March 3, 2025

Death summons memories. It clarifies and purifies them, like iron touched by fire. We had another death, the husband of the sister who died two months ago, in Tennessee. It wasn’t a surprise, he had been expected to pass before her. So we settled in the van and drove off.

In late September Hurricane Helene blew part of I-40 between Asheville and Newport, Tenn., into the raging Pigeon River. At a gas stop I noticed an announcement in The Asheville Citizen that the damaged stretch would reopen March 1. This was February 27. Family funerals can happen any time. We still were shunted to U.S. 25/70 for the 50 miles to Newport.

Ten miles from Asheville the traveler encounters another world. In Marshall, 15 minutes off the interstate, Bonnie & Clydes advertises “Appalachian Cuisine.” The signs on the door announces love of guns and military service and threatens arrest and prosecution if the visitor mentions vaccines or vaccination. But we ordered the bacon, eggs, coffee.

River and mountains intruded for long stretches under harsh gray skies. It was winter, after all. Rain fell hard, the river flowed with anger in whitecaps, waves thundered against boulders, the riverbank lined with storm blowdowns and piles of flotsam. The mission, another funeral, came back to us.

I had known the couple for 47 years, but never knew them well. We saw them for short visits, a few hours, maybe once a year. The husband never showed up at our home. We knew them through Sandy’s phone calls, and her memories.

Eight hours of driving got us to Mount Juliet, Tenn., 25 miles east of Nashville, to the home of her cousin Mike, her Uncle Pete’s son. Pete died a few years ago at 95.

It was inevitable. When folks pass on, their family lives return to mind one way or another. The Harper family formed in the south-center of the state. The sons and daughters left their home place, near Winchester, and moved on. So we talked about all that.

It was the right time and place. Mike went upstairs and pulled out his dad’s, Pete’s last two Winchester Central High School 1944 and 1945 yearbooks, called “The Kickoff.” I was impressed, my own high school yearbook hit the trashcan decades ago.

The books offer a carefree but serious and un-self-conscious portrait of mid-1940s America, which was wartime America. The Class History page in the ’44 book notes, “We have not forgotten the boys from our class who have left to join the service or those who have been called away for this purpose.” The ’45 Class History observes that as freshmen the class had 48 boys.  Only eight remained as seniors.

An honor roll in the ’44 book lists 15 boys who joined the service. Mike’s dad Pete, who starred in football in ’44, did not graduate with his ’45 class; he had left for the Navy and served aboard a ship in the Pacific.

Student life at WCHS, as reported in The Kickoff” seemed oddly, yet somehow happily archaic, frozen in that long-ago time. Of the 29 seniors of the class of ’44, 26 belonged to the Bible Club. Morning class included Bible study.

The Future Farmers of America club for ’44 consisted of 40 boys and one girl, Joan Gaines, who is listed as the “queen.” The Home Economics Club had 75 members, 74 girls and one boy.

The time was 1944 and 1945, the place the deep-central American South. No Black students appear among the senior portraits nor in the student club, team, or activity photos. Like everywhere else in the South, schools were segregated, Black children attended their own school. Strangely, the ’44 book is dedicated to a Black man, “Uncle Bunt,” who informally acted as an adviser to the Future Farmers of America and a couple of other clubs.

In the 1940s and before and for years later in the South, whites referred to Black adults as “Uncle” and “Auntie,” not “Mr.,” “Miss,” or “Mrs.” That is the way it was. In the dozens of photos of clubs and teams, girls wear only skirts and dresses, the dress code did not permit pants.

Among the clubs at WCHS, 13 girls and no boys belonged to the O.G.A. Club, which trained members in the “Order of Gregg Artists” method of shorthand. Certificates were awarded to girls who excelled in taking shorthand, members participated in shorthand competitions.

Students apparently were happy to catalogue each other in personal ways unimaginable in high schools today, that yet now seem almost comical: kids were recognized as “most beautiful girl,” “most handsome boy,” “cutest girl,” “cutest boy,” “most flirtatious girl,” “most flirtatious boy,” “shyest girl,” and “shyest boy.” Couples “going steady” were singled out as “cutest,” “neatest,” “shyest,” and “loudest,” among other such things.

