Hank Griffin Podcast

This episode originally aired in May of 2023. It is the story of how I met one of the very best friends I ever had: Prissy the wonder dog. I hope you enjoy it.

Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!The Hank Griffin Podcast

So, You or Someone You Love, Just Got a Parkinson’s Diagnosis

First of all, I am sorry. Parkinson’s sucks. I wish this weren’t happening to you.

Secondly, while I am sorry and Parkinson’s absolutely does suck, you’ve been diagnosed, and most likely this is real and is really happening.

So, now what?

Well, life goes on. It is different. No doubt you feel like someone who just got ran over by a large truck. At least that is how I felt when I was diagnosed. The shock was, it was tough and stayed with me for many weeks.

I’d been living with it for years by then. I’d had tremors that began in my hands when I was seven. Over the years, it moved to my whole body. Minor at first. Pretty bad eventually.

If you or a loved one is experiencing it, you know just exactly what I mean.

In my case, as I said, the shock lasted a long time. That may have been in part, because I chose not to talk about it. Not to anyone except my Bride. It is not an exaggeration to say that, for the first few years, I could not even bring myself to utter the word, “Parkinson’s” aloud in the presence of others.

I was embarrassed; ashamed. Looking back, that was really dumb. I’d had an essential tremor since I was a kid. My hands always shook. People would ask, “Why are you hands shaking?” Thoughtless adults who should have known better asked questions like, “Why are you so nervous, you up to something?”

That last one really irritated me because I was a good kid who was struggling but was being treated like a kid whose behavior was suspect and shown no compassion by people who could and should have demonstrated some degree of care knowing it would have cost them nothing.

I may have felt embarrassment knowing I would be asked for additional explanations. I was really concerned about my employer finding out. Plus, Parkinson’s, as I understood it, is an older person’s disease. I’d been dealing with it since my early thirties. I didn’t know anyone else, personally, who was similarly afflicted. I mean anyone else in my age bracket.

Obviously, the first name that leaps to the mind of most people is, Michael J. Fox. As it happens, he and I were both stricken with Parkinson’s at similar ages but ten years apart which is also the difference in our ages. I admire the work he has done, the example that he sets.

Like the majority of those reading this, I am neither wealthy nor famous. I am unlikely, for example, ever to be asked to testify before congress about Parkinson’s and what living with it is like.

If I were to be asked, I would gladly tell them that it sucks. Parkinson’s sucks.

I wish I had not lived with that shame and embarrassment for so long. If I could do it over, I would have started talking about it right away. I would have sought out the advice, counsel, and support of those who’d already walked this path a while. But, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was just too ashamed.

I was a fool!

Listen to the full episode by clicking on the player at the top of this email!

Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!The Hank Griffin Podcast

Weary Woodcutter’s Winter Lament

Momma and Dub worked hard to provide for our family. They were good people, young, in love, and they loved us kids. They were, neither of them, perfect. Like me, they were not even close. Curiously, to my mind these several decades later, though it is fair to say that neither of them were perfect, it is also entirely correct to say that they were more perfect, together than either of them were, individually.

I think back to the words of the prophet, Nephi who, in introducing himself in the Book of Mormon, wrote, “I Nephi, having been born of goodly parents…” Be patient with me, we aren’t about to have church today. He wished immediately to convey a sense of who he was to the reader. Who we are, particularly, in our youth, really does begin with where we are from, who our folks are.

Nephi was a Jew fleeing to a Land of Promise prior to the destruction of, Israel. He would go on to become a great leader of his future people. He would see and do extraordinary things. But, there, in that moment, he wasn’t yet the prophet, Nephi. He was still just, Nephi, a son of Lehi and Sariah.

In Sunday School we are often encouraged to “liken ourselves to the scriptures.” That is a fancy way of saying, put yourself in the place of those about whom you are reading.

They like to talk real fancy at church. Do that do at your church? Whew boy, they sure do it at mine. You should come sometime and listen to them. So dang fancy!

