Let Me Tell you about my Friend and Mentor, Emmett Daugherty

In 1974, I graduated from Lee County High School in Beattyville, KY, and needed a job for the Summer, before I started college at Morehead State. A good friend, Toni Wolfinbarger, told me her sister’s boyfriend was leaving Newnam’s Funeral Home and they needed someone to replace him. I talked to Cooge Newnam and he hired me.

That Summer I worked mowing Cooge’s steep backyard, sitting on the porch with Emmett Daugherty, Ronnie Paul Begley and Henry Sizemore; watching future customers go by, vacuuming the chapel, and even helping embalm people.

One day, Emmett’s aunt, I think it was, passed; so we took her up on the gurney in the old rickety elevator at Cooge’s and embalmed her. Emmett was the coroner and did most of the embalming work. I probably helped him with ten or twelve people, from children to the old. I watched him closely, especially the time it was his aunt. He was silent, his movement precise, efficient, and though I could usually never read emotion from him, I could tell that particular job affected him deeply.

Emmett taught me how to take flowers from the funeral home to the grave side and place them as they should be, how to set up the tent and take it down being sure to get it back in the truck exactly the way I found it; and much of the other work I did that Summer. I had never been around someone so precise and painstaking. I had always tended to be slapdash and disorganized.

On slow days as we sat on the porch talking, a question might come up, to which no one had an answer; a question such as: what type of tractor did Eddie Albert drive in Green Acres? Emmett talked less than the rest of us, but if we looked and he appeared to be seriously considering the question everything would stay quiet. Then, he would either tell us the answer or he would announce: “I don’t know.”

No one said: “I don’t know” the way he did. We knew he had carefully considered the question and since he knew a lot of things, we would all be patient until he was done reflecting on it. As a young man aspiring to know things and impress people with how much I knew, I learned from Emmett, it is more important to be honest with yourself and others, than to impress them with what you know.

Emmett lived so as to make the lives of others easier, more organized, less difficult. He thought more than he talked, and never seemed concerned with how other people viewed him. The question of who he was, was the one he never had to answer: “I don’t know”.

I loved Emmett Daugherty as a friend and mentor. I wish the family and friends comfort during this time.

Thoughts on Social Media

Do you walk around imagining status updates you might put on Facebook until finally one wells up inside you and you rush to your phone or computer and type it in, and then check back often to see if anyone has liked or commented? The desire to connect with others in this way seems entirely new, but surely those of us who do it, must have had some sort of desire like it before Facebook made it possible. What would that have been? Would it have been wishing to tell those we most love exactly what we were doing right then, thinking, planning, thought funny; a comment a child made, we wanted to share with our friend/relative? We may have wished for these things, but it was not easy to do. We could not always be calling someone up and saying, hey: “I hope I did not interrupt anything important, but our nephew, little Joey, just said:  ‘Rainbows are colorful.’ Isn’t that neat? Yeah, I thought so. Okay, bye.” They would have thought we were going crazy, right?

But now that we can send people messages, tweets, statuses, emails, etc., we know they will only get them right away if they are connected and if they are connected it is still their choice whether they respond or not; so it does not make us seem so presumptuous, or intrusive (crazy). They can always ignore us, we figure. But can they really? I mean, if you post something, or text or message someone; don’t you start getting suspicious if the usual people do not respond to you? Don’t you wish you could just ask them right then: “Why did you not reply or respond to my status update? Were you using the bathroom, because if you were, that is certainly understandable, and if you were driving, thank goodness you did not, because I want you to be safe, but if you were sitting there looking at your phone and you did not respond, what does that say about our relationship? Did you respond to other people who were updating, texting or tweeting instead of me? If so, does that mean I have come to be a bore to you? Is this the beginning of the end of our relationship?”

Is it going to be possible for us to be as productive as we were before this new need crept in to our lives? And will our desire to do great things, say to write scientific articles or literary works (those of us who are paid to do such things) begin to diminish now that we can get our jollies impressing Facebook friends, those who read our blog, or those who follow us on Twitter? Will those of us who have written for audiences prior to this, but where that audience has been reading our stuff weeks or even months after we created it; find the allure of less credible or professionally-relevant feedback - but more immediate feedback; too great to resist?

