Credo est

Part 1

Pretend that I am right; that our every thought and action is determined by the unalterable laws of cause and effect; that we are like so many rocks being tossed about as they roll down a hillside.

Peggy returned from settling her mother’s estate in Mississippi with a collection of family photos. Among those photos were school pictures from the 1940s of Peggy’s aunt for whom Peggy was named.

When she was in her forties, Aunt Peggy shot herself while lying in her bathtub. Her family came home to find her helpless with a collapsed lung. She recovered.

Aunt Peggy soon shot herself again. This time, she was left a quadriplegic. Several years later, she died.

Had I been a boy in her school, I would have tried to date Aunt Peggy. I know this because I like the way her eyes look in those old photos—mischievous, sensual, flirtatious—qualities irresistible to young males... Would you want to know how you will die?

I look at Aunt Peggy’s old photos, so filled with promise and life, and I wonder what she would have said had an angel offered her a vision of her final years? Among all possible lives, hers would have been among those that might be described as purest hell.

I knew her before she shot herself, but having moved to Oregon, I never visited her afterwards. It would have meant a long trip and, knowing something about her life, I had no thought that she would talk to me openly.

Her family blamed Peggy’s husband for her attempts at suicide. It’s easier to blame someone, anyone, other than your daughter or sister, I suppose. But if I am right, she had no choice. She never, from the foundation of the universe, had any choice. Would it have mattered? Unless we were able to know where our choices would lead, the freedom to make different choices would be of questionable benefit. I’ll give you an example.

A local man was a professional bodybuilder. He wasn’t among those who are pumped up on steroids, but a man who was sincerely devoted to healthy living. One day, a squirrel ran into the spokes of his bicycle. When he woke up in the hospital, he was informed that he was now a quadriplegic, and that he might never be able to live without a respirator. He insisted that the respirator be removed; it was, and he died.

Two people on opposite routes reach the same end; the one who never wanted to die chose death, while the one who longed for death continued to eat, and by eating, to live. I can make no sense of this, and if I am right, there is no sense to be made, because neither really got to choose. Their paths were determined from the foundation of the universe.


Part 2

I’ll tell you something that I have learned about suffering. Suffering admits no visitors. No matter how much you want to be understood, you cannot; or at least, I cannot; or at least, I feel that I cannot. This is mostly bad, but it is not altogether bad. Sometimes during the day, I will be thinking about the hours I lie awake hurting, and there will come to me a certain nostalgia, an almost glad anticipation of the coming night. Yet I would not for the space of a heartbeat choose to suffer. It is another irony to see some poorly defined good in that which I wish with my whole heart to avoid.

What is this good?

The recognition that I am thrown back upon myself to survive such nights. I subsist on hope for a better future, it is true, but I cannot help but think I would want to survive even if I knew I would suffer equally every night for the rest of my life. I cannot explain this except to say that suffering brings the possibility of redemption. But what is redemption? Redemption is freedom from appearances. Redemption is to know reality at its worst, yet to still love reality. Or so it comes to me. Maybe I am insufferably pollyannish; I suspect I am.

Why?

I knew a man who lived across the street from another man whose wife died. No one saw the bereaved for weeks after the funeral, so they finally broke into his house. He was there, in his chair, still dressed in the clothes that he wore to the funeral. He had sat, and he had urinated, and he had defecated, and he had eventually died.

If Peggy were to die, I would know suffering. I often think to myself that my situation is bad, but I know that it is merely a stubbed toe compared to her death. The sun can revive or burn. Suffering can strengthen or destroy. There are no guarantees. There is no rationale. There is no benefic plan. There is only death after life, but not, so far as I can see, life after death. When the boulder reaches the bottom, it stays at the bottom.

I judge my life - Part 5 - Best friends

Dogs. I’ve always had dogs. First, there was Mike who was old when I was born and wouldn’t allow anyone but family near me. I use to pee on Mike as he lay on the ground, his great tail thumping the earth. Mike went into the woods one day when he was seventeen and never came back. I was told that it was the way of dogs to die alone, and I believed it at the time. Now, I don’t know. I’ve had few dogs who got to choose.

The mailman missed Mike terribly, having run over him several times through the years. Dogs regard mailmen as persistent intruders who would steal everything and kill everyone if not chased away daily, and it’s hard to convince them otherwise since, by all appearances, they are 100% successful in protecting their homes and families. Everyday, the mailman comes, the dog barks, and the mailman leaves. It illustrates David Hume’s conviction that, just because one event follows another, we can’t assume that the one caused the other; but how many dogs have read David Hume?

