Duane Hiatt

“It is now my pleasure to present…,” said the man at the microphone. Hands throughout the auditorium were poised to applaud.  The president of a nationwide network of motels was about to announce a program to build dinner theaters at the motels. For the thespians and performers including The Three D’s gathered in company headquarters in Memphis Tennessee, the circuit might be the greatest opportunity since Vaudeville.

The announcer uttered the president’s name.     The welcoming applause was predictably thunderous from an audience with so much self interest at stake. The sound crescendoed to its peak, struggled then slipped as hands grew weary of clapping, whistling lips dried, and enthusiasm seeped away.

Meanwhile his Excellency the president ambled toward the microphone arriving several seconds after silence had replaced the jubilation. Sagged expressions replaced smiles on the faces of the audience members, all of whom considered themselves experts in stage technique. Across the table I heard one potential starlet of the circuit say to another, “He just doesn’t get it.” Her companion nodded.

What they accurately predicted was that any person who didn’t ride in on the applause of his or her introduction and use it as a launching pad didn’t know bean one about show business. Not a good omen for the proposed theater circuit. Not surprisingly the project never got off the ground. It was like asking a garden club president to race stock cars..

“You only get one chance to make a first impression,” as the saying goes. On stage, when the curtain opens, your chance to soar or face plant is multiplied by the number of people in the audience. Start off right and you are halfway to a standing ovation. Stumble, and immediately feel the flop sweat begin to seep into your shoes.

Sometimes the deck is so stacked against you it’s like having a hangman for master of ceremonies. I once performed for a national organization of university educators. Like many intellectuals, they considered the expanding world population a curse on the future of the earth.

The master of ceremonies meant well. He laid on the usual accolades, but finished with, “And he is the father of fifteen children.” I felt like a Christian being introduced in the coliseum by Nero. The silence was deafening. The stony faces and smattering of applause told me I was a ham sandwich in a synagogue.    Introductions on stage are different only in degree from personal introductions. If we are introducing someone to another person or small group, consider beforehand the good things you know about that person, and particularly those things that might link him or her into the group. Introducing ourselves is a bit different. We obviously don’t want to open with a list of our accomplishments, but a word or two about who we are is certainly appropriate.

The next difference between public and private introductions is even more important in my opinion. On stage or at a podium or pulpit it is expected that we will deliver the presentation we have prepared. People would be confused if we immediately asked for questions from the audience or launched into a sing along.

But in private introductions I have found that after a brief statement of my identity, the best thing I can do is listen. If the other person doesn’t fill the silence with his own opinions or observations, a non threatening sincere question may break the ice.

The mechanics are also important, a firm handshake, eye contact, and a smile almost always open doors to communication. I have a pet peeve about people who want to dominate an introduction. A university president I met a few times was known for his hand shaking style. Particularly if you were taller than he which many people were, he would grab your hand and pull you off balance to let you know up front who was in charge of the conversation. I admired the man as a mover and a shaker. He didn’t need to try to intimidate me with hand shaking theatrics. I have a friend who instead of pressing palms grasps just the fingers of your hand and crushes them to one up you. An introduction should be an invitation to discourse, not a call to arms with verbal light sabers.

The Three D’s received many introductions over the years. Some were grandiose, some simple. My favorite intro of all time was from a scout leader introducing us at a Jamboree.

“Welcome The Three D’s.” He said, “Boys, we have a real treat for you tonight. The Three D’s will entertain us. And I want to tell you. I would sooner hear these guys sing than eat. (pause)

Because I have heard them eat.

“Welcome The Three D’s.”

“He said it seemed like a good idea at the time.” (Steve McQueen in the movie The Magnificent Seven, explaining why his flakey uncle jumped into a big tangle of cactus naked.)

I was considered an athlete in my youth: captain of our high school football and basketball teams; all region, and second team all state in basketball; and played for a year on Brigham Young University’s j.v. team.

I believed that good opinion of my athletic prowess up until the seventh grade. On the football field I was tall enough to catch passes over the defense. On the basketball court I was in my native habitat. For years my favorite pass time had been shooting hoops by myself or joining pick up games wherever I found them. I had some fairly good moves for a twelve year old.

