Bringing In The Herd

I've got to bring in the herd even if it's winter time. And yes, I've got a Winchester just in case any aliens rear their scaly green hides! And no that's not a Winchester or a pack of Marlboro cigarettes that I'm holding in my hand. See the link.

Fancy Pants (Daydreaming)

For as long as I can remember, daydreams have always been for me a major form of inner entertainment. Daydreaming or flights of fancy allow me to travel far away ... Away from where I am and what I am doing at that very moment. Where's the harm in that, it’s only for about ten or fifteen minutes that I escape. A window to look through is usually helpful -for my escapes from the mundane. But a windowless room can be more like a prison to me.  Sometimes, I'll even daydream while driving, yet I always stay safe because I can drive on autopilot. 

While flights of fancy are pleasant things, there are other types of inner thoughts known as ruminations, rehearsals, and rehashing that are gloomy and exhausting because they often involve either bad circumstances or conflicts with others.  Phew! I've got to cut those off before they make me feel miserable. Then there is a third category of inner thoughts known as fantasies. Fantasies  are like daydreams that are wearing  dark hooded cloaks! They can be about guilty things that should definitely be kept private, better yet treated by a therapist. But the best of all for me are daydreams. They have greatly enriched my life and I just can't imagine what boredom I would have felt without them.

Driving lessons for the blind

Pass on the left, stay to the right always use your signals.  Maintain a steady speed; get out of the left lane if at all possible when approached from the rear. Do not text, do not watch TV; drive as if your life depended on it -it does! This is especially true when driving long distances on an interstate. 

I am serious, it makes me furious that all too often the rules of the road are ignored or worse, a driver is clueless that there are good driving rules of the road. Such drivers are the blind that my post title refers to.   Once you reach an urban center, the rules go out the window and you may as well slow down, and watch out for local yokels, who may be speeding and weaving in and out of traffic and blasting loud music. You've got to expect  that within the city limits; keep on driving you will soon leave them behind and once again reach the peace of the open road.

In another post, I will write an exposition about getting from point A to a distant point B like a pro; when you are in a hurry.

Love or compassion for the lost?

Love or Compassion for the Lost ?

Intro: 

Who was ever more lost than this guy Chuck Noland, in the movie Cast Away. Not long ago I heard an evangelist preaching about spiritually lost people. His challenge to his audience was for us to ask (30) people a (7) word question: Would You Study the Bible with Me? Inspired by this, I wrote down some thoughts and devised a 'movie therapy' lesson exploring this concept.

First, some Q & A about sharing your faith with someone who is lost i.e., someone who needs to find God:

Q.        Why would we consider doing such a thing, this sharing of our faith in God?

A.        Because we love the lost!

Q         How many of us actually love the lost?

A.        I can’t honestly say that I love the lost as a group. Usually, I love only people that I know personally, or who are somehow, lovable. There are exceptions.

RUN FILM CLIP (15 minutes) from the film Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks, a film well worth watching again in its entirety.

SCENE 1.

Man was lost on an island for 4 years and finally escaped to sea on a log raft and drifted for 500 miles lost and alone on a raft with only his make believe friend, Wilson.

SCENE 2.

Man filling coconuts with water, latter that night he hears a sound and a whale surfaces and takes a look at him.

DID YOU SEE THAT WHALE LOOK AT HIM?

SCENE 3. (several days latter)

Wilson, falls off the raft and the whale has returned to spray man with water to wake him up to Wilson’s plight!

DID YOU SEE THE WHALE SPRAY THE MAN TO WAKE HIM UP TO THE FACT THAT HIS FRIEND WAS DRIFTING AWAY?

SCENE 4 (several hours or days latter)

Nothing on the horizon and the man lies weeping alone on the raft; he gives up hope and throws his paddles away is despair.  But, the whale returns and sprays the man twice to wake him up in time to see that a ship is near and the man is rescued.

DID YOU SEE THE WHALE SPRAY THE MAN TWICE TO WAKE HIM UP TO SEE THAT A SHIP WAS NEAR?

Commentary:

Webster’s Dictionary definitions:

LOVE is defined as – A strong affection for another arising out of kinship (relationship)  or personal ties.

