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Why are pro choice people so angry?

  • April 4, 2023
  • by W.W. Hutto

 Why are pro choice people so angry?

 I was watching the news after Roe was overturned and in the midst of a loud angry crowd was a blue haired woman waving a sign that said my body, my choice. What struck me was her rage.  She was yelling and getting in the faces of Pro life people and attempting to tear down signs. She looked scary crazy. 

What thoughts fueled this blind rage? Maybe the idea I can do whatever I want because my feelings are more important than anyone else’s. Or being able to do whatever I want when I want are my rights because pleasing myself is all that is important. I will live the life I choose even if it means having an abortion.

Why are they thinking like this?  Narcissism comes to mind. When people grow up getting whatever they want and never being corrected they can develop an attitude and belief that they are somehow special and above everyone. They may also be sociopathic in the way they lack empathy toward most people.

They can never be wrong about anything and any disagreement is taken personally. Growing up they become experts in manipulation and intimidation. They feel they are much smarter than others and this gives them the right to tell people what to think. Many Pro Choice advocates are not interested in honest debate but simply want to exert their power. The truth doesn’t matter to them.

Another possibility is psychosis, yes psychosis. The National Institute of Mental Health says a person can have psychosis and never be diagnosed as schizophrenic or having a mental disorder. Instead it can be caused by lack of sleep, underlying medical conditions, prescription medicine, alcohol, illicit drugs and marijuana. All of these exist on most college campuses.

Now consider this definition of mass psychosis on Google. “Mass formation psychosis is when a large part of society focuses its attention to a leader or leaders or a series of events and their attention focuses on one small point or issue. Followers can be hypnotized and led anywhere, regardless of data proving otherwise.”

Many children grow up in broken homes and spend a lot of time alone on their computers cruising the internet and social media. They take in all kinds of information and images and, unable to process it, develop anxiety and distorted ideas and attitudes. The family is dysfunctional and the child is raised on peer pressure and the internet. Going to college the teenager is functionally an orphan.

At college the pattern is repeated except the teenager might develop a strong bond with a professor that becomes a parent figure. Because the real parents were absent, he or she has no internal values and probably weak critical thinking skills. With no mental filters they believe everything the professor and friends are telling them. Add lack of sleep, alcohol and illicit drugs and a perfect environment is created for psychosis.

How did we get into this situation? I have a theory that many of the causes originated in the fifties and came to fruition in the sixties. Baby boomers of whom I’m a member were born between 1946 and 1964. Could they have passed down their attitudes and beliefs to their grandchildren who are in the pro choice movement?

Could they have suffered from psychosis and could there have been areas in the country of mass psychosis? There was fear of the atom bomb beginning in the 1950s and simmering racial tension then after 1963 with President Kennedy’s assassination there was non stop political and social unrest plus the Vietnam War. Kids didn’t believe their parents anymore and some were dropping out of society to live in communes. Drug use became widespread. 

Does psychosis or even mass psychosis seem like such a far fetched idea for many baby boomers at that time? Many felt the older generation and all it stood for had to be dismantled and society had to be radically changed. Was this caused by charismatic counter culture heroes and professors who replaced their parents and effectively brainwashed them?

Look at the way pro choice people act at demonstrations now and the way their grandparents acted at some of the demonstrations of their day. Do you see a connection? Were there people and powers behind the curtain instigating and orchestrating the chaos then and for what end? Are they still in power today? What do you think?

 

historical

Saturday Morning

  • August 2, 2022August 2, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

 Saturday Morning

Do you remember when you were young and couldn’t wait for Saturday to begin? Lying in bed you think about trees to climb, grasshoppers to catch, balls to throw and places to hide. Then the first rays of light shine through onto the wall behind you. The world is waking up for you and excitement bubbles inside as you think of new adventures just down the street or even in your backyard.

In the morning of life you still believed in Santa, the tooth fairy and your dad was the greatest man alive. The world was all goodness and love and mom and dad were always there for you. Guardian Angels were real and when you talked to God he listened. Everything was so new and shiny just waiting to be explored and enjoyed.

  Throwing back the covers you bounce to the bureau taking out your favorite pair of jeans. Mine were Wranglers which I turn up in a cuff around my ankles. I put on my new Red Ball Jet tennis shoes with the large circle patch on the inside ankle and after putting on a wrinkled white tee shirt I bound down the stairs hoping I’m up before my sister.

Downstairs I made a bowl of cocoa puffs or frosted flakes and went into the family room and turned on the dark brown Zenith box T.V. which was almost up to my shoulders. Laurel and Hardy would appear driving an old Model T Ford. I would watch a little while then my sister would come in and sit on the couch with a bowl of cereal. Then it might be Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Sky King followed by The Three Stooges and Lone Ranger.

I had a little submarine about the length of a pen with an opening that you put baking soda into then closed. It would go to the bottom of the sink as bubbles came out the top then when they stopped the sub rose to the surface. I would repeat the process several times just to watch the sinking and rising. As an eight year old I found that amazing.

Sometimes for lunch we walked the three blocks to town and ate at Bacon’s Drugstore. I would sit on the round chrome stool at the counter watching the cook cut the hotdogs in half lengthwise then fry and place them on a sandwich. He would also make a malt placing all the ingredients in a large stainless steel container then place it under a mixer. The food was sumptuous, especially the chocolate malt.

Afterwards we walked along Main Street on the sidewalk stopping in at the Five and Dime Store to look at the toys and coloring books.Then crossing Main Street we might have stopped at the wishing well in front of the old brick courthouse and thrown in a few pennies. I probably wished for a new cap pistol or toy men.

Western Auto was my favorite store. It was heaven for boys. You could try on every baseball mitt. There were Spalding, Rawlings and Wilson gloves with distinct logos and lacing. Throwing up and catching a new baseball I admired how they felt on my hand and the smell of new leather. The catcher mitts were my favorites. They were huge with thick padding and the round shape really caught my eyes. I’d also get in my batting stance and swing some of the wooden bats pretending I was Mickey Mantle.

Then there were boxes of model cars and planes you could assemble and decorate with decals and also paint. I had a car collection including a Corvette Stingray along my bedroom shelves along with a Corsair Fighter plane and the X-15, a hypersonic rocket powered aircraft first made in 1959.

Every October on a Saturday we had Kid’s Day and I always had trouble sleeping the night before. It started around nine at the high school football field. One year a star player in a gold and purple letter jacket talked with the kids. He had scored a couple of touchdowns the night before and was a hero to us.

There were the two legged and single person burlap bag races, the ten dollars on top of the greased pole and the greased pig. If you caught him it was like a twenty five dollar prize. My favorite was the huge sawdust pile that hid dimes, nickels and quarters. It was also the favorite of almost every kid in town.

We commenced digging frantically because back in ‘62 and ‘63 that could buy a lot of marbles and model airplanes. Soon the pile was covered with holes like swiss cheese as the kids dug like an army of ants. Dust hanging in the air and sweat running down our backs we kept digging shoving coins down our bulging pockets.

One year after digging a while, another kid and I walked up the long hill to his house where we ate sandwiches and listened to a transistor radio in his canterbury tree. I remember the announcer talking about Sandy Koufax. It might have been ‘63 when he pitched in the World Series against the Yankees. After a little while I walked further to the top of the hill and the old red brick elementary school.

In the auditorium I watched a film about Alan Shepard’s flight into space in the Spring of ‘61. Flickering light streamed from the projector behind us onto the large screen in front creating a slightly blurry black and white picture of a man in a tiny space capsule. I remembered seeing that picture as it happened on the black and white T.V. in the second grade.Then the film told of John Glenn’s orbit around the earth in 1962.

After that we walked up to the movie theater in town, got in free, spent a nickel on candy bars and a dime on a coca cola. A red and white box of popcorn was a dime. I can remember the excitement walking into the pleasantly cool theater then plopping into a soft seat. Cartoons came on and it was quiet. Then there was a movie where a man on this strange island used a long wooden pole to fend off a giant crab. 

It was a great time to be a kid and not feel pressured to grow up fast and be protected feeling the whole town was watching over you. We could explore and wonder about things or just use our imaginations. There were so many interesting things all around that my curiosity kept me in an almost constant state of excitement as I explored.

Along with the interesting stores and small drug stores with comic book stands and lunch counters there was the library where you could get lost in an interesting book. After you finished reading there was the city park with lots of swings, slides and a merry go round which could go faster by pulling a bar and pushing on another bar with your feet.

Kids sat in groups making that contraption spin faster than the earth while those trying to get on were dragged like rag dolls until they pulled themselves up over the seats. Getting off was a real trick as you tumbled and rolled after ejecting. Time was suspended as we spun around laughing, giggling and even at times screaming. What seemed like five minutes might have been an hour.  I sometimes wondered why I didn’t fly off the earth.

Going home was always an adventure as we could explore different parts of town on the way to our destination. One street had massive oaks as old as time itself and old two story houses with screened in porches on both floors. Pictures of Model T’s rumbling down the street and people talking on porches on sleepy summer nights came to mind. Sometimes I felt I was in another time or “the hour of the pearl.” 

