“What is wrong with those imbeciles?”  The question echoed in my head as I labored to complete my task.  I was angry!  Why in the world couldn’t they anticipate that I would have had this problem when this guitar was being designed and built in that high-dollar factory, with its multi-million dollar machines for shaping the top and sides, the jigs for assembling and gluing the myriad pieces together, the plating process for producing the high-gloss finishes on all the metal components?  It wasn’t rocket science, after all!

What was this horrible design flaw that had evoked such an angry outburst?  Had they built the guitar with too short a scale, thus causing the instrument to play out of tune with itself, as well as any other accompanying musician?  No, the scale was perfect, the harmonics sounding clear and pure at each successive node; all producing the exact pitch anticipated.  That wasn’t it.  Perhaps, the structure was flawed, with a weak dovetail at the junction of the neck and body, causing a separation between the two components.  Again, no.  The structure was very satisfactory, with no imperfection to be found.  Then, was it the finish?  Had the factory technicians neglected to sand the sealer completely before applying the lacquer?  Were there horrendous imperfections in the surface of the instrument?  Again, the answer comes back.  No.

You see, I had spent an hour of my precious late-night time installing a pickup system in this guitar and I was to the last stage.  The holes had been successfully bored, the surfaces of the pickup and the bridge saddle matched exactly, all the adhesive pieces put into their respective locations.  The installation had been trouble free, but I was behind schedule if I was to have time to write for a few moments before heading to bed.  The final step of the job, installing the strings, was the simplest.  The new bronze strings would be laid out from the bridge to the tuning machines.  The little tapered pegs would push the ball-end of the string down through the bridge and then slip effortlessly over the metallic ball to lock it into place.  If the ball remained below the tip of the peg, it would certainly launch the plastic device like a missile across the room as the string was brought up to pitch.  Here was the essence of my problem.  This was the horrific design flaw over which I was angrily exclaiming.

As I struggled with each string, it was necessary to rotate the peg rapidly left and right, then left again, until it slipped over the ball-end of the string.  Why, I bet I spent an extra five seconds on each string, as it went on in its turn.  I griped the whole time.  Didn’t these jokers know that all it takes is a simple angle cut on the bottom of the peg to avoid this?  How much profit would it cost them to do that simple step?  What could it cost them; two seconds work, perhaps two cents a peg?  What short-sighted pencil pusher was insisting that they put these inferior pieces of junk in their guitar?  As I got more and more frustrated, I labored harder and harder at the process.  All of the sudden, a thought occurred to me!  What was I doing?  Why in the world was I struggling with this, when all it took was two seconds work to rectify the problem?  Taking a single-edged razor blade and cutting just the corner off of the lower edge on one side, the next peg was prepared before you could say “mountain” (or even “molehill”) and slipped easily over the ball-end of the string and it was done.  Sure, the better scenario would have been for the makers of this fine instrument to do the right thing in the first place.  That said, it was a huge waste of emotional energy and time for me to stubbornly do it the hard way just because they hadn’t foreseen my predicament.

Of course, you saw the solution all along, as I ranted and raved.  This is a frequent problem of mine…this over-reaction to miniscule issues.  There are times when I believe I’ve got it whipped.  I take pride in a small victory here or there; I may actually have been sensitive to my need to adapt just for once, and then something like this episode comes along to remind me of my propensity to go to pieces over nothing.  I’m guessing that we all do it though, in our own way.  “This is not my fault!”  You’ve said that, right? Or, how about, “It’s someone else’s responsibility”?  We justify our self-centered reaction by quoting our job description.  Never mind that the solution is within our ability, nor that the result will be the absence of the hassle and frustration of the ever-present issue.  Why not be a part of the solution?  We can “curse the darkness”, or we can “light a candle”.  Stubbornness chooses the former and stubs its toes stumbling around.  Wisdom always chooses the latter, and saves the pain and suffering for all within the light’s reach.

If some late night, you happen to be passing my shop and you see a wild character pacing the floor, and pulling his hair and shouting, don’t worry about me.  I’ll get it figured out eventually.  Just like the less-than-bright character in Tolkien’s epic books, I can see through a brick wall, given time.  Some of us are just slower at it than others.

