Blue Hill

She was only seven years old when it happened. It was in the summer, a dreadfully hot day. The breakfast dishes had been cleared off the table and piled high in the sink, flies buzzing around the table as her mother wiped it clean with a dishcloth. Edna Taylor was a large woman with an unruly head of hair which defied all attempts to keep it out of her face. Long strands fell this way and that as she cupped all the crumbs into her hand at the end of the table after a final swoop. Her seven year old daughter looked up at her from the door to the back porch, sensing that something wasn’t right. Edna looked worried and weak. 

“Lizzy, go outside and play. Your mother needs some time alone. Run along!” Elizabeth heard the tone of her mother’s voice and understood it to be an order, not a suggestion. She bounded down the back steps and ran around to the front of the house where it was cooler. She looked down the field that sloped away from the great, white salt box house that went by the name of Blue Hill. The field of brown straw, scorched by the relentless summer sun, stretched all the way to the river. Elizabeth sat herself down on a stump of a tree that had been cut down earlier in the year when it was struck by lightening. Edna had thought it a bad omen, a sign that her sick boy wasn’t long for this world. But that was months ago, and lately Chesty had seemed to be getting better. Elizabeth watched the water drifting by slowly in the distance. She heard the whistle then saw the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad train coming up from Gladstone on the other side of the river. She could smell the smoke from the engine some days, but today the wind, what little there was, was headed in the other  direction. Still, she watched the train until it disappeared, worrying about her mother and her sick brother. 

It was just the three of them this morning. All the men were working and wouldn’t be back until lunch when the kitchen would come alive with noise and fuss as her father, three brothers and older sister came back to the house to eat. It always irked Elizabeth that her father wouldn’t allow her to go with them. “You’ve gotta stay with Momma, Lizzy. What’s gonna happen if she needs help with Chesty,” he would explain. 

Chesterton Taylor had been born in 1925 and had surprised the doctors by surviving his first year, then surprised them every year since. He had been born with what they called a weak heart and wasn’t given much of a chance. The fact that he was now twelve years old had been a testament to either God’s grace or an extra helping of the famous Taylor stubbornness gene. It hadn’t been much of a life though, he having spent much of it bedridden and weak as water. Elizabeth loved him, felt sorry for him, and on some level envied him their mother’s attention, But even a seven year old knew not to admit to such a thing. 

Suddenly Elizabeth thought she heard crying. Had the sound of the train drowned it out? How long had she been crying? Where was she? She ran around the house and saw her sitting on the steps holding her head in her hands, sobbing, great anguished cries of despair and heartache. Elizabeth ran up and wrapped her tiny arms around her inconsolable mother. “What’s the matter, Momma? Is it Chesty?”

Edna buried her face in her apron, wiped away the tears then lifted Elizabeth into her lap. “Chesty passed away, Lizzy. His time for suffering is finally over, he’s gone home.”

“But, this is his home,” Elizabeth cried.

“No Lizzy. This is just our earthly home.”

Thus went the strangest conversation of young Elizabeth’s short life for fifteen minutes or so as she rocked back and forth in her mother’s strong arms, not understanding but taking comfort in her odd words. Then they both saw him.

Blue Hill was a house that rested at the end of a two mile one-lane dirt road that slithered down the middle of the 700 acre farm like a serpent. To the north lay cow pastures, a couple of barns and on the highest point, the family cemetery. To the south, fields of corn and soybeans and more barns. From the back steps of the house you could see a car approaching from half a mile away, a tail of dust billowing behind it with the soft rumble of a distant engine. Neither of them saw or heard him approach. They just looked up and there he was, the morning sun shining off his clean blue clothes. He wore a white boater hat and his brown wingtip shoes looked like they had just been buffed clean. Not a trace of dust. Sitting at his feet was a Jack Russell terrier, his pink tongue bouncing up and down. Neither Elizabeth nor her mother felt any fear at the strange sight of a man in a clean suit who seemed to have arrived out of nowhere. When they looked up at him he tipped his hat and smiled down at them. 

“Good morning, Mrs. Taylor. I can see you’ve been crying. What’s troubling you?”

Elizabeth had never seen a kinder smile or heard a more soothing voice. She felt warm inside as he spoke. She heard her mother’s anguished answer, “It’s my boy. He’s dead.”

The dog walked forward, jumped up in her lap, curled around and laid down. The man took off his hat as if to acknowledge their loss then said, “I know, Mrs. Taylor. I’m so sorry. It’s a terrible thing to lose a child, especially one who has been sick for so long.” He then walked over and sat down beside her on the step, he on one side and Elizabeth on the other, both holding on to her. They rocked back and forth together while the dog slept peacefully in her mother’s lap.

