My Mom...The Felon.

       I have to beg your indulgence on this one. The events that I am about to relate are true. They happened after I was a boy, but not yet married. I apologize in advance to my mom and a few other people for dragging this out of the closet. If you see Miss Rita after reading this, try not to tease her too much.

      I come from a long line of famous-in-their-circle musicians. My great-great grand pappy was a fiddle player who is often credited with composing Soldier’s Joy during the Civil War. His boy taught his boy (Melvin Wine) who influenced my mom, who raised me. I learned all sorts of cool stuff from mom: gardening, milking cows, music and a directness with people that is sometimes to our detriment, which is a big part of this story.

      In 1991, my Grandpa Melvin was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts as a National Heritage Fellow for his lifetime of work at playing and preserving Appalachian Folk Music. It’s kinda a big deal…http://www.nea.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/fellow.php?id=1991_16&type=bio   The award came with a big poster, some pocket jingle and an invitation to play a tune at the Kennedy Center. Not too shabby for one of the most humble and peaceable men I have ever known. Seriously, he could have taught Gandhi a thing or two.

      The Wine family being what it is, we loaded up a tour bus and went along with Grandpa for his visit to the big city. If you are hearing the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies, then you are on the right track. As a brief aside, if you ever have the chance to ride 6 hours in a tour bus….don’t. Seriously, trust me on this.

      So we roll into D.C. and check into the hotel with the admonition from mom not to raid the mini-bar. It’s a Friday and not much else is going on. My little brother and I, along with our girlfriends, decide to take in some of the sights. Walking along the Mall and seeing the spotlighted Vietnam Vets bronze statues appear out of the gloom of a summer evening is a vivid memory that I hope sticks with me forever. That and The Wall, and the Lincoln Memorial, and….well, you get the picture. Of course, the P.O.W.M.I.A. people looked at us askance, it being dark in D.C. and we being very white on the Mall. They feared for our safety and made us call a cab to get back to the hotel.

      The next morning we boarded the bus to go to a reception for that year’s honorees in some Federal building. Milling around in the lobby, I was a bit starstruck to note B.B. King was also being honored that year and we would later get to meet him. So imagine the scene: A hundred or so people in a Federal building, waiting to go thru the metal detectors and hang out with various Senators and fellow honorees with their families…when all of a sudden, momma Rita turns to me and says, “I’ve got a gun in my purse.”

      Let that sink in.

      Gun. In. Her. Purse…..Federal. Building….Washington, D.C.

      Holy. Crap.

      I quickly offered to take it back to the tour bus, but whipping out a pistol seemed a poor idea at the time, given the crowded venue with looming guards and men with ear-pieces who were talking into their sleeves. So mom and Melissa went back out to put her purse on the bus and be done with it. Of course, the bus is gone. Of course, they can’t come back in and face the metal detectors. Of course they decide to toss the little .22 caliber pistol in the bushes….outside a Federal building….in Washington D.C. ….in broad daylight….within a couple hundred feet of a police box.

      No. I am not making this up.

      So mom comes back in, just as cool as a cucumber and rejoins the tour group. All is well. We pass the detectors and meet the other honorees and marvel at the cool artisanship of their work. The quilts were stunning. B.B. King was gracious to anyone who wanted a picture. The displays of traditional artwork were impressive, as were the men in suits who eventually accosted Miss Rita.

      Just as a public service, let me point out that when approached by D.C. police it is never a good idea to spout off, “Oh, I see you found my gun.” It is a weak opening gambit that leaves you little room for debate or discussion. This we learned from mom’s example. We also learned that the D.C. police and the Federales despise each other and love nothing else so much as a good pissing match over jurisdiction, which is exactly what we had since mom’s clever repartee had been heard by representatives from both forces.

      So my mom, 50-something widower from the hills of WV, who wouldn’t say “poo” if her mouth was full of it was caught up in the machine of D.C. justice. She was booked and searched like a dangerous felon. I’m sure a few of you understand what that means. Not Fun.

      Also not fun was the pre-cell phone era chase around town trying to catch up with her and bail her out. Eventually, Senators Byrd and Rockefeller got involved to expedite the process. So my mom was convicted of weapons possession and run thru the system in record time. She managed to make it to the concert at the Kennedy Center just in time to see her dad play.

      Overall a pretty standard trip for my family.

      If you would like to hear a few of Melvin's tunes, here's a link...http://www.myspace.com/melvinwine ... Cold Frosty Morning is a personal favorite. Pretty sure mom is a big fan of I'll Fly Away.

