It wasn’t a long article.  The radio news announcer was almost cryptic.  “The first man to walk on the moon is dead.  Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong died today, at age 82, of complications after a recent heart bypass surgery.”  There would be other stories later, most with more detail, but that first one hit home for me.

I was just a month over twelve years old the day that the Apollo 11 mission left the earth.  After that week, I would never look at the moon in quite the same way again.  A few days after the Saturn V rocket that carried the lunar expedition blasted off, on a Sunday afternoon, we sat around my grandparent’s little black and white television set with its rabbit ears sticking into the air (adorned with aluminum foil) and waited for those now-famous words.  “Houston, Tranquility Base here.  The Eagle has landed.”  Because of the limitations of the technology then, we had been unable to see the actual landing of the craft, but we had watched repeatedly as the simulations had been run onscreen.  Late that night, we were able to see the actual images as the first foot was set down on the moon’s surface.

Commander Armstrong uttered those other famous (and much discussed) words as he stepped onto the fine dust of the lunar landscape, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant step for mankind.”  I remember walking out of my Grandma’s house and, as the screen door slammed shut behind me, looking up at the sky to see the familiar crescent glowing above my head.  It didn’t look any different.  But for the first time ever, there were people standing up there.  It was a night that few would forget.  And, now Neil Armstrong is dead.

I don’t know what I expected.  It was a long time ago.  People die.  Somehow though, we don’t expect our childhood heroes, bigger than life as they seemed, to just die.  But, as it turns out, heroes are just mortal men after all, governed by the same laws by which all of us live and then pass from this world.  Funny…two years ago, Mr. Armstrong had suggested that he would be willing to be the commander of a manned mission to Mars.  I almost believed that he could have done just that.

I don’t know what Neil Armstrong believed spiritually.  At one point after his visit to the moon, he told someone, when asked about his beliefs, that he was a deist.  Deists believe that nature shows the existence of a Creator, a God, but they don’t usually believe in the possibility of a personal relationship with that God.  I can’t see how anyone who had been on the surface of the moon and seen the splendor of creation from that vantage point could have believed any less, but it is my hope that Commander Armstrong went beyond that first stage of belief in his later life.  We’ll probably never know the answer to that question in this world.

You haven’t read my posts for very long without realizing that I believe in a personal God, One who stepped into time and space to make a way for us to be with Him.  What a shame it would be to understand a God who created all of the cosmos, along with us, but to miss His incredibly simple gift of Grace. 

As I considered the passing of a hero this weekend, I did have this thought.  Although the passage from life to death seems to be a long and arduous one, I can almost hear that crackly voice coming through the little speaker again, as he steps into eternity and says one final time, “One small step for a man.”

“And with your final heartbeat
Kiss the world goodbye.
Then go in peace and laugh on Glory’s side, and
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus…and live!”
(from “Untitled Hymn” by Chris Rice~American songwriter/singer)

“HIGH FLIGHT”

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
(John Gillespie Magee, Jr~American aviator/poet~1922-1941)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012. All Rights Reserved.

“Paul, I need some help getting this secretary moved into your house tonight.” I raised my eyebrows a bit as my brother-in-law spoke the words. Secretary? Didn’t he know that I had the Lovely Lady to take care of things like dictation and bookkeeping? Tongue in cheek, I replied, “I really don’t think there’s room in this house for two ladies, thanks!” He laughed and shot back, “Oh, you’ll want to find room for this beautiful old lady.” He was right. The aging Victorian lady moved in that night and has been resting comfortably in our living room since then.

I am, of course, speaking of an antique piece of furniture, a throwback to the dim, distant past when computers and smart phones could not even have existed in the imagination of the most forward looking dreamers. To communicate with the outside world, one would sit primly in front of the secretary, with the lid down to form a desk, dipping the nib of her pen in an inkwell and actually writing on paper. Invitations to dinner, notes that conveyed the sorrow of loss or the joy of new arrivals, letters to lovers…all were composed and completed from this ornate piece of furniture. One did not lounge on the settee while firing off a post to thousands of “friends” at a time, nor could you pick up a telephone and call across town, much less to the other side of the world. It was a simpler and slower time in history.