Another way home took us around the old red brick elementary school and the basement classroom. We would kneel down and see the hanging skeleton and jars of dead animals. Sometimes it would be a cow skeleton and jars of glassy eyed snakes. Around dark a light was often shining making those snake eyes gleam. We would hurry on our way wondering if the creepy science teacher was around.

We were always using our imaginations to make up fun things to do. One Saturday me and my sister pretended we were walking to the center of the earth by way of the red brick school building. Stepping carefully along narrow brick ledges while grasping at the mortar between bricks above us we climbed along the walls pretending there were bottomless chasms or molten lava below us. Time and place were suspended as we lived in our own little world.

Another time me and my sister along with neighbor friends transformed an overgrown lot behind our house into an adventure in the jungles and savannas of Africa. Using a sling and lawnmower we cut main paths through the stalks of weeds and wild potato vines. We added smaller connecting trails and hiding places throughout the area.

Walking along the paths and trails the explorers were trying to get out of the maze to the other side of the lot which was where they came out of the jungle. The head hunters and wild animals were already in the hiding places and crouching in the connecting trails as the trek began. We’d have a blast for several hours playing different parts and creating new obstacles like quick sand and river crossings with alligators. Sometimes we would stop and throw wild potatoes at each other.

As I got older and started riding a bike I would often ride across town to a friend’s house. We would go down into and explore the drainage ditches all around town. Sometimes we’d take sandwiches and cokes and spend half the day turning over rocks and searching the stream bed for something shiny or colorful.

We’d take all our booty back to his house and hose it down in his backyard. There would be old cork stopper medicine bottles in various shapes and sizes with the glass etched in animals and designs showing a name. The colors came in light rose, deep blue and bright turquoise. We’d divy up the spoils and I’d ride home with one or two bottles as the late afternoon sun lit up the old oak in front of the courthouse. 

Somehow I obtained a flintlock pistol. It just seemed to appear one day in my room. The barrel was octagonal with no noticeable rust, had a sight for aiming and still had the pan and plate. The dark brown handle was about two inches long. I was the only kid in town with a flintlock pistol and I proudly showed it to my friends. 

After school when I was alone I would sometimes sit in my room looking around just admiring and taking in everything. Pictures of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were to the left of my bed. I got them off a Frosted Flakes box. My eyes would always drift over to the shelf with the model cars and planes. The X15 looked like it could fly out of my room.

Afternoon light sometimes streamed through illuminating the multi-colored bottles and bathing the room in a soft Autumn glow. I would just watch for a while feeling happy. It was great being a kid and I couldn’t wait for the next Saturday morning.

 

 

 

lessons learned

You’re weird

  • May 25, 2022June 17, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

Have you often felt the world is going too fast and you just want off? Did you have a hard time growing up and navigating all the social situations? Do you feel like you are always behind and trying to catch up and just can’t figure out life and where you belong?

I, too, have known those feelings plus being overwhelmed and have often found things important to me were not so with other people. I’ve always been a little different and been called weird a few times maybe more out of affection but how many kids at eleven sit on their front steps admiring the lines of a 58 Chevy wagon or reflect on life and wonder about God?

I had good friends but there was always this secret place inside myself to reflect and just be alone. I wondered why we didn’t fly off earth as it spinned or why the moon followed while you rode in a car. Sometimes I thought about people or things happening in my life.

Life was going really smooth in elementary school, enjoying  teammates on my baseball team, and enjoying the game. I had come a long way from the beginning when I was terrified playing in front of people. Now I loved baseball and camping out with friends after Friday night games. Life had a nice flow and predictability.

I could climb trees, watch Shock Theater, ride my bike down Howell Avenue flying over the bumps, and Saturdays play all day with friends. There was the third floor attic and dreams of turning it into a hangout with a pool table and chairs. Dad’s artificial arm hanging on the brick chimney could be a conversation starter and on the walls I would put posters of sports stars.

A window overlooked the street below and two streets further down the hill was the primary school and below that the high school and football field. Farther out on Highway 41 was Chinsegut hill and beyond puffy white clouds floating to the horizon. It was a great place to think and daydream.

Junior high came with the Beatles singing “I want to hold your hand.” Also organized sports, dating, and all the social rules and cliques. A dreamer and contrarian, I didn’t care about those rules. Being the son of a teacher and partially deaf made me a target for bullies.

Pressure to make the team and coaches yelling took the fun out of sports. Now I was competing with eighth graders who were bigger and faster. My anxieties of playing in public came back and I no longer had the security of my dad coaching me. It was a tough experience for a sensitive kid who didn’t understand jock culture.

Adolescence takes many forms. Guys mature early with lots of confidence while others find their voices suddenly cracking around girls painfully self conscious of saying the right thing and being seen with the right people. Meanwhile more mature girls are gatekeepers of the cool kid’s club.

In seventh grade I was a free spirited individualist picking friends because I liked them not because they were popular. We were still playing baseball and hanging out together along with a few new guys. Camping out we smoked wild potato vines telling stories around a fire and talking about girls then late at night we’d go out in the woods and play flashlight tag. 

 In eighth grade adolescence brought zits, social anxiety and the feeling I woke up on a different planet. My emotions were a rollercoaster. A girl smiled, I was on cloud nine, somebody laughed at me and others were laughing behind my back. Then after school I’d play basketball with friends and life was good again. 

 Sports dominated my life … football, basketball and in the Spring baseball. Nothing was fun anymore, it was always about competition plus an older guy was bullying me and even threatened to kill me one time. Nightmares came and for almost a week I woke up shaking with my heart pounding. Something seemed to change inside me and I became more fearful.

Playing football the next two years I was either too light or slow and broke my arm twice while other guys were getting bigger and more athletic. Tired of putting in all the time, seeing no results and dealing with injuries, I just wanted to get out. I was tired of the constant grind of practice and all the anxiety especially of games.  

In the eleventh grade I quit football and school clubs and it felt good having less pressure. However there was guilt over letting people down, especially coaches, but also a feeling I could breathe and maybe enjoy life again. Now I had time to just enjoy being with friends and have intelligent conversations with different kinds of people.

 The 11th and 12th grades I believe were the beginning of a process called individuation. It was a separation between what I wanted and what had been expected of me. I had to break away from football and other people’s expectations to establish a separate identity to begin understanding myself, the world, and how I fitted in the big scheme of things.

However I was not very good at thinking logically then as I shut down academically and emotionally from school. My grades plummeted and I began to feel like the world was against me.  Clubs and school events seemed corny and juvenile as I preferred being with close friends talking about things other than high school. I managed to squeak by graduating with a C average.

 I’ve often wondered why I acted the way I did and how it could have been better. In my mid twenties I took the Myers Briggs personality test and found my type, INFP, is kind of rare. Over the years I’ve learned about myself and other types, understanding my needs and behaviors and how others may think and see the world differently. 

For example in the eight grade I had very little free time. Being an introvert and a feeling, sensitive type, I needed more alone time to relax, process feelings and figure out things. All the activity over time wore me down and I think I was suffering burnout. As an intuitive I need to be able to imagine and think outside my own narrow existence to keep my mind excited and energized.

An ESTJ, the opposite of an INFP, would have been better able to look objectively, with much less emotion, at my situation and would have had a rational plan. Regardless of pressure from coaches he might have told me to cut back or take a year off from sports. Success in classes and socially was more important as well as having time alone. 

In the bullying situation my dominant cognitive function of feeling took over making me unable to see and take in what was happening or react rationally. All I could do was go where my feelings took me and just react. Inside all I could feel was that men handled things on their own and it was shameful to fail or be seen as weak. 

 A bully’s dream, he could do anything and I’d never tell anyone. Also I felt partly to blame because dad fired him from a job. Feeling types can be so empathetic that they can be manipulated and put other people’s needs above their own. Then tied up in emotional knots they’re frozen unable to come to any decision to help themselves.

An ESTJ would never have been manipulated by feelings of guilt but would have seen the facts which were the bully was two years older, much bigger, not well liked, and deserving of no sympathy. He may have found out other students were being bullied and that the bully had been in reform school and came from a troubled home with an alcoholic father.

The ESTJ would have looked logically at the situation coming up with a strategy which included telling his parents or teachers and possibly talking with the coach. With other bullied kids, he may have gone to the principal, or with some older, larger kids talked to the bully. He would never have had nightmares because he would have been able to keep his emotions in check.

In the 11th and 12th grades I was inside myself way too much with all my emotions even though outwardly I seemed not to care. Keeping a journal would have helped me pull away some from my dominant feeling function and think more logically about my problems like an ESTJ. Ultimately though I should have shared those feelings with family or close friends.

 Also, I wouldn’t have been so hard on myself. Knowing my type I would have understood my needs and not have felt so self conscious about being different. I would have fixed up the attic making it a haven for me and also a place to think as I looked out the window at the white clouds in the distance. I would have done what I wanted even if it was spending all day reading in bed or sitting on the front steps admiring the lines of a 58 Chevy wagon. 

