Banned From the County Courthouse

 Banned From the County Courthouse
Quite a few years back I answered a call for jury duty at the Fayette County Courthouse. As a citizen of the United States, I felt it was my responsibility to go. I was retired and didn’t have anything else exciting to do. I was blessed when I found the gate to the parking garage was open and was able to park for free. I made my way to the courthouse and entered a courtroom for roll call. I was amazed at the inefficiency of the officials. Instead of someone checking people as they entered, marking them on the roster, and assigning a juror badge number, the juror pool sat and waited until the room was full. One by one the names were called and given badges. It was more than an hour wasted while I sat on those hard oak benches irritating my patience and sciatic nerve.
Our group was assigned to report to another courtroom. Again we sat on hard oak seats for another hour. The ache in my back worsened and my foot began to go numb. After the judge sat on his dais and lawyers made one plea deal after another, we were excused to wait in the hall. By then it was lunchtime and we were dismissed to find food nearby. When I returned my pain had worsened. I hunted the office of the woman in charge of the jurors and told her about my problem with the progressive numbness in my foot. She said if I stayed until three PM, she would excuse me from jury duty.
While I was talking with her, I mentioned, “The last time I was here, the prosecutor didn’t do his job.” She looked startled. So I shared, “The accused stole an air conditioner for the aluminum but the prosecutor failed to say whether it was commercial or home model and whether it was even functioning. We could only judge the accused with scrap metal prices for the aluminum.”
At three I left AND would you believe it, the very next week, I received another jury duty summons. I sent back a scathing letter telling the courthouse that they could send the sheriff and all his deputies, but I wasn’t coming back. I explained that I’d already been there and my sciatica problem. They sent a return letter saying it was no longer necessary for me to serve as a juror. I’d been banned.
Because my address is Acme, I also get jury summons from Westmoreland County. When I received one from Westmoreland, I returned it saying I lived in Fayette. When they responded I needed a doctor’s excuse, I phoned them. The reason for the continuing snafu is the list is generated in Harrisburg. Enough said.

Visiting a Widow

 Visiting a Widow
When my wife Cindy Morrison Beck was alive and we went shopping together at Pechin’s in Dunbat, Pennsylvania we would buy some extra fruit for a friend who lived along our driving route home. We knew the woman before she lost her husband and would sometimes we would stop to visit for about half an hour.
I knew the couple as a child from the old clapboard, one room church in Clinton Pennsylvania. Ahe and her husband were good friends with my dad and mom. As I mayured from childhood, they became my friends as well. He was a thin man with a ready smile and she was a sweet woman who laughed easily.
Because they lived along the Springfield Pike, it became natural for us to stop when my wife and I saw them on their porch. From those visits my wife and our children grew to know them as well. We were always welcome and they seemed to enjoy our children. Our children became comfortable with them almost as much as with their grandparents.
It was hard to explain to our kids when her husband died. We didn’t take them to the funeral home. We didn’t think it was appropriate for them and would have been a distraction to other mourners. It was difficult to stop at her home, but we needed for her to believe we hadn’t abandoned her. It was more awkward for my wife and me, but our children continued where they were before her husband’s death, climbing onto her lap and playing.
It slowly evolved for us to buy some extra fruit: a bunch of bananas and a container or two of whatever fruit that looked good. That might be a bag of apples, a tray of oranges or a container of pears or tangerines.
She never said that she needed the fruit, but was always thankful. Cindy and I knew that she could use it, because after her husband’s demise, she took on jobs cleaning other people’s homes and became a sitter for sick clients at night.
When we moved fro Normalville, we didn’t drive by her home nearly as often, but we would occasionally make the detour so we could visit. She slowly aged and her family moved her into the same nursing home as my dad. We could visit more often. She remembered us and still called me Tommy when we would stop and talk with her. She and my father are gone now, but the pleasant memories linger.

