the coast.”

“Since when are you moonlighting for those masters of manipulation? I thought this was a fair and balanced magazine.”

“Shut up, get back to work. Ten minutes left. Write about the mossy oaks, the birds, the fishing, the flowers, the sunsets or the food. Don’t you have something nice to say about anything?”

“Listen, didn’t you hire me to write about absurdities, spoofs and farces? You want the lovely things of this island? Then consult Eugenia Price, or add more pictures of smiling locals. Look, I’m into hyperbole.”

“This conversation’s over! Five minutes…complete this or you’re toast. And please, write something nice for a change.”

“Did she just say ‘please?’” My cell curls up and dies. I grin. Enough anguish for today—she almost came unglued. Hope she recovers.

Guess we can’t keep it secret much longer. Come on down, cross the causeway, experience for yourself. Perhaps you’ll agree with us, “… (we) on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise.”

What more can be said? Res ipsa loquitur.

Bud Hearn
May 28, 2013

Pressure Cookers…Gone with the Wind

“Song, song of the South, sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth. Gone, gone with the wind, there ain’t nobody looking back again.” Alabama

If there’s one thing Southerners know anything about, it’s “gone with the wind.” Last week the passing of pressure cookers was mourned with dirges and eulogies.

Living along the sweltering Georgia coast, one wonders what the world’s coming to when the law of unintended consequences drops by, as it did last Sunday in Hortense, Georgia, a rural crossroad in a time warp where happenings are few and change is invisible, unless it’s the weather, the thermometer or the water level of the Little Satilla River where the religious right meets the liberal left and neither are unequally yoked in orthodoxy for the rite of baptism of their converts, young and old, like it or not, sprinkled or immersed.

It’s a place where home-grown truth works and outside meddling is as unwelcomed as gnats in August. It’s where the last major battle of the pressure cooker was waged. On a vacant lot next to Dollar General a memorial of a enormous pressure cooker---fashioned with rusted tin from a derelict barn and parts from Lamar’s Junk Yard---pays homage to the desperate struggle.

Hortense is also where hasty ‘shotgun’ marriages of first cousins are not uncommon, arranged or otherwise, allowing for ‘fair and balanced’ gossip and suggesting a bride’s bulge might in fact be a consequence of Cracker Barrel biscuits and not heat.

Heat can cause other strange ‘things’ to happen…like sightings of alien spaceships at night while eating boiled peanuts cooked in a pressure cooker. Some blame these phenomena on the sodium levels in peanuts which enhances mental acuity when dropped into a Coke or Miller Lite, and the resulting fizz is sucked through a straw. Some say a lot of things. This is Hortense.

While all this is interesting, it doesn’t compare to the humiliation Aunt Janie suffered on Sunday. She’s a devout lady, a church tither, leader of the woman’s guild and organist in the First Apostolic Redemption Temple, often profanely referred to by its acronym, FART, where she has not missed Sunday School in 2,721 consecutive Sundays, her only sin being a garrulous widow.

She burned up the phone party line during the week organizing a birthday party for her neighbor, Mabel, who was turning 99. She used certain catch words like ‘tea party,’ how much ‘good stuff’ she’d packed into the pressure cooker, and eventually opined on government spending, taxes and ObamaCare.

No one told her about ‘The Machine,’ a vast government data base where suspect words are secretly collated and monitored by thousands of below-average high school dropouts hired to fulfill the employment mandate of ‘no child left behind.’

Making matters worse, Aunt Janie recently held a fund raiser for the Brantley MudBoggers after the IRS targeted their application for tax exempt status. She later learned the FBI had her on a ‘watch list’ for her effusive jubilance in praising the ‘Patriots’ returning from Afghanistan.

Well, last Sunday 15 octogenarian ladies arrived at Aunt Janie’s house for the birthday. She had possum and potatoes cooking in the pressure cooker. The ladies each brought a casserole. They had barely finished the first cup of punch when 38 black Humvees with tinted windows rolled up. Men in camouflage uniforms with bomb-sniffing dogs piled out and surrounded the house. The Savannah SWAT team unloaded its baggage of hulking men with bald heads and automatic rifles with knives gripped between their teeth.

They assaulted the house. The ladies were marched into the yard, chained and searched, their rights read to them. A bomb robot was sent inside. It retrieved the pressure cooker. The bomb dogs attacked the pot and ripped the possum to shreds. It was an ugly scene.

The blotched incident would have faded into oblivion except for an overhead ATF heat-seeking drone searching for contraband shrubs, the current South Georgia cash crop. Pictures were taken and instantly circulated on YouTube, which alerted the local volunteer fire department who hosed down the miscreants as they fled in embarrassment.

