Most Important Meal of the Day

 

 

April 26, 2021

 Greetings from the ache,

 Not twenty feet from where I sit writing to you there is a refrigerator filled with food.  It faces a pantry that is stocked with every imaginable consumable, and a few I hadn’t imagined.  This presence is reassuring in a way; I will not go hungry, nor will I ever feel the fear of being hungry.  But neither will I take my abundance for granted. 

 In one of the most influential times of my life I learned a respect for food.  Not as a gourmand or chef, but as a hobo. 

 Most mornings I woke on the ground, a few feet from my bicycle.  I would sit up, the grass damp from dew, and pull things from my saddle bag.  Grape Nuts, sometimes dry from the box, other times soaked in water.  I would boil water and make chickory or instant coffee.  Sometimes I’d make instant oatmeal, only slightly more appealing than drywall putty.  But some mornings, I would pack up my things and ride into the next town and find a diner for breakfast.

 I had planned five dollars a day for my existence.  The money was mostly for food.  I would buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, a can of corned beef hash, canned tuna, boxes of noodles.  I made it last.  And people would give me food, in fact that was what made the budget possible.

 Some days I spent nothing.  Some days I had to buy a part for my bike, or a warm shirt, and then for days I would watch every penny.  So eating in a restaurant was a luxurious extravagance, and I made the most of it.

 I would ride into the town, often a crossroads between farmlands, and then find where the pickup trucks gathered in the first minutes of the day.  It would be called ‘Sweeties’ or ‘Don’s’ or named after the town, or just called ‘Diner’. 

 Small towns are as different as fingerprints, but they have things in common.  In these little diners, especially as the day started, there was a similar cast of characters.  Farmers, local tradesmen, perhaps the constable, all huddling around a meal, trading the news, laughing and gossiping. 

 In the seventies, it was not unusual to see people packing around the country, but not every place welcomed smelly, long haired bike bums.  So, I did my best to be respectful, polite.  People would be curious, so I made it easy for them to be.

 Sometimes there was a waitress, who would become my ambassador to the rest of the patrons, whispering my story to them as she refilled their coffee.  Other times I sat at the counter and the guy cooking would take my order.  I looked for whatever breakfast presented the greatest mass of food for the least money.  Lots of eggs and potatoes and big slabs of toast, whatever I could fill up on that might carry me through the day.  And of course, the bottomless cup of coffee. 

 I’ll also confess I pilfered my share of salt and sugar packets, tubs of jelly, little creamers, wads of napkins.  I’m not really ashamed of this now, but I don’t suggest it to my children.

 In these small spaces it was natural for people at the next table, or across the room, to ask me things.  Where are you headed?  How far do you ride a day?  What do you do when it rains?  Where do you sleep?  And if things went well, someone would offer to pay for my meal.

 I knew very little of nutrition, only that I was burning a lot of calories every day, and the machine needed to be fed.  I was hungry, and some days the space between towns surprised me, so from time to time I ran out of food.  Some nights, sleeping under bridges, or in cornfields, I would go to sleep still feeling the grumble of my empty stomach. 

 It’s the same ache we have all felt at one time or another, but most of us can solve it easily.  In fact, just now I stood up and walked into my kitchen and ate a muffin, answering the mildest mutter of appetite.  But there is something that feels desperate and lonely in going to sleep hungry, a pang that I have not forgotten.

 Along my way I was fed, literally, by the kindness of strangers.  If I stopped at a farmhouse and asked permission to sleep on their land, they invariably would feed me, and send me off the next day with food.  A stop at a produce stand, and in exchange for stories of my travels, I would leave with apples or a jar of preserves.  People driving past me would stop and give me things.  I haven’t forgotten these powerful acts of grace.

 It has been over four decades since those experiences and I still feel them as fresh as now.  Every time I sit down and order breakfast at a diner, I feel this small rush of gratitude.

 Two things remain with me from this passage. First, that I will never take a full stomach for granted.  Second, I remember the countless times that someone gave me food, or paid for my meal, maybe without knowing what an enormous difference it made.  It is one of the simplest ways to help someone else ease an ache.  I’m reminded this morning, knowing there are people not far from any of us, whose day can be changed with only the smallest sacrifice, of the gift I’ve been given.

 I am going to make my breakfast, a bowl of Grape Nuts.  That thread has stayed with me too.

 

Hope this finds you sated,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith

The Movie House

  

 

April 19, 2021

 Greetings from the big screen,

 Not long ago I was thinking of watching a movie.  I flipped on the TV and scrolled through the myriad choices, until just the act of searching was more wearying than I cared to deal with.  I am sure most of us have felt this fatigue, especially in the last year.  This week I felt it with a pang of loss.

