A Philosophical Waxing

The last few columns have gotten me to thinking (to a certain extent) about character traits and emotions. What traits to I have? Why, to what extent? Each of us believes that we are certain ways......are we correct in how we perceive ourselves......sometimes yes, sometimes no..... For instance I "know" that I am barely into middle age, vigorous, quite handsome (in a rugged way), with a devastatingly brilliant smile....then I look in a mirror, and remember...oh, no I'm older with white hair, lines in my face and don't smile often because of the gappy teeth, and vigorous!!! Even getting to the mirror wore me out.

So what about ourselves aside from the purely physical and hence easily checked upon characteristics? What traits do we actually have? I'm talking about things like integrity, wit, charm, charisma, bravery, intelligence, spirituality, industriousness, a will to win, patriotism....you get the idea.

Looking at my father as an example, not counting looks...how would I describe Frank Spencer.
A serious mien, hard working, dutiful, responsible, respected, respectable, quiet, reserved, industrious, steadfast, loyal, honest, sober, accomplished.

Mom; hard working, cheerful, outgoing, creative, single minded, fun loving, dedicated, dutiful, non-complaining, romantic, practical....you get the idea.

Hmmm, that wasn't how I was intending to go on this subject, but...what the heck.

They certainly weren't perfect people...they each had their faults, although in the rose colored glasses that are hindsight, the faults tend to be glossed over...how about rose colored sun glasses? Mom was born with a world class "worry" node in her brain.....you will be happy to know that she left that intact (after years of nurturing it) to my sister.... She would get exasperated easily, and obsess on something trivial. Dad had no patience for fools (and look who he got for a son), he was obsessive about work, quite shy and hard to know. Boy those sun glasses are working well for me today, hard to think on this line. Might come back to this later.

Now....I have a chore.....why is my mother one of my heros? That's hard to put into words......When I moved home in 1992 I found my best friend.....we were so alike in many ways, but so vastly different in many others.

She came out west to get over a broken hart at the end of the war. By the way, she had me do an internet search for her ex-boyfriend. Took me a few days but I found out he was a retired Air Force Colonel living in Georgia. She just smiled and walked away....I think she only wanted to know if he was still alive and had done well.

But enough of that......

Mom always worked hard....long and hard...as they used to say in the west....."from can til can't" and very seldom did she complain about it. To any "Liberated" women out their....not that one would read anything by me.....grin... Mom always described herself as a housewife first.....that's a hoot, because she was a housewife and also put in a good 30 to 40 hours a week at the store (with out pay) and usually had a part time job of "only" 20 or so hours a week!

In spite of this, she almost always had a smile on her face and was everybodies good friend. I think I wrote earlier about her lack of profanity. Not that she was strait laced, just that she was raised to believe that a "lady" didn't swear. Believe me, she was a Lady (notice the capital L?). If you went somewhere with Mom, you darned sure better expect to be with someone that was dressed appropriatly for the occaision....I'm not talking modern day appropriate either! I'd better not get started on that aspect of life.

She always new how to act and behave, no matter what the situation.....she always new how to be pleasant to everyone....not just the people she knew and liked.

Very organized, sometime I will talk about her LISTS...... oh my goodness....

Could keep a secret better than most.....and didn't delight in malicious gossip...

She was a very intelligent person, blessed with a inquisitive mind, and always wanted to learn about new things....

A political junkie, and a real rarity a Conservative Republican that was born and raised in Massachusetts!

In all of the years they were together, I never heard Mom nag at Dad for anything....and take it from this old cynic... that is a real rare gift.

Anyhow, my health being what it is, I'm going to have to cut this short and finish it another time......

Oh My

Have been in kind of an "old age moment" for a couple of days whilst trying to figure out what to write next......

Thinking of the Tony Snow column, made me consider doing a bit on who in history I have looked up to the most and why....but, then I realized that two of the people I have always admired more than anyone are my Mom and Dad.

