That’s what the sign said on the old dishwasher by the side of the road.

I pondered a bit.

I knew we were about to move, and we’d lived in a house for a year that had had a wonderfully remodeled kitchen, which included a dishwasher, and I didn’t know if the next house would have one.

I took the piece of paper taped to the dishwasher, walked up the driveway, found the owner working in his garage, and asked the first question that came to mind:

“Does it work?”

“Worked the last time it was used.”

That was good enough for me, so since it was on wheels (it was considered a ‘portable’ dishwasher) I pushed it home.

I don’t know what drivers thought as they saw me, waiting to cross the street, pushing a dishwasher, but I did have to wait for traffic to clear, and I did get some weird looks…

Oh well.

I got it home safely, put it in the garage, and left it there so that it’d be ready to move to the new house when that time came.

And what’s weird is that I moved it from one garage to another (there wasn’t room in the kitchen, or living room, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to try to lug the ‘portable’ dishwasher up and down the stairs).  So it was one of the first things to go into the new garage.

In the back corner.

On the right.

And it got covered up by boxes of stuff from the old house that needed a temporary place to stay.

And it was forgotten.

For about 10 years.

One spring, I was off work for a bit, realizing I’d accumulated a lot of – well, crap, and set about cleaning out the garage.

I felt strangely like Howard Carter as I shined a flashlight into dark areas of the garage that hadn’t seen the light of day in at least a decade.

And amidst all the boxes, and dust, and cobwebs, (cue the dramatic lighting and suspenseful music) there, untouched for years, I found the dishwasher again.

No, there wouldn’t be any great exhibits of The Dishwasher That Tom Found In His Garage, but it sure wasn’t going into the house again, so as I stood there, in the dusty garage, I realized I’d have to get rid of it.  I didn’t want to take it to the dump. (that would cost money, and I’d need to come up with a way of getting it there, and who knew, someone might be able to use it).

I looked down the full length of the garage, out the door, and saw the cars passing by, and an idea started to grow in my noggin.

You see, we live on a busy street, and we have seen where people who are trying to get rid of things just put a sign on them that says, “FREE” in large, block letters, and then set them on the sidewalk in front of the house.

Generally, whatever is there disappears in a day or so.

It’s like magic.

I smiled, and decided to try this.

I got a huge marker, a piece of paper, and a couple of pieces of tape and pushed the dishwasher down the driveway to the sidewalk.

Since the dishwasher was on rollers, and going downhill, I had to steady it to keep it from rolling into the street.  When I got it stopped, I put the paper on the top, kind of tacked it on with the strips of tape so it would stay still while I got to work with the marker.  I wrote FREE in big block letters, then filled them in one by one.

And – well, this next part happened much faster than it will take to write it, and actually, faster than it will take you to read it, but here goes:

I lined up the top of the sheet of paper along the edge of the dishwasher, pushed both pieces of tape down hard so they’d stick, flipped the paper down so drivers could see the word “FREE” there, and turned to my right to walk back up the driveway.

Before I’d taken a single step, I heard the sound of tortured tires clawing the biggest hunk of Detroit steel I’d ever seen in my life to a stop.

I turned fully around, prepared to run to escape, only to see the trunk of that hunk of Detroit steel come crashing back to the ground, almost like in a cartoon.

The driver hadn’t pulled over, he’d just stopped in his lane, and was completely blocking traffic.

He came flying around the driver’s side of the car, pulled the piece of paper I’d just stuck onto the dishwasher off and shoved it at me.

I reflexively took it as I heard him ask,

“Does it work?”

And for a moment, time, as we know it, stood still, (cue the dramatic lighting again, bring up the suspenseful music) and then I heard myself using the same words I’d heard years earlier in front of this same dishwasher, under almost exactly the same conditions,

“Worked the last time it was used.”

That was good enough for him, and he opened a trunk that was big enough for an entire mafia hit, including the horse’s head, hefted the dishwasher over the trunk lip, dumped it in head first, strapped a couple of bungee cords to hold the trunk lid shut, jumped into the car and roared off.

I stood there, beside the road in front of the house, watching the smoke and traffic clear as the car roared away, the piece of paper in my hand still flapping a little in the breeze, and realized I should have given it back to him.

In 10 years or so, he’d need it.

During this – and it’s fairly safe to call it a crisis – there were many times when I wanted to know from people who would, and should have the answers, “What should I expect?” – and without fail, I was told, “Everyone’s different…”.

Bottom line, “I can’t tell you what it will be like because I don’t know…”

Bottom line: “The mind being what it is, I don’t want to tell you what it will be like because these things can easily become self fulfilling prophecies, so if I give you bad news, it could make things worse for you.”

Bottom line: “I don’t know if you can handle knowing what you’re up against now.  If I tell you it’s going to be bad, just telling you might affect the outcome. If I tell you it’s going to be good, and it isn’t, then – well, then you would rightfully be upset with me, so the answer is…”

“Everyone’s different.”

In all of this – I had a dream…

A father and young son are going down a steep, rocky path.  The father has a flashlight and is guiding the son.  The father sees things in the dark, at the edges of the light, that he knows would scare the child, and so, doesn’t shine the light on them.  The child sees enough to keep moving forward, but not enough to know that the path they’re walking on is on the edge of a cliff.

The child has to trust that the father knows what he’s doing, and where he’s going.  And as long as the child holds his Father’s hand, no matter how long the journey, or how difficult, the Father will be with him, beside him to help him when he stumbles, to support him when he is weak, to encourage him when he is tired, to cheer when he is sad.

This does not mean the journey will be easy, nor will the way be smooth, but the Father will be alongside.

Always.

May God bless you this new year.

…and in this New Year, may you not be alone, may you have a hand to hold, and may you be able to trust the Light that guides you.

The story I’ve been working on just hasn’t come together, and I’m getting the feeling, that just like some stories have to be published at a certain time (hard to explain, but it’s true – some stories have this urgency as I’m writing them that just can’t be ignored, and later, in either comments, feedback, or just people talking to me, I often find out how important it was to get a story out at a certain time.

The story I was working on, however, is giving me the other impression.  It isn’t ready, and needs to wait until it is ready, and I don’t know when that will be.  On the other hand, another story showed up just this last weekend, and I think that one might have peeked out of the shadows just in time.  As I write this now, I don’t know how it will end, so join me in that discovery.

I’m thinking, over the years, as I see what has happened around not just “the holidays” – but Christmas, that people (myself included) often have such high hopes and expectations of Christmas that it can’t possibly live up to those expectations, and that we end up being sad, or depressed because of that…

I was thinking about it, and realized that we often try to replicate the good parts of the Christmases we had in our childhoods, and sometimes, in those memories, forget the bad stuff that happened that made the good stuff stand out.  Often we find ourselves wanting “something” – but not being sure what exactly it is.

We often do what Madison Avenue wants us to do – which is to “Stimulate the Economy” – but that just causes problems in other ways.

Where am I going with this? – Well, stay with me for a bit, we’ll find out together.

I found myself thinking of Christmas trees… I’ll tell you about three of them that I remember having.  Two as a kid, one as an adult.

When I was a kid, we were poor.  There’s no other way to say it.  My dad was off at college trying to get a degree so he could help make life better for us. He could only come home on the weekends if he came home at all.  There were several years when the money was so tight that we couldn’t even afford a tree at Christmas, much less presents to put under it. In fact, one year, we got the tree the church had used and set it up on Christmas Eve.  I don’t know if many people have had a used Christmas tree, but we did.

Ironically, we didn’t think it was weird at the time, we thought it was kind of neat that at the last second, everything fell into place, and we got a tree, for free.

It was during those years that I had a paper route, earning me about $40.00 a month.

One year, we were praying for both Christmas presents and a tree, and while mom made Christmas presents, God answered the prayer. One Saturday morning as I was on my bicycle finishing my paper route, I saw a Christmas tree laying in the ditch beside the road.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, but there it was.  I delivered the last few papers, and came pedaling back as fast as I could, where I picked the tree up and put it on my left shoulder with the butt facing forward so I could steer and shift the bike with my right hand.  I could see through the branches, but if someone were driving by (and several people did) they’d see a rather large Christmas tree riding a bicycle, rather unsteadily, I might add, down the street.

