A Worthwhile Scene

I have worked hard during my life time. I have put in long hours, been responsible for large organizations and projects. I have not gotten rich, but in the scheme of things would be considered fairly well off. From time to time I think about the effort and what makes that effort worthwhile. Well, yesterday a scene brought home the lesson of worth again.

I was mowing the grass at our home in Arkansas. Terry and I have worked quite hard keeping our property looking clean and neat. As I was in the section of the lawn on the east side Terry and her beloved Grandson Sam strolled down to the garden where we've planted some blueberry bushes. The bushes are new this year, but had some berries on them when we purchased the plants in the spring. We've enjoyed some berries in our breakfast cereal over the past few weeks. Sam and Terry stopped and pick a small plate they had brought with them and had a few blueberries on the plate. Then as I kept on mowing, they strolled across the yard to the black berry stand and proceeded to harvest perhaps a pint of fresh black berries. All the while talking and carrying on some conversation that takes place between grand parent and grand son.

As I watched the scene unfold in front of me I thought about the hard work I've done and the effort we make and this is just another example of why we do that. The scene of Terry, obviously enjoying her grandson's company and strolling about our property picking blue berries and black berries will join those events that occur from time to time that remind me that our effort is worthwhile.

Today's Link to the Past

We seem to be facing difficult times. The price of gas has risen to $4.00 a gallon. Yet I drive approximately 400 miles a week for work and have kept on going. Thoughts of alternate methods to conserve are entering my mind. My wife and I recently examined ads for an all electric car to get around our home town. It is odd, we are on the verge of paying off our home which will free up a great deal of cash to invest or make home improvements. Prices are rising, the stock market is tumbling, the world is chaotic, the Republicans and the Democrats are beginning the throes of the Presidential election heartache, yet I find life good.

It does make me remember some of the things I have gone through with others and think about times long ago. August 21, 1965 Bonnie (my first wife) and I married in Munising, MI. Bonnie had graduated from Albion College with a degree in education and a major in German. My parents could no longer afford to send me to Albion, I had gotten myself into a credit predicament that could cost me another semester to graduate, plus my parents moved to Wisconsin so I became a Wisconsin resident.

Bonnie and I made plans to get married the summer of 1965 and decided that I could transfer to the University of Wisconsin and she could get a job in Madison as a school teacher. Good plan, I'd finished my schooling, she'd support the effort then I'd find a job and we'd set off down life's path without much of an idea of what would take place, but hell, we were young.

Well, I was working in Milwaukee that summer on the Chicago & Northwestern RR. I took some time before the wedding to go to Madison and find us a place to live. I found a nice one bedroom furnished apartment on the south side of Madison just off Park Street. I was through Madison once some years ago and drove by the area, it had changed so dramatically that I was just about lost, but I did find the apartment complex and it still existed. Anyway, the apartment complex had a pool, was full of students, and seemed like the right place. I made the down payment and the rent would be $135.50 per month. No sweat, surely a teacher makes more than that. I hadn't thought up the original idea of investigating things yet.

Well, Bonnie and married, set off for Madison, and with school starting, not knowing teachers search a job out the year before, we embarked on this journey. The first thing we found out is Madison is full of educators, teachers are coming out of the walls. There were a lot of graduate students who had married, their spouses were teachers and any hope of finding a job teaching for Bonnie disappeared in the first few days of searching. It rapidly boiled down to finding a job. We had a few hundred dollars between us, no great savings, no income and a lease.

Bonnie finally found a job at Sear's as a credit analyst. In other words, she searched credit applications for approval. She brought home $56.36 a week in wages. If you take that times four she made roughly $230 a months. Take out rent and we had a net income of $94.50 a month for food, gas and entertainment. (By the way, that amounts to less than $25/week for living) We were so naive we did not know we were in trouble.