Dad first...
Mr Spencer (something I will never be, because I never had to earn it like dad did) had a tough life, nothing was ever handed to him......figure a dirt farming family in Missouri then the plains of Colorado.....that meant working every waking minute of the day, once you got to the advanced toddler stage...haphazard schooling because of the rural life at the time, then leaving school for good at 12 years old...oh, and having to learn how to write with his right hand, because in those days it was considered a fault to be a natural born lefty! The hard physical jobs as a teen and in his twenties...a marriage that fell apart though no fault of his ...... a succession of low paying retail jobs, that ended up being his apprenticeship to the world of small business...finding a career with Rascos store, and having to uproot his family and move them every year from 1956 until 1962 before settling in one town for more than 9 months....the strain of having either his mother or mother in law as a "house guest" for 19 of the first 21 years of marriage......

The things that strike me at looking back at this wonderful man.....

I never, ever, once heard him complain about life or unfairness.

If there was a job to be done, he did it, right now, and it was done and life went on. No procrastinating.

When his health issues started to take a toll on his body in the 1960s, he never let it show in his speech or attitude.

People always, and I mean ALWAYS trusted Dad..... to know him was to believe in his inherent honesty and courage..both morally and physically.

People respected him.....never saw anyone (except a certain mother, and a wayward son) treat him with any kind of disrespect.

His quiet efficiency, never boasted, never bragged, just did.

The aura of protection he placed around his family....one of my most cherished memories is going somewhere with the folks, driving at night, Dad (always Dad at the wheel), Mum in the passenger seat, me laying down on the back seat drifting to sleep with the steady click click click of him alternately dimming and brightening the head lamps.... the rhythm of him being in charge and aware......

Even as he lay dieing in the Tucson Veterans Hospital...tubes running in and out of his body, monitors beeping and knowing we was close to the end... a full grain of morphine every 2 to 3 hours..... I told him if he pulled through I'd shave off my (hated by him) beard and mustache....he was able to only nod his head a very tiny bit, but his eyes crinkled up in humour and around the breathing tube his mouth broadened in a grin wide enough to set off an alarm.....

At his funeral a few weeks later, most of the pall bearers were men that had known him for decades....once a friend of Frank T. Spencer...always a friend......

His enjoyment of, and contentment with the so called little things in life...picnics and bar-b-ques...a baseball game... teaching me how to throw and catch a baseball....panning for gold......rebuilding a car I had bought.......

He was always neat and clean......never had a fancy wardrobe, however when he went to work, it was in a pair of sharp creased slacks, and a short sleeved dress shirt...OK, I guess it would be a sports shirt, but it would have buttons down the front, and a button down collar.... in cooler weather he would wear a button up sweater.....I'd say like Ozzie Nelson, but few today would catch the reference....

These things added up to quite a man.....I've always berated myself for not living up to his image.....took me many years to realize that I couldn't do that.....a cheap imitation at best.....However, I can do the best I can in my own way and thank him for the loving example he set...

Tony Snow R I P

Former Presidential Press Secretary and Conservative Pundit Tony Snow has passed away at the age 53. His passing will be mourned by many on both the right and the left.

At the blog HOT AIR this morning I read the following paragraph in reference to Mr Snow....I regret that I can't remember the name of the person that used it...but it fits Tony to a T.

THE TRUE GENTLEMAN The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.- John Walter Wayland

I (like many others) had never seen that before, but it struck me as how correct it is in describing Mr Snow.

I first heard of Tony in the mid 1990s when he sat in for Rush Limbaugh on occasion. To this day, he has always been my favorite of the fill in hosts. He used an innate good nature and sense of humor to convey the message of conservatism, which after all is one of the movements basic qualities.

When I watched television, I loved his shows on the Fox Network...and no, that is NOT a Conservative or right wing network by any stretch of the imagination....it only seems that way because they let both sides (left and right) speak.