COMPASSION is defined as – Sympathetic consciousness (awareness) of other’s distress; together with a desire to alleviate (lighten, ease) it.

Of course the bible is full of references to  LOVE, with many references to God’s love for man and our love for God and a few references to man’s love for one another; e.g., Leviticus 19:18 Love your neighbor as yourself and in the  new testament, Matthew 19:19 Love your neighbor as yourself.

There are also many references in the bible to COMPASSION; e.g., 2 Corinthians 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion. Colossians 3:12 Therefore as God’s chosen people holy and dearly loved clothe yourselves with compassion.

Now it’s time for some Q & A follow ups:

Q.        Did the whale show love or did it show compassion for the lost man?

Q.        Why did the whale show compassion for the lost man?

Q.        Where does compassion come from?

Q.        Is it easier to share your faith out of love for the lost or out of compassion for the lost?

Q.        Would our reaction be different to the (30) person challenge to share about  God; if we had compassion for the lost instead of trying to love the lost?

Conclusion:

I think it is possible to experience both love and compassion at the same time.  But sometimes we feel either one or the other. But as long as you feel something, either love or compassion, you can still reach out to someone. It is called having a heart after God's own heart. 

It's Not The Train, It's the Locomotive That Kills You

Have you ever played baseball swung the bat and squarely hit the ball?  One second the ball is coming towards you and then whack!  Now its flying off in another direction. One night, I saw a train do that to a car from about ten feet away on November 3, 2009.  The car was stationary with it's back end hanging over the tracks when wham! The locomotive hit it and the car went flying on impact. I had never before seen a car sized object fly off right in front of me; after being hit by a building sized object. The glass and metal pieces of the car went flying everywhere just like the pieces from a popped air balloon.  The sound of the impact itself merged into one terrible sound from the train engine, it's bellowing horn,  rolling metal wheels, screeching breaks and the car itself being instantly demolished.  Fortunately, the car was unoccupied when the train hit it. The two would be occupants of the car were two women but they were safely standing right alongside me away from the tracks.  Prior to the wreck I saved their lives by getting them out of their doomed car seconds before the train hit their car. Since then I still drive cross those same train tracks right where this happened and I remember that night.

There was a local newspaper article printed about the incident titled: "Local Attorney Saves two women from major train accident." You can check out the article by clicking on the above 'Local Attorney' link or view image below.

Fort Bend Star Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Jazz Record Found after long search

Last June 2012, I went to the Jazz Record Mart: 27 East Illinois Ave., in downtown, Chicago. It was filled wall to wall with vintage jazz and blues vinyl records and posters. I just happened to find the store while visiting Chicago. I spent two hours in there looking at albums and listening to a few cuts. This was the funnest thing I did on my whole trip to Chicago. This was on the same day I ate an Italian Beef Sandwich which was very delicious.  I found an album in there that I have been looking for for a long time; that I once owned on an 8 track tape which broke long ago.  The album is called Powerhouse by the Jazz Crusaders, recorded in 1968.  This was probably the first jazz album that I ever owned and I have not heard it for over thirty years.  I played it when I got back home to Houston and it sounds as good as it ever did. It is incredible that I had to travel so far to make this discovery. I have over the years purchased a few other Jazz Crusader albums, but Powerhouse is by far the best of their early work. I love old record stores; may they never completely disappear.

The Street Van Man (Part 3) "Vantastic Voyage"

My 1975 Dodge Tradesman-100 was still a new vehicle, just two years old and sturdy.    I remember saying goodbye to my mother right in front of our house in Orange, New Jersey and driving off at around 3:00 p.m. on a weekday. There is a reason why we left so late, but that is another story. We made our way to Interstate 80 near Teaneck, New Jersey -where the Isley Brothers supposedly lived and our journey began. Our destination was Los Angeles, California so we headed west on I-80. There were just three of us trucking out of town: my friend Larry age 25, my brother Martin 24 and yours truly age 23.  This road trip out to the west coast would be the furthest either of us had ever driven –Two thousand, eight hundred (2,800) miles one way – and this was our first road trip in a 'Street Van.'