 Like a good book, I enjoy a well made film, perhaps a moment of escape or entertainment, or maybe the chance to explore.  But on that night, I felt more like the luxury of choice had soured the experience. 

 In the time when I fell in love with cinema, the act of watching a movie was engaging, unique, a special occasion, for me not unlike going to church.  The process was inconvenient by our standards today, but there was a commitment by the viewer that is hard to explain now.

 I remember our neighbor Mr. Berry worked for Butterfield Theaters, a company that owned some of the screens around town.  It was strange to see him raking his yard one day, and another standing in his suit in front of the Capitol Theater, important, smoking a huge cigar.  To me he was a celebrity, and at the time I was sure he must be a millionaire.

 I lived most of my young years in Flint, Michigan, where, at the time, the city was filled with movie theaters.  Decades before, the growing population, nearly desperate for entertainment and a respite from whatever their daily labors, pushed the demand for theaters until there was hardly a place in town where you couldn’t walk to see a movie.

The first movie I saw was at the Della theater on Welch Boulevard.  We walked six blocks from our house, which didn’t have a TV yet, and sat in that dark place and watched the magic unfold.  It was not my favorite movie, ‘The Blob’ but it was the beginning of a fascination with film.

 Some Saturdays I would go to YMCA downtown and watch serial movies of Rocket Man or the Lone Ranger.  I’m sure my parents hoped I was making the trip there to exercise and learn how to swim, but I was lost in the adventures of Superman.

 Most of the movies I saw in those years were at the Capitol Theater, a classic 1920’s example, with its ornate pillars and formal décor, painted ceiling and friezes.  It had a dramatic lobby, and in the shadows was a giant pipe organ, left over from the days of vaudeville stage acts, and silent films. 

 It was perhaps a two mile walk for us kids to go downtown to see a movie.  We were instructed to wash our knees and faces and hands before going, a futile attempt at fooling our peers that we were well raised.  We would sometimes be dropped off on the sidewalk with firm instructions, and then we were free to forget them and enjoy the afternoon.

 We would buy popcorn, so drenched in butter it would stain the bag, and then weave between the seats in the theater, make a noisy cluster with our friends, and sit back and watch the giant curtain reveal the screen.

 There was a balcony there, for a while a place of racial divide, but by my time was where teenagers would make out during the movie.  Ushers in the aisles, discretely sweeping the dark with penlights, making sure the standards of decency were upheld and to ‘hush’ unruly kids.

 Just a block away was the Palace Theater, across the street from Hale Hats, just to give you bookmark of the era.  For a while I had a friend who worked there in the concession stand, and she would let me in to watch the ‘Blaxploitation’ films that ran at the time, including ‘Shaft’ and ‘Superfly’.  I saw ‘Wattstax’ there, the only white face in the seats when the lights came up.

 There was the Royal, where the older kids, adults, would go to see ‘racy’ movies.  I never saw the inside of it, and my guess is that its reputation was more interesting than experiencing it.

 A different escape, but embossed just as deeply, was when our family piled in the Vista Cruiser and went to the drive in.  It was an event.  The kids would put on pajamas and my parents would sit in the front, and we would prowl through the gravel lot to find our spot, and then back in, hook up the speaker to the window of the Vista Cruiser, and then sit in the ‘way back’ and watch the movie.  If we were good, we could go to the concession stand for some awful treat.   We prowled the dark lot of the US 23 or the Dort Drive In, wearing our Keds with our PJ’s, watching the other families make their camps in between the stanchions that held the little speakers.

 The other thing I associate with all of these, was the countless times my teenage friends and I would sneak in to catch a film.  Sometimes one of us would buy a ticket and then while the movie was playing, sneak down to the fire escape door and let the rest of the gang in.  Or three of us would pile into the trunk of the car while the driver innocently bought a ticket at the drive in.

 The movies we watched were forgettable.  Maybe a few held up and might be called classics, but truthfully movies have gotten better since then.  We would sit through the trailers, and then sometimes newsreels, and the little blurbs from the theater urging ‘Let’s go out to the lobby, let’s go out to the lobby…’

 What was not forgettable was the experience of going to the theater and being changed by the journey, the environment, the unique partnership of the film makers and the people who came to see their work.  Even as I write this I can remember the feel of the crushed corduroy of the seats, the smell of cigarettes and buttered popcorn and the mingling odor of people.