Its good stuff, to be sure, if occasionally laid on a little thick… and fancy.

I’ve done it of course, likened myself unto the scriptures, I mean. Sometimes it is wonderfully useful. Other times, it just serves to demonstrate to me how very, very far from the scriptural ideal my life is, was, and most likely, will ever be. But then, perhaps that is the point. Maybe when we do this we are meant to gain personal insight into our mortal state as compared to some ideal that we can then aspire to.

Let me try it here: “I, Hank, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father, and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days.”

Huh, I’ll be. I was prepared to write as to how that felt silly. In fact though, it sorta felt right. I won’t dwell further on it. Rather, I will carry on with the record of my proceedings in my days.

Still, pretty fancy, huh...

Momma and Dub worked hard to feed, clothe, and shelter us. Dub was a coal miner. Momma was usually a work-in-the-home mother. With four children to tend to, corral, and provide for, both of them worked hard.

I often felt that Dub was addicted to hard work. He spent twelve hours each workday in the mine. He worked four on and three off then three on and four off. When he wasn’t working mining coal, he was working during what were, ostensibly, his off hours in other ways that usually involved working our farm. We raised watermelons commercially, a huge garden that fed our family and other families too, and we kept beef cattle.

Aside from the mine and our farm, Dub cut wood to heat our home and to sell to members of our community. He hired himself out to build barbed wire fence. He had a lot of irons in the fire.

By the time I was just about eight years old, maybe just a little earlier than that, Dub started taking me with him. Where ever he was going, whatever work he was doing, I was right there with him.

I hated it.

To hear this podcast in full, please click on the link up top. I hope you enjoy part 1 of this two part episode of the Hank Griffin Podcast.

Much Love,Hank

This Classic Hank episode of the, Hank Griffin Podcast is intended as a companion piece to this week’s episode, “Crack In The Mountain.”

It originally aired on Father’s Day, 2023.

I hope that you enjoy it here.

Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!The Hank Griffin Podcast

Ps.

The Hank Griffin Podcast needs your help. Help me grow this podcast by sharing it with those you enjoy storytelling. Thanks in advance!

Father and Son Camping Trip

Recently, my son and I drove into the mountains to enjoy a father and son camping trip. It was not one sponsored by a third party. He is active in his Deacons Quorum at church. He is also active in the Masonic, appendant group, DeMolay, for boys. Both of those worthy organizations are known to host such trips but this time was set aside for just he and I.

We drove some hours north and west. As we did so the topography over which we traveled changed. We do not lived on the flat earth I knew and loved in, Beautiful, East Texas. Here there are hills. As we traveled those hills began to increase in size and scale and were joined by beautiful valleys. Eventually, those hills and valleys were left behind as we progressed and in their stead were mountains.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“Isn’t this beautiful?” I heard the inspired awe in my young son’s voice and could not help but be moved.

“It really is, son. So beautiful.”

“We drove this way when we went on our young men’s camp out at church a few weeks ago.”

“Did you?” I knew perfectly well that they’d gone this way but wanted to hear him tell his tale.

“Yes sir, we did. There is a crack in the mountain that we drove through. Are we going to drive through the crack in the mountain today?”

At this, I was stumped. I’d drive the region numerous times but had never driven through a crack in the mountain and could not say with any certainty that we would.

“Son, I don’t recall having seen such a thing but, I sure hope we do. I’d love to drive through a crack in the mountain.”

“Me too, Dad. Its really neat. Its one of my favorite things to see. I hope you get to see it too.”

… To listen to the full story, click on the link above.

Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!The Hank Griffin Podcast

Please enjoy this Classic Hank episode of the Hank Griffin Podcast.

I like to garden. Always have. Inherited the trait and learned the basics from, Momma.

Momma has always been a forward thinking, able, and diligent gardener. For all I know, she had to be, after all, old gun fighters sometimes need a place to bury the fools who occasionally show up to challenge the legend.

