My very first memory is sitting in one of those canvass bottom, aluminun legged walkers, apparently I was not capable of walking at the time. I was watching them tarpaper the house that I was to live in. A twenty foot square with a chimney in the middle, one side a woodstove the other a pot belly. Our toilet was a"thunderjug" a porcelin pail with a top on it. It was emptied into the outhouse in the morning. We had a pump that you had to prime with the mason jar that stood beside it. Got to fill it after each use of the pump. Not a TV, not a radio, not a single piece of reading material. Crackers and milk for breakfast., maybe some fried salt pork. I could see the ground through the spaces of the floorboard. The house was on cement blocks, I could crawl beneath it.
Long summer days, playing in the dirt outside. Having bunnies and ducks, and chickens that always seem to go and get lost in the woods sometimes. A cold, hunrgy gray world. I was aware of the differences only when I entered school. My family was poor. Meat from a government can, lard, peanut butter, butter. The church bringing gifts on Christmas eve, and a huge basket of food. This was the world that I would learn.
Walking in the woods as a little boy, in the early Spring I could smell the sun upon the evergreen newfall beneath my feet. A glorious smell. And the older guys..."bend over Bruce, (as the ram set up in the other corner to bust my ass.), or how about.."Hey we caught an animal in a box and we can't get him out." (It turned out to be a skunk, tail arched, his ass two feet from my nose and like the stupid child inside me held on for dear life, holding on with a steel grip by the tail, and chasing all my friends through the cornfield, laughing until our stomachs hurt.) I stunk for weeks.
School was a train wreck. Being poor in the fifties and sixties had it's set of stigma. Sociality was pretty much limited by the dollar, believe it or not. Learning to fight, getting $5.00 a round to get my ass kicked paid off. I was somebody, but it was hollow.
A nine or ten yr old boy, is in the middle of elephant grass holding a broken stock AK-47, caked in mud. He has been popping shots at helicopters. The down draft of the main rotor (Uh-1C gunship ("Charlie Model") flattened the grass around him. A perfect circle of flatenned grass, like a golf green. He is a peasant child, they probably pay him .25 cents a day to take two or three shots. Harrassment rounds.
Jesus man, I cannot reconcile those years and my reaction to them. I became flat in affect. No emotions anywhere, I save them for the place 7000 miles away. We cannot reach the "here and now" mentality. We drink and laugh at the war. It is much too horrible to digest. So we twist it and elevate it to to the place that I heard about it (Fuck it man,....just fuck it). My brothers know the depth of this level of functioning in a cognitive world. There isn't one of them that didn't hear it at least once.
Escape..Two quick marraiges to "fix me". and take full responsibility for them. Two daughters, in their thirties now, in the divorce shuttle, and the different sides of the stories. Spent years trying to model behavior.
Camping, beaches, boats on the lake, trolling for Bass, roadtripping to Mexico every year. A stable loving marraige, (not withouit bumps), that stands stronger every day that passes. We traveled the world. Flying, scuba diving, yoga... on and on and on. It has been a life of adventure.
My major concerns in life have changed, my heart aches for those without freedom, food, clean water, the homeless that camp along the Creek west of the Springs, and then there's the guy who shows you his new car as he waxes it with a quart of $34.97 the most expensive wax, and his kids got dirty faces and momma is working her ass off and stumbling through the years, she has lost hope. But he's happy, sipping his mini-brew beer.
To the mountains my friends. Backed up to over 400,000 acres of Pike National Forest, sitting well above 8000 ft. My Golden retreivers, no fences, new D-mail every day. Gotta get outside dad NOW! The black tufted squirrel is my claim to fame here. I have managed to plant my fields with food. Deer food, bird feed, butterflys, bluebird houses. But my black boys are a challenge. Shy like you wouldn't believe. After 11 yrs I have seven of them, 22 ferral pigeons, 4 sets of seasonal ring neck doves, Bucks and does that lazily eat wtih their spotted fawn in the early mornings of Spring. The racoons hiss at each other under my bedroom window, 5 or 6 of them posturing. I can hear the pack of coyotes calling to each other, rounding up food, they can be heard for over a mile coming and a mile passing in the late night, and not one siren. There is no one racing up and down the street. People visit on their quads or tractors. The longest line at the post office I have ever seen is 4. We have a small bank, I think I have waited all of 3 minutes at the most to be recognised by name. I forgot my wallet and was in the little country store to buy wine. Holly said "I know where you live, bring it to me tomorrow". It is a magic home, one that embraces you. A place of solace.
From what.......from my life of course. It is time to integrate, I can't change that shit now. It was another me. 30 yr old Rocky was not one of the guys I find to be a real gentleman, nor would I have a relationship with that person at this point in my life.
I have adapted. I did not "settle" in the process.
Sometimes I feel 61. Most times I don't "feel" anything, I just go about my business.
I have a great hunger to serve the world. If only I had the ability to ease some of the suffering. We do what we can, and pray we can do more one day.
The Wanderings of a Winter's Mind
Rocky
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