Elizabeth couldn’t remember how long he was there. Time was a difficult concept for a seven year old. It felt like a long time but it might have only been a few minutes. Regardless, his presence had a calming effect on her mother. She had stopped sobbing, was no longer shaking with the force of her grief. The tears had dried up by the time he left. He had stood up slowly. The dog jumped down from her lap and joined him. His parting words were simple, “The men will be back soon.” Then the two of them walked back up the road. Elizabeth watched them get smaller and smaller, noticed the dust that their feet kicked up as they walked along, saw the sun shining off his boater hat. 

       When her father, brothers and sister returned for lunch, they all began crying at the news. They gathered around Chesty’s bed and wept. Rosemary, Elizabeth’s only sister, was particularly distraught, draping herself over his dead body while she wailed. Her brothers mostly stood at a distance, arms crossed stiffly over their chests, eyes rimmed with tears. Her father held his filthy hat in both hands, lower lip trembling for a minute until he got a hold of himself. Then he said, “Ok, that’s enough of that,” as he gathered everyone up, led them out of the bedroom and closed the door. Edna served lunch. Everyone ate slowly, in silence. Elizabeth had never seen her family do anything quietly. They were loud people, always hollering and screaming about one thing or another, not with anger or malice, they were just loud. They spoke to each other loudly, worked loudly, even ate loudly. The clatter and tumult were an incessant part of Elizabeth’s life. Now, the seven of them sat around the long oak kitchen table so quietly you could hear the stirring of fly’s wings.

“Did ya’ll see the man wearing the white hat?” Edna asked, breaking the silence. They all exchanged glances. Her father answered, “What man?”

“You must have passed him on the road,” she insisted. “He just left us thirty minutes before ya’ll drove up. He had a little dog with him.”

“We didn’t see a man or a dog on the road. Who was he?”

Edna insisted that they couldn’t possibly have missed a man with such a sharp suit and fine dog. She told them all about his visit and as she talked they all began exchanging worried glances. Finally, Edna dropped the subject and the silence returned. Later that night when she tucked Elizabeth in bed she whispered in her ear, “Lizzy, that man was an angel sent from God to comfort us. Don’t you ever forget it, ya hear?”

And, she hadn’t. But oddly, had never bothered to share the story with her son until now, the night before he was to undergo open heart surgery to repair a faulty mitral valve. As she sat on the end of his bed regaling him with yet another creepy paranormal family secret, it occurred to Montgomery Duncan that his mother’s family history was chocked full of this sort of thing, Blue Hill being a house shot through with Gothic mystery. He made a mental note that if he survived his pending procedure, he would attempt to get to the bottom of it all. There were so many unanswered questions about the Taylors, so many odd tales. The least interesting part of this particular story was the fact that the beautiful woman sitting at the end of his bed telling it had been dead and in the ground for eleven months, having died in her sleep of heart failure herself. There seemed to be two things that prominently ran in the Taylor family, bad hearts and bedside visits from the dead. Montgomery chalked this one up to the delightful drug cocktail pulsing through his veins from the shiny IV bag beside his bed. But what to make of the half dozen other stories of premonitions, warnings and reassurance that had been provided from various dead Taylor Uncles, Aunts and Cousins through the years?

“What are you saying Ma, are you an angel sent to comfort me?”

“No. I’m just your mother.”

And with that, she was gone. Montgomery drifted off to sleep thinking about his grandmother, her dirty apron, the black wood stove in the dark kitchen, that heavy picnic style table that ran the length of the room. He pictured her turning from her cooking to see him standing at the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t sleep well in the huge red bedroom upstairs, always woke up before dawn and always found her busy in the kitchen.

“Come over here, child,” she would smile. “Give your Nanny a hug.”

She would envelope him in her apron which always smelled of sausage. She would tussle his hair then sit him down at the table and give him a hot biscuit. 

“How come you always wake up so early?”

Montgomery never told her the truth. He never told her that Blue Hill scared the hell out of him at night. The big room upstairs was painted blood red and the only light was a single clear light bulb which hung at the end of a long chord from the middle of the ceiling. For reasons that he didn’t understand the light always swayed a little from side to side sending shadows slithering across the walls. For a five year old boy this was the stuff from which nightmares were made. But all it took to break the spell was a visit to Nanny’s kitchen and the rising sun peaking through the screen door. For Montgomery, Blue Hill was part paradise and part haunted house. The haunting always happened at night making the arrival of the morning sun feel like paradise.