Just kidding, Momma – on the off chance you are listening, just a little jokey-joke.

For the rest of y’all, its not really a joke. When you see Momma at the Piggly Wiggly, you really should treat her courteously.

When my father died, we had a good supply a preserved meat that he and I hunted, our family, fished, a hog done in a sugar cure, and jars and jars and jars of Momma’s good home canned garden produce that she’d labored to put away in case of hard times.

Hard times… ugh.

Little do we know, especially in our youth just how sudden and painful hard times really are.

Death is no respecter of persons. If it were, the world might be far more orderly, predictable, and make sense. Perhaps babies would come into the world, live their lives contributing to society, the happiness of their families and other loved ones, then, at a ripe old age, pass from this world to the next.

It is a sweet thought, but naive.

There are lots of folks who live good, or awful, long lives. Some do great good in the world. Others do little else but wickedness. Most of us are likely somewhere in between. Then, when age settles as winter upon them, they go. For some, its sudden. For others, death lingers about them for decades before it finally provides relief for their suffering.

For too many, it comes as a thief in the night, sudden, terrible. No thought given to preparation. In its wake, wailing, pain, misery, hunger, cold, fear, abuse, maybe years of it, or a lifetime.

There is a subset of the population that we refer to as, “preppers.” They are viewed with suspicion, concern, derision, condescension, and little of anything like respect. This despite the fact that many of them are actively engaged in activities that help ensure their family’s resiliency in the face of sudden difficulty.

I think part of this is probably because of the buffoonery we see on YouTube and other digital platforms. Some of these people talk a lot about zombies, the end of the world, and other catastrophes that are devastating to a degree that can only be societially fatal if not world ending. Some appear to seek attention that is self affirming or are trying to see items that will make sure that, “you too will find yourself safe, sound, and at the top of the food chain when all the, ‘sheep’ are nothing more than food for the wolves.”

How silly.

Meanwhile, there are also thoughtful men and women in the world who save a little money, set aside something extra in their pantry, and try to ensure that they have a few paper books to refer to in case something unexpected happens.

My grandparents were like that. Uncle Carl was too in his way. They were the children of the Great Depression. They were the soliders and wives of the Second World War. They knew, from first hand experience the hell of want, real hunger, and war. None of them wished to experience those things a second time. Those old men and women worked hard – not to merely buy toys but to ensure that they had a bulwork, a hedge against any storm be it sudden or well forecast. They did not want to go hungry again. They had no desire to fight the Nazis and the Japanese again.

Those good men and women did not want to see their children or grandchildren suffer for lack of forethought, care, and planning. They did what they could to inculcate in their posterity all that was needed to thrive in times of plenty and persevere in the face of hardship.

Now, they are gone and there are none left who share a collective memory of terrible hardship, world war, and starvation.

Momma and Dub listened to their old folks. They worked hard to ensure that we had a secure home, something set aside to eat if things went south of a sudden, and thank God they did. When my father died, there was little else but hard times.

There was no credit life insurance on our farm. We lost it and moved into town.

Momma, a stay at home wife and mother, with an eighth grade educaton, had no marketable skills. She took job waiting tables at Chris’s Cafe during the day. At night, she attended school to become and emergency medical technician or EMT. When she graduated from EMT school she took a job, out of town, as an EMT during the day and continued to attend school at night to become a Paramedic.

Eventually, she graduated, went to work in our little Beautiful as a Paramedic and was even made Shift Sergeant. For all her hard work, she was paid 18,000 dollars a year. That is how she fed us.

I have always been incredibly proud of her for that.

Eventually, we ate through the venison, pork, fish, peas, corn, tomatoes, and Momma’s good jelly of wild blackberry and wild plums.

Thankfully, through all of it, she continued to garden and can what we couldn’t eat.

