It could have been my father’s as he was an inventive engineer.
If only…
In 1960, my parents built a two-room addition to our little house: a first-floor family room and a second-floor bedroom.
Wax Santa commemorated the new family room.
Mom and Dad slept on that hideaway couch for the first decade of their marriage.
That’s where I would watch Captain Kangaroo and, on the rare occasion I stayed home from school, I Love Lucy.
They hauled the couch up the stairs when their new second bedroom was finished. It would serve them for another decade or so. This bedroom doubled as our family’s TV room.
By the early 1970s, my two brothers and I had left the nest. To celebrate, my parents bought a new hideaway.
My father died in 1993, at 71, of sinus cancer.
My mother pulled that old sofa sleeper out every night until early 2015, when my brothers and I had to move her to a memory care unit.
In the house, she had lived in for 60 years.
With the wax Santa appearing every Christmas.
Do you have time for another photo and story?
You may have wondered what I have from my father.
Photo by the author
This is my father’s only material legacy to me. The copyright is 1946. He purchased it in the bookstore at St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa, where he would use the GI Bill to finish his engineering degree.
1946 was also the year he met my mom.
There may be a curiosity gene.
But my father modeled curiosity for his three sons.
That’s what this well-thumbed, yellowing relic means to me.
Nurture more than nature.
Only Santa and Winston from my mother and father.
Both would understand.
My parents were minimalists. You don’t have to get rid of what you don’t buy.
So, it seems natural to me.
To pare down what little I’ve bought or owned.
I take no moral credit for this.
Mom and Dad made me do it.
Before I started writing this morning, I deleted 40 emails. I’m down to 34, and my daily maximum is 30.
For the last month, I’ve been erasing pictures from my 9000 photo library with the ultimate goal of under 6000.
Why?
It just feels good.
And it could be a time machine back to my parents!
Yesterday, I took five books to the free library down the street. Our community has about ten of these scattered about.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for 30 seconds so your read will count, and I won’t come back to haunt you.
Today’s random word is nook.
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His book nook — that’s what he calls this spot.
Is this where it happened?
I was surprised. He gets up at 4 am and is always in bed by 8:30.
Tell me exactly what transpired.
We’d just finished Fargo’s Season Five, Episode Nine. It was 8:45. He said: We’ve got to watch the last episode.
I was shocked.
How did he look?
Committed.
So, what did he do when Fargo was over?
This is what’s so strange. He pulled the nook light cord. I didn’t think it even had a bulb.
A white man’s reflection on the O.J. Simpson murder acquittal 29 years later.
Photo by the author
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RAGE
When I was a kid in the 1950s, my parents and three brothers would have dinner on Sundays at Dad’s parents’ farm in Tipton, Iowa. Occasionally, Uncle Jim would use the N-word, but its wrongness did not colonize my innocence until years later in college when I read James Baldwin. Baldwin wrote this line, and it has stuck with me.
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
This rage accumulates from
The millions of details 24 hours spell out that some lives matter more than others.
Baldwin taught me that in America, race always matters. And that nothing about race was simple.
I taught politics to college students for 40 years and retired in 2018, so I’m conditioned to think, even in retirement, about how best to understand my country — what films to watch and essays to read.
When O.J. Simpson died last week, I set aside 467 minutes to view the 2016 documentary O.J.: Made in America. It’s available on Netflix and worth every minute.
I’m a 74-year-old white man born two years after Simpson.
Author’s photo of an image from the film O.J.: Made in America
This image from the film represents how I and most whites felt in 1995 when he was acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. (In 1997, a civil trial jury would hold Simpson responsible for their deaths)
Most blacks felt differently.
Author’s photo of an image from the film O.J.: Made in America
John McWhorter explained in retrospect.
The evidence of Simpson’s deed was overwhelming despite the ineptitude of the prosecution team. The verdict and the response to it among the Black community wasn’t a sign of support for Simpson; it was a protest against a long legacy of mistreatment and even murder at the hands of the police.
The film reminded us of the 1991 beating of Rodney King by four police officers and another acquittal.
With this image of pain.
Author’s photo of an image from the film O.J.: Made in America
AMERICA IN BLACK AND WHITE
My Uncle Jim was not an evil man. He volunteered to coach my brother’s Little League team, where he treated Pat’s African-American teammates kindly, as he did all the kids. He was no better or worse than most white Americans in the mid-20th century. But not all. Photos of civil rights marches always showed whites among the crowd. (source)
Thirty years after those Sunday dinners, Jim had a fatal encounter with a different sickness: brain cancer.
It became too much.
The end that broke my father’s heart came behind the barn on his parents’ farm.
Pain and rage.
America is not unique: Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Israelis and Palestinians, Sunnis and Shia, Tutsi and Hutu. Across time and space, the list is endless. Even God has lost count.
Pain and rage.
I was numb by the 467th minute of O.J.: Made in America.
How do I make sense of this human propensity to divide and destroy?
And then be blind to the consequences?
Back to Baldwin:
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
Of course, O.J. did it. Of course, that predominately African-American jury in 1995 found him innocent because America was 400 years guilty.
Of course, people rioted after Rodney King.
And the murder of George Floyd.
The murderous means of Hamas, the IRA, and the Hutu militias came from grievances shared by many who did not accept their terrorist means.
Today, what is the tragedy of Israel/Palestine but the reality of two victim peoples sharing the same tiny, blood-drenched piece of land?
Pain and rage.
AND HOPE
Today, most Americans, black and white, believe African Americans are treated less fairly by the police than white Americans. (source)
This morning, when I think about the Brown-Simpson and Goldman jury’s murder acquittal after only four hours of deliberation, it makes perfect sense to me.
O.J. may be guilty, but America is not innocent.
Justice is complicated.
Perhaps we can control people, but we can’t control their pain.
*Today, America is racially and ethnically diverse. It is more than black and white. The current figures are White: 59%; Hispanic & Latino: 19%; Black 12.6%; Asian 5.9%; two or more races: 2.3%.
Thanks to the careful editing of Malky McEwan for Medium’s Entertain, Empower, and Enlighten.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for 30 seconds so your read will count, and you won’t be among the guilty ones.
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You’re in.
This is it.
What I’ve been working toward all my life.
It was my dad’s dream.
I made it mine.
Mom took me to practice every day when I was a kid.
They said I was too small.
And not fast enough.
Here I am, about to step on the sacred dirt in my hometown.
In front of family and friends.
And Kathy. Who’s believed in me since high school.
Field of Dreams.
I won’t screw this up.
I’m ready.
“Willie, did you hear me? Go in and take the urine test. And you’ll be batting seventh today.”
A Drabble is a precise 100-word story. This Drabble was written for Fiction Shorts.
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Jim woke up feeling confident.
Unusual.
His mother said good morning to him for the first time in a week and added:
“I’ll pick you up from basketball practice.”
On the bus to school, when he looked at Mary, she met his eyes and smiled.
John asked him for his algebra homework, and Jerry laughed at his joke.
In history class, the minute hand moved every time he blinked.
While waiting in line for lunch along corridor C, Jim saw Joe and Tom pushing Bill’s wheelchair away from the boy’s room. He grabbed Jerry and John and led the charge.
This is a photo of a 50-year reunion of friends from the St. Ambrose College class of 1971; the author is second from the right in the second row.
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A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for 30 seconds so your read will count. This Drabble is written for Fiction Shorts.
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The Trembles?
Nah, that doesn’t sound right.
The Tomatoes?
Have you ever heard of a group named after a fruit?
A tomato is a vegetable. Look, here comes Sharon — name tags help.