 I realize this is a sentimental indulgence, but the contrast to what we feel about movies today is bold.  I have seen people watching one movie on TV and another on their laptop while scrolling their phone to fill in the slow moments.  What is seen is ‘content’, no longer valued in the same way.  I know this cliché is hardly worth repeating, but for this morning it felt important. 

 Some time ago it seemed that artists involved in making films were creating expressions of ideas, creating an image of another time, or adventure, or romance, to take the audience with them.  In that time the media was still unique, distinctive from other experiences available, and so we held it with a different regard.  Also, we had to be involved enough, committed enough, to devote energy and time to the process of seeing a movie.

 It is not unlike setting a needle to a phonograph record or opening a book.  There is a connection between the creator and the person enjoying the creation.  I don’t know if it is lost entirely, but it is harder to feel.

 I chose ‘Cool Hand Luke’, and it held up pretty well, but even with my nostalgic filter, I smiled at the corniness and the innocence and the social baggage of the era.  That said, I think it’s worth remembering, and respecting, the era of movie watching that has now nearly disappeared, and the mark it left on my generation.

 Hope this finds you transported,

 

David

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith

Grow

 

 

April 12, 2021

 

Greetings from the roots,

 This week I was given a message, one of those things that I can sometimes ignore, or absorb into the plethora of other things that flicker across my consciousness.  I might have missed it completely, but I had help.   This morning I will share it with you, perhaps as a reminder.

 The message was: Grow.

 Like most of the best things that come to me, this word didn’t arrive in the traditional way.  In fact, I absorbed it over time; days actually passed before I realized what I was being shown. 

 Light grows into the day, sooner now than yesterday.  Morning shoos the evening back from the east, chases it across the sky, siblings above us, squabbling for a place in our life.   I am in love with the night and its mysteries, with the stars and their cousins the fireflies.  But there is a magic in the first light of morning that I was made for.  When it comes earlier, when it grows the day, I feel as if it is pouring more of that light into me.

 This was my first clue, one that I saw and didn’t absorb, even as people around me remarked how the season was changing.  I was distracted by what filled the days instead of what made them possible.

 Luckily, I have the birds to remind me.  I don’t know which songs belong to what birds, but some mornings, even as the dark embraced me, standing with my second cup of coffee out on the deck, I would hear them begin their conversations with the world.  Earlier.  More stridently.  In a couple of days, I realized they were asking to see who was awake.  And they were growing the day.

 I went running on almost every morning this week.  Geese flew over, laughing at whatever geese think funny, wandering across the sky, practicing geometry.  Other birds, late risers, those who may not seize the worm, sang solos, brought together choruses, made the morning sound into something more than it was. 

 The wind pressed between things, sighed against the pine needles, then found small places to whistle in.  It moved across the open places, carrying what will grow.  Some days the wind was the herald for storms, knotted clouds grumbling on the horizon, creating sinewed features where there was once only a simple line.

 The world grew wetter.  Some mornings it seemed as if it should rain, but the air declined to shed the moisture in any organized way.  Mist hung over the fields, ghosts of other storms, both rain and snow, escaping the soil’s grave.  Dew bent the blades of grass, glistening under the pink-grey sky, billions of bedazzled fronds.

 I ran by proud creeks, chattering in lilting voice about their growth.  Water, boldened by the snowmelt, pressing new shape to the banks of the brooks, splashing higher over rocks.  The water lept into the air, for a moment was beyond what streams can do, and then chuckled into itself again and went on to wherever was waiting. 

 I ran along the path that followed the river and was startled by the green filling the space around me.  The woods have changed from a stick museum to a forest, buds muscling the ends of every branch. Some trees sported traces of pink or white.  I was in awe.  How did this happen?  Is this the same life?

 Flowers, so easy to take for granted on some days, were heroes among the winter litter.  Patches of violets, a bold dandelion guard in the cracked sidewalk, little mobs of daffodils springing up in nonsensical places among the trees.  Pushing aside impossible to show the color they had growing in them.

 The sounds and smells, the feel of the air, the burgeoning plants.  The animals leapt and scurried, deer and rabbits, squirrels, all knowing the message, passing it on, then living their day.  Grow.

Some of it sunk in, finally.  I thought about what I knew, and what I had been told about how real growth happens.  What was common was that challenges, difficulties, setbacks, were what made growth possible.  I held these thoughts up against the fading winter, and the victory of spring.  Grow, the world said, open your eyes to this light, and see more and be more.