I don’t know what dog came after Mike, there being so many, and them dying so young. Cars killed them for the most part, either outright or later. Some might have been saved, but country people didn’t take their dogs to the vet; they just got new dogs. Peggy and I treat Bonnie and Baxter like children, but when I was a child, dogs were more like to contract laborers. In return for barking at intruders, we fed them, wormed them, pulled their ticks, and dipped them in creosote when they got the mange. That was the deal, and dogs were too loyal to form unions.

Our dogs invariably came from places on the side of the road where people dumped their garbage. In a typical scenario, Dad would be scavenging in one of these dumps when he would find a litter of puppies. When he got home, he would tell Mama about them, and being softhearted, she would tell him to go back and get them, which was surely what he wanted to do anyway, or else why would he have said anything? They were usually too young to eat solid food, so she would feed them with a doll’s bottle. When they got bigger, she would give away all but one or two.

I got to name our dogs, and not being a terribly original kid, I always used the same three names—Wolf, Tippy, and Sassy. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was way more than the cats got; they were all called Tiger. I wrote the following true stories in 1960 when I was ten. I copy them as written.


Sassy

“Sassy was about the best dog I ever had. She was very playful. She wasn’t famous are anything like that. But she just gave you a warm feeling.

“We found her and 4 other puppies in a ditch on the roadside. She had a pretty color of white. Dad did that is when he was coming home from work during a rain one morning when it was to wet to work. He came home and told us about them, and mama told him to bring them home. Gay and I went with him. I don’t know the date. We fed them out of a doll bottle.

“Sassy only lived to be a little over a year old. I remember we used to get out and play with her and the other dogs. We gave all of the puppies away expect two.

“When Sassy died I was raking the grass, and dad was cutting it. And a car turned around in our driveway and Sassy started to chase it, and as soon as it got in the road Sassy got under one of the wheels. She turned and ran for the house and fell in the front yard. I ran and got mama and dad they said she was breeding inside. In about ten minutes later she died. She is berried in the back yard of our house. And we berried her on the same day. Gay and I prayed and singed for her.

“She left five puppies just like before. When she died I know she was trying to tell me something. I think she was trying to tell me she loved me and to take care of her puppies. She died in the evening of June the 19, 1959. I wrote this on the evening of January 13, 1960. I call the day that she died Dogs Day.”


Wolf

“I don’t remember much about Wolf, but I do remember he killed chickens. Well anyway, he was one of Sassys puppies. When Sassy died he was a orpan. That was the second time we had five orpan puppies.

“After Sassy died we to care of him and the other puppies. They became pretty big to. Even bigger than Aunt Annies puppies “Pal,”

“When got grown he started killing chickens. We whipped him but he wouldn’t stop.

“We used to play with him a and our other dogs in the yard. He fought the other dogs off so he could have all the food. He was very rough.

““Oh Yes,” I almost forgot we was talking about him killing chickens. So one Sunday we came home a found about 5 chickens dead.

“Ma Ma wanted Dad to shoot him with my new gun. But we decided to take him off. That is all I remember about Wolf.”

The End


My great-great uncle, King James Newby lived in Arkansas with his wife, Molly, and a pack of coonhounds. Molly complained bitterly about the dogs barking, digging, chasing chickens, and pulling laundry off the line. After years of being ignored, she gave King an ultimatum: “King, either the dogs go, or I do.” His answer was: “Me and the dogs are sure gonna miss you, Molly,” whereupon Molly kept her word and moved to Mississippi. When my father visited Uncle King years later, he found the old man living alone on a diet that consisted mostly of eggs, the shells of which he threw into a barrel beside his woodstove. After a few days, my father got up the nerve to ask, “Uncle King, do you ever think about taking another wife?” “Humph,” King snorted, “I’d rather sleep with a wet dog than with any woman that ever lived.” Thus is illustrated the loyalty of the men in my family.

Stupid old stupid old

Some fascinating—no, unbelievable—geographic facts:

The southern terminus of the Cascade Mountains is Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They exit the state east of Meridian and end somewhere in Alabama.

Portland is the largest city in Mississippi. It lies in a north south line between New Orleans and Memphis.

There is an area of small barren mountains just southeast of Brookhaven, Mississippi. I spent 37 years in the area without even knowing about them. Now, they are among my favorite places to visit.

