BUZZARD AND I

Francis, just when you think an old friend just doesn’t get it and never will, he shows you something. I have a friend or two who remind me of Buzzard, good company, easy to be around, but not inclined to deep thought or discussion.

I have one friend who I assumed was like that, until he showed me otherwise. He uses the word buzzard to describe clueless people who try to rook him in a business deal, thinking they’re slick. I knew him for a few years as a business associate and assumed that he was a shallow thinker.

I learned, though, that that’s just a front he puts on when he doesn’t want to talk about whatever I’m telling him. He told me one time, “When some buzzard is screwing himself on a deal with you, don’t interrupt him”.

He’s actually a sharp old dude, and he also happens to be my best friend.

Cricket,

We called it rape when we were kids – I grew up near Tisdale and I remember when this sign made the David Letterman Show:

[img[/img]

I hate calling it Canola. I refuse to to do so just to make the PC police happy.

Rob,

You’re welcome!

My husband’s grandfather’s farm was in Rose Valley. I wish we’d bought it when the opportunity presented itself a decade ago.

I’ve come across excellent thoughts from people that you wouldn’t expect could think past their next beer. OTOH, these same people have done the dumbest thinking (if you can call it that) on politics, economy, etc.

I, however, make my Big mistakes doing things (labor involved but very little thought until after the job was completed – then it was an ‘aw shit’).

IS- Carlin helps. On the other hand my kids have been a constant source of joy for me and to be honest I think they are part of the reason I’ve been able to view most of what happens day to day as theater. Kids are smarter and more resilient than you think – they have become my ‘posse’ so to speak. I have a theory about why our civilization is completely fucked up and it has largely to do with how we have come to view the family unit and how it interacts as it ages. I’ll probably write something about it soon. Just have to sort it out and pull it together.

Francis Marion,

My husband still has family in Rose Valley. You may have even crossed paths in another life.

My husband ventured back to Rose Valley was earlier this year to attend a funeral. We were happy to find that the family friend who bought grandpa’s farm has kept it a farm, and even branched out to raise some cattle.

Not you Ed ,it’s the world. It being ruled by a Satanic elite who is hell bent on destroying what’s left of American society. It’s realizing at the age of 53 I never accomplished everything of real value .I worked all my life ,paid taxes all my adult life for what ? To support a government I have nothing but contempt for ?

And then theirs the the question of Stucky. Who used to like to play around. At least insult me daily . Now he’s giving me the silent treatment in hopes I just go away . I Guess .

Remember the old Waylon Jennings song . Good time Charlie got the blues ..I think that’s me.

Francis, thanks for writing this. I’ve been surprised more than a few times by the things some friends and relatives have said. You’ve been awake a lot longer than me, judging from your post from all those years ago you put up recently. We who think like this may be in the minority, but I’ve come totes lose there are a lot more of us out there than I’d previously thought. I mostly keep my opinions to myself nowadays, most people just want to exist in the bubble and don’t want to hear it. I can understand that. It’s a lot more pleasant in there.

As far as having kids goes, I am pissed off about it. It sucks, not much else to say. I’m watching their future get traded away to maintain the corrupt status quo. But I don’t regret having kids, they bring more joy to my life than I would have thought possible. If this country is ever going to recover, it will need young people who were raised right.

