They are all the same, though their frames are different. Silver, red, blue and black… a line of cars sit in a row, as their drivers speak into a speaker and listen to garbled tones.
At the window will be a drink made-to-order. A custom cup served up with a smile, steaming-hot or chilled on ice, but steeped in attention no less.
Me in my in plaid blue shirt, the one with the pocket once torn. Thoughtfully this shirt was mended for me; I cannot escape that stream of affection. And I grin when thinking of the little foot that did the tearing.
Caught up in today’s rush torn garments are of little value, they are discarded without a second thought; with little regard for the hands capable of mending.
I consider the careful fingers able to do the stitching… somehow their care makes it into the weave, I have a feeling. The few stiches over my chest give me a full suit of armor.
Perhaps the hands that serve our tea offer the same kinds of blessing; hands attending to battered hearts and words to tired minds. We are line of wounded persons being steeped in careful attention.
True, I do not “get out” much these days, but I do know an interesting conversation when I enter one!
Having two kids and one on the way it is not often that my wife and I get an afternoon away to entertain new ideas or even have the opportunity to cross paths with new people. Ironic we should have met a new person in an antique store, but less and less strange as we discovered that this gentleman belonged in there.
It had been a spontaneous decision to stop off at the store for a minute… as Aunt Kimmie had offered to watch the kids for a few hours and we were only driving through town to drop off the water bill and return some library books. Parking behind the city park, like so many times before, this time I did not offer up lip service saying “I would like to go in there sometime.” Instead there was no reason keeping us from stopping in: no busy hands to break things, no little tummies that were hungry, and no promises of ice cream treats to stain little cheeks. So…when my wife said “Oh look, the antique store. Do you want to go in for a bit?” I stood there strangely pondering and found it bizarre that I actually had a choice in the matter on this particular morning! It took me a while to answer, but finally “Yes…yes I think I do!” was my reply.
I loved absolutely everything about our visit. The old brick that welcomed us was more than facade, it led on among four walls of times forgotten with thick, heavy rafters running overhead. Each beam appeared to be a single cut log, tree trunks really, that had noticeably been shored up with hand tools; tool marks and lines of imperfection gave each beam a certain individuality and they stole my attention for some time. We walked down the right side of the store admiring aged cherry and mahogany desks, looking in all their secret compartments and asking questions about little knick-knacks that were displayed on each and every shelf and surface.
The kind lady that worked the right half of the store, explained that she ran the “furniture-part” of the store and that this building once operated as an ice house. Today the building held in its’ frame antique furniture (some from roughly the same time period as the building itself) and the other half of the store was a custom framing operation for portraits and prints. For a minute I sat, reclined, in an old Quaker rocking chair that I was afraid was going to drop me, but it sure enough did not. Just after poking my head around the wall that divided the two halves of the store, I saw that the other side had only fabrics and framing materials… and its’ few employees, I presumed, standing up toward the front.
I sat for a moment in a replica of a corner chair before my wife Mel and I scooted-off up the thick cut, timber stairs that curled up the back wall to the loft of the ice house. We could feel how old the wood was beneath our feet as the darkness of the stair well opened to the brightness of the upper floor. There were not many things up top, so I walked toward a front window and was pleased to discover some old soda bottles, and I am glad I did but not solely because I am a collector.
When I made my way back down the stairs, with an arm full of glass treasures, another lady working the desk on the framing-side of the store began wrapping each bottle and nestling it down into a brown paper bag branded “Ice House Oddities”. About that time I heard a raspy but, exuberant voice ask me “Ya ever go bottle digg’in!?” I informed the man behind the voice that I would not know where to look.
So we began in what I thought would be a two phrase exchange. Again, I am glad that it was not.
A gray haired man in a pair of bi-focal glasses and with a button-up, pocket shirt continued in his advice, that if I were to locate an old outhouse that I could dig up plenty of bottles. Fifty years ago, I suppose, that would have been a pretty grotesque endeavor but, now-a-days I would only be digging through fertile soil… that did much to change my image of the scene. The man further explained that back when indoor plumbing was introduced that folks began using the outhouses as garbage dumps and how those times were long before concerns of “The Environment” were so very prolific.
Not yet finished in our exchange over the subject of outhouses, he had mentioned that every so often the outhouses would have to be dug-out (i.e. cleaned out) and this old timer went on to educate me on a few new terms. A gully he said was just a valley where two good sized hills settled into a ditch (being a country boy myself, I was savvy on this term) and a washer he said was when a torrent of rain would come through and send a “Gully Washer” down through the trench. The washer term was one that I had never before heard of being applied to a down-pouring of rain.
