REMEMBERING AUNT BETTY

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Has a better opening paragraph ever been written? I've chosen to start this essay with it because it is in the spirit of what I want to talk about, but I don't have the ability or insight to craft a sentence like it.

A few days ago I stepped into a time capsule and whooshed back sixty years or so. In a little ghost of a town named Dubach, Louisana, we gathered with cousins to remember our Aunt Betty, Dan and Philip's mother and my dad's last living sibling. The night before her memorial service we gathered and told stories of childhood.

My cousin Dale said to me, "Do you remember that time we were playing Tag in the dark in Aunt Betty's backyard and you ran into the clothesline? It caught you right in the neck. Your feet went flying and you slammed on your back. We all stood around you, looking down to see if you were still alive."

I didn't remember it. Maybe I blocked that memory, but others seem as fresh as they did when we were just kids. Dubach was one of those places and the halcyon days of the late 50s and early 60s one of those times when we could run unfettered from morning to night with little to worry about; save a clothesline.

Remembering playing Tag? Did your version provide a homebase where you could be "safe" from the the pursuit of the person who was "it"?

Dubach, and more specifically, Aunt Betty's home, was a safe base. Aunt Betty took grace and eternal hope seriously. To a casual observer she might appear to have a side to her that seemed stern, strict, springing from a devotion to her faith. In reality she had higher aspirations for us all than we even had for ourselves. Make any sense? How about an example:

She was a fine musician. If you had the slightest interest in music (as I did), you would feel sort of a weird accountability to her to get it right. Dig in. Learn more. Practice, practice, practice because the art demanded it. For her, music was created by and was a gift from God. If you claimed to be a musician, you had a responsibility to honor that gift. I can't thank her enough for being my first and foremost teacher of music appreciation.

It was not just music, but in life that she expected the best. We were implored by her example to unrelenting devotion to family and faith.

Those priorities were the super glue that bound my father and his little sister. In the birth order of the six children of Chroley and Bernice Fuller of Dubach, Louisiana, Dad was fourth, Aunt Betty, fifth. Apparently, from stories we've heard many times, Dad saw himself as guardian and protector of his little sister. Later she became his spiritual and doctrinal guide.

Dad, being a Baptist pastor during a time before Baptist fell into the abyss of authoritarianism, sort of complied with the common beliefs and interpretations. One day years ago we were gathered. The subject of the role of women in faith came up. Mention was made of the current fad of religious leaders putting women in their subjective place. My Dad, who grew up with a mother who was a cornerstone in their local church and a sister who was the glue of that church, said, "I tend to agree with that view." His sister, my Aunt Betty turned from the kitchen counter where she was preparing a dish and said, "Brother! You know better than that." Turns out he did know better. He knew empirically and experientially that to view women as subserviant to anyone in the work of faith is untrue, unjust and ungodly.

A few years ago, My Amazing Missus and I were having dinner with my parents. Dad told us he and Mom wanted to talk with us about their last wishes. He said, "We've decided to be cremated upon our deaths." I was so surprised. This had never been mentioned in our many conversations on the matter. Where had this come from?! He continued, "We were visiting with your Aunt Betty on the phone the other night. She has been praying and reviewing scripture on the matter and has come to peace with a decision in favor of cremation for herself."

That settled that.

That's one of the things about homebase, that safe place from the "its" of life. There are trusted voices. People with high expectations for us but also a deep, abiding love that lets us try, and whether we succeed or not, they are there.

That's why even at 70-something, with the passing of my Aunt Betty, the ground feels a little less sure. The certain voices of my early life are passing. But we have their wisdom and spirits with us still.

After the service, a few of us cousins and spouses gathered at the cemetary in Dubach. There are so many headstones there with the "FULLER" name, that if that's your surname, you wonder how there can be any left. But, there we were, the kids who once ran around that little town, who ate at Aunt Betty and Uncle Steve's table. For a few moments, as the sun was setting and the mosquitos were beginning their attack, we were all at home base, safe, about to return to grown up life trying to outrun "it".

