The Phone Call

Yesterday morning I received a very special phone call. I had just gotten in to the office. It was around 8 o’clock. The caller ID told me that it was a client of mine who happens to be an old friend. I’ve known him almost all of his life. I will try to recall his words accurately. I want to write this down while it is fresh in my mind...

...I’m on the road, driving around on this beautiful morning, and I got to thinking about your Dad, of what a wonderful man he was, of how much he meant to me and my family when he was alive. You know, your Dad was famous for those long invitations at the end of services where he would sing 13 verses of the invitation hymn. Ha! Well, in my case, if he had limited it to just twelve I might never have become a Christian. Anyway, this morning I was wishing that I could call him up and thank him, but I can’t do that. But, I thought...if I can’t call up Emmett, I guess I should call Doug and pass along the thanks to him, instead. Be sure to pass the thank you along to your brother and sisters too, ok?

When I hung up the phone, I needed a minute to compose myself. I sat there in my quiet and empty office pondering what had just happened. I tried to imagine someone, anyone...five years after my death picking up a phone and calling one of my children to thank them for my life and just couldn’t.

So, thank you, Ray Melton. 

Intelligent Design?

Yesterday was a day for the ages. Every once in a while a day comes along that makes you wonder what’s going on. I mean, how many things can go wrong in one 24 hour period? How many things is it possible to screw up between sunrise and sunset? Listen, every day has its own challenges, I get it...but some days it’s like they are having a clearance sale on challenges...buy one, get two for free.

So, yesterday was going along just fine at first. Everything was on schedule, clicking along in a plodding, predictable way. Then the auditor showed up. A surprise, unannounced auditor...which is fine. We get one of these every few years. No big deal. But, getting audited is unnerving. Someone with authority shows up at your office and starts poking around looking for mistakes, and immediately your blood pressure ticks up. I came out of it largely unscathed, but annoyed by the process and its underlying assumptions. From there, things went downhill in a hurry. One setback after another, one foul up on top of another began raining down on me. It was as if, given an opening by the surprise auditor, the dogs of misfortune got loose from their pen and began rampaging through my office, leaving several odious piles on the carpeting.

But, there’s good news, because of the ingenious design of the the 24 hour day. We wake up with the sun, and as it rises, so do we. By noon, we are fully engaged in our work. When the sun gets lower in the sky, we too start to disengage. When it slips under the horizon, most of us retreat into our homes, the comforts of which begin to do their therapeutic work. Our favorite chair awaits. The dog greets you as a conquering hero. Over dinner you tell your best friend about your miserable day. She listens patiently, nods knowingly. She has heard it all before, but acts like she hasn’t. You then settle into your after dinner routine. You read some, you watch a little Grapefruit League baseball. Before you know it, it’s like the day never even happened. Then you wake up to a brand new day, yesterday’s disasters but a memory, and you think...wouldn’t it be horrible if we lived in a world where the sun never set? An incredibly intelligent design, the rising and setting of the sun, and the perfect rhythm it provides to our lives.

...not to mention the glorious views.

Questions About This Mornings Post

One of my young friends from back in my Grove Avenue youth group days asked me a couple of questions earlier today about this morning’s blog. The first question was about my trip out west after high school which caused me to miss my first Fall semester at U of R. He wanted details! The second question concerned how I managed to pay for the rest of my college experience after my dad forced me to pay my first semesters tuition with my own money. Since he asked, I will attempt an answer to both questions in what promises to be perhaps the most boring blog post in the nearly nine year history of The Tempest. 

After I graduated from Patrick Henry high school in June of 1976, I was not ready for college. I wasn’t ready for anything that looked or felt like being a grown up. So, along with my best friend, Al Thomason, I hatched a plan that would buy me some time. The two of us got jobs working in the warehouse of Lowe’s Hardware on Broad Street. We signed up for every shift they would give us. Our plan was to save every dime we made and blow it all on a cross country back-packing odyssey out west. While the rest of our friends would be moving into freshman dorms, we would be on the mother of all road trips cross country, heading for the Rocky Mountains. We both left Richmond on August 12th with $1,000 of cash each. Seven weeks later we wound up totally broke and almost out of gas near Bluefield, West Virginia. Luckily for us, we knew a freshman at Bluefield College who allowed us to crash in his room. His dorm took up a collection for us so we could make it home. Those seven weeks are mostly a blur now, but some of the highlights involved the Bad Lands in South Dakota, Mt. Rushmore, a rodeo in Gillette, Wyoming, Glacier Park, Montana and a motorcycle mechanic and his very hot gypsy girlfriend, Yellowstone, and a series of cowboy bars in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The hiking was incredible, the life experiences even more so. Needless to say, my parents didn’t think much of my plan, thinking it dangerous and foolhearty. They were right.

