SIGNS OF THE TIMES . . .

They were  everywhere !

    At my age, antique malls can be a "mixed blessing". . . often wondering how an item used in my youth has suddenly been  deemed 'Antique'.

 Yesterday, we were poking around one of our favorite 'treasure chests' when I spotted the above beauty.  Quite likely the picture will not resonate with many below 'a certain age' because

the signs are no longer a feature of the American highways.

In 1960, John Steinbeck travelled across  the United States with   his French Poodle, Charles le Chien, and from that trip wrote Travels with Charlie.  Interstate highways, aka 'Superhighways', were just becoming  common and Steinbeck lamented  that the time was soon coming when it would be possible to travel coast to coast without seeing anything distinctive on the landscape.

    Hasn't always been that way.  Until thirty or so years ago, rare was the town or city with its own bypass for avoiding the numerous stoplights. Consequently, it required much longer just to get from here to there.  Today, billboards along the Interstates loom large in order to be read quickly when cars  are zipping along at high speeds.  Among the first highway advertisements, Burma Shave jingles 'were everywhere'  until around 1963.  The slower speeds of those years permitted reading the poetic segments which were placed on slats, each on a pole about ten feet above ground and placed perhaps fifty yards apart.  So the 'poem' pictured above likely was not a solitary entity.

(To read about the history of the Burma Shave signs, enter that in your  search engine.)

Between my hometown and Raleigh, the state capital, on a rather winding  road, I remember this ditty:

Spring has Sprung/

The  Grass has riz/

Where last year's/

Careless Driver Is/

Burma Shave

Always the tag line was the  same:  Burma Shave.

If 'ubiquitous' means 'everywhere', then the only  ubiquitous competition those advertisements had in this region was "SEE  ROCK  CITY", the admonishment painted on the side of many farmers' barns.  I never felt deprived during my youth that I never saw the place which is just outside Chattanooga, Tennessee.  

I wrote my own little jingle about these signs from another time:

While traveling down/

 the 'Road of Life'/

A sign you'll see/

'No turning back'/

For you or me/

Not even to find Burma Shave signs, though Rock City still awaits my visit.

Satchel

"LATE AFTERNOON AND EVENING THUNDERSHOWERS . . . "

       
             At 6 p.m. today, I had an appointment, via FaceTime, to provide supervision for a woman working on her LPC license.  At 5:30,she texted a request to delay due to thunderstorms in her area. Soon the weather issue was resolved and our session completed.

     Reading her text, I remembered a common 'weather forecast' heard over the years here in the American South, predicting "late afternoon and evening thundershowers." Old-timers could survey the sky and warn, "It's comin' up a cloud", meaning a thunderstorm was imminent. And, as my dog knows, there can be no thunder without lightning.

    Last Winter I promised that I would not complain of Summer heat. I must acknowledge that the pledge has been severely tested as we have had many days with 90+* temperatures, often many of them in succession. Add high humidity readings and there is a recipe for discomfort.  A long ago neighbor, a native of England, said of the local weather conditions, "It's damned de-bil-i-ta-ting !"  The heat and humidity sometimes seem to conspire to produce the storms.

    According to a long-circulated story, Ben Franklin flew a kite with a key during a storm and confirmed some kind of theory about electricity.  It was fortunate for Ben and his experiment that he was not my mom's son because she would not have allowed him outside during the storm. As a matter of fact, my brothers and I remember
being allowed little activity during those events.  And, for goodness sake, stay away from windows and doors and unplug all electrical appliances, and do not go near a telephone. 

    While mom may have been a tad over-cautious,common sense indicates the high risk that lightning poses.  In just the past three days, two persons in our state have experienced lightning strikes and a church several miles away totally burned after being hit by a bolt. 

    Only when my siblings and I became adults did we learn the origins of our mother's fear: as a barefoot young girl, she had been standing on wet ground when an unexpected lightning strike nearby provided more than a tingle.

    As a teen, my now mid-40's daughter was  speaking on the telephone as an ominous cloud formed. As a precaution, I had her end the call and within a couple of minutes, a tree near the corner of our house took a hit from top to bottom.  The voltage continued down the embankment just outside her window.  The furrow was deep, wide and long enough that I could have planted a small vegetable garden.  

   Well, what do you know, maybe there are occasions to take mom's counsel.

    Take care . . . you never know when it will be 'raining cats and dogs'.

     Satchel

    
    
       

Can you 'make music'?

        How I wish that I could play a musical instrument !

       In previous posts I have written about my appreciation of several genres of music, how I have no rhythm, how even Stan Brown with his great talent and patience could not overcome my limitations and teach me to play the banjo, how I cannot carry a tune in the proverbial bucket, etc.  I also wrote with awe about the talents of Stan, Everette, Willard, Julie, Odell and several other friends.  

    Last week we visited the pottery of our friend, Al, in Seagrove, North Carolina, hailed by many as the ' Pottery Capital of the World'. (Several members of his family are also renown potters.)  Al is something of a Renaissance Man.  Not only world-class potter, he has been a Registered Pharmacist, fiddler extraordinaire, and now he is crafting beautiful instruments.  (If interested, put your search engine on Fiddlin' Al McCanless. And, no, this is neither a requested nor reimbursed commercial.  Al is unaware of this writing.)

