BRAGGING RIGHTS ON THE WALL OF FAME

You’ve got bragging rights when you’re got a good dog like this.

We went to class together, graduated together, and one of us peed on the floor during class.

We’re still going strong but the teacher and the store she worked for moved on.

Education is funny like that. What we learn stays with us after the last class.

Is it all that important?

Where I live there’s a bookcase I made screwed into a wall.

In one corner of a shelf are diplomas from every stage of life so far for the four of us.

Four high school diplomas, five college diplomas, one advanced degree, and one honorable discharge from the Army, and one dog diploma.

Who’s a good girl.

If they were framed and mounted they would be on our Wall of Fame with is located just outside my bedroom door.

I walk past every day.

Instead of academic rewards, the wall is full of pictures from our grandparents, to our family, and events.

Every day is a reminder to live up to the standards set before my time and to build on them.

These are the highlights of three generations:

My mom was so smart she skipped two grades and graduated at sixteen. She took after my grandma who was also a sharp cookie.

My dad was the first in his family to go to college and graduate. I don’t have his diploma.

Grandpa went to WWII in the Pacific; Dad went to war in Korea.

Because of a chosen date I’m somehow considered a Vietnam Era Army veteran.

I was deployed to Fort Dix, New Jersey, then Philadelphia.

That’s three generations in uniform.

The fourth generation are my sister’s kids.

Needless to say, it feels like a service oriented family.

My kids came of age during the second Bush administration who I thought mishandled their military responsibilities, but I would have cheered them on if they had joined.

I’m like that, a real homer.

 

Following Orders With Reservations

Some people do better when they are told what to do, but not all of them.

Those are the skeptics, the doubters, the free spirits.

Have you seen the free spirits? Maybe you are one?

I saw a documentary recently about a couple who found their free spirit by leaving everything behind and living in a tent.

They seemed happily unencumbered. For a while.

The man died soon after the show aired so it was a short while, but it seemed worth it. To them.

My understanding of their freedom, their spirit, comes from my experience earlier in life.

At eighteen a friend and I set off on a hitch hiking trip halfway across America and back.

We went to Iowa for a wrestling tournament, so we had a purpose, but it was the freedom of the road.

I could have kept going, adapted to a lifestyle on the road, and never returned.

But the wandering nature of life on the road took its toll. I got homesick for Ma and Pa, brothers and sister.

I wasn’t a devoted enough wanderer and wanted to go home after a month and never do it that way again.

Fast forward fifty odd years and I traveled some of the same blacktop as I did back then, this time with my dog.

It felt invigorating, or reinvigorating. Again, there was a goal: pick up my wife halfway into the trip and head for home.

Instead of Iowa, this time it was New Mexico, pick up wife, and take the long way back through Monument Valley.

 

Bragging Rights Done Correctly

At sixty-four this was my theme song.

 

When I get older, losing my hair
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine,
birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

 

Six years later it still resonates, but it came out when I was thirteen.

I remember thinking young guys singing about being sixty-four was weird.

So was dressing up in marching band gear.

Does it all make sense now? Sense enough for me.

 

Ev’ry summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight (or Cannon Beach) if it’s not too dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Grandchildren on your knee;
Vera, Chuck and Dave.

 

 

For most of my life I’ve kept score on everything, mostly on whether or not I’m ahead.

If I call you and you don’t answer, I still get a point for calling.

Anytime I cook up a storm? Score for me.

On time? Score.

This is my biggest recent score:

There’s a high school in the state of Oregon where a teacher is creating more value in his students than any teacher I remember.

The kids in class learn woodworking, construction, with heavy machinery on the horizon.

If that’s not enough, he’s adding a furniture making class for his gifted and talented students.

I’ve made enough furniture to know I’m not talented or gifted.

The last example was a canopy bed made from oak railroad stickers I milled down on my table saw.

I finished, set it up with a mattress, and hopped on.

It collapsed.

I picked up the pieces and turned it into four foot stools.

With that in mind I sent the teacher some of the most beautiful wood I’ve ever seen.

It’s red oak uprights from a library railing, the sort of railing that looks like fine furniture by itself.

I got it and took it apart with a personal pledge to make something beautiful and long-lasting.

Well, twenty-five years later, maybe more, there’s a chance that will happen.

Those pieces of history, 39 3/4 x 4 3/4 x 1 1/4, are in good hands. (Hey Al)

I did the right thing twice; first I didn’t screw it up, at least not all of it, and second I didn’t panic and throw it out.

Score two on bragging rights for the home team.