Now, a clever friend of his had positioned his outhouse just at the mouth of a gully and so every few months when a Gully Washer would come through, the cleaning of his friend’s outhouse was naturally automatic. Sending me into a wry smile and a few chuckles I had commented that this brought on a whole new meaning to the term “Gully WASHER” and danged if this old man didn’t miss a single beat and exclaim, “Yeah, how about a Gully FLUSHER?”
We all three broke into a fit of laughter and I could not help but offer up my hand to congratulate my new friend on his comedic success.
After shaking my hand he began to ready himself to leave. He had been standing at a hind counter, pen in hand, over an index card. A black and white pattern had caught my eye and now I had the comfortable grounds on which to intrude. “What do you have there?” I asked, thinking that he was scribbling some words on a pre-printed card stock, the design was so bold and intricate that I thought for sure he couldn’t possibly have drawn it; the design being so very fine.
“Just doodling.” he had said in an un-presuming tone. “It’s yours if want it.” That is when I realized I was talking to an artist. The card held an imaginative work of art, how could I possibly? “Well, I don’t want to take this, if it could be used as inspiration for another piece someday.” For a moment the paper switched back to his hand and I am sure he had thought maybe I did not want the clutter. Snatching a pen off the counter I said, “Well…you will have to at least sign it!” His eyes lit up a bit as I assumed he could tell how much I did like the design. “Let me use my good pen” he retorted as he pulled it from his shirt pocket. ‘Wm. Tippie’ was the name that he signed.
He seemed pleased that I liked it so much and he proceeded to show me a few more of his “doodles”, that he had captured as images, on his phone. We flipped through three or four doodles as I could tell that the one I held in my hand was not his best or even a finished work, though I liked it the same. “Here is my card, if you wish to come see some of my other art. A few of my pieces used to be displayed in some galleries around town but they have all recently been closed.”
I am sure many people consider themselves to be artists and it is a shame that they cannot vouch for their own work matter of factly in a commonplace conversation, but I have the feeling that a true artist would not do so even if they had reason to boast. Perhaps the best artists, just as the best people, do not know just how good they are.
Our last words we shared were those concerning his health, he explained to me about how his blood pressure had been all “out of whack” until he began doodling; how he had tried five different medications and how none of them had seemed to work. But, when he had begun “doodling” his blood pressure magically normalized! In this context, “A doodle a day keeps the doctor away” it seems. This did amaze me…but not quite so much as the beautiful abstract that I glanced down at on card-stock. How it did change my day!
Pointing to the branding on my paper bag, Mr. Tippie inquired “You know why they let me hang out in here don’t you? It’s that last word in there.” I laughed, thinking to myself that was about right, though he was not what I would call “odd” as the word odd has a stigma attached to it, he was indeed “an oddity”! And an oddity that my wife and I had thoroughly enjoyed that morning.
As I swung my bag by the handles, exiting the store, I heard someone say “Later, Bill.” Not to me, but to Bill Tippie as he thanked them for letting him camp out for a few hours on a Saturday morning. From one Bill to another I could have told him right then that I would definitely be calling him later. Perhaps he had already figured that much.
After two weeks had passed I had serendipitously been finishing up a piece of writing that had not been written regarding a soda bottleas main subject, but that had included a soda bottle from my youth as a supporting image, that I remembered seeing in my grandparents’ garage when I was young. Recently, my grandparents had given me an old six-pack of special addition RC Cola bottles with faded orange and blue paint from the seventies (old for me but not so old for my new friend). The subject matter of my writing piece was the coincidental thing though…the title I selected was “Digging Down“, and in it I was surmising that we should all cut busyness and agenda in order to share time with the important individuals of our lives. And so with the overwhelming feeling that an important person had entered my life I called up Mr. Tippie and told him “This is the other Bill speaking.” I was pleased that he did remember our conversation and I caught a chuckle from him as I assumed he was remembering our gully flusher exchange.
So, when I showed up to his home not knowing what to expect, he led me up the stairs in his two bedroom home, to his “gallery”.
As two of the three galleries containing his art had been closed, he confessed that he did not know just how much art he had accumulated until he was forced to consolidate it. His main “gallery” now doubling as his guest bedroom, was impressively covered, surface upon surface, with art. His word “accumulation” I thought very odd though, as that is a word that suggests glancing out the window on a winter’s day and being surprised at the white blanket that wraps all the greens and browns in a unified coloring of white. That could not have been what this was.