 Knowing other personality types I hope that I would have seen everyone’s uniqueness and not lumped them into groups. Understanding their weaknesses maybe I would have been more forgiving and less judgmental. That’s a weakness of an INFP, not seeing details and using our feelings to generalize about people. Maybe I could have gotten to know more people and they could have helped me with algebra and explained why they were so enthralled about high school.

 Listening more closely and being observant, I would have tried to live more in the moment like an ISFP, paying attention to little things about people like changes in their eyes and facial expressions. I would have listened more to the rain on our tin roof and watched the yellow butterflies dancing over the daisies in the field by our house. 

 An INFP is very intuitive looking outward at the world, seeking knowledge, seeing similarities and patterns trying to find truth and also seeing possibilities. In a way it pulls an INFP out of his dominant introverted feeling, helping him to actually start looking at the world and start using his thinking function more.

 I would have used my extroverted intuition to think about what I wanted out of life. It would have driven me to talk with my parents and teachers about the problems I was having hearing and understanding. Tutoring could have been arranged and whole new worlds opened up to me.

Algebra would have shown me how to use logic to solve problems and chemistry would have opened up the vast unseen worlds of molecules, atoms and quadratic equations. School would be fun and challenging again as I actually learned how to think. This would have given me new possibilities about my future and more to ponder.

Like an ENFP I would have tried to be more outward looking becoming more aware of the different groups in my high school hopefully learning how they operated and their unspoken beliefs and rules. Who were the leaders and how strong was groupthink and which ones were most open to knowing outsiders? 

I would have figured out what I wanted from the high school experience and used strategic planning. Being more intentional I would have sought friendships with good people I thought would be stimulating and also with those hard to understand and very different from me. It would have helped me understand the world a little better and enriched my life.

This is a lot of information, I know, and I hope maybe something I wrote will help someone. My main idea is to shine some light on this difficult time in life, at least to some of us, and help us gain some perspective, some insights and maybe even a little healing.

Imagining how other types would react is a good way of looking at high school and also of dealing with current situations. It helps take us out of ourselves and see things in different ways. New understandings can be incorporated into our present life to expand our cognitive abilities and enrich our lives. Just a thought but maybe you could try being a different personality type for a day. If it goes well you might want to try out other personality types.

In ending I just want to stress that being an INFP is okay. We have wonderful gifts and talents so the next time someone says you’re weird just smile at them and say, “No, I’m just unique.”             

          

                   

                               

 

            

 

lessons learned

Serendipity

  • May 25, 2022June 17, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

In the summer of 1963 ,when I was eight, I visited my grandfather in Arkansas and when we were on the front porch of his house I asked him if he could beat up Nikita Kruschev.  Kruschev had been on TV pounding a lectern with his shoe saying the U.S.S.R. would bury the United States. He seemed like a school bully and I wondered if granddaddy could protect me. I don’t remember what he said but it made me feel like everything was going to be okay.

Did you ever have a dream where you’re walking around in a strange city trying to find your way out? Someone gives you directions but they don’t make sense and everything keeps changing randomly so you have no landmarks to guide you. The sun is going down and people and places seem meaner and harder. You feel empty and afraid then you wake up.

I began to feel that way my junior year in high school. That summer on the front porch with my grandfather seemed so far away in 1970. Positive feelings and optimism had been replaced by uncertainty and a growing undefined guilt at being an American. Instead of unity, divisiveness was growing throughout the country.

I was almost nine when J.F.K. was assassinated but life in our small town continued unaffected. Then hoses and dogs were turned on people in Selma but I believed that good people would prevail. In April 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated then two months later Robert Kennedy was killed. My age of innocence was gone and I was no longer sure good would prevail. 

G.I. ‘s in fire fights with Viet Cong began appearing every night on the news and local boys were dying in Viet Nam. Anti-war demonstrations were breaking out on college campuses and draft cards were burned. In August, 1968 at the Democratic National Convention television coverage switched between the nomination of Hubert Humphrey and police outside battling with long haired protestors. 

I went on with my daily life with a growing sense that things were changing rapidly. Jim Morrison of the Doors in late ’66 said “I like ideas about the breaking away or overthrowing of established order. I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that seems to have no meaning.” In my dreams two plus two began to equal five and the fear began that nothing made any sense.

In early 1969 news of the My Lai massacre in VietNam began coming out. Charlie Company of the 11th Infantry Brigade had possibly killed as many as several hundred people in the village of My Lai and it was in the news for weeks. Soldiers were now baby killers and spat on by long haired hippie types in airports. The Company leader William Calley was convicted of murder and in an odd way i felt guilt just being an American.

By 1970 drugs came to our small town. I tried mariquana which just made me paranoid and smelled like burning rope. Alcohol was my preferred drug and I drank a lot that junior year. Mainly because of peer pressure but also to help me socialize. I heard through the grapevine others were making psychedelics out of a certain mushroom and were taking heroin and L.S.D. One slightly older guy committed suicide that year.

Social norms were really changing. The Rolling Stones had released “Let’s spend the night together” in 1967 and much of the music we listened to was heavily sexualized. For many guys a date with a girl was a conquest as we were urged to “Go all the way” as sung by the Raspberries in 1972. It made for a toxic mixture of lust, guilt and anxiety.

The Doors with front man Jim Morrison released the song “Break on through” in 1967. The group took its name from “The Doors of Perception” written by Aldous Huxley who had a positive experience using mescaline and thought it could expand the way we used our minds. Psychedelic drugs became the vehicle of rock groups to reach altered states of excitement, enlightenment and heightened eroticism. This quickly spread to teenagers looking for sex, thrills and maybe even God.

Also in 1970 there was a growing nihilism among me and some of my friends. Vietnam was still hot and there was always that fear we might wind up there. The music was dark and sometimes demonic with occult symbols and messages. “Stairway to heaven” sounded otherworldly and dangerous while the Rolling Stones song “Paint it Black” was depressing.  

I see the girls walk by 

Dressed in their summer clothes

I have to turn my head

Until my darkness goes.

The music itself had a dark feel. Other songs like “Run through the Jungle” and “Let’s live for today” made me think about dying in Vietnam but finding some pretty girl tonight to get drunk with and find comfort. I had no chance of going to Vietnam because of partial deafness but still I soaked up the feelings of my friends and made them mine.

That year Jimi Hendrix ,on September 18th 1970, suffocated on his vomit from a drug overdose then October 4th Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose. On July 3rd, 1971 Jim Morrison died of a heart attack. He had broken through to the other side but what was over there? They were all just 27. It didn’t make any sense.

My senior year was like the dream where i’m wandering around a strange city trying to find my way out but to where? My friends were just as lost and didn’t know it. They said things like party hearty and do your own thing….whatever that means. I felt overwhelmed and any real wisdom seemed to go right over my numb brain. A girl that year said she was a member of the church of what’s happening now and I felt like I was sitting on the front pew.

By the time I left for college in September, 1972 I was a ship lost at sea. I didn’t know what was right or wrong or even if there was such a thing. Forget about knowing how to decide. For all I knew we just made up everything as we went along on this meaningless cosmic ride. I was a long way from that summer with my grandfather and the feeling that everything was going to be okay.

The college in the middle of Georgia had around three thousand on campus students. Once called the Harvard of the South it had old two and three story brick buildings clothed in ivy as well as light stone and brick buildings built in the last few decades. Large oak and hickory trees graced the gently sloping campus that could be walked across in fifteen minutes. 

Walking around campus with my parents we passed other wide eyed students also with their parents. The nervousness clung to me as I tried processing being on my own for the first time in my life. After they left I felt strangely detached as I sat in my dorm room wondering what was next? Then I met my roommate.

Smoking a corn cob pipe he liked the simple things in life and his long, wavy hair was never out of place. He played guitar and harmonica like Bob Dylan, sometimes playing his music. Guys started hanging out in our room smoking weed, acting like they shared some private joke and being condescending when I tried to make conversation. Then one night they lit a ring of lighter fluid around my bed as I slept. I avoided them after that.

The first few weeks were a rush of new experiences as I began classes and met people. One of the most interesting persons was my English teacher who took the time to try and know me. She wore long cotton dresses and her hair was long and brown. Wire rim glasses made her look the writer as well as her gentle, sensitive manner. She thought I had potential and was possibly a kindred spirit…. an INFP like I later discovered I was.

She asked open ended questions about things we read which sparked a lot of free flowing discussions. The subjects were sometimes funny like when we were asked to describe taking a bath in jello and mind scrambling the time she asked when was two plus two equal to five. Carlos Castenada’s experiences taking peyote made me wonder why anybody would do that and what did they gain?

Reality was being examined through reason, drugs, social norms and the senses. In the case of drugs my default reaction was look what it did for Jim Morrison. With reason it was more nuanced and interacted with social norms. Two plus two equals five can be synonymous with an authoritarian country that controls what people know with the byproduct intense peer pressure which begs the question…. “does belief in a consensus reality make the lie true?”