No one crashed, including me, which was good – and we were again blessed with a Christmas tree that year.

One that we couldn’t have afforded otherwise.

The thing I realize now is that we didn’t even have a Christmas tree stand.  Over the years, Dad, being home from University over Christmas, would make a tree stand with me out of 4 boards that we’d nail or screw together, then to the tree, with notches at the bottom so there’d be enough room for a pie tin of water underneath.

If we’d had a tree stand like everyone else, I wouldn’t have this memory.

The next year, finances were still pretty rough, and we were still just scraping by. At the time, we had a large garden, and were very familiar with what passed for food banks back then.  We didn’t drink soda, couldn’t afford it, but we did drink apple cider we made from all the apple trees we had on the property.

Hmmm… if we’d been able to drink soda like everyone else, I wouldn’t have that memory.

I’ll write about that someday, but that December, even with all the things we’d done to save money, a tree was still not in the budget.

I think that might have been my last year with the paper route, and I was looking for a tree beside the road like we’d had that one year, but there were none.

In fact, it’s safe to say, that in that year, God did not have Christmas trees falling out of the sky for us.

Well, actually… I take that back.

He did.

A tree did fall out of the sky, but it was in kit form.

And actually, it wasn’t a ‘tree” per se…

It was a branch.

No, really.

It was a huge branch from a tree on Fort Lewis – on one of those side roads that’s made by an 18 year old kid driving a 60 ton tank at 35 miles per hour and leaving a trail of wanton destruction in his wake.  (Yes, there were kids that age out there doing that.  They were, however, in the Army when they did it.)

I don’t remember exactly how I got it home, but I did.  The huge branch was far too long to get into a tree stand without gouging holes in the ceiling or chopping holes into the floor, so I got out one of my dad’s old saws and whacked off a good chunk of it so that it would fit.  (That cut-off part unwittingly became our Yule Log) I then started cutting branches off and drilling holes into the trunk where I wanted to put them.  I whittled them so they’d fit into the holes I’d drilled and ended up moving almost every branch that way.

Then I made the stand for it like I did every year.

And we did have a Christmas tree that year.  It was beautiful, really.  Complete with decorations, and even some presents.

If I’d been able to buy a tree like everyone else, I wouldn’t have this memory.  I’d have forgotten about an anonymous little tree in one of many Christmases a long time ago.

That got me thinking.

Those weren’t easy times that I’m writing about.  Seriously.  But it feels like it was those parts that made me grow in ways I couldn’t have grown if life had been as easy as I wanted it to be.

Many years later, I’d grown up, become an adult, and was now in the position of trying to support my family, and for a number of years, life was pretty rough, and I got to thinking about where every penny was going, and spending any more money than I had to on a Christmas tree was just impossible to comprehend, and for years we bought our trees at a now defunct store called “Chubby and Tubby’s”.

If you’ve lived in Seattle for any length of time, you’ll remember that Chubby and Tubby trees could be had for $4.61 ($5.00 with tax).  Oh you could get nicer trees, for more money, but we bought the trees we could afford, (here’s one of them, picked out by our then two year old Michael, his mittens dangling from his sleeves).

And for a number of years, I made a Christmas tree stand like I did when I was a kid, and I drilled holes in the trunk and moved branches around so they’d look nice, just like I did when I was a kid.

Only this time I was doing it with my son, not with my dad.

I did some more thinking – because we’ve been able to have some pretty neat Christmases over the years in spite of things.  There was the year we were able to make it to church Christmas Eve.  That might seem “normal”, but I’d just gone through my 4th and last round of chemo, and we had to leave right afterwards – but we made it.

That was cool.

And over the years we’ve found that Christmas comes every year, whether you’re ready for it or not.

And it’s a mixed bag, isn’t it?

Sometimes life happens to be good and you can have a “good” Christmas.  That’s a blessing to cherish.

But sometimes – and you can probably figure that I could tell you stories about this: Life is just life, and it isn’t as kind and gentle as we’d hope, or as we might remember.  Without going into great detail, a number of people I know are at this moment going through some of the worst challenges a human can go through, the loss of a parent, a sibling, a child, the loss of a marriage, or relationship, and they’re still trying to celebrate Christmas, and trying to figure out how and why they even can, through all the struggles. They’re looking in vain for that blessing.

And after awhile, being pulled in all sorts of directions, it’s easy to lose sight of what Christmas is all about.

I don’t have answers to why this kind of stuff seems to happen more at Christmas, but amidst the turmoil we’re all experiencing, whether it’s spiritual, or health, or relationships, or economy, I’ve come to the conclusion that we crave the opposite of that turmoil, especially at this time of year.  It’s one thing: Peace.

A friend who’s experienced his share of turmoil (he’s a medic) noted, “Perhaps that’s why people wish others “Peace” during this season. That doesn’t just mean “absence of war” but inner peace. I wish you both senses of the word.”

His comment about both kinds of Peace got me to thinking of the original words about Peace in this Season, and while you can read the words here, we heard one of the great philosophers of our time do a pretty good job explaining it to his depressed friend, who was also pretty confused about what Christmas was really all about.

In a crystal clear voice he said to him, and to all who would listen,

“And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid … And the angel said unto them, “Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all my people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord.”

“And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men.”

“That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” – Linus Van Pelt

And so it is.

So whether you have a beautiful tree and all that goes with it, or whether you are struggling to make a tree out of a branch that fell out of the sky, above all else, I wish you God’s blessings, and Peace this Christmas season.

When my son was little – about 2, we went out to the Pacific coast of Washington State and stayed in a vacation house for a few days.  He got to run on the beach, play with things he’d never played with, and just really, really had a good time.  It was wonderful to watch.  For those of you who have children, you’ll recognize this.

He was also at this stage in life where he just wanted to do everything by himself – and, for those of you who have children, you’ll recognize some of this, too.

He was a “big boy” now, and he wanted to take care of things in a “big boy” way, so when he had to go take care of some, shall we say, personal business, he wanted to do it, as he said, “all by myself”.

And so, like many parents, I waited for him to call me and tell me he was done, so I could help him finish up the paperwork, so to speak.  And he didn’t call, and didn’t call, and didn’t call.

Finally I called in and asked if he was okay.  I heard a strained, “I’m fine!” – and then silence.  Then I heard a thump, followed by another thump.

Hmmm…

Silence followed by thumps is never good.  It seemed like it was time to go check on him, so I rushed in to see what was the matter – and in half a second I could see what had happened.

He’d been sitting on the toilet – the “grownup” toilet that everyone else used, not the little one he would normally use, and he’d been struggling to hold himself up with his hands to keep from falling in.

When he was done, and being a little tired from holding himself up, he wanted to be a “grownup”, he skootched himself forward until he could get off, but in doing so, left quite a bit of “evidence” on the toilet seat, the front of the toilet, and all the way up his back that he’d done so.  It was clear he’d lost his balance a bit as he was trying to stand and had bumped into the wall, leaning there to hold himself up.

The, um,  “evidence” was there, too.

He was standing there in the middle of the bathroom, ‘pullups’ down around his feet, surveying the scene with an almost analytical detachment when I rushed in and saw the whole thing.  I could clearly see what had happened based on what I just described, but instinctively wanting to confirm it, I blurted out, “Michael!  What happened?!”

His answer was priceless…

“Well, Papa.  Sometimes… things go wrong.”

There it was, plain and simple. “Sometimes, things go wrong.”

Despite the best of intentions, despite the best will in the world, as he said, “Sometimes, things go wrong.”

People make mistakes, or don’t live up to our expectations.

Things go wrong.

Things break, or don’t work like we expect.

Things go wrong.

No matter what we do in life…

Sometimes…

Things go wrong.

So how do you handle it when they do?

And, when you have a simple acknowledgement of the fact up front, how on earth can you be angry?

How do you – at work or at home – handle it when things go wrong?

What, if you were faced with that situation I mentioned, would be the most important thing?

Seems like they’d be like this, in order:

1. Clean up Michael (as in: clean up the source of the – we’ll call it “evidence”)
2. Clean up the toilet seat (as in: make sure things are functional again)
3. Clean up the wall (as in: take care of any – we’ll call it ‘collateral damage’ here)
4. This one’s incredibly important:  Remember:  Sometimes, THINGS GO WRONG – equipment breaks or wears out, code for our computers has bugs in it, and humans, both personally and professionally, are not perfect.