Ringing the Bell

I was looking back at some of my earlier posts on this blog, smiling at this, shaking my head at that and wondering how I could even publish some of those other things. Something all writers do. Well, not just writers, any creator looks back at his creation and sighs sometimes or laughs. “Wow, that didn’t turn out the way I expected.” Or maybe, “That looks better now than it did when I started.”

When I was a boy, my father worked with his hands. He spent years working as a welder and craftsman at Murray’s Sheet metal shop in Parkersburg where his mates eventually made a little wand with a star on top that they gave him due to his wizardry with metal. It was made of stainless steel and rather heavy. I wonder what became of it? He had a unique way of seeing problems and often came up with surprising answers, which is why the really hard jobs came to him so often. He was a creator.

When we boys were born, he decided he didn’t want to raise us in the pollution of the Ohio Valley, so we settled in the magick-heavy valley of Sinking Creek near Glenville. For awhile he continued to work at Murray’s, but the commute was too long and he felt like he was missing out on raising his sons and so, Chapman Sheet Metal was born.

It was a small operation, dad and us boys really. But it put food on the table and kept us connected. Back then, air ducts for heating and air conditioning were made by hand at a metal brake. Bent to spec and installed by hand. Not cookie-cutter tubes that get tacked up in basements or slung thru attics. It was custom work. Individualized and special. It was an act of creation every time dad put in a furnace.

Dad created tons of things: tall bikes, winch-powered cranes, an underground house, solar heating systems, a metal bed….one of mom’s least favorite things. His creations weren’t always pretty or even functional, but he never stopped making something. He always had an idea for how to make it better. Everything.

He was a church leader, yet was for legalization of marijuana, quite the shocker during the 70’s. He thought the criminal element was worse than a few stoners eating pizza all night. He wanted to sing, but couldn’t carry a tune, so he worked like crazy at it. God bless JoAnn McHenry for her enormous patience. He knew, at an instinctive level, that The Church had gone wrong somewhere along the way and he applied all his work ethic and creativity to trying to fix Her.

He wasn’t always right, but he was always sincere. Thousands of people came to know Christ thru his ministry. He touched the lives of people wherever he went with a message that was accessible to working men and professors. “Try to do just a little more next time” was one of his main themes. “If you can say ‘Pray for me’ in church, then next time say ‘Please, pray for me.’” He was joining a long line of theologians who saw that something was amiss and worked to advance The Church as best he knew how. Something more than simple human failings was to blame, in his mind. There was some fundamental flaw in modern Christian teachings.

I think Earle Chapman would have liked Rob Bell.

For those of you unfamiliar with Rob Bell, he is causing a bit of a stir. He has a few books out, most notably Velvet Elvis and Love Wins that re-examine current doctrine and teachings. He is looking for that fundamental flaw in The Church and stepping on some toes while doing it. He, like my father, is part of a long line of discussion that has shaped and formed the church for ages. He, like my father isn’t always right (ask mom about that clunker of a metal bed) but he seems sincere and asks questions no one else wants to answer. Earle and Rob wouldn’t have agreed on everything, but it seems to me they think the same way.

I have only read thru the two books I mentioned earlier, just a single reading so far. I’m not buying his conclusions, but I’ll amen a lot of what he says about the love of God and the exclusion mind-set of The Church. He answers a lot of questions I was poorly asking in an earlier blog you can read here…http://jc-wheniwasaboy.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html.

So, if you are disenchanted with The Church or have left entirely, I am going to recommend you pick up a copy of Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. Does it have all the answers? No, but it asks questions you never thought of and answers some you are too afraid to voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBSr-2THXxQ&feature=related

Ringing the Bell

      I was looking back at some of my earlier posts on this blog, smiling at this, shaking my head at that and wondering how I could even publish some of those other things. Something all writers do. Well, not just writers, any creator looks back at his creation and sighs sometimes or laughs. “Wow, that didn’t turn out the way I expected.” Or maybe, “That looks better now than it did when I started.”

      When I was a boy, my father worked with his hands. He spent years working as a welder and craftsman at Murray’s Sheet metal shop in Parkersburg where his mates eventually made a little wand with a star on top that they gave him due to his wizardry with metal. It was made of stainless steel and rather heavy. I wonder what became of it? He had a unique way of seeing problems and often came up with surprising answers, which is why the really hard jobs came to him so often. He was a creator.