Here we were, ten minutes before leaving on our trip. My dad probably was looking at us while Mom took this picture and thinking...What could possibly go wrong??

Now, as far as the second question goes...its a bit harder to piece together. Basically, I was only able to afford to go to U of R if I commuted, and even then, I couldn’t really afford it. My dad was a Baptist preacher and I was the last of his four college attending kids, so A. Dad didn’t make much money and B. By the time I came along he was tapped out. So that meant I had to find a job. Lucky for me, I did...building pallets and assembling shelving in an un-air conditioned, and unheated warehouse in the Hanover Industrial Air Park for a company called Trefz & Steenburgh. In the four and a half years it took me to graduate from college, I worked every single week, 25 hours, from 12:30 to 5:30 every day, Monday thru Friday. During the summers I worked full time there and built decks with my buddy Al on weekends. The money I was able to make over the summers helped keep the amount I would have to borrow in the fall more manageable. The money I made from that job...about $175 a week after taxes paid for about a third of the costs. Everything else was financed through loans that my dad co-signed for me and educational loans from an outfit called the Charles B. Keesee Fund. I graduated with roughly $18,000 in Keesee loans in 1981. It took me ten years to pay them all off.

So, there you have it.

The Latest College Scam

These two pretty women are TV stars. That’s what every headline I read yesterday called them. One is Felicity Huffman, the other Lori Loughlin. The one on the left used to be on Full House, I think. The one on the right has been on a bunch of shows. If I search hard enough I’m sure that I can find footage of both of them lecturing middle America about our manifold failings in the area of either gun control, LBGT rights, abortion or immigration. Chances are very good that they would both qualify as woke. Or maybe not...maybe they are just two apolitical empty suits. Until yesterday neither of these two women had entered my consciousness in over a decade. Now, i can’t get either of them out of there!

So, these two actresses were among over 50 wealthy, well-connected parents, administrators and coaches caught up in an FBI dragnet of illegal college admissions activity, whereby rich people sought to bypass the normal admissions proceedure (which was screwed up to begin with), by falsifying test scores and impersonating athletes for the benefit of their non-athletic, not bright enough children. In other words...what rich, entitled parents have been attempting to do for their worthless pea-brained kids since Christ was a corporal. Talk about your dog-bites-man story...I mean, where’s the fire?

Anyway, this story got me to thinking about how I got in to University of Richmond back in the day. My parents were completely disengaged about my future plans. They were the type of parents who today would be considered negligent, almost to the point of disinterest. My first couple of years in high school were spent adrift from academics...I had decided to become a carpenter who wrote stories on the side. College wasn’t on my radar screen. Suddenly at the dawn of my junior year, I realized that if I wanted to even consider college I had to actually buckle down and open a book once in a while. All of these decisions came about with virtually no input  from Mom or Dad, who were apparently preoccupied with putting food on the table to concern themselves with what Junior was going to be when he grew up. Anyway, my last two years of high school featured straight A’s, which was fine...but only partially fixed my GPA. If I was going to get in to UofR I was going to have to do well on the SAT test. My guidance counselor handed me a test preparation book with two sample tests and a piece of paper with all the exam dates and sites and said...Good Luck, kid.

I took the thing twice, scored quite well on it, then wrote a snappy essay and fired off my application to UofR. When I got my acceptance letter, Dad looked up from his News Leader Green Section to say, Congratulations, Son, and that was that. Later that year when I informed him that I wouldn’t be matriculating until I returned back from my planned two month backpacking trip out west, his answer was typical of my Dad. I paraphrase:

I think that’s a dumb idea. But if that’s what you’re determined to do, here’s the deal. You better get a job when you get back and save up your money, because your spring semester tuition is coming out of YOUR pocket.

That’s exactly what happened too. When I finally ran out of cash out west, I made it home and immediately went to work for a guy named H.G. Lanier installing lockers and shelving in high schools in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. I will never forget how horrible it felt to write a check to the admissions office for $1800 in 1977.

