My People

The Dixon family reunion at Green Hill in Buckingham County is in the books. It was a delightful day, sunny and breezy with random memories whipped up in the wind all around us. There were probably 80 people there, 70 of whom I didn't really know. But it was like an episode from the twilight zone where in a room full of strangers, everyone looked familiar. Someone would pass by you and there would be a flash of recognition, that nose, those eyes, that facial expression, so closely held, so dear. 

". . . you must be Bubby's girl."

" Yep! You look like Betty's son."

My Uncle John, the war hero was my Mom's big brother. His family lived in Gladstone, Virginia in the big house by the railroad tracks. We would visit when I was a boy. He had four kids, my cousins. There was Bootsie, the oldest, Bubby who would go on to be a war hero himself, then Peggy and Joanne, the youngest who was my age. Yesterday, those three sisters were in charge of things. They had organized and planned the event. I watched them as they talked, saw them interact with everyone, felt the love of family and the pride they have in being a Dixon. I have it too. 

There was a table with pictures, all pressed behind plastic, some with short descriptions. . .  Alice Horsely Dixon 1910. . . John Henry Dixon in New Orleans. The pictures were mostly black and white and faded, over exposed here, bleached out there. But each of them sent out a message. . . We were here. Here's the proof.

Then I saw this picture of my mother. Bootsie suggested that it was either her high school graduation photo or maybe a picture taken for her wedding announcement for the newspaper. . . either way, she would have been. . .16. It took my breath away. Was my mother ever 16? But, there she was in 

glorious, faded black and white. I saw my son in her eyes. Her hair was my daughter's hair. I looked closer and saw myself staring back. I saw my sisters in her smile. That nose, the dead giveaway of my ancestors, the playfulness and great expectation in her face was stunning. She had her entire life ahead of her, about to marry the man of her dreams. And now, four years after her death, the grateful family she left behind stands on the spot where she grew up, with tears forming, fascinated by the transformative power of a photograph.

It's funny. When she was alive, this was the type of event I would have come up with any excuse not to attend. But now that she is gone, something inside of me was longing for it. The older I get the more aware I have become of my mortality. These people are my people. They share with me a common ancestry. Their blood is my blood. 

We wandered the grounds, visited the cemetery up on the hill overlooking the ghost of the old homeplace. There lie my grandparents. A few feet from them lie my great grandparents. It is an odd feeling, walking through a cemetery, something that is equal parts pride and sadness.

But on this day, it was mostly pride.

Glorious Thought For The Day

I woke up at the appointed time this morning, walked downstairs, made my coffee and settled into my cozy chair. I had just opened my iPad when it hit me in a revelatory flash...

. . . It will be four long years before the American airwaves are once again bespoiled by a Presidential debate.

That happy fact rolled over me like a wave of Caribbean water. It produced in me the same feeling I get when reaching for the first strip of bacon whenever Pam makes apple pancakes. It was like how I feel whenever I see one of my kid's cars making the turn onto Aprilbud Place at the end of a long, safe drive home. It was like. . . ok, now things will be better.

Did I watch? Uh. . . No. There was baseball. Did you watch? If so, did you change your mind about either of them? I didn't think so.

A Bittersweet Memory

This coming Saturday there will be a Dixon family reunion up at the old home place, Green Hill, which is now the James River State Park. It's the sort of thing that my mother loved to attend, while most of us kids always found excuses to get out of attending, shamefully. Now that my parents are gone, I am drawn to the idea. I will see people I haven't seen in years, some who I couldn't pick out of a lineup if my very life depended on it. But, I'm excited about it. Mom would be very proud of me.

As prepararation for the event, the invitation instructs us to gather up any old photographs of family members that we can find. Apparently there will be a scanner on the property to properly duplicate these pictures and enter them into the official record. In doing so, Pam pulled out the album she had put together of my parent's 50th wedding anniversary/vow renewal ceremony from 1997. It was a moving but quite sad experience to flip through the pages..

When these pictures were taken, none of us had any idea that they had less than fifteen years to live. They looked so healthy and happy. They were surrounded by all of the people they cared most about in the world, their family.

There we all were looking healthier and younger than we do now. There were some of Mom's Dixon family. There was her dear kid brother Jim who walked her down the aisle.

There was their dear friend and pastor Ron Boswell administering the vows, and a yard full of friends sharing the moment.

Favorite Food

Before....

After...

