The holiday season is over and today I return for a shift at the home, farm and auto supply store. I’m fine… I’ll be fine.
Since the orchard closed for the season it has been two months of reading, writing and cooking in the kitchen. Existential errands have been run. There was a special election Dec. 18. I eschewed the company of anyone but those closest to me plus people I encountered in the world of commerce.
My daily journal of meetings with family, friends and acquaintances is the emptiest it’s been since I began keeping it. It has been the kind of holiday isolation a writer needs and appreciates. I’m ready for the holidays to be over, even as winter has just begun.
It was quiet on New Year’s Day. Using the rest of a jug of sweet cider and a packet of spices from the orchard, I mulled cider which was warm and comforting. The flavor of spices combined with local apples tasted just right.
I curled up with a book, a cup of mulled cider, and dwelt in the narrative that is Bruce Springsteen’s memoir. It was great escape. I wasn’t that familiar with him or his music. It was day to forget about the outside world before the 2019 maelstrom begins.
Seven or eight weeks remain until soil blocking begins at the farms. With time on my hands one would think I’d have a better plan for the coming year. It’s sketchy at best. Time isn’t waiting for me to catch up.
So it begins, my 67th trip around the sun. Ready or not, here we go.
After work at the home, farm and auto supply store I stopped at the warehouse club to get a few groceries. Shopping there is never a quick in and out because of my relationships with people from when I worked there. There’s is catching up to do every week and the expanse of concrete floor serves as our modern piazza.
A person can only get certain kinds of goods at a warehouse club, and some of my friends don’t have membership cards as they work there. A recurring conversation is about my 2015 move down the hill to the home, farm and auto supply store where the idea of pay with benefits takes on an other-worldly aura. My low wage colleagues shop there and like our store’s offerings. Yesterday’s conversation went a little differently.
We’re not over the closures of K-Mart, Sears and Paul’s Discount. We worry that J.C. Penney will close as well, concerns driven around available and reasonably priced goods. On low wages, we don’t shop at Tiffany & Company or Bloomingdale’s so it matters.
The rumor is a couple of shops at the outlet mall in Williamsburg are shuttering in January, and a couple more will close at the nearby Coral Ridge Mall. Consolidation and reduction of competition is not positive. Consensus was we’ll get by and pay more as we often do.
There is a certain inevitability to changes in retail. As stores carry a smaller number of items, it becomes inconvenient to drive here for one thing, there for another, making hard goods available on line more attractive and accelerating the demise of storefronts.
Chaos reigns in many retail establishments. We discussed nearby Kohl’s Department store where certain types of goods fall to the floor where customers trample them. That’s not a positive experience. If I had all day, we could have enumerated them all. Time drew short and we said pleasantries to end conversations in a sociable manner.
Our lives no longer inhabit the town square. In many modern cities, there is no town square. That’s so modern, so American.
Instead of spending time at the piazza we trade in rumors spoken among friends. Maybe society has always been that way and always will. It was yesterday, such self-awareness helping sustain our lives in a turbulent world.
We have yet to see our first winter snowstorm. Some of my neighbors would be fine if temperatures never got below freezing. As a gardener, I know the value of a long, deep freeze in killing insects, and enabling tree pruning the way I learned it at the orchard.
I relish a couple of cold spells each winter.
It’s raining now and expected to continue all day into tomorrow. The forecast has snowflakes coming, but that is laughable with all the heat in the ground. Maybe by Monday conditions will be right for some to stick. For now, we have winter rain.
Aside from a couple of errands, the next five days are clear to plan 2019. Maybe the rain and snow will precipitate some brilliant ideas on how to spend time. In some respects, there is not that much to plan.
Financially the only decisions are whether and when to move to full retirement. For the time being, a couple of days at the home, farm and auto supply store is useful, and the income finds a home every month. How the money is spent was predetermined by household decisions already made. Every bill payment is known, with anything left at month’s end going against debt. The main calculation is developing an escrow system that accommodates property taxes and several other categories of expense to even them out over the year.
The garden almost plans itself. Seeds have mostly arrived and how the seven plots will be planted consists of a vague notion to rotate different varieties of vegetables among patches of sunlight. As a soil blocker at the farms, I’m well in tune with which seeds need to be planted when, and like always, will follow their schedule. I have enough fertilizer for most of the first planting, and expect to use the spade and rake method for planting. I no longer dig up entire plots for planting, but narrow strips. The purpose is to preserve soil structure. Based on tomato production last year, it’s a viable method. Some thought will go into the garden, and it will require only a bit of energy to finalize it.
In the end, our financial picture and food ecology will take care of themselves with a combination of experience, habit and awareness to new opportunity. What’s left?
When I left full time work March 16 I had no expectations.