In those days there was no talk of zombies or other silliness. Rather, we were living through the loss of father, provider, and protector, and Momma simply did what she and Dub did before – made sure that our family worked to set aside a surplus that would continue to see us through whatever might come.

Were my parents, “preppers?”

Heavens no!

They were practical people who paid attention to the world around them and never wanted to either go hungry or see their children starve.

Dub was a coal miner. From time to time there was talk of strikes. I remember a particular time when the talk was serious. Dub was worried enough that he sat me down to discuss it, man to man.

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It was clear that my father wanted to work. “Can’t you just vote no and keep working?” I asked.

Dub, not wishing to make me afraid but also desiring to convey the honesty that should be respected between a father and son said, “No son. If the union votes to strike, I will strike. If I did anything else, our family would be made to suffer. Let’s pray the mine remains open and union doesn’t strike.”

My folks weren’t concerned with foolishness. No. They, like their old people before them, were worried about things that were real. We never worried about, zombies. We were afraid my father might lose his livelihood.

When I was five, Momma and I presented Uncle Carl with a young pear tree. Before long a second pear tree was planted alongside it. Over the next twenty years, I benefited by watching that pear tree grow and seeing it produce a rich abundance of delicious buttery pears year after year. It didn’t happen all at once of course. It took three or four years for the tree to mature to a point that it could produce any fruit. Eventually though, the pears came and in such wonderful abundance!

Uncle Carl and us boys ate all the pears we could stand and every old woman that Uncle knew came to pick pears from which they made preserves. The smart ones shared a few jars with Uncle Carl and continued to benefit by being able to come pick. Those who did not… well, they usually faded from the story pretty quick.

In addition to two large pear trees, Uncle Carl had a good producing fig, a gigantic series of wild black berry bushes, an ancient mulberry tree, dewberries, hack berries, and passion fruit that grew wild in the corral. He also tended a modest garden until he just couldn’t anymore.

In that wonderful old gentleman’s yard were two huge native pecan trees. They provided shade for the house, shade for sitting, a home for squirrels, and a rich harvest of pecans year after year.

After my father died, things were difficult between my mother and I. This trauma affected each of us deeply.

I was not an easy child to raise. She was not an easy woman to be raised by. There were only seventeen years separating us. There is no fault finding here. I was a child being raised by a child – one who’d just lost the only man who really and truly ever loved her - as a man ought to love a woman.

Those were desperately hard times.

Despite this, we were blessed for Momma loved to garden. Our home there in Beautiful sat on good sandy soil. It was the kind of earth that would grow anything worth growing! On the south side of the house we had a large garden plot and just as was true with Momma, it called to me.

I loved to work my hands in that good earth.

It was not only “good” earth, it was something akin to “sacred” earth. When Momma and I stood on that garden plot, within the confines of the barbed wire fence that surrounded it on every side, and worked there together, there were no unkind words. There were no ugly looks.

Momma taught. She was patient.

I listened, worked, and learned.

That garden plot was blessed ground; a place of miracles.

With hard work, prayers for rain, more hard work, patience, and the blessings of Heaven, our garden grew. We planted seeds, hoed weeds, killed pests, worried over the infreqency of rain, hoped, and prayed. Seeds sprounted. Sprouts became plants. Plants grew, flowered, fruited, and went to seed.

Our family’s garden was not some exercise in meditation. We were not trying to connect with the earth. This was not some hippy experience for us.

We were poor. My father was dead. Momma worked very hard but there were many mouths to feed.

The success or failure of our garden mattered. It determined much of the quaility of our diet for most of the next year.

On a particular evening, I sat on the floor in the front room as I often did working on my school work. Momma sat up on the couch. As I remember it, we were alone. Movement on the periphery of my vision drew my attention. Turning to look I was surprised to see someone in our garden apparantly helping herself to our vegetables.

My much younger self lept from the floor, yelped the alarm, turned to lead the charge outside, only to be stopped by Momma.