The design of the books show their time. The text was typed with mechanical typewriters in a single font throughout, no italics or graphics flourishes. The yearbook staff recognizes the typists, all girls. Photos show boys in white shirts and narrow ties of the day or their “W” sweaters.

It was Winchester, Tennessee, a small, out-of-the way place, but then too, it was America. “The Kickoff” was one high-school yearbook among thousands of similar ones created all over the country in those years, when senior classes were nearly all girls, the faculties were nearly all women. Eighty years later they are likely all gone.

We talked about Pete, about the family. We went to the viewing and the Mass and the cemetery. We talked with the others who showed up, a few around our age, but then too, a few children and grandkids. We smiled at the young kids, full of pep, but a bit puzzled about why they were there. It was a happy time, a few moments of ritual and then memories, still being formed.

February 24, 2025

My fifty-seven-years friend Connie and I parked and checked in at the Visitor’s Center, or Zentrum, of the BMW Spartanburg Manufacturing site. It was all of a 20-minute drive from home. I wondered why I had never made the effort in the past four years.

We hooked our visitor’s badges to our jackets to ensure they were clearly visible and browsed through the classic vehicles on display. We looked over the Z3, used by Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in GoldenEye, the first car built at Spartanburg. Other vintage cars introduced new technical features going back to the 1930s.

The Spartanburg site, which started operations in 1994, encompasses eight million square feet, BMW’s largest in the world. The plant builds 1,500 cars every day in six vehicle types with a staff of 11,000 “associates.” Some 60 percent of the production is for export to 120 countries. In 2023 the plant built 225,276 vehicles, every one to a specific customer or dealership order.

The work is done almost entirely by robots on automated assembly lines. Human beings no longer turn bolts in auto manufacturing. The associates wear sharply pressed uniforms, not a grease spot to be seen. Team members man inspection stations, running gloved hands over vehicles chasses to check for imperfections.

For the tour we turned off our cell phones and stuck them in our pockets. No pictures! We put on safety goggles and earpieces to listen to the tour leader’s briefing. The group stayed in single file, walking a line marked with green paint. We watched the “white” unpainted vehicle hulls move along the conveyers to be lifted to a second level. Each department is lit by fluorescent lamps that mimic natural light.

We got a look at the paint shop, where each vehicle gets five coats of water-based paint. Painting adds 20 pounds to the weight of each car. They did not show us the installation of engines, transmissions, and electronics. We watched team members drive finished cars off the line. They get five gallons of gas and head for the testing track. 

The Spartanburg site dazzles the visitor with or without an engineering background. As we entered the plant we met a crowd of BMW people, each wearing the distinctive blue and silver logo. I caught a murmur of German, visitors from Munich headquarters, I guessed. No smiles. All business.

We marched behind our tour guide, a young woman who rattled off statistics like a German-trained engineer, which she might well be. We paused to gawk at the rows of car bodies creeping forward toward giant robots, which attached doors. The vehicles were lifted overhead for a ghostly silent conveyor ride to classified spaces for finishing.

The previous Saturday our kitchen table was set for painting. On canvas surfaces, two young girls sketched images, the older one, ten-year-old Josephine, of our grandsons’ new dog, the younger one, six-year-old Iris, of their own home. Slowly they filled in the outlines they had drawn with acrylic paint, browns and blues. They applied themselves to the work, seriously, deliberately, focused on the task, on their brushes and colors.

Josephine worked from a photo, Iris from memory. They created images that captured their sense of their subjects. In two hours they created art, little girls’ art, a few brush strokes too heavy here and there, a few too thick. But their colors glowed. Their art was something real and true.

The girls completed their painting. Josephine gently finished the dog’s ears in light brown then daubed the background in light blue. She looked her work over as if intent on touching it up later, then moving on to greater challenges. Iris mixed aquablue with green. I left them a box of new brushes.

Connie and his wife Trish stopped to visit for a couple of days. We talked a bit about publishing the college newspaper and hitchhiking from New Hampshire to Washington for the big anti-war rally in November 1969. He later joined the Peace Corps to teach English as a second language in Zaire, now the Central African Republic.

