by jphilo | Feb 11, 2021 | Reflections on the Past
The Forest Service Ranger Station in Camp Crook. The brown house in the background is similar to the one where Jane and Pam meet.
Jane threw her Bible away years before she moved to Little Missouri. Her lack of faith is a major player in See Jane Run! Finding a way to show rather than tell readers why Jane threw her Bible away was a real challenge. My daughter, who is doing a final consistency read through before the manuscript goes to the publisher, says a recently added flashback rose to the challenge.
The flashback is based on something that happened during my high school years. I had forgotten about it until about 10 years ago when my uncle–the inspiration behind Uncle Tim in the novel–invited me to look through the journals he’s faithfully kept for decades. I chose the one for 1973-74, which was my senior year in high school. I scanned pages for mentions of our family. One described a phone call to my uncle after I got home from school and found Dad on the bathroom floor. My uncle came over. He cleaned Dad and dressed him in fresh clothes. My uncle’s journal account ended with these words, not written out of pity but with deep compassion: Poor man. Poor wife. Poor family.
To be clear, I didn’t lose my faith after the real event. However, I used it in a fictional flashback to show why Jane threw her Bible away and abandoned her faith. The excerpt you’re about to read is an early scene. It takes place a few days after Jane moves to Little Missouri. On a walk around town she meets Pam, who shows her around the Forest Service campus. Here goes:
After the tour ended, I declined Pam’s offer of more tea.
“Then would you join us at church tomorrow and come to Sunday dinner?”
I wanted to say no. After all, I had wasted years going to church, following every “thou shall” and “thou shall not” in the Bible. Every night at bedtime, I asked God to heal my father. I prayed the same prayer night after night. But Dad didn’t get better. He got worse. Even so, I prayed up a storm. Until the day I walked the bathroom and found him huddled on the floor by the toilet, feces smearing the floor.
He gazed at the wall and spoke in a monotone. “I fell off the toilet.”
“It’s okay, Dad. I’ll call Uncle Tim.”
His jaw clenched. “It’s not okay. A daughter shouldn’t see her father like this.”
Uncle Tim got there as fast as he could and took over. While he gave Dad a bath, I went to my bedroom, found my Bible, and threw it away.
I opened my mouth to say I didn’t go to church, but opted for Iowa nice. “I don’t want to put you out.”
“Put us out? Dan’s grilling hamburgers, and I’m making potato salad.”
My mouth watered.
What do you think of the scene? Does it showing rather than tell why Jane threw her Bible away? You can leave your feedback in the comment box!
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by jphilo | Nov 20, 2015 | Family
Today’s the last day I’m in my home town. I walked by the house where I grew up and where Dad encouraged me to play fast and loose with shellack. This Fantastic Friday post revisits that memory and one of my few bonding moments with President Obama.
shellacking: present participle of shel·lac (Verb)
1. Varnish (something) with shellac.
2. Defeat or beat (someone) decisively: “they were shellacked in the election”.
First, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now he’s reviving dead language. Our president is proving to be quite the leader, at least in areas he hadn’t planned to pursue.
After his famous admission that the “Democrats took a shellacking” in the midterm elections, media groupies have used the word with the fervor of young adolescents imitating the most popular kid in middle school. According to the Christian Science Monitor, “It was Obama’s use of the word ‘shellacking’ that had the blogosphere talking.”
All I know is that every time I turn on the radio, broadcasters and talk show hosts work the word into their copy. They use it with eagerness and obvious pride, their intonation hinting at their delight and pride in using the same word the coolest guy ever in the White House uses. Pretty cool, huh? Huh?
They’re loving keeping up with the big guy, but I’ve had about had my fill of shellacking. In fact, I haven’t been this fed up with the stuff since the summer of sixth grade. Mom was gone for a week or two, taking graduate classes for her masters degree. In her absence, Dad worried that I wouldn’t have my 4-H project – refinishing an old end table – done for the county fair. So he roped our elderly neighbor into helping me glue and clamp the pieces together. Then Dad wheeled out to the garage to direct the staining, sanding, and varnishing stages.
He had me load the brush a little too heavily, coat after coat, so the shellac formed unsightly runs and ridges. My half-hearted sanding efforts between coats didn’t improve matters. The end result was less than stellar, and project only earned a red ribbon at the county fair. A real shellacking in my blue ribbon family.
To this day, every time I walk by that little end table in our upstairs hall, my shellacking debaucle comes to mind. Makes me wonder if Obama regrets his overloaded word choice as much as I regret overloading the paint brush years ago. Anyway, I think it’s pretty cool that the same word taught me and the big guy the same lesson – albeit through alternate meanings.
A little shellacking goes a long way. And don’t we both know it?
by jphilo | Nov 16, 2015 | Out and About
One of my earliest memories is of sitting with my big sister on our bed, the kitchen radio between us, waiting for Dad to read the market report for our hometown radio station. Our bedroom door was tightly shut to avoid feedback from the dining room, which was HQ for Dad’s broadcast.
The glamour of hearing Ole Oleson announce–”And here’s Harlan Stratton with the morning market report for K-L-E-M, 1410 KLEM.”–sent shivers of delight down my spine. Listening to Dad’s voice come through the radio was magical.