“‘Then, I will do it myself,’ said the Little Red Hen.  And she did.”
(The Little Red Hen~American folk story)

“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.”
(Anonymous)

Have you ever hit a barrier you didn’t even see?  Eyes wide open, watching where you’re going, and suddenly you’re stopped dead.  You probably think I’m talking about an esoteric principle, with some hidden, deep meaning, but I’m not.  Okay, to be honest, I may get to that later.  For now, I mean a real, physical barrier.  I remember the day I hit one of those.  It wasn’t pretty; all blood and screams, but in this case, there was no one to blame but myself.

Way back in my carefree childhood, the long days of summer meant freedom.  None of this “I’m bored, text me” garbage I read frequently from my young friends today.  We filled the days to capacity with adventure and activity.  Our only concern was to be sure that we got meals and were home in time for the curfew.  Other than that, we were up before the parents, fishing, or biking, or wandering the neighborhood in search of friends to hobnob with.  Biking was the favorite.  No, not the twenty-one or twenty-eight speed road bikes of today, not even the three speed axles for us.  We rode whatever we could get our hands on and we made them better (or so we thought).  Did you know that cutting the front forks from a thrashed bike and sliding them onto the forks of a functioning one would give you a chopper?  Okay, it was a poor kid’s chopper, but to us it was the ultimate in cool ( I think we actually said “neat”).  Miles and miles a day, we rode those monstrosities, caring not a whit that we looked utterly foolish to most onlookers.  Of course, being the youngest meant that I got the cast-off bikes, and on the day in question, I was riding a rusty old junker, which had not even the decency to have the extension forks added.

Now, where was I?  Oh yes!  The blood and screams.  After a day in the sun, I was headed into the yard for the last time.  It was approaching the time when I would be in trouble if I was late, so I cut between the trees in the side yard, instead of entering the property via the driveway.  As I flew over the handlebars, head first, I had a brief moment of clarity before the pain hit me.  That wire stretched between the two trees?  I had placed it there just a day or two before.  No particular reason, just had the time to fill and the wire was handy.  In my brief moment of clarity, as I flew through the air, I thought, “You stupid idiot!”  That was all the time I had, because suddenly my head hurt.  Worse; I was bleeding profusely from my right thumb, where my hand had gotten caught between the wire and my handlebars.  This obviously, was where the screaming came in, since that was what I was doing uncontrollably by that time.  Of course, Mom was there quickly, with first aid and comfort, along with a few pointed questions about the source of the wire.  The embarrassment of the injury being self-inflicted took all the enjoyment out of the bragging, which normally followed such an event.  Even when the thumbnail fell off a day or two later, there was none of the standard “show and tell”, which would inevitably have followed that development; the injured party in this case hoping for as little notice as possible.

As I considered that long ago event, I was reminded of a more recent occurrence, now part of the local lore, regarding a highway which had fallen into disuse and the lady who laid claim to it.  You will understand that I must issue a disclaimer regarding any concrete knowledge of the event, since I have not talked with any of the principals, but knowing the parties involved, it seems to me a likely scenario.  It appears that the state had built a highway nearby, with a shorter and straighter route up the hill from the river than the old road, so the aged one was used only in very bad weather.  Since the woman owned property on both sides of the old highway, she thought it might be nice to have title to that too, without the nuisance of strangers being able to drive up it.  Discovering a law that pertained to abandoned roadways, she sought to have the highway declared as such, but failed because it was determined that the road was still in use.  Her solution to that was to string a logging chain across the road about halfway up the part to which she was laying claim.  It was a disaster waiting to happen.

Late one night as a storm came in, an old farmer decided to take the old road instead of the new, just to be sure he didn’t have any problems making it up the very steep incline the new road offered.  In the dark, he didn’t see the chain which spanned the space ahead of him.  Fortunately, he was moving slowly and the only damage was that the chain broke out his windshield at it brought his vehicle to a sudden stop.  If some script writer in Hollywood had written the story, I’m sure it would have ended with decapitation and the roof of the car torn off completely.  More blood and screams.  Maybe it’s a good thing we just have the local storytellers to relate this one.  I’m not absolutely sure, but it’s my guess that traffic stopped moving up that old highway within a very short time of that event.