None of this would have happened except for a Saudi named Hussein who was arrested at the Detroit Airport concealing an empty pressure cooker. He swore it was only used for cooking lamb. My, how great a fire a little pot kindleth!

But things have settled down in Hortense since then. PTSD has arrived and settled in. A long recovery is predicted. Aunt Janie now uses an iPhone. Her niece is instructing her in the esoterica of Acronyms for Seniors, a firewall against further government intrusion. Yesterday’s text was BYOT and WTP…something about teeth and prunes.

It’s a sad day in America when lamb, possum or peanuts can’t be cooked in pressure cookers. “Gone, gone with the wind, there ain’t nobody looking back again.”

Bud Hearn
May 23, 2013

Invasion…a Clear and Present Danger

“Don’t go around tonight, Well, it’s bound to take your life, There’s a bad moon on the rise.” Credence Clearwater Revival

We live in troubled times. Dire warnings predict doom. The world is in a fighting mood. Things have not been the same since Orson Welles read War of the Worlds on the radio. People fled in wild pandemonium from the fictional alien invasion.

Now, invasions are actual. Look around. They’re everywhere. They’re overt, they’re covert. Social media assaults us…“flash mobs” erupt spontaneously. Twitter topples empires. No one is safe.

What’s changed? Nothing. We just get brutalized with the mayhem quicker and in more graphic form. Pity. Poe did a better job with words and spared us the videos.

The best location for editorials on current events is in a hair salon or doctor’s office. I prefer salons. They’re recruitment central for contestants in the Jerry Springer circus.

But today, it’s the dermatologist office. I hide behind an enormous flaming icon of a Sun god. It’s a symbol of the doc’s business raison d’etre. I try to pull myself together before being plundered. I ignore the invasive TV thrashing from Judge Judy. I need to focus on something besides myself.

But boredom beats on the door of my weak defenses. It wants to drag me down dark alleys of physical inspection and personal introspection. Nothing good comes from these obsessions. Imagination dredges up dread diseases. Worse, my skeletons rattle their chains, awakened from former late-night invasions of hard whiskey. In this hellish state there’s no statute of limitations.

So I read an article about alien invasions. Seems some leftover U.S. senators have assembled to form policy on the problem of aliens contemplating colonizing the planet.

It reads, “They’ve been monitoring us for decades, there’s proof. There’s a government cover-up. The public demands transparency. They won’t attack because we’re a war-like planet…,” and on and on. Really? What would aliens expect to find here…brotherly love? Wonder if they have a religious preference?

Then I hear something…cloaked voices, blended with heavy breathing, are coming from the nurse’s station. Lucy and Betsy are whispering. It invades my senses and stimulates the voyeuristic impulse to eavesdrop.

I listen, strain to hear, catch only a few words:

“It’s…about sex,” Lucy says. “What’s not?” Betsy replies.

I hear more excerpts.

“…crawling from their holes after 17 years…”

“…absence…heart…fonder…”

“…ratio, 600 to 1? …not enough males…30 billion females?”

Betsy laughs. “Can males survive such an invasion?”

“What, survive the ratio, or the 17 year hiatus?” Lucy asks. “Males deserve torture.” They laugh hysterically.

Their whispering continues.

“…go underground…back in 2030…”

“…sing for sex…94 decibels…”

My curiosity rages. I creep closer, listening.

“…and huge red eyes that bug out…”

Sex, a 17-year hiatus, bugging-red eyes? Is this college déjà vu? Or simply speculation on the miserable plight of out-to-pasture old men? My curiosity sweats. I must know.


"What are y’all talking about?” I plead. They’re startled, hand me a newspaper article about the invasion of armies of cicadas. It has a picture. It resembles Gregor Samsa, a man-turned-insect in the book, The Metamorphosis. Kafka wrote it after a night of heavy drinking and serial debauchery.

Before I could justify my invasion of their privacy, a door opens. It breaks up the conversation and my concentration. The scene is shocking.

It’s my old pal, Larry. He comes crawling from an exam room like a crippled cockroach. His face is soot-black and appears to have been scorched by a blowtorch. Two gigantic blood-red balls, posing as eyes, protrude from his skull. His body is plastered with bandages. His hair is singed. It still smokes.

“My god, man,” I say. “Look at yourself. Was there an explosion?” (What can one say to a man who looks like he just escaped from the invasion of hell itself?)

“Ravaged by the sun,” he says. “The tumors, the tumors.” Pain eats his face.

“Will you survive?” I ask.

“Death is the final doctor here, pal,” he says as he shambles out.