      When we boys were born, he decided he didn’t want to raise us in the pollution of the Ohio Valley, so we settled in the magick-heavy valley of Sinking Creek near Glenville. For awhile he continued to work at Murray’s, but the commute was too long and he felt like he was missing out on raising his sons and so, Chapman Sheet Metal was born.

      It was a small operation, dad and us boys really. But it put food on the table and kept us connected. Back then, air ducts for heating and air conditioning were made by hand at a metal brake. Bent to spec and installed by hand. Not cookie-cutter tubes that get tacked up in basements or slung thru attics. It was custom work. Individualized and special. It was an act of creation every time dad put in a furnace.

      Dad created tons of things: tall bikes, wench-powered cranes, an underground house, solar heating systems, a metal bed….one of mom’s least favorite things. His creations weren’t always pretty or even functional, but he never stopped making something. He always had an idea for how to make it better. Everything.

      He was a church leader, yet was for legalization of marijuana, quite the shocker during the 70’s. He thought the criminal element was worse than a few stoners eating pizza all night. He wanted to sing, but couldn’t carry a tune, so he worked like crazy at it. God bless JoAnn McHenry for her enormous patience. He knew, at an instinctive level, that The Church had gone wrong somewhere along the way and he applied all his work ethic and creativity to trying to fix Her.

      He wasn’t always right, but he was always sincere. Thousands of people came to know Christ thru his ministry. He touched the lives of people wherever he went with a message that was accessible to working men and professors. “Try to do just a little more next time” was one of his main themes. “If you can say ‘Pray for me’ in church, then next time say ‘Please, pray for me.’” He was joining a long line of theologians who saw that something was amiss and worked to advance The Church as best he knew how. Something more than simple human failings was to blame, in his mind. There was some fundamental flaw in modern Christian teachings.

      I think Earle Chapman would have liked Rob Bell.

      For those of you unfamiliar with Rob Bell, he is causing a bit of a stir. He has a few books out, most notably Velvet Elvis and Love Wins that re-examine current doctrine and teachings. He is looking for that fundamental flaw in The Church and stepping on some toes while doing it. He, like my father, is part of a long line of discussion that has shaped and formed the church for ages. He, like my father isn’t always right (ask mom about that clunker of a metal bed) but he seems sincere and asks questions no one else wants to answer. Earle and Rob wouldn’t have agreed on everything, but it seems to me they think the same way.

      I have only read thru the two books I mentioned earlier, just a single reading so far. I’m not buying his conclusions, but I’ll amen a lot of what he says about the love of God and the exclusion mind-set of The Church. He answers a lot of questions I was poorly asking in an earlier blog you can read here…http://jc-wheniwasaboy.blogspot.com/2010/07/for-love-of-god-usually-i-post-cute.html.


      So, if you are disenchanted with The Church or have left entirely, I am going to recommend you pick up a copy of Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. Does it have all the answers? No, but it asks questions you never thought of and answers some you are too afraid to voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBSr-2THXxQ&feature=related

Fox and Hound

       Today, I took my daughters and their friends sledding on Quincy Hill. The snow was fluffy and light with the sunlight pouring down, fighting a losing battle with the frigid temps to melt the snow. As I watched them load into their plastic sleds and rocket down the slope, I was reminded of when I was a boy, skidding down the hills up Sinking Creek holler.

       I know I have written about tubing off the mountain after we moved out of the valley, but today, the memories that flooded back were of when I was a little boy, down in the valley, where magick hung heavy in the air and each breath steamed with possibility.

       The 70’s were the coldest and snowiest decade of the past 100 years. I remember one year when we had snow around Thanksgiving and never saw the ground again until St Patrick’s Day. Where Mr Heckert crawled under the school bus and put on chains to get us to school in a half-foot of snow. Winter had teeth and we learned to avoid getting chewed on.

       One of the ways we dealt with snow was to play in it. Sledding was a first option, but sometimes a kid needed more to do than just trudge up the hill time after time. Thrilling as it was, sledding grew old after awhile. That is when we came up with “Fox and Hounds.”

       Imagine a game of tag played in snow, on a track made by tramping out grooves in the newly fallen snow. We would slip on our four-buckle arctics (remeber those?) and start making a design, a little train of young boys chug chug chugging after each other to fashion a web in the snow. The idea was to play a classic game of tag and stay in the confines of the pathway we had stamped out earlier.