With all due respect to any vegans or Muslims who might stumble upon this blog...bacon is at the very top of my favorite food list, followed closely by sausage, in either form it cares to present itself, link or pattie. I am addicted to bacon in much the same way as Trump is addicted to tanning beds or Hillary to $250,000 speaking fees. I like any dish that starts with the descriptor bacon-wrapped. Bacon is good any way it is served. Although I prefer it crispy, if confronted with a plate of droopy bacon, I will eat them with no remorse or hesitation. You want to improve the deliciousness of your dinner entre? Sprinkle some bacon on it. 

I am told by a long list of puritan killjoys that bacon is bad for you. It is full of fat and it clogs the arteries, and bespoils the intestines. Yeah, well. . . to quote the great food expert, Luther Ingram, "If loving bacon is wrong, I don't want to be right."

So, just for fun, here's my list of favorite foods in the order of their awesomeness. Feel free to judge me.

1. Bacon

2. Sausage

3. Cheese

4. Bread

5. Steak

6. Beef jerky

7. Jambalaya 

8. Beer

9. Donuts

10. Cheetos (crunchy)

Great and Good

Here's something to consider as we enter the final three weeks of the most negative presidential campaign in my lifetime. . .  the United States of America is a wonderful country. That's right, you heard me. You and I live in an amazing country filled with great and good people who do great and good things every single day. Just last week. . .

On Monday, I played in a charity golf tournament put on by the Tuckahoe Kiwanis Club. I was joined by 79 other men and women who each paid $150 to enter and spent more money buying raffle tickets to raise even more money. Several dozen local businesses sponsored holes and donated prizes for raffle winners. All of this charity work was pulled off by a local service organization with only nine active members. The beneficiary of all this work was a local non-profit who works with abused children in our county. The leader of that organization gave a three minute talk to all of us describing the work. At the end of the afternoon, $10,000 had been raised. Each member of the Kiwanis Club donated hundreds of unpaid hours to the effort. This sort of thing happens every day, all over my amazingly philanthropic country.

Yesterday, Pam and I drove over to a brand new small business called The 21hundred. It's a coffee shop which serves gelato. It's owned by some old friends of ours, who later in life have decided to take a chance. It's a family affair, all hands on deck, fifteen hour days, six days a week. The place was packed with smiling faces on this, their grand opening. The coffee and gelato was delicious. They want their coffee shop to be a place where people come not just for coffee, but also for conversation and friendship. There will be no charge for any residual goodness and joy that might break out. I have determined to drive out of my way to The 21hundred the next time I'm craving a cappuccino. I want them to succeed, don't you?

This morning, Pam and I drove up to Graves Mountain with my sister and her husband to pick some apples and have a picnic lunch creek-side. The place was packed, thousands of people. There was a middle school-aged boy stirring a giant pot of steaming apple butter. There were craft booths selling every sort of American knick-knackery. There was funnel cake and apple butter donuts, and a huge display of something called Uncle Dave's Kettle Korn. We bought apples and browsed the shops. I saw a 300 pound man wearing a t-shirt that said, "I Beat Anorexia." We ate homemade sausage and kale soup that my sister had made while we watched kids playing in the mountain stream babbling along a few feet from our picnic spot. Within ear shot, a bluegrass band was covering Earl Scruggs. The beautiful tan upright bass thumped the notes in perfect rhythm. The guy playing the banjo looked to be in his 80's. We had driven 71 miles to pick apples but instead found America, big, generous, beautiful America.


All of this was unremarkable. None of what I have described will be a surprise to any of you because all of you recognize it. This is what kind of country we live in, one that we take for granted too often. Yes, there are Khardashian issues in our country. Yes, our politics are a mess, and there are inequality and racism problems that seem intractable. But, we are a great and good people who, when the chips are down, come up big time after time. There are more Good Samaritans per capita here than any place on earth. Despite all of the problems with immigration today, as a nation we have always welcomed the stranger. If we didn't we wouldn't still be the go-to destination of  teaming masses yearning to be free for over a hundred years. People aren't squeezing through the fence to get to Mexico, after all. Nobody is jumping on rafts trying to make it into Cuba.

So, I for one am proud of my country. I'm aware of its flaws, frustrated by its politics, and annoyed by some of its culture. But, I still love it and feel lucky to have been born in such a place. That will never change. . . especially on November 8.