Then spring came and with it a stunning shock to my all-American-athlete self image. The phys ed teacher introduced us to gymnastics. My long, smooth graceful (in my mind) body was now supposed to tuck into a tight ball and roll across the mat or fly through the air. Tucking for me was like trying to turn a grass hopper into a roll up potato bug. My tight tuck was a bent spine with elbows and knees sticking out in several directions.

Jay Brown, Mr. Cool in our class, was not built for football or basketball, but he was Bolshoi Ballet material on the tumbling mat.

Track and field, tennis, and other field events were more of the same for me. Even baseball where I had sometimes had modest success in the sand lot leagues despite my skinny arms and wide strike zone. These challenges convinced me I was not an all around athlete. They also made me grateful our little school didn’t have a golf, soccer, lacrosse, or broom polo team. I longed for autumn, winter and what I considered the real big time sports.

My new hard won humility brought with it a small shaft of insight. People have different gifts and talents. The key to happy relationships is to notice what others do well, encourage them in it, and find joy in their success as well as your own. Nobody is good at everything, but everybody is good at something. I believe that if you could design your own Olympics competition, you could capture the gold. In my case it would be a cross country race up the mountain behind our house where I jog most mornings, and know the trails well. In my Olympic run you would get additional points for each year of your age, how many children and grand children you had, if you took size 14 shoes and your left foot was longer than your right. If I needed to I would award more points if you could play “Malaguena” on the guitar, write left handed, and flip your left thumb out of joint. I think I would have a good chance of taking home the trophy in that race.

“That’s a stupid race,” you might legitimately say. True, but is it more stupid than hitting a boxing glove with a broom, throwing a ball into a fruit basket, or madly sweeping a broom ahead of a rock sliding on the ice? (The beginnings of baseball, basketball and present procedure in the sport of curling.)

But back to the point of this diatribe if there is one. Sports can be entertaining, participating can be healthful, but contrary to my seventh grade perspective they are no measures of the importance of one person over another.

Beyond the enjoyment and the health benefits of sports, are the skills one learns of any practical value? What is the real life usefulness of putting a ball in a basket nailed up on a wall when the basket has a hole in the bottom? How about carrying an inflated pigskin across grass while being pummeled by a stampede of human flesh. How about hitting various kinds and sizes of balls with various shapes of bats, clubs, or rackets, only to have to retrieve the balls or have someone else hurl or swat them back to or at you? Except for fighting through a Black Friday Christmas shopping crowd like a fullback driving for yardage, or sweeping your house clean in 23 seconds if you are a champion curler, most athletic skills don’t seem that practical.

But there is one sport that can be very useful in certain situations. The sport is gymnastics. The situation is when a car with a total idiot at the wheel (a.k.a. an 18 year old male driver) is accelerating like a drag racer down the straight away so the people hanging on to the side of the car will be afraid to jump off.

Fortunately the sport of car hanging has attracted only a small following. To participate you need fingernails of steel, white knuckles, skill in judging speed, and the intelligence of a retarded mealworm. Who would do this and why? Who? Jay Brown and me. Why?*

This is gymnastics on steroids. Procrastinating your jump a nanosecond too late as we did incurs a penalty. Jay hit the ground, took two giant steps across a field, snapped into a tight front roll, spun like a tumbleweed in the wind, and jumped up dusty with only a scratch on his nose. I flew off the driver’s side, took one giant step, made a five point landing on the pavement and skidded to a stop. I picked gravel and tar out of my hands, elbows and one hip bone for weeks.

As every athlete knows, it’s hard to win on the road.

* See Steve McQueen observation

“Engineering the Ultimate Toy,” was the title of an article in Popular Science this month. The thesis was what toys would creative inventors build if money, safety, and the very laws of physics were no objects? My favorite toy idea was an augmented reality system imagined by Joshua Garrett, a computer game developer. It would understand voice commands and comments and instantly change the child’s environment. If he or she sat up in bed and said “spaceship” the bed and its environs would instantly become a rocket ship, and the space around it would be, well space. If the child then said, “This looks scary,” little green monsters would ooze out from under the former closet door now become a spaceship portal. The child could then imagine whether to fire up his fingertip laser and zap them into non existence, or imagine peanut butter sandwiches for everybody while they all settle down and make friends.