 In the last year we have been scraped and pushed and worn until we frayed.  Looking closely, I saw many people took moments to learn, and then grow.  Even now I see people creating and connecting, reading differently, finding other ways to know things.  Being uncomfortable, finding solutions anyway, trying new things, being disappointed, trying again.  Growing.  It may be that this time is an unprecedented opportunity for us all to grow.

 Every day has this potential, I suppose, but in this leading edge of spring, it is practically shouting at us.  Grow!  Find the way, small or large, to become more.  It is why you’re here.

 I came home from running, breathless and damp, and stood in my yard and looked again, saw the message.  The lawn is mostly invisible to me unless there is something to be filled or pulled out.  But there, decorated in glittering diamonds, I saw what nature conspired to say for weeks now. 

 There were brave tufts of grass, surging into the day above their neighbors.  As if they got the message first and wanted to show the way.  And show me.  This cluster of deep green shoots, towering over their peers, reaching into the morning air, toward the sky which grew lighter, to the world that grew more beautiful. 

 

Hope this finds you growing,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith

Windmill

 

 

April 5, 2021

 Greetings from the strange land,

 When I was a young person, I read a fair bit of science fiction, including ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.  On the cover was a simplistic illustration of alien ships on spindly legs, seeking to conquer the panicked Earthlings in their path.  That’s what I thought of.

 I was driving through a part of my state that is famous for very little, other than perhaps sugar beets.  It is flat, and where it is not flat, it is somehow flatter.  It’s wide open, I suppose to give the sugar beets room to graze, and you can literally see for miles in any direction.

 So, it was easy to spot the first windmill.  Just to be clear, this is not one of the Dutch inspired replicas for which another part of Michigan is famous.  This is the high tech giant, nearly terrifying in its towering height, looming over the land.

 I had the same reaction I always have, which out loud was: “Wow.”  I know, it’s an inspired expression, obviously well thought out and rooted in a deep consideration of what I was seeing.  After all, I’m a writer so this kind of genius commentary is usually on the tip of my tongue.

 It’s hard not to be amazed.  These things are enormous, and when you get close you realize they are enormouser than you thought.  There is something bizarre about the incongruity, this plain, simple farmland, with few trees to interrupt the view, and then suddenly a 500 foot tall machine.

 And I had this flashback to the cover of a book I read more than five decades ago.  “Wow.” I said.  And then I tried to remember if I ever took it back to the library.  Hmm.

 It did look like the windmill had conquered Earth.  There was nothing around it but hard packed dirt.  I had a fleeting thought that somehow the sugar beets create wind and that’s why they built wind farms in this part of the state.  It was just thought; I’m a writer, not a scientist.

 From time to time, I will see large trucks on the road, carrying the blades of the wind turbines, and it’s almost as unsettling as seeing the monsters towering in the fields.  I sometimes imagine that these are the tusks of wind machines that have been hunted down and captured by the rebellious faction of humans. 

 As I drove across the farmland the number of windmills grew, and then there were more, and before long they were everywhere.  One giant machine lording over the world is unsettling.  Scores of them, for miles an all directions, inspires a whole other set of feelings.

 After a while I pulled over on the shoulder of the tired dirt road I was on and just looked at them, bouquets of windmills, scattered across the horizon for as far as I could see. The movement is hypnotic; the ceaseless sweep of the blades, not quite in synch with one another, all of them driven by an invisible conductor. 

 I know there are people who object to these titans.  They say they are an eyesore, or they hurt birds, or they give off a vibration, or flicker the light.  I tried to sense those things, wonder what it would be like to live with this presence filling the flat world.  I don’t know if I would like them in my backyard, but as I sat there, I was carried away by their unique presence.  It was a beauty of sorts, as hard is that may be to feel.

 I had this impression of ballerinas, all in en pointe position, their arms performing a strange pirouette.  They were graceful, these long pointed wings whirling in front of them, elegant and yet powerful.   The longer I sat watching, the less I felt like leaving.  It was mesmerizing.

 Maybe it was the hypnotic cadence of the blades, but in only a few minutes I felt this ease, which was so different from the jarring feeling I had when I saw the first wind turbine.  It just flowed over me as if I were seeing an art installation, something that intrigued and inspired. 

 It might be that this kind of beauty exists in all things, even outlandish mechanical devices.  When I turned to leave the last of the windmills behind, I felt curious about what other pieces of art were scattered along the roads I travelled.  It really made a difference in how I made my way back out of the flat land, into the other world I normally inhabit.  It took a little longer to get back, but it was worth it.

 Hope this finds you inspired,

 

David