The eternal snows of Mt. Hood loom large just east of Jackson, Mississippi.

Mississippi is known for its mild summers.

I often encounter such facts in my dreams, and am challenged to make sense of them. Since they are facts, I am able to do so. When I awaken, I realize that I had my facts somewhat, shall we say, confused, and I am forced to abandon them. I had rather have the dream facts because, in my dreams, Mississippi is an improved version of Oregon, and I am eager to move back.

Peggy never confuses the two states in her dreams, but then she wasn’t a Mississippian; she was an Air Force brat with Mississippi roots. She has already lived in Oregon far longer than she ever lived in Mississippi. When she was a kid, she hated the place so much that she made a vow to never fall in love with a man who lived there. Then she met me.

If I had my rathers, I had rather live someplace close enough to Mississippi that I could easily visit (it being 2,500 miles from the Willamette Valley). The problem is that I don’t know where that would be because I need wilderness, and wilderness is hard to find in the South. Here, people become lost in the woods while taking a Sunday afternoon hike, and they are NEVER found; their BODIES are never even found. You would have to work really hard to pull that off in the Deep South. You can hardly even escape the sound of people in the South. Here, there is wilderness. Here, there are mountains. I couldn’t give those up. But today, on my blog, I heard from a California woman who grew up 20 miles from where I did, and I felt that longing, that kinship that I never feel for someone who grew up twenty miles from Eugene.

Being from Mississippi is like getting a stain on your best shirt that won’t wash out, and that people from other places never seem to get on their shirts. You don’t even know why you can’t rid yourself of stupid old Mississippi because, after all, what is so special about the stupid old place? The stupid, humid, suffocating heat? The stupid fireants? The stupid mildewed everything? The stupid, provincial, impoverished, undereducated, pathetically obese, and grotesquely waddling fundamentalist Republicans who consistently outvote their Democratic counterparts who look like themselves only in a different color, and who don’t have much interest in voting despite all the rigmarole of the ‘60s? The stupid impossibility of finding whole grain foods or vegetarian options? Sure! Who wouldn’t want to live in Mississippi? Same humongous box stores and tacky fast food joints as in the rest of the country only in a Third World setting with no alternatives.

“Why, Snow, I haven’t seen ya’ll in a coon’s age. How are your folks?”

“They’re dead.”

“Oh, my, that’s just too bad. I didn’t know they was that old. You know, everybody used to say that your mamma was just the best little cook they ever saw, and that your daddy was such a hard worker. The last time I saw them was out at Mt. Zion when Uncle Elbert died, and they was looking kinda poorly then come to think of it. Look now, I gotta run, but don’t make such strangers of yourselves. Ya’ll drive out and see us sometime when you’re back home.” Course, we might like you about as much as we like pus from a dog's anus, but Mississippi don’t call itself the Hospitality State for nothing, so we have to talk like this even when we don’t mean it.

Why, why can’t I be done with Mississippi? I have no family there (except for one sister who would NOT be glad to see me); I have no friends there; I own no property; there’s nothing in particular that I’m dying to get back to. Missing such a place is like having a mental illness; it is self-destructively irrational. Still…

Peggy’s mother died there last summer, and I told Peggy that if she wanted to move back to be near her father during his declining years that I would be willing. She looked at me as if I had offered to hang her upside down with no clothes on and dunk her in Crater Lake (way deep, way high, way cold). But what if she had said yes? I would have gulped, but I would have moved. God knows, I would have moved. I would have regretted it before I saw Eugene, Oregon, in the rearview mirror, but I would have moved.

I judge my life - Part 4- The unpainted house

I passed my first ten years in an unpainted house (photo 1) on a gravel road (photo 2). It stood a few hundred yards from where Peggy and I were building our new home.

I was often lonely because the only other children in the area were cousins who were a few years older than I and whose mother (my father’s sister) didn’t like my “city woman” mother, and who consequently didn’t like me. The fact that my Granny—with whom we lived—made no bones of the fact that she loved me more than she had ever loved anyone didn't help relations. Yet, I remember those years fondly because my father (photo 3) was saner than he would later become, and as far as I knew, my family was a happy family.

Until my sister was born in 1954, five years after myself, I was the center of the universe to my parents, my father’s parents, and an elderly dog named Mike (photo 4) whose fangs kept the rest of humanity at bay. I remember peeing on Mike as he lay in the dirt flopping his big tail against the ground. I considered this great fun.