As I perused the collection, I found it quite baffling how ANY of this had happened! The collection was astounding and diverse. Another of his comments had been that he had never been able to settle into any form “of style” for his art. I now truly came to know this man, not as a self-proclaimed artist, but I began to see the art that this man had brought to each day he had lived. Surely, he had lived in a world of imagination as if each day was a blank canvas; suddenly I could not have been more aware of how ALL this had happened.
Our visit ended by him gifting me a pen and ink, an image he had shown me on his mobile phone at the Ice House and a piece that I had been mesmerized by. Upon my arrival of our second visit together, I had given him one of the six soda bottles from my grandparents’ garage, along with the words I had written and wished he would enjoy reading. Tippie had said, “Now we are even.” but, in my chest I knew how unbalanced the deal was that had been struck.
I had looked through a few easels loaded with art and Bill and I ended up in his art studio where he showed me a few pages of a scrap book that he had complied, cataloging some of his earlier works. It was all impressive. The most impressive thing to me, however, was sitting atop the corner of a short dresser, against the wall of the guest room just beside a padded, wicker chair covered in art. A half-inch thick notebook of what Tippie called his “doodles”. I had hoped, through his word choice, that he was not suggesting them as a “lesser” art, because to me they are the most artful of all; brilliant works of imagination that adorn the pages of a priceless book of masterful visions.
Quite a day this was for me.
The name of one of his “pen and ink doodles” stuck firmly in the corner of my mind:
Grown-ups ferry you from building to building and place to place. Walls and fences serve to hold the outside world at a safe distance and as children we need not know of the supposed framework holding it all together. Even as a child though… we still catch glimpses of traffic as it passes by.
There’s traffic in the sky And it doesn’t seem to be getting much better There’s kids playing games on the pavement Drawing waves on the pavement Shadows of the planes on the pavement Its enough to make me cry But that don’t seem like it would make it feel better Maybe its a dream and if I scream It will burst at the seams This whole place will fall to pieces And then they’d say…
Well how could we have known? I’ll tell them it’s not so hard to tell If you keep on adding stones Soon the water will be lost in the well[1]
The four-line chorus above sends me to a place in my thoughts, an arid plain where dust is blown in gusts and you have to squint your eyes to gain any partial visibility. The small village I see doesn’t look like much, most of the mud-brick structures are near collapse and their occupants sit along the exterior walls, slumped over in defeat as they look to the center where the streets meet. All the best stones they have pulled from their foundations for the building of a wall; the sides of a well that circle ever-upwards toward the heavens. The stones extend high above the roofs of the clay hunts, and all eyes watch as a bare-foot, dark skinned boy climbs a rickety make-shift ladder. His legs wobble as the bindings that lash the struts together creak and snap. On his head the boy balances a bucket on a leather strap, he tilts his nose downward to keep the strap from slipping off his sweaty forehead and the empty bucket moves out from his back and knocks between his small, bony shoulder blades with each..shaky..step..upward. His eyes are fixed on the last rung and a rope dangles over his right shoulder as he carefully moves up the last step. Then the real tragedy sets in as the rope end wags… brushing the dirt at the base of the ladder.
Even if the boy were to lean over the edge, down into the mouth of the well, what hope is there that he could ever reach the water far below the ground? Too many stones have been added and the water has been lost deep below. Lost, in the well.
As a boy myself, I remember playing games, but I also remember the shadows of the planes on the pavement.
I remember Sunday afternoons, after church, driving with my parents over to my grandparents’ house in the city. Though Ma and Pa’s house did not feel like “the city” because they kept things so very simple. Ma had a washer and dryer, yet preferred to let the clothes air dry, outside on the line. She had raised four boys in that two bedroom house… things were always kept tidy and neat. And, as I am sure my father did, I found comfort as a child in the routine and simplicity that is Ma and Pa. We always sat around the same table, ate the same food, and curled up in the same places to take our naps. On nice days we would all be energized and want to enjoy the fresh air of the back yard.
Sitting just beyond the patio, next to the separated single-car garage was a “porch” style swing that would fit three adults or snuggly fit two adults with two kids sandwiched in between. We children had to take turns swinging with whomever was in the swing. When we were small we did our best to touch our feet along the ground and help push the swing higher, but until we were a bit older and longer our efforts were futile at best; our little legs could not reach the six concrete pavers that were set into the grass below. However, we could arch our heads backward over the crook of the green metal swing and stare up into the Gum tree high above.
The Gum could not have been more magical if it had dropped gum balls on us… as in the spring it would drop small round seed casings about the size of a large cherry, stem and all! The Gum balls were bright green and firm in the early spring and grew prickly spines and turned brown as summer approached. The sky itself was barely visible close towards the house where there was another maple tree (off-set several feet from the Gum). The T-supports of the clothes line started there next to the Maple and extended towards the back fence row. How fun it was to run beneath the hanging laundry and to weave in and out past the end post. We ran wildly back into the long yard that opened up to blue skies.