Dad’s radio career was cut short by the progression of his multiple sclerosis, which soon left him unable to read. But KLEM’s magical aura lingered clear through numerous high school treks to the station to promote the theater productions that were my lifeblood in those days.
This week I’m in my hometown again to speak at 4 northwest Iowa libraries, the Le Mars Public Library included, about caregiving. Monday morning, at 11:45, I’ll join the city librarian at K-L-E-M KLEM to talk up the Le Mars event. Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can listen to 1410 KLEM live from wherever you may be–in the next room or in the next continent.
Dad’s been gone 17 years now, and his last radio broadcast was 50+ years ago. But if his name comes up during the broadcast and my voice wavers, you will know that the magic of hearing Dad’s voice still lingers. No longer on the radio for the morning market report, but forever in my heart.
by jphilo | Oct 9, 2015 | Uncategorized
This Fantastic Friday post comes from October of 2007. It’s one of the first blog posts ever published on Down the Gravel Road. I can’t remember the name of the person who’s funeral is mentioned. But every day, I remember and treasure the lesson my dad taught me each day of his life.
On Monday, I went to a funeral for a man from our church. His children paid tribute to their dad during the service. He’d been a wonderful father, who took them hunting and fishing. He coached Little League, encouraging and teaching every child on the team. They mentioned that throughout their adult lives, when they reunited with childhood friends, their friends said hello and in the next breath, “How’s your dad?”
Maybe I shouldn’t confess this, but their memories saddened me. They reminded me of all my father couldn’t do with us. Don’t get me wrong. Dad was a vibrant man who loved children. He would have been a great Little League coach. And though he wasn’t a hunter or fisherman, he would have led our 4-H club. He would have taught us to raise, show and judge cattle because that was what he loved.
But he couldn’t do any of that because multiple sclerosis put him in a wheelchair when he was thirty, my sister was six, I was three and my brother was a baby. So I was sad at Monday’s funeral, not only for the family of the man who had died but also for what our family lost to Dad’s illness.
For the last few days, God has comforted me with truth. Over and over I’ve pictured Dad in his wheelchair while he lived at home or in his bed at the nursing home. And in every picture, his wide face is serious, even sad. Until one of his children or grandkids comes into his presence. Then his face breaks into a big grin that shows his square, white teeth and his green eyes light with delight.
And that is what Dad taught me: a father’s delight in the presence of his children. His delight didn’t come from what we could do for him. He was delighted because we were his children. We had taken time to be with him.
So now I’m thinking about God the Father. When I enter His presence, does His face light up? After all, I’m His child too.
by jphilo | Feb 13, 2015 | Reflections on the Past
This week marks the beginning of a new Gravel Road feature called Fantastic Friday. Each Friday a fantastic blog post from the past will be given an encore airing. I hope you enjoy what you read as much as I enjoy thumbing through the archives and choosing them.
With Valentine’s Day almost here, this post about Mom’s Valentine wish (circa 2012) sprang to mind immediately. It truly is a favorite post because it shows the depth of Mom’s love for Dad, who died in 1997 after a 38 year battle with multiple sclerosis.
When Mom and I kept our standing lunch date last Tuesday, I mentioned that our next lunch would fall on Valentine’s Day. “That’s kind of fun, Mom. What would you like for Valentine’s Day?”
She thought for a few seconds. “Well, what I really want for Valentine’s Day I can’t have.” She fiddled with her coffee cup. “So I might as well not mention it.”
“Go ahead,” I encouraged her. “What do you really want?”
“What I really want is a few more years with your dad before his mind went…” She paused and moved her fingers in a circle at the side of her head. Her brow furrowed, and her blue eyes looked sad. “…you know, before he was…”
“I know,” I whispered.
“He wasn’t with me that way long enough,” Mom sighed.
I nodded, not knowing what to say. There are no words for Mom’s loss. Dad’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at age 29, less than 10 years after their marriage. The love of her life struck down by multiple sclerosis. The end of her dream of being the wife of a county extension agent and mother to an increasing brood of kids. The loss of the bread winner, the protector, and leader of the family she loved so much and taking on those roles for the next 38 years as Dad slowly failed and finally died at age 67.
Now, 15 years after his death, what does Mom want for Valentine’s Day?
Not chocolate.
Not flowers.
Not a card.
She wants a few more years with her husband as he once was.
I looked at her, across the table, and said, “We can’t know what life would have been like if he hadn’t gotten sick. But I do know the life you gave us was a good one. You raised us well.”
She nodded and smiled. “I did a pretty good job, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I agreed and helped her into her coat and out the door.
Hiram’s off tomorrow, so we’re going down together to see Mom. We’ll take her to lunch at Culver’s, one of her favorite places to eat. Mainly because she loves their frozen turtle custard.
Over dessert, we’ll tease her like Dad did. We’ll talk about his love of ice cream, his silly jokes, his infectious grin, the goofy songs he loved to sing, the cribbage rules he invented as he played.
Compared to what Mom has lost, lunch at Culvers doesn’t seem like much. But perhaps, sharing memories of Dad and indulging in the laughter and dessert he loved will bring him to her in some small way. Perhaps, over frozen custard, we can give Mom a memory of what she’s wanted for Valentine’s Day for years.
If you would like to see a certain post on Fantastic Friday, leave a comment in the box below, and I’ll try to find it. Happy Friday and Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