I finished the Taco Bell dinner, two bean burritos, two taco supreme and a diet drink. I began to think of the time when I had used this same meal in achieving time travel. My purpose then was to know the election results long before the year-long campaigns were over.
I had watched the classic Somewhere in Time and resolved to try Richard’s method but using a different means of hypnotism. After several futile attempts, I realized the burrito wrapper was grounding me in the present. I hid it under the bed and before long I was repeating the line: It is November 3, 2016. At least that is what I thought I was muttering.
November third twenty sixty, November third twenty sixty..
When I awoke, I could feel the crisp November air. I ran outside and finding no one, I walked several blocks to the corner bar. I got lost. I stopped an old man, a stranger in my small town, and asked immediately about the election.
“There was no election, he said, We still have the same president.” The news shocked me, I had skipped several months and now I knew nothing of Obama’s suspension of civil rights and the imposition of martial law. “You mean, Obama is still the president?”
“Don’t be an ass,” said the old man, “Hillary is the president, she’s been president for over 40 years. Of course, most people only call her H1.”
I cut the old man off in mid thought and lectured: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste by using drugs.”
“Uh huh. Whatever. Listen, I remember that Obama fella and I can assure you that President Hillary must have sent him packing, he was never heard from again. Most people don’t know but I recall she cleaned house, if you recall Dick Cheney, he was tried for war crimes and sentenced to life in prison. He’s been in Gitmo for the last 40 years.”
“When will you stop hallucinating? I chided him, He was VP not more than eight years ago! Do you expect me to believe he’s been in prison for forty years?”
“Well I do. Last time he saw office was nearly fifty years ago. This is the forty fourth year of H1, in old terms, the year 2060.”
“What the fuck do you mean two thousand sixty?”
“Son, the old man paused and looked me in the eye, “ever since Hillary Clinton won the presidency, she has been succeeded by hand picked female leaders. Each one takes the name H1 in her honor and the fact that they are, by law, Homeland citizen #1.”
“I think you’ve lost your mind.”
The old man laughed sarcastically and said: “You’re the one with all the strange questions, I’d say you’re out of your mind.”
“No I’m not, sir. I’ve simply arrived at a state of complete and total confusion. I no longer understand America.”
“Ya right. America hasn’t existed since Homeland was established by H1, the original.” The old man chuckled and shook his head.
“What happened to Trump?, he was wildly popular.”
“H1 appointed him president of the Mexican protectorate.”
“Ok, now you’re startin’ to lose me.”
“Well, I reckon but it’s pretty simple. You see, he was all fired up to build a wall and all that. It didn’t get him far. Matter of fact, they made a joke of it;
Humpty Trumpty ran on a wall
Humpy Trumpty had a great fall
All the GOP’s pundits and all the GOP’s men
Would not put Humpty Trumpty together again
“I still don’t see how that could happen, why Trump?,” I asked under a raised eyebrow.
H1 has a sense of humor, she let him govern that country and he made Mexico pay for the wall, alright. If it hadn’t been for Saint Melania, as they called her, he would have been hanged by his golden mane.
“This used to be a free country, now you say Homeland, as you call it, isn’t free?”
The old man shook his head. “You’re messed up man. First you say we aren’t free and now you’re telling me we are? What kinda crap is that?”
“There was a Rhodes scholar said once, ‘freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’ nobody cares about freedom.” he said.
OMG, I said, 1984 has come to pass, surely H1 indoctrinates you everyday and the teevee spies on you…
“Or maybe, as a guy by the name of Heinlein once wrote: ‘I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.’ Do you understand what I’m sayin’ young fella?”
“We were free!, You don’t know the meaning of freedom; elections, gender identity, free love, political representation and a victim status of your choice!
Ya man. That’s some pretty deep shit.” he nodded thoughtfully.
“Actually, it’s pretty simple shit. Everybody has a purpose, to move the Homeland forward. Anything that is not recommended by the Homeland is backward thinking.”
“Maybe. I need to think about it. I said. Tell me, what is backward thinking?”
“Look, certain words like freedom and elections are unknown except to old people like me. Work is the purpose of living. A person works for the good of the Homeland and when he dies, he moves forward. All our work is to get Homeland to go forward. Individualism is a step backward. Backward is undesirable. Forward is the ultimate goal. Backward thinking people foil the efforts of the Homeland and when they die, they go backward.” he replied as he looked back out over the horizon. The sun had finally set taking the pink sky with it.
The old man pointed back towards town: “You wanna grab a beer before you head home?”
“You mean you can still do stuff like that?
Absolutely.”
I can’t help but think; maybe there’s hope for Homeland after all.

Choosing to do the RIGHT thing is what I think really makes us free.

When my father-in-law was terminal and knew it (I noticed that initially, Poppa G was in denial about his chances for recovery and seemed almost terrified of dying), my husband and I decided that he’d suffered enough. He’d made the journey to Oklahoma to “escape” the lonely end designed for him by a senile and bitter wife, an immoral older son and an estate lawyer who’d taken his life savings and declared him indigent, dependent upon Medicaid for his care in a substandard nursing home in Ohio.

When Nick snuck him out of Ohio (Honestly, if the idiot older brother had even visited him once a week, he would have realized his father was being packed up to move) and we got him settled into assisted living close to our home, we decided he would spend as little time alone as humanly possible. We decided it was the RIGHT thing to do for a man who had worked his entire life to provide his wife and sons the highest standard of living he possibly could, in spite of his being the uneducated son of an Italian immigrant escaping Mussolini in the early 20th century with all the baggage that carried.