Is the story true?  I don’t know, but the truth it demonstrates is unassailable.  Sometimes, as in my childhood experience, we put up barriers in our own way, but frequently, the barriers just appear, through no fault of our own.  In such cases, if we can’t go through, we find alternative routes to get where we’re headed.  I’m fairly sure that driving up to the chain and waiting for it to be removed would have accomplished nothing.  Going onto the lady’s property to remove the chain would almost certainly have resulted in injury, since large dogs and shotguns always come into the local lore centering around property questions in that sector.  You’ll have to remind me to talk about a canoe trip the Lovely Lady and I, along with a few friends, took along the river down that way once, many years ago.  Sometimes the best route, when the immovable barriers crop up, is around.  As we say, it doesn’t do any good to beat your head against a wall.  The wall doesn’t feel it and the head’s function isn’t helped much either.

The simple truth is that we learn from hard lessons.  I never again rode my bicycle between trees without being able to clearly see the path I was traveling.  This, in spite of the fact that the wire came down the day after my accident.  Folks learned to avoid that blocked off road.  They still make the journey into town, just by another route.  We adapt, we learn.  Life is truly an adventure, with opportunities and disappointments.  The beauty of this journey that our God has set before us is that both the opportunities and the disappointments move us closer to our goal, both helping to equip us to make the trip in grand style, enjoying the journey.

Keep your eyes peeled for the junk across the road, though.  It seems likely that there may be more coming up…

“Failure is not fatal.  Failure is our teacher, not our undertaker.”
(William Arthur Ward~American educator, writer, and pastor~1921-1994)

I got a note from Mrs. Spyker yesterday.  She noticed that I would be having a birthday soon and sent me her best wishes, along with some news about how her family was doing.  I haven’t seen her for forty-five years.  It’s great that we’ve been able to renew our very old friendship, but her note brought an old memory to mind; not a very enjoyable one, but it was one which had some part in shaping who I am.

The Spykers (pronounced “speaker”) are missionaries in Mexico even still, although at one time, Mr. Spyker was also a building contractor.  The family took a break from ministry for a few years about the same time we were getting settled in the home in which I spent most of my growing up years.  The incident I recalled recently, happened while they were building their house which was essentially next door to ours, although a narrow side street separated us.  The house was made completely of concrete block, including the inner walls.  It was a little unusual, but block buildings tended to be cooler than most homes constructed of other building materials and, being in a very warm climate in the days before air conditioning was common, it made sense.  Of course, it was impossible to keep a six-year old kid away from the construction site, with the cement mixer and power tools filling the air with attractive noises, and the structure rising up from the ground.  Where there had been an empty lot, a building was literally growing, since all the block walls had to be laid from the ground up at the same time.  It was not just one wall being put up at a time, as you would expect with a wood structure.  My intense curiosity was to have disastrous consequences.

On this particular day, all the walls had risen to about five feet tall, towering above my head.  I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I snuck in anyway, just to watch the block layers plying their craft.  They worked quickly, first slathering a layer of mortar on top of the last course which had been laid, taking the eight-inch blocks from their helpers who constantly kept them supplied, and setting them into place, tamping them down with the handle of their trowel.  They would level them up with the string which had been stretched from one end of the wall to the other, pausing to make sure of the level after each course was completed.  Every once in awhile, one of the block-layers would take a funny top-shaped steel device out of his pocket and holding the string it was attached to at the top of the wall, would let the “plumb-bob” dangle down to the floor, checking to be sure the walls were plumb and not leaning at all.  This is where my part came in.  As I watched the men, I had gradually leaned against a short stub wall behind me. In height, it was just as tall as the others, but it was only a short length of wall between interior doorways.  Because of this, it wasn’t connected to any other walls.  You can guess what happened in short order.  As I leaned, the wall began to tip.  I yelled; one of the men carrying blocks dropped his load and leapt behind the wall, pushing it back up into position.

It wasn’t immediately clear to me why the men were all so angry, but I knew I had done something terribly wrong, even though my intent hadn’t been malicious in any way.  Mr. Spyker was immediately in front of me, asking me, no…telling me in very clear language that I was not to enter the building zone again.  He did explain to me that if the wall had gone over into the next wall, they might have been rebuilding the whole house, since the domino effect was a definite possibility.  He finished up by saying, “You have to keep your eyes open if you’re in here; and, you have to know what you can lean on and what you can’t.”  Crying and ashamed, I headed for home and went straight upstairs to my bed and bawled.