It’s a wild concept, stretching our minds, creativity, and believability to their outer limits. “Impossible” to the digital development geniuses is like “no” to a high pressure salesman—not in their vocabulary. They have made such strides the past few decades that the system may be on shelves at Toys R Us not many Christmases hence.

There is only one drawback to this mind warping stocking stuffer. It has already been done by the children themselves. From time immemorial children have turned sticks into fiery steeds, corn cobs into cuddly dolls, nighttime shadows into monsters under the bed.

When I was a child money was so tight that we couldn’t afford to imagine space ships, but my brother Gordon and I won the battle for the skies against the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese warlords by flying dogfights in our family’s 1928 Chevrolet box on wheels. My friend Monte Montague and I freed Europe with tanks, ships and planes fashioned from railroad parts we found in the train repair yard across the street from our house.

On the home front we tamed the great American west, pulled out last second miracle victories on imaginary grid irons, and captured outlaw gangs with our bare knuckles and lightening draw index finger six shooters.

The social experts tell us we slough off that genius for creating instant worlds to live in. As we mature it’s undignified to have make believe war games around the office water cooler and ride stick horses down the city sidewalks. But I have found we can tease back our latent genius of imagination through such magic carpets as theater of the mind. For decades I have invited audiences to ride with me and my guitar chasing outlaws with the Mormon cowboy law man Porter Rockwell, saving the Union with Abraham Lincoln, following the Old Testament prophets, or swinging away with Casey at the bat.

I supply the suggestions with voice characterizations, songs and strums on the guitar, and occasional sound effects. The audience takes it from there. We can travel anywhere and any when on the wings of our minds.  It’s a stimulating and refreshing way to learn by living for awhile in a world of our own creation. And unlike even the greatest movie or digital production, each person creates his own version of heroes, villains, romantic scenes, and goofy comedy. Our imaginations can create monsters that would petrify even the little green aliens oozing out from under the closet door.

This childlike ability to create the mental, and emotional world we choose to live in has great practical potential in our adult worlds as well. Environment and events give us the raw materials, but we can and do fashion them into the world we choose to inhabit. Certainly that is true of our inner world. Most of us know rich people who are miserable and people of much lesser means who picture themselves as enjoying a rich and full existence. Both are in large measure correct. And speaking large measure, Albert Einstein reconstructed our view of the universe by framing one mental question, “What would the world look like if I were riding on a light beam?”

By applying time, energy, tools, and materials to the image in our imagination, we can often replicate our inner vision in our outer world. The theater then becomes a workshop or even a factory of the mind.

In her last years my mother was still in the little house she had lived in almost all her married life. She said, “I’m so glad my house is small. I get dizzy often lately and if I start to fall there is always a wall nearby.”

Her mind turned her cramped quarters into a comfortable cocoon. I’m quite sure if she had wanted to she could have turned it into a space ship. She already knew how to create great peanut butter sandwiches.

Cyrano de Bergerac, the dashing poet and warrior of the stage, had the charm, wit and manners every man possesses in his fantasies. But he had one devastating drawback, or maybe it was a pull forward. His gigantic nose ruled his life and decreed his destiny. The play has been a theatrical mainstay since it was written in1890, and has been produced in several movie versions. Apparently the nose thing strikes a universal chord. In America thousands of people every year spend $3,000 to $15,000 for rhinoplasty to improve the shape of their noses.

Nose consciousness is worldwide apparently. When our son Tom and his beautiful wife Alma had their first baby, her family who are from the Philippines was joyful that the little daughter had a longer nose than Asians usually have. Apparently this was because some of Tom’s ancestors (his mother’s side of course) had noses that made them wish they had some Asian DNA to temper their profile.

The Three D’s once performed as the warm up act for a Bob Hope show. Bob was one of the most successful comedians of the twentieth century. His career spanned vaudeville, radio, TV, movies, books and world wide junkets entertaining military men and women. His fast paced topical humor kept audiences rolling for most of his century-long life (1903-2003). He was also a savvy business man and marketer. He billed himself as Bob “Ski jump nose” Hope. His middle dipping proboscis was the result of taking too many punches as an amateur boxer in his youth. The deformity could have been an embarrassment to him. Instead he turned it into a trade mark. Successful people often get there by knocking the mis- off of misfortune.