I love old things. They not only convey beauty, and the skill of the craftsman’s art, but they connect us to our past and the lives of our predecessors. When I run my hand over an old piece of furniture, or eat from an antique dish, or gaze at a century-old oil painting, I treasure the thought that I am just one of many people who have done exactly the same thing. I revel in the idea that generations before me, some other aging man sat and lost himself in the beauty of the artwork, or some young woman poured out the longing of her heart in a letter to her sweetheart, himself on another continent fighting a war from which he might not return. I don’t find that feeling as I wander through the huge marketplaces of today. Cold and faddish, most of the new furnishings I see will outlive their usefulness and interest within a few years, or a decade at the most. Then, relegated to some garbage heap, they will disentegrate into dust, when these old things I speak of are still treasured by generation after generation of my progeny.  At least, I would like to think that will be true.

This evening, I sit and gaze at the old secretary in the living room, drinking in the timeless beauty of the carved decorations against the beautiful quarter-sawn oak and the curved-glass door to the bookcase, its shelves still empty, awaiting the day when either I or the Lovely Lady decide on the most efficacious use of the space. Perhaps, some of my old sets of books? Maybe it will be one of the antique tea sets from her childhood. That will be sorted out in time. But tonight, my gaze is drawn irresistibly upward to the lamp holder above the fold-down desk. Or, more specifically, to what is holding up the little shelf upon which a lighted oil lamp would have been set to drive away the dimness of the evening. Amidst the calm and creative beauty of the useful piece of furniture is one jarringly ugly, hand-carved object.

Can someone tell me why this gargoyle is here? Why in the midst of what can only be described as timeless beauty, do I find this ghastly shape, grinning at no one in particular, mouth open and eye fixed in the distance? I know, from my school days and learning about the old buildings and cathedrals in Europe, that the builders often placed these horrible shapes up high, around the parapets that kept people from falling off of the roofs. They were largely functional there, with gaping mouths that were connected to the roof gutters into which the rain water would flow in a downpour. The water pouring from the open mouth was funneled away from the building, to cascade to the ground below harmlessly, instead of damaging the structure. Even the name “gargoyle” comes from a similar word in many of the early European languages which pertain to the throat or “gullet”. (Our word “gargle” is from the same root.) It actually describes the function of the roof appendages on those old buildings. But the horrid shape? We have to go back centuries to find that connection. Put simply, the shapes were of hideous, mythical creatures which were intended to assure people as they entered a building, specifically a church, that all the gargoyles would prevent the evil spirits from entering the edifice and the congregants would find sanctuary inside.

But why is it on my antique secretary? I called it a gargoyle, but when there is no intention of moving water from one place to another, technically, the form is known simply as a “grotesque”. There is, of course, vague speculation about the designers of these old furniture pieces latching onto the idea of evil spirits driven away by the grotesques, so they casually included them in the design. I’m pretty certain that there are no evil spirits lurking in this furniture, so the grotesque isn’t a necessary part of the landscape for that purpose, but I’m going to leave it there. I’ll probably even point it out to visitors who admire the piece.

Why, you ask, would I make a point of drawing attention to this ugly little apparition? I think it’s a great reminder that we live in a tarnished world. We like to build our perfect, pretty little hideaways, intent on keeping the evil at bay. Sometimes, we even convince ourselves that it no longer exists in our corner of the world. The little grotesque on this beautiful work of art serves to demonstrate that there is no place that ugliness cannot rear its head, as long as we are on this side of Paradise.  In the first garden, there was a snake. Our Savior had a Judas. Everywhere we go on this big ball of rock and water and soil, we will find great beauty, but also great evil. It doesn’t do for us to forget that, doesn’t pay for us to build imaginary sanctuaries against the world.

Each of us loves the beauty that is all around us. We forget though (all too often), that the ugliness tags along everywhere beauty goes. To acknowledge that the ugliness exists doesn’t make us love beauty any less, or take away from the beauty, but it does help us to be on our guard against the destruction that the ugliness can inflict. There is nothing to be gained by denying that the ugliness and evil are real.  I’m reminded of my boyhood friend, a portly little guy, who did not want to run the required laps at gym class one day.  Gary stopped behind a small sapling and, hiding his face in his hands against the slender trunk, said, “I’m going to stay here until this is over. If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.” As I ran past, I glanced back and laughed at his chubby body showing clearly on each side of the tiny tree. I leave you to work out whether his plan was effective. How much more effective will ours be, if we attempt to deny evil?