We had a 1960 Volkswagen that Bonnie's parents had bought her while in high school. It ran well, but I have no idea of the MPG, we just drove it. We had invested in AAA road service, and in the winter when the Madison temperatures can get below zero we used the service quite often. I finally found out that if I took a rough wool tarp type covering and wedged it in around the engine, took the battery out and brought it into the apartment that almost always the car would start in the morning. However, getting the battery out meant taking up the back seat each night and tucking the blanket around the engine compartment.

Gas was between $0.16 and $0.19 a gallon. We could fill up the car for $1.00 a week and run it all week. Bonnie became an expert at budgeting, we made a trip weekly to Piggly Wiggly on the west side of Madison as it had the best prices. No frills boy, just sustenance to subsist. We made friends with Dave and Betsy Jensen who lived next door in our apartment building. Our entertainment consisted of playing a dice game called "Shut Box" and eating Snickerdoodle Cookies chased by some Kool Aid.

We had a TV and I still enjoyed Saturday morning cartoons. Sometimes I would wheel the little fifteen inch black and white TV into the bedroom, set a timer and wake to cartoons playing. We had percolator coffee pot made of some type of plastic, it was the latest thing and that would perk away while we lay in bed watching cartoons. The damn pot would perc, then suck in air and it sounded like and asthmatic person suffering a severe attack. It made us laugh. We didn't know we were in trouble.

Later in the fall I found work in a shoe store to help offset our costs. Bonnie eventually got a second job at the shoe store, it was one way we could still spend time together. Suffice it to say we made it.

Madison taught me some early lessons. One was to trust the budgeting skill of my wife. She was incredible. I have never forgotten that lesson and use it to this day. I don't maintain the detail required when pennies meant the difference between filling the car to go to work, or buying food for a meal. It also taught me that two people can overcome enormous difficulties. It would have been tough for one person as two made a support network.

I also learned that humor never should disappear, regardless how serious the situation there will be humor show up that you should laugh at.

Bonnie and I did not stay together. We did however last for 23 years, and raised two fine daughters. I do keep track of her now, I know where she lives, I know she is happily remarried as am I. I am sure life is good for her. She has that quality to enjoy things and pretty much accept life on its terms. I have learned to try to do that, although I feel I make more of a struggle out of it than others. But life has always been good. It would be better if gas were still $0.19/gal.

The First Day of Summer, 2008

The day started a little overcast and moisture so heavy it looked like fog. The beginning of summer in Arkansas. A doe and her fawn were out early this morning. I would not be surprised it was the fawn's first trip around the yard. The doe was very skittish. I took my morning walk, the temperature was comfortable and there was an odor in the air. I cannot describe the odor, it was a summer smell. I've smelled it before and the memory it evokes is of summer.

Many of my thoughts turn to my northern home, Munising, MI. I recall, even at a very young age being thrilled to be out in nature and the sights, sounds and smells were truly exciting. I recall the odor I sniffed this morning, I've smelled it before when school was out. A time when Joe and I had dug a Campbell's soup can of worms, each. A time when we met outside our houses and got on our bikes for a two or three mile trip out to the Annie River for some summer trout fishing. The air would have that summer smell, I cannot tell you what it is comprised of, but it definitely is summer. It is not hot, it does not smell like concrete or asphalt. It evokes the memory of walking in the woods coming out of a warm field and entering the cool woodland area. It does not smell like the Annie River, that is a separate and distinct odor. The odor does bring back exploration trips up the West Ward trail, out by St. Martin's farm. It brings back the memory of sitting on the hillside above Munising overlooking Munising Bay and looking for wildflowers such as Dutchman's Britches, or Tiger Lilies, or May Flowers. It has a little heat and dust in the memory, but one of comfort, not the dry brittle odor of August.

It was a good morning to smell that odor. I am a seven days away from going north for two weeks to spend time in my old haunts. I will see my children and grandchildren in that faraway place that remains so dear to me. I will smell summer in the north and I will be young again.