I identify with Bob Hope. Except for the fame, success, money, and circumstances of nose breaking, our biographies are identical. I rearranged my profile at a much younger age than Bob did. I was so young, that other people have had to tell me how it happened. But I do remember a steep hill, some playmates in a wagon, me pushing them, the wagon going faster until I was hanging on not pushing. I remember thinking, “This not going to turn out well,” just before the sidewalk rushed up to meet my nose.”

The next phase of my facial makeover is blank to me since I was unconscious at the time. In those days, if a child sneezed it was time to take out his tonsils. I did, and they did. After the doctor scooped out the offending organs, my mother said, “While he is asleep, could you do something to straighten his broken nose?”

This being the days before doctors were justifiably paranoid about malpractice suits, he said, “Of course.”

I am told he then twisted my nose into various contortions. Things seemed to only get more deformed, so my mother suggested we let worse enough alone. As a result I have been blessed with a nose that appears to be adapted to smelling around corners. Actually that was the first break. The doctor’s handiwork made my nose appropriate for smelling around complicated freeway interchanges. In addition, if Bob’s nose was a ski jump, mine was now a roller coaster. But like Bob, and other successful people, I soldiered on wearing my disfigurement. Arising each morning I would go forth and fight the battles of ridicule, amazement, and smothering pity that I would face and conquer that day.

Actually I wasn’t that heroic. I forgot all about it. Doctors told my parents they couldn’t clear out the wreckage inside my nose until my face was fully grown, at about eighteen. Based on the first confrontation between the nose and the doctor, this was welcome news. I grew up breathing through the open side of my nose. Then at eighteen the doctor bored out the other side. I expected this would allow me to now slam dunk a basketball with either hand, play the piano, get straight A’s in school, run and not be weary and walk and not faint. Didn’t happen.

Years later a friend of mine, Dr. Blaine Hirschi who happened to be a world class plastic surgeon offered to straighten my nose for free. I declined. I thought, “I’m too busy, and the most important people in my life love and accept me. Why bother?”

Dr. Hirschi has since past on, so I guess the offer is over until the resurrection, and I suppose then hands even more gifted than his will have already done the job. In which case I may have to introduce my new nose to my old friends who may not recognize me.

In retrospect my turning down Dr. Hirschi may have been self centered. I was focused on me. He perhaps considered it a humanitarian gesture to make the world more beautiful and other people more comfortable. I rationalize my decision by quoting Abraham Lincoln about his own homely features. Lincoln would say, “I have the advantage of you because I am on this side of my face, and you are on that side.”

From the east hillsides the nighttime panorama over Oakland and across the bay to San Francisco is a kaleidoscope of multi colored lights, and moving traffic fascinating to watch.

“The view down from here is spectacular isn’t it?” a voice behind me said.

I turned to see a security guard with a big but friendly looking dog at his side.

“But the view up from here is inspiring,” he added directing my attention to the temple behind us. The white stone spires softly bathed in spotlights pointed heavenward into the starry sky.

“For those who have eyes to see and comprehension to understand every pinpoint of starlight, leads on to billions, trillions more.  Choose any number, even infinity and you will not overestimate the depth and scope of the heavens.  And yet the creator and ruler of them all knows and loves each of us.  Looking up I feel like King David in the Bible, ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,’” he said.

“Eloquently stated.  Where did you study all this goodly speech?” I borrowed from Shakespeare.

“I practice it on my dog,” he said.

“You’re security I see. Is he?”

“He sniffs out drugs in general, but his specialty drug is tobacco,” he said. “Comes in handy here at the temple.”

(Background note for those not acquainted with this aspect of the Mormon faith.)

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nicknamed The Mormons, temples and tobacco don’t mix.  People who smoke, or drink alcohol are not barred from church meetings in chapels, but the Mormon temples are special places of service and devotion. Entrance requires a recommend from ecclesiastical leaders certifying among other things, abstinence from tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs.

My new acquaintance said that he and his dog had just finished checking a suspicious aroma in the bushes landscaping the temple.  As they approached, a man hiding there decided he had important business somewhere else.
The security man and I talked awhile.  I mentioned I was in California on a tour doing musical concerts and promoting an album of poetry we had set to music.

“I love poetry.  I could quote poems by the hour,” he told me.