The gargoyle stays. I don’t celebrate it, but I will tolerate it, because of the lesson it teaches. Sometimes, we need to be reminded that things are not always as they should be.

And, we look expectantly to the day when they will be. Even so…

“Be very careful then, how you live–not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil.”
(Ephesians 5:15,16~NIV)

 
“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your reckoning, if you live near him.”
(From “The Hobbit” by J.R.R.Tolkien~British educator and author~1892-1973)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012. All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Alden Jewell

Rick was ecstatic! This old 1949 Pontiac Chieftain he had purchased from my grandfather was the car he had always wanted. Day after day, for several years, he had driven past Grandpa’s house, seeing the old car parked under the carport, or watched the old man drive cautiously down the street past his own home. Even in the late 1960’s, the big auto was still in nice condition, having been driven no place else for years than to the grocery store or taking my grandmother to work at the nursing home a couple of miles down the road. Rick, a big man, drove a little Volkswagen Beetle and it wasn’t a good fit, in more ways than just the physical sense. It was safe to say that he was in love with the old Chieftain.

 Then came the day that Grandpa put the “For Sale” sign in the window of the old four-door sedan. He had purchased a much newer 1962 Impala and no longer had need of the heavy old sedan with the faded TCU Horned Frogs decal in the back window.  His asking price was right and Rick couldn’t get his wallet out quickly enough. The transaction was quickly completed and the car made its way out of Grandpa’s driveway for the last time. For the next few days, the old car flew back and forth along the avenue between our houses repeatedly.  To my knowledge, it had never moved anywhere nearly that fast when the old gentleman had been at the wheel.  Grandpa was not happy, either.  I remember his annoyance as the car blasted past, going to or from whatever errand Rick and his wife had to do in the days after they purchased it. It was no longer his car, but still, he didn’t want to see it abused.

I was in the room the day (just the next week) when Rick bragged to his friends that the old beauty would go ninety miles an hour. “I had it out on the expressway and it just blew the doors off of everything else on the road!” the cocky man boasted. I thought back at how my Grandpa used to creep along the road in that car, always a few miles below the speed limit. It wasn’t any of my business, but I chimed in, “That car’s not used to being driven that fast,” to no one in particular. The big man scoffed. “It can take it! This car was built for speed.”

Three days later, the car was parked in the tall grass of the vacant lot behind Rick’s house. It never moved from the spot until it went to the salvage yard. No, he hadn’t wrecked it. Instead, he was flying down the highway one afternoon, when the car decided that it didn’t care much for its new owner’s driving style and, in protest, threw a rod through the crankcase.

Rick was devastated. The old car he had purchased from my Grandpa, the car he had always wanted, was finished. He went back to driving the Volkswagen. I’m not sure if he was any wiser, but he was definitely sadder.

Years later, I was to remember Rick’s example…too late.  I purchased the 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme from a local preacher.  “It’s a good solid car, Paul,” he promised, as he took my money and handed me the keys.  I believed him, but I wasn’t interested in “solid”.  This car was for impressing people.  I already had the cute redhead beside me, so I wasn’t out to show-off for the girls, but I did want to impress the other guys around town with this car’s power.  For a few weeks, I had no problem with that.  Then one day, I was poking along behind a friend, as he leisurely made his way to another friend’s house.  Intent on showing him what my beautiful blue hardtop could do, I floored the three hundred-fifty cubic inches and roared up beside him.  Just as the rear end of the car passed his door, I felt a slight lurch and white smoke began to pour out from the exhaust pipe, the billows of steam completely erasing my friend and his car from my rear-view mirror.  I wished that I could disappear, too.

The blown head gasket was a not-so-subtle reminder of a lesson that I should have learned all those years before. I have never claimed to be the brightest crayon in the box and I certainly proved it that day.

But, is there a bigger lesson to be learned from these cars? How do we determine a moral to the story? I’m not sure if we need spend too much time on that tonight. You will, no doubt, recall the story that Mr. Aesop told of the man who had a valuable goose.  He waited patiently every day and was compensated with one golden egg for his patience.  In a moment of intense greed, the man killed the bird to acquire all of the wealth at one time, but was rewarded with nothing more than an ordinary dead goose.