I remember just how quiet it was there, in that closed-in back yard. That is, until the belly of a plane would move from low-to-high into the distance with a roar. The planes were so loud that if you had closed your eyes you would have believed they weren’t more than stones-throw away.
Still, there are those memories, of being a kid, and of eating ice cream sandwiches and rainbow bars in the afternoon sun. Attempting to climb trees with branches so high we could only hope to reach them with a jump. We usually settled into a game of croquet, a game that for us, had none of the typical rules and consisted instead of seeing who could swing the mallet the hardest… knocking a colorful ball to the back fence in the least number of swings. The croquet set that we used was a seemingly ancient one. One that my father had played with when he was young. Among the cob webs of the garage there were other discoveries lining the slatted, wooden walls: old tools and empty RC Cola bottles commemorating the Kentucky Colonels basketball team. I remember fragments of the conversation that we would have on such afternoons and the calming breeze that could be felt… before the traffic in the sky would startlingly come roaring by.
Airplanes will always remain to represent a crowning achievement in technological advancement… I am not suggesting that there were not incremental steps along the way and that air travel would have even been possible without the advancements of other technologies, I am simply saying that planes are impressive. And how about the computer and electrical system advancements that control the traffic in our skies! All these are impressive stones.
But, now it occurs to me that more important lessons may be learned from digging down, rather than adding stones onto the tower of human progress:
Puzzle pieces in the ground But no one ever seems to be digging Instead they’re looking up towards the heavens With their eyes on the heavens There are shadows on the way to the heavens It’s enough to make me cry But that don’t seem like it would make it feel better The answers could be found We could learn from digging down But no one ever seems to be digging Instead they’ll say…
Well how could we have known? I’ll tell them it’s not so hard to tell If you keep on adding stones Soon the water will be lost in the well
Words of wisdom all around But no one ever seems to listen They’re talking about their plans on paper Building up from the pavement There are shadows from the scrapers on the pavement It’s enough to make me sigh But that don’t seem like it would make it feel better The words are still around But the words are only sounds And no one ever seems to listen Instead they’ll say
Well how could we have known? I’ll tell them it’s not so hard to tell If you keep on adding stones Soon the water will be lost in the well[2]
For over five years I have worked at a rather fervent pace in downtown Louisville. My grandparents’ home is only ten or so miles from the tall sky scrapper that I work in, due north of the airport. With an open invite to lunch, I recently did make it back over to their house. Sitting and talking with Pa, I enjoyed asking him questions and digging down. There is a fulfilling quality hidden within such conversations. And on my way back into the office I considered what kinds of walls I had been building. Walls at least tall enough to cast sizeable shadows and thick enough to muffle the voices of the meek. Perhaps, we should all find ways to draw some of “the sounds” around us back into the bucket; back into words… as water from a well.
In the vast gap between question and answer, silence becomes a sound. Perhaps those of us that are the most simple are also the most able to frame these sounds into words; into phrases capable of reaching the wellspring of being that has been lost in the depths, beneath the stone. Such waters offer a refreshing drink for one’s soul.
Before I walk back into my building to sit at my computer, I hold in my two extended hands a draw-knife that belonged to my grandfather’s grandfather. Its design is simple, a sturdy marriage of soft wood and hardened steel. My grandfather’s gift to me is that I will possess something that his father, and his father before him, had held in their hands. A greater gift still -if I could hold something of their heritage in my heart and mind. Today, I find that the stones in the wall… have been little more than minutes, of busyness and of agenda.
Laying some of those stones aside I sit with my grandfather as he remembers a few words that his father left with him: “Sometimes it will bring a tear to your eye just to think about it,” he says, “and Dad said ‘Son in this world we may never be worth much, but we can have a good name.’ and I think that’s about as important as anything that you can have that comes along.”
Pa went on to say “Life is not about how much money you make or how big your house is, it’s about how you treat people.”
While this may seem like common knowledge, how many of us continue spending the majority of our time and efforts paying-off bigger houses instead of nurturing the priceless relationships of people that wish to share in our lives (this author included)?
If we continue pulling stones from places of sanctuary we will leave our souls vulnerable and exposed. And despite each effort to do something great with our lives we will only serve to un-settle ourselves more completely.
“You have to set aside time for things. Otherwise you miss out on the things that are worth the most to you.” -William Thomas Hudson (Pa)
[1] Traffic In the Sky, Song Written By Jack Johnson, 2003 (Universal Records)