DRUMS.HEARTS.WOMEN

I first met Danny, as he was known then, in the Fall of 1974. He was 15. I was 23. I had just moved to El Reno, Oklahoma, from Tulsa to be the youth director at the First Baptist Church, Dan’s church.

We connected right away. He was an aspiring drummer. I was a drummer. Drummers can talk for hours about paradiddles and snare tensions. Dan loved nuance and I did too. Every time he would buy a new album (that’s a vinyl record that plays music for those under 20) he would bring it to our house and we would listen. “He’s got to be playing double bass pedals on that!” he would say, or, “I wish I could tune my toms to sound like that.” All of that would serve him well. He became one of the best sound engineers around. Any band loved to have Dan mixing their sound. He would study a room for hours, moving mics just an inch or so, tweaking knobs and sliders, switching a cable trying to isolate a hum; all behind the scenes stuff to make the experience great for the band and the audience.

One of the very first of many memorable experiences with Dan came early in our friendship. His parents we’re going out of town over night. The lived just a few houses up the street from where we lived. His mother asked My Amazing Missus if we would sort of keep an eye out since Dan would be home alone. Early, on the morning after that night, I drove by their house and noticed his dad’s car in the driveway with the rear end up on a couple of wobbly jacks. I stopped by—just curious.

Turns out he and a couple of buddies had taken the car for a drive the night before. He knew Ralph would have taken note of the odometer reading. Their hope was that by running the car in reverse, those miles would come off the odometer. FYI, it doesn’t work.

“Oh man, we shouldn’t have done that!” is a close approximation of what he said, revealing the fact that you can’t turn back time either. Or can you?

Yesterday, Dan’s wife Peggy held a beautiful memorial service for him. These are the hardest, when a beautiful life ends way too soon. Can’t we please just run this thing back a few miles, a few months, a few years? At this memorial service was a number of Dan and Peggy’s friends from those days when I got to be their youth director. I stood at the back and looked at them and remembered. Rewound the tape so to speak and in my mind watched those times again. Times that for me and My Amazing Missus shaped so much of who we are today.

One evening years ago, Dan called and wanted to come by to talk. As I’ve said this wasn’t unusual. I remember it like it was yesterday. We sat on our back porch and he anxiously told me that he had decided to ask Peggy to marry him.

I assumed he was telling me this so I could share in the celebration, but he was really seeking advice, some guidance. At first I assumed that maybe it was because I was his wise spiritual mentor. No. It wasn’t that. Basically he was concerned that he would be asking for the hand of a girl he probably didn’t deserve (as least in his mind). He wanted to marry a girl that he considered out of his league. He was asking me for my adivce because he understood that was exactly what I had done.

He was concerned with messing things up. He was worried about how her parents would react. He was afraid she would say, “Sorry, you’re nice and all, but…” Anyway, not too many months later, I had the privilege of marrying them to each other. I’m proud to say it is one of the many, many marriages I’ve officiated that actually worked out.

I got to do youth ministry for many years. I still have wonderful relationships with some of the “kids” that were in our youth groups. In fact, one of those kids is now my daughter-in-law!!! Dan is one that I’ve stayed connected with all of these years. We used to work in downtown Oklahoma City. We would often meet for lunch at a Chinese restaurant on the mezzanine level of the Sherton Hotel, where he unsuccessfully tried to open my taste buds to the wonders of egg foo yung.

I made a career change to a company that was in the beginning stages of building a new computer network. Dan had become an expert in that area, again a testimony to his relentless pursuit of nuance and perfection. He built our network that is essentially still the core we depend on. Later on our CEO mentioned that the company was needing a new member for the board of directors. I reminded him that Dan had experience in bank auditing, he knew a thing or two about our company by this time and he was a CPA. Dan joined our board and served masterfully until just months ago.

Funny thing about that CPA thing. Maybe you’ve heard the horror stories about people trying and trying to pass those exams. Best I rememember, Dan just sort of decided to sit for the exams, approaching it with the same nonchalance, but not the arrogance, of Donald Trump taking that cognitive test they give the elderly to see if they should still be feeding themselves with a fork. Dan, like Donald, passed with flying colors.

