Saturday Well Spent

I celebrated my birthday on Friday with my son Andrew, his wife Renee, and my two granddaughters Celine and Moriah. They lived in Amarillo, Texas, having them close, and spending an entire day with them was a true blessing.

Saturday I drove to the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society in Stahlstown, Pennsylvania. Earlier in the week, I promised to share some of my postcards in a display. Members try to create new ideas for a showcase where contents change frequently to draw the public. It displays photographs and items from local towns and villages. They were trying to decide which town to present next. They’d nearly exhausted fresh displays for the area.

When I made the suggestion of sharing my postcards for the display, they asked to see them. When I got home, I sorted through my large collection of cards that were passed down from my in-laws and my parents. I selected cards from World War II, Easter, Christmas, New Year’s, greeting cards, and of course, cards with the older local pictures of buildings, bridges, and images from the early 1900’s to cards that were more recent. I even took a few letters dated from 1885.

On Saturday, I joined an older volunteer at the building and we spent the afternoon with no interruptions. Her O.C.D. kicked in as she viewed the cards, sorting them into more precise piles. With that task finished, she went to work filing documents and my imagination began to wander. A large desk and all of the displays are in a single room. Limited space causes some exhibits to suffer. One side and corner of the room is filled with a library of family information in black or multicolored binders. The distracting rainbow detracts the eye. I thought the library should be in a less obtrusive place. Making room for more display cases and historic articles swept over me.

I began to consolidate things. I emptied battered and torn cardboard boxes, placing their contents in reinforced boxes with lids and easier to store. I stacked chairs and moved some non-essential items. The volunteer listened as I shared my vision to put the library out of sight behind the display cases. The binders could still be accessed. Moving them would give room for more display cases.

I may be in deep trouble and possibly lined up for a musket firing squad when the leaders of the group return and begin to search for a specific box only to find it has a new home. It was a bold step for me as a new member, but I listened as they shared they needed more space for their artifacts, books, and old letters and ledgers. I just carried out their wishes, even though some members are resistant to change.

So, pray for me my dear friends. I plan to go back Wednesday to face the music. The building is open for visitors Wednesdays from 11 to 3 pm and Saturdays 10 to 2 pm. Please come to visit, you may just prevent them from scalping me.

Mystery Solved

For those who have read my Tommy Two Shoes mystery series and have been asking when are you going to have another book published? I can answer, I truly don’t know, but I have just climbed back onto the horse and began the next mystery in earnest with some thoughts on another one.

My first book, From Mountains to More is an introduction to the retired Pittsburgh homicide detective, Thomas Miner that picked up the name Tommy Two Shoes as a kid in school. This book as all of my others in the series is a compilation of short stories; each chapter is a different mystery. That way the reader can have their desire to solve it more quickly and those who don’t like to read, they can pick up the book and put it down without losing sight of the ending.

The second in the series, Entangled introduces more characters of Tommy’s friends and relatives. Again Tommy is solving mysteries, unless he falls into the middle of a crime. He’s smart enough not to interfere with a police investigation. A few of Tommy’s stories gets him involved in organized crime, the death of his uncle and muse, being assaulted and shot, the kidnapping of his bride-to-be, and finally the honeymoon.

The third book is The Twelve Murders of Christmas. When Tommy and his new bride find a baby abandoned on the front porch of their home, the first chapter is called “What Child is This.” The mention of a Christmas Hymn directed the rest of the stories to be recollections of the past homicide investigations from incidents in their home. The chapters are of Tommy and his partner solving murders over the holidays from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.

The fourth book Partners for Life Tommy invites his wife Cora to become a partner in his newly started private investigative service. Her insight and knowledge begin to draw them closer together and make a solid team. In this book, Tommy tries to trace the abandoned and now adopted son’s roots, taking him to West Virginia. Cora is held hostage. In another story Cora steps up to solve a mystery or two without Tommy’s assistance, Tommy is arrested and assaulted and Cora finds out that nightmares can come true. They meet Johnny’s maternal grandmother and Tommy is called on to find evidence to free the Deputy that locked him up.

My other novels The Walls Come Tumbling Down and Addie are full length and not as action filled as the mystery series. Although I’ve had good reviews on the novels, some of my readers prefer the faster action of the short stories. Hang on. There’s another in the pipeline.