Yelling at my son about making a mess he already told me he didn’t mean to make wasn’t going to solve anything.

Managers yelling at employees when things go wrong generally don’t have much of a good result either, nor, often, does yelling in personal situations.

The important thing there was to help clean up the mess, then reassure him and let him know that everything was okay.  Just like you need to reassure and encourage the people involved so they’re not afraid to, shall we say, ‘get back in the saddle’.

And this takes us to…

5.     If you want to keep this kind of thing from happening again:

Personally: I can’t stress the importance of communication – not just speaking, but being willing to listen.  I can’t tell you how crucial that is, but I’ll be the first to admit I’m not perfect in this and have definitely made my share of mistakes, so please don’t take this as some perfect being sitting on the top of a mountain dispensing wisdom.  Nope, I’m down in the trenches, muffing things up along with everyone else, trying to learn the lessons God has for me, and trying to share the experiences along the way.

Also, (this one is challenging) realize yours might not be the only right view there.  (Yes, hard as it is to understand this in the moment,  it’s possible for two people to be right about something – and still disagree with each other). Often, one will be thinking short term, one long term.  Or, one may be thinking, we’ll call it ‘rationally’ while the other is thinking ‘emotionally’.

Note: One is just as valid as the next.

Professionally: Communication here is just as critical.  You might have one person thinking long term, but unable to articulate it, while another is focused on the immediate problem, and is more vocal.

Both are valid.

Be sure to listen to the quiet people in your organization.  Make sure your people are equipped with the proper tools to do the job they’re expected to do.  Going back to my son’s analogy, it’s good to make sure the saddle’s the right size in the first place.  Instead of your people using all their strength to keep from falling into a place they’d rather not be because the hole – or the responsibility – is too big, make sure they have the skills (read: training)  to be big enough to keep from falling in in the first place.

Does that make sense?

There are many ways to handle situations like this, but for those of you doing management of some kind, understand that the minds of your employees are the most vital things you have.  Most often, it’s in there that the solutions to the problems lie.  Making them quake in fear of you isn’t a productive use of your time, isn’t a productive use of their skills, and doesn’t make them feel comfortable getting, as I said, ‘back in the saddle’.

So, whether it’s in your work life, or your personal life, when dealing with folks:

Respect them for their skills, whatever they may be.

Forgive them for their mistakes, whatever they were.

Put the past where it belongs, behind you, and in doing so, you’ll help them learn, and you’ll teach them something far, far more valuable than you realize.

You’ll teach them they can trust you to have their back when they need you.

You’ll teach them they can take risks and fail, and not worry about their jobs.

But in setting them up like that – they’ll also feel comfortable right at the edge of their skill envelope, and, as one leader (the former CIO of the company I work for – yes, this means you, Dale) once said, “it’s when you’re at the edge of your envelope that you make mistakes, but that’s also where you learn the most.  Yes, sometimes you fail, but sometimes you succeed beyond your wildest dreams.”

He was right, and I appreciated that sentiment more than I ever really found words for.

It also boggled my mind that someone, with all the education he had, with all the experience he had, at the peak of his career in a company could come to the same conclusion that my then two year old son came up with on his own.

It shouldn’t be that hard for those of us somewhere between the two to come to similar conclusions, should it?

In fact, it seems like a huge part of success comes from understanding, and accepting, that…

Sometimes…

Things go wrong.

(C) 2011 Tom Roush – all rights reserved

I headed there on Wednesday afternoon to get an early start helping out with getting things ready. I was driving down a road that I used to drive a couple of times daily, but hadn’t driven down in some time, when my mind suddenly shifted gears faster than a dual clutch automatic transmission in a time machine.

Suddenly I was a 20 again.

Not driving my wife’s Honda wagon with a 17 pound turkey in the back.

Not coming back home to visit as an adult.

Not planning on being part of creating a Thanksgiving feast for 8.

The time machine had deposited me inside memories that washed over me like a dump truck full of water balloons, each one bringing another thought, story, or reminder that flashed into my consciousness as it popped, until I was completely soaked in the spring of 1982.

I was almost finished with my second year going to a local community college, and I had a friend named Jill.  She was my absolute best friend at the time, and we hung out as friends do.  She was still in high school, I was a couple of years older, and we all went to the same church, same youth group, and so on.  One day I had some car troubles (the car in question was a 1965 Saab 95, 3 cylinder, 2 stroke, 46 cubic inches of raw, unbridled power – of COURSE I had car trouble), and without me even asking, she offered to loan me her car one day if I could pick her up from tennis practice after school.

This was a no brainer, and I immediately took her up on her offer.

Now something to know about her car, it was about a ‘74 Ford Torino, originally came from the factory with a 302 cubic inch V-8 engine that had been customized over time to be a V-5.  The rest of the car was great, but this thing was the personification of the phrase, “Not firing on all cylinders.”  Three of the cylinders were just along for the ride, and what a ride it was.  (It was actually hard to comprehend the concept of having three cylinders not firing.  If the Saab had had three cylinders not firing, that car would be parked.)

I drove it to school, and I realized that since I’d been spending a huge amount of time under the hood of cars in general, it wouldn’t take much to just do a tuneup on her car as a thank you for letting me borrow it, so I bought 8 plugs, points, condenser, and a rotor and cap, typical tuneup stuff for a car of that vintage, and it cost less than 20.00 for the parts.

I drove it into the middle stall of the three car garage that my dad and I had built.  Even though it was the only car in there, the garage felt a little crowded.  It had never seen a car that big, and I popped the hood to start working on it.  What was really a challenge at the time was just figuring out where everything was.  I mean, it wasn’t hard to work, on, it’s just that that 302 V-5 (soon to be V-8 again) was so huge compared to the 3 cylinder engine I could pull out of the Saab and carry by myself to where it needed to be.

So I yanked all the plugs out – sure enough, three were pretty bad, and gapped the 8 new ones so they were set right, then popped them in, put new points in, gapped them, replaced the cap and rotor, making sure that all 8 plug wires were connected in the right order, then replaced the condenser and then, finally, got my timing light out and made sure all the plugs were firing when they were supposed to.  It wasn’t hard, but it did take just a touch more than the hour I’d budgeted for it, and I was getting worried that I might not make it in time to pick her up from tennis practice like I’d promised.

I fired it up, and it started beautifully.  It ran on all 8 cylinders, and was so smooth you could hardly tell it was running.

I allowed myself a smile, then suddenly realized as I looked at my watch that I was cutting it a little close.  I ran into the house to clean up, then tried like you wouldn’t believe to keep from driving like a madman to pick her up in time.

A couple of green traffic lights helped me get there with a few seconds to spare.  She saw me as she came bouncing off the tennis court as I eased her car gently onto the unpaved parking lot.  You couldn’t even hear the engine anymore.  All you could hear was the tires, slowly crunching on the gravel.

She got to the car, and was just starting to get in on the passenger’s side when she realized it was her car she was about to be a passenger in, so she playfully informed me that she was driving.  She ran around to the driver’s door. I played along and skootched over to the passenger’s side, and she got in the driver’s seat.

The engine was still running, just purring, no longer doing the “thoof thoof thoof” that the custom V-5 had been doing under the hood for so long.  She automatically put her seatbelt on while I was still fumbling with mine.  I looked over at her and saw she was giving me “the look” that made it crystal clear that the car wasn’t moving till I had my seatbelt on and my tray table in the full upright and locked position… (okay, ignore the tray table thing) So I hurried up and got mine on as well.

Understand, she had no clue about what I’d done.

So she put it in drive, like she always did.

And then she gave it 5 cylinders worth of gas, like she always did.

And she expected to have 5 cylinders pull the car out of the parking lot, like they always did.

But Jill did not know, at that moment, that she had 8 cylinders reporting for duty under the hood.

With the gas pedal close to floored, those 8 cylinders did exactly what they were designed to do, and the engine roared. The tires spun, and Jill sprayed gravel all OVER that parking lot before she stomped on the brakes, looked at me in total shock (and just a little delight) and said,

“WHAT have you DONE to my CAR?”