A Memorial on Memorial Day

 A Memorial on Memorial Day
The United States of America set aside an entire day to honor those brave men and women who marched off to war knowing full well what might be asked of them and they still left home to protect their home, family, and country. There might have been a person with stray thoughts of glory, but I’m sure that all of those thoughts evaporated at the first taste of battle, of seeing the carnage of war, or of watching fellow soldiers falling dead around them. As the sounds of bombs falling, guns being fired and the screams of pain from the wonded, and moans of dying assaulted thir ears. Thoughts of home and hearth became more intense and more important to them and yet they continued to advance through the jungles, onto the beaches, and travel in ships and planes to stop the tide of oppression.
I would like to honor the brave men and women who sacrificed all to allow America to remain free and to break the grasp of despots of the past.  I was going to write about a close friend and honor him, but expanded it to include all the military men and women who gave their lives to preserve freedom in the Unuted States.
My friend and I were playmates as children and grew up together. We spent summers together at is grandmother’s home. He was canscripted to fight the war in Vietnam, the war that wasn’t a war. He was killed in action. When I heard the news I felt crushed and heartbroken. I was the same age. I was a corpsman in the Inited States Navy. But by the hand of God, I was spared the Hell that was Vietnam. I was relegated to care for those who sacrificed body parts, who were maimed and wounded when they returned home. I was responsible to help mend their broken bodies.
I searched for him on Google to be sure to spell in correctly. I knew his name, but I had never actually seen it written. As the screen popped up, I felt my chest tighten as I scrolled down through the names. Fifty-eight thousand men and women died in just that war. The weight of that number pressed down on me as names flitted by. Not too far down that list I found what I was searching for: Earl Duane Barkley, Sgt. Army, Indian Head, PA.
Since then, the bridge in his nearby hometown now is honored by being named in honor of him. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.

Getting Out

Getting Out
Saturday I went hunting wheen my brother Ken called and asked if I wanted to try hunting for a deer. Saturday, old people could hunt with a rifle for antlerless deer. I accepted. I have been much too sedentary lately. My dad Edson Carl Beck would say, “You need to get outside and get the stink blown off you.” I really needed the time away from my computer and television. I have been spendingg too much time inside.
My brother has a small mobile hunting blind. It is handbuilt on a trailer with a door on one wall and three windows on the remaining three others, allowing an unrestricted view of the terrain. An office chair on wheels make the perch comfortable and the hunter is able to scoot around inside to have access to shoot out any window when a deer should wander into view.
I’d hunted from the hunting blind before and was comfortable once I had been dropped off and settled with my rifle at my side. It was still dark outside and I loaded my gun in the dark. Once done, I sat in the darkness waiting for the sun to rise. The weather was chill. It was silent with no breeze, no bird sounds, and no movement at all.
Slowly the morning sun crept over the distant horizen to my left to cover the valley below me. The dark terrain evolved into shapes before gaining any color at all. Gradually I could see the pale vapor cloud that came out of my nose as I exhaled. Eventually birds began to stir around me wakened from their sleep and their small cheeps and peeps greeted my ears. The air was still otherwise. There was no wind, not even the sligtest puff of a breeze. As I rearranged myself in the chair, it would groan under my weight.
The sun climbed higher and the golden aspen trees began to glow in the diffuse light enhanced by a crystal robe of frost. They looked bright among some dark evergreen trees. It was a beautiful sight. Brown weed carpet and occasional thorn trees covered the field that spread from the building to disappear at the feet of the woods and I began my watch for a deer. The minutes passed into hours and nothing appeared other than the birds I was once graced by the arrival of a brilliantly fearthered cardinal. Its bright red plumage was intense against the green leaves that remained on the bush.
Empty handed I returned to my car and drove back home, but it wasn’t wasted time. It was a needed vacation from myself. 

It's Remarkable

 Remarkable

It has been fascinating to watch the skies at sunrise, sunset, and the hours in between. I have been drawn upward by the sun, clouds, moon and stars. I can be enticed even on the days when the sun refuses to shine and a vast panorama of clouds seethe and churn darkly. Occasionally the clouds are charged with twists of lightning, stirred by the deep rumbles of thunder. Sometimes the ground vibrates beneath my feet as the lightning flashes dance close causing the earth to quiver in response to the roar of thunder.

Sometimes the clouds are only a misty veil. It stirs, just thick enough to play a game of hide-n-seek with distant mountain tops. Sometimes the clouds sag low wrapping the trees and bushes with a damp blanket of fog to cover the ground with its thick blanket of cotton. When the cloud rolls away, the grass is covered with dew that sparkles as the sun or the moon rises.

The moon appears as a celestial orb, full faced and bright or as thin slices. The calendar shaves away the moon in slivers to make sickles of light. The moon evolves into the smile of a Cheshire cat or into fishhooks that snag stars in the dark night sky. Slowly stars fade as night ends and the sun begins its rise. This is where another remarkable fantasy begins. The sun’s rays pierce the darkness and dance on the passing clouds. Pale yellow light cuddles with the surface of the clouds. The light intensifies, turning the rosy glow into colors of glorious orange-gold or into a blazing hot red hue. Then the sun itself rises. It shows its brilliant face above the horizon then the clouds reclaim their virginity, white and pure.

