An Old Testament View of Vacations

My dentist, Dr. D E Carroll a very competent man, looked down and patted me on the shoulder. He had applied a new topical anesthetic to numb my jaw so I would later not feel the needle prick of a syringe. Then in an unsure voice he asked his assistant for instructions. Did it take two minutes to numb or could he just stick me now? She said she couldn’t remember. There was a moment of dead silence in the room. Then both burst out laughing. Dental humor.

I admired that. I am a worrier myself and appreciate a professional approach to anxiety.

I come from a long line of worriers and first cut my teeth on vacations. Nothing fills me with trepidation like planning a week of pleasure and fun. I was raised an Old Testament Baptist and believe that God smites people who enjoy carbohydrates, mingle with pagans and whoop it---or as they say, a vacation.

Therefore I believe that a vacation trip only jeopardizes your future. I’m leery of door handles in public rest areas because you know they have been smeared with germs by the great unwashed masses. I always think of gonorrhea and syphilis which until this moment could not be caught from door handles but you become the very first to contract both at the same time and in this way. It will make medical textbooks, YouTube and Twitter. You will be packed off barking mad and foaming at the mouth to a nursing home that doubles as a truck stop. You are unfriended on Facebook.

Everyone believes you got it from sordid sex and you are judged guilty without having experienced the pleasure. Later your brain turns to talcum powder and you die believing you are Henry VIII. At your funeral public outcry has demanded your casket be shrink wrapped in plastic and instead of pall bearers they bring in a forklift and the undertaker wears a toxic waste moon suit. They bury you behind the maintenance shed at the cemetery.

Or perhaps back home your sweet old mother has fallen and broken her hip and is now dragging herself across the front yard in the cold night rain waving a flashlight at passing cars. You see all this in your head as you sit to take your first bite of dinner at a resort in Hilton Head.

Or maybe the pipes burst in your upstairs bathroom flooding the house and creating mold. When you return home a week later and open the door you inhale extremely virulent spoors. You develop a nagging cough and your eyebrows fall off which turns out to be the result of a fatal Brazilian respiratory disease so rare only two doctors in the country even know the name of it.

So you grow sicker and waste away. People hug you longer than necessary and silently mouth over your shoulder to the others in the room “Goner”. Then your wife comes to your bedside one evening to spoon feed you your evening bowl of tepid watery soup. She seems hurried. You notice she is wearing a pearl necklace and a black evening dress with spaghetti straps and a nicely dressed man is looking down at you from over her shoulder, smiling---it’s the doctor who diagnosed your disease. You stare at the ceiling and say in a weak raspy voice, “If only I’d never taken that vacation.”



So you’ve already made reservations for your summer vacation? Now you’re having second thoughts? Well, I’m sorry you didn’t ask me about it first. Good luck.

Sir, your screams are forgiven

Sunday and I am driving through my neighborhood observing picturesque yards with thriving lush greenery, shrubbery and multicolored flowers, the labor of each homeowner evident and offered for the viewing pleasure of any and all. Yet the children that live there could be telling chilling stories to their therapists about mental and emotional stress experienced in these very homes when back in April and May parents forced them to hard labor which in turn made for this beautiful yard. My son probably told the same stories years ago. I smile. This does not bother me. Those who make beautiful things happen are simply forgiven.

I am on my way home from church, a place founded on forgiveness. And good stories. Today’s story was about an adulterous woman and her accusers, the Pharisees, who wanted to stone her. She had made bad choices but our Lord forgave her, prevented the authorities from stoning her and told her to go and sin no more. A story all too real that shows among other things, people in authority can become calloused and willing to commit horrendous acts of cruelty.

The recent massacre in Houla Syria comes to mind. About 100 women and children, mostly children were simply killed outright. The Syrian president claims the murderers were terrorists, which may be the beginnings of a civil war, and so he demands greater power. Hitler took the same tack with the “Kristallnacht” (Crystal Night) as an excuse for emergency powers which ultimately led to the death of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. Interesting to note that when one person is attacked it is a story but when a hundred or millions are executed it is just a statistic. Man’s heart is cruel.