Lessons learned?  Wow!  Where to begin?  To start with, this domino effect was a new idea to me.  To think that one little error at a single point in a huge house could cause a problem which might require a complete rebuilding of the whole project, was mind-boggling.  It was just an accident!  Was it really possible that a little boy of forty pounds, leaning against a wall of sturdy concrete blocks much heavier than he, could wreak such havoc?  In spite of my embarrassment, I was unbelievably relieved that the man had caught the wall.  I thought that would be the end of the incident…right?

Not quite.  It seems that the section of wall I had tipped that little bit, had to be completely removed and then rebuilt, block by block, from the concrete floor, all the way up to the level at which it had stood before.  As the wall tipped, it broke the mortar joint at the floor, changing the level of each course.  Obviously, it would no longer be plumb either, so down came the wall, right to the floor; a fate I thought had been avoided by the quick thinking of the fellow who caught it as it tottered there.  So, in spite of my relief, workers still had to spend precious time and energy rebuilding a wall that moments before had been perfect and solid.  All because of one little six-year old boy.

My mom was fond of maxims.  You know, “If it had been a snake, it would have bitten you”; “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”;  that kind of thing.  Her comment this time was, “Curiosity killed the cat.”  I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I didn’t think it fit.  I wasn’t hurt a bit, but I had caused all that damage for others to deal with.  What a burden for a small lad to carry.  I still remember the shame and the desire to find a hole to climb into.  But, like most things, I got over it within a few hours.  Hopefully, the lesson has lasted a little longer.

What are you leaning on?  Pretty solid, is it?  Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.  If your prop gives way, who else is going to be hurt?  It’s easy to think that our actions and decisions will affect only ourselves.  But, time and again, that proves to be a falsehood, because everything we do has a domino effect.  It might seem a little less severe than that; more like a ripple effect, but the end result is the same. Lives will be upset and turned upside down, needing to be put right.  All because we are putting our trust in something that isn’t solid, isn’t able to stand up to our weight.

Sometimes what seems to be solid ground is nothing more than shifting sand.   You might not expect the six-year old to know the difference, but we’ve got a little experience under our belts now.   The more I consider it, the more I realize that we’ve come to put our trust in stubs of walls, not able to hold us up; Money in the bank, Governments, homes, guns; the list goes on and on.  Maybe that’s what the Psalmist was thinking when he wrote, “Some trust in chariots, some in horses; but we trust in the Name of the Lord our God.”  Now there’s something solid on which to lean!

No more leaning against unfinished block walls for me!  Now if only the rest of the decisions in life were that easy to figure out.    

“When I was a child, I talked like a child; I thought like a child; I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man,  I put my childish ways behind me.” 
(I Corinthians 13:11)

“Lean on me when you’re not strong.
I’ll be your friend. I’ll help you carry on.”
(Bill Withers~American singer/songwriter)

I bought a pig in a poke last week.  Okay…really it was a pickup truck.   But the idea is the same.  The local university, where the Lovely Lady goes each day to spend time with her friends, was offering the truck in a sealed bid auction.  What’s that?  Oh yeah…She actually is employed by the university library, but my take on it is that she has entirely too much fun there to call it work.  A few weeks ago, she showed me an email about this truck, with high miles and not running.  The university department which owned the vehicle had decided not to put any more time or money into it and was offering it to the highest bidder.  I decided to take a chance on it and submitted a bid.  My theory was that if I couldn’t get it to run, at least I could sell it to the scrap yard in town for pretty close to what I paid.  The pig in the poke was towed home last week and it was running by the end of that day.