“What in the world is wrong with you boy?”

“There is a woman in the garden stealing our vegetables!”

“What?!?”

Momma turned to look out the window. I saw her eyes narrow. Knowing my mother’s temper, a sense of glee made itself known to me as I considered the fate of the thief in the garden.

“Let’s go get her,” I said.

Momma turned to face me. Her already narrow eyes took me in and narrowed further.

“What do you mean, ‘Let’s go get her?’”

“She is stealing from us!”

Again Momma turned apparantly considering then turned back to face me.

“Stay here.”

Momma walked to the dining room, found her stash of paper grocery bags that she liked to keep from our shopping trips to the Piggly Wiggly, brought four large ones back with her and pressed them into my arms.

“Take these out to the garden, fill them up with the prettiest vegetables you can find out there. Fill up every single bag – to the top. Load them into the back of that woman’s car then come back inside.

“Momma, she is robbing us!”

“Shut your mouth and do what I said.”

My heart raced. Blood and rage rushed to my face. My pulse pounded. Tears of acute frustration threatened to spill from my eyes.

I thought to say more but looked into the eyes of my mother who, though she only stood 5’2” and weighed no nore than 110 lbs, was known to shoot first and ask questions later – literally. She was the kind of woman who might burn your house down while you slept inside. Had made clear to more than one of our school teachers who called her to announce that one of us was about to receive a paddling that, “certainly you can whip him if you think thats best, but I know where you live and if you do whip him, when you get home, I’ll be there waiting and am going to whip you.”

She was not much physically but Momma was very like a storm in her way. Sometimes she brought rain. Other times thunder. From time to time a terrible East Wind - biblical.

Looking in her eyes, it was that terrible East Wind I saw looking back at me and I had no intention of reaping it.

I turned with the brown paper bags, stepping towards the front door.

“Son,” my mother said. I turned to hear what she had to say. Her features had not softened, if anything that awful wind seemed to gather about her as she said, “If you say a single ugly word to that woman, if you so much as look sideways at her, you will regret it.”

In the part of the world where I live now, good manners are less important that they were when I was a boy. Many seem to look on them as, ‘qauint.’ In my childhood and in that of many of my contemporaries, good manners were a matter of childhood survival.

“Yes ma’am,” I said then stepped outside.

The woman, a dark skinned black woman who appeared to be in her mid-forties did not see me at first. She was bent over an okra plant cutting ripe okra. Her car was parked on the side of the road on the other end of the garden. When she did see me, I was already in the garden. I thought she would run, she seemed about to bolt, then saw the paper bags I carried.

Cold rage coursed through me. I said nothing, I could not trust myself to do so without precipitating the fury of the storm that waited in the house. I did not so much as look at the woman who wantonly robbed our family’s only means of feeding ourselves.

Green cucumbers, yellow crook neck squash, okra, purple hull peas, corn, tomatoes, onions, zucchini, cantaloupe, cream peas, jalapeno and cayenne peppers, and much more went into the bags until they were filled – to the very top.

For a while the woman just watched me. As I worked and said nothing to her, she returned to her labor of helping herself to our garden. She wore a large apron that she held open in front of her like a sack, filling it with vegetables.

When my work was done I turned to her working hard to control my facial expression, preparing to speak, hoping I could do so in a way that not doom me to the Terrible East Wind.

“Ma’am, if you will open your car I will put these bags in your back seat or trunk.”

There was fear in her eyes though at my words the fear softened. She lead me to a well worn, old blue hatchback. Something like a chevette or B210. Paint faded and worn. In any other state it would have been ravaged with rust but not in, Texas.

She opened the hatch and I sat the paper bags full of our family’s hard work and future meals into her car then turned and started toward the house. As I began to step away the woman, who had not yet spoken a word, laid a gentle, tentative hand on my forearm then quickly pulled it away. I turned back to her working hard to control the anger that fought to consume me.