I only say him as Press Secretary a few times.....and got a kick out of his relish at going head to head with the White House Press Corps. His enjoyment and zest for life came through so strongly that it was a pleasure for all of us....even the notoriously antagonistic press people themselves.

My heartfelt and sincere condolences go out to Tony's family and loved ones....My thanks to go to Tony as he is now in Heaven.

God Bless You Tony.

Later that same knight

Well sports fans, you've now cruised the loop for about all its worth...it only being around 8 or 9 pm it's probably too early for any serious racing...now Yuba City is one of the "Twin Cities" the other half is Marysville across the river.....they are joined by two umbilical cords.....we called them the 5th Street Bridge and the 10th Street Bridge....Original wern't we? As we cross the 10th Street Bridge (a modern 4 lane arch) we scope out the quiet burg of Marysville....big big rivalry between the two towns...at least as far as us high school kids thought....always the last football game of the year....usually for the league championship...being the small of the two towns 10,000 versus our 22,000) Marysville had even less to offer bored teens.....there was the Dairy Queen, and Denny's ......a movie theater that usually had something different than the one in YC.....a converted Quonset hut on the north side of town that had dances on Saturday nights, they actually got some decent bands in there...Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Spencer Davis Group, and a few others.....but Marysville also had the local junior college and Beale Air Force Base....so a lot of guys in their twenties were around that town...bad for us when it came to finding girls......anyway, over the big bridge, down D street (the main drag) and back over the river too Yuba City, over the smaller and older bridge...laughing at what happened last week on that bridge....as the local paper put it....."Local Wags replaced the Entering Yuba County sign at the half way point of the bridge with a sign that had been pilfered from another county, saying Now Entering Butte County....picture and all......the great part is, they never caught us! Wild kids, huh?

Sometime in the night, we would try to score a few 6 packs of beer, sometimes we made it, some times not....if we did, then we would go out to one of the remote spots on a levee and sit-n-sip...

Back in the '60s street racing was big time...everyone did it, or at least tried to.....if you hooked up a race, you would generally head out to the boonies (never that far from downtown in those days) and with luck you would have enough tag along's to set up a start and finish line and egg you on.....

Kids nowadays would probably scoff at our evening out with the guys...boring and dull, not much to do and we loved every minute of it....well, usually we did. OK, we did in my memory...there, that's being honest.

Every so often we would drive the hour or so north to Chico, or the same distance south to cruise K Street in Sacramento. In the school year, everyone went on Friday nights to the football games...home or away.....as we got older, some of us got jobs....I was the night guy at the local Standard Oil Gas Station at the lower end of Plumas Street. My best friend Lloyd was the night clerk at the Shell Station at the other end of Plumas Street, so that worked out well for us.

Isn't it amazing how the memory can flood back with such vivid images of those days when the old men were young men and immortal?

Later folks.

Memories

My Sister, who shall remain nameless to protect her insolence, but her initials are Kristen Gayle .....oh and be careful not to overlook her, cause she's very vertically challenged as well as being blond. Anyhoo, thinking of her comments on my efforts of the blog before last has taken me back to

Those exciting days of yesteryear.

For me those would be the mid 1960's....for a boy in his teens in the great central valley of California....

Friday night, that's the night for "boys night out" unless your girlfriend said no......you and your buddies would get together and just cruise. Only AM radio back then so the local station would be playing either the Beach Boys or one of the girl groups from Mo-town.....Jan & Dean, Roy Orbison, the Righteous Brothers, Ray Stevens and many others.... the cool thing was..that was the only station available, so that's what every car was blasting, summertime and the windows down.....

