CLYDE'S BOOKSHELF (An Incomplete List)

I found a list of books written out in daddy's hand, some with asterisks next to the titles. He was a voracious reader. It wasn't just a hobby - it was him. He could have, and should have, written a few but never got around to it. Here is the list - to be sure, an incomplete list. I may read them all. I want to find out what it was about these books that prompted him to write them down. This list is a microcosm of the thousands He read. He always had a book in his hands and often read them more than once. He would underline and make margin notes in his beautiful tiny handwriting. He enjoyed passing particular books to someone else like a son or friend and asking them to feel free to add their own notes so he could read their thoughts. He loved discussing a book he was reading - - but perhaps rarely had someone to participate in that discussion. I think maybe his deep intellect was threatening or unrelateble to some. He did do dives where most swim in the shallow end philosophically.  Daddy I'm sorry for all the times I didn't take the time to listen. All the times I was too busy or distracted. I didn't understand then that I could never recapture those moments with you.

Man's Search for Meaning. Victor Frankl
Resilience: Discovering a New Strength at Times of Stress.  Flach
The Way of a Pilgrim. French
The Wayward Youth.  Aickhorn
Feelings. Gaylin
Bias. Goldberg
Through Many Windows. Gordan
Spoiled Rotten. Gosman
The Hungry Person. Greenwalk (BB)
We Have This Ministry.  Griffith (BB)
The Silent Language. Edward T. Hall
* Hallock (Pastor E.F. Hallock of First Baptist Church, Norman, OK)
Living Expectantly. Harbour
I'm Ok, You're Ok. Harris
Antagonist in a Church. Haugk
* We Are Driven. Hemfelt
* Doctrine of Man. Hendricks
The Soul's Code. Hillman
Our Inner Conflicts. Hoeney
*X the Tiger. Howard
*Hegel.
*Testament of Devotion. Kelly
We the Lonely People. Keyes
Your Geatest Power.  Koke
*Lalanne
*There's A Lot More to Health Than Not Being Sick.  Larson
*Prayer. Laubach
*At My Father's Wedding. Lee
The Ways of Friendships. Lapp
* Love and Marriage. Lessor
*Divorcing of Society. Locke
*McCartney
*H.R. Mackintosh
*True Success. Morris
*Spiritual Secrets. McMahon
*Simply Sane. Gerald May
*Moustakas. 3 books
Passive Men, Wild Women. Mornell
*Growing Young. A. Montagu
Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic. Reinhold Niebuhr.  & several other books.
The Only Necessary Thing: Living A Prayerful Life.  Nouwen
Our Greatest Gift. A Meditation on Dying and Caring. Nouwen
The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom. Nouwen
Anything by Henri Nouwen
Everything by C.S. Lewis

TRAVELING BACK WITH MY DAD

Taken from notes I took on a warm, beautiful July day talking with my dad in his backyard.

It's July 8, 2005. I bought daddy a free-standing hammock and put it under the dogwood tree in his backyard. He wanted to be outside and the most pain-free way for him was to be able to lie down. Daddy had none cancer. He shouldn't be alive but God gave us all more time.  And God gave this faithful man of God more painless happy days. We were grateful.  As he looked up through the filigree of tree branches which shielded him from the sun on this early July morning, I pulled up a chair to sit next to my father. I felt it - this was going to be a special day with my dad. I had a notebook and pen in hand because I wanted to document wherever his thoughts wanted to take a stroll. I wanted to hear - - everything! I wanted to capture the oral history of the first man in my life.

Daddy started talking about when he was a young boy in Leaksville, NC. Leaksville is in Rockingham County, the county from which all my father's ancestors came from. There were three towns much alike in culture and industry: Leaksville, Spray, and Draper. Leaksville was the oldest of the triplets, in fact it was the oldest town in the county. Colonel William Byrd was given a grant of twenty-thousand acres when he led a commission to establish the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. He said it was the most beautiful area he had ever seen and he called it "The Land of Eden." In 1967 the three unincorporated towns incorporated into one city called Eden.

Daddy told me he loved going on Saturday afternoons to see the black and white spaghetti westerns at The Grand. They usually were Tom Mix westerns. Tom, "the King of Cowboys" and his intelligent horse Tony always "saved the day," and when the picture was over daddy would run home and recount the entire story to his mom and dad. He said they hated when he did that but would tolerantly listen. He said he loved going to the movies and whatever the music was, people came out of the movie house humming and singing. Most times the movie reel broke so you'd just sit in the dark waiting for it to start up again! Daddy's good friend, Tommy Smith, sold popcorn in the lobby. He always managed to give daddy popcorn that was only half popped. If dad happened to take a girl to the movies he'd get a cherry smash (coke and cherry syrup) and they'd share a bag of half-popped corn.

"Back then," he explained, "...we had ice wagons that came by. You'd chip off whatever you needed for your icebox. As the ice melted it ran through a hole cut in the bottom into the basement.  Another inconvenience was no running water. There was a pump out back and everyone drank from a common dipper which hung from a hook. Of course we had an outhouse too.