I have to admit, I am struggling with this when it comes to poetry. I have written poetry throughout my life, but prior to around 2008, when I became a Facebook user and 2010 when I created a poetry blog, I wrote maybe three or four poems a year. Now, I may write that many a month; and when I post them to my blog, even if few people view them; it still feels as if I am “published” and my dream of getting my stuff out in physical form, or even in e-book form, does not seem as urgent. The paradox is that I am more productive, but less likely to ever have my work judged by the traditional judges of such work.

Recently I had a company print all the poems from my blog: gloamtoglimmer and for a few bucks, they sent it to me nicely bound in the regular mail. I have it on the coffee table in our living room and ever so often since, I will have an extra minute and I pick it up and read a few of the things I have written. Some of it seems pretty good and I wonder: is this all that will ever happen to the things I am writing? Will I just keep posting them to my blog and having a few friends see them, for the rest of my days? And then when I am gone, what will happen? And honestly, I often end up further asking myself, what does it matter what happens to anything after I am gone? I mean, I will be gone, for God’s sake. In fact, it would not even matter if everything I wrote was acclaimed as the best ever written. I would still be just as gone and any feeling of pride over it will accrue to those who knew me and lived a little longer, but even they will be gone before too much longer and then it will be only those who admire such work in general, but after a while; what does that even matter?

Sometimes I find myself thinking, maybe the connections we make to people in real time or at least in fairly rapid fashion; are the most important ones. We feel them right then and if we string enough of such feelings together over enough years, might that not be sustenance for our spirit sort of like eating nutritious food is for our bodies?

There are so many more parts of this, but alas; I must get up from here and do something productive; maybe not more productive, let’s just say, productive in a different way, like taking the clothes out of the washer and putting them in the dryer. I will be checking back to see what you think. ☺

Letter I wrote my Dad in 2003 on his 74th Birthday.

Dad:

Today is your 74^th birthday. Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear daddy, happy birthday to you. That song seems much longer when you sing it, doesn’t it? Anyway, the reason I am writing this is I have decided to see what is in my heart on your birthday.

            As I have told you before, the life you are living is a classic. When you were still a young man, you dramatically converted to serve Jesus and over the years your dedication has come to inspire not only those around you, but I suspect even you. By that I mean, I bet when you look at fifty years of dedication to the same master, your respect for the master is renewed and your sense of who you are, the servant of one master, comes clearer than ever to you. You are steeped in riches of the soul, one of the richest men I know, in that way.

            This piece I am writing is about you, but inevitably, me as well; in fact - you and me.  Sometimes in life the opportunity arises to do what we believe to be the right thing and ever so often, doing it makes us feel better about ourselves too. So, yes this is being written as something of a thank you letter to the man most important in my life, but I must admit, it is also being written in part because I believe it will make me feel better about me and maybe especially you and me. I also think I am trying to tap a little of your inner strength for myself, through this process. So you see, I am not doing this strictly out of the goodness of my heart. In fact, it might be more apt to say, I am doing it to see what goodness is in my heart; thanks in no small part to you.

            Several years ago when Earl and I were playing tennis on one of his visits to Knoxville, where we lived at the time; it was hot and we were giving each other a real struggle. Neither of us is a great tennis player, but we are both old-fashioned competitors - I wonder where we got that? Anyway, we were sweating and pounding the ball back and forth at one another in the hot summer sun and I was beginning to consider giving up and letting him win or at least just not trying so hard, after all what did it really matter in the long run which one of us won this tennis match. 

            But then it occurred to me all of a sudden - this was what life comes down to. We are repeatedly faced with challenges and obstacles causing us to have just such inner conversations and one of the voices always seems to want us to give in or take it easy and the other says no, stand up and fight, give it all you have. These exact words may not have come to me in that instance, but the conversation goes sort of this way. 