“Really? What and who are some of your favorite poems and poets?” I asked.

He smiled. “I can’t remember.”

He could see I was puzzled, so he continued.

“I had a photographic mind.  Read once, remember forever.  My memory gave me a big advantage in my work. I was an electrical contractor.  I could read through a thick book of blueprints, roll them up and never have to look at them again.  This made me fast and accurate.  I was very successful, big money, beautiful wife and children, respected in my work and in the community.  Maybe I was too successful. I got cocky, stuck on myself, began looking for new thrills.  I found them in a bottle of booze, then uncounted more bottles.  I lost my jobs, my good name, my self respect, and saddest of all my wife and children.  I who had been on top sank like a rock in the bay down there.

“See those lights next to the ocean.  Every seaport city has a street they name first street, or front street down by the docks.  It’s the toughest part of town, full of drunks and whore houses. One night at the bottom of my plunge I found myself on that street in Oakland, literally face down in the gutter. In the drunken fog bank that was now my brain I thought, ‘I’ve hit bottom. I can’t go any lower.  And I can’t get up.’  I prayed the prayer of the helpless and hopeless. I said, ‘God you know me. You know what a rotten wretch I am, garbage to be hauled off with the rest of the city refuse. God, I don’t have the strength of body or will to move a muscle. Will you please help me lift my head?’

“I collapsed onto the scum and concrete of the gutter. How long I lay there I don’t know.  Then I felt something move.  It was my head rising up until I could see level with the sidewalk. God gave me the strength to do just that and no more.  I prayed again, long and hard.  Finally I could push up to my hands and knees and crawl up on to the sidewalk.

“It’s been a long, long journey with God helping me every step.  I lost everything on the way down, even my great memory.  Alcohol dissolves brain cells.  Many, maybe most of mine were sluiced away in the booze.  I don’t have my family anymore.  I’m a long way from when I was on top, but I’m a longer way from where I was at the bottom. I’m grateful to work on this sacred ground, and in my off hours I try to help guys like the one we just scared out of the bushes.  Thanks for listening.  Good luck with your poetry music.”

He walked away.  I thought, whether we are on the peaks or in the valleys of life, even if, like my new friend we have to strain upward just to see the sidewalk, looking up gives us the perspective of eventual perfection.  Like my friend and King David, “I will lift mine eyes.”

“Had a fire in the bathroom last night. Lucky it didn’t spread to the house.” That red neck comedian joke minus the fire, describes our house for the first years of my growing up. But then we leaped into the twentieth century and got indoor plumbing.

World War II was a contributing factor. Because of the war the government built a new plant on the shores of Utah Lake. My father who was turned down by the draft for eyesight problems got a well paying job at Geneva Steel. This provided the money to build the new accommodation. On the other hand, the war effort rationed many things including toilet bowls. I’m still not sure how toilet bowls are used in a war. I’m not even sure I want to ask. We had a fair wait with uncertainty until we finally were able to purchase this home improvement. In addition to not being available at the whim of a shopping spree, the gleaming white porcelain bowl was not cheap in terms of our home improvement budget. Being porcelain it was also potentially breakable.

My mother gave us careful instruction, demonstration, and testing on how to open and close the lid without letting it fall possibly putting us out of the indoor bathroom business, and crippling the Allied war effort to some extent. My brother Gordon and I watched carefully, then successfully passed our skill test.

The great moment came. We experienced the first flush of success (sorry, couldn’t resist.) Life was better, especially in the winter.

Then one day we were at the city dump. My memory grows foggy at this point, but I assume we were there taking trash to the dump not from the dump. Things were tight financially, but not dumpster diving tight.

Gordon and I were off inspecting the interesting offerings cast from our little town. Mother called authoritatively, “Come here.” We came. She pointed at a ghastly scene, a white porcelain toilet with part of one side broken out. We stood solemn and stunned.

Secretly I hoped it was wounded in the war by a howitzer shell and not the result of some kid dropping the lid; a prodigal now stabbed with guilt every time a family member left the house in winter to visit the “facility” out back. Whatever the cause of the catastrophe, Mom reminded us again how important it was to set the lid down gently.

Though she rarely mentioned it, I’m sure I often fell short of Mom’s expectations. For example, at my request we got a correspondence course on playing the piano. It is moldering somewhere in its original mail wrappings I think.