I took an extended leave of absence (turned permanent) from my gubment job and proceeded to be his almost constant companion, making my job the attendance of elder care appointments and activities at the center. I grew really attached to my FIL and became, for all intents and purpose, his daughter. My son, who had lived so far from all his grandparents most of his life that they were just strange old people we saw once in a while, joined the fun as his schooling and work allowed, popping into the apartment or the dining hall and delighting his proud grandpa, who doted on him. For high school graduation, he insisted I buy my son a gold pocket watch and have it engraved for him. My son treasures it.

Poppa came to us with about $60,000 he’d managed to put aside for my husband when he realized his POA given to his POS oldest son was being used to siphon the money into a Family Trust. (Oddly named, when what it is really meant to do is misdirect and hide the truth and there is very little trust involved.) We spent quite a bit of his money fixing up his apartment at the center and buying whatever would possibly make his life easier and more comfortable. Since he was technically NOT an Oklahoma resident, he was not eligible for any help other than his private Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance for Seniors paid for until we could get his residency changed. We could have declared guardianship and then gotten him cared for on the military retirement dime, but when Nick and I decided to do the “thing” (take his father from nanny state Ohio out of the clutches of a corrupt brother and estate lawyer), we decided that the only thing we ever needed to do was the RIGHT THING.

Now, the right thing to do is almost always clear. It is that thing that the ego balks at doing because it costs time, money or effort. It is that thing that many people claim comes to them from their little WWJD bracelets or after they have gotten onto their knees to pray and meditate asking a Supreme Consciousness to guide their decision. The Right Thing to do is not rocket science. It is what an honest person with integrity SHOULD do in every situation. And, when you are looking at a broken old man who has been betrayed by his wife and his child, the RIGHT THING to do is to simply love him and let him know he is important to you.

After we took him to a private doctor and had him evaluated for the ability to make his own decisions, we put the proper paperwork in place to let him do exactly that. After he got his paperwork in order with a lawyer who thought we were NUTS for allowing that dear old man to control his own monies, he told his doctor that he no longer wanted life-sustaining medical care. He lived four months after Nick’s frantic trip to Ohio to shuffle his father to a doctor for the medicines necessary for a trip and then onto an airplane (with medical assistance inflight) to bring him to Oklahoma.

Now, I’m not bragging on Nick or I for doing this thing. It was the RIGHT THING to do. And there were many days that my decision to give up a paycheck to entertain a group of elderly residents at the home seemed like the most insane idea I’d ever had. One day we went to the church for Bingo or an ice cream social and almost ran out of oxygen. I realized that my Poppa’s life was a delicate balance of insulin shots, oxygen tanks and breathing treatments that we could never overcome. But, because he was enjoying what was left of his life, every single time I walked through his door, there was a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

I play the piano pretty well, so I became the de facto entertainment for ALL the residents at meals, with a lovely grand piano having been gifted to the home by someone’s grateful family. I told Poppa that he had given me the most beautiful piano I’d ever played upon. I got to witness some wonderful things because of that. A woman who never spoke or interacted with anyone would lift her head and SING when I played gospel music. Turned out she was the daughter of a preacher and she sang for church as a child. A man in a wheelchair asked to come join me and played an astounding rendition of Mozart’s Alla Turca one day. I brought him up to play another day and the memory and ability was gone. He couldn’t bring it back again. A mean old woman who’d taken one look at my Poppa G the day we’d moved him in and said “well, he’s not gonna be here very long” had to eat crow and admit that he changed quite a bit from that broken old wreck in the wheelchair that first day during the weeks we tended to him. Another old woman who simply wandered the halls looking for her deceased sister came and sat on the bench beside me and lay her head on my shoulder during “In the Garden” then asked me if I’d seen her sister and returned to her wanderings.

A couple of days before he died, his nieces and sister from Ohio called and wanted to talk to him; they wanted to tell their godfather they loved him one more time. After all the calls were over, I wiped my tears and said to him “well, that is all of them” and he shook his head. He asked me to call his oldest son, which I did. He said to him “I want you to know I love you and forgive you.” I couldn’t hear what the reply was, but shortly afterward he just handed the phone to me and I said “He’s done” and hung up.

It was the most profound thing I’ve ever witnessed. It is by far the best thing I have ever done.

I don’t know if this is exactly what Heinlein was talking about but I know that I learned a LOT about being free to do what is morally correct from that experience with Poppa. If you want to understand what it really means to be free, visit a nursing home and get to know some of the residents who understand what the loss of that freedom really means.