A voice said, “look at you out here about ready to pack it in and say, you’re a better man than me, you win. Look at you, you’re just another creature in the universe, your life does not matter any more than the millions of others that have come before it or the millions that may come after it. It is all for no reason. Nothing you ever do will matter for eternity, so why do anything? These moments you are stringing together are as inconsequential as all the other moments of time, the universe smiles and frowns equally on every particle of matter and ultimately rules them all equally inconsequential.”

But as that voice was having its say, the other voice was preparing its response. This other voice can be quite persuasive too, when it takes a mind. The second voice said, “Get thee behind me Satan or whoever in the hell you are, but before you do, I want a word with your butt. What do you mean it all means nothing? Not only are you wrong, but the truth is exactly the opposite. Everything I do is profound, for when I think, it is the only time in history that anyone will ever think exactly that way, and when I talk, it is the only time in history anyone will ever talk exactly like that, and every time I look at a sunset, it will be the first and last time anyone ever comprehended it in just that fashion. 

So, look how wrong you are. Everything I do, and everything anyone does is spectacular and unique, and it goes together with all other phenomena, all other matter, to comprise this beautiful system that makes me and yes, even you Satan, possible; even necessary. So, don’t talk to me about eternal uselessness. 

You see that strapping young man over there on the other side of this tennis court? That’s my brother. He is important. Every breath he takes is precious, not just to him, but to me, to my sisters, to my mother, to my father and all those who know and love him. That connection we all have, that passion for our own lives and for the continuation of the lives of others we become acquainted with on this planet, is the realest thing in this universe. Yes, realer than you Beelzebub. And I have another thing for you to think about. You see these hands and feet and you hear this voice and you see and feel the results of the workings of this mind? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Before I leave this planet I plan to show you a few more things. If you are going to hang around me, you might want to bring a pencil and paper because I plan to show you the difference between useful and useless, what is needed and not needed. For starters, what is useless and not needed are your words of discouragement.

            Some day within the next several decades, I will cease to occupy this old body and at that time, whatever new process begins then after living is done, will take over and my current way of being will be finished. But between now and the end of this living process, I am going to give every tennis ball hit in my direction a quick ride back across that net and if it comes back I will swat at it again. There will be all of eternity for the next process, for these old bones and this flesh to intermingle again with the other living things. But right now by virtue of whatever accident or cause there may be, I have breath, I have strength, I have desire and I am going to give an account of myself on this planet.”

            Needless to say, that first voice turned his tail and ran and I did not hear from him again for some time. In case you are wondering about the tennis game, your favorite never-can-do-any-wrong son, Earl, broke the wooden racket he was using, Tanga’s by swinging it forward and stopping it too quickly – not even hitting the ball- so we went in and got ourselves something cold to drink. He was apologetic as they always are.

Of course all the apologies in the world were not going to bring back poor Tanny Bea’s Tennis racket. Remember that time you got to feeling guilty about taking toilet paper from the men’s room at J.P. Stevens and went in and made restitution? I keep hoping Earl will get under similar conviction about that tennis racket, but it’s been over fifteen years now.

           

            Perhaps the greatest miracle any of us will ever be part of is our own birth. Life, that’s what Viennie Mae James and John Wesley McCullough gave you and that’s what you and Joyce Elizabeth Spearman gave me. This gift is not one that we need worry about repaying or compensating anyone for, it is too valuable to ever be able to do that anyway.  However, there is something we can do, I believe, and that is to seek as much as possible to create an understanding between ourselves and those who gave us life and between ourselves and those who come after us. This understanding should be sought not to perpetuate myths or provincial attitudes toward people or ideas, but rather to line up vertical time with horizontal wisdom, remembrances of yesterday, hopes for tomorrow, united in the rich community of the present.

            My earliest recollections are of you reflecting back to me my worth as a person. You expected grown action, lofty thoughts, fast feet, a true heart, respect for authority and I tried my hardest to meet your standards. Remember the time we dropped mama off to get her hair fixed and I asked you how fast our ’57 Plymouth would go and you said, we could find out and so you had me get down in the floorboard beneath your feet and mash the gas with my hands. I guess you figured that if you let me mash the gas with my hands, any disappointment in how fast the car could go would not be because we did not give it everything we had. You steered and I pushed with both hands on the foot feed, gritting my teeth, trying my best to “mash that dal thing plum through the floorboard”. It was a two-lane road, the one that runs in front of Rehobeth Baptist Church.