“I have not eaten in two days. My children have not eaten anything today. Tonight, we will eat these vegetables. May God bless you.”

With this the woman gave me a tearfilled smile, closed the hatch, sat in her worn out old car, worked to get it started – the car did not want to start. Gave up a moment, assumed an attitude of prayer, tried again and, after a loud backfire, and an excess of awful smoke, was able to drive away.

I watched, there on the side of the road next to our garden as she did so. The anger that threatned to overtake me faded. In its place I felt shame. The color of rage melted from my face only to be replaced by shades of humilation.

Returning to the house I walked up the concrete steps, entered the door, and saw that there too the East Wind had subsided. In its place was a much gentler Momma. She hugged me and said, “Son, charity is the perfect love of Christ.”

It is a lesson that I have never forgotten.

Much Love,

Hank

You’ve Been Hanked.

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Present Day

Last evening, Dearest Love and I were lying in bed ready to turn out the lights to go to sleep when we heard the alarming sounds of tires screeching on pavement, a scream, the sound of several crashes, a moment of comparative silence, and then a den of mayhem outside our home. I jumped from the bed, threw on something to cover my modesty, ran from the bed room to the parlor where I was surprised to see My Bride already there.

“Baby, you need to put something on to cover yourself.”

“I just want to see what happened.”

Upon opening the door we saw a startling sight. One so startling that it might have been the set of a disaster movie. Heart’s Desire quickly went to put something more on. As she did so, my son appeared.

“Dad, what happened?”

“I don’t know son. Let’s see what is going on. Stay close to me.”

Before me where no fewer than three savagely damaged cars, two of which were on my front lawn. One of them, a small white sedan, just feet from having crashed into our home. It was a frightening scene made all the more so because of the smoke rising from beneath the hood of the car that was so near to my home. More frightening still was, the greatly increasing rate at which that smoke steadily increased.

I called 911. Tried to remain calm and un-frustrated in the face of numerous questions that, I know very well are important, but were much less important to me than was the reassurance that help was on its way.

The driver was being questioned by a pedestrian, who’d witnessed the crash.

“Sir, are you okay? Are you okay, sir?”

He was dazed but soon emerged from the car.

My neighbors, good people that I esteem greatly, joined us on my lawn, on the sidewalk, on the county easement. In time there was a real crowd. Across the street, more people gathered to observe, talk, and try to understand.

I talked to one of the witnesses and learned that the driver, when he came into view around the curve in the road was driving much too fast, and already losing control of his sedan. He struck the curb two houses down. Sure enough, when I walked down to take a look there were metal, not plastic, but metal car parts that were lying there on the ground.

He then, completely lost control of the sedan, came up off the road, struck an ancient maple tree in the yard of my nearest neighbor, crashed into a medium size four door sedan, which was absolutely demolished, crashed into a large four door sport utility vehicle which was rotated a full forty-five degrees and pushed over two car lengths into my family’s yard, the driver of the white sedan, whose car had done all this, was propelled forward past all the wreckage that lay in his wake, and finally – finally, stopped… just feet from the exterior wall of my home.

I paused at this to offer a silent but heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving that my home and family were spared and to also seek blessings on my neighbors, our community, and the driver of the white sedan.

Consider a moment if you will, the speed that must have been in play and the enormous expenditure of kinetic energy that had to occur, in order to crash over a concrete curb, clip a huge hardwood tree, demolish not one but two large vehicles, and still keep moving!

The driver was fine. He got out of the car, was speaking animatedly, and announced his intention to leave the scene which notion he was quickly disabused of by relevant parties.

After a few more minutes wait, Emergency Services arrived: Police, Fire, EMS. Having evaluated the scene and the driver the police made an arrest. One of the officers left. The others remained to assist with traffic and in other ways. Once EMS knew they were no longer needed, the ambulance left.