Digging It

I can remember having to use outhouses when I was a child. My father Carl Beck bought a small house nearly halfway between Indian Head and Normalville, Pennsylvania. The house had a kitchen, two bedrooms, a partial basement/coal cellar, a living room and a path… that led back to the brown Insulbrick single seat privy. There was water to the kitchen and partial basement from a spring located on a hillside three hundred yards away.

The lack of plumbing was a normal scenario in the mountains of southwest Pennsylvania at the time. After enlarging the house, I can remember my dad digging the pit to receive the concrete septic tank. It was about six feet wide eight feet long and eight feet deep, all hand dug by mattock and spade. When the tank was delivered and set into place dad dug the sewer line to a nearby stream to handle the runoff. He attached the pipe from the newly installed commode to the tank after breaking through the cinderblock wall of the coal bin and passing the pipe to the tank outside.

We were in business. There were no more dodging raindrops, no more treks through the snow or frozen hineys, no more flies and bees, and a lot less smell with which to deal.

I can also remember my grandparents, Ray and Rebecca Miner’s outhouse. It was a two seater, one larger and one smaller. It wouldn’t do to have a kid fall through the opening. Grandma became older and decided she no longer wanted to make the jaunt to the privy or to use the “slop jar” stored beneath the bed. She talked granddad into indoor plumbing.

They had water to the kitchen via a pump in the basement from the springhouse, but no bathtub or commode. The best place for the septic tank was near the house where foot traffic and an occasional farm wagon compressed the earth. Digging was much harder there, but it was the most reasonable place for it. Uncles came and by taking turns, they used picks, mattocks, and spades to create the hole for the concrete holding tank. Sweat dripped from the men as they labored. I wasn’t there when the tank was delivered, but Grandma was very happy when it arrived.

March

Even though March is the month of my birth, it is a month that my family views with some trepidation and caution. No, it’s not because of me and my “being born” in that month, but because of several serious occurrences that have happened and have left sad and bitter feelings for us, forever marring that calendar month.

The first tragedy that fell during the month of March was the death of my wife Cindy. This month of March will mark the fifteenth anniversary of her passing. Fifteen years ago, what started out as a severe upper respiratory tract infection turned into an all consuming disease. The symptoms she presented pointed to, what Cindy called her “annual” gift to me of laryngitis, but this time with more intense wheezing and coughing. It was so pronounced, I thought she might have pneumonia and forced her to go to the emergency room. Her blood work pointed to something more. It showed a more severe reason for her shortness of breath. She was transferred to a larger hospital where she was diagnosed as having ovarian cancer, the silent killer. The cancer had spread to every organ of her body and ten days later she was gone.

My emotional hurt had all but scarred over, when her mother Retha Morrison died the next year. It felt as those scars were ripped open and raw, coming a little more than a year after Cindy’s death. The month of March didn’t claim Retha, but her passing fell so close to her daughter’s death the redoubled hurt and pain came back.

My mother Sybil Beck had suffered with Alzheimer’s disease for several years, slowly descending into that Nether-World of neither life nor death that separated her mind from her body. On the third anniversary of Cindy’s passing, my mom’s body and mind became one again, united in Heaven. The very same day, three years later, cursed the month of March for my family, many refusing to make any major decision during this month. They’ve even rushed or postponed surgeries to avoid March. Superstitious, probably, cautious definitely, but none-the-less this feeling of dread for the month of March is a reality.

The Infinite Joy of Cat Ownership

The infinite joy of cat ownership… let me rephrase that. A person doesn’t own a cat, but the person becomes an indentured servant of these creatures. Long ago, the Egyptians became enamored with these animals to the point that they assumed the often aloof and arrogant attitude of these creatures made deities to be worshipped. They wandered the courts of the pharaoh and the Egyptian elite and upon the cat’s demise; they were embalmed and encased in a sarcophagus and placed in a burial chamber.

Today, mankind doesn’t worship the cat, but the servitude continues. Watering, feeding and hauling away their daily toilet has become our tasks. We keep them inside to protect our homes from rodents, but my cat Willow only toys with them, choosing to catch and eat the common houseflies. She graces herself at my side as I try to write and create a semblance of thought to softly “mew” until I recognize her presence and give her a treat.

As I travel in my kitchen, she will have pushed her food or water bowl into the center of the floor, chiding me that I dared to forget to refill her offerings. Her resting places are nearly always in the middle of the stairs where I am most likely going to step on her or trip over her relaxed form if I miss seeing her in the night. Last night as I attempted to fall asleep, she came to my bedside to clean herself. The tiny bell of her collar jingled until she finished her toilette. Often she will jump onto the bed or onto my lap to have an itch scratched or her fur smoothed.

