Ramshackle Notes - #1
July 27th, 2014 / 2:40 PM / Sunday
Hot winds outside, wind chimes wildly clanging, slamming almost discordant, peerless blue sky behind ripped white billow clouds scudding overhead. The ramshackle house shudders and groans in the powerful winds coming from god-knows-where. Just a week or so ago, mornings were chilly and wet. Now the humidity is subsiding and the soil buckles up in thirst or the fledgling beginnings of thirst. I sit in the kitchen all too aware of my 44 year old expanding gut starting to balloon over my belt line, especially when I sit down. It can’t be helped, at least for the time being. Kids are almost done here in the kitchen, kids being Max and Zoey, the two oldest of five. They anxiously work to finish up and get up stairs to play with the ferrets.
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So Max came with me to Brookstone this morning. Brookstone is a rest home in west Omaha where I used to work as a CNA and then an activities assistant. I still go out there occasionally to do sing-a-longs and oversee Sunday morning services in the chapel. This particular Sunday morning, I preached about Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness concentrating on Christ’s replies to old scratch sallies and closed ended deals. The story is actually quite wonderful because Christ easily dispels evil, almost shrugs it off because he is at one with God the father, thy will be done and not my own, and when you choose to live this way, a hot wind outside clanging at the wind chimes stirring up dust and trash in its wake and drying up the unharvested roots of whatever-crops in their drying field beds, I can still see clearly my responsibility in the eyes of God. Jesus was a man completely in tune to God’s will, and God’s will encompasses all, from the rays of hot bothersome late summer sun to every nuance and rhythm that takes place in human interaction, the will of God prevails. If you fight it, the road is thorny. If you accept it, God can carry you over the thorns, if it be His will to do so. Personally I find it easy to thank God for the pains in life as well as the pleasures, it all bringing me closer to God. Anyway, that was the jist of my sermonizing this morning. Max sat in with the old folks and listened attentively. I wondered what he’ll think of all this when he grows to be a man.
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Clear-eyed hot breath day. In the 70’s people used to lumber around in such weather driving giant clang-axled station wagons with a million woeful leaks underneath to calico whole parking lots in grease spots, not to mention a dirt-dust-begrimed windshield to boot, men carting their whole families around, their backs sticking to their shirts and moistening the car seat in a tense human smell not entirely unpleasant. On the way to Hinky Dinky or twilight summer night Dairy Queen drive through, children in the back seat cozily pajama’ed and ready for bed after a tall icy-chilled tower of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream cone, parents tuned into crackle AM radio up front licking at their own cones before the ice cream melts and slovenly drips in the heat. Shadows are longest just before twilight and Nebraska is a wilderness in its ink-black night and stuttering house creaks in the dry summered prairie wind. Out here there are voices in the wilderness and prophets bones rotting in the ground.
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7:25 PM
Evening descends, winds still high but sunshine losing its heat, all in all a pleasant evening temp. I walked down to 33rd and California about an hour ago, purchased chewing tobacco, cigarettes, and two mini-pieces of beef jerky (can’t remember the last time I did that) and walked on home through a cool wind gusting up 33rd, probably from the north west.
Evening will settle everything down, enclose this Nebraska town in its solitary dark and final ink-splotch till sun up the following day. The week will start over again, me returning to my home-care job (same client now for almost a year) and the mornings are always good.
Ash cooked up delicious servings of potatoes, green beans, onions, and sage in a pan on the stove, boiled it all into a scrumptious healthy dinner-meal. She never ceases to amaze me with her cooking. George is off at a Loose Cannon practice (Loose Cannon is the name of his swampy blues band) and we have a plate ready to be warmed up for him. All the veggies Ash used were bought from a farmer’s wholesaler, good fresh veggies giving up the meat of their vegetable growth at the wee-start of harvest. The cool evening breeze outside signifies that harvest time isn't too far off. The land is ready to POP.
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