It took more than two hours for the scene to be cleared. For three tow trucks to come and take the ruined vehicles from my yard and my good neighbor’s driveway.

I watched the ongoing confusion and found myself taken back in memory and time to other crashes. Crashes that happened in Beautiful, East Texas.

Beautiful, East Texas, Circa the Early 1970s

To listen to the rest of this episode, click the link above.

Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!The Hank Griffin Podcast

Recently, while driving together, My friend, Buddy, who’d been occupied with his phone for a while, looked up from it and said, “So, you are a Mason.”

“I am.”

“What is it, exactly, that Masons do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do y’all do, really? There are some crazy things out there, you know? I want to understand what Masonry really is.”

“Crazy things?”

“You know what I mean. In the shallow end of the pool, its movies and television shows about treasure if its American media or evil plots if its out of the UK. In the deep end, on the internet, there are some really weird ideas out there.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I’ve seen some of that.” Then asked, “Have you ever read anything by Kipling?”

“The guy that wrote the, ‘Jungle Book?’”

“The same. He wrote a lot more than that. You should read some of it.”

We were in heavy traffic. Another driver signaled her desire to get in line ahead of me. I slowed, let her in, looked for a wave, which was not forthcoming, and sighed.

“C’mon, not so much as a wave?”

“The only wave you are going to get around here is a one finger salute,” Buddy laughed and he was right.

“Back in, Beautiful, East Texas, if you didn’t wave, someone was calling your mom, granddad, or talking trash about you at the cafe, the bank, and in church too,” I said.

“Whatever Toto, you ain’t in, Beautiful, anymore.”

“You’ve got that right,” I said.

“You also aren’t answering my question. Should I have avoided asking it?”

“Not at all and, I am answering your question, or beginning to.”

“How is a reference to Kipling the beginning of an answer?”

“Like me, Rudyard Kipling was a Mason.”

“That isn’t an answer, or the beginning of one, that I can see.”

“Be patient. I promise this is going somewhere. Kipling was a Mason. He was a lot of things. There are people who think well of him. There are other people who think poorly of him.”

“Okay, that is true for everyone.”

“It is,” I agreed.

My friend asked, “Isn’t pretty much every President of the United States a Mason?”

I laughed, “I wish they all were. We’d live in a better world but, no. We are able to claim a few though and particularly good ones too. George Washington to start with. I think Gerald Ford was the most recent.”

“How long have you been a Mason?” my friend asked.

“A quarter century.”

“Did you know any Masons before you joined?”

“I did. Good men. Our local retired pharmacist, the county attorney, a judge, a farmer, at least two of my great grandfathers, several others.”

“What about your dad or grandfathers?”

“Nope.”

“So it skips a generation or two sometimes?”

…

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Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!

Granddad struggled with retirement. For twenty-two and a half years he’d owned and operated the only service station with a mechanic on duty, twenty-four hours a day on the two hundred mile stretch of interstate between Texarkana and Dallas. He’d done is bit and finally sold out. I think he was glad to be free of the hard work of being a service station owner. However, he wasn’t fine with the lack of social stimulation. Granddad was, perhaps more than any of the men and women of his generation in my family, gregarious. He missed conversation. He missed people.

Grandma, an introvert who was happy to remain in her bedroom reading trashy novels, eating cherry flavored cough drops, and smoking Pall Mall cigarettes, was a wonderful grandma who I loved, but offered nothing like the conversation and social outlet that Granddad longed for.

As such, everyday, without fail, Granddad loaded up in his beautiful 1977 model, Chrysler Cordoba. It was white with gold velour seats, alas, there was no Corinthian leather. It was, nevertheless, a pleasure to ride in and was an automobile that Granddad loved.

I enjoyed taking turns with my brothers spending nights with Granddad and Grandma. They were so kind to us but, unlike Uncle Carl, who was glad to see all of us each and every weekend, Granddad and Grandma could only take us on one at a time.