But, back to the two lovely ladies above. The thing about the story that infuriates me is this. To make room for their pampered, privileged spawn, somebody else had to be denied. Chances are, that someone was some incredibly bright, hard working kid who busted his or her butt compiling a 4.0, piled up hours and hours of extra curricular activities over four years, stayed up late studying and practicing for their SAT tests, while their parents worked three jobs saving up to be able to put them through if they were fortunate enough to get accepted. That kid also opened an acceptance letter. But, his or her dreams were crushed...to make room for Constance Elizabeth Huffman with her 1600 SAT score and four year career as a champion pole vaulter, field hockey captain and point guard of the basketball team.

Makes me want to throw up...

April Fools From Afar?

So far in 2019, I have been distracted by the constant demands of my chosen profession. This is by design. After 36 years, my work year has become deliberately front loaded into the first 5 months of the year, and heavily backloaded into October and November, leaving the majority of the summer lightly scheduled, leaving me free to decompress in Maine. One of the highlights of these first five months of hard work is April Fool’s Day. I circle it on my calendar every year. I begin the plotting and scheming in February. By Mid March, my plans are operational and the required props have been purchased. Only somehow this year I have made a major strategic error from which I may not be able to recover. For reasons I cannot possibly imagine, I have scheduled a week in Myrtle Beach with my wife which includes Monday, April 1st. It is not all rest and relaxation...I also have reviews with two clients who both live on Pawleys Island for that day, but still, a major scheduling mistake.

But, just because I will be 5 hours away from Short Pump on the big day does not mean that I cannot visit havoc on my office-mates. It will take extra planning, attention to detail, and a devious imagination, and as luck would have it, I am highly skilled at all three. My plan is already taking shape in the fevered swamps of my mind. Since I will be leaving for the beach sometime on Saturday, I will have to lay the trap either late on Friday night, or in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Then, on Monday morning at roughly 8:30, I will sit back on the deck of the condo drinking my coffee as the texts start pouring in. They will all begin with feigned outrage and accusations of childishness. Something like this...

Blaire: Seriously Doug??!! Cloves of garlic embedded inside the mouthpiece of my phone? Are you like 5 years old??

Allison: Don’t even bother coming back! I’m serious Doug, this is inexcusable. I’m not cleaning any of this up!

Lindsey: How come every key on my keyboard types the letter “M”???

Lynwood: I swear to you that if my truck cab is crammed full of orange ping pong balls again, I’m gonna kill you, man.

This is what they will threaten, but what they are really saying is “How lucky are we to get to experience this every year?!”

You may be saying to yourself, If they all know what’s going to happen every year, why do they even come into the office? That’s an excellent question actually, the answer to which strikes at the very heart of the eternal appeal of the practical joke. See, deep down inside of the human heart there is a longing for mischief. We all desperately try to be all buttoned-up and proper. We try our best to promote a professional exterior facade. But, everyone of us, whether or not we care to admit it, are amused by the pratfall, fascinated by slapstick and amused by juvenile tomfoolery. How else to explain the enduring popularity of Blazing Saddles and Animal House among the male species? How else to explain the decades long popularity of the whoopie cushion? It is one of the basic needs of human beings, right up there with food, clothing and shelter...the innate desire to playfully humiliate your co-worker.

So, I will put my devious plan into motion remotely this year. It’s gonna be great!

Life In My 60’s

Considering the alternative, I am quite fond of being alive three weeks shy of my 61st birthday. I have been blessed with a healthy and happy family, a wealth of good friends and a thriving and prosperous business. However, there is something about life in my 60’s that is annoying, that is...the propensity the body developes towards falling apart. A few examples:

# While many men complain about losing their hair later in life, my experience has been different. I not only maintain a thick head of hair, I am now growing hair in places I wouldn’t think it possible for hair to grow. It’s like all of a sudden somebody has slipped Rogaine in my shower water. I’m like a giant Chia-pet!

# Despite having established and maintaining a workout regime that has had me at the gym every other day for the past 15 years, my body betrays me in new and bizarre ways on nearly a weekly basis. The following are just a few of the discussions I have had to have with Patient First doctors of late...

Doc: So, Mr. Dunnevant, what brings you in today?

Me: I’ve thrown my back out.

Doc: Oh Dear...what were you doing? Lifting something without bending your knees? Trying to do too much yard work in one day? Moving a piano upstairs?