November the 9th

November 9th is the day after Election Day. It's also a Wednesday. That means the recycling has to be out at the curb before 6 am. No matter who wins the election, the recycling better be out at the curb by 6 or it will pile up on the steps inside my garage leading into the house for an entire week. Every time I walk past the huge pile, I will kick myself for forgetting to take it to the curb on the day after Election Day.

November 9th is also the day that my Verizon wireless bill is due. It's always due on the 9th. I pay it electronically now, placing a stamp on an envelope having suddenly become medieval. But whether or not I pay through the mail or electronically, the bill gets paid on the 9th or my wife will get an email message notifying her that the Verizon bill is late. She will then remind me to pay the Verizon bill. It will annoy me that they send a late notice to my wife, even though I'm the one who pays the stinking bill. I think it's because she's the one who established our online account or something. Still, it always annoys me. This will continue to annoy me no matter what happens on November 8th.

November the 9th will be exactly two weeks before my two incredible kids will be hitting the road driving home for Thanksgiving. When they get here, I will be very happy and thankful that they made it home safe and sound. My happiness and thankfulness will not be dimmed in the slightest by what happens on November the 8th. By the time Thanksgiving Day comes along it will be a faded memory. Kaitlin and Jon will bring their awesome dog, Jack, with them. Patrick will be bringing his adorable girlfriend, Sarah, home for the first time for Thanksgiving. Jack will be awesome and Sarah will be adorable no matter who prevails on November 8th.

On January the 20th, 2017 the winner on November 8th will be inaugurated. It just so happens that Henrico County real estate taxes on my office condo are due that day. I can assure you that if I don't get that bill paid on time, I'm going to hear about it on Monday morning the 23rd! My county is dead serious about getting paid. Whoever the new President is, he or she will be of little help to me if I stiff Henrico County, this I can tell you.

For a small government Libertarian like me perhaps the single most annoying aspect of the 2016 election has been the overblown cosmic existential importance it has taken on. To hear some of my friends talk, you would think that the fate of all life on planet earth literally hangs in the balance of this Olympian struggle between good and evil, republican and democrat, liberal and conservative, male and female. Maybe they're right. Or. . . maybe some geek in a garage in Buffalo invents a perpetual motion device that produces clean energy out of apple cores, rendering politicians obsolete.

We will have a new President on January 20th, 2016. But, the grass will still need to be mowed, the leaves raked, the snow shoveled. We will still go to work, do our jobs, and love our children. And on the day after Election Day, we will still have to remember to take out the recycling.

4 and a half hours? Seriously??

My prediction blog of October 3rd has proven to be roughly half prescient. My National League prognostication has been golden. I had the Dodgers playing the Cubs in the championship series. My American League guesses were a disaster. Both the Red Sox and the Rangers are gone, demonstrating once again why I never place wagers on sports.

Last night's Dodgers/Nationals game was a classic, but for all the wrong reasons. The 9 inning game took 4 and a half hours to play, an hour and 6 minutes to play the seventh inning alone. Why? The plague of modern baseball...overmanaging. Washington manager Dusty Baker blazed through 6 pitchers trying to get 3 outs. This is matchup baseball taken to rediculous lengths. None of the pitchers that he brought in from the bull pen were as talented as the first guy he took out, Max Scherzer. But, the 210 million dollar starting pitcher gave up a home run on the first pitch of that ill-fated inning, his 99th pitch of the evening and that was it. Oh, the dreaded pitch count! Why, we can't let our delicate flowers extend themselves beyond 100 pitches because their valuable arms might fall off!! So, let's trot out guys who aren't good enough to be starters to get one out because maybe they struck out the same guy two years ago in a spring training game. Matchup baseball sucks. Nats fans will never know if their high priced ace could have gotten out of that inning or not because Dusty never gave him the chance to prove he was worth his contract. I wonder what Sandy Koufax was thinking as he watched this game, the guy who started three of the Dodgers last ten games of the season one year to assure them a chance to go to the World Series, pitched three complete games, giving him 385 innings pitched for the season. Today's ironmen pitchers pitch 220 innings in a season and are lauded for their durability. Give me a break.

So, I made it to the end...one o'clock in the morning to watch Clayton Kershaw come in on 24 hours rest to get the final 2 outs. I made it to the end, but probably 10% of baseball fans joined me. A game that could have and should have been played in 3 hours tops. I think Lucy speaks for fans everywhere...