“Move quickly,” she admonished me. My quick was her stopped.

“We’ve packed enough socks for you to wear a fresh pair every day. Then at the end of the week wash them all for the coming week.” Her parting words to Gordon and me as we left on our great summer adventure working in the Kaniksu forest in the Idaho panhandle. We meant well, but there were always so many things to do after work that were much more fun than washing socks. At the end of the summer, I suppose we hiked out of camp for the last time and left the socks lined up standing stiffly at attention in front of the tent.

But with a clear conscience on the day of judgment I will report that never, from the men’s room of the New York Waldorf Astoria Hotel, to a thousand truck stops as a traveling troubadour, to the latrine tent of a Boy Scout Jamboree, never did I on purpose drop a lid on a toilet bowl. And I am sure I never shall. The lesson is engraved on my DNA.

I think my mother would not be necessarily proud to hear this, more like puzzled. I’m sure she has forgotten the whole thing. As a parent I identify, although I don’t understand either. Why is it that we can drum great words of wisdom into our children, and the pearls will, in the words of my mother’s generation, “Go in one ear and out the other?”  And yet they take some off handed comment or action we do and make it an article of faith. More sobering to me is, how healthy was the smorgasbord of words and actions that I presented to them to pick from. They have turned out to be pretty respectable citizens, so I hope that reflects our parenting.

And I’m glad I followed my mother’s counsel to be gentle with toilet lids. In part it has made me who I am. In the interest of full disclosure though, I must add, I worked summers during my college years in a service station. Once while cleaning the ladies rest room, the top of the water closet slipped out of my hand, fell and smashed a hole in the bottom of the unit on the back of the toilet. Water ran everywhere and we had to replace the fixture. The station manager was a good hearted guy who took my clumsiness in stride. But he did say, “You only have to shine up the outside of the water closet. Why did you take the lid off in the first place?”

I said, “Mom never mentioned that.”

He looked puzzled.

That day as I walked into the entrance of the Capitol Records tower I was tingling. We were going to record in the studios where legends such as Frank Sinatra, The Kingston Trio, Ella Fitzgerald (I pause here while people under 50 consult their history books. But take my word for it. They were icons in their day.) This place was Mecca for creative musical performers back then. You could sell a record album (Pause again for the young and middle aged to look that up. A record album was a flat black plastic disc the size of a large dinner plate that could hold almost one 500th as many songs as you can store in an I Pod. You could also sail them like a Frisbee. You could almost sail an album from the top of the Capitol Tower down to the corner of Hollywood and Vine, two star studded streets second only to Broadway in New York for show biz fame and glory.

Even the building itself was a creative symbol, built to resemble a stack of records (see previous explanation of records.) Not to make any old fogy comparisons, but you don’t see any famous music buildings today shaped like a stack of MP3’s.

I thought, “Surely this building must be constructed on springs to hold the creative energy exploding inside its round walls.”

The receptionist took our names and the purpose of our entering this hallowed hall. She called upstairs to make sure we were legitimate, and the security guard bade us pass. I wondered how long until we were on a first name basis with these people and so famous that this identification stuff would be ridiculous..

The glitter began to fade as I walked around (literally) the building and saw desks and behind them people on phones, typing memos, and shifting papers. It was looking suspiciously like an insurance company’s headquarters.

Many people looked “cool and far out” to use the vernacular then in vogue. But after awhile they began to look uniformly cool and far out. I overheard two people shocked by one of the middle managers wardrobe. “He wears white socks.”

Can you believe it?”

He says its doctor’s orders for a foot condition.”

“Whatever. You’d think he could wear something over them.”

Seemed to me an odd conversation from people involved in the non conformist pop music scene of the 1960’s. The stars of that decade seemed bent on reshaping not just the music, but the world into their creative image. They were proclaiming “Don’t trust anybody over 30.” Many of them professed to be not just entertainers, but intellectuals and philosophers with expertise in social relationships, foreign policy, and military tactics. As Truman Madsen, an authentic Harvard Ph. D. in philosophy once said to me, “The question today is, shall we follow the advice of Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan, or rely on military commanders, none of whom have a single hit record.”

