NO CHARGE . . .

           Some things are much more than they initially appear. . . like this simple orange dry cleaning ticket.
I came across it recently when rummaging through family "artifacts".  It has become a treasure of sorts, pointing to relationships that were strong and consequently  stabilizing factors in my youth.

     In the early 1950's, my dad and uncle co-owned the dry cleaning plant in the (then) small North Carolina town of Apex.  G.C. Cooper was their father-in-law.  He died in April 1951, approximately two months after the date on the ticket.
I earlier wrote something of my memories of him and my grand-mother in a post, Worth a Thousand Words.  Here I reflect, rather, on the in-law dimension between them and my dad.

     The "N.C." in dad's unmistakeable script, of course, meant "No Charge" and that kind of  generosity was indicative of the warmth and  love of their relationship.  Dad and their daughter had been married almost 18 years at the time of my grand-parents' deaths, but weeks apart.  I was but 13 years old when they died but I had been able to take some measure of their depth and character. I do not know how far they progressed in their formal education; I do know by recollection and family lore that they possessed a generous allotment of wisdom.  

    As frequently happened with young couples of their generation, my parents eloped to a neighboring state.  Upon their return to mom's parents' house, dad asked timidly, "should I run?". To that , his new father-in-law replied, "I think you have run enough already."  When I made my appearance about  five years later in another state, mom in her correspondence with her parents extolled the beauty of her first-born. She and dad returned to North Carolina a month or so later and upon  seeing me for the first time, grand-pa teasingly told mom "Every crow thinks hers is the blackest", which much later I learned is a paraphrase of a Talmudic proverb. Dad acknowledged that as a young man, his temper sometimes prompted his using colorful word choices, until one day, grand-pa simply said, "Frank, you are too intelligent to have to resort to using those words."

     Speed (his nickname because of his slow locomotion) read widely.  As a child, I remember mom's having a copy of Les Miserables that she had received from her father.  Mom read widely despite having but attended but seven years of public school.  She was very proud of her GED, earned after her three sons were adults. My parents' love of reading was passed on to their children and now the grand-children continue the tradition.

     In the early years of marriage, dad worked in the village cotton mill, as did his mother-in-law.  Many times, he recalled, she would come by his machine and have him share a soft drink break. Three times weekly for eight to ten years, one of dad's dry cleaning routes included the small mill town where my grand-parents lived.  Often, he (and I when I rode with him in summers) would be invited to have lunch (or as it was called at that time and place Dinner.  The evening meal was Supper.) My grand-ma was a cook extraordinaire.  Memories of her chess pie remain vivid.  Never did dad charge them for their dry cleaning.

   On re-reading those last sentences, I do not mean to give the implication that theirs was a kind of financial quid pro quo... quite the opposite was the case. Cost and indebtedness were never features of the relationship.

    In her early 60's, my grand-mother had cancer. Long-term care facilities were not commonplace and even if they had been, I doubt that their children would have consented to their living in one.  Rather, her children cared for them on a rotating basis ---in their own homeplace and in the siblings' respective residences.  So it was that in 1950, my grand-parents came to live with us for an extended time.  During that time, she taught me  the hand alphabet for hearing impaired persons, some of which I still remember.  My youngest brother has sketchy memories of grand-pa's taking him along on his regular visits to Mr. Levy Pendergrass's store during that time.

                  Grand-pa Cooper with two of his sons-in-law . . .
              Wade Baker (center rear) and Dad and two grand-sons.
              (pre-1948 . . . because "Baby Brother" not yet born)

      While dad inscribed "N.C." on the ticket, the memories are Priceless.

My Cooper grand-parents



Satchel

"Just the facts, ma'am"

     Sergeant Joe Friday (aka Jack Webb) of the Los Angeles P.D. on the long-ago tv program Dragnet immortalized the expression, "Just the facts, ma'am".   

   I find definitions helpful; so, from some on-line dictionaries:
FACT: "a thing that is indisputably the case"; "something that has actual existence"; "a piece of information that has objective reality" about which there would be unanimous agreement.  By contrast, OPINION is "a view or judgment about something not necessarily based on fact of knowledge"; "... it may deal with subjective matters"; "a belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof"; "opinions are beliefs not necessarily based on facts."  

    In my counseling office, I regularly hear opinions expressed as if such were fact.  As a very elementary exercise in identifying the  difference, I sometimes point to a lamp on a side table and indicate that we can agree that the object is indeed a lamp.  Then I continue by insisting that we can agree that it is a beautiful lamp. (Actually, in my opinion it is not; but that is another matter.)

    Beyond those differences, I believe that FACTS have to do with another huge matter: TRUTH: "that which is in accordance with fact."  In a courtroom, the bailiff charges the witness to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."  Over time, I have learned that this phrase is not a redundancy but a continuum, necessitating each component. Deliberately omitting or over-emphasizing either one can produce a caricature of Truth. Then, there are LIES : "Intentional false statements."  The Reverend Doctor Richard Lischer in a recent sermon in Duke University Chapel (January 15, 2017) said of lies, "their persistence and perversity can wear you down."

     Currently, a fact and what makes something such is a   hot-button political debate with expressions such as alternative facts and fake news having entered the public vocabulary. Recently, a counselor to the President, acknowledging that he tells falsehoods, nonetheless said that those were less important than the many things he says that are true.  Expressing opinion or lies as if they were incontrovertible fact demanding universal agreement ---whether done consciously from whatever motivation or done without awareness --- forms the base of much controversy and/or damage,  whether in the realm of politics or personal relationships.

   Recently I read something to the effect that knowing how to counter falsehoods means knowing how lies benefit those  telling them. Or, as Edwin Friedman, an eminent therapist once  observed . . . we cannot  replace by data, opinions that were not created by data in the first place.

   Truth-telling can be dangerous and unpopular. To tell the truth, Lischer noted, can be "when the trouble starts. . . . When I was a kid, my mother always told me what your mothers told you: 'As long as you tell the truth, you won't get in trouble.' Our mothers lied. . . . You see, it's just the opposite. Tell the truth and that's when the trouble starts."  Just ask John the Baptist or Jesus.

     And, that's just a fact.

         Satchel