“Put your shoes and socks on, son.” Granddad always called me, “son.” We need to run into town.” As he did so, he extinguished the last remaining nub of an unfiltered Camel cigarette that he’d just used to light a fresh one. Granddad was a chain smoker.

It was not until I was 25 years old that I lived in a house with proper air conditioning. One of the real treats of spending time with Granddad and Grandma was one that many of us, me included, now take entirely for granted, air conditioning. They lived in red brick, ranch style home and liked it to be very cool in the hot East Texas summers. Stepping outside, from the refrigerated inside of my grandparent’s well insulated and air conditioned home, into the stark reality of summer in, Beautiful was always an experience. It was the experience of being restored to reality as one stepped from the carefully controlled environment inside to the wildly hot and humid truth that lay without.

The air, even in the shade offered by the porch was hot. Stepping off the porch and out of the shade was hotter still. Walking across the lawn meant stepping upon much too dry Bermuda grass that crunched along the way. Crunch, crunch, crunch, with each step. Granddad, long tired of mowing or of even bothering to hire anyone to cut his grass, had taken to keeping three sheep. A friendly, if tiny, flock of ewes that kept his grass well mowed but who were less inclined to also eat the weeds. For that Granddad would either need goats or need to manage the weeds himself. Not being a man who wished to keep goats and being neither inclined to manage the weeds, Granddad did what many of us do. He settled. It was enough for him to know the grass was managed and to accept that in his yard, just as in life, there were simply going to be a few weeds.

Surrounding Granddad’s and Grandma’s yard was a four foot tall chain-link fence. It kept the dog and the sheep in and helped the dog dissuade the coyotes from troubling the ewes. At the chain-link gate the too dry Bermuda grass transitioned to the white rock that composed the driveway.

Grabbing hold of the metal door latch on Granddad’s splendid Chrysler Cordoba, burned the skin. Thankfully, when he bought the car he upgraded to the gold velour seats that were far superior in terms of comfort to the black vinyl of his old Plymouth Fury III. One could at least sit in the car without being burned by the very seats upon which one sat. Despite that happy blessing, the car was still as hot as an oven. Had we bothered to put on seat belts, the metal housing of both the male and female ends of the latches would have been painful to the touch in that heat but that was before what my old folks would later refer to as the, “tyranny of seat belt laws.”

To hear the rest of this episode, click on the link above!

Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!

A Beautiful, Lie

I remembering transitioning from elementary school to what we then referred to as Junior High School. My children and the children of my friends tell me nowadays it is more commonly known as, “Middle School.” No matter what is called today or may be called tomorrow, in those days, in that part of the world, and particularly in the Beautiful Independent School District (BISD) it was, Junior High School.

Junior High was a different experience from that to which I’d been accustomed. It was a big change. Every class was held in a different room. There was no, one teacher, we would spend a majority of the day with. So many new faces and we now found ourselves competing for space in the restrooms, band hall, gym, the hallway, and every where else, with kids that were much older than we were.

Just as is true in any community, some of the folks with whom we worked, students, teachers, and staff alike, were just wonderful, some of them were just awful, and most where somewhere on the scale between those two poles. One of the great things about Junior High School was the liberating truth that if a teacher truly was awful, and some really were, one only had, for the most part, a single class that had to be endured each day rather than being interred for the full school day with a single rotten teacher.

On the first day of the new school year when I entered the sixth grade, my first year in Junior High School, an assembly of the students was called. We were instructed on how the school system in Texas was funded and that it was important that we attend school every single day so the school would receive the monies it needed from the state.

As an incentive, our principal promised us that every single student who achieved perfect attendance that year would be awarded two silver dollars. I knew what silver dollars were. Both of my grandfathers, at different times, had expressed to me the value of silver and demonstrated to me the difference in silver coins versus those made of less valuable alloys. The promise of two silver dollars really motivated me to attend school every single day, no matter what!

To hear the full story, please click the link to listen above.

Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!