A nurse with kind eyes wearing a mask asked him to count backwards from ten. He felt a soft tingle in his arm, then a blast of cold air, then nothing. When next he opened his eyes he was hovering above the bobbing head of his surgeon looking down at the bright red blood surrounded by sky blue napkins in the middle of the table. He heard the buzz and gurgle of the ventilator and picked up parts of a conversation between the nurses about the results of a football game. Then over in a corner behind a tray of instruments he saw his mother staring intently at her son’s open chest. She was swaying from side to side with one arm raised towards heaven. This had always been how it was with Elizabeth Taylor Duncan, always turning up at the oddest times in the oddest places, always knowing something she had no way of knowing, understanding things she couldn’t possibly understand. Montgomery knew at that moment that he would survive the operation going on below. He would make a full and complete recovery. There suddenly wasn’t a doubt in his mind.

Inauguration Day

Inauguration Day. When I was a kid I remember watching them on our old RCA Victor black and white with the aluminum foil wrapped around the tips of the rabbit ear antennas. The first one I remember was Richard Nixon. I was ten years old and bored to death, but I was told that it was an important thing, an inauguration. It was a symbol of democracy, this peaceful transfer of power, where the vanquished sat next to the victor, smiling and shaking hands.

I watched them all back then. Eventually there was color TV and the picture was clearer. I watched mostly smiling politicians looking for all the world like best friends as they chatted with each other in the grandstands behind the podium. I watched the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court administering the oath of office to a succession of men. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bush the elder, Bush the son, then Bill Clinton and finally Barack Obama, the first time but not the second—and nothing since. I won’t be watching today either. The reasons for my lack of interest are puzzling, even to me.

First of all, where politics is concerned there has never been a good old days. Politics has always been a troubling business shot through with duplicitous, back-stabbing charlatans. Spin the dial of American history and no matter where it lands you will find Washington DC positively seething with unsavory people. It is one of the inherent problems with democracy—brain surgeons and poets aren’t the kind of people that seek higher office. This is not to say that all of them are bad. America has had its share of fine men and women who, after a life of achievement, spent their last years devoted to public service. But it’s the 99% that give the rest of them a bad name, I suppose. Somewhere over the last forty years or so, politics became an occupation. Young men and women would go off to college with a career goal of running for office. The most popular on-ramp was the law, resulting in the herd of lawyers we now have running the country. Search high and low in the halls of power and you will not find any plumbers, electricians, engineers, or high school government teachers. But you can’t swing a dead cat anywhere in DC without hitting a lawyer, bureaucrat or now…billionaire.

The last one of these things I watched was Obama. I hadn’t voted for him, but it was historic, this handsome black man taking the Oath of Office. So I watched and listened to his speech. On the substance it was fairly boiler-plate progressive platitudes, he being firmly convinced of the government’s ability to remake the world, to right every wrong. But other than what I considered to be the wrongheadedness of some of his policies, the speech was…beautiful. He delivered a speech that gave power to the ideals of America. It was intelligent. It was in places stirring and even poetic. I remember thinking to myself, “Good luck, Mr. President. Godspeed.” Isn’t that odd? That someone who didn’t vote for him would wish him success? It sure seems odd now, but back then it seemed almost normal. My reasoning was that a failed Presidency was bad for the country. Why would I want him to fail? Suppose the policies I thought were wrongheaded actually worked? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? What was I thinking?

But by the time his second inauguration came around I was done with it. I’m not even sure why. I suppose for one thing, my life had entered a different phase. Our kids were grown up and in the process of moving out on their own. I had finished paying for their education and was now paying catchup with saving for my own retirement. Secondly, my Mother had just died in her sleep and we were scrambling trying to take care of my Dad. My patience for politics ended. It all seemed so small and petty compared to losing your parents. So I tuned out. Since then there has been Trump, then Biden, and now Trump again.

To everything there is a season. The season I’m in right now is taking care of my family, finding people to help and encourage, and trying to love my neighbor as best I can. 

Little Feet

Today is my turn to make dinner. First I had to go to the grocery store to buy the ingredients, then prepare the meal. It’s not a complicated recipe and it would embarrass me to name the dish, but it’s a start. However, I did notice something at Publix, our grocery store of choice. As I walked the store I noticed not one other retired gentleman. There were plenty of ladies, several workers rearranging the shelves, but as far as men of a certain age—just me. At that point the thought occurred to me that perhaps I have stumbled in to some sort of trap by volunteering to cook dinner for my still employed wife. Regardless, it seems only fair for me to share some of the dinner making responsibilities since I am freshly in possession of free time and she is not.