By now, I’m guessing some of you are wondering about that “pig in a poke” thing.  Word nerd that I am, I wondered about it too, so I did a little research.  I’ve heard the phrase all my life to describe buying something that might turn out to be a good thing or not.  As my friend, Andy says, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”  At least, I think he means about the same thing.  (Andy’s brain operates on a much higher plane than mine.)  In my research, I find that the phrase dates back to medieval England, when you might be wandering along the roadside toward the marketplace and find a farmer carrying a cloth bag, which was called a “poke” (hence our modern word pocket, from poke-ette, or little bag).  Asking him what he has in the bag, he would reply, “A suckling pig, fattened up just right for roasting.”  You could see the squirming, wiggling mass in the bag, so the price would be agreed upon and you would head for home with supper “in the bag”, so to speak.  Arriving home, the bag would be handed to the lady of the house and it would be opened to reveal…a large cat!  You’ve been taken!  The false farmer (probably just a tramp who grabbed a stray along the road) would be miles away with your money before you let the cat out of the bag.  Yep!  That’s also where that saying originates.  Anyway, the secret is revealed and you have an inedible cat, with nary a sign of the pig for which you bargained.

I hope the word nerds are satisfied, because there is still a bit more of this story to tell and I’m already running out of space.  I told you the truck was running by the end of the day.  I did not say it was running well.  Overall, I was pleased with my purchase, but the motor ran roughly, with a strong gasoline smell being emitted as it ran.  The optimist in me wanted to believe that a little injector cleaner would take care of the problem, so I took a trip to Wally-world to buy this elixir of youth for old engines.  The additive in the tank and a few gallons of gas later, I took a test drive.  About four miles down the road, I looked in the mirror to see sparks flying behind me.  This is not a good sign.  Onto the shoulder the truck was pulled and, moving around to the grass verge, I knelt down and looked under the truck.  Somehow, the catalytic converter is the only thing I could see in the dim light.  Of course, this might have been because it was glowing red-hot!  In my memory, it was just like the molten steel you see in the movies of the old factories in Pittsburgh, but that also might be an exaggeration produced by my astonishment at seeing such a thing within a foot of the gasoline tank on the underside of the truck.  You see, I was sitting right above the tank, so I had a vested interest in it not being ignited by the hot converter.  I took the truck directly home and called a mechanic to schedule a consultation with the expert.

Within a day or two, we should know if the cat’s out of the bag, or if I really did get a good pig for my money.  I’m hoping for the latter.  That said, I’m keeping the phone number of the salvage yard handy, just in case they need an old stray cat.

The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy.  The transliteration of the quote from Robert Burns’ sad ode “To a Mouse”, while seemingly a bit depressing, actually helps me to put things in perspective.  We can’t see the whole picture, but just have pieces to the puzzle.  It doesn’t stop us from trying different pieces, from turning them around and checking to see if the fit is right.  We just need to know that not everything is going to come to a happy conclusion without some flexibility along the way.  I’m starting to see that pretty much everything we attempt in life is like “buying a pig in a poke”.  That’s not to say we shouldn’t attempt to make good choices, but it becomes clearer day by day, that even the best researched moves we make don’t always produce the results we have planned for.

I’ll keep working at fitting my pieces together one by one and will have faith that the great Puzzle Maker knows His craft.  It’s a good thing He does, since it’s a cinch that neither my puzzle assembly skills, nor my mechanical ability are going to get the job done without help.

“If I had more skill in what I’m attempting, I wouldn’t need so much courage.”
(Ashleigh Brilliant~American cartoonist)

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
(John Lennon~English singer/songwriter~1940-1980)

They’re closing down my old elementary school.  The article in the hometown newspaper says that the school board has decided the maintenance costs are too high to justify keeping the school open.  The new use?  Offices and storage space.  The place I spent six of the formative years of my life will no longer enrich the lives of children in that South Texas city where many of the events about which I have written happened.  The newspaper article was brought to my attention by another friend the other day, so I posted it on an online page which plays host to a few generations of alumni of that school.  The result was amazing and even a little confusing.  There had been no activity in the past year on the page.  Now, a couple of days later, I have to scroll down on the page again and again and again, still not reaching the original posting of the article from a mere forty-eight hours ago.

I’m trying to figure out this phenomenon.  As long as the status quo remained, no one was concerned; we didn’t even deem it prudent to expose our memories in public.  Tonight, many aging adults share a common bond with people they have never met, simply because the use of an old brick building changed.  As long as the routine was unbroken, we were content to let our memories lie unexpressed.  Now we are compelled by some unseen force to talk about first grade teachers, principals, lunch tokens, Halloween carnivals, and crossing guards with complete strangers, whose only connection to us is this sixty year old building and its history.  Whatever the impetus for the conversation, I’m thoroughly enjoying it!

