Tag: birthdays

Thoughts on getting older

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life6 Comments

If you came here today expecting wisdom or anything approaching sage advice, you’re screwed.

For one thing, I don’t think you came here for that reason because, as we were saying during the Vietnam War, you can’t trust anyone over 30. Today, our youth culture still maintains this truth, adding to it the idea that it’s completely unnecessary to know anything about what happened over 30 years ago.

oldclipartI’m amused by people half my age who explain things to me that I knew before they were born. I think my parents were amused by this when I told them stuff I learned in college. Some of what I told them they experienced first hand–like World War I and the depression.

For those of you under 30, World War I happened before World War II, though with today’s math instruction in the schools, that probably doesn’t make sense. And, the depression wasn’t the kind one tried to escape with Valium or Xanax.

Quite possibly, I have a long list of things about which I can say, “been there, done that, got the tee shirt.” Unfortunately, more and more people haven’t heard of any of those things even if they do have the tee shirts.

One of those things is walking or riding my bike to school. That doesn’t seem to be done anymore. In fact, it appears to be borderline illegal. I’m reading this novel right now in which a single mother wonders how so many parents can attend–by her calculation–some 30+ hours a week of school related activities: plays, talent shows, recitals, togetherness sessions all of which occur during working hours. If you don’t show up, the parents that do show up pity you and think you’re rearing* your children wrong. They think that, too, if they see your kid riding or walking to school.

I work at home as a quasi retired, borderline crazy writer. That means I can log on to Facebook and Twitter any time I want. When I’m there, one thought is this: what the hell are all these other people doing out here during working hours? I know, I know, since corporations and other employers are borderline criminal, it’s okay to steal time from them by texting and looking at Facebook. Or, maybe their employers think it’s okay and have hired extra staff to cover the time when the current staff is online. That sounds like something that would happen in France.

I guess it comes down to this, my thoughts on getting older probably sound like the same kinds of thoughts by parents and grandparents had when they were getting older, and that boils down to you kids have it easy, hell, my generation had to claw its 20 miles  to school on snowshoes. Most of you didn’t know my parents and grandparents, so maybe this snow information is something new.

See what I mean? You’re screwed (figuratively speaking, hopefully) for reading this post.

—Malcolm

* One way you can tell I’m over 30 is that I say “rearing kids” instead of “raising kids.” In the old days, “raising” referred only to pets and/or pigs. And jackasses, too, I would think.

 

Another day older and deeper in debt

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life10 Comments

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt

from “Sixteen Tons,” as recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford

There was a lot of pure country music on the radio when I was young, especially on the powerful clear channel AM stations that could be heard throughout large areas of the country after dark. I heard Ford a lot on the radio, along with everyone else who recorded a version of “Sixteen Tons.”  I don’t hear the song much any more, but the words still resonate with me during these difficult economic times. One doesn’t have to be a coal miner stuck in the old country store and truck system (payment in goods rather than cash) to understand the feeling of  “I owe my soul to the company store.”

These days, the company store is the mortgage company, the credit card company, the IRS, the county property taxes, and a host of other payments that keep a lot of people behind the 8 ball. As for the load sixteen tons, we could substitute “write sixteen novels” or “drive 1600 miles” or “work sixteen years” or whatever fits.

Oddly enough, though, I only think of that “another day older” line and start hearing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s voice on my birthdays. That’s good, I think, for it keeps industrial-strength worrying about finances to a minimum. That was yesterday. Today, I’m blogging about it and then moving on. As Smoky Zeidel said in today’s post, “I’m a True Writer: a writer who not only can write, but must write.”

Sometimes must write = curse. But most of the time, writing is a creative way to stop oneself from worrying about being deeper in debt or how long the drought’s going to last or why political campaigns bring so many clowns out of the woodwork.  It seems a bit audacious to say that writers create worlds, so I’ll just suggest we’re creating cities, lakes and mountains. If I don’t like what I see, the backspace key comes in very handy. It won’t erase actual debt, but it will erase scenes in my short stories that aren’t turning out quite right.

On my birthday yesterday, I wrote a fair number of words of a new short story, saw a friend of mine stop by unannounced and mow my lawn with his riding mower, ate a plateful of spaghetti, talked to my brothers on the phone, had a glass of Biltmore Pinot Noir, got some reading done, and felt pretty good about things in spite of hearing  “I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine,  I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal.”

I also heard Ford’s radio/TV sign-off catch phrase: “Bless your pea-pickin’ heart!” and found it hard not to smile.

Malcolm

The Glenlivet

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn eternity2 Comments

My wife gave me a bottle of Scotch for my birthday because (a) I like it, and (b) the protagonist in my upcoming novel likes it.

Trying to be frugal, Lesa and I usually get each other a cool birthday card and when time permits, go out to dinner. But this year is different and it’s not because I’m now old enough to have a Medicare card. (See the latest Morning Satirical News satire.)

2009 is special because the release date of Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire is also this month. It was supposed to be today, but printer delays have pushed the release into next week. That’s okay, though an August 12th double hitter would have been nice.

My birthday has been grey and rainy, but that’s great because after a wet spring, the drought has been trying to sneak back into north Georgia again. It’s been a good day to read and in a little while perhaps, pour several fingers of a single malt whisky into a glass and celebrate the moment along with Pablo Picasso’s sentiment that “It takes a long time to grow young.”