Dan was the kind of guy who would find that funny without offense. He and I could talk about anything: something we heard on NPR, which is better—cover bands or tribute bands; and lately, matters of the heart.

Just a short time ago, Dan told me he had something he wanted to talk about. Maybe he has a new album, or maybe he’s discovered a new trick for how to mic a drum set. He wanted to talk hearts.

He was facing heart surgery and he knew that I had been through that. It was kind of like the talk we had about the marriage proposal. He wanted to talk to someone who had been there. Dan and I learned long ago that we could not BS one another. He could always see through me.

Here’s the thing. He and I both had good hearts. We both love our wives and our kids and grandkids deeply. We both are tolerant of the life choices of others. Today that is called liberal, but for us we just considered it grace-full.

But while we have good hearts, we have flawed hearts—the physical ones. When we talked, I told him he would be fine. I meant it. I mean they sawed me open, borrowed some vein from my legs, wired me shut, sewed me up and a few weeks later I was back to some level of normal. That was my experience. It was not his.

In Dan’s final months, I was a lousy friend. If I were saying this to him I would use the word shitty and he would appreciate the honesty of that.

The fact is my heart was selfish. I couldn’t bear to see him so frail, not Danny. I didn’t have magic words for him or for Peggy. I was inadequate and so I became negligent.

How I wish now I could jack up the back of the car and run the odometer, and time, back. I am so grateful for the few moments yesterday at Dan’s memorial with the people who hold Dan and Peggy dear—old friends, family, musician buddies and those who were touched by Dan. We wore our masks and our Hawaiian shirts. It was the most colorful memorial I’ve ever been too. Just the way he would have wanted it.

Good bye buddy.

MY PENNY LANE

LAST TIME, I was talking creativity and Penny Lane. I threw out (or, down) a challenge, a prompt to do some creative writing or at least thinking: In the spirit of The Beatles’ song Penny Lane, write some thoughts about your own “Penny Lane” — the street(s), neighborhood, or town where you grew up.

I’ll get to that in a bit, but first… My Amazing Missus’ “Penny Lane” story is fascinating for a lot or reasons, but one of the coolest parts of the story is that her grandfather owned an amusement park! With a roller coaster, a train, a lake, Tilt-A-Whirl and all the rest. Her family and four siblings lived within a corndogs throw of the park. Oh, the stories of their Papa, F.H. “Red” Cox, and his amusement park; there’s a whole book right there.

If you ask my grandkids, “Tell us about Pops. Does he have anything like an amusement park?!” They might say, “He knows two magic tricks, but now we know how to do them because he showed us. He knows like three or four stupid jokes. He says he once had a sailboat. Oh, and he says he used to play drums in a band.”

But, they didn’t know me; back then; in the good old days, as I choose to remember them. I’VE WRITTEN BEFORE on growing up on Quincy Avenue in south Tulsa. At the time, in the 60s, Quincy was on a sort of pennisula created by the Arkansas River and Joe Creek, both of which tended to flood a lot back then. At the southermost tip of the pennisula was a slough, a feeding ground for boyhood adventure. I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT that as well.

It’s all urban sprawl now but then most of it was raw land, pecan groves and an emerging architectural mess they were calling Oral Roberts University. For those of you who don’t remember Oral, he was a TV preacher, faith-healer, evangelprenuer. That’s a word I just created to describe “evangelists” who make some serious money plying their trade and trinkets. I should mention that Papa, the amusement park owner, and Oral Roberts, the owner of the university that looked like an amusement park were friends, although they definitely did not share the same religious worldview.

from the ORU website. Used without permission or apology

There were roughly twenty homes along that part of Quincy below Seventy-First. In our neighborhood, was a small gas station, and the Riverside Drive-In movie threatre. On many summer nights we would sneak in the back to watch movies and create trouble.

Krause Auction was also on Seventy-First just off Quincy. I loved hanging out there. The pace of the whole thing was intriguing—the call of the auctioneer and the bidding. To this day I don’t know how he knew who was bidding through the smoke-filled, hot, greasy air, of the overcrowded room. On the days leading up to the auction you could go in and see what items would be on the block.