“I, um… I fixed a few things…”

“You WHAT?”

She couldn’t believe it – and insisted on paying me.

I didn’t want any money for it – it really didn’t cost much to do it, and it was so much fun to see that amazed look. I think, in the end, she managed to give me $10.00 – which was close enough to the price, but what was worth more than all the money she could have ever given me was the look on her face when she hit the gas that first time.

She drove the car for the rest of that summer and into the next winter, and as there are people who are in your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, Jill was in my life for a season. That summer, she and I still saw each other, but she had a special friend named Mike, and Mike and Jill were inseparable.  On the one hand, I was, as anyone would be, heartbroken that she’d chosen someone else, but she and Mike were such a couple, and it seemed that there was something so much bigger going on than just Mike and Jill, that anything other than bowing out gracefully simply wasn’t an option, and so I did the best I could.

That summer was hard, but like I said, Jill was in my life – in our lives – for a season.

I got the Saab working again…

School started again…

Life was, for the most part, going okay.  We made it through thanksgiving and Christmas of that year, were barely a couple of weeks into the New Year when one Thursday morning the phone rang.

I still remember being home that cold morning – when the phone rang.

I still remember the pastor’s wife’s voice on the phone, crying.

I still remember sitting down, collapsing, really, as I heard her say there’d been an accident.

I heard everything, almost as if I were an uninvolved third party, but this was happening, and happening right then.

I heard disjointed words.

I heard something about a patch of ice, and about a pickup truck in the oncoming lane.

And I heard that both Mike and Jill, who’d been on their way to school that cold, clear morning, took an unexpected detour and left this life.

The next week was a blur.

The funeral for them was huge.  I think there were 1500 people there.  I’m not sure.  There were many, many tears, but I remember walking past the casket, and looking inside, and while Jill’s body was there – Jill’s spirit was gone, flying as freely as the angel she was.

As you can tell, I still think about my friend Jill, and I miss her.

But I’m thankful for the time I had, and for the friendship that we had those many years ago.

I’ve learned that time machines can be wonderful ways to reach back into the past, bringing back memories that you’d forgotten were there.  But I also learned you have to be a little careful, as along with the memories come emotions that you might have forgotten were there, too.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand as I stepped out of the time machine, and came back to Thanksgiving, 2011, where the smell of the turkey was just starting to waft through the house.  I asked mom if she knew where “the picture” of Jill was.

There was only one that I knew of.  She never wanted to be in any pictures, and was pretty adamant about that, but one day, that spring that I fixed the car for her, we were doing homework in the camping trailer my parents had. I was fiddling with my mom’s Yashica rangefinder 35mm camera.  It took a bit to learn how to focus a rangefinder camera, which was achieved by getting two images to line up one over the other, and once you figured it out, it took some practice to get any image in focus. So I told Jill all I was doing was checking the focus, but inside, I really wanted at least one picture of my friend – and I was able to capture the only picture I have of her, doing her algebra homework after school one day.

And I got to thinking.

The Jill-shaped hole she left in our hearts will never be filled, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized Jill hadn’t left.

She’d gone home.

Now I’m sure Mr. Carr had a first name, but I never knew what it was.  He had grown up, as I recall, in the Ozarks, and was the kind of guy who could speak intelligently about absolutely anything.  At the time I knew him, he was old.  I wouldn’t say he was older than dirt, but I’m sure he watched some of the first dirt being made.

There are people on this planet who make stuff, and there are people on this planet who do stuff.  And then there are the people on this planet who know how to make stuff to do stuff.

This was Mr. Carr.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Shooter” – and heard the fellow say the line, “…still got the shovel…” that’s a lot what Mr. Carr looked and sounded like.  You just knew  that he knew far, far more than his simple life would tell you.

He had a sky blue 1962 Ford Falcon that he changed the oil on every 1200 miles, whether it needed it or not.  I don’t know if he ever drove it faster than 35 mph, though I suppose he might have on some of the straighter roads out there.  The car had been in mint condition until someone backed into the left front fender.  He had it replaced with one from a black 1962 Ford Falcon, and that’s the way I remember the car.  There was no reason, in his mind, to paint the car.  The fender did what it was supposed to do, so that’s how it was left.

He rented half a duplex from my grandparents, and had lived in this duplex for as long as I could remember.

It had an oil stove in it, an old black and white TV, and a rocking chair and a couch.  His kitchen could be seen from the living room, and the kitchen windows looked out over his little garden, where he had his tomatoes, his corn, and his beans.

The light coming into the kitchen lit up the old porcelain sink and an empty dish strainer on the counter. A simple cutting board was next to it, and the towel that he’d used to dry the dishes was hanging from a little hook.  The dishes were put away, nowhere to be seen.

Standing in the kitchen, looking out to the right, you could see the Falcon in the carport.  Beside the Falcon in the carport was an old hoe, with a handle that had been marinated smooth from years of well-earned sweat.

The handle on the hoe made me look back at the garden.

There were no weeds in it.

At all.

Mr. Carr wanted for nothing.  That is to say, he had what he needed, and to be honest, he didn’t need much, but one day, it seems, the duplex needed to be painted, and my grampa was willing to hire me, an eager teenager to do it.  As I recall, my job that day involved scraping the side of the duplex in preparation for the painting that was to come later, so it wasn’t hard work, just tedious.  I got there and started working on the west side while it was still in the shade.

Around noon, the sun was just starting to peek over the eaves, Mr. Carr came out, and asked if I was hungry.   I hadn’t thought about it until then, but it had been several hours since breakfast, and any time sitting with Mr. Carr was a treat – he was so full of stories of times gone by that it was like listening to a time traveler, telling of long lost adventures, so when he offered to make me a sandwich, I said I’d be delighted to have lunch with him.  He had me sit on the front steps while he went back inside to that little kitchen of his.  He’d said he had some good ham, and was going to make me a ham sandwich.

And he did.

The hinges on the screen door creaked, as he came out a couple of minutes later with exactly what he said he’d make: a ham sandwich.

With it he had a pickle, and a glass of water.

At first, I thought there was something missing.  I mean, on the plate, there were two slices of bread, not found in any store, and between them, a slab of ham almost as thick as the slices of bread he’d sawed off the loaf.

But I have to tell you – there must have been a glow in that little kitchen when he made it, and Angels must have been singing next to the cutting board as his knife cut through the bread, because this was a ham sandwich like none I have had before or since.

Any other ham sandwich I’d had was on bread that you didn’t want to squeeze too tight or it’d turn to mush.

Any other ham sandwich needed mayonnaise on it because the bread wasn’t moist enough.

Any other ham sandwich needed mustard on it, and maybe some lettuce or something, because the ham was – well, just ham…

But as I sat there in the shade on his front step, a paper plate with a pickle on it balanced on my knee, the glass of water carefully placed on the cement one step down, I looked at the sandwich, and wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or not.  He’d talked about having some ‘good’ ham – but I’d never had a sandwich that was – well, just a slab of ham stuck in between a couple of thicker slabs of bread.

But he was right.

I took a first, tentative bite, and it was clear this was no supermarket bread.  This was bread with a crust that had enough attitude to put up a fight, but once I got past that, I found a sweet, earthy nuttiness.  It was bread that had enough flavor on its own for you to be perfectly happy eating just the bread – without anything on it, bread that had enough moisture to not need the mayo that every other ham sandwich had always needed.

But there was something on it – it was the ham – and Mr. Carr was right – this was, indeed, “some good ham”.  It had been cured just right, with spices like I’d never tasted before.  It was cool, still from his old refrigerator, and had so much flavor it didn’t need the mustard like every other ham sandwich had always needed.

…and right about then, looking down at that sandwich, I had to reach for the paper plate, and decided to try the pickle.  It was home canned.  It wasn’t bought from a store, either, and it was soft where it needed to be, crunchy where it needed to be, refreshingly sweet, salty, and spicy.

It was so simple.  Bread.  Ham… Pickle.

That was it.

I sat there, savoring it, and realized I still had the glass of water.   What could possibly top that sandwich and the pickle?

It was a glass of well water.

Not city water that had been purified to within an inch of its life, but simple, pure, clear, water.

…that had come out of a faucet, yes, but the well that fed that faucet was in the back yard, just past that weedless garden.