Some of these pickers and singers were also learned theologians, preaching from their on stage pulpits that “God is dead.” Not everyone joined in the wake. I followed one bumper sticker that read, “My God is alive. Sorry about yours.” Apparently some people had replaced God with the Beatles; John Lennon once proclaimed, “We [the Beatles] are more popular than Jesus, and we will outlast him.” How did that turn out? A few years ago I read an account of. Paul McCartney being pulled over for speeding by a patrolman in Australia. The officer took one look into the car and said., “Hey I know who you are.”

Paul smiled a nonchalant “Who in the universe doesn’t?” smile.

The patrolman said. “No really. I know you. You used to be in The Rolling Stones.”

Other pop stars included psychological counseling with their music. The answer to the world’s problems they advised was free love and listening to Mother Mary (-juana’s) wisdom, “Let it Be.”

The overriding theme of this new wave in music was, “Do your own thing.” But the subtext seemed to be, “But it better be like our thing.” Someone suggested a slogan for the time, “Individualists of the world unite.”

The Three D’s didn’t fit the mold. With clean comedy, upbeat music, and unabashed flag waving we were paddling upstream many experts in the business said. But we chose to be true to who we really were. Fortunately, a fair number of people liked the direction we were paddling, and the little stream we chose to float on. Our first Capitol Records release contained our own musical recipe for happiness, “Give Said the Little Stream. I’m small I know, but wherever I go, the fields grow greener still”

Even if we had tried to join the mass march of the individualists we probably couldn’t have pulled it off. Somebody would have peeked into my cowboy boots and spied—you guessed it. White socks.

Every True down in Trueville loved Christmas a lot,
But the Geek up in Sueville most surely did not.
He claimed to be happy and maybe he was,
Had no gripe with the reindeer or with Santa Claus.
He could join in the singing about peace on earth,
But he ground his Geek teeth about Jesus’ birth.
A star and bright angels why how could that be?
He said, “Superstition.  It’s all Geek to me.”
In matters of faith he would give not an inch.
His heart was as shriveled and cold as the Grinch.
He said, “If there’s one thing I thoroughly hate
It’s to have signs of churchiness mixed with the state
Never mind that the money says ‘In God we trust’
That’s an old fashioned notion that’s dry as the dust.”
So he thought till his humanist thinker was sore.
Then he thought with his humanist thinker some more.
Then he thought, “I know what I’ll do, just what I’ll do.
If anyone talks about Jesus I’ll sue.”
So he called up his lawyer friend Clyde the attorney.
And Clyde said up front, “What’s the fee it will earn me?”
The Geek said “I’m really embarrassed you’d ask
To be paid to be part of so worthy a task.
We are saving this land from religious fanatics,
The noblest victory since Appomattox.”
So the Geek and his side kick Clyde the Attorney
Set out on the work of their humanist journey.
The Geek sent out more than one great proclamation
To every far corner and edge of the nation.
“Better our walls should be filled with graffiti
Than we should help people have faith in a deity.”
“Season’s greetings,” they shouted, “Hooray Santa Claus”
But refused to acknowledge who’s season it was.
One day on the corner where Elm Street runs through
They chanced to meet sweet little Mindy Lou True.
They said to her, “What’s that bad song you are humming?”
“Away in a manger, for Christmas is coming.”
“That’s religious,” they scolded sweet Mindy Lou True
“Why if everyone sang that you know what they’d do?”
“They might do what Jesus did,” Mindy replied.
“They’d start to feel wonderfully happy inside
Their joy would spill out all over each other
They’d love everybody as sisters and brothers
We would humble ourselves and repent of our sins
And our frowns would be covered all over with grins
If we learned to love baby Jesus enough
We might even be willing to share all our stuff.”
“Stop your talk of religion,” the Geek and Clyde told her.
But Mindy Lou True became even bolder.
“Why that’s a religion that you two are preaching.
To me this makes more sense than what you are teaching.”
So the Geek and his lawyer had had quite enough.
They took off in a whiff.  They took off in a huff.
Through the cities and towns they went suing and stopping
Any talk about Jesus, but they loved Christmas shopping.
Then they ran to their home to chuckle and chortle
Over how they stopped Jesus from looking immortal.
The Christmas they taught was no birth of a king.
It was kind of a warmed over washed out old thing.
Instead of the wise men with stars in their eyes,
We got Geek and his lawyer, couple a wise guys.
In the home of the free and the land of the brave
They made talk of the Savior a thing to be saved.
The Geek issued his seasonal formal decree,
“Mistletoe is ok and the log and the tree.
Happy holidays everyone have a good time
But don’t mention the Christ Child for that is a crime.
Season’s Greetings and have you a happy new year
Have a glass of spiked eggnog and send up a cheer.
But don’t set any manger scenes up now you hear?”
Geek said, “Those Truevillians are burning with rage.
They don’t know we have entered an enlightened age.
They don’t need faith and reverence the Geek said with pride.
They’ve got Rudolph and Santa.  They’ve got me and Clyde.”
Then he heard in the street a low rumbling sound.
Like the thunder of elephants pounding the ground.
He looked out the window and all he could see.
Were the Trues up from Trueville the little city.
“Oh no,” cried the Geek, “They will lynch Clyde and me.”
But the Trues started singing a beautiful song.
They sang it out loud and they sang it out long.
They sang, “Jesus has told us to love everyone
For each of us is the Lord’s daughter or son.
You can’t take away Jesus, he’s still in our hearts,
And when we feel happiness that’s where it starts.
Though you’ve tried to stop Christmas, you’ve tried and you’ve tried,
We still care about you.  And we even love Clyde.”
Then a new thought was born in the Geek’s little brain
He thought and he thought, and he thought once again.
It stretched in his mind till it even caused pain.
Could it be that religion is valuable too?
That the song of the Trues down in Trueville was true?
If it was, then the Geek and Clyde knew what to do.
The Geek’s brain grew more than three sizes that day.
He grew humble and some say he started to pray.
Even Clyde the attorney had something to say
Though he said it in quite an attorneyish way
“We the parties in question hereafter referred
As the parties fore mentioned first second and third
Express affirmation of what we have heard.”
Nobody from Trueville could tell what he meant
But they loudly applauded his worthy intent.
And the Trues and the Geek and the lawyer named Clyde
Felt a wonderful Christmasy feeling inside,
And it lasted, they say ’til the day that they died.
(Chorus of Trues)  Aaaaah Clyde