After all, there was work at two farms in spring and early summer, and fall weekend shifts at the orchard, all to keep me busy. That’s along with two days a week at the home, farm and auto supply store.
Once the farm work ended in October, my outside work schedule left me with five days a week at home. I didn’t know what to do.
I continued my habit of reading and writing in early morning. I read more full length books than I have in years. With my Social Security pension our household income rebounded to a livable amount. Our garden was the best ever and the extras from barter arrangements made a reduction in grocery expense possible. We cooked more meals at home and ate better quality food. The sum was that if I continued that direction, I could get by, and live well, but it wouldn’t be very good for my life in society. I’m not ready to settle into an easy chair and kick back during my remaining days.
I’m okay with slowing down and taking stock. It’s a luxury many people don’t have. It is time to overcome the inertia that’s settled in since October and get to work. The challenge is picking a couple of meaningful goals and bringing a reasonable level of focus to them. That’s where I’ve been stuck for a couple of months.
If I were to get a legal pad and write down tasks needing done it wouldn’t take long to fill several pages. Filling time and making lists is not the point. Finding meaningful work is the goal, work meaningful not only to me but to those around me. That is a harder planning session.
That’s where I land after 50 years of applying my driven personality to society in the workforce. What I do next is more optional than it has been since I was a teen. It will be work and I want to make sure it is the right kind of work for a sixty-something.
The remaining December days are a perfect time to set course for 2019 and beyond, and so I shall.
In May 1972, in the English Philosophy Building of the University of Iowa, professor David Morrell held up a copy of the book he published the previous year and asserted it represented the future of modern American fiction.
My high school friend Dennis was also in the class and we were skeptical. Morrell wasn’t wrong.
The book was titled First Blood and has been in continuous publication ever since. In 1982 it was made into a movie starring Sylvester Stallone. There were sequels. A student of Hemingway and John Barth, Morrell wrote First Blood while at Iowa where he taught English until 1986 when he gave up tenure to write full time. Last count he had written 32 books.
Morrell is the only undergraduate professor I continue to follow. That’s because when social media rose in the culture he adapted to it and is a constant presence on Twitter and Facebook. He’s easy to follow. Yesterday he posted a link to a video about writing which arrived as I’m figuring out what to write next year.
“The point is to have the passion and the drive to see in a book that it can make you a better person,” he said. “So that even if the book is not published you haven’t wasted your time because you wrote something that is truly important to you.”
That’s good advice. Write to make yourself a better person.
If I took any lesson from Morrell it was his practice of taking a deep dive into techniques he would depict in his fiction. Over the years he learned mountain survival skills, firearms handling, how to drive in emergency situations, and how to fly an aircraft. All of this training served his thriller writing. The take away for me was that writing must be grounded in experience. Not only so it reads well, but so we understand and can communicate life experiences faithfully.
During end of year holidays Big Grove and the lake district gets quiet as people settle into home, family and community. It is respite from the increasing turbulence we see in our politics and in society. I use this time to gain perspective on what I’ve done and written. Today the days start getting longer — an embarkation point for what’s next. Not sure what I want except forgiveness and redemption.
Midst gardening, farming and living there will be writing. I hope to improve my skills and stay grounded in reality… and to become a better person.
On early morning walkabout the moon and stars were out, casting silvery light on me and everything.
Yesterday a thin layer of ice rested on the lakes, its mirrored surface perfect for skating if it thickens. Based on the forecast, we’ll see more open water soon.
When our daughter was a grader and the lake froze we’d don ice skates and cut a path all the way to the other shore. When snowmobiles plowed by we could feel the ice moving up and down taking us with it. We keep the skates on a shelf in our garage.
We live in a cold middle place where it’s not quite winter and not warm enough to work long outside. Our attention turns inward and to the possibilities of next year.
The best part of the coming holidays is people engage in things. A calm quiet falls over the Johnson County Lake District. If it were snowing one could hear flakes fall.
It’s a time for planning and writing here in Big Grove. What few fresh vegetables are left in the ice box will soon be eaten up… well, except maybe the turnips. I’ve been watching videos of Indian street vendors making gigantic woks of chicken fried rice. There’s a tub of leftover rice and plenty of eggs so I’ll try that for lunch or supper. I forget eggs are chickens.
And so it goes. Vonnegut taught us death can be absurd, tragic and predictable. It seems mostly random and will eventually take us all. I’d like to get back out on the ice and cut its clear, smooth surface in long figure eights. I’d watch fish swim through the ice and hope the crazing wouldn’t result in my going to live with them. Not yet anyway.
The hope of this holiday season is we can do positive things next year. Isn’t that always the case? So it goes, and here we go. Gliding along the surface until we take a plunge, hoping for a resurgence of living each moment as best we can.
That’s optimistic. Increasingly, that’s who I want to be, who I am.