A street van is unlike an ordinary car or station wagon. It gave us awesome flexibility with plenty of elbow room to move about inside; two small beds; a small table and privacy to change clothes in and to sleep in overnight. It was very comfortable inside of my van even in some of the hottest parts of the country. The windows were tinted, we had AC and most of the windows could be opened. In a van like mine you also ride higher up than in a car and the front windshield was very large which gave us a great almost panoramic view. We could even change drivers without stopping! Okay, I tried that driver switching thing only once while moving and definitely not on the highway.

The California trip wasn't originally my idea.  It was my friend Larry who first proposed we take a road trip out to California to transport a guitar amplifier to his brother Romeo who had moved out to LA to make music.  The plan seemed feasible to me and as I was listening to Larry talk, I was thinking furiously, ‘I have the wheels, I love the road, I have vacation time off from work at INA, why not, why the hell not?’ The three of us caught  road fever right then and there and I didn't hesitate to say ‘let’s go’ and that was the birth of our dream road trip to California.

The very next day, I started prepping my van for the voyage. The first thing I needed to do was to replace the horn. The Dodge Tradesman van had a very puny sounding factory horn that was a little bit embarrassing to blow. The solution was to install two used Cadillac horns I found in a junkyard. I attached the horns under the hood then wired them to a large push button I installed on my van’s dashboard. The new horn button was just to the left of the steering wheel column and within easy reach of my left hand. Now I had a much louder, manlier horn for my van that I thought sounded pretty cool.  Maybe not as cool as those air horns I'd seen mounted on the roofs of some other vans; but I had to save my money for the trip.

Next, I got together some cross country maps to plan with and my dad  helped us with some of the more technical aspects of our route.  My two travel companions and I wanted to make a few brief stops along the way to see some well-known sights -Chicago, The Great Salt Lake, The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Once we reached the west coast we would be touring and spending at least a week in both southern and northern California. Last but not least on my list, was to record some riding music. You just can’t have a great adventure without also having a great soundtrack, right? ‘Right on to the Max!’ After all we were going to be doing some Hollywood Swinging- and driving clear across the country.  I got right down to recording our cruising music on audio cassette tapes and this proved to be one of my best decisions. To this day whenever I hear a tune from that playlist my mind and my emotions can’t help but travel back to one of our finest hours; our California road trip adventure. This was the seventies so I had cassette tapes the long 120 minute ones loaded with music from The Commodores (blue album), Johnny Guitar Watson's A Real Mother for you, and mixed tapes of cuts like, Float On -The Floaters, Coco - Joe Thomas, Sassafras Girl - Pleasure, Free As the Wind - The Crusaders, some Fleetwood Mac - Dreams, Steely Dan - Royal Scam and Aja, Lowdown - Boz Scaggs, some Earth Wind and Fire cuts and so much more. Of course the music helped us to stay awake over long and lonely stretches of road as we traveled day and night to get to the coast without any overnight stops.  My companions and I would each take a four hour shift of driving while the guy riding shot also stayed mostly awake, to help the driver to stay awake. The third guy was lucky, he was able to get four hours of uninterrupted sack time if he wanted to.

To the right is an early photo of my Dodge van while being customized in 1976. You can see  in the photo that there was a day bed platform in the rear of the van and a side couch platform with enough room to stretch out on. The spare and jack were underneath the rear day bed platform which also left room for other things no taller than twelve inches tall. There was additional storage under the side couch and even more storage room for bulky luggage, coolers and whatever else we wanted to bring in the trunk space behind the rear day bed.  You could get to the trunk space either from the inside or through the outside rear doors.

All of that storage space in my van would come in handy on our long road trip.  We would need to bring along sleeping bags, towels to wash up with and lots of clothes of course.  We were going to need our clothes to go hang out in California discos and to make the right impression in diverse situations. We were even prepared for going on job interviews so we brought along a suit and tie just in case. As for food provisions we didn't store up any food in the van because we were going to live off the land and eat fast food. What did we care, we were young.  Food however, latter proved to be a major drain on our money.

That's me in the dark glasses having fun in my van just days before my Cali road trip in 1977.

Here I am posing with my van cigarette in hand while doing some sight seeing in the Los Angeles foot hills, travel bug screen still installed on my grill, New Jersey plates.   

Pacific Coast view out my window

Oakland California friend admiring the inside of my van

Two Oakland friends with the Street Van man

 (The Street Van Man will return.)