You'd pick up the cruise going eastbound on Colusa Highway, 4 lanes with a center divider. Down to Plumas Street, hang a right and a slow cruise down the main business drag..past the theater....going slow cause the cops were usually up at the end of Plumas (not your nice and polite cops of today either), down to the street past my dads store, hang a left then a short block to another right....ahh there "it" is ... the A&W drive in....set back from the street, THE local hangout... you'd try to look cool while checking out the cars already there. In the right drive way, that was the "uncool" side..... idle to the back of the lot and around the building (it was set against the city cemetery, so some neat teenage pranks and legends came out of that. Then idle your ride down "Bad Boys Row" if the entrance side was uncool, then the other side had two levels of cool, if you pulled into the head in slots on the left it was not as cool as backing into the ones on the right....but be very very careful...you had to have a really fast and neat car to park there..if your car wasn't that neat, then you had to be very tough to hang onto your spot.

Alright, you've backed into the slot....it's 8PM and just gotten dark, it's the right time of the evening, so the place is packed....you were lucky to get your spot on the first pass.... One of the harassed twenty something waitress' comes's out to your car and you get your order .... usually a Large iced mug of A&W Root Beer, and an order of fries. maybe 50 cars are in the stalls, kids out of them and mingling indiscriminately...another 20 or so vehicles are bumper to bumper going through the drive ways.....every radio is blasting "Surfin USA" by the Beach Boys.... Now you are there for two reasons....the first is to see and be seen, the other is to try and get a race against a car that you think you can beat.....Jimmie Johnson is there, in his 65 Chevy Impala with a 396....fast, one of the fastest in town, Jack Glover with his 66 GTO that he just got....sweet ride, there's the guy with the new Stingray that's fuel injected.... a neat 55 Chevy pulls through, looks rough, just primer for paint, but you know better than to choose that one to race, it's jacked up all around, cheater slicks in the back, American mag wheels, and a cam so radical that the car can barely idle as it goes through the line.....

Leaning against the front of your car, you light another Camel cigarette and decide it's time for a loop or two....into the car, start her up and you're off....back to Plumas Street, up to Colusa Highway, now down a little further....to the Chico Hiway, turn right and then into the bowling alley parking lot, around that building, maybe stopping for a second if a friend or cute chick is in the parking lot.....then run the loop again, maybe 5 or 6 times before a change is made.....

More on that later

Hollidays Continued

Ahh, where was I? To coin a phrase...that was yesterday, and yesterday's gone.

So that year I got the BB gun....and if you are a fan of that movie, you do know what happens next. Dad set up a target in the garage, all sorts of soft stuff around it so there would be no ricochets, we went out of the garage about 20 feet and and he showed me how to handle the weapon, how to aim and pull the trigger.....and the first shot I fired.... we think it hit a nail head on the wall, because it ricocheted straight back and hit the tear duct of my right eye!

Sigh.......

Anyhow, as you can imagine the family was more than glad to get the Christmas season done with. Then on to Valentines day, which after I was 10 or so, was just another day. Easter we did the usual hiding of Easter eggs and the obligatory Easter service. Thanksgiving was usually fun for everyone cept Mum, who hated cooking all that much.

The US Holiday's Memorial, Labor, the 4th of July, and Veterans Days were very much welcomed in our house.....the store was closed and not much in the way of seasonal merchandise to put out to get in the way.

One of those days, always meant a family outing....we only took 2 or 3 a year......the folks loved picnics....so there was usually one of those, preferably near water of some sort. Whether it was a river, lake or seaside...that didn't matter. It was just neat to have everyone relaxed. and enjoying things as a family.

Now, Mum and Dad didn't show emotions all that much....almost never showed affection in public....so was quite a shock when Kris and I found that box of letters from their courtship...because included with them were cards they had exchanged for every Holiday from year one.....Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Valentines and Easter...they were all there. One thing that struck me in reading them, was they quite often made reference to something that had happened between them in the preceding months. We never saw these cards exchanged....but there they were...year in and year out....without fail....signs to each other of their love and commitment.

Would you look at that....If you glance down the page, you can see this segment has come to an end.....I'll be darned....