Memories are funny things, though.  It is possible to get so tied up in the past that we miss the import of the present and the potential of the future.  That’s why I love having children around me – because they lend an onus to make sure that we help their memories to be happy ones.  The events my grandchildren are living through now will be the memories they share with old friends forty and fifty years from now, just as I do now with you.  If all we do is live in the past, neglecting the present, we risk abetting in forming memories of dysfunctional and unhappy interactions, instead of bright, joyful ones.  I also have a few of those dark memories (as I’ m guessing you do), which I’ve not dwelt on, either in my mind, nor in my writing, simply because I’m not sure either would be profitable.  Some may be woven into a few of these pages when it seems beneficial, but most are best left in the dim shadows to do no more damage.

I’m convinced that we can learn from the past, but also that we must live in the present, as well as having hope for the future.  To that end, a generous dose of memories from years gone by, mixed with dreams for the days still to come, seems to be a reasonable tonic to make the present a very acceptable place in which to live.

Our memories don’t fade simply because building are torn down or re-purposed.  We don’t lose sight of loved ones, simply because they no longer walk this earth with us.  Our memories are a gift, given by a loving God to remind us of the good things, as well as the less happy events which have shaped who we are.

I remember with fondness the line to the cafeteria, one child after another, rubbing our lunch or milk tokens against the brick wall.  Those little plastic disks soon wore down to tiny nubs, but still entitled us to the meal or drink we had paid for.  In much the same way, as we age and the years erode the clarity of the events and memories, we still continue to reap the benefits of those early days spent learning, and growing, and living.

Maybe while we’re remembering the past, we can take some time to make a great memory or two for the future today.

“We must always have old memories and young hopes.”
(Arsene Houssaye~French novelist~1815-1896)

“Old things are passed away.  See?  All things have become new.”
(2 Corinthians: 5:17b)

The old Chevy sat out in the middle of the horse pasture.  I had let slip to a customer that I had a 1962 Impala that I was going to restore, and he immediately volunteered the information that he owned the same make and model and would be willing to sell it.  I didn’t need another car and started to move on in the conversation, but he steered it right back.  “No, I would sell it for parts.”  I asked him if the car was complete and he replied, “Right down to the hubcaps.”   I didn’t need any hubcaps, but there was one thing I knew I would have to have before the restoration was complete on my car.  “Is the windshield good?”  I probed.  The answer came back immediately,  “Perfect.  Not a single crack or star.”  I knew that a new windshield would cost me a hundred and fifty dollars if I installed it myself, so I made an offer.

“I’ll buy the car for a hundred dollars, on one condition.”  He wasn’t impressed with my offer, but wanted to know what the condition was.  “I’m going to take all the parts off that I want and leave the rest of it where it is.”  It wasn’t much of a proposal and I really didn’t expect him to jump at the opportunity to be used as a salvage yard, but his wife was a few feet away, nodding her head vigorously.  He accepted my offer.

A week or so later, my little girl and I made our way through the rickety gate back to where the old flivver sat; a derelict in the middle of the overgrown field, with a few wildflowers scattered around and three or four horses grazing at the back fence.  The car really was in too good a condition to be cannibalized, but I was fixing up my Grandpa’s old car, not some other vehicle with an unknown history.  The little girl played nearby, as I started removing trim inside the passenger compartment.  I really wasn’t worried about her, but I thought I was keeping an eye peeled for trouble.  Evidently it wasn’t good enough, because all of the sudden she screamed and ran for the car where I was.  It seems that horses are just as curious as humans, and they weren’t sure what to make of this miniature person invading their bailiwick.  They had gotten fairly close before she noticed the movement and looked up to see a giant creature towering over her.  In the safety of Dad’s presence and the car’s interior, she calmed down quickly and was soon chattering on about the beautiful animals and whether she would ever be brave enough to ride one or not.  I finished removing the trim from around the windshield and then decided that the last step of the removal process needed two adults, so we picked up the small parts I was taking and headed out.  The horses escorted us out, so the young lady elected to be carried to the gate, a rare occurrence with that one. 