            Of course, looking back, a man wonders how he survived sometimes, doesn’t he? I mean I doubt very seriously if the lord would have had much sympathy if we had wound up wrapping that thing around a tree or something, acting like pure fools that way. My guess is if we had prayed and asked him to stop the bleeding in our necks after our terrible accident, he would have just smiled and said, “Come up hither, my children, before you kill somebody else.”

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Let me tell you about my Uncle Jim Spearman

Jim Spearman, mom's youngest brother; two years older than her, at 80, died on May, 8th; to little fanfare. None of my immediate family went to the funeral nor did we even send flowers, because we were not told when or where it was.

I can't remember for certain the last time I saw him, but it would likely have been at mom's mother's funeral; in early 1998. I remember he said he was the ugliest man there, when I told him I thought he looked good. The top half of one his ears had been cut off in a car wreck. 

When I was a boy, we lived near him; near all my blood relatives, but we moved away in 1967, after which we only saw any of them at funerals or other odd times, averaging maybe once ever two years. Jim looked like a 1949 Ford, because the grille of that car looks like a grim, but likeable man's face.  He and mom's other brother, Paul; taught me to whistle. They both had big biceps from physical work, Jim's was round and steep, Paul's was broader. Paul looked like a 1954 Chevy.

Jim spent years in prison in North Carolina for stealing a man's car at gun point. When mom and dad went to get him out of prison  sometime in the early 1950s, dad flipped his 1936 Ford. None of them were severely injured.

Jim's first wife was killed, years after the divorce, by their son Leon. Far into middle age, he married Shirley, a feeble-minded woman who was the way she was, they said; because her parent's were first cousins. I don't want to be crude, but she was strikingly unattractive and one time she asked my brother Earl  if he wanted to "date her", since, as she said; he was a purty thing.

The last twenty years or so of his life Jim lived with different women across South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida. His children and grandchildren from the marriage with  Shirley were all raised by mom's saintly sister Lula May, and her wonderful husband; Wiiliam Major.

I don't know what to make of Jim's life story. It reminds me of something out of Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road. I could say I wish I would have seen him again, and that would be true. But after we discussed the weather, or lives and deaths we both  recalled; what would we have said?

Its funny what you remember from time spent with people you know you're supposed to try to know better, that you love because they were said to have loved you when you were little; but one of the last times I saw him, probably in the early 1990s, it was scorching hot, and we were at mom's mother's house in Williamston, SC., and Jim said: "It's too hot to go in swimming,"

So that's about it:  half an ear, a carjacking, bad luck with women, a big-round muscle, me able to whistle; and days too hot to go in swimming.

Let Me Tell You About My Friend (and Nephew) Matthew Lang

Matthew Lang was born in to THE GANG when he was eight or nine years old, so I guess you might say he was born again, and although this rebirth is not the same as being “washed by the blood”; we do believe in the security of the believer – which means: once a gang member, always a gang member. So, despite his becoming a “man” today, for us he will always be that precocious little boy with the quick replies; before the wooly mammoth days, before the saxophone, before Wal-mart, driving, NKU, nursing school, or any of the stuff he might be hiding now.

Most of us old heads fondly remember turning 21, though for me it did not mean more drinking (I didn’t drink before and I didn’t start, I’m just odd that way; I guess), it simply meant becoming what most people referred to as an adult; or to put it another way, one year closer to being considered wise. In my case, after reading Carlos Castaneda’s “Teachings of Don Juan” on becoming a man of knowledge, I sort of privately took that on as a project. I have since learned it is anything but a straight-line journey and definitely not directly correlated with age. In fact, it is more often one step forward and two steps back. Matthew is surely learning that now, because it is easy to see he has set himself out a course of lifelong learning.