Connie talked about his Peace Corps work, teaching in a remote African place where French and hundreds of local languages and dialects were spoken, but local people hoped to learn English. That was the 1970s. Over time the teaching was undermined by endemic political violence and brutal civil wars that extinguished Zaire as a nation, along with its colonial heritage.

While flying out of the country his plane was forced down in the Ugandan city of Entebbe by soldiers of then-Ugandan dictator Idi Amin because Amin suspected the passengers of sympathizing with local rebels. After that experience Connie extended his Peace Corps term for a third year.

These three anecdotes of vastly different human experiences reveal the application of single-minded focus to achieve a goal that is meaningful, virtuous. The goal is elusive because it is universal: the pursuit of excellence. We encounter it, sometimes unconsciously, taking no notice as we rush through our daily lives dealing with chores and obligations, confronting, or cooperating with others. We may achieve it when we work at it.

Authentic achievement grows from serious effort, the force of the human will exerted in the act of creation, whatever the scope: a child’s studious application of paint to canvas; a teacher’s perseverance in a remote Third World backwater; the sophisticated innovation of brilliant engineers to build high-performance automobiles on a massive scale.

We know it especially by contrast with this moment, as we witness the silence of the Republican sheep in Congress, fearful of being “primaried” (is that a word?) if they breathe a syllable of discomfort with the Trump rampage against federal agencies established to serve Americans.

The act of creation, spontaneous, courageous, whether deeply personal or collaborative, enlarges and renews the human spirit. We know it when we see it. We look about now, hoping and praying to see it again.

February 17, 2025

The route I have taken at 5:00 AM most weekday mornings for two years is six miles of blackness: no street lights, mainly woods and pastures that show up in high beams.  At the third mile the rural road through the ink-black darkness turns into another, past a sheetrock factory. White smoke pours from smokestacks and curls into the night sky.

In recent days headlights of approaching vehicles exploded in blinding glare.

The road descends through the hamlet of Taylors for two miles to a city highway, where the gas station and fast-food lights show the way. Traffic signals blurred in double images until I pulled into the parking lot.  Daylight had broken when I left the exercise class an hour later.

More and more, I had been increasing the font size on the laptop in order to use it. Reading a book or magazine meant pressing my nose into the pages.

On a sunny morning I drove at a snail’s pace to an optometrist’s office and picked up a six-month-old prescription for eyeglasses. The next appointment was scheduled for June. Instead we headed to Stanton Optical. The woman at the desk read the prescription. “This is probably out of date. You need a new eye exam,” she said.

The doc ordered me into his tiny chamber to sit facing a row of eye-test devices. He gave me eyedrops to dilate my pupils. “Set your chin here, your forehead here,” he ordered. He pushed a button and sets of four block letters flashed on a white screen, F-R-Z-Q, A-Z-K-R, T-H-A-K, and on and on. He increased and lowered the font size. I squinted and guessed through eye-test boot camp. Cataract surgery is the ticket, he said.

Following the exam we made a weak attempt at fun by picking out frames. The Stanton shop offers hundreds of frame styles displayed on three walls. They stock the senior-citizen Ben Franklin type, the tiny squares of glass that convey world-weary wisdom, and the Clark Kent-style thick black frames.

You can choose the giant aviator type Peter Fonda wore in Easy Rider. The saleslady showed off her horn-rimmed frames streaked with tiger-like stripes. We have a woman friend whose thin dark frames add style and glamor.

The Stanton staff person said the drugstore “readers” scattered around the house may do more harm than good because of the imbalance of strength in one eye or the other. We ordered two pair, one for distance the other for reading.

I pulled from the Stanton parking lot into the afternoon traffic. Vehicles ahead were blurry, indistinct. Signs were unreadable, except for the giant L-O-W-E’S that’s half the height of the hardware store building. Luckily, we were early for rush hour. Muscle memory and knowing the road got us home.

Hours later the dilated pupils returned to normal, the blurriness receded a bit. But the cataract alters, clouds, distorts. I resumed enlarging the laptop font size in the same way I turn the TV volume up so I can hear it.

In high school I spent a week in the hospital after a friend stuck his finger in my eye playing basketball. Both eyes were bandaged, the doctor explained, to avoid stressing the uninjured eye. I lay in darkness, a Candystriper volunteer about my age spoon-fed me meals. I never actually saw her. I got her name but not her phone number.