A Holliday...Cheers!

Holiday time in the Spencer household.....that is of the 50's and 60's. Looking back I have come to the realization that some very nice memories were made then.

We had an unusual view of the Christmas season.....being in retail, it was our busy time of the year and hence, filled with long hours and stress..oh you can add more than a dash of nasty customers to that recipe. Christmas stock started arriving at the height of summer so it had to be stored somewhere that would be out of the way for 4 or 5 months. Oh yeah, fun! Anyhow, the semi-official day to start putting out the "seasonal Merchandise" as it was called was the day after Thanksgiving. Then the fun started, the next time you are at Wal-Mart or another big super store and getting ticked off at the people restocking the shelves that seem to be blocking your isle....think of 1963 (random year), Yuba City, California..Plumas Street, Rasco's 5 & 10. 9,700 square feet of store space and maybe another 1,200 feet of office and backroom. Dad, Mum, the Dragon in the Basement (Gramma was in control down there), Addie, Bobbi, Bobbi's Daughter, Ingrid and a couple of part time girls along with Kris and myself who came in after school. In less than a weeks time, we would take that store apart and put it back together again with a different theme. All the while maintaining a full sales schedule that was increasing as the season kicked into gear.....not you normal shelf stockers of today either......everyone there did everything. Oh, you had your "own" department to be the expert in and take care of.....Mum had greeting cards and stationary, Gramma had yardage, Addie had the front end counters (candy and stuff like that), I had the push broom! However, when it got busy you helped the others out, each of those ladies knew the other departments and how to help people in them, how to run the registers how to do it all.

Well, as the season wore on, so did we.....the store opened at 9am, meant that Dad was there at 8am....we closed at 8pm, 5 nights a week, Saturdays was 7pm and Sundays open from noon till 6pm. From Thanksgiving thru Christmas Eve. Dealing with customers that were on edge, in a hurry and rude!

OK, now keep a Christmas spirit through that. Yet somehow Christmas morning would arrive at the Spencer house with happiness and joy!

The folks always tried to get us something we really wanted as a "big" present. Wish I knew how they did that on what Dad made. Oh, it was never what would be considered expensive. Just like the movie "A Christmas Story" in 1956 I got a Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun.

Well, will come back to that thought shortly, am going to answer the phone now....

Well, here we are once again....typing without the slightest Idea of whats going to be said.........Did you grow up living in a single house or many? The folks didn't start out to be gypsies.....at least I don't think they did....Things just kind of happened that way..

From Prescott we moved to Paso Robles, California about 1953...this turned out to be quite fortunate because that's where Kris was born a few years later!

Dad worked for the big store in Paso Robles...the Mercantile...after a few years he realized that it was a dead end job....and went to work for Florsheim Shoe Company, managing a new store in San Jose, California....we lived there for just a short time. Dad was recruited by a division of the Gamble-Skogmo Company called F S Rasco Stores....they were a small five and dime outfit on the west coast. They wanted Dad to be a trouble shooting manager for them, and he was perfect for that role. Energetic, honest and a good manager of people. We lived in Tracy, California for a while on his first assignment. Then it was off to Reedly, California, Gallup, New Mexico and Farmington, New Mexico....this was in the first two and a half years with Rascos! He was then given the opportunity to buy a franchise store in Hayward, California.....then traded up to the store in Yuba City, California. It was now 1962 and I was going into my sophomore year of high school. I thought this was normal, I had been in a different school every year since the 2nd grade......sometimes two in one year. Didn't understand how to not be a rolling stone. Finally in Yuba City spent three years in the same school...and then two more at the local junior college! After I left home in 1967 the folks bought another store, this one back in San Jose.....they stayed there for quite a while, then on the road again.....ending up the Rasco Odyssey in the garden spot of Brawley, California. Dad retired from there a few years later and it was back to Prescott, the place that they (and I) had always considered home.