Although he turns 21 today, it does not appear to be a major transition point, since he has for years been a hard-working, hard-studying person; finding the resolve to do what is required, able to be a student, band member, son, employee, and friend – all while holding on to the irreverent perspective on life we all know and love.

As is the case with a lot of people I have known who are inclined toward the medical field, Matthew spent a lot of his early years in the presence of physicians and nurses; given how his infancy was more complicated than most, although I will not and probably could, not recount the details for you. I guess he imprinted like a little duck on some nurse, because now he is on the verge of becoming a nurse himself, and plans to pursue more degrees after that.

Matthew is in good company with our group of friends since most of us were the first in our families to go to college; but I honestly do not believe I worked as hard as Matthew has. By the time I was twenty-one I had spent three summers in the dirty oil fields, but during college semesters, I relied on Pell Grants, Tanga’s social security and Raleigh’s occasional charity; to concentrate on my studies. Matthew would not know what it’s like to have free time, so let me just tell you now, Matt; it’s overrated; and you are right to stay busy, even though sometimes when I think of your schedule, it makes me tired.

Matt: your life is like reading an interesting biography being written right before my eyes and I can’t wait for the next page.

Happy 21st.

Let Me Tell You about My Friend (and Sister-in-law) Carla Turner

If I said in a little over forty years from now, something you’ve always needed would come into your life; no doubt you’d probably try to stick around long enough to see if I was right. That’s pretty much what happened to JR Turner. He waited for over forty years and then the right woman came along; and in 2001, he married her. April 1st (no wise cracks) is her birthday.

Her name is Carla Turner and since JR is my wife’s brother, she is my sister-in-law; and now, close friend. She strode into our group of friends without knowing what there was to fear, which is the best way to stride in really; and honestly, what is there to fear? We are an easy group to be around if you don’t mind being kidded for every single flaw you have, every little mistake you make, every little quirky habit you have and every time you can’t take kidding.

Carla talks to you like you're on the platform and the train she's on is pulling away; and that would be okay, because you could always mull over what she said after the train left; only there is no train, she's just talking fast and it always seems to be time for the next sentence.

When you look into the life histories of most of my close friends and relatives, it appears to be a competition for the most profound story of hardship; a mother widowed here, a nine-year old losing her father there, a helicopter crash over yonder, a father at Pearl Harbor on that fateful day. Carla competes well with her car-wreck tragedies, moonshining relatives and life lived by the Ohio river. You really don't want to get any of us started.

Carla's husband, my wife's brother, is not on Facebook or I'd tell you about him. Suffice it to say, everything about him says: I'll never change, except for his history of changing to accommodate those he loves and we all can see how much he has been changed by Carla. He now loves cats, tolerates a house full of teapots, and after living with only people his age for decades, has been an awesome stepfather.

I get grief from my wife for being the only vegan who does not really like animals. My usual retort is to say, I may not want to pal around with them, but at least I don’t eat them. Carla, on the other hand, loves animals; cats alive, and most other animals cooked and on her plate. Her love for cats is legendary.

I have never been a cat lover and honestly, I have never understood cats (or their lovers); except as they can help keep down the rat population. Most cats stare too much, seeming to have a hidden agenda; an agenda I have no real desire to know. Who knows, they may be thinking: if I were only larger, smarter, and more athletic; I would be killing and eating these silly two-legged creatures. At least dogs seem to respond when we talk to them, wag their tail gleefully when we come back home and play games of fetch with us. Cats are more like giant bugs than entertaining animals.

Unless I miss my guess, I now have Carla right where I want her; mad at me and ready to give a piece of her mind - at the speed of light. The good news is, she will not see me today or tomorrow or Sunday, her birthday, and she may well have calmed down once she does see me.

Now to make her feel bad for being mad; Carla, as you know, JR is dear to us all, so for you to pass our approval process and be accepted so quickly, was quite a feat. As you know, we are not an easy group to enter so late in our existence. Heck, I get the feeling, some of the gang likes you better than they do JR by now. So, you go girl, you talk as fast as you want to and collect all the cats and teapots you want, because you are a certified member of THE GANG!