My most memorable and only auction experience was going in one day to see a go-cart among the items for the Thursday night auction. I set to work earning as much money as I could—doing odd jobs for people, picking strawberries for my uncle Bob. I think I had about five bucks by the time Auction night came. I stood at the counter to get my bid number. A man who I recognized as a regular asked me if I had my eye on something to bid on. I told him I was hoping to get the go-cart. When the go-cart came up for bid, the man was standing by my side. He helped me open the bid for all that I had. There was not a single other bid (as far as I know) and in a matter of minutes my number was called as the winning bid.

The next day I pushed that go-cart down the street, because it wouldn’t run, but later did, all the way to our little concrete block house on Quincy Avenue.

And as John Lennon says in the Penny Lane lyric:

“[Quincy Avenue] is in my ears and in my eyes”

A Trojan & A Spartan

Preface: Remember the Trojan War that started when a Trojan prince went to Sparta and abducted their queen? Well, this is kind of like that; except this time the Trojan was a college boy and the Spartan queen was Miss December.

You have to have a union before you can have a reunion. Feel free to quote me on that.

Typically when I think of a reunion, I think of a group of people striving to be thinner, healthier, happier and appear more financially successful than they really are. You know, kind of like in Facebook World. But, as I discovered this weekend, that is not always the case.

Late last week, around the office, people were asking, “Big weekend plans?” You know the routine. My answer for this past weekend: “Why yes, we’re going to my Amazing-Missus’ high school reunion.” Typical reply: “I bet you’re thrilled about that [wink-wink].”

Actually I was looking forward to it. This was not my first gathering with the Bixby High School Class of 1972. This group reunites relatively regularly, and although I’m an outlier of several sorts, I’ve always been welcomed. Of course, why wouldn’t they, I am married to their Miss December (no centerfold involved), according to the 1972 Spartan Yearbook. And I am happy, blessed and humbled to say, that Miss December and I hold the title of being Married The Longest to the Same Person among this cohort.

How Miss December got out of the house without her mother seeing that dress...?

I am a few years older than these youngsters; proud Senior ’69 and only a few years away from being a 69 year-old senior. Not only am I older, but I didn’t even attend their school. Worse yet, I attended their biggest rival—the school just across the river. I was a Jenks Trojan.

If you’ve ever been around an Oklahoma University football fan, you know that if they see someone in a red shirt they will holler, “BOOMER!!” in hopes that the person will respond, “SOONER!!” In that spirit, if a Bixby Spartan hears the word “Jenks”, they reflexively reply, “Jenks Stinks!!”

Although it’s been many years since I attended a Jenks football game, as we gathered for the first of the reunion activities, a tailgate party at a Bixby Spartan football game, I couldn’t help feeling somewhat creepy and disloyal; like I might feel at a Re-elect Trump rally.

But this had nothing to do with old school rivalries or the fact that Bixby beat Jenks in football this year for the first time in 40 years. This was about re-unioning, re-membering, re-calling tales of simpler days; basically re-collecting.

In the last event of the weekend, a few of her classmates picked up guitars and provided a soundtrack of sorts for the reminiscing. And as a bonus, these guys were good, really good. I thought to myself, “I wish I had brought my drums.” One of my favorites of the night was Eric Clapton’s “Old Love”, somehow apropos for such a time as this. 

At one point, in that last event of the weekend, as they were scanning yearbooks of their youth through their bifocals, I thought about standing and admonishing them to remember the words of the Old Testament:

“Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.” Ecclesiastes 7:10

Or, for those who don’t speak King James:

“Don't long for ‘the good old days.’ This is not wise.” —New Living Translation

But surely it can’t hurt to reunite every few years and rekindle, can it? Sitting as an outsider watching the Bixby Class of ’72; NO, the answer is no, it can’t hurt a thing. After 45 years these people weren’t worried about waistlines, bottom lines or goal lines. They were just humans being human for a few hours.

As my Amazing-Missus said her good-byes and we left the reunion, I thought of this Beatles song, and her, and me, and Spartans Class of ’72, and the Trojans Class of ’69:

"In My Life"

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

In my life I love you more