I took a sip.

And realized that Mr. Carr had given me a gift.

Instead of being a time traveler, telling me stories of times gone by, this time, he’d given me a gift, and without me realizing it, had taken me along on one of them.

I allowed my thoughts to come back to the present – which was my friend Greg and me standing there, looking at the porch I’d had the sandwich on, and the house Mr. Carr had lived in those many years ago, and Greg paused, and said, “You should write that one down…”

So I did, and even though I couldn’t share the sandwich, at least I can share the memory.

Fare well, Mr. Carr – and thank you…

So I got to thinking about this whole thing – realized that a number of the stories I’ve written are because I simply didn’t understand that someone could possibly say ‘no’ to a well reasoned, logical request.  The story about Fifi is a prime example.  So’s the story about Misty 42.  There’s a bunch of unwritten stories still in my head that are the same way – and this whole thing could apply to any life situation.

I mean seriously, what right did I have to badger a newspaper photo editor that I didn’t know into holding space for me on the front page of his paper so I could talk my way onto the only flying B-29 in the world…  Then again – who was I to just casually talk my way onto a KC-135 tanker (twice, actually) and get a picture of an F-4 Phantom seconds before it refueled?  Who was I to get strapped into a C-130 for the greenest ride of my life?  What did I do to deserve something as cool as some of the things I was privileged to do?

Well – the answer’s pretty simple.

I asked.

See – that whole thing about a guaranteed “no” is something I learned early on, whether it involved asking a young lady out on a date when I was younger, or asking for a seemingly nonexistent transmission for my car, or if I somehow could get go onto a plane, train, or automobile (yes, I have stories of all three) – it was still the same.

If I didn’t ask, the answer was no.

So…

I asked.

So with that as a little bit of a background, let me take you to a small town in west central Ohio for one of these stories – just because it was an example of what a difference asking a question like that can make.

I’d just started my internship at the Sidney Daily News, and was between assignments, looking for some of what they called “Feature” shots.  That means anything that makes you think thoughts like “oh, cool!” or “gosh, I wonder how they got that shot”, or just something that’s a fun picture to take, something to share with the folks who live in the area, and, hopefully, is of general interest.

Part of this was just having a fresh set of eyes that hadn’t seen anything like this town before, part of it was just curiosity.

So being between assignments, I found myself in the center of town, driving circles counter clockwise around the courthouse.  There was construction going on, and I thought I could make an interesting image out of it. I saw a fellow up on the scaffolding, and figured I’d found something to work with – so I parked the car, grabbed my gear, and moved so there weren’t trees in the way.  I realized I’d need my 300 mm Nikkor 4.5 because of how far I was – then realized that wasn’t enough, so I put the doubler on it, making it act like a 600 mm lens.  I got down on one knee, steadied myself with one elbow on the trunk lid of the car, and then realized that I was taking a shot anyone on the street could take with what was then the camera that produced some of the crappiest pictures on the market, a Disc Camera.  Oh, sure, my shot would be like a telescope compared to the disk camera, but that wasn’t the point… The point was that I’d been hired to take photographs that other people couldn’t see, that other people couldn’t get to, or that other people would never in their wildest dreams think of taking.

I mean, it was possible to take a photograph of the courthouse from the ground and have it look great.  I found a shot online and asked the fellow if I could use it (Thank you David Grant)– and here it is:

Shelby County Courthouse, Sidney, Ohio. Photo Copyright David Grant, used with permission

Problem though, was the light for what I wanted to shoot, while gorgeous like the shot above, wasn’t that gorgeous on the side of the court house where my picture was waiting for me. I knew that – I’d driven around the thing, and sure enough, all the action was on the shady side.

Sigh.

I put the camera down before I took a poorly lit shot anyone else could take from across the street, and stood up.

And then I did something dangerous.

I started wondering…

I wondered what the view from up there was like…

And then I wondered how I could get up there…

And then I did some thinking about how I could get up there.

See, if you want to get into a building, and if you want to go straight to the top, it’s best to start right at the bottom – and often, as in this case, the fellow at the bottom is the janitor.

Janitors are amazing people.

They have keys for EVERYTHING.

So I made sure the car was locked, threw everything over my shoulder and headed into the courthouse, to have a chat with whoever was playing receptionist and see if together we could find the janitor.

One receptionist’s phone call later, I was introduced to the older gentleman with the iconic huge ring of keys, and I heard myself give what would be my standard greeting for the next few months, “Hi, my name’s Tom Roush and I’m a photographer for the Sidney Daily News…” followed by the question of the day. In this case, it was: “I see you’ve got some work being done on the roof, and was wondering if I could get some shots of it for the paper.  Is there any way I could get up there?”

I don’t think five minutes had gone by from the time I didn’t take that picture over the trunk of the car until I was walking out of the elevator, through a dusty attic filled with huge beams, and through a small open window onto the roof.

The janitor looked out, called up to the fellow I’d seen, then stepped aside and let me crawl out.

I introduced myself to the fellow many feet over my head up on the scaffolding and asked if I could come up.

He stopped his caulking for a moment and looked down, seeing I was carrying a camera bag, a couple of cameras, including that one with the 300 mm lens and the doubler on it.  Somehow bringing the bag up there onto the scaffolding was deemed, without any words needing to be spoken, a bad idea.  So I set it down, put the 24mm wide angle lens on the F-3, slung it over my shoulder, and carefully climbed up the scaffolding.

I climbed on top of the topmost section of scaffolding so I could look down and see him, my goal being to see – and thus tell a story – that no one else could see.  I sat on the very top of the scaffolding, wrapped my right leg around the vertical part of the support, leaned back, (yes, the scaffolding leaned with me, but not by much) composed the frame so the horizon was at the top of the frame, then told the fellow to just keep working as he could (as I write this I still can’t believe I did that – had I slipped, there was nothing but air between me and the roof about 30 feet below, and I would have rolled down, then off the roof and fallen another 40 feet or so before becoming one with the pavement)

And the thing is – I could have taken that first shot from across the street, it would have been safe – but it would have been a totally forgettable image, lost in the back of the paper somewhere.

But I didn’t take that first shot.

I wondered, “What if?”

I wondered, “What can I do that will make this better?”

And then I realized the only thing keeping me from making it better was me.  I had to go in, ask a question that they could have easily said,”No.” to, and that would have been that.

But I didn’t.

I asked.

And when you’re faced with weird situations in life when you’re just thinking there’s no way you can succeed – trust me, there are ways you can succeed. And stand out – literally above the crowd.

There have been times in my life – and there will be times in yours, when you find you can barely think of the question to ask, much less step out of your comfort zone and ask it, but that little thought, that maybe, just maybe, asking will make a difference, that *is* the difference.  In fact, often, the hardest/simplest/most important thing of all is for you to step out of your comfort zone and just ask.

Now, understand, whoever you’re asking might say no, and you’ll be right where you were before you asked the question, but so what? You can try something else then.

On the other hand, if you don’t ask, the “no” is guaranteed.

So…

Take care – really – be careful out (and up) there.

And don’t forget, it’s okay to ask.   Think about  it: what’s the worst that can happen? (they say “No”, and life hasn’t changed.  But if you do – the results can be magic.

I’m working on a few more stories that will show you what happens if you dare to ask – they’ll come out over the next  year or so, and often, they will be the story behind a photograph (which is proof in and of itself)

All that said, here (below) is the shot I’ve been describing.  (in another frame you’d see the camera bag teetering at the bottom of the frame, but that one didn’t make the final cut) – and below that is how they actually ran it in the paper.

Shelby County Courthouse, Sidney, Ohio. (click for larger image)

…and how it appeared in the paper the next day.