       Often, we would start with a hub and wheel formation, but would eventually have a wider design with many rays and long winding paths that radiated off into the drifts. It seemed like hours were spent chasing each other around the labyrinths we had created, although I’m sure a few minutes passed for each seeming hour.

       What strikes me most, looking back thru the lens of time, is how we would often include a few paths outside the main wheel. Paths that would be just beyond reach, that paralleled the the paths most tred. Often we would be leaning out over those paths to desperately try to make that connection across the gap, fingers aching to touch another, to complete the game.

       It seems to me that we worried about those moments most of all, those times of near connection. And I came to realize that the fulfillment wasn’t from just catching someone to not be “it,” to not be the fox; but to play the game, to strive, to make the connection. Sometimes we have to be content to reach across the void and get close to someone else before drifting away on a precocious whim of the path we are on.

       Relationships are that way sometimes. We get close, but despite how much we strain and reach out to connect, we must eventually be content with running a parallel path. Friends are sometimes just a breath of a finger width away, to drift away and be drawn together thru the funnel of events and time.

       I miss those days of innocence and joy that shaped who I am, but even more, I miss the friends who stretched out a hand that was a whisper of a breath from mine. Friends I have lost, and friends I have found who reflect what I am. No matter how we drift apart or near, know that you are in my heart.

       God bless you all.

GPS and Banjos

     When I was a boy, we lived out in the boonies of West Virginia (yes, it’s a whole other state) where roads frequently became paths and those paths often stopped in someone’s yard. I know that concept may be unfamiliar to many of you, so let me repeat it. THE ROAD ENDS!!! No intersections, no round-abouts, just a car on blocks in the middle of an occasionally mowed area we will call a lawn. Usually, the owner would look darkly in your direction as his half-wit son would stop playing the banjo, prompting a quick wave and u-turn to get out of there in a hurry.

     Not really. That’s the sort of stuff we tell the tourists to keep them from moving in and setting up another Starbucks. More often than not, if …no no…WHEN you found the end of a road, there was no one home or you could have a nice visit and make a friend (not the Ned Beatty kind of friend.) Seriously, who believes that stuff? The boonies can be dangerous, but hanging up your truck in a ditch is about as bad as it gets.

     Actually, holler hoppin’ was a frequent pastime for me and Lori. I had a little Subaru wagon with 4-wheel drive that could put a young hormone-driven couple in the remotest areas. Not that parking was the only goal of our drives. We had no money, and gas was cheap, so random drives were our best entertainment. Even when we were out of college and could afford those fancy picture shows, we would often rather take a drive down a new road just to see what was there than spend a couple hours in a dark smelly room with a hundred strangers.

     As a quick aside: somewhere in Braxton county there is a back road that has a wooden bridge over a railroad track. It is on a little dirt road and the bridge arches steeply, leaving a blind drop where you just have to pray there is no turn at the bottom. If any of my WV peeps knows where that is, drop me a line.

     Flash forward to Fall of 2010. The family is loaded in the Freestyle AWD on our way to a wedding reception, when daddy decides to try out the GPS function on his phone. I know how to get where we are going, but I just wanted to check the toy out. Lo and behold! The GPS says there is a shorter route which will cut 20 minutes or more off the trip. What it doesn’t show is that a bridge is out on the chosen path. No problem, I’ll just hit this handy dandy “re-route” function and viola, a 4 mile detour pops up.

     I hesitated when the detour started with a left turn onto a gravel road, but forged ahead. I was a little nervous when the road narrowed and we bounced over some rock ridges, but pressed on. The GPS was with me and was my guide and comfort. When the GPS said “turn here” and all I could see was a deer path, yea verily, I was filled with doubt and misgiving. I looked over at my wife of 20+ years and saw the sparkling eyes of that little red-headed girl in a belly shirt from the 80’s and knew in that moment, that we were taking the kids on their first off-road experience.

     What Sprint Navigation called a road was a series of welltender paths meant for ATV use only. Two narrow mud ruts casually defined our new route across the ridgeline of some unknown hill in Doddridge County. The squeal of brush scraping down both sides of the Ford was matched by the two girls in the rear seats. For awhile, I thought we had lost them when we splashed thru a couple hundred yards of creek bed as a road, but they were just drawing in breath to squeal again. Good times, good times.

     Eventually we found a house (no banjos) and gradually the road led back to pavement. We had a good time at the reception and when the time came to leave, we considered the detour again, for about a second. The mud quickly washed off the roof of the truck, but I hope the memory sticks with the wee ones. It was a good trip, and a great reminder that the boonies are never more than a couple of turns away.