Which is all the more reason to enjoy this quiet street and it’s green lawns, toys on a front porch, a cat slinking around some hydrangeas, a bicycle propped against a tree—it’s the miracle of the ordinary. All of societies’ goals are realized here on this street-- security, peace, prosperity, a bed of orange Day Lilies, a child’s chalk writing on a driveway. There are men who would destroy this and men who would protect it.

But here today we are not interested in war or the politics of a corrupt Syrian or past dictators. Good stories all, but sometimes you wish people would get angry about meanness and cruelty.
I think of the man on the interstate highway last week that became enraged when I changed lanes. I thought I had given him plenty of warning with my turn signal and lots of space but apparently he felt I had cut him off. He pulled up beside me, rolled his window down and screamed obscenities. Then, for emphasis, he showed me his finger.

I wish he could show some rage for those massacred children. I like to think that later he felt embarrassed, hoped none of his friends saw him so that when he pulled into his driveway and saw the chalk message “I love Daddy” and saw his house and it’s lush green yard and unharmed children running to meet him, that he felt chastened. I hope that he got out of the car and realized his home was as he left it this morning and took a moment to look at all that was his. Earlier he wanted to stone me, but now with time to reflect I hope his rage is replaced by gratitude.



Good sir and father, thank you for your beautiful yard. Your family is safe and loved. Your public display of rage is forgiven. Now go and scream no more.

When Winnebago’s give way to stories

Ninety percent of the ten people I polled in my doctors waiting room believed that the price of gas will exceed $4.00 a gallon after the presidential election and dashed my hopes that oil prices would return to something normal—which we all know is about 30 cents a gallon. I could buy a Winnebago and drive around the country this summer and do Yellowstone National Park with air conditioning and lawn chairs under a roll out awning.

However Winnebago and RV stocks are wilting. When you sell big metal McMansions on truck chasses for as much as a quarter of a million dollars your clientele is rather select and may opt to buy a home in Cancun rather than face five o’clock traffic on an interstate.

When I was a kayaker I hated RV’s. You paddled to shore after a long day on the water only to see the campground filled with motor homes and hear the hum of air conditioners and see the flicker of TV’s sets through the windows. You would camp as far away from them as possible so as to keep yourself pure. You also learned that if you picked a good angle you could watch “ The Red Skelton” show through their windows while you ate your supper of cold Beanie Weenies.

The dream of easy travel lies deep within most Americans and once when I was 12 years old a friend invited me to go camping with his family in their Winnebago. It was wonderful to have your comic books on shelves and clothes in a drawer and you could use the bathroom all while hurtling down the highway at 60 miles per hour. I drank a lot of water for the fun of it.

Eisenhower transformed our society with the interstate highway system which was based on the assumption of cheap fuel, so we built houses with big back yards which made for long drives to the grocery store. We’ve forgotten how life looks on foot and now whenever I walk across the parking lot of a giant Wal-Mart I feel as though I’m approaching an enemy fortress
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We shall have to entertain ourselves in other ways. I predict harmonica sales will pick up. Screened porches will come back and so will fly strips. Story telling will return as a source of amusement for people on foot. I have never told a story to a clerk at the drive-thru window but you can walk up to the check out lady at Food Lion and make small talk and learn that her grandson is in a school play and suddenly you experience fellowship and humanity. She becomes a real person to you. People who are not real to each other are dangerous. They sometimes wear bombs in their clothes or go on shooting sprees in high schools. Stories and conversation gives us feelings for each other which allows the practice of the Golden Rule and that is the foundation for a civilized society and the freedom to carry three ounces of shampoo onto an airplane.

So when gas passes five dollars and goes on to six and eight we’ll learn to sit still and tell each other stories about our lives. I’ll tell one about me and a mountain camping trip when we sat by the light of a Coleman lantern and ate fresh caught trout and the night stars listened in to our stories and we rekindle the joy of talking to each other.



And so something is lost and something is gained and we know that is the real story of our lives.