In a similar manner, simply put, the moral of the cars is this; For a few seconds of pride, a lifetime of usefulness was sacrificed. It’s a moral which could easily fit many other situations, but you will know best how to apply it for yourself.

I’m still learning the lesson, too. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t take another blown head gasket (either the real thing or a more symbolic one) to imprint it indelibly in my feeble brain. 

“A farmer, bent on doubling the profits from his land,
Proceeded to set his soil a two-harvest demand.
Too intent thus on profit, harm himself he must needs;
Instead of corn, he now reaps corn-cockle and weeds.”
(Ignacy Krasicki~Polish moralist~1735-1801)

“Before destruction is pride, and before stumbling–a haughty spirit.”
(Proverbs 16:18~Young’s Literal Translation)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012. All Rights Reserved.

I saw my good friend the other day.  He had read my recent post that featured the Saint Bernard dog.  It was his story.  As we shook hands, he spoke sternly to me, “What are you doing, digging up stuff from ancient history?”  I knew he was joking, but still…it got me to thinking.  What if all I’m doing with these posts about the past is “digging up bones”?  You know what I mean.  Dredging up memories that, for most people, are long dead and buried–forgotten in the far away and rapidly dimming past.  Memories that might cause embarrassment, or recriminations, or even outright shame.

As I thought tonight, my mind was drawn to a country song of the twentieth century which used exactly that phrase, digging up bones.  The singer spoke of “exhuming things that are better left alone.”  I couldn’t help but realize that the famous singer who had a hit with that song has been in the news recently, entangled in a situation which, one day, he will wish to leave buried like those old nasty bones.  Mr. Travis is having some problems with alcohol and maybe has already been digging up a few bad memories himself.  I think though, that his current experience (or something like it) is actually the reason that I go on digging up the bones of the past, not to wallow in misery like some pig in his sty, nor even like the drunk crying in his beer.  I bring up the past again and again simply to instruct myself (mostly) and a few of you readers who find the lessons enlightening as well.

Tonight, for some reason, old song lyrics keep popping up in my head, themselves a kind of bone being dug up.  The problem with these bones is that they are largely unattached to each other, just like the dry bones that the old prophet saw.  It is an event immortalized in the old negro spiritual, ‘Dry Bones”.  “Dey gonna walk around, dem dry bones (oh hear de word of de Lord)…”  Those bones too, were scattered and dead, but they became connected once again.  Flesh once more covered them and then breath was given to them anew as they stood alive and whole.  In a way, my hope is that this is what happens with the old bones which I dredge up now and again.

The connections are made, the story fleshed out, and the living tale stands before us to instruct and warn and convince us to avoid the errors of the past.  Some of the memories simply bring back warm thoughts of people no longer with us, reminding us of lives shared and love given.  Some make us laugh and feel the joy of times we would not like to lose as we move into the future.  It would be nice if all of the old bones I dig up ended up like these.  Alas, that doesn’t always happen.

Again, a short lyric comes to mind.  I hear a bouncy, rhythmic instrumental background as a voice calls out stridently, “Caldonia, Caldonia.  What makes your big head so hard?”  I don’t remember any other part of the song, but it is enough.  This one phrase speaks to me.  Perhaps to you too?

I jest, but there is a serious bent to my humor.  I’m a hard-headed human being, insisting on my own way again and again, ignoring the road signs and past history with disdain.  I am smarter than that boy and later, the young man, that I used to be.  Those old bones hold no messages for me.  History could never repeat itself.  I suspect that many of you are nodding your heads as you read along.  You too, have insisted that you are beyond the foolishness that snared you before, but continuing in the same path, you are bogged down time and time again.

So, I think that I’ll keep digging up the past, if only because my hard head needs the repetition.  Yes, I’ll dig up the past, even the Saint Bernards, and the pizza eaten once in a blue moon, and wondering what actually is the function of the fulcrum.  Not so that we’ll focus on events long completed, but so that the future will be profitable and bright as we learn from our errors, and gaffs, and triumphs. 

You never know what old bone I’ll be digging up tomorrow.  Let’s hope that it’s not one of those really embarrassing ones…either for me or for you!

“De toe bone connected wid de foot bone,
De foot bone connected wid de anklebone,
De anklebone connected wid de leg bone,
De leg bone connected wid de knee bone,
De knee bone connected wid de thighbone,
Rise an’ hear de Word of de Lord!”
(Old Negro Spiritual~”Dem Bones”~traditional)

“…The fool is obstinate, and doubteth not: he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.”
(Akhenaton~Egyptian King~14th Century BC)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012. All Rights Reserved.