Our other close neighbor was the Floyd King family on whose property was a gravel pit that was home to the water moccasin that killed their little boy. Like a lot of people, the Kings had a section of their yard that was swept. A swept yard is a child’s delight—cool, non-itchy, and smooth for toy cars and trucks.

Grandpa was opposed to indoor toilets for sanitary reasons, as he said, and even after we got electricity, it was prone to fail after every rain, so kerosene lamps lined the mantle. Our water came from a well that consisted of 8” concrete pipe that was sold in sections and descended a hundred feet or more into the earth. The long and slender well-bucket was raised and lowered by a hand crank, and had a float in the bottom that opened to allow water to enter, and closed when the bucket was full. I considered the well a mysterious and fascinating place that descended almost to the center of the earth and welcomed the toss of an occasional pebble followed sometime later by a muted splash.

We burned coal for heat—and perhaps for cooking for all I know. This now strikes me as odd since south Mississippi was hundreds of miles from the nearest coal mine. Yet, we had a little outbuilding that contained nothing but coal. Coal was an exceptional substance, unlike anything else I had seen or imagined, but I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t like the mess it made. We had other outbuildings as well, all of which were covered with unpainted planks that had grayed in the weather. One was for smoking meat, another for chickens, a third for hogs, a fourth for tools, and a fifth for a garage. The biggest one was for cattle, and it had a loft. Only horse nettles grew near it, probably because cattle wouldn’t eat them. I say this in retrospect; I don’t remember being curious about much of anything at the time.

A little way down the gravel road was a gristmill, and an occasional mule-driven wagon bearing a family of Negroes passed the house. Sometimes, they let me ride with them.

The Mississippi heat was pervasive for eight months out of the year, and even worse at night because my mother didn’t believe in fans or open windows after sunset. “Drafts” and “night air” carried disease, she said. She also worried about buzzards. The South surely leads the nation as the home of choice for vultures, and my mother was convinced that they dropped germs. She would look out from time to time when I was outside playing, and if she saw them circling high overhead in gentle glides on their great wings, she would call me in somewhat frantically.

Rattlers, cottonmouths, copperheads, red wasps, yellow jackets, and roosters were more realistic threats. The one I feared most was roosters because that was the one that plagued me most, but my worst encounter was with a speckled guinea hen. Unknown to me, it had its nest in a ditch, and it flew atop my head one day when I came too close to the eggs. I ran toward the house screaming as it clawed my scalp, but I nearly forgot my terror when the screen door flung open and my elderly Granny (photo 5) came charging across the yard with blood in her eye and a broom in her hands. It was surely the first time she had run in decades, and it was no doubt the last. One species’ maternal instincts had clashed with another’s, and I’m happy to say that mine won.

When I was almost five, Grandpa died. I have pictures of us together (photo 6), but I only have one memory of him, and that was because he did something unimagined; he scolded me. I was sitting among the chickens at the time (photo 7), and all of us were happily eating from the same trough. I didn’t even know he was around when he suddenly began yelling as if I had done something terrible. This man who had beaten his own sons had never even raised his voice to me, his favorite grandson.

Soon after his death, we got a bathroom, and it was also about this time that my father gave up his job in town and built a small grocery store in front of our house. He and my mother also farmed, but when the store burned one night, the money from farming wasn’t enough, so he eventually went back to maintaining the holdings of Gerald Kees, a rich man and the local Buick dealer. I still have the melted coins from the cash register. My father naturally suspected arson.

When I was eight, my father gave me my first real gun, a .22/.410 over-and-under (two barrels, one atop the other). I went hunting alone that first day, and killed a bird that was singing in a pecan tree. Its shattered body didn’t give me the feeling of triumph I expected, and I sought to atone for my sin by having my Granny cook it for me. I used my gun mostly for shooting opossums that got in the hen house. I left their bodies for my father to remove.

I can’t say now why my father exposed me to death when I was so young. Every Sunday morning, he would have me kill a chicken for dinner. I was too young to kill it outright, so he would hold it while I sawed its head off with a butcher knife. Then, he would toss it from us, and we would watch it “dance” as the blood splattered. I didn’t know what death meant or that a chicken could suffer, so I laughed. One day, I saw my father kill a stray dog with a piece of pipe, and since my best friends were dogs, I began to understand death, and my laugher stopped. Maybe he thought he was making me tough so I could better face life, but it didn’t work.