The front page, with the camera & lens I shot it with. At top is the camera bag mentioned in the story. (click for larger image)

]]> http://tomroush.net/2011/11/10/courthouses-janitors-and-the-audacity-of-a-simple-question/feed/ 0 tomroush Sidney Courthouse Sidney Courthouse - from the top - original print Courthouse - Front Page, with F3 http://tomroush.net/2011/10/31/october-museums-and-bavarian-waitresses/ http://tomroush.net/2011/10/31/october-museums-and-bavarian-waitresses/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:15:39 +0000 tomroush http://tomroush.net/?p=1110 ]]> The other night some friends had an “Oktoberfest” – where they blocked off the street in front of their house.  There was bratwurst, sauerkraut, potato Salad, and of course, beer.  On top of it all, was this overwhelming oompah music

It’s funny, as I was writing this story – I realized there was a theme there that I hadn’t even noticed -

It took me back many years – the last time I was in Munich, when our friend Martin, his brother Wolfgang, my sister and I drove down there from the Ludwigsburg area where we were, and took in the sights.  We went to the park they’d made for the 1972 Olympics, went up the tower.  You could see the BMW Museum from there, so we went to visit that, where I discovered that they absolutely don’t like you touching the artifacts (since I’m an official airplane nut, I was looking at, and in this case touching, a WWII airplane engine – I’d just reached out to touch it when I heard a very loud, very German voice on the loudspeaker shatter the otherwise almost reverent silence of the museum.  I looked up and froze.  The camera that had been aimed at the engine was now aimed straight at me, with a red, almost laser like light on it that made it clear I’d been both spotted and caught.

Yup… Deer in the headlights, that’s me.

It was very clear that I was to keep my hands off the merchandise…

The tone in the fellow’s voice made it very easy to imagine that in a control room somewhere, a security guard must have been marking a little notch in what would translate as his gunbelt… “Yep, got another one…”

I was embarrassed, but what could I do?  So we left.  By this time it was afternoon, and went to the German Museum where they had all sorts of exhibits and displays, and for whatever reason we started at the bottom, and were in the middle of this exhibit on some kind of ancient Babylonian or Mesopotamian stuff when the lights started flashing and we thought either there was a power outage or – then the siren went off.

I figured I’d touched something wrong.

Again…

Turns out it was neither.

It was the fact that the place was closing down, and of all things, at 4:00 on a freaking Tuesday.  With me being the aforementioned airplane nut, instead of going straight for the airplanes, we’d wanted to see everything, and were planning on saving the best (airplanes) for last.  When I heard on the loudspeaker the rough German equivalent of “Attention K-mart shoppers, the store will be closing in 5 minutes, please take your purchases to the checkout stand.” – okay, so it wasn’t K-mart shoppers, it was all of us who’d come thousands of miles to see the exhibits, only to find out at the last second that the place was closing before we could see everything.  On that realization I just about went nuts and tore out of the Babylonian exhibit into the lobby area.  I looked around, found the signs to the second floor and tore up saw this huge curved staircase to the second floor where the airplanes were.  I was running so fast that it’s possible to truthfully say that I ran rings around a V-2 Rocket (okay, so the rocket was in the center of the curved staircase I was taking two and three steps at a time), and I arrived panting at the door of the hall the planes were displayed in just as a rather burly, and fairly stubborn, guard locked the door from the inside.  (Note: you don’t get much more stubborn than German stubborn, unless you’re talking Hungarian stubborn – don’t ask me how I know this

I tried to plead my case, but my Schwäbisch accent was no match for his Bavarian accent and attitude – and he was the one with the lock in the key.  I could only look through the now smudged windows at the planes I’d come to see, neither realizing, nor being able to convince the guard, that this might be my only chance to ever see them.  He didn’t seem to care.  I remember seeing a two seater Me-262 and the only Do-335 in the world – oddly, without the swastika on the rudder, like most planes of the time had had – but then I realized, even then, that the echoes of WWII were still there, and the law was clear: absolutely no swastikas – even if they made something historically accurate.  You couldn’t even buy a model WWII airplane with the right decals…

Once the doors were closed, there wasn’t anything else to do there – I was so frustrated at the time I don’t even remember taking a picture of anything.  Wolfgang, Martin, and my sister showed up about then, and, knowing that this was something we – especially I – had wanted to see, they tried to get me out of my funk… I mean, getting kicked out of – well, “encouraged” to not come back to the BMW museum until I could behave was one thing… Having the dang exhibits in the German Museum close in my face was another.

We were hoping to not make it a “three strikes and you’re out” kind of thing, but I was seriously frustrated.

It was hard to acknowledge it at the time, but aside from that, we’d had a pretty good day.  We’d driven well over 100 mph on the famed Autobahn, to the point where slowing down to 60 when we got into Munich made us want to get out and push), we’d seen priceless works of art, items that were literally one of a kind on the planet – and – it was almost as if Ferris Bueller had taken a day off and gone to Munich, instead of going to Chicago.  Somewhere in there we got onto a subway and got out at the Marienplatz in the square in Munich and watched the famed clock tower (or Glockenspiel) strike, I think it was 5:00 in the evening by the time we got there – and our friends, realizing it was dinnertime and still trying to help overcome the last Museum bust, wanted to take us to this place they called the “Hofbräuhaus”

We were tired, had done a LOT of walking, and were to the point of not even caring anymore, but they insisted, so we went in – and were suddenly surrounded – no – immersed – in Bavaria at its finest.

To say that the Hofbräuhaus had atmosphere would be like saying water is wet, and this atmosphere was thicker than the proverbial pea soup.

First: The music.  I know there are people who think that the definition of “perfect pitch” is when the accordion you just tossed out lands on the banjo. I’m not sure how many banjos there were, and I didn’t take any pictures, but Lordy, you have never, ever heard “Ooompah” music till you’ve heard it played by a bunch of well lubricated Bavarians. (there was an accordion, a tuba, a baritone, I think a trumpet and a trombone)

Tourists like us were there, but it was the locals who were just a delight to watch.  I’d heard the song most Americans know as the “Beer Barrel Polka” – but the words were a lot different, and came across sounding more like the music here: “Rosamunde”.  (the video’s not from the Hofbrauhaus, but watch the crowd in the video to get a sense of what it was like).

It looked like the people in the band wouldn’t remember it the next morning.  In fact, it seemed the band was on complete autopilot.  Waitresses kept their steins full, and they played – well, like a well lubricated machine… it was a wonderful background to everything else.  Occasionally the crowd would join in and we’d see people standing up, arm in arm, singing their lungs out.

Then there was smoke from any kind of tobacco, there was the astounding smell of beer.  Not stale beer from a place that’s been serving beer for the last few years and hasn’t been cleaned up, but fresh beer that’s been poured in the place since 1589.

Like for more than 400 years.

There was a sign up at the front where the bartenders were filling the 1 liter steins as fast as they could, something to the effect of “Wet Floor” – and they weren’t kidding… there was beer all over the place, and you did want to be careful to not slip on it.

Why was there beer all over the place?

Well, part of the answer lay in the regulars.  It seems that the place has special tables for them. A lot of them are pensioners who live in apartments nearby and come for the camaraderie, the social aspect, the food, and of course, the beer.  What’s surprising about them is the vast quantities of beer some of them can put away.  I was talking to a fellow who’d been there a few times, and had seen this little old man, couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds, put away several liters, every evening, every time he showed up.  These are guys who by any other definition would be considered alcoholics – but there, they show up (and have been showing up) daily for years, and they have their usual table, the waitresses know them, know their orders, and keep them happy by keeping their beer mugs full.

Now those waitresses, to keep from having to make too many trips to serve a table, take as much as they can carry with every trip.  This means that invariably, some glasses spilled, some fell, some broke, (hence the  warning signs about the wet floor) but for the most part, the beer gets to where it needs to be.

So it was this expectation that helped set up our next encounter.  We were led to our table, and as the waitress came over, we realized we’d spent most of our money on museums, trips up the tower, and souvenirs.  We pooled all our money together and realized that if we subtracted the money for the souvenirs we wanted to buy there, subway money to get back to the car, gas money to get the car back to Ludwigsburg, that left us with enough for – um – one beer.

Split four ways.

Oh oh.

So one of the things that’s important to know is that a good percentage of the tourist photos show gorgeous young Bavarian women serving beer in places like this.

They’re models.

The real ones aren’t hired for their looks.  They’re hired because they can carry, over the course of a shift, hundreds of liters of beer to their customers.  They keep the customers from getting too thirsty, they keep them from getting too hungry, and they keep bringing whatever it takes to keep the customers satisfied and happy, as they’ve been doing for several centuries.

Our waitress looked like she’d been there since the place opened.

She looked tired.