Other joys include finding clumps of her log black and white fur decorating my new carpet or furniture. Sometimes I hear a retching and gagging sound. That means that she’s shared more of herself with me. I hurry to clean up the regurgitated saturated hairball before it dries and stains the carpet. Why is it always the carpet? Why can’t she use the litter box? If I miss hearing the sounds of her puking, I sometimes tread on the soggy offering as I stagger from the bed making the nightly trek to the bathroom. Oh what joy to be a cat owner.

Evolution Prostitution

I’ve seen several posts about Public Broadcasting and the possibility that the Federal Government may cut back on their funding. I do find many of the PBS programs interesting however my major concern is they preach evolution as a fact on nearly every one of their television presentations. The carbon dating method scientists use to state ages of billions and millions of years is not reliable. One test performed by an independent group was given the age of a living mollusk as being millions of years old. The carbon content varies from year to year and would give different readings.

The world has continued to profess the theory of Evolution and discredit Creationism. Evolution is only a theory and a way to draw mankind away from seeing the hand of an omniscient, omnipotent Creator. There is a concerted effort to replace God in everything with the ideas of man.

When I hear someone mention the “Big Bang” theory, I ask, “Where did the matter for the explosion come from?” Any detonation I’ve ever seen caused destruction and chaos, not a finely tuned and balanced solar system filled with heavenly bodies that are too numerous for scientists to count.

The theorists propose that chemicals somehow mixed in primordial sludge and formed a one cell life form. Have scientists been able to replicate that? Now, I want to address the evolution of mankind from the kingdom of the apes. To me, if it happened once, why hasn’t it continued to flourish or at least occasionally happen? Why don’t we see Cro-Magnon Men still appearing on earth? Why aren’t apes still producing more prehistoric men? The Nazis tried to impregnate women with gorilla sperm and that was a total failure. Why, man and ape are two different species.

Every civilization describes a flood in their historical records that cleared the earth of man and beast, save those who were sheltered safely in an ark. The cataclysm of a worldwide flood answers the question of how layers of silt were created and how so many animals were buried and preserved as fossils.

A friend of mine who lived on the west coast told me that after the eruption of Mt St. Helens, the things scientists said took millions of years, started to appear only ten years after the explosion.

To wrap it up, until PBS explains that Evolution is only a theory and not a fact, I can’t support them. When I watch PBS, I have to listen with only one ear, especially when they give a dating process in any program. The only exception is when they are counting tree rings for an age.

Evil Times

I really didn’t want to write about the debate about the restrictions that people want to place on the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, but I feel compelled to do so. I am terrified that this is just the beginning for the erosion of America’s freedoms. If this continues, we will not be able to resist any intrusion that the government wants to impose on us. We have examples of Nazi Germany, communist Russia and China.

I mourn the death of these innocent people. I also know that restricting guns is not the ONLY solution to the problem. Chicago has the most restrictive gun laws and still has one of the highest murder rates in the country. Obviously that isn’t the answer. If we are really serious about protecting our children, we need to put everything on the table and examine ALL options: mental health, drugs, violent games, armed guards and everything in between. I don’t consider the Second Amendment as a sacred cow, But I cannot let it be the only thing considered in this headlong rush to correct a problem.

Evil abounds and things made for good and peaceful purposes have been perverted by men with evil intent to cause death and carnage. Fertilizer, fuel, screws and nails have devastating effects when converted into explosive devices. Automobiles and airplanes have been perverted to become vehicles of death. Alcohol and drugs just add to the flames of wickedness.

Our forefathers as they settled the country placed armed guards at their churches and meeting places to protect their loved ones from the savages who wanted to kill them. Shouldn’t we do the same? If schools are considered “safe zones” isn’t that an open invitation for depraved people to come in and cause carnage with the least resistance.

Do violent games cause insensitivity to the taking of human lives? The military introduced the use of human shaped targets instead of the bull’s-eye targets to minimize the trauma of shooting another person. Isn’t that what is happening with these video games? It's said that most of these shooters were on prescribed antipsychotic and mood stabilizing drugs. Should they be evaluated?

Finally, I heard a radio announcer say that he thought these shooters wanted to commit suicide but were too cowardly to do it themselves. They've lived in relative obscurity and decided to write their names in blood before dying themselves. Going out in a blaze of glory is better than living the lives where they are now.

I don’t know the answer other than changing the souls of evil men, but shouldn’t we consider all of the alternatives?