UNCLE P’S

So Many Squeaky Wheels… And Not Enough Grease To Go Around…

1960’s, Dad and I in his pickup, first air-conditioned truck he’d owned, hand crank windows, AM radio, single cab, one big bench seat, covered in vinyl, no cup holders, a truck you could drive a few years, but needed to trade it in around 60,000 miles while it was still worth something and lest you be confused, this truck is kind of prestigious, back in the day, he’d come a long way from a farm boy who grew up behind oxen and mules…and now on to our story…

…so we’re parked near the diesel tank watching a tractor throw up some dust pulling a Vibra Shank cultivator, when something came to his mind, from childhood, him working in a field, hold your thirst till you got to the end of the row, and then dip some sun cooked water from a bucket, drink it with your mouth where everybody else’s mouth has been, and not think twice, then get on, get on down the next row… and he made the mistake of complaining about how hot it was, how hard this work was, in front of Miss Jim, a woman who had only known hard work – and been at it from an earlier childhood – and she just about spit in the dirt, shook her head, and said in French, “You kids don’t know nuthin about hard…”

She was still alive when he told me that.  She lived right down the road.  Go in her barnyard, past the milk cow, and there was a little shed – too small to call a barn – with shovels and hoes and old rope, and a little room, with a Sears catalog and a smell.  1970’s, folks, the only outhouse I ever used…  Last year’s Sears ‘n Roebucks Christmas catalog, I kid you not.

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A lot of noise out there, in This Here America, everybody all offended about so many things, and making sure we all know it.  Is it Big or is it small, is it Real or imagined, all these squeaky wheels, shouting over each other to make sure their paper cut or mosquito bite is duly noted and cared about and somebody best be about the fixing and right quick…

Yet another word got in trouble.  “Thug.”  Lot of people are upset about the word being used against certain ethnic groups.  Code talk.  Whatever that is.

I remember listening to 80’s talk radio and some old black guy calls in and he’s plenty mad, all this fuss, “dese youngstuhs…mos’ ain’t nevuh seen no cotton field and ain’t nery one walked a row wit’ a hoe.”

And now people who weren’t even born in the 80’s are part of the national noise…

Where’s Miss Jim now?  Who’s qualified to say, You kids don’t know nuthin about hard?

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Here goes the No Fault Of My Own disclaimer…

…Through no fault of my own, I am a child of the 60’s, born to two white people, in the USA, in the South.  I’ve done a little good, a little bad, mostly I’ve been average.  I have messed up enough to know bottoms beneath bottoms.  There have been times when I’ve tried to make sense of the complexity of life, and my faults, but frankly, pushing sixty, I’m kind of tired of it, and have settled into a simpler state of mind…which goes like this…

…I am grateful for having a life, for whatever batteries were included in the box…  I’m grateful for precious memories, and believe it or not, I’ve benefitted enough from great pain to appreciate the bad times, and cannot imagine being me without them…

I am old enough to know the hourglass is short on sand…and I don’t want to waste jack squat on things that don’t matter.  I’d rather count my blessings than scratch my itches.

I don’t have time to fart around with youngsters, who think symbolism matters.  I have no patience for people trying to make paper cuts into cancer.  I am woofed out on people crying wolf.

As I age I don’t measure myself against the living, because the most impressive people I’ve ever known are now gone to grave.  I want to be tough like them.  I want to take a punch like them.  I don’t want them looking down and catching me soft.

I have this one life to live…and I don’t think I’m particularly important.  I’m not expecting Perfect America anymore than I’m expecting Perfect Me.  I’m just grateful, to be, and still be.   One life, whatever cards I was dealt, whatever cards come, let me live on, and eventually die, grateful for the chance.

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This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where common sense is rated higher than Harvard.

Uncle P can be reached at 81creativity@gmail.com.