Protesters on the Champs-Elysees. Photo Credit – NBC News
We see a lot of customers wearing yellow safety jackets at the home, farm and auto supply store. Mostly they seek something to complete a project.
Road crews, construction workers, and tradesmen of every kind stop in wearing the bright, reflective safety gear. It is mostly men. Usually, they are in a hurry to get back to work.
The similarities between these Iowans and the French citizens protesting an increased fuel tax seem mostly external. The French are required to carry yellow jackets in their vehicles in case of a mechanical breakdown on public streets and roads. Before I began working at the home, farm and auto supply store I thought only fire fighters wore such reflective clothing.
What makes our yellow jacketed citizens different is the Trump administration is creating massive changes in financial matters that impact them and who cares? Where are the protests? For the most part Americans play the hand dealt in subservience.
Take interest rates. On our last statement before the president was inaugurated, our annual variable interest rate was 3.00 percent on our home equity loan, indexed to the Wall Street Journal published rate. Our current rate is 4.75 percent, an increase of 58.33 percent. Where is the outrage?
Take gasoline and diesel prices. On Dec. 10, the average U.S. price of gasoline for all grades was $2.511 per gallon with diesel at $3.161. During the same week in 2016, gasoline was $2.347 and diesel $2.493. The price of gasoline increased 6.99 percent and diesel 26.80 percent under this administration. With U.S. oil production hitting record high levels last month, why aren’t gasoline and diesel prices coming down?
I don’t really expect answers because I know them. Interest rates and oil prices are just not on the financial radar for most people. They are an assumed background noise. Something that has to be dealt with, but not very often. Importantly, American businesses have learned how to change things in their favor without precipitating the kinds of protests we see in France. It is a basic part of corporate pricing policies.
The protest in France is about fuel prices. During the first Gulf War I worked for Amoco Oil Company, where we were acutely aware of the global political situation as it related to discovery, development, refining and selling our products. I managed a small trucking fleet and fuel price volatility during the war led us to implement a fuel surcharge in our contracts with customers. We weren’t the first to implement a fuel surcharge but today they are a hidden part of almost every type of delivery service. Depending on a customer’s savvy, fuel surcharges can be negotiated to produce an additional margin for operations through various pricing schemes. As suggested, it’s just not on the radar for American yellow jackets. Interest rates? You gotta be kidding me.
It’s been a long time since I was in France. I’ve never understood their politics the way I do ours. Is Macron good or bad, or just another president in a series of controversial figures? What I do know is Americans rarely make the news for our protests. That is more newsworthy than what the yellow jackets are doing in France.
On Aug. 10, 2016, Donald Trump appeared at a campaign event about 50 miles from my father’s home place in southwestern Virginia. He asserted coal miners would have one “last shot” in the election, cautioning that the coal industry would be nonexistent if Hillary Clinton won the election.
“Their jobs have been taken away, and we’re going to bring them back, folks. If I get in, this is what it is,” Trump said.
How do you tell if the president is lying? Check to see if his lips are moving.
It is easy to dismiss his comments as campaign bluster. However, real lives are at stake and young couples are leaving Appalachia to find work in other professions and make a life. We are all driven by the need to make a living. Despite strong personal history and traditions in a place, the economics of living there may cause us to leave as it is doing in coal country where mining jobs continue to be in decline.
U.S. coal consumption is projected to decline by nearly four percent in 2018 to the lowest level since 1979, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday. At year-end, appetite for coal will be a staggering 44 percent below 2007 levels according to NBC News.
The cost per kilowatt hour of electricity generated by new solar arrays is less than those generated in existing coal-fired power plants. Cheap natural gas extracted by hydraulic fracturing has taken new coal-fired power plants off the drawing board. Right or wrong, the power industry is switching to gas. India, one of the top ten global carbon dioxide emitters, has cancelled plans to build nearly 14 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants with the price for solar electricity “free falling” to levels once considered impossible, according to Ian Johnston at the Independent.
There are no easy answers for people impacted by our changing energy economy. Families that relied on coal extraction to make a life will have to revisit their choices regardless of what the president does or says.
When I was coming up the home where I spent ten formative years had recently been heated by coal. When my parents bought it the large gravity furnace in the basement had been converted to natural gas. It was an inefficient way to heat our home, but it was very reliable, and natural gas was less expensive and more convenient than coal trucks plying the alley behind our house to deliver. There is no going back to coal in home heating, or anywhere else.
The sooner we generate our electricity from renewable sources, the better we reduce greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere. No amount of presidential bluster can save the old energy economy, nor would we want to. Our politics isn’t there yet, but we will act on climate change. There is an existential urgency that we do.