      I did not know J.B. Prince who died this past week.  He was a friend and mentor to many musicians.  He was only 58 at his death.  My wife remembered him as a youthful prodigy (although he disliked the term) who sometimes played with the Bluegrass Experience, a band co-founded by her deceased husband.

     Today I preached at a nearby church while the minister is away. Greeting folks after the service, I fell into conversation with Bobby Gales whose family I had known from long ago.  When I told him that he plays 'a mean banjo' (that's a compliment, meaning he plays it well), he said, "Well, it's a mean instrument to try to play sometimes."

    These recent occurrences have reminded me of how I wish I could play . . . and particularly what someone has termed a portable instrument.  My parents paid for me to have piano lessons for seven years, although truthfully (as I wrote earlier), I had one year seven times.  My Uncle Frank Durham played guitar very well.  In the 1920's, he and a group of his friends formed a band called "The Chatham Rabbits" and occasionally performed on WPTF radio in Raleigh.  Why, I now wonder, did I not ask this kind and patient man to help me learn to play.  While largely disinterested in piano practice, had I given just a portion of that time to Uncle Frank's tutelage . . . well, I can dream, can't I?

    Actually, before I became enamored with string instruments, I had made another brief effort at 'portable musicianship'.  I wanted to learn to play bagpipes.  One of my colleagues in the Music Department began a class for learning to play the Chanter as prelude to playing the bagpipes.  He assured us that once we had mastered the fingering on the chanter, we could learn how to inflate the 'windbag'.  After a few lessons, it became obvious that I had three thumbs on each hand, and that was that for talent.

      Retrospectively, it has likely been a good thing for relationships that I do not play that instrument. Hearing bagpipe music is largely an acquired taste for many.  Once I saw a lone piper playing just off a busy highway near Duke University.   I wondered if spouse, friends, family, landlords or someone else had 'suggested' he take his pipes and go elsewhere.

     'Wisdom' would indicate that I make peace with the fact that my  fingers can not decipher the code. At least I can 'pat my foot' as long as no one notices that I don't quite have the  beat.

      Satchel
    

William wants a doll . . .

           "Free to be you and me" was an early 1970's project of stories and songs by then-current celebrities "to encourage post-1960's gender neutrality, saluting values such as individuality, tolerance, and comfort with one's identity.  A major thematic message is that anyone -whether a boy or a girl -can achieve anything." (Wikipedia)  One song by Rosey Grier, "It's Alright to Cry", I sometimes play for my male clients.

       Another favorite is "William Wants a Doll" sung by Marlo Thomas and Alan Alda ("Hawkeye" of MASH). Young William at five years of age announced that his choice for a birthday present was a doll.  Somewhat aghast, mom and dad attempted to steer him towards more 'gender appropriate' toys such as baseball bats and gloves.  While William liked these, they were not his request.  Peers also  teased and berated him.  Finally, Grandmother pointed out that he wanted a doll so that he could learn how to be a father.
One later critic asked why it was not o.k. for him to have a doll simply because he wanted a doll.  (These videos are readily available on YouTube.)

     The 'acculturation' of young boys to be real boys begins early ... often with the result of squelching and shaming their ability to experience what are usually regarded as feminine traits, such as tenderness, empathy, dependency, receptivity.  In their stead, we are encouraged, overtly and subtly, to value competitiveness, externalizing or outright denying our emotions, and bravery (or bravado ?).  The therapist, Terrence Real, calls this a form of trauma that begins early.  In his book, How Can I Get Through to You?: Reconnecting Men and Women, he cited a study that  indicated that boys and girls til the age of four or five "rest comfortably in the 'expressive-affiliative mode'" with girls being allowed to remain there longer while boys are subtly - or  - forcibly pushed out of it. (p. 123) (Young girls have yet another form of trauma that can move them away from their true selves.)  While it is o.k. for young girls, say 8-12, to be called Tomboy, think of the negative cultural connotations of calling a young boy, Sissy.  There have been many long-term effects of this process, which Real calls emotional amputations.

     So, back to the matter of little boys and dolls . . .  The late author, Reynolds Price, wrote of gifts received on his fourth Christmas. "Santa" brought  what Price termed "an odd array" that included an Indian outfit complete with Headdress, a Shirley Temple doll, as well as an imitation double-barreled shotgun.
There was also an unrequested "and perhaps as a slightly unnerved nudge toward manhood" midget car.  At that time an only child, he frequently told Shirley his "private woes".  (pp.94-96 of his Feasting the Heart).

    Some (much?) of the cultural objection to allowing young boys such "feminine" toys as dolls is homophobia.  While Price as an adult readily acknowledged that he was indeed homosexual, having a Shirley Temple doll was hardly a "cause".  And, what, then, of straight, heterosexual men such as my brother and I who had dolls in our early years.  Mine was Nancy Jane by now long lost but who bore a strong resemblance to the one at the top of this post.  My brother had (and still has) Bob Junior.  Along the way, we each received our share of masculine toys.  In addition, to those pictured below, I recall the complete football uniforms another brother and I received one Christmas when we were pre-teen.

The next Christmas. I have vague memories of this.

Probably age 3.  Note the boots and goggles

      But no pictures of Nancy Jane have been located.  I hope that she is doing well, wherever she may be.  She played an important part in my early years.


     Satchel  (my first name really is William)