And it looked, from everything we could see about her, that she’d had a day we, as tourists, couldn’t possibly imagine. She looked like we were her last table and she was looking forward to going home, soaking, then putting the feet she’d been on all day up and getting a chance to rest a bit before starting it all over again.

She just had this one last table to deal with, and at that table were four teenagers and a pile of change.

She straightened her apron out a bit as she got to our table and was all business:

“Also, was möchten sie?”

(Her words said, “So, what would you like?” but her tone said the Bavarian equivalent, “So, what’ll it be?”)

We looked at each other, swallowed, and then together, said, “Ein Bier.” (one beer)

“Also gut… Vier Bier.“

(“Right… Four beers”)

„Nein… EIN Bier.“

(“No, actually, ONE beer.“)

„EIN BIER? Da sind ja doch vier von Euch!“

(“ONE BEER? But there’s FOUR of you!?“)

She looked at us with a combination of disgust and disdain that can only be done by German and French waiters.  Add to that a look of confusion, like a mathematician who’d just discovered that dividing by zero didn’t work.  In her world, one customer = many beers, not the other way around.

We kind of stared at each other, and it was then that we realized the first rule of the Hofbrauhaus:

It is not, repeat, NOT a good idea to – um – ‘irritate’ a Bavarian waitress… I don’t care how many weights you’ve lifted, they’ve lifted more, they’re stronger than you are, and they do it for eight hours at a stretch.

As we were coming to that conclusion, the day finally got to her and she absolutely went off on us.  I don’t remember her exact words, but they translated roughly to:

“How can you possibly expect me to make any money if my customers only order one beer?  I mean, you’re sitting there taking up four spots, and only ordering ONE beer? There’s no way you’re ordering one beer, that’s not just unheard of, that’s an insult.”

Uh… right… insults were off the table.

Then again, now that she had set her expectations: “Also, was möchten sie?”

(Again, her words said, “So, what would you like?” but the tone said, “Alright, really, let’s get this show on the road… what else are you going to order that is going to make it worth my time to even see your faces again?”)

We dug deeper into pockets, wallets, whatever might have a little extra money, and ordered some kind of pork roast, some sauerkraut, and I think there might have been some mashed potatoes.

And one beer.

And oh, my, it was good.

The beer was strong enough to pack a bit of a punch, but between the four of us, none of us had enough to worry about. The pork was amazing, and the sauerkraut was something you’d just have to go there to experience.  It was amazing.  We pooled enough money for a tip, left what we could there, then headed out into what was now night..

We got to the subway, then to the car, but didn’t drive 100 on the autobahn this time.  This time we slowed down to about 80 mph.

Because it was dark.

And because it was raining off and on.

Martin wanted to be safe and drive even slower, but there’s something about German drivers and the autobahn, and by golly, they’ll drive as fast as they can.  We were constantly having to move over so that other cars could pass us.  The law’s pretty clear over there.  If someone wants to pass you, you let them.  Martin had been moving back and forth and was getting tired of it, so decided to stay in the fast lane.  One driver made his thoughts very clearly known to us by getting so close that I, in the back seat, couldn’t see his headlights past the trunk lid. Martin finally moved over, and the last thing I remember of that day was that the silhouette of a Porsche 911 with a glowing exhaust pipe as it passed us.

Oh – and we did get home.  I’d managed to save enough for one souvenir that actually survived the trip back, and that I still have after all these years.

One, genuine beer stein from the Hofbrauhaus

I found I was telling him stories, not just stories from some mystical past, but stories right where they happened.  And it made the stories a little more real, to be standing exactly on the spot where they happened.

And we got to talking about one particular story that happened long before the house had any reliance on fossil fuels.  When I was a kid, back before Al Gore had even thought of inventing the internet, we didn’t have cable TV, or video games, but there was always, always something to do.  There were chores constantly, and one of mine was simple: When I came home from school, I’d have to bring wood in for the rather cranky woodstove (it was simple: no wood, no heat), or – sometimes when I came home and there was no one else home, the house was cold.

Well, if the house was cold, and I was the only one in it, and if I was the one who wanted heat, then I had to build a fire in the stove.  That got interesting sometimes, as there were times when I couldn’t get a fire going for anything.

Keep in mind here – I was a teenager.

With matches.

And I couldn’t get a fire started…

In the house…

Sigh…

The idea of having a thermostat to turn up was a dream – but it was just that.  (It was only 11 years ago that we had a gas fireplace installed there for my mom.  But back when I was a kid (oh gad that makes me sound old), one day, I was both cold and impatient, and to light the stove in the living room, I got a bunch of newspaper, was too impatient to split any kindling, so I just put some wood scraps from the lumber mill in town on the newspaper there in the stove.  Sometimes I’d be lucky and actually get it to light – but this time it just wouldn’t stay lit for anything – and I was cold, and I just wanted a fire.

RIGHT NOW. 

So, operating with the Infinite Teenage Wisdom ® that is so common at that age, I got some gas from the lawn mower, and poured a little onto the wood and paper in the stove.  I then reached up to the place where the matches were…

…and realized I’d used the last of them trying so unsuccessfully to start the fire.

Oh good.

I took the gas can back outside (first – actually, only – smart thing I did) and hunted all over until I found some matches.  When I got back to the stove, I instinctively knew what had happened – the gas had vaporized to its most lethal form, and I knew that lighting it would be a bit of a challenge now – far different than the “I can’t start this fire” challenge.

Given that, and knowing that exploding gas would be a challenge to try to contain, I decided to stand to the side of the stove, with the door open instead of trying to toss the match in and slam the door shut., That way it would relieve the pressure I knew was coming, and toss the match in while I was standing on the side, away from what I thought would be a bit of a flame coming out.

So I stood to the side, with some fresh newspaper and more wood in the firebox of the stove, and I tossed the match in.

Now I don’t think I’d ever seen a rectangular flame before, and definitely haven’t since, but a flame – exactly the size and shape of the stove opening, shot about three feet out of the stove, spewing bits of wood and burning newspaper paper all over the living room.  What must have been just seconds seemed like hours as I frantically cleaned all those pieces up before they caught the rest of the living room on fire.  That would have been, um, bad…

And I would have had to explain to my mom yet again why there was smoke in the same room I coincidentally happened to be occupying. (I did have some experience with that)

By the time my mom got home that day, the fire was burning nicely.

Inside the stove.

I have no idea how I hid my guilty expression when she came home.  Maybe I was too frustrated by the whole event to feel guilty. In fact, she only heard about this years later. (actually, Thanksgiving a couple of years ago)

And of course, she was shocked.

Come to think of it, a number of the stories that are mentioned here are stories she finds out about as I’ve been writing them.  It makes for fun conversations now – but as I look back on it – the adult in me got to asking myself, the Teen With the Infinite Wisdom ®, “What were you thinking?” Or more specifically, I narrowed it down to, “Did you not see the line between dumb and stupid as you blasted past it?”

I realized that this, like most of the actions controlled by my Infinite Teenage Wisdom® were the result of simply not thinking of the consequences to my actions early enough to have them change what I was doing.

Yes, I knew that gasoline was flammable, in fact, I even counted on it.  What I didn’t count on, or expect, was that the, um, “influence” that the gasoline had, could expand to other things as quickly as it did.  No, even that’s not true… I knew it would be dramatic, otherwise I wouldn’t have stepped to the side.  I guess I was expecting flames, but not the aftermath of all the fiery bits and pieces that flew out after the flames, and I didn’t expect to have to try to put all that back in the stove.

I did some more thinking about it, and realized that the adage my son has told me many times, “To be Old and Wise, you must first be Young and Stupid.” –

In fact, there’s an old saying, with a corollary right along with it:

“With age comes Wisdom”

“…but sometimes, Age comes alone.”

So how do I learn from this as an adult now?  Well, I’m still human, still capable of making mistakes with the best of them, but at least I’m working on learning from the old ones and using those lessons to learn how to make different new mistakes, (instead of repeating the same old ones over and over.

And I guess that’s it, huh? Learn from your mistakes, because if you don’t, you may as well just soak the mistakes in gas and throw in the match, because in the end – well, – cleaning bits and pieces of what you were trying to do will be very much like trying to put a burning fire back into a fire place, and that, my friends, is hard.