Before discharging me an optometrist checked my vision using his 1960s technology and pronounced me just below eagle-eye sharpness, better than 20:20, then the going standard for human eyesight. As the decades flew by, friends and family members surrendered to declining vision and acquired glasses and contacts. I marched forward, clear-eyed.

Eventually, a career of staring at desktop screens did its damage. For years the eight-dollar off-the-rack readers were good enough. Two weeks ago I sat opposite two people across the living room. I saw only hazy silhouettes in the lamplight.

The branches of the six-foot-tall avocado tree in the corner of the room spread gracefully from the woody stem, giving the tree the appearance of a giant bird. From my chair it was a fuzzy shape in disorienting duplicate, the dark outline of a tree, twice. I could make out neither detail nor the rich texture of the foot-long leaves. The trunks and limbs of the trees through the windows behind it were faint and ghostly.

The other sideshow, the one in the midsection, continued with small victories. Two consecutive CT scans showed stability in my liver and pleura. The oncologist ordered a more precise PET (positron emission tomography) scan, which confirmed progress. “The drug clearly is working,” he said. “Stop taking it for a while, let’s focus on quality of life. Get the cataracts done.”

Over days without the chemo, the eye redness and irritation faded. I quit the twice-daily eyedrops and hunted for an ophthalmology practice. “They’re very good at it these days,” a friend with experience said.

It doesn’t need to be mentioned: ophthalmology and optometry are facts of modern life. Nearly everyone in the family wears glasses. Our daughter Marie wore corrective glasses with Coke-bottle-thick lenses when she was five or six; eventually she grew out of them.

We make allowances for handicaps that become the nuts and bolts of our lives. Eyeglass wearers acquire several pair as insurance against losing them. People with contact lenses deal with cleaning, inserting, and removing them. We wait on hold to make appointments with specialists, on slick highways we allow greater distance between our vehicle and others.

The eyes make allowance for the cataract. I still drive the dark road, slowly. We navigate through the health-care wilderness, trying for wisdom or at least humor, sometimes dazed, bewildered.  The caveat: being able to see, move, function. Confronting the handicap is survival, but also joy. The bold colors of spring are weeks away. The ophthalmologist is downtown, waiting.

February 10, 2025

Twenty or twenty-five people gathered in the back yard of a modest three-bedroom house to welcome the new owner. Amber, a single mother of four daughters, two teens and two preteens, arrived with her girls a few minutes late. They stood nervously in front of the crowd.

A couple of people with Habitat for Humanity Greenville, the local Councilwoman, and staffers from public-spirited banks and real estate outfits stepped up and said nice things. They welcomed Amber to her new Habitat-built home and recognized her perseverance through personal challenges. Joe, the head of the city housing redevelopment authority, GCRA, said a few words about the value of homeownership.

The house is the ninth and final project on the same side of Sturtevant Street in this scruffy, partly residential, partly industrial neighborhood four miles from downtown. They line up on identical lots laid in with new sod. The houses are single-level, built on slabs roughly 50 by 30 feet. Two tall windows fitted with shutters look out on the street.

The houses are a mix of two- and three-bedrooms. Designs are similar but not cookie-cutter identical. The front entrance of each, built on a small porch, opens to a large family room partitioned by a half-wall from a roomy kitchen. The kitchen is fitted out with a refrigerator, dishwasher, stove, and microwave.

The bedrooms are small, opening from a short hallway. One bedroom flourish is a large ceiling fan. The master has a private bathroom, a second small bath and a large closet are off the hallway. Storage space is limited. All the walls are painted a standard white. Concrete driveways extend from the house to the street.

The front yards are postage-stamp plots, the back yards are long, maybe 40 feet, but narrow. The homes at the west end of the street, those completed and occupied first, show a touch of the owners, a bit of shrubbery and small flower beds. Habitat built and donated utility-storage sheds. Some of the yards are fenced in.

Amber’s home touches the eastern boundary of the Habitat development, so she has one neighbor. The eastern side faces a fenced-in drainage ditch. A couple of hundred yards to the west is a large apartment complex, showing the no-zoning development chaos of the area.