Two times a year a hog was killed and they would make bacon and sausage and hams, sharing with the neighbors. When those neighbors slaughtered their hog, they would do the same. Those were simple times, simpler than today for sure. If some of us kids wanted to play ball we'd get string from the mill and make a ball with it, then use a limb from a tree as a bat. One time, daddy said, Buck threw the ball and my glove finger got bent back and the ball hit my nose and broke it. I had to walk across town with dad to the doctor's with my nose bleeding. Another time Buck and I were jumping on the bed and we broke the bed! Buck tried to convince me to let him use a blowtorch to try and fix it but I was afraid he'd burn my house down. He gave me $5 to tell my mom and dad I did it. I'd do anything for money!

Back then Henderson was a mean town. Aunt Lola, my father's sister, lived there. Buck's dad was stabbed to death on the street one night for no good reason. Lola was a good person. She drove around a lot. She killed a kid one time that ran out in the street from between two cars. Lola never drove after that.

Daddy talked fondly of the Leaksville Boys Club (YMCA) which became like his second home. The club was on Harris Street, the same street as his family home. During the Depression, like so many other families, the kids had to seek inexpensive entertainment and playing basketball and baseball at the Boys Club provided good clean fun. The man who ran it during the 1930's was Thomas Jefferson Carter. He became like a second father to my daddy. His own father drank too much at times and could be an angry drunk. 

Grandpa had a hard life, but one typical of the time in history and the place. He was a smoker and I remember an odd thing - his legs from the knee down were entirely hairless, just smooth pale skin. I found out later it was because when he fought in WWI their uniforms were wood britches and long wool socks. He wore them so much that the hair on his legs never grew back. Grandpa had only a third grade education, and went to work at the Marshall Fields Mill (later Fieldcrest Mills) when he was 13 and had to stand on a stool to reach his work area. He worked there until he retired at 65 as a mechanic. He never owned or drove a car, but walked every weekend from his home to Washington Street, the main drag, to hang out with his buddies drinking coffee and playing checkers at the diner. He did that as long as he was alive.

Greystone Rock Quarry is in Henderson and was one of our swimming holes. Buck and I would go skinny dipping out there in that cold,
clear water. I'd get him to hand me down my clothes which sometimes he didn't thinking himself very funny.  His brother, Gene, was a nice guy. He was a radioman on the Langley aircraft carrier during WWII. Gene was a good baseball player.


I like poetry. When I was 12 years old I was cutting up in class so the teacher made me quote "Birches" by Robert Frost in front of the class.  I graduated high school when I was just 16 then started working in the mill in Spring until I went to Portsmouth, VA because I wanted to be enlist. Raymond Shouhf and I walked over to the Marine recruitment headquarters one day. We had nothing better to do and we had been turned down by the Army and Navy because of our vision. We were told that the Marines had just come out with a directive that if your vision could be corrected to 20/20 with glasses they would take you. So that's how I became a Marine at 17 years old. Something funny, if you look at my military ID picture you'll see my eyes are looking off to the side. That's because there was an office full of girls off to the side and I'm checking them out while having my picture taken!

Before going to basic training, one day we went driving in Raymond's dad's car with some girls to go shopping in Danville, VA. A spring came lose under the car and we went off the road and flipped over. Raymond's girl was thrown out and pinned under the car in a ditch. I took off running for help. While I was gone Raymond was able to lift the car up just enough with his back for her to get out. Fortunately she only had a broken rib.

I did my training in Paris Island. I got off every Saturday until Monday morning while there because they found out I was somewhat of a sharp shooter so they made me a coach. I also got extra pay, but I paid for it when I was deployed. When I got over to the Pacific they gave me a 16 pound Browning automatic to carry along with extra ammo. Some of the time a bigger fellow Marine in my platoon had pity on me and carried the Browning.

At the end of the war I ran into a nice Japanese soldier who was from Nagasaki. I have a picture of him. We exchanged weapons, my rifle for his sword. Our own little detente I guess. Sometime later after marriage and kids, Martha and I went to England. When we visited Branscombe, England I felt like I'd come home again. It was just like the mountains of North Carolina or Virginia. We loved sitting in the Mason Arms Pub and visited the local anglican church. In the sermon the pastor said, "If we can't get along with each other what do we have to say to the world?"  What indeed?

There's a poem I memorized when I was younger. It was written by Robert Frost and called "Mending Wall." I think I agree with Frost -- "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." I think that day at the end of the war, the Japanese soldier and I tore down the wall for just a moment and became neighbors.

MENDING WALL

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side.  It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it
Where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.'  I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself.  I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

Reflections on Conversations with Daddy Late in Life

Written July 5, 2005 (the last year of my father's life)

Reflecting back upon my father and his life I wonder how I could go for so many years and not know how much poetry my father could quote. That he could remember his friends' names from childhood, even their addresses; could talk animatedly, as if it were just yesterday, of walking to the little corner grocer for a Moon Pie and an RC Cola; of throwing his paper route before school on his bicycle and going up and down every street in Leaksville so many times that he could make those trips in his memory simply by closing his eyes, and did so often, including during his service in the Marines. He told me on several occasions of lying awake during the night, unable to sleep, and walking the streets of his beloved hometown in his memory. Going into the homes of friends and family and remembering specifics. He would say, "It's been said you can't go home again, but I do it all the time. My memories take me home."

