YAHOO MOUNTAIN DEW! My Dad would shout this loudly anytime we were close to home on our way back from a trip.
See dad and mom used to own a produce store in Bluefield WV called Gateway Country Store and Produce. I often think it would've been cool for Gateway Computers to have to pay my parents for the name Gateway-it was after all a corporation. But that's off topic.
The store was like a min-Kroger that mated with a Cracker Barrel-before there was a Cracker Barrel. They went under in 1985 during the last "economic downturn" during the 80's.
Dad drove a truck to go get produce from all over the south east. As a little boy I often went with him. The truck was a white International Harvester with a 16ft bed. The truck kind not the kind you sleep in.
We'd go to Mt. Airy and Hillsville North Carolina to pick up loads of various kinds of produce. Then we'd haul it back over the mountains back to the market to sell it.
We'd travel to the docks at wholesale places in Winston Salem North Carolina where I would get to ride on these cool automatic palate jacks while they loaded our truck.
We'd go to the farmer's market just outside of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks football stadium. It was there that I learned to throw watermelons. We loaded them from the back of an open trailer attached to a semi and formed a line to throw them from the back of that truck to the back of our truck. It was hot, dirty, and itchy work. I loved it. I was thirteen and honestly thought that being part of the line of throwers was a right of passage into manhood. Dad was proud of me when that happened too. Good memory.
We'd travel to Georgia to get peaches right from the orchard, and Virginia to get Apples from the orchards, and strawberries from Florida.
I remember being small enough to stand up on the seat in the old International Harvester and my head touched the ceiling of the cab. I remember the smell of the vinyl seat and the faint hint of axle grease mixed in with my dad's Old Spice and coffee.
We'd be traveling for sometimes eight hours at a time back from these different states. When we'd get through the tunnel at East River Mountain we could feel the cooler air of "Nature's air conditioned City-Bluefield West Virginia" and dad would shout and I would shout with him YAHOO MOUNTAIN DEW WE'RE ALMOST HOME!"
My dad's almost home now. His spiritual home. He's dying in a nursing home. I can't help but smile as I imagine him feeling the grace of Jesus enfolding him with the familiarity of the mountains and the comforting presence of the One who created all of life. I imagine Jesus saying "Come on in Bud, I've prepared a place for you," and dad saying YAHOO! MOUNTAIN DEW!
Dwight
Showing posts with label laughing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label laughing. Show all posts
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Monday, August 18, 2008
On labels
I was discussing recently the difficulty we have with labels-not on clipping them from Del Monte cans and handing them in so your school that's poor from spending money on sports can buy books instead of raising taxes on people who are already well off-but still don't want to pay taxes any higher than they did in the '60s.
I'm talking about the labels we apply to folks in general. Liberal and Conservative. Christian, progressive, or fundamentalist. There is actually no way to avoid labeling to some extent. If we didn't we'd all be stuck using general and neutral pronouns.
Excuse me person? Could you hand me that thing with the stuff on it?
"This?" no
"That" no.
the thing with the color on it that's darker than the color of your eyes or the thing with the stuff on it the color of your skin but darker? No-the thing with the thing that's sitting on that other thing.
It quickly would become an exercise in futility and vagueness.
What can be frustrating though is the vast differences and nuances of opinion that exist in each individual and the attempt to try and place one person or the other in a particular category. This of course is what helps us define people but it can erode the sense of complexity that makes up individuals as well.
I long for a day like Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of when "we'd one day be judged not by the color of our skin (or any sort of label in particular), but on the content of our character".
It seems like a happy possibility to not be categorized as a lover of Rush Linbaugh or a lover of Keith Olberman-or maybe Bill O' Reilly vs. Al Franken. The truth is we're a huge amalgam of opinions, influences, circumstances, and convictions. To categorize anyone is to simplify people and the human experience so that we can be less anxious about reality.
Our anxiety comes from self consciousness-self awareness and the understanding that we can't figure everything out-and that there is randomness and insignificance as well as meaning and relationship that makes up our reality. But we can't wrap it up in a neat package for marketing it can make us antsy. If I can't buy it at Wal-Mart Dwight, I just don't trust it.