I’ve mentioned it before, there were other things we did, but one of the very important things we learned was all about Search and Rescue, or SAR.

One the hallmarks of a good search was when the person was found.

One of the things that made that possible was the organization that was part of every search.  There was communication (we had an old M-715 military surplus communications truck (mentioned in this story) with radios of all varying frequencies, so we could be a relay to the myriad of agencies that could be part of a large search), there were all the volunteers who showed up, and then there were the people who did the searching.  Sometimes the searching was done from the air, but that was to get a general sense of where things might be.  The end of a search was often done from the ground.  In both circumstances, we would work what was called a grid pattern, so we would always know what had been searched, and what had yet to be searched.

What was drilled into us at the time was that you searched a part of the grid, and if you didn’t find what you were looking for, you crossed that square off, and then moved to your next assigned section.  It was almost sacred, how important that was. The commanders had to know with 100% certainty which grids had been searched and which ones still needed to be.  Therefore, you did not, under any circumstances, deviate from the grid pattern.

Ever.

So to practice these searches, and these techniques, we had training.  Each squad (two to four cadets) had a map of the area being searched.  We each had a compass, and we had our assigned grid sections.  And we did everything we could do to be prepared for any emergency, at any time.

And then one day, every member of the squadron got a phone call.

The phone call.

Someone was actually lost.

Someone needed to be both searched for and rescued.

This time it was for real.

This time someone’s life was really on the line.

This time someone needed help, and so with adrenaline flowing like never before, we all did what we’d been training to do for what seemed like ‘ever’.  We gathered our pre-packed gear, put on our uniforms, and assembled the squadron to go to find this person who’d completely disappeared.  The family was in shock, and for everyone’s benefit, the person in question needed to be found.

We created a command post near where the person was last seen.

We assembled our vehicles.

We spread our maps on the most convenient flat thing around (that would be the warm hoods of cars), got our compasses out, and planned our search.  To be honest, it looked very much like an old war movie.  The only thing missing was an old Jeep and mugs of bad Army coffee.  Actually, come to think of it, the maps were held down on the hoods of those cars with what was probably cups of, by then, lukewarm 7-11 coffee.

After the planning, we were each assigned a section, and the leaders would gather their squads together and give instructions.  We’d go out initially in groups of two or four cadets, each squad having one copy of the map of the area divided up into the now familiar and very sacred grid pattern, and we started searching.

In my group, there was Aaron, Bruce, Dave, and me.  Aaron had this back problem, so he had this huge brace that he’d wear from his hips to his neck, and we’d always want to be careful that he didn’t hurt himself. The thing we weren’t used to was that Aaron’s view of the brace wasn’t that it was a hindrance, but that it was just part of life, and being careful about it really wasn’t something he was concerned with.  So we went and searched the grid area to the northeast of the house, and since this was a real live search, we were going to leave no stone unturned.  If this person was out there, we were going to find them.  It was a matter of safety for them, and a matter of pride for us, so we put all our training to use, and we searched.

Now one of the things they didn’t tell us about this grid pattern was that if there was something truly in your way, you could walk around it.

In fact, they’d never said we could walk around anything.

I suppose because when they drilled it into us that we were to maintain those straight grid lines, that we hadn’t thought to ask, but when we got to our designated section of the grid, there was this huge, house sized thicket of bushes in front of us.  A lesser (or a smarter) group of people would think thoughts like, “If you can’t even part the shrubbery, how could you possibly get there to actually be lost?” – Seriously –the bushes were so thick we couldn’t even get into them, much less get through them.

At all.

But remember, this was during a time of youth. This was when we were full of energy, testosterone, and Infinite Teenage Wisdom®.

And Aaron, bless him, said, “Grab my brace and push me through!”

We thought he was nuts.   This was like taking someone’s cast off their broken leg and beating off an attacker with it – it just didn’t seem right.  But Aaron insisted, and so he got in front, I remember grabbing his brace through his shirt, Bruce had his hands in the middle of my back, and – well, I couldn’t see what happened past Bruce, but on the count of three, we all shoved Aaron into the thicket.

We had to do it over and over, and each time, pushing Aaron a little further into the thicket.

Luckily, this wasn’t a briar patch, or images of Brer Rabbit would have been quite appropriate.  No, this was just a thicket of bushes, along the side of this country road that was on our grid.

Eventually we made it through the other side of that thicket (which was really deeper into the woods), and this may not come as a surprise, but we didn’t find that our lost person was in there.  We radioed that our grid was clear.  We were ordered to split up and I was given another grid with another cadet.  This time we were to be walking on public roads, so we were issued bright orange vests to go over our fatigues.  That way it would be safer, and our presence would be obvious from some distance.

We walked some distance on that road, making some turns and such, following the instructions on the map we’d been given, but again, didn’t find what we were looking for, so we were able to successfully mark that grid clear.  We were invited to come back to the command post for a break, and so we headed in that direction, but while the map seemed to show us that we were heading back, the countryside looked quite unfamiliar.  In fact, we had walked quite some distance, and because we were to cover all the ground in our grid, had taken some turns we weren’t expecting, turns we didn’t see until we got there to take them, and eventually, unintentionally, had walked off the edge of the map, so to speak.  We had to backtrack a good bit, and were coming back in from a direction we hadn’t planned on coming back from.

Eventually we started seeing familiar territory, and I decided to call the command post on the radio and let them know we were on the way in, and I heard a voice on the radio say something that I still remember to this day.

“Understood. I’ve got you in sight”

Have us in sight?

How could they have us in sight?  For that matter, how long had they had us in sight?

We couldn’t see them, how could they see us?

It turns out they had binoculars – and because we’d gone off the grid, we were late coming back, and they were looking for us.  In fact, they’d had some hot food and something to drink ready and waiting for us, and had been keeping track of all of us for some time as we were walking back…  Those orange vests we’d thought were so funny earlier were actually turning out to be pretty useful, and even then, it got me thinking. How many times do we wander off on our own merry way in our lives, going places we really don’t have any business going, that don’t make any sense at all?

It made me wonder how many times we actually work hard at doing the stupid things we do in our lives, either allowing ourselves to be pushed, or even enlisting the help of our friends to push us into places we really shouldn’t be.

And sometimes we end up completely off the grid, in places we didn’t expect to be at all.

How many times, when we should be paying attention to being where God really wants us to be, do we end up getting ourselves lost, even when we have a map we could use to guide us, or better yet, have a radio we could use to simply push the button and check in?

And how many times, when we finally come to our senses and do check in, do we hear, “Come on in, I’ve got you in sight?”

I’ve pondered that over the years, wondering how often God simply watches us through His binoculars, to see how long it actually takes us to come to our senses, and start heading home, back to the command post, where He’s got hot dogs and cokes waiting for us.

We learned later, after we told the story about the bushes, that we actually didn’t have to walk through things on the grid that were in our way.  We had permission to walk around things that we couldn’t walk through as long as we got back onto the grid again.  Sometimes that kind of stuff happens.  Things get in the way.  You step around them, get back on the grid, and move on.  It turns out that takes a lot less energy than trying to fight your way through something that’s bigger and stronger than you are.

Ironically, had I used the radio I had clipped to my belt to ask about that at the time, I would have gotten a very quick answer right then that would have saved us (and Aaron) a lot of trouble, but we were so busy ramming Aaron through the bushes that we didn’t think of calling in and asking for advice.

Of course, given that we were operating with that ever popular “Infinite Teenage Wisdom®,” that would have made far too much sense.

Over the years, I’ve found myself wondering if there’s an adult version of “Infinite Teenage Wisdom®”. (I’m sure there is)

I wonder how often we do things like that when we grow up, how often we stray from the map, and get off the grid in ways we really don’t mean to, only to get pushed around by things that are bigger and stronger than we are.

I wonder how often we do that and don’t realize that we could just walk around them instead of spending all our energy trying to fight them.

I still wonder how long they had been watching us, and I wonder about that radio I had on my belt, the one that when I used it to let someone know we were on our way back, broadcast the words, “I’ve got you in sight…”

And I wonder how often, in life, even if we stray off the map, we might actually hear God saying words like that if we were really paying attention.

It turns out – both on that search, and in life, we weren’t completely lost.

He’d known where we were all along.