My daddy's heart home for the last 53+ years has been with our mother, the love of his life. I don't think in my entire life I've heard my parents quarrel. They just always deferred to each other, thinking nothing important enough to fuel a rift or sustain an argument. Their love produced five children, 14 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren (at this writing there are 8 great-grandchildren). Dad is very sentimental and has kept many of the notes and cards we, as young children, gave him over the years.

I've spent all week just sitting, literally and figuratively, at my father's feet listening. He seems to have so much to say and I have a need to hear it. A need to hear the voice of this man I have heard for 51 years and can't imagine not hearing. It's as if I can't listen fast enough. Time is moving too quickly and there is so much to say. I have to leave soon. I hate that I live 7 hours away. Weeks between trips are going to seem like an eternity when there used to be times, half a year or more, between visits. Time is running out. I wish I could have all those past years back. I wish I had understood then how precious those days and hours with my father were going to become.

I massage daddy's diabetic feet, an act of love, something simple to do. Yet the act becomes more somehow. It becomes a way of connecting to him and of honoring him. It feels like an live electric current between my hands and his warm skin covering his thin bony feet. His feet are so slender - I never realized that before, and soft because he never walked barefooted. There is a slight pigeon-toeing when he walks. I've never seen him cross his legs like many men do with his foot resting on the opposite knee. He always crosses his legs daintily, more like a woman, with his long slender foot toed in. Come to think of it I've never seen daddy sit in that familiar, confident, open-legged posture, typical of men. I pause as I hold his soft foot and we hold a gaze into each other's eyes, not speaking, but speaking volumes. Two sets of brown eyes glistened with tears that don't quite escape their boundaries.

"These feet have taken me a long way." Daddy starts talking again, "all over the streets of Leaksville growing up. Okinawa, Pearl Harbor, Siam, Philippines, Guadalcanal. He said he thanked Adolf Hitler. Strange thing to say I thought, but he went on to explain how if one thing was changed in your history how everything else changes. Thus the ironical gratitude for the war coming along and giving him the opportunity to escape the mill town he loved but didn't want to spend his entire life in, knowing he'd end up like his father working in the mill, drinking, never experiencing anything else. He would have never met mom, the love of his life, and of course would have none of his children or grandchildren. And that's how it was that at the tender age of 17 my dad enlisted in the Marines, after being turned down by the Army because he wore glasses. He had driven to Portsmouth, VA with one of his friends to enlist. When the Army turned him down, someone told him to go to the Marine recruiter, "...because the Marines take anybody!" During boot training it was discovered what a sharp-shooter he was, so for a time he was kept at the base doing rifle-training with other green recruits. Eventually he would leave for the South Pacific theater with a large Browning Machine Gun that weighed about 16 lbs. Dad isn't a big guy, and back then he was 18 years old. The gun was too much for him to haul around on long foot patrols so a nice guy in his platoon voluntarily carried it for him.

My dad is an intellect - unapologetically. His richest most robust world is between his ears. You'd never find him covered with grease in the garage tearing down an engine. It doesn't seem like men today read that much but there actually couldn't be a manlier hobby. Teddy Roosevelt was a voracious reader and so were most of the greatest men in history. Reading allows you to connect with the great thinkers and writers of history and expose you to new ideas. It makes you "go deep" and become more well-rounded, able to talk on a level that the majority of people seem to be too distracted to participate in. Maybe they just have nothing to say - because they don't read enough. I see dad pondering something deeply after reading, and then he begins to extrovert his thoughts over something he read, looking for an exchange of ideas, a meaningful discussion. How I wish I was that kind of person but my thoughts must be shorter,  in staccato time and all over the place. It must be lonely for him not feeling he has anyone to talk to on his intellectual level.

Well, daddy just shifted from one subject to another one. I wish I had more days just to sit at his feet and listen. Now, at the end of his days on earth, we are finally saying all the things we feel and want to say and maybe never did. Why does it take pending death to incite us to cherish the precious gift of each day with those we love? It's all over too quickly. Life is a mere breath. I see that now. But then again, there is eternity - time that never ends. Days and days of days and days. I'm so thankful there is a heaven and I'm glad of the assurance that my precious father is going there and that I will once again sit at his feet and listen.

When I'm ready toleave to drive back to Virginia I go to his bedside to say goodbye,  knowing it will probably be the last time.  It's hard to let go of his hand.  My kiss to his cheek lingers and our tears merge.  He whispers,  "I love you a bushel and a peck," and I reply,  "...and a hug around the neck. " I cross the room slowly and look back.  He smiles and whispers,  "Drive safe. " Yes,  Daddy,  I will.  You have a nice trip to; I'll see you soon."  His eyes are drawn back up to the top right corner of the room, as if he sees something there that he can't take his eyes off of. He's been staring there for days, a half smile teases the corners of his lips up slightly as if he'd seen something nice or perhaps heard something pleasant; it must have been heaven's door opening.