It reminds me of the phrase from the movie Pleasantville where everyone who is frightened about the change that is taking place all over the town say something to the effect of "Where do you go when everything around you is changing and the world seems so uncertain? The bowling alley of course".
People can certainly lean one way or the other in terms of political, religious, and all other viewpoints and character traits. But sometimes the idiosyncrasies and contradictions within our selves or that we observe in others is dumbfounding.
I know of a lesbian couple who attended a church that was against homosexuality. They did so because they didn't want to attend a church that while supportive of homosexual people had a woman minister. DOH!
That's like an NRA member that can't find it within himself to quit his knitting group even though his friends think its gay.
We're all so different-it makes us have to come up with labels to manage it all sometimes-so I respect that. I just ask "Where then is the middle ground?" Where can we find a place to accurately describe people, or realities without limiting the person or reality to that specific label? The bowling alley.
I don't know and I don't think we're supposed to know. I think that probably the process of learning about people and relationships is a lot more important than the arrival or the destination. That's not a particularly original concept-but it holds true in many instances. Along the way I think we're invited to make sure we laugh, love, and whatever third thing you can add here to make it a complete statement.
What is it that he poster says "Dance like no one is watching-even though you look like a dork, laugh as thought people around you aren't frightened by your boisterous and close to maniacal look and sound, and love like you aren't going to be issued a restraining order.
I hope you can label yourself as one who laughed at the end of today and each day.
Grace,
Dwight
I'm talking about the labels we apply to folks in general. Liberal and Conservative. Christian, progressive, or fundamentalist. There is actually no way to avoid labeling to some extent. If we didn't we'd all be stuck using general and neutral pronouns.
Excuse me person? Could you hand me that thing with the stuff on it?
"This?" no
"That" no.
the thing with the color on it that's darker than the color of your eyes or the thing with the stuff on it the color of your skin but darker? No-the thing with the thing that's sitting on that other thing.
It quickly would become an exercise in futility and vagueness.
What can be frustrating though is the vast differences and nuances of opinion that exist in each individual and the attempt to try and place one person or the other in a particular category. This of course is what helps us define people but it can erode the sense of complexity that makes up individuals as well.
I long for a day like Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of when "we'd one day be judged not by the color of our skin (or any sort of label in particular), but on the content of our character".
It seems like a happy possibility to not be categorized as a lover of Rush Linbaugh or a lover of Keith Olberman-or maybe Bill O' Reilly vs. Al Franken. The truth is we're a huge amalgam of opinions, influences, circumstances, and convictions. To categorize anyone is to simplify people and the human experience so that we can be less anxious about reality.
Our anxiety comes from self consciousness-self awareness and the understanding that we can't figure everything out-and that there is randomness and insignificance as well as meaning and relationship that makes up our reality. But we can't wrap it up in a neat package for marketing it can make us antsy. If I can't buy it at Wal-Mart Dwight, I just don't trust it.
It reminds me of the phrase from the movie Pleasantville where everyone who is frightened about the change that is taking place all over the town say something to the effect of "Where do you go when everything around you is changing and the world seems so uncertain? The bowling alley of course".
People can certainly lean one way or the other in terms of political, religious, and all other viewpoints and character traits. But sometimes the idiosyncrasies and contradictions within our selves or that we observe in others is dumbfounding.
I know of a lesbian couple who attended a church that was against homosexuality. They did so because they didn't want to attend a church that while supportive of homosexual people had a woman minister. DOH!
That's like an NRA member that can't find it within himself to quit his knitting group even though his friends think its gay.
We're all so different-it makes us have to come up with labels to manage it all sometimes-so I respect that. I just ask "Where then is the middle ground?" Where can we find a place to accurately describe people, or realities without limiting the person or reality to that specific label? The bowling alley.
I don't know and I don't think we're supposed to know. I think that probably the process of learning about people and relationships is a lot more important than the arrival or the destination. That's not a particularly original concept-but it holds true in many instances. Along the way I think we're invited to make sure we laugh, love, and whatever third thing you can add here to make it a complete statement.
What is it that he poster says "Dance like no one is watching-even though you look like a dork, laugh as thought people around you aren't frightened by your boisterous and close to maniacal look and sound, and love like you aren't going to be issued a restraining order.
I hope you can label yourself as one who laughed at the end of today and each day.
Grace,
Dwight
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)