Out of the corner of one eye I glimpse a dark figure clad in a black cape. He stands in the shadows. A white mask shrouds his mouth. Tinted welder’s glasses conceal his eyes. He holds a butane torch. It hisses with a blue-hot flame. With the index finger of the other hand he beckons me to come. I do, but remember little after he invades my body with fire.

Life sometimes burns us…how many ways can you count? But as for extraterrestrials, there’s proof they’re already here…they signed up for welfare a long time ago!

What’s your bet?

Bud Hearn
May 16, 2013

Cinnamon Toast

“Stood alone on a mountain top, starin’ out at the great divide. I could go east, I could go west, it was all up to me to decide…” Bob Seger

I left home at 18. Not willingly. Poverty evicted me. My parents couldn’t afford my enormous food intake. They had to choose…a new car or feeding their omnivorous son. The car won. So I left.

I didn’t really mind, except I hated to leave behind mama’s cinnamon toast. But life moves on. Anyway, the future winked at me when I graduated from high school. I winked back.

The future is a Siren. It seduces with promises of magic kingdoms, just waiting for us. Its allure packed more punch than my last fortune cookie, “See Rock City.”

I said my goodbyes. Mama sat grinning on the fender of her new black Plymouth, delirious over the car. Or my departure? She never said. I never asked.
I stood in our front yard, one foot on the driveway; the other on US Highway 27. It ran north and south. Across the street lay a dead-end dirt road to our farm. Three choices. I went north.

The Stone Age was slow to leave South Georgia. It slipped out unseen in the dead of night the week before I left. We both knew it was time. It couldn’t compete with Elvis or hippies.

Food was responsible for my expulsion. Children consume vast quantities of it. My father was a righteous man but tight with his cash. He saved money goading me into mowing the lawn by eating the grass like a goat. Promised it’d build muscles and attract girls. Skinny boys are dumb. They’ll believe anything that promises muscles or female attention.

But I hated anything green, except money, of course. Later I learned that’s what attracts female attention. If I got hungry, I had to find it or kill it. My parents were tyrants. “Feed yourself or starve,” they said. Said it builds character. Hogwash.

They were devout disciples of Dr. Spock. He warned them in a dream not to hug or kiss children. Said they’d never leave the nest, and like leeches, they would make old age a living hell. No, give ‘em sugar instead, said Spock.

I preferred sugar to kisses anyway. Familial affection abused me horribly as a child. I was mentally damaged, suffering from the dual stigma of being both seen with relatives and hugged by them. Aunt Doris once hugged me. Mothballs popped out of her pockets. Like a dog, I ate whatever fell to the floor. I now refrain. That day’s consequence remains vivid in memory.

As for kisses, OMG, their breath. It was a ghastly cross between snuff and coffee, as stale and stagnant as swamp water. But then again, who with any brain would touch a teenager who secreted musk more rank than that of a bull moose in rut?

Sugar is the quintessential staple in the diet of children. My mama had plenty of it. She dumped it on everything. Kool-Aid and ice tea were as thick as molasses. And always on cinnamon toast for breakfast. I mourn for it even now.

I used to watch her prep that delicacy. She’d slather slices of Wonder Bread (white, of course) with a tsunami of Oleo margarine. She’d shake fistfuls of freshly ground cinnamon on top and layer it with a pound of Dixie Crystal sugar. Just looking at it red-lined my glucose level and sent my stomach into orgiastic spasms.

Cinnamon toast is magic. In the oven the concoction boiled and bubbled. It emitted a heavenly aroma, the pure essence of Paradise. My mouth would drool profusely in anticipation of gnawing out the sweet bubbly middle of the toast.

I was a voracious snacker. Cheese toast, for example. Soda crackers toasted with cheese, topped with marshmallows. Bananas, peanut butter and honey. No apples…too mealy and mushy. Apple sauce? No problem.

There were mayonnaise sandwiches stuffed with pineapple, and light bread smeared with butter and sugar. I ate raw cookie dough, drank Ovaltine, devoured popsicles and occasionally squirrels. But nothing compared with cinnamon toast.

The ugly underbelly of cinnamon toast was the crusts. No kid ever ate it. It remains an unsolved mystery. My mother tried, reminding me about starving Chinese children. Since I didn’t know any, my conscience was clear.

Some years later I discovered the magic kingdom promised by the Future is often more like a chimerical dream. It’s a mirage that shimmers in the distance, twinkling just out of reach. Unlike mama’s cinnamon toast, the center core of reality is not always sweet. Life has its own share of crusts.

So here’s to mama’s cinnamon toast…thanks for the memories, to hell with the crusts.

Bud Hearn
May 9, 2013