The clouds scurry across the sky pushed by prevailing breezes. The sky’s color may vary from a pale milky hue to a deep azure blue. The wind swirls the clouds like creamer in a cup of coffee. The sun continues its journey overhead. Its path marked by shadows that the light paints on the earth beneath. Hour by hour shadows lengthen as it nears the end of the day and the time for the sun to put on its pajamas and go to sleep. The sun leaves goodbye kisses on the clouds to create fantastic scenes of light and as it settles in for the night. The sunset colors rival the morning’s sunrise, but in reverse. As the light lessens and the sun finally slips below the horizon, I sometimes think that we are looking at the underside of heaven, what will our actual view of heaven be like? It’s too grand for me to imagine.

Aging

 

The Chair

The old man sits in a chair by the door

waiting for someone who's been there before.

His skin is as thin as rice paper page,

drooping face speckled with spots of his age.

Drowsy head bobbing with white hair askew,

as light leaves the sky and lawn fills with dew

No headlights appear and shaking his head

Weary he rises and shuffles to bed

The old man sits by the door in a chair

no children or friends come visit him there.

Stirring as thoughts of them surface and rise.

With muscles twitching he opens his eyes,

through rheumy lenses and limited view

he sees youth passing, amazed how time flew.

The door remains closed, sealed tightly with rust.

The chair's now empty, filled only with dust.

 

 

The Sink Window

The old woman stands and leans on the sink,

she stares through windows to look and to think

Her steps now falter on knees filled with pain.

Wistfully her eyes stare down the long lane.

Wrinkles map her face. Age spots back her hands

wearying quickly from daily demands

No family’s seen, she turns and shakes her head,

closing the curtains she hobbles to bed.

The old woman wakes and on the sink leans,

her body is bent, face lined with ravines.

She stares at her hands, once supple and sure,

resting on the sink, misshapen and sore.

Puckered lips sag into a toothless frown.

Her youth’s flown away and her clock’s wound down.

The curtains are closed as stray breezes sigh,

The windows are dark. The sink is now dry.

 

 

The Problem

Children are caught in personal affairs

no time for one who sits alone in chairs,

no time to give them, and no time to think

of someone who waits and stands at the sink.

Busy with family everyday

not recognizing how time slips away.

Someday you will be waiting for a call,

wanting affection, no matter how small.

Quickly the children grow and leave the nest,

lifetime spouses die and are laid to rest.

Embers of hope weaken and barely glows

when no one calls and no one shows.

Traveling salesmen are greeted with glee.

The “Witnesses” invited in for tea.

It will happen much sooner than you think,

It will be you with the chair or the sink.

Masquerades

 Masquerades
There was a time as I was growing up that Halloween was little more than dressing up and taking on the persona of a scarecrow, a hobo, a princess, a cowboy, a bride, an Indian, or even a clown. I’m not talking about the scary live-in-a-storm-drain clown, but the classic ones like seen in a circus. One of the easiest costumes of all was being a ghost by using an old sheet with holes cut out for the eyes.
The decorations for Halloween were mostly dried corn stalks arranged and tied into shocks with pumpkins at its feet or maybe some old clothing stuffed with newspapers sitting in a lawn chair on the front porch. But today, the decorations have expanded to the point that many people have spent more to decorate than at Christmas. So, what’s the problem? Halloween is just another holiday, right?
Not so. it’s a celebration of the dark things in the world: a celebration of the evil things that go bump in the night; demons, skeletons, monsters, ghosts, vampires, witches, and even Satan himself. Costumes have gone from spooky to overly bloody and gory. Homes have light displays; mechanical blow up decorations, and front yards filled with Styrofoam tombstone cemeteries. Skeletons climb over cobweb covered porches to rest on rooftops. Skeleton horses pull horse-drawn coach hearses. I’ve seen plastic cat skeletons and rats for sale at Wal-Mart. I can hardly wait for skeleton dogs to join them on the shelves.
Even trick-or-treat night has a sinister past. Druid priests would go door to door to collect tribute and if the homeowner refused, the priests would refuse to bless the house and not chase away unwelcome spirits. The Celts believed that the dead returned to earth at the festival of Samhain, which is celebrated on the night of October 31st. Bonfires and sacrifices to the dead were offered. The Celts would disguise themselves in costumes of animal skins to drive away the phantom visitors. The priests would perform “blessings” in exchange for food and drink. Later people began to dress as ghosts, demons, or other malevolent beings. This custom evolved and is considered the precursor of trick-or-treating.
Too often the celebration of this season overshadows and swallows up the next holiday, Thanksgiving. The blessings of God are lost in the evils of Halloween. Our gratefulness is deferred by the rush toward the Christmas holiday. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus the Christ child; the Light of the world and our gratefulness at the birth of our Savior should outshine the darkness of Halloween.