Habitat put up its sign at the front porch for the ceremony. The place has been scrubbed for the occasion, the sod neatly laid out in squares, still a winter brown.

The dignitaries hurried through their prelims. Several presented gifts: a certificate, a Bible, colorful quilts for Amber and each of the girls, everyday housewares, framed photos of nature scenes taken by a local photographer. Habitat donated a lawnmower and some household tools. The girls wrapped themselves in their quilts.

Amber stepped up, a bit teary-eyed. “I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart. When I applied for the Habitat program six months ago, I never dreamed we could actually get a house. Those of you who know me, know that I’ve had some challenges, some hard times. I’m grateful for all your help through all of this. I’ve taken all the courses, how to budget money, how to take care of and maintain a house.

“It was hard work, but I didn’t mind, it meant so much. One thing that matters so much to us is I’m not from around here. I have some family in Memphis, but here we are. We’re so looking forward to putting down roots here.”

The little crowd applauded. The Habitat manager offered a closing prayer. One after another the official people hugged Amber and each of the girls. A photographer took pictures of the family on the front porch, Amber with the real estate people, Amber and the Councilwoman and others. She invited all of us into the house, and hugged everyone who walked through the front door.

She’s scheduled to move in next week.

It’s an event repeated each time Habitat turns over a home to a new owner. I’ve been to a couple of them. The new owners are young people, old people, folks with families, singles, people of all races and beliefs. All of them have been through personal nightmares of family crises, job loss, poverty, other traumas of life. The common factor is the treadmill of poor housing, crummy apartments in bad neighborhoods, exorbitant rents, crime, evictions.

Habitat steps in. Not everyone who applies for the program is accepted. Those who are have to learn the basics of home ownership, paying bills, keeping up property. They have to contribute “sweat equity” by volunteering on Habitat projects. All that points to finding and keeping a job that will pay the mortgage. Habitat works with mortgage lenders to get the payments to the owner’s level. Once in the home the owner has to step up.

It was a sweet moment. Amber’s heartfelt eloquence seemed, for a few moments, to override a week of national nastiness: Trump’s miasma of babble about Gaza, Greenland, the Panama Canal;  U.S. senators soiling themselves by confirming charlatans and fanatics to high office; an electric car company owner, paymaster of Trump’s campaign, calling civil servants “criminals,” “traitors,” and “lunatics.”

Amber talked about the meaning of a home to her family. She built on the GCRA guy’s insights about how you might have a rough day, but walking in the door of your own home creates strength and sustenance for adults and children. Kids who may not have much else in their lives, Joe said, grow strong and self-confidant in the security of a home they know is their own.

We all understood what she was talking about. We know too that the economics of real estate are difficult these days. Habitat is finding it harder to finance properties, even in marginal neighborhoods. The organization has been forced to sell its two Greenville ReStores, the thrift stores that have provided some cash flow and more important, jobs for Habitat home applicants.

Still the good will endures. The Sturtevant Street project is finished, Habitat is moving on. The volunteers still will show up to swing hammers and build frames and roofs for modest homes around town, around many towns. Times are tough. Times will get better.             

February 3, 2025

A few months ago we sat in the waiting area of an Urgent Care in Huntsville, Alabama. It was late afternoon, the place was crowded. We were on a road trip with the grandsons to the NASA Space Center, the main tourist attraction in the town. Huntsville was chilly and windy, and I had a hacking cough.

The receptionist handed me a sheaf of paperwork to complete. She explained that since we were from another state the facility couldn’t access my insurance.  She chatted cheerfully with other patients, some of whom, I guessed, used the Urgent Care as their doctor’s office. They came and went.

An hour passed, the place was nearly empty. The grandsons fidgeted.  The receptionist stared at her computer. I asked when I’d be seen. She didn’t seem to hear me. I asked again, she looked up. “It could be another hour, maybe two hours,” she said.

At that I recalled the incisive Albert Camus quote: “The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.” We left. I picked up some over-the-counter medicine.

An Urgent Care a mile from our home is owned by Prisma, the big South Carolina health-care company. We’d been there a few times. Prisma transferred management of the place to a support contractor. On our next visit we had to complete a half-dozen forms. “We’re part of Prisma, but we can’t access their records,” the desk person said.