What a Wonderful World it Would Be

     When I was a boy, we lived in a deep valley in the middle of West Virginia, where TV reception was poor and so were we. Seriously, we had a single TV set. I remember when we got a 19 inch COLOR TV! What a day that was. The case was a deep gray and white, so when mom asked if it was color or black-and-white…we could honestly say…”Yes.” Awful, I know. I sincerely apologize to my mom for that. It was mean.

     The new TV sat on a small table at the end of our living room where everyone could gather to watch the single station we could get. WDTV Clarksburg, with as much snow as program, but it was as good as it gets to a kid who had never seen regular programming before. It was to us as though the Gods had come down from heaven and poured nectar into our eyes. You just can’t imagine the impact this had on our lives if you have grown up with cable.

     Later, we would move up on the mountain and get FOUR stations!!! I felt like a luxuriant man of leisure then. But when we lived in the valley, and magick was heavy in the air, we had one channel…CBS. Fortunately, The Wonderful World of Disney was on CBS and our eyes were widened by this program. Mom and dad were very careful with what we watched. An hour of gospel music on Sunday morning before church, maybe half an hour of The Bullwinkle/Rocky Squirrel show before school during the week, but WWoD was an EVENT each week.

     We would gather between the wood-burning stove and the TV during the winter months and be glued to the screen by Davey Crockett, or Benji, or The Alamo. Perhaps a Don Knotts/Tim Conway movie would be on and we would roll with laughter to the Apple Dumpling Gang or Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

     What a unique treat it was to share a few hours together as a family, watching such family-oriented and…wholesome…entertainment. It is a time that we can never reclaim, much to the detriment of children today. With so many media outlets/gaming platforms available now, I long for the simplistic days gone by. Today, to get that same closeness, we have to go out into the boonies and isolate the wee ones in random off-road events, but that is another story.

     For now, I wonder….what was your favorite WWoD moment? Did you have anything similar in your past? Dig deep, and bring up those smiles from your childhood to brighten our days.

When Love Comes to Town

When I was a boy, my parents raised us as fundamentalist Christians (sometimes I think Fundamentalist was capitalized too.) We were in Church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening with occasional other nights thrown in if some other acceptable Church was having service. We were a separate and peculiar people, seeking the face of God.

It wasn’t easy on us boys, being peculiar. We couldn’t be in sports that interfered with church, so if practice wasn’t over by 6:45 for us to make church by 7:00 on Wednesday, well forget about it. Sports on Sunday wasn’t even an option. We kept the Sabbath holy, and never mind you seventh-day people.

One episode stands out in memory as being particularly painful. Some “forbidden books” were being taught in English during my grade school days. Due to my parents’ belief and protest, I and a few other kids were separated from the class and sent to the library. Our precious ears couldn’t be offended by the heathen literature of Poe or Wordsworth.

As a parent now, I know it must have hurt mom and dad to cause us boys pain. I would rather cut off a finger than subject my daughters to ridicule unnecessarily, and I’m sure my parents felt the same. They did what they did on a principle that they believed in, and I learned something from that. I learned principle matters, especially when it makes you uncomfortable. I learned religion can make you do things you don’t want to do. I learned religion can divide. Mixed messages, to be sure, but that’s the way it is sometimes.

This Saturday, there is a funeral planned. A young man, a soldier, died in a foreign country doing something he probably didn’t want to do, but doing what his country asked of him. His family is proud of him. His family is grieving. This being a small town, we are all grieving. We either know him, or know his family and it hurts.

There are some people planning to attend his services who believe he died because his country, our country, is being punished by God for its sinful ways. They plan to jeer at his family and blame the community for its moral failure. There’s about a hundred of them. Most people believe they are complete nut cases, and that may be. There are counter protests planned and many people pray the hateful group stays home. I am thankful they are coming.

I am thankful because, without these people protesting, we would have grieved alone. The young man, the soldier, would have otherwise had a small private service and his family would have suffered at a distance. I am thankful because we, our little community in the fly-over states, gets to stand with them and wrap our collective arms around them and say with a unified voice, “We are proud of your boy. Proud, Thankful and above all else, Honored by his service.”

The same may be said for all our servicemen and women. But on this day, in this small community, we say it for the young man, the soldier, SPC David Hess, may he forever rest in peace with the thanks of a grateful nation, state and town. His stand on principle enables mine.



“No man has a greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” John15:13