Fifty years ago December 15, 1961, Diane and I pooled our resources and came up with $30 for a marriage license, and gave ourselves to each other for Christmas. As a couple of working college students, we made a lavish splash on the society page, “Local couple hitches ride to the temple with his parents since groom’s ancient Plymouth may not have had the 90 mile round trip left in it. Following the nuptials, the happy couple hosted a wedding breakfast for two at one of the city’s finest hamburger emporiums.”

Diane insisted she didn’t like diamonds, so we got a gold band. We honeymooned in our basement apartment. We told each other truthfully we could do scenery some other time. We just wanted to see each other for eternity. That was life in living color. Anything else was pastel pabulum.

Diane wanted a quiet wedding reception at home. This also fit her widowed mother’s situation. But our families were determined that we should have a memorable wedding. They succeeded.
My first memorable event was being late for the reception line and finding my third and fourth grade school teachers waiting for me. I remembered how many times I had seen that look before. I was about to make an excuse for being late, then I realized I had used them all in their classes. Would they believe that the dog ate our marriage license? Probably not this time. My problem in grade school was that we lived only a half a block from the school. Not far enough to hurry and beat the bell. My former teachers gave me the kindly smile and sigh of resignation that had endeared them to me back then.

My communication professors in college had us ponder with furrowed brows whether if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The question was somehow vital to the metaphysics of communication theory. I didn’t and don’t know why.

The visual equivalent to that question in Diane’s family was, “If some event takes place, and no one is there to take pictures, did it really happen?” Their pronouncement was, “No.” Pursuant to this decree, Diane’s brother-in-law Dale came armed and determined that this historic event be filmed for posterity. Compared to today’s low light, miniscule digital video cameras, photography equipment back then was one small step advanced from cave wall painting. Dale had a light bar attached to his movie camera with a brace of flood lights that lit up the room like a tanning bed… for about 45 seconds. Then everything went black. Dale scurried down the basement stairs searching for the fuse box. The guests in the wedding line groped in the darkness for the next hand to shake. Finally the lights reappeared as did Dale a few minutes later. Fortunately Dale