“I can’t install this nut.  You’ll have to get someone else to do it for you.”  Chuck stood in front of me, electric guitar in hand, with a look of abject disappointment on his face.  I couldn’t control the grin that spread across mine, nor could I keep him in suspense more than a few seconds.  “Okay.  I’ll install it for you, but take a look at this label and think about what it would mean if it really were accurate.”

I took the guitar nut he had handed me (that’s the bridge piece that sits at the top end of the fingerboard), fancy plastic packaging and all, and read it to him verbatim.  “Permanently lubricated guitar nut.  Precision engineered with Teflon, the slipperiest substance on earth…”  Trying hard to curb my laughter, I explained to him the difficulty I would have keeping the material in my vise.  Imagine the trouble I would encounter as I clamped down onto the slippery piece.  Why, it would be shooting out and ricocheting off the ceiling in nothing flat.  And, when I tried to shape it with a file?  I’d be likely to find myself smashing into the wall as the file (and me with it) slid off the top of the teflon.  It was permanently lubricated, mind you.

Chuck and I laughed, and I installed the part he had purchased from some online supplier.  The hype might have something to it, but the fifteen dollar price tag for a one dollar part smacks of snake oil sales technique to this old fashioned instrument repairman.  He was very happy as he tried the guitar in my store today, so either the nut was great or my fitting job was superb, but regardless, as they say today, it’s all good.

I gather up the funnies like coins.  This kind of currency is indispensable to me. It’s what keeps me going when the days bring unreasonable customers, as happened today, or I find myself overwhelmed by the sheer mountain of work waiting for my attention.  The list of times when I have need of these coins to spread around seems to be growing as I age.  It only seems fair that there are so many things with which to be amused.  It would be a great shame to miss them in the midst of circumstances that threaten to smother and snuff out the joy of living every day.  I’m still trying to figure out the exchange-rate, but I think the inflation of the difficult times has made the coins I have saved up worth much more in the present day.

The Lovely Lady’s father kept me going with his funnies all the time I worked with him.  I would be repairing a guitar back at the workbench and drop a tool with a loud clatter.  From the front of the store, I could hear his voice call out, “Did you lose a filling out of your tooth?”  In similar fashion, a customer might drop her keys on the concrete floor.  “I think you lost the set from your ring!” he would offer.  While the Lovely Lady and her siblings had heard them all and would just groan, I delighted in these gems.  I find myself using them more and more in daily life.  Why, just the other day, I belched after eating something my doctor would have disapproved of completely and the words from my mouth came unbidden.  No, it wasn’t the customary “Excuse me” I’ve been taught to say from my childhood.  Rather, the hilarious words popped out (much like the sound which preceded them), “What did you expect to hear?  Bells?”

Is life serious?  You bet!  There are so many junctures which demand sober attention and clear, pensive thought.  That said, it’s essential that we be able to discern the moments that are solemn occasions and those that are not.  Appropriate humor, shared in an appropriate manner, can diffuse tense situations, and relieve a combative encounter or even a frightening one.  I still have a problem telling the difference sometimes, but I tend to think that to err on the side of humor will cause less problems in the long run than the alternative.

My father-in-law had a little poem (from an old folk song, I think) which he would quote frequently.  It may have annoyed his wife, but I thought it amusing.  “When I was single, my pockets would jingle.  I wish I was single again…”  To my knowledge, he had no desire to be single again, but he was tickled by the sentiments that there was no extra money for the married man.  I understand (and identify) with the tongue-in-cheek verse, but I want you to know that tonight my pockets are jingling with all the funnies I’ve been saving up.  I intend to keep spending them as needed.  I’m pretty good at collecting them, too.  Not much danger of going broke here.

With that, I’ve wasted about enough time on this for now.  I’ve got to get back to my hog-killing…(yeah, one of his, too.  What a great inheritance!)

“I am thankful for laughter…except for when milk comes out of my nose.”
(Woody Allen~American comic and film director)

“The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.”
(Shirley MacLane~American actress)

Photo: Kheel Center, Cornell University

Originally posted 6//24/11

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012. All Rights Reserved.