Today was also the occasion of my first retirement project fail. My wife hates to be a nag so instead she leaves random lists lying about with items listed with little check boxes next to them with no one’s name at the top. She leaves these lists in inconspicuous locations but also locations where I am likely to not miss them entirely. She is a diabolical genius. Anyway, on one of these lists I noticed entries mentioning the need to replace two dimmer switches in and around the kitchen. They need replacing, it should be noted, because of errors made by the previous installing electrician, which I feel obligated to point out was…me. Nevertheless, I drove over to the hardware store, bought the new switches and then proceeded to fail miserably getting them installed. By way of explanation I have to admit that when I was growing up I showed zero interest in many traditional male adolescent fascinations like cars and building and tinkering with small engines etc..I was into sports and girls and not much else. So, I bring no skill and even less enthusiasm  to many homeowner-type tasks that men are expected to know how to do. I do not have the disposition of an engineer or tradesman. I’m more like a wise-cracking rogue who knows a truck load full of worthless information that never includes anything useful to the task at hand whenever that task is something that needs to be done around the house. So, I will have to suffer the eye rolls of either Ron Roop, my handyman brother in law, or Chip Hewette, my engineer friend. One of them will soon get a call.

But all of this morning’s electrical failures have been eclipsed by news I just received from my daughter. My grandson is now the size of a banana! In addition, his little feet are the size of the metal tab from a soda can…

My First Real Retirement Day

Ok, I finally had my first real day of retirement. It started this morning when Pam went back to work. I had written up the items for today’s agenda last night while eating my last pack of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls that I got for Christmas. This morning was not only the first real day of retirement but also the first day of our self-imposed no sweets ban. We both figured that our 2025 weight loss plans should start slow. Before diving into the deep end of the Weight Watchers pool and all the meal-prep hassles involved in that nightmare, we figured we would first give up sweets. So far it’s been 24 hours now and I haven’t even been tempted. But, I digress. The point is that I had a plan for today as soon as Pam left the house…

* Did my exercises and my stretches 

* Spent zero time checking the stock market

* Hauled an old Christmas tree down from the attic and into my car. Lost control of a large box containing the limbs of the tree in question, sending it sliding down the attic stairs where it made a very loud and rumbling sound just before it crashed through the attic door, upon which time the ancient cardboard box basically disintegrated sending artifical tree limbs cascading onto the carpet and causing poor Lucy to pee on the floor. Once all was cleaned up I successfully took it all to the dump.

* Visited some of my Hope Church Volunteer peeps at the Cafe.

* Took on the out of control plastic container cabinet in our kitchen, discarding any container without a lid and any lid without a container. Threw the useless lids/containers in the recycling and deftly organized what remained after the great purge…

* Even though what follows was not on my written agenda for the day, I cleaned our bathroom to within an inch of its life.

* Stopped by the office to sign some document for Penny. Shared two awesome dad jokes to all my adoring fans who still work there. More than once I was told how much more boring the place is without me. Someone even said that they’re actually getting stuff done now.

* The only item on today’s agenda that I failed to complete was—making dinner for Pam. She had left two recipes on the kitchen counter and I thought I would surprise her by having one of them prepared when she got home. But, as I read through these two recipes it occurred to me that there were significant sections of the instructions that I didn’t understand. Discretion being the better part of valor, I deferred to her superior skills and decided to wait for a less intense meal was in the works—like soup from a can and grilled cheese sandwiches or barbecue cups.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. My first real retirement day is in the books—and if you don’t count the unfortunate incident with the 15 year old Christmas tree box—it was a smashing success!

The California Fires

I’ve been watching Los Angeles burn for over a week now, the images and videos painting a hellscape of destruction. Palm trees spitting sparks like Roman candles. Entire neighborhoods reduced to soot and ashes. I learn that some celebrity’s house was destroyed. Lots of celebrities have lost their homes. There are thousands of ordinary people who have lost everything. I’ve watched video of incredibly brave pilots flying helicopters and fixed wing airplanes dropping water on the fires despite the most dangerous flying conditions you can imagine. The amount of heroism on the ground of this tragedy has been astounding, from firefighters to homeowners coming together in crisis. I watch the destruction and the destroyed communities and my heart is broken for my fellow Americans in Southern California.

Just a few months ago it was the people in the North Carolina mountains, entire towns wiped off the map by floods and landslides. Months later those folks are still homeless. It will take years for their recovery. Same for California. Natural disasters have the power to wipe out in minutes what it took a lifetime to build. For the people of North Carolina, the freak hurricane was a once in a lifetime disaster. For the people of Southern California, destructive wildfires are a fact of life due to a collection of conditions from drought and the Santa Anna winds to questionable land management restrictions—or lack thereof. But in either case watching people dying and their homes being burnt to a crisp is a catastrophe.