Quite an adventure......and my sister and I always considered a move a year "normal" Sheesh...

Well, it's been a long, long day and this child is tired....think I will stop typing at least for a while.

Later y'all

Postcards from Mum

This one is either harder or easier to write....hunhhh? Spent a lot more time with Mum and was quite a bit closer to her than with Dad..... So been really thinking of which postcards to share.

Paso Robles, California..about 1954 or 55.the house I loved the most of all the ones we lived in.....Mum sitting in the kitchen talking on the telephone to someone, she's sitting on a bar stool type of ... stool....phone in one hand and as she talks she is doodling on a little note pad with a pencil in the other hand.....a perfect representation of the ornate sugar bowl sitting on the counter about 3 feet from her! Mom always loved art, as a child she wanted to be an artist and she had "the eye" of an artist.....as we all know, life and reality often gets in the way of dreams.

Early 1960s, the family is on a rare outing, we are walking down the street in San Francisco.....can't really remember exactly where we were headed, do remember it was downtown and we were walking downhill...Mum, Dad, Gram, Kris and myself......a group of people are walking towards us......not really paying attention to anything myself...a beautiful day (it was always beautiful weather for Mum in the City by the bay)...all of a sudden both Mum and Gram scream...so do the people walking towards us....as Dad, Kris, and myself watch in shock, horror, amazement and acute embarrassment......the group of strangers and our Mum (and Gram) are embracing and laughing and crying and generally embarrassing the hell out of us....I remember the three of us slowly backing uphill away from them, looking at each other as if wondering "Is this catching?"...... Turns out to be Mum's grade school teacher and her family from Gardner, Mass....vacationing in California and they had recognized each other......whew....

You know how sometimes you can actually "hear" someone blush? When their embarrassment is so acute that it radiates! Was on the phone with Mum in the late 1980's.. She told me the first "off color" joke I had ever heard her say. "What do you do with a Pollock that has 4 balls?" she asked......"You take him gently by the hand, and lead him to first base!"...... Kris still doesn't believe that she said that ...you see, Mum was the kind that wouldn't say it if she had a mouthful of it.....that kind of person....

1992...I had recently moved back to Prescott and was living with Mum after my divorce......she hadn't been to visit Dad's grave site in a long time. I hadn't seen it in years....we finally went to visit it.....on a beautiful summer day... parked the car and walked to the site and the monument was covered with pine needles, and dirt...the little junipers on each side were unwatered.....she was so .... I'm not sure of the word here......intense will do....you could see tears flowing, and hear a sniff or two.....she tried to get on her knees to clean the slab, but at her age, that was almost impossible....bending over, brushing needles and dirt away scrubbing furiously using the abrupt and stilted motions of someone who is so very much on the edge....all the while just barely audible, berating herself for letting it get this way......the real reason was she was so upset with him for leaving her all these years....she loved and missed him so much.....we got the grave site cleaned up, watered the junipers, got some flowers from across the street to put there... Well, when I say we......she supervised all of that being done.

2005, same location...Mums with Dad..... I haven't been to visit them since the service...I drive up and park the car...it's a short walk to the grave, yep.....both names now have dates...it's official....as I stand there.....crying.... I say a little prayer....Dear God, I have no way of knowing for sure, but I believe they were both devout and good Christians.....I wish there was a way for me to know that they were both with you in Heaven...... a few more tears, brush off the pine needles...walk back to the car....get in the drivers seat and start the car....realize that when I had stopped my front bumper was was almost touching a brand new wire mesh trash can! Can't even remember seeing it when I came in....sheesh, am getting old......get out of the car to make sure I didn't hit the new can.....in the can are some beautiful roses.....kind of a soft beige color that Mum loved....pick them up...ohh, there are two bunches ... each the same, each almost brand new, each is artificial roses arranged in a heart pattern! They fit, and look beautiful at the head of the monument..

Thank you God.......