Me: No...I was plugging in the blow dryer.

Me: No...I was brushing my teeth.

Me: No...I was retrieving a coffee mug from the cabinet.

The latest bizarreness occurred yesterday...at church. I was in my customary aisle seat, and had just settled in to listen to a sermon from our new Youth pastor. I should emphasize at this point that I was...sitting in a chair...perhaps the least strenuous activity on the day’s agenda. As is often the case with those of us who have difficulty with the whole sitting down thing, I almost instinctively began to cross my legs by lifting my right leg off the ground and resting it over my left leg, a move that men have been executing flawlessly for roughly 4,000 years of recorded history. Suddenly, an excruciating pain shot up my right leg from my ankle to my knee, complete with heat. At first I actually thought I had severed a tendon, it hurt so bad. I grabbed it with both hands right after the offering plate had passed and pondered what the conservation was going to be like with the Patient First doctor...

Doc: So, Mr. Dunnevant, what brings you in today?

Me: I think I’ve blown out my knee.

Doc: Oh My...how did it happen? You training for a marathon? Were you doing wind sprints at the gym? Trying to do squats with too much weight?

Me: No...I was crossing my legs...at church.

After ten minutes of extreme discomfort, during which time I completely missed the sermon intro, the shooting pain stopped...completely and totally vanished. Twenty minutes later when it was time to stand up for the closing song, I cautiously applied weight to the leg...100% pain free.

It’s this sort of thing that is disconcerting about turning 60. You feel good, even look good (if grading on a curve), but you never know when your body is going to start screwing with you. Out of the blue, you will develope an irritating eye twitch, break out in a 24 hour rash, suddenly not be able to eat pizza after 9 o’clock at night with Pepcid, or all of a sudden, every time you blow your nose, tears start shooting out of your left eye. I mean, seriously? Tears shooting out of your left eye when you blow your nose? In the name of all that is holy, what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here??(asking for a friend)??

50 Years is Probably Enough

Ever since I was a ten year old sitting on the floor of my grandmother’s trailer watching Bobby Kennedy get assassinated, I have been interested in politics and politicians. That event was so traumatic, it convinced me, even as a kid, that I should be paying attention to the world more. Strange, eventful things were happening and I needed to get in on it. Thus began a lifelong fascination with the political processes of our Republic, born out of a violent tragedy. There, right there on my bio for this blog, politics is listed as one of the things I enjoy blogging about!

But, no more.

Honestly, the past few years have managed to destroy any vestige of interest I have had about politics and politicians. Part of the blame for my condition is the complete capitulation of the Republican Party to Donald Trump, the sacrificing of every core principle they ever claimed to hold dear for the purposes of loyalty to the current occupant of the White House. To witness a great and storied political party transformed into a tribe of sycophants virtually overnight has been a colossal disappointment. But, it’s not just the GOP which has been transformed. Suddenly, as if someone has managed to slip hallucinogens into their communal coffee, the Democratic Party seems hellbent on out-Socializing each other. All of a sudden, practically every prominent leader of the Party commits to some new collectivist scheme or another. The new telegenic freshman from Brooklyn sucks all the oxygen from the room when she calls both Reagan and FDR racists, to the squealing delight of her starstruck sycophants...another great and storied political party transformed into something radically unrecognizable to someone who has been paying close attention from fifty years.

Every other party available to me in this famously restrictive two-party system are worthless whiners, forever complaining about how unfair the world is...Libertarians, The Green Party, The Constitution Party...are they still a thing? So, yeah...I got nothing.

Purists out there will lecture me about pragmatism, about how I should work within one of these two parties to bring about the change I desire. I should either hold my nose and work to pry the Republicans away from their jock-sniffing worship of Donald Trump...or I should endeavor to pull the Democratic Party away from the cliff of Socialism they seemed determined to launch themselves from. My answer to these two suggestions is simple...nope. I’m almost 61. Fifty years of politics is enough. I’ll let the kids figure it out.

Of course, if I decide to more or less withdraw from the scrum, I suppose I should stop writing about it too. Everyone who reads this blog already knows my feelings on the subject. I will never change anyone’s mind. Nobody in politics changes anyone’s mind anymore. We all have everything figured out already. We’re right and the other guy hates America, right? So, I should probably stick to Dad Jokes, sports, family, and fiction. That should be enough to keep me busy.