Along with the bravery of so many there are also examples of human depravity. Seeing men walking around with blowtorches starting fires intentionally is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil.

But, just like the disaster in North Carolina, it hasn’t taken long for the conspiracy theories to sprout up on social media. We humans want to assign blame, it is unavoidable when people are angry, I suppose. The Los Angeles Mayor has come in for her share of criticism with her deer in the headlights press conference to being out of the country—in Ghana??—while her city was burning. The California Governor has come in for lots of criticism as well, as have some of the policy decisions that his government has made that many people believe have contributed to the severity of the fire. But there have also been other theories thrown into the mix claiming everything from deliberate malfeasance on the part of the governments involved all the way to blaming the fires on a United Nations plot to destroy LA to make room for a smart city! Now, there’s a new one that claims that the fires in Pacific Pallisade were set deliberately by Hollywood big shots to destroy Sean “Diddy” Combs’ home and all the evidence to be found inside and underneath his house. Sigh….

By far the worst take I’ve encountered watching this story unfold is one that thankfully I’ve only seen once or twice but even that is too much. California is being destroyed by fire because of God’s wrath and judgement. People who feel this way also seem to delight at the prospect of this so-called divine justice. Be careful what you wish for. If you think that God is behind this because of the sins of Southern California, you better hope he doesn’t start looking for sinners in Short Pump. I happen to know that Short Pump is crawling with them, including the one writing this blog. So, I’ll just let the conspiracy folks believe anything they want. I don’t know enough to cast blame, especially while the fire is still burning. What I do know is that some really good people have lost everything. My heart is with them.

Grandson Update!!

Thursdays have become big around the Dunnevant house. That’s the day when we get the latest status update on our grandson’s development. Kaitlin is subscribed to this super cool website called The Bump that gives her new info every Thursday including, but not limited to, the approximate size of the little guy. Unfortunately, the creators of this website  are under the mistaken impression that we are familiar with the sizes of obscure fruits and vegetables. For example, this morning Kaitlin informed us that the little buddy is now the size of a…mango. A couple of weeks ago it was a kiwi. Before that it was a plum. Do these people know that we’re Americans? If they want to help us visualize how big the kiddo is wouldn’t they be better served by using something more familiar? How about, “Congratulations! At the 19 week mark your baby is now the size of a pack of Twinkies. Next week he will be almost the exact size as a Poptart.” Instead, I have to Google…mango…size of, where I find a bunch of confusing data. Apparently these things vary in size depending on what continent they come from, time of year, weather conditions. I’m no closer to knowing how big my grandson is now than I was before this new information! This would not be a problem if they told me that he was as big as a package of peanut M&M’s. Nobody would be left Googling the size of a pack of M&M’s because we all know exactly how big it is. I mean they might as well tell me that my grandson is now the size of a pomegranate harvested from the plains of Uruguay after an unusually dry winter.

But I suppose I should be thankful that he’s growing like a weed…and soon will be the size of a overripe Carambola!

An Uneventful Beginning

I have been retired now for 8 days, but it doesn’t feel like retirement. Because of the snow, Pam hasn’t been back to work yet so it’s like—“Honey, how can I miss you if you never leave?” Plus, I’m going a little stir crazy being cooped up in the house all day. We did manage a morning walk through the neighborhood yesterday, and I paid some bills after having lunch at Boychik’s. But last night around 9:30 I looked at Pam and made the observation that I hadn’t taken a shower all day. Don’t worry, I won’t turn into that guy—two showers a week guy. It was a one-off oversight. This morning I returned personal hygiene to its rightful place in my daily routine!

Now I’m at the Cafe plotting and scheming my plans for 2025. I’ve gotten to chat with a couple of my favorite Hope Church peeps. I’ve gotten to brag about my pending status as a grandfather. Later today we have a Facetime appointment with Patrick and Sarah because it’s our daughter-in-law’s birthday. Her presents arrived yesterday, just in time, and apparently Patrick opened the boxes and gave each present a proper wrapping. Major props to us for raising such a thoughtful man. Not only is he lucky to have found Sarah, so are the rest of us. She is a gem and I am thankful that God brought the two of them together.

It’s not like I’ve accomplished nothing in these first 8 days. I have stepped up my Dad Joke game with beauties like this one:

What do you call a detective who solves cases accidentally?

Sheer Luck Holmes…

I texted this to some friends of mine and they responded with this:

“Is this what your retirement looks like for us?”

Yes. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what my retirement looks like. This morning I got a text from someone at the office:

“It’s boring when you are not here.”

Well, they can’t say that I didn’t warn them.