Two plus two equals five had been in my dreams about five years before and had a very personal meaning. How could you know if anything was true if all methods for finding truth are valid making all answers true? How can I really know what I know? I was probably one of the few people that felt like that. Most thought it was a fun, easy class and a few saw that it was designed to create writers. Back then I couldn’t put into words what I was thinking or searching for but I do remember feeling anxious most of the time.

Art class was simply learning how to draw and I enjoyed it. A nice girl named Margaret sat next to me and we started having lunch together. I think she sensed my troubles interacting with people and was trying to help me. Having lunch with her gave me a bubble of security and I could talk to her. She invited me to Baptist Student Union activities but I resisted.

Due to my bad grades but potential I was placed in the Alternate Freshman Program. It emphasized informal learning and developing a small community. We met with our professor and two older students in their homes which turned out to be part self esteem rehab (we listened to excerpts from the Velveteen Rabbit) and social enlightenment which sounded to me a lot like their own opinions. 

The group was a mix of high academic achievers, underachievers like myself, dreamy artistic types and a few very average people. Some were lost like me and struggled with social situations and at least one was manic depressive. One really smart guy seemed to understand situations and people better and became friends with me. Intuitively I didn’t feel the professor was doing anything to prove her ideas right. 

Meanwhile my roommate was disappearing with friends for days at a time. They mentioned one time hitchhiking to a concert and buying drugs. Janis Joplin a little over a year before took some untested, lethal heroin and her heart exploded a few seconds later and she smashed down on the carpet. My roommate and his friends were somehow enlightened and knew what they were doing just like Janis. 

Margaret was a real Godsend during this time. She was a Christian and had a loving quality and a calmness. So many seemed to be selling ideas and attitudes and only accepted me if I agreed with them. With her it was different. There was a light around her as I began opening up and she sometimes shared her faith. With her I could disagree and she still liked me. 

White witch, a rock band, played on campus that Fall and I felt darkness and danger yet others watched with no awareness. My sister and I had seances using a ouija board and soon quit but a silent presence remained making my bedroom suddenly cold in the summer and appearing as an apparition blocking the door. When I was in the 11th grade the presence smothered me with a pillow until I thought I was going to die. Even that Fall the presence seemed to be following me.

I’m a highly sensitive person that has what is called sensory processing sensitivity. About the third or fourth week of school I was starting to feel overwhelmed by everything. I couldn’t selectively filter sensations so everything seemed to be coming all at once. It made it hard to concentrate as different sensations pulled at me and my attention was like an old black and white TV fading back and forth between channels.

It got to where I didn’t want to go to classes with all the people talking and moving around. Not only were my senses overloaded, I also felt very anxious. The cafeteria was really difficult. One dreary, cold day I was about to finish eating when the song “I am a rock” by Simon and Garfunkel began. 

A winter’s day 

In a deep and dark December

I am alone

I picked up my tray and began walking toward the door past noisy, crowded tables.

I’ve built walls

A fortress deep and mighty

That none may penetrate

I have no need of friendships friendship causes pains

The sound was swirling around me as I dropped off my tray and headed to the exit.

I have my books

And my poetry to protect me

I am shielded in my armor

Hiding in my room safe within my womb

I touch no one and no one touches me

I am a rock I am an island

I walked up the small hill past a skeletal tree to my empty room.

 

My roommate was gone now for weeks at a time and I really enjoyed the privacy. I drew my high top tennis shoes from different angles in pencil as well as my hands, even my transistor radio that looked like a gas pump. Also for art class I created a mobile of geometrical designs and painted it.

In English class we were reading classics like the “Rump Wiper”, a man on a quest to find the ideal replacement for toilet paper and also writing a paper to describe the edge of a magnified razor. I don’t mean to sound sarcastic, the teacher was really good and was just trying to get us to think in different ways so we could be better writers.

I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X in AFP but at seventeen how much can you really know about life. I definitely couldn’t think critically so I was relying on the opinions of people a year older and the professor. AFP had this feeling of trying to shape me in a way I didn’t know or understand and not teaching me how to think and giving the resources so I could learn to make intelligent decisions.

 Meanwhile through Margaret I met other Christians and eventually went with her to the Baptist Student Union one night. We sang songs and listened to a message and it was really nice. I felt comfortable around them and began to open up some. It was a little bit of light shining in my world.

The Christians were different. Some of them carried Bibles everywhere, wore khaki and button down shirts and penny loafers. The word brother was used even though I didn’t feel that close and sometimes they wanted to pray with you. Yes it was different and sometimes awkward and some might say nerdy. But they weren’t mad at their father and experimenting with dangerous drugs. There was a calm about them and they were nice.

I went home at Thanksgiving and my mind worked overtime trying to process everything. Going back was hard, especially when I said goodbye to my parents. My roommate was gone but the weather was dismal as I trudged past turned down faces and heard occasional laughter on my way to class. Then I would go with Margaret or by myself to the cafeteria then back to my room for the rest of the day.

Several weeks went by in a blur then one day I got into a cab with my suitcase. The sky was gray and trees naked riding past somber old houses to the bus station. I lit a cigarette as the bus pulled out and stared out as everything rushed by. Then we were out on the Interstate and trees and open fields.  At noon we stopped at a truck stop restaurant. The fields were turned up clay as tractors went down long lines of churned up red ground. Then we were on the road again.

 

Been walking my mind to an easy time

My back turned towards the sun

Lord knows, when the cold wind blows

It’ll turn your head around

James Taylor, Fire and Rain

 

I thought of this song as I stared out at the flat land. The last few months had been cold and hard with lots of new ideas and experiences. Some had literally turned my head around, more like scrambling my mind, and leaving me with more uncertainties. Sometimes my brain felt like a garbage can that all this stuff had been dumped into and I was still trying to sort it all out.

But there had been some light and illumination and a glimpse of something that was better and made sense. I thought about Margaret and her Christian friends and the peace they had and I envied them. I lit another cigarette and stared out at the afternoon light slanting golden red across the fields. 

The bus entered a small town and took several turns going down brick streets past a rusty tin warehouse, small frame houses and empty lots then turned right maneuvering in front of a high school marching band and behind a float with people throwing out candy. Smiling, laughing folks, young and old, stood on both sides of the street in front of barber shops, insurance offices and small cafes. The band was playing “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

We opened the bus windows and soon were sticking our arms out waving at the smiling crowds. A few people in the back started singing spontaneously along with the band. Everyone on the bus was smiling and laughing and suddenly talking with people that were strangers just minutes ago. Even the sunlight shining between and on the red brick buildings seemed more golden.

Maybe there was a lot of good in Americans in spite of all the criticism and there were a lot of things that didn’t need to be changed. Some traditions and beliefs were good and they helped us to be better humans. Maybe some things were absolute and needed to be held onto and maybe there was a God. Maybe logic and reason and belief could go hand in hand and everything be okay like it was on the front porch with my grandaddy.

 

lessons learned

The man who lived in an egg color

  • May 25, 2022June 17, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

The waitress took our order for coffee. That’s all we ordered until the Pizza Hut protested so we started getting toast and English muffins and always stayed until closing. The usual suspects were Gary, a VietNam Vet, Kerry a.k.a. Mr. Coffee, Alan, called Captain Weirdo though I called him Captain America, and myself. Sometimes David, the quiet one, and Bill, also a Vietnam Veteran would show up.

The year was 1975. Elvis was still touring and bell bottoms and long hair were popular. M.A.S.H was a popular tv show making green Army jackets popular. In the real world the Vietnam War ended April 30th and Vets were readjusting to civilian life. New words like space cadet, far out, pad and threads were being used. We were also learning about post traumatic stress disorder from the Vets.

I had been at a four year college the year before with no direction and mediocre grades, so in June of 1974 I went back home. I watched a lot of the Nixon Impeachment hearings that summer and worked on an ink drawing of a stone grist mill. In between I ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches washed down with coca cola.

My parents kept insisting I get out and do something so finally I went to a football game with an old friend. Somehow I felt disconnected and had no interest in football or talking about high school. I had learned things and met some unusual people and the old things no longer seemed important or interesting.

That Fall classes began at the Community College which was an old furniture store. It had a handful of classes and most of us had been together in high school. A large counter had a secretary who helped with registration and other matters while in the back were several small buildings with classrooms. It had the look and feel of high school 2.0. which I thought I had escaped at college in Georgia.

There I made some very good friends, had long intelligent conversations about almost anything and had more freedom to know different kinds of people. I felt like I finally belonged somewhere and felt free to express myself. I almost felt like an adult but all that changed when I went back home.

Somewhere I had picked up this idea that through the right knowledge and experiences you could become more enlightened and engaged in life. You would become the real you and be self actualized. Transcendentalism was another idea. It started around 1836 with poets, philosophers and theologians to get away from understanding everything just through reason. Nature, art and literature were some of the ways God could talk in a mystical way. It was very intuitive.