In another day or two, I returned, sans daughter, but with a brother-in-law to assist.  We cut the gasket around the glass and pushed gently on the upper edge of the windshield inside the car.  It gave a healthy amount, so we worked together, the Lovely Lady’s brother outside with his fingertips in between the rim of the glass and the channel in which it normally laid, and me pushing a moderate amount at about the same place as he was pulling, only from the opposite side of the glass.  The process was much slower and more difficult than we anticipated, and we were winded well before we had progressed a fourth of the way across the top side.  We took a breather and talked it over.  “Why don’t we use a little more pressure on the inside, this next go-round,” the brother-in-law suggested.  I was just as eager to be done with the job as he and wondered aloud if it would hurt to use my feet.  The soft rubber soles of my Converse sneakers could do no harm, surely.

Those, as my mother would say, were “famous last words”.  We returned to work and he grasped the glass from the outside once more and this time I placed my size 10 1/2s on the interior side and pressed gently.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t so gently.   The disastrous result was an instantaneous “POP!” and just as rapidly, a crack appeared from top to bottom of the precious windshield, about ten inches over from where we had applied the pressure.  The only thing I needed from that car was ruined!  My razor-sharp bargaining skills had netted me nothing but a few hours work and a huge disappointment, to say nothing about the hundred dollar-sized hole in my pocket!  I pried the hubcaps off the car and left.

I laughed on the way home, though.  Somehow my mind seldom leaps to similar situations before I get myself into trouble, but on the road back to the shop, I recalled that fateful Sunday afternoon a few years prior, when my good friend and I were trying our hand at replacing one of the flat windshields in the old church bus.  Easy-Smeazy, right?  Flat piece of glass, new rubber gasket…What could go wrong?  We had set the gasket and glass almost into place and were just popping the final inch or so of glass into the place where it would be perfectly flush all the way around.  The large glass was reluctant to settle into place, but, hey!  The rubber gasket would give some around the edges wouldn’t it?  That’s what rubber does, right?  We forced the glass into place the last sixteenth of an inch and the job was complete.  Both my friend and I stepped back to admire our workmanship.  It was whisper-quiet, but we both heard it…the tiniest “zzzzzip” reached our ears and we searched for its source.  There.  Right in the middle and at the bottom edge of the three-foot tall glass panel, a crack about 1/4 of an inch in length was showing.  No…It was 3/8ths of an inch long now…then 5/8ths, creeping its way from the very bottom of the glass inexorably toward the top.  “Drill a hole!  That will stop it!” he suggested excitedly.  The only problem with his solution was that we were out in the country and had no power tools at all.  We jumped in his truck and tore down the dirt road, three miles cross country and three miles back with the drill, to find that the time it had taken to get the drill was just exactly the amount of time it took the crack to traverse the pane of glass.  We watched in dismay as it disappeared under the lower edge of the rubber gasket across the top.  When the church sold that bus ten years later, it went to its new owner with a cracked windshield on the passenger side.

Is there any lesson to be drawn from these two episodes?  Not really.  Oh, I guess you could work out something really deep from it, but I actually only mention them in the hopes that they are as funny to you now in the light of day, as they have been to me, squirreled away in the secret vault of my memory.  While they were happening…Disaster!  But we get over these mini-disasters and faux-catastrophes in time and then, looking back, see them for what they are, just good memories of spending time with friends and learning a lesson or two along the way.  If I had the power of the Doctor in that quirky Brit Sci-Fi series, “Dr. Who?”, and was able to travel back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing about either event.  I’m grateful for friendship and companionship along the way, sharing in my ineptitude, as well as in my accomplishments. 

I read daily in the social media of friends who are having horrible days.  I hope that recording them in a public forum now, doesn’t preclude these times from becoming just more amusing and educational memories years down the road.  We all need the opportunity to laugh at ourselves and enjoy life, with all its bumpiness, for what it is…an adventure not to be traded for any perfect fairy-tale ever imagined.

Today is yet another chance for us to fashion more good memories on the road to our final destination.  Why don’t we settle in, ignore the cracks, and enjoy the trip!

“…The most dreadful of all Bilbo’s experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most – which is to say it was the one he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards…”
(Excerpt from “The Hobbit”~J.R.R. Tolkien~British author~1892-1973)

“Try not to have a good time…This is supposed to be educational!”
(Peanuts character Lucy Van Pelt~created by Charles M Schulz~American cartoonist~1922-2000)