And Happy Birthday, you April fool!

Happy Birthday to My Daughter Stephanie Kay McCullough

It is probably not possible to permanently elevate life with words; but as you know, I never give up on the idea. I sit here trying to be fresh, witty, to give you a lasting thought, or at least something to let you know how it feels to be me thinking of you, and loving you without bounds. As I have told you before, I will be disappointed if I leave this planet before giving a full account of myself in writing, and any such account must include an expression of my love for you; hence these words.

One of the great challenges of my life has been to find people with whom unedited speech is possible. Often the only choice I have had is to find a way of talking closer to the way those around me talk. I am not saying I cannot relate to people or engage in plain speak with them, but rather, that from time to time; it is nice to relax my editor and let the words come out the way they first appear in my brain.

                   

I have had a few friends who allowed me this unedited speech, but my fondest memories have been of you and me in the car with the words coming easily for us both.

You are someone with whom I can talk and never feel the need to edit. And when you speak with that beautiful rhythm of yours, it’s as if I can feel my mind relaxing. When I talk to you and we are really communicating, I feel compatibility between who I believe I am and what we say.

We now live separate lives and I am sure you love the freedom from my cloying nature. I can tell your current project is to find inspiration to guide you, to stay active, progressing; all while appreciating your life more than my driven nature has permitted me to. You have already demonstrated the capacity to enjoy each moment in ways I have never attained.

        

When we are young, people discuss our potential, our ability.  At my age, no one speculates any longer, but now they look at my productivity, at how effective or efficient I am.  We only have a short period of time to spend in what might be called “The Ability Years”, the precious time of expectancy, future-mindedness, of being a caterpillar. You are still in those years, despite your milestone birthday today.

But a few things you have already clarified, such as that you travel well, your memory is sharp and your perceptual habits keen, and that as your two 4000 mile drives this year indicate; you seek more from life than sitting on a couch or in an office chair.

Where we start our lives tends to be due the decisions of those responsible for our birth. From those put up for adoption to heirs of fortunes, the once placid embryos take what’s dished out.  Something wonderful happens, though, if we are at least mildly blessed by circumstance, because up from the horizon of our minds can come light enough to work by. 

          

My father prayed for my soul on a daily basis, wanting less for him and more for me each passing day.  His blind mother brooded over his future.  Her parents would have cringed to think she would spend her last twenty years in total darkness. 

I follow in that line. I use you as a compass, sun dial, and road atlas, all in one.  For better or worse, I am never any better or worse than what’s going on in your life at any given instant. I know, your life is not a possession of mine but yours to work out and it is that process I have learned to enjoy. I remember early glimpses of the wonderful adult you would become.

Do you recall the short period at age ten or so when you became fascinated by butterflies and moths?  We bought you the Audubon book of moths and butterflies and you and I went out into the field near our house and caught butterflies trying to match them to pictures in the book.  There was this one large brown moth that stayed for days on the rail beside the walkway leading up to my office at work. You figured out what kind it was. We even bought you a net and a type of scrapbook where you could “mount” the ones you caught, but you lost interest in the project when you realized you would have to kill the poor things and then look at the slaughter every time you opened the book. That was my first real insight into the depth of your compassion for other sentient beings and this is the greatest capacity we humans can demonstrate.

Then, shortly before Thanksgiving, in 1997; we drove past a dead deer that had been hit by a car. You told us later, seeing that deer caused you to reflect on how unnatural and cruel it was for human beings to keep and kill animals for food.  So you decided to become a vegetarian, partaking of your last hamburger at Backyard Burgers in late November, 1997. I was glad for your decision, but mostly pleased to learn of your reasoning, knowing it demonstrated the depth with which you were experiencing life.

As long as you live in such a way that brings you increasing hope and sustains this abiding love for the living; I will be thrilled to watch your progress, and no matter where your journey leads, my spirit will still try to reach yours, to send this message:  you are loved and your life is affirmed.  If you get your own heart’s permission for the choices you make, you never need ask for mine.

I love you Stephanie Kay McCullough and Happy Birthday!!!