It felt romantic and made me feel different having knowledge and experiences other people didn’t. At Georgia everything seemed limitless and full of possibilities. Back home I was already defined and felt like I was in a cage. My life felt limited or was it? Looking back there were opportunities if only I had been open to them. I was too idealistic to see them.

Meanwhile Vets talked to guidance counselors and took aptitude and personality tests. Other students were exploring career opportunities. I took some tests too which showed artistic leanings with suggestions like commercial or graphic artist. I didn’t follow up, instead I just concentrated on getting my A.A. Degree and experiencing and learning different things. Part of the idea of self actualizing.

My parents were worried about my lack of direction which was partly because I feared making the wrong career choice. They did try to have a conversation but I shrugged them off thinking they would be against my being a commercial artist. I did say something about being a teacher that seemed to placate them for a while.

In early Spring of 1975 my parents encouraged me, actually dragged me to a tent revival with the idea of straightening me out and giving me direction. It would have been much better if we  had conversations about my hearing loss and my talents and personality. Maybe we could have come up with some career possibilities but I might not have listened.

At the fairgrounds I left my parents and made my way through the standing crowd to the restrooms. Going back I got stopped behind a group of people talking and was waiting for them to move when a short, thin guy about my age started talking to me. We were standing under the covered entrance of the restrooms and being tall I could see my parents. 

They were getting annoyed as Alan and I talked, then angry as the crowd started toward the revival gate. We just clicked and kept talking like old friends as the crowd disappeared into the revival. Christian music was playing on an organ as people sang then someone said a prayer.

He would arch his dark eyebrows over his brown glasses as he stroked his bearded chin then suddenly his eyes would brighten as he quickly rattled off something as he had a sudden inspiration. He was excitable with an expressive face, talking fast using his hands a lot. A leather visor kept long hair out of his eyes and flip up sun visors sat on his glasses. He was  eccentric, lively, and sometimes theatrical and kind of reminded me of a leprechaun.

We walked over to the revival, two opposites, I was tall and laid back, he was short and excitable. I was Joe Buck and he was Ratso Rizzo from the Midnight Cowboy. Several people gave us “hairy eyeballs”, cold stares,as we entered the tent about thirty minutes late. Someone  had been saved and was giving his testimonial. It sounded kind of scripted but who am I to say.

 I was doing well in school taking biology, American government and several other subjects and spending free time drawing. Maybe it was immaturity but I was not thinking at all about making a living and possibly getting married. I just felt if I followed my interests and stayed true to myself everything would turn out okay. 

That sounds strange to many people but that is who I was then. I felt I had to follow this one true path to fulfill my destiny. Looking back it was so impractical. Much of the time calling if it ever comes arrives after maturing so when you’re young be pragmatic, choose the best work option available and become competent. You will gain self worth and respect making it easier to later change careers if you choose. Feelings, fears, pride and misguided thinking kept me in an intuitive bubble keeping me from clearly seeing reality. 

That is how I thought in 1975 and why I was such an enigma to my parents. I became good friends with Alan and we started meeting the other guys at the Pizza Hut, drinking coffee and eating toast, talking until closing. We all seemed to be searching for meaning, validation or simply to be understood. There was nothing bad or devious about any of us. The main thing is we all felt different and on the outside of society looking in.

Sometimes me and Alan would go over to my house and we would just keep talking until my dad threw us out figuratively. Alan got more energized as the night burned on while I fought through grogginess.Then around four thirty I began to experience sudden clarity and felt like I could understand and talk about anything. Sometimes it felt mystical and enlightening like an altered state of consciousness.

Alan talked about Faust and his bargain with Mephistopheles, the Devil, and we wondered if Jim Morrison had made this deal. He talked about being an outsider at a tiny Oklahoma high school then it was C.S. Lewis and the Screwtape Letters and Alan acting out one of the devil scenes with crazy eyes and gleaming face as he rubbed his hands together. Being at odd places at weird times would sometimes come up and we would talk about how it affected your feelings and mind.

Alan was always full of surprises and kind of quirky like the time I went to his house before Christmas and he was brewing tea on a butane camping stove in his bedroom. A hitchhiker from Canada he met a few days before was staying with him so we spent an hour or two talking about Canada and his experiences on the road.

 Then about six months later I visited him and his mother again at a new house. Alan was all excited and wanted to show me his new pad out back. He led me across the backyard and into a large tin roof open air shed. We stopped in front of a large white box refrigerator for storing egg crates and he pulled the metal lever opening the thick six inch door. We stepped inside and I had to crouch as I sat down against one wall.

The ceiling may have been five and a half feet high with a bare light bulb and ventilation fan. Two other guys I had never met were sitting against another wall smoking. Probably Canadian hitchhikers. Alan was sitting in the middle next to an air mattress and butane camping stove. A hazy cigarette cloud hovered just inches above him.

I don’t remember any of the conversation except Alan talking about wiring his door so at night he could flip a switch electrifying the outside. My chest was getting tighter and eyes burning and I kept looking up wondering when it was going to rain cigarettes. The room kept feeling smaller so after about thirty minutes I left. 

We knew each other about two years but he’s one of those characters that sticks in your mind. He gave me a Bible that says Merry Christmas 1975, Alan and every time I read it I remember our good times. The day he left we talked a little and I remember he was imagining fixing his old Plymouth to look like a spaceship. Then we said our goodbyes and he drove down our driveway and was gone. Good luck Alan. You showed up when I really needed a friend.

 

 

 

lessons learned

Mr. Hardwick

  • July 19, 2021June 17, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

Mr. Hardwick lived across the street in a large white house with a tin roof. In front were two large Canterbury trees surrounded by pink azalea plants and between the trees a sidewalk went up to two steps and a screen door. The front porch was large and screened in from just below the ceiling down almost to the floor.

In his seventies he was medium height and wiry. His fine white hair was often wind blown like straw and his deep set grey blue eyes were penetrating. He often walked down the street, stoop shouldered and slightly shuffling with his small brown dog. When I walked past him he seemed to always look down.

Several years before my mom brought my grand dad to Florida and found him an apartment two blocks away. In his mid seventies he was still active walking up the hills of our small town. Almost everyday I rode my bike to visit him and we would eat oreos and drink bottles of coke as we played dominoes. I also started mowing his yard.

For almost two years I would ride over there, leave my bike on his porch, and walk in the front door. He always had bags of caramel squares and chocolate covered cherries. I would grab a handful of caramel squares and we’d sit on the porch and he’d ask how school was and I’d always mumble it was okay.

Gradaddy was not a story teller and I was not much of a talker so the conversation was short and usually about school or baseball. Then we’d go inside and break out the oreos and cokes and begin playing dominoes. He always called the extra dominoes that you drew after playing the bone yard as we listened to the news on his old radio.

He started to get forgetful and sometimes got confused when he was walking or would start saying stuff that didn’t make sense. At Church he made faces at the choir. Mom said it was hardening of the arteries and he was put in a group home where he died about a year later of a stroke.

The funeral was in Batesville, Arkansas and it was dreary and cold the whole time. Sitting in the service was like a dream and I kept wanting to open the coffin to make sure it was him. Being twelve I never had any family die. It was something I couldn’t understand and I thought about grand daddy a lot even at school. 

That was when Mr. Hardwick entered my life. He came over to our house and asked if I could mow his lawn. It was okay with my parents then they began talking and mom asked him how he was doing. He said he was getting by alright. Mrs. Hardwick had died about six months before. 

I started mowing his yard every two weeks and he would pay me and I would leave then one day he offered cheese and crackers with tea. My feet could barely touch the blue gray wooden floor as I sat in a large rocking chair. Several other rockers with small tables were placed along the porch which was about thirty feet long. 

Soon I started going over there just to visit and hear his stories. Bobo, a small brown and white dog that looked like a collie laid at his feet as Mr. Hardwick in his dignified English baritone talked about going from England to Canada on a boat when he was 18. Sometimes he paused as his eyes twinkled then he softly chuckled as he remembered something. 

He worked in different lumber camps until he reached the Pacific and told me about spit freezing in the air and large stacks of flapjacks with butter and maple syrup for breakfast. He said a hay wagon ran over him once and smiled when he said nothing can kill you when you’re twenty.

Smoking a cigar, he waved it or looked at it then would start talking about hopping trains in Alberta. He would slide the train door closed then make a small fire to stay warm. Sometimes he saw Indians on trails in the Northwest Territory. The way he described things made it seem so real. 

Over time he became like a grandfather especially after my sister left for college. He would ask about school or life in general and sometimes I told him my problems. High school was hard and at times I felt I didn’t belong anywhere…in a way we were kindred spirits. One time he told me that even when you feel alone, God is always with you. 

He quoted poetry and loved Tennyson ….. “May there be no moaning at the bar when I ship out to sea.” He often quoted that line and now I understand it has to do with not grieving when someone dies but remembering the good life they had. Mr. Hardwick was a self reliant, proud man and didn’t want people to feel sorry for him.

