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

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!

A hum of conversation droned, punctuated by loud laughter, and was occasionally brought to near silence when for reasons unknown to me, the whole crowd, whether seated at tables, in booths, or at the counter, grew suddenly quiet. Eerily so. Chris and I were at the counter. She sat in her customary place, on the comfortable padded stool between the counter and the cash register. I stood, wrapping metal forks and butter knives in paper napkins and stacking them in their designated holder on a shelf against the wall opposite the cash register. Startled by the silence, I looked at Chris who looked back at me. She cocked one eyebrow high up on her forehead and inhaled deeply from the Winston cigarette that she held in her right hand. I narrowed my eyes wonderingly and paused my work. Even the noise from the kitchen where Betty worked to prepare supper had gone quiet. Then, just as suddenly, the hum resumed.

“What is that all about?” I asked Chris.

“Honey, there are three things here that are inevitable: Everyone has to stop to breath eventually. Most of our customers are smokers and just like breathing, have to pause to inhale from their cigarettes. And Sugar, it is a cafe, eventually someone is going to take a bite of food, chew, and swallow. Sometimes, all those things just seem to come together and happen all at the same time.”

I marveled a moment then eyed my friend suspiciously. “Are you pulling my leg?”

“Pulling your leg? Oh Honey, no. I’m imparting wisdom gathered over a lifetime!” Again Chris took a drag from her cigaret

te. Seeing the unconvinced furrow in my brow, she winked, exhaled, and we both laughed and resumed our work.

It was Tuesday. The Lions Club always reserved the second largest of the cafe’s three dining rooms to hold their meeting and share a meal. Betty had to work extra hard on those evenings to prepare a meal especially for them as well as the usual supper special for our regular patrons. I would work extra hard cleaning up and washing dishes. The cafe would have a good night. The thought made me happy.

To hear the rest of this Beautiful, East Texas tale, click on the link above and thanks for listening!

Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!