Months later I went again. The receptionist handed me the same forms, saying the Prisma records aren’t accessible. She didn’t know why. Others in the waiting room were looking down at clipboards filling out forms. The people behind the glass were typing information from patients’ forms into their terminals. Where was it going?

On a trip last summer to the tiny town of Chapel Hill, Tennessee, named after the North Carolina city, I injured my foot. It was late Friday afternoon, we were at the lodge at a nearby state park. “We need to find an Urgent Care,” Sandy said. Oh no, I thought. The desk clerk gave us directions. We got there just before closing time, the only customers.

The young girl at the desk glanced at my insurance card. I detected a non-Southern twang. “I’m from Wisconsin,” she told us. “My family moved to Chattanooga, so here I am. Not sure how long I’ll stay.” She took me to a treatment room.

A nurse practitioner walked in. I explained my problem. “I’ll write you a prescription for an antibiotic. The pharmacy is right next door,” she said. Another non-Tennessee accent. “Are you from around here?” we asked. “I grew up in Oklahoma,” she answered. “My dad got a job here, so we moved here. I like it, it’s a nice small town.”

We thanked her and walked to the pharmacy. Weeks later we received a “thank-you for your business” from the Urgent Care. The note said drop by anytime.

A week ago we rushed to a nearby Urgent Care run by the Medical Group of the Carolinas. It was 7:00 AM, dark and raining. The lady at the desk took my date of birth. My medical records popped up on her screen, going back years.

A technician arrived, all business. She wanted my blood pressure and wrapped my upper arm in a blood-pressure cuff and pumped. A light blinked. “70 over 50, too low. Let’s try the other arm,” she said. Same result. She found another blood-pressure cuff and tried again. “It’s up a little, 80 over 60.”

Dr. Kevin walked into the room, smiling. He looked at my bloodshot eyes. “Pinkeye,” he said. “I’ll write you a prescription for an antibiotic eyedrop. We said thanks and were out of there, all in about 20 minutes.

I had been there last fall with a similar problem. A nurse practitioner looked at my low blood pressure. “I can’t help you here, you need to get to the ER,” she warned. Not what I wanted to hear. But I went, the hospital admitted me. Good call by the Urgent Care NP.

At another Urgent Care a nurse practitioner warned us against consuming honey. “Honey has this halo about it as a healthy cure-all,” she offered. “But it’s pure sugar and not good for you.”

The Huntsville Urgent Care experience is part of modern life. We risk something like it when we encounter petty bureaucracies: cable and cellphone companies, the homeowner’s association, Amazon, online retailers. The bigger ones, too: the IRS, DMV, the local tax office. health insurance providers. A person sitting at a desk before you is steadfastly unhelpful. Or you call the place and hear a barrage of options. No one answers.

We’ve all been to Urgent Care. Those storefront medical offices are everywhere, affiliated with hospitals or other medical organizations, sometimes teams of physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses. Some work wonders on the “urgent,” side of the term, others don’t.

No one wants to go to the doctor, even with spectacular health insurance. Being sick is frightening. The treatments, drugs and their side effects, the thought of being hospitalized, are frightening. The costs, even with insurance, can be devastating, although doctors, nurses, and their support staffs do heroic work to help severely ill people. 

Urgent Care is a kind of twilight zone of health care; not the doctor’s office, not the hospital. The patients usually are there with aches and pains, cuts and bruises, coughs and fevers. The care calls for prescription drugs, sometimes a few stitches, or just health-care advice. The doctor prescribes something, the rest is up to the patient.

Some Urgent Cares sit in strip malls between the pet store and the Walmart. If I spent years in medical school and residencies, studying and working 80-hour weeks, I’m not sure I’d want to work in those places. Sometimes, I’ve noticed, the front-desk people seem bored, detached. They’re processing insurance, taking payments, listening to complaints.

The patient sits alone or with a family member, ill at ease, worried. The medical professional walks into the treatment room. They’re not on the staff of some famous hospital, the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins. But they’re doing what they trained to do. It may not be brain surgery. Yet in those cramped, windowless rooms, they’re doing good work, helping people; in a way, saving lives.