Turn-Style Department Store, Davenport, Iowa. Photo Credit – Davenport Iowa History Facebook Page
In high school I worked part time at a discount department store called Turn-Style. Located on Brady Street near what was then the edge of town, the meager income enabled me to purchase a used Volkswagen Beetle and save money for college. I made my first contribution to Social Security while there and learned work habits that continue to serve.
Over the years, Jewel Food Stores sold Turn-Style to May Department Stores which converted it to a Venture Store. It was purchased by K-Mart. Today the building is a Theisens Home, Farm and Auto Supply store, owned by the same family that owns the store where I currently work two days a week.
In high school I worked in the drug department which sold consumable products that included over the counter medicine and hygienic products, candy, tobacco, nuts, greeting cards, gift ware, sugary drinks, and recorded music.
Most shifts I would spend part of my time stocking vinyl records, making sure any new arrivals made it to the sales floor, and the bins of albums were properly sorted and arranged. I picked records to play as background music before the days of Musak. There were no rules in the late 1960s and my supervisor seldom censored my choices. It gave me a chance to listen to music that wasn’t available on AM radio. I started buying vinyl and played it on my parents’ record player.
As my collection of records grew an issue arose: the distinction between being a music player and a music listener. It caused me some teenage consternation.
One of my neighborhood friends’ older brother was the drummer for a popular band called The Night People. They played at the Draught House next to the Mississippi River and the cool kids in my class went to hear them. I did not. I guess that made me a listener rather than a player, and I was okay with it. They would make fun of my friends and I when we talked about news from bands they had performed with.
I got my musical start right after the Beatles came to America in 1964. I persisted in playing, despite derision in our neighborhood. My song list included mostly folk songs I played by myself. On occasion I played with a small group or with someone else who was learning to play the guitar. It seemed like there were a lot of us learning to play then. There was always a divide between what music I played and that to which I listened.
In the end, a musician had to make a song their own. Bands like The Night People sounded just like The Beatles or Rolling Stones or whoever they mimicked. What art is there in that? Live bands like this were co-opted by disk jockeys who played original, prerecorded versions. If I was a music listener more than a player, it was to understand and adapt songs that might be a good fit for me. By all accounts The Night People were successful, and who ever heard of me?
During those years in high school I made a decision in the Turn-Style parking lot. A friend wanted to go to Woodstock. We’d heard about it the week before and he offered to drive if I’d come along and pay part of the gasoline expense. We talked about it for a while and in the end I said, “I have to work Saturday.” That was a decision easily made. In it I chose to be less a music listener and more a player. It made all the difference.
My story includes music, especially as I left home in 1970 to begin university. College began a period of adventure and learning that extended through my return to Iowa City in 1980 and subsequent marriage in 1982.
In following years I pivoted to providing for our family, which eventually included a daughter who had a musical training as part of her curriculum through high school. Somewhere between then and moving back to Iowa in 1993, the chords got lost and dissonant.
I had a nascent hope I could make a living playing music with no idea how that would work. The closest I came to it was when I flew to London in autumn 1974.
What would follow getting my English degree at the University of Iowa? To postpone answering that question I made a grand tour like people did in the 18th Century. With two thousand dollars in American Express traveler’s checks, a backpack full of clothes, and a satchel Grandmother made for me, I booked a flight from Montreal to London with a open return date. The trip was poorly planned and I had no clue where or what I would do once I arrived. I picked London only because English was spoken.
When I arrived at a youth hostel I met two musicians who had just arrived from New York. They had plans to find an agent and book some shows. They suggested I get a guitar and join them. I had no resume to present, just an assertion I had been playing since grade school. In any case, I bought a cheap guitar and made the rounds with them one day without rehearsals or a song list. I quickly grew skeptical, took their names, and decided to leave. It was probably best and the closest I’ll get to being a professional musician. That is, not close.
I carried my newly acquired guitar wrapped in the jean jacket I wore on the plane and headed out of London for a loop around Southern England. It included Oxford, Stratford upon Avon, Bath, Stonehenge, Salisbury, Portsmouth, Brighton and Dover. I played when I stayed at youth hostels and in parks along the way. I had no trouble meeting other travelers my age and made connections that would serve me while touring the continent. I practiced a lot to conserve funds and divert from the immediate need to find a place to stay each night.
Traveling alone, having my backpack stolen in Calais, going through Paris, then to Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany and Holland in rapid succession over 13 weeks made music a central aspect of my life. I got better at playing and playing with others. I used no sheet music, but listened to songs and figured out the chords in a style that suited me. I watched other musicians and learned from them. Music was not the whole experience as I took in architecture, paintings and sculpture as well. Music was something.
Music still is something. What exactly that is will result from this series of posts… I hope.
The holiday season is over and today I return for a shift at the home, farm and auto supply store. I’m fine… I’ll be fine.
Journey Home 
You must be logged in to post a comment.