Sometimes he read his own poetry and explained it to me as Bobo laid at his feet. He liked to talk about how certain simple habits help you live a good life and he explained that working in his yard gave him a reason to get up in the morning. I think it also helped him focus his mind away from bad thoughts.

Being private and reflective with no family and few friends he was often alone. His independence also isolated him; church people asked him to attend but he said his yard was his church and where he found God. I really respected this about him…he was an individualist who thought for himself.

 I stayed with Mr. Hardwick one time for a week. At night in his easy chair smoking a cigar he talked about meeting his wife and how they would talk. After they married she helped him as a photographer. He would nod, then wake up as his cigar burned his pants. Sometimes I put the cigar in the ashtray.

There was a real honesty about him I admired. All he wanted was to live his life on his own simple terms without having to pretend he was something else. He always talked to me like I was an intelligent person and he was someone that just wanted to be left alone to care for his azalea bushes which gave him some kind of peace. 

I sometimes wonder why we meet certain people in our lives. Could it be that there are a few people in everyone’s life that God brings to teach certain lessons and to help them? I think Mr. Hardwick was one of those special people in my life.

He came along right after my grandfather died when I was entering adolescence and provided the guidance and understanding I really needed. For that I will always think of him as my other grandfather.

lessons learned

The Young Republicans

  • July 6, 2021June 2, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

What is the response when someone says young Republican? In today’s hyper driven corporate media world and from Hollywood it is always negative filled with untruths and stereotypes. Truth be told they live in a world where everybody has to think the same. I prefer to think for myself and i’m certainly not going to believe someone just because they have made a lot of movies.

Many people in high school thought the Young Republicans were squares. They were the squeaky clean kids that made straight A’s, never smoke or drank and always seemed so sure of themselves. They were always neatly dressed, had their homework ready on time and never ever made C’s. I was one of those kids that secretly liked them but was quiet whenever someone criticized them.

What did these kids that criticized them know anyway? They were adolescents living in a small town with very little critical thinking skills just copying whatever they heard from other people. They were insulated from reality and believed they knew more than adults. In an odd way it kind of sounds like corporate media and Hollywood.

I never picked sides. You could say I was neutral. It felt safer at the time but it was lonely and isolating. However I couldn’t hide the fact that I was conservative. I liked the Carpenters, wore hushpuppies, had a crush on Marie Osmond and sometimes listened to Johnny Cash and other country singers.

My older sister who had long blonde hair was one of the cooler kids. She was more socially aware of the wider world and at ease in public. She even smoked cigarettes now and then and one time skipped school spending a day in another town day tripping like the Beatles without the drugs. She also liked the louder rock music.

Still we were able to talk about a lot of things. We went to M.Y.F. (Methodist Youth Fellowship) I know you p.c. police are saying we were being brainwashed against our wills but what do you call what the mainstream media and much of Hollywood is doing?

M.Y.F. back in the mid to late sixties was really exciting. Besides pool parties we often had intelligent discussions. Our youth leader Miss. Wood was really great at asking open ended questions that guided us into thinking about a topic from different angles gradually leading us to examine the questions from a Christian perspective. I learned that faith can be rational and that there is an underlying meaning and order to life which i find reassuring.

It was really hard when my sister left for college in the Fall of 1969. I really missed her. Everything seemed to be happening at once with people screaming at each other at protests, riot burning cities, and Vietnam where guys a few years older were dying every day. Then you had Timothy Leary telling everyone to turn on, tune in and drop out. It was a difficult time to be young.

Suddenly baby boomers a few years older than me were going to save the world. A popular movie called “Wild in the Streets” had a twenty something president and detention camps for anyone over thirty where they were kept sedated on L.S.D. Most people probably laughed it off as just a movie but still those ideas were out there. Then some fifty odd years later Hillary Clinton talks about having to reprogram people with certain beliefs.

There were serious young people in the early sixties called the freedom riders who often gave up their lives for racial equality but then there were some who went to extremes and became very intolerant of those who disagreed with them basing everything purely on emotions. Case in point look at how many of the returning servicemen were treated. They were spit on and called baby killers.

I had no exalted opinion of myself and I still don’t. Like a lot of teenagers I was just confused and more interested in dates than trying to save the world. Who was I to tell people how to live when I was trying to find so many answers myself. Besides what was wrong with keeping some things the same and having stability?

Fast forward to today and those aging baby boomers are still trying to save the world and making it worse. Look at all the decaying cities run by Democrats and they have the gall to virtue signal that they are somehow morally superior.

Conservative baby boomers feel unheard and when we do express our ideas we’re accused of being out of touch by liberals. But how do they know our ideas are irrelevant when they won’t even listen to them and how does someone who doesn’t believe in absolutes become absolutely certain they are right? How convenient to label someone irrelevant or bigoted and not have to have an honest discussion.

But that scenario is played out all the time. When Donald Trump spoke about building a wall to keep out Mexicans the media left out key words and pushed the narrative he was a bigot. It was fake news. The Democrats were able to say Trump was a bigot so he is discredited and we don’t have to listen to him. They are able to hide the fact they want mass illegal migration to help them get elected. It’s the cancel culture in action.

It’s ironic that those who were for tolerance in the sixties are now the most elitist intolerant people you will ever meet. Look at colleges, they are the most undemocratic places in the country. Free speech, forget it. Don’t learn critical thinking skills just follow your professor who is one of those anointed baby boomers saving the world. And good luck getting a job with one of those meaningless degrees.

If being intolerant means thinking for yourself and ignoring the p. c. thought police, then I guess I am guilty. I don’t want to force people to think a certain way. I’m still the same guy who in the sixties was trying to make sense of things and live in peace. However, I do want the freedom to express my ideas and live by my values and I expect the same freedom for everyone else. The Bill of Rights guarantees those freedoms.

Having strong feelings and belief in God doesn’t necessarily mean I am going to take your rights away. If I deny you free speech what’s to stop someone else from denying me that freedom. So it’s in our mutual best interests to follow the Constitution. I think sincere religious people believe everyone deserves life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness within context of the rule of law laid out in the constitution.

Progressive Democrats want absolute power for the elite. All their talk about social justice is designed to create chaos and division. It is a smoke screen to try to keep people ignorant of their real intentions. Government is their God and their hearts are a cesspool of hatred and vile corruption. Instead of truth they want everyone dumb and apathetic so they can carry out their real agenda which is control by a few over many. Sounds like Communism.

Thinking back to the M.Y. F. that was the purest sense of democracy I have ever experienced. People weren’t being forced to believe a certain way. Miss: Wood was merely presenting what Methodists believed and helping young people find meaning and direction in life. No one was forced to attend. Isn’t that the essence of democracy……exploring ideas in a civil thoughtful manner?

In making decisions about meaning and direction in life don’t we make judgments about what are the best ideas or beliefs? That’s not being bigoted and intolerant that is just making wise decisions about life. Going one step further isn’t there an order to life and certain laws that make one set of actions preferable to another set of actions and can’t we say these absolutes help us solve problems?

Absolutes like hard work and living a good moral life lead to success and fulfillment as well as respecting elders and the wisdom passed on from them. We don’t need hope and change or whatever vague, deceptive ideas the progressive Democrats push to promote communism; we already have great conservative ideas that are time tested and work. That sounds like something a young republican would say. Maybe they were right after all.

 Sincerely,

An older thoughtful republican

historical

It started with a jar of peanut butter

  • November 11, 2019May 21, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

 

     What are you going to do with your life? That was a question I kept hearing from my parents and academic advisors my sophomore year in college as I tried to decide on a major. All the while in my mind I kept thinking I’m only 19…how am I supposed to know what I should do with my life?      

     It was the spring of 1974 and I was attending Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. The Vietnam War was winding down and the decade of the sixties had passed. Still in some ways the spirit of the sixties still lingered. The campus was buzzing with excitement over the upcoming visit of President Nixon and students were sleeping outside and playing guitars in protest. Speakers daily criticized Nixon and my sociology teacher was preaching the gospel of self actualization and trying to organize a commune in San Francisco.

     On a weekend trip home, I talked with my dad about school and career choices mentioning the commune which he wasn’t too keen about. I told him I was having trouble deciding and then he told me about how he got into education. But how do you decide at 19 I asked him and how do I know what I’m good at doing? He said I was intelligent and came from good stock so I should do fine. He then mentioned some of my ancestors. I drove back still confused.

     Back at Mercer the campus was going crazy. Television crews were interviewing students daily and protesters were everywhere. Secret Service men in dark suits were mingling with the crowds, listening and observing. Rumors were rampant about hidden listening devices and men with rifles on the roofs. The word around campus was to stay away from windows.

     Escaping the chaos on campus I retreated to my dorm room where I could think. My mother was a teacher and my dad a principal in our small town where I always felt like I was under their shadow. Here I was my own person and finally felt like I belonged somewhere. Now I felt like I was being pressured to decide how I would live in the future when all I wanted to do was learn how to live right now.

     The sun was going down and yellowish golden light was streaming through the window when i decided to get some peanut butter and bread at a nearby grocery store. Carrying the bag of groceries back to my room I had to climb over a large rope cordoning off the campus. A group of secret service agents stopped talking and stared at me as they instinctively reached for their guns but stopped midway. Shaken I got back to my room and remembered to stay away from the windows.

     Several days later, after giving his speech, President Nixon scurried down the back steps of the old stone chapel surrounded by secret service agents. In his haste he tried to climb into a black convertible but got stuck with one leg in the car and the other leg dangling on the outside. Someone pulled him the rest of the way into the car. Then the cars sped away down blocked off roads.

     After that I thought the campus would calm down but things got crazier. A tsunami of pent up emotions crashed over the campus and I jumped on the giant wave. It started when a girl from a nearby college drove topless through campus in a convertible. Then about twenty male students jogged naked on a public road that went around the campus.

      Several college administrators and policemen were having a heated discussion in front of the dorm when the joggers returned. Since they had been on a public road the police were arguing they should be arrested for indecent exposure. Somehow something was worked out so they wouldn’t be charged, but a few days later the mayor mentioned castrating any future streakers.

      The next week a bicycle streaker rode through campus almost every afternoon wearing a ski mask. A group of us would gather on a small hill above the sidewalk and cafeteria. Dennis who wore a green army jacket and somehow reminded me of John Denver was there as well as Mike who looked like Buddy Holly with reddish orange hair.

      We would be talking or smoking a legal substitute for marijuana that had the same smell when the bicycle streaker would come whizzing by on the sidewalk. A roar would come up from the crowd then sometimes a few more streakers would come by in the gathering twilight then we would go our separate ways.

       I think the whole country was having a meltdown from the turmoil and tension still lingering from the previous decade. The search for deeper meaning and utopia was suspended. Self-righteous world changing was exchanged for kids just wanting to be kids. A national catharsis was taking place as we symbolically shed all the angst of the sixties and streaked away from it. For me the sixties ended that Spring of 1974. I no longer felt I had to change the world.

      I literally ran away from the sixties when I streaked with a friend named Rob the next Saturday. We decided to run from the Art building to the street in front of the women’s dorm, a distance of about sixty yards. Dotting the gently sloping landscape were small trees that had just been planted. Another friend named George would be waiting in the getaway car.

           After hiding our clothes behind some bushes, we started running when a large black dog started running beside me. I started laughing so hard I couldn’t run while Rob was trying not to run into the small trees. Suddenly the street looked a mile away as a crowd of students started gathering with cameras by the steps leading to George’s car. Somehow, we made it and as I was going down the first step my ski mask fell off.

            Meanwhile an old security guard with thick glasses from the dorm across the street started running toward us to get George’s tag number. People in the crowd started calling out numbers to confuse him as I lunged down the steps and jumped into the car. A line of cars behind us were beeping their horns as we sped away with Rob and me in the back seat laughing.

            We sneaked back onto campus a few hours later amid wild rumors that the police had George’s license plate number and were in the process of tracking us down. I spent an anxious weekend but nothing ever happened. On Monday when I entered the cafeteria I was surprised when a large group stood up and started clapping. For a couple of hours, I felt like a celebrity then the bicycle streaker came back that evening. So much for my fifteen minutes of fame.

 After that Spring my dad decided Mercer was too expensive……… I guess the streaking didn’t help. That summer I spent a lot of time watching the Watergate hearings then that Fall I enrolled at the local community college. I really missed Mercer and it was especially hard at first………… it was the first place I ever felt like I belonged. I wrote to Dennis for a little while and even visited that Spring but it wasn’t the same. We had all moved on with our lives.

As far as the question of what am I going to do with the rest of my life is concerned I have come to believe for myself personally the better question is what do you feel like doing for the next few years? Why can’t a person have a series of mini careers especially now with it so easy to get training? But basically, I think it comes down to each individual.

The look of those secret service agents as I climbed over that rope with a jar of peanut butter is something I will never forget as well as that amazing Spring of 1974.

travel

Three weeks in the Philippines

  • June 10, 2019June 17, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

 

     Large green lizards with their small mouths moving were lined up ready to grab any food that fell from his plate. The bravest lizards were almost touching the plate when he swatted them away with the back of his hand.

     Three days ago, I was sitting in my air-conditioned office in Florida and now I was eating with a Filipino family in Manila. Dark eyed children stared at me from behind furniture and scrutinized every movement I made. On the table in front of me a pack of the largest lizards I had ever seen were lined up waiting to scurry for any food that fell on the table from the people eating.

     I was staying with the Arcega family as a guest of their daughter Precila who was a pen pal.

For three weeks I would live as they did which meant no air-conditioning, no screened windows and no hot showers. My small dark room had a bamboo bed covered by a thin mattress and a small fan blew across the bed to keep away mosquitoes. Cold water from a bucket in a small shack was my shower while a cold-eyed albino lizard watched.

     The Arcega family home was raised above the other single room structures which surrounded it and made up the Arcega compound. Below the home was a partially enclosed dirt packed area where canopies swung from the roof above. A narrow stone archway partially shaded by a banana tree opened into the narrow alley in front of the house and open sewer ditches drained into sewers that lined the alley. Smoke from burning trash saturated the air and burned my throat.

     Brothers, sisters, in-laws, friends and grandchildren lived in the crowded compound. In the Arcega home people slept in any available space often sleeping on the kitchen table. Meals were eaten in shifts with the last to eat getting less. A family of four lived in a single room below the house and it was divided into eating, living and sleeping sections by curtains with a single hot plate for cooking.  

     It was a tough day by day existence. Those who worked suffered endless days of tedious boredom at repetitive low paying factory jobs. Those left at home were up before the sun cleaning the open sewers or washing clothes by hand. Water was fetched from the community pump and food was bought daily since they had no refrigeration. Having little time to relax they always took time to talk with one another and make light of their situation.

     Several times I left the compound with Precila and her sister Lilly. Walking down the alley past vendors pushing carts selling fresh pineapples we would come to the main road where a cacophony of sounds wrapped around us. Jeepneys which were military jeeps converted to taxis prowled the streets looking for passengers. The back was covered and two small wooden benches were for the passengers.

       They were in different bright colors with lots of chrome and prominent silver hood ornaments. Finding an empty one we jumped in the covered back and scrunch down on the wooden benches. Large silver crosses hung from the rearview mirror and on the dashboard were prayers to patron Saints. After driving about a mile, we transferred to another jeepney and eventually got to our destination.

     Manilla was a blend of extreme contrast and unusual sites where people lived in cardboard boxes minutes from modern shopping malls. People hung on the outside of leaning buses lurching under sleek silver monorails and a piano bar in a McDonald’s downtown was directly across the street from a bank with machine guns in front. Rich sophisticated people got out of limousines next to farmers eating nearly hatched ducks they washed down with rice wine.

     After wandering around Manilla for several days we decided to see Baguio City which is called the summer capital of the Philippines. Before air conditioning government was conducted because being in the mountains it has much cooler weather. The first four hours we rode past flat land with lots of banana groves guard and rice fields being plowed by water buffalo. The last hour was almost straight up a winding narrow road with no guard rails. Finally, at the top Baguio City with governmental buildings, curiosity shops and open-air restaurants.

       Sitting outside a Filipino restaurant I watched people strolling by leisurely listening to the Asian and European dialects. The leisurely pace and fall like air gave Baguio City a light holiday feeling. We walked around past the many shops and international restaurants with tantalizing aromas of different foods filling the air as we explored the town. Going past a small park I saw a saw a small dark- skinned man standing on one leg under a tree. He was a native Filipino called an Igoriat.

     Later we took a taxi to a large open-air market where on wooden tables under canopies were fruit and vegetables colored deep purples, bright oranges, yellows and many other tones. People of all skin colors and manner of dress were there along with Igoriats barely five feet tall selling beautiful wooden carvings. I bought a life size eagle in stained black and several smaller painted carvings of ducks.

That evening the temperature turned brisk and fog enshrouded the city as we walked past small white stucco buildings with red terra cotta roofs. After walking down several streets we came to a large park with a manmade lake in the center. Lanterns around the lake made golden sparkles in the water while small row boats glided through the light fog making the scene look like an impressionistic painting. It was magical.

            Back in Manila a few days later Precila, Jojo, her brother, Parley and myself walked about a mile past small squatter hutches and large banana trees to a complex of underground bomb shelters used by Japanese and American soldiers during World War II. Stomping down the steep narrow concrete staircase I could see one single burning light bulb above the entrance to the dark subterranean shelter. It gave me the willies going down those steps……I can’t imagine what it must have been like during the war.

             We stayed in Manila for several days as a typhoon came by the island making a lot of rain and some wind. After it passed, we decided to see Matabungay Beach in spite of warnings about the NPA robbing tour buses and even kidnapping foreigners. They were a small guerilla type army that lived in the provinces and opposed the current government. Lily and Jojo came along for added protection.

 After several hours in an old school bus that speeded around curves without guard rails and made frequent stops to pick up people carrying goats, chickens and produce we were dropped off on a desolate macadam road. A small grove of banana trees was just up the road and in front of us a sand dune then the beach. After climbing over the dune, a young Filipino boy selling souvenirs came up to us.

           We rented a bamboo raft anchored in shallow water and partially covered by a canopy of bamboo and palmetto leaves. A charcoal grill was on the ocean side in front of a wooden bench where we talked while waves broke continuously lifting us up and down while a cool breeze blew in from the South China Sea. The young Filipino who greeted us on the beach was still with us so we asked him to get some food we could cook.

            Meanwhile we jumped in the water which was comfortably warm like being in a bath tub. While everyone talked, I swam under the water which was so clear though I had no mask I could see perfectly the hard, flat, sandy bottom. Swimming around collecting interesting rocks and enjoying the relaxing water I kept thinking to myself in amazement that I was actually swimming in the South China sea. A few weeks ago, I was in my trailer in Florida. It was surreal.

 I got out when I saw the young kid coming down the beach with some food. They were the largest shrimp I had ever seen being about the diameter of a large man’s thumb and about eight inches long. We lit up the charcoal grill and boiled them as we edged toward twilight. About twenty minutes later as we ate the sun touched the ocean creating bright streaks of red and gold in the sky. We listened to the lapping waves while the first stars appeared then came to shore as it got too dark to see. Another magical moment.

A few days later I left for Florida. My first stop was Seoul where I remember running through the airport to catch a plane. Then over the Pacific around two a.m. some guy tells me about a plane catching on fire in the middle of the Ocean. I tried to sleep but kept thinking about burning airplanes as we reached Washington state as the sun was just rising. That was really beautiful. Tampa was dark when we landed then the first thing I did was get a big Wendy’s hamburger. I lost several pounds while I was over there.

     Several days later I was at work looking at the picture we took of the sunset at Matabungay beach.  Priscila, her sister Lily and I were on the raft and behind us was that beautiful yellow and gold streaked sky. It felt strange to think that just a few days ago I was there swimming in the South China sea. I don’t know if anyone else has ever experienced this but for a few days it felt like I was still somehow there.

            About a week later there was a coup attempt in the Philippines and many of the places the newspaper said they were fighting I had been two weeks earlier. I remembered the machine guns in front of the building across from the McDonalds in Manila and wondered where I would be if I had gone to the Philippines two weeks later. It was a strange feeling.

Still it was a beautiful and amazing place.

lessons learned

My friend Tony

  • May 30, 2019June 17, 2022
  • by W.W. Hutto

 

     Break on through, break on through to the other side was playing on the radio and wrapping us in our own private world. Tony forced his tight twisting neck to turn his head to the right so I could give him a spoon of apple sauce as he closed his tired eyes. The cerebral palsy was causing his muscles to tighten. It was Friday afternoon.

     Normally we ate in the school cafeteria but today he wanted to eat in the physical therapy room where we could be alone. His twisting, pulling neck was forcing his head to lean further to the right. “How you doing Buddy?” Tony said in a tired voice. I’m okay I said as Tony slowly moved his arm and pointed a curling forefinger at the chocolate cake. I broke off a small bite and placed it in his mouth.

   We sat quietly listening to the music. Tony didn’t say it but I knew he was worried about his surgery tomorrow. Surgeons were going to cut his neck muscles to relieve the constant pulling. Tony told me it was a routine surgery but something was telling me it was very serious.

     That Sunday walking across the parking lot to the hospital I tried to convince myself everything was okay but when I saw Tony’s dad in the lobby it was obvious something was wrong. Color had drained from his face and black circles were under his blood shot eyes, “He’s dead”, he said in a worn-out voice. “Tony’s dead.”

     My legs felt weak and everything seemed out of focus. I couldn’t believe it. We had been together Friday and now he was dead. It must be mistake I told myself as I walked across the hospital lobby to the door.

 A skinny palm tree leaned against a gentle spring breeze as I slowly walked across the parking lot in a daze. On the way home I passed lakes and azaleas in their pink bloom. It was beautiful in Orlando in the spring but all I could think about were the last seven months I had spent with Tony.

     I had been hired as a teacher’s aide by Evans High School in August, 1983 and was assigned to a special handicapped unit in a separate building from the high school. The handicapped students met in this building in the morning for homeroom then left to attend classes with the other students.

 During the day they came back to the unit for academic help and physical therapy and also classes. My job was to assist a student named Tony, who had cerebral palsy, with his daily activities.

     I was nervous the first day of school as the lift slowly brought Tony and his wheelchair down from the bus. My first impression was how large the wheelchair was and how small Tony looked. I was wondering if I was in over my head. He looked so fragile and his head was twisted to the side as the lift brought him down to the pavement.

My fear was that he would be very quiet and all I would become was just an extension of the wheelchair. I went over to help him up the incline to the sidewalk and he jerked up in his chair, smiled and we started talking. That first day I walked beside him as he stiffly pushed the directional stick to maneuver the wheelchair among all the rushing students.

He bumped into several students and apologized as we searched for his first period class. We got there about five minutes late and all eyes were on us as we backed up the wheelchair several times as students slid their desks around so we could get through. Finally, we were able to find a place where Tony could see the teacher.

Tony was introduced and the teacher asked him some questions and Tony in his unflappable way jerked up a little in his chair, smiled, and answered. It was amazing how he put everyone at ease and suddenly I felt real comfortable working with him. From that moment things just clicked and we had a remarkable chemistry between us. 

     This was necessary since I spent the entire day with him. I walked beside him to classes, fed him at lunch, helped him with his homework, bath roomed him and several times a week assisted the physical therapist with stretching exercises on Tony. Woven into everything we did was his sense of humor and enthusiasm.

            A lot of people put on masks in public but Tony was as honest and open as anyone I have ever known. He had a childlike innocence that saw the good in everyone and even when he was tired and his muscles were pulling, he always did or said something to brighten the day.

            Maybe he knew his time was running out…I don’t know but he really squeezed every bit of life out of every moment. He had a real joy for life. Sometimes when I was cleaning him, we would start play acting a scene from a movie Tony was planning on making.

            One of the characters I played was a Russian interrogating Tony who was an American spy. Adopting an accent, I would start asking questions but inevitably Tony would start laughing and the teacher would tell us we were taking too long. Another time I did a Frankenstein impersonation for Tony but the principal walked into the room…….  not good.

     One of my favorite times was in the morning before school started. As soon as he saw me his arms would flail up over his head while he pushed himself up higher in his chair. It looked like he was about to fly. He would smile and a look of pure joy would come over his face.

 We would start talking and several other kids would be drawn in by his contagious laugh. Usually Tony talked about his favorite T.V. show, the A Team, which had inspired him to make a similar movie. We would discuss different story plots and often laugh at some of our most outrageous ideas until the bell rang and we went to homeroom.

             That Fall Tony went to his first high school football game with some of the other handicapped kids. You would have thought it was the Super Bowl the way everyone was so excited the week before. Then on Friday, Tony talked all day about the game.

 That night Tony and his classmates went to the game and I watched him push up in his chair and flail his arms every time a roar went up from the crowd. He yelled out defense, defense with the rest of the crowd and stiffly shook a pom pom at the night sky. That night I saw what it really means to live in the moment.

            Tony’s favorite class was aviation which got into some of the technical aspects of flying including terms related to aerodynamics and also discussed some of the different types of airplanes. It was taught by a real nice man named Mr. Johnson who had been in the military and had lots of stories related to flying he told the class.

            Tony’s favorite story was about how early pilots flew before a lot of the modern instrumentation. They would actually use how long it took to smoke a cigar to gauge how far they had gone so that a pilot might sometimes smoke two cigars before he got to his destination. Tony would stay after class every day talking to Mr. Johnson.

 Knowing Tony’s love of planes, Mr. Johnson arranged for Tony to fly in a small prop plane and for several weeks that’s all Tony could talk about. Then on the day of the flight he came out of the bus onto the lift wearing an old leather aviator’s cap. I said hello and he broke out into a huge smile and pushed up so hard I thought he was going to come out of his chair.

 Later that day everyone in the handicapped unit went outside and watched Tony as he soared overhead in an airplane. The next day he was still soaring as he talked all day about his flight.

             At some point I stopped thinking of him being in a wheel chair or handicapped.  I just saw a warm, intelligent human being with hopes and dreams who wanted to go out on dates and have a car like every teenager. I’m sorry people just saw the wheelchair and never saw him because he was truly a wonderful person.

   A few nights after his funeral I was in bed when in a half-asleep state, I heard a wheelchair in my bedroom. A golden glow was all around and Tony said he wanted to tell me something but someone else was telling him he had to leave. The wheelchair turned around and gradually the sound disappeared.

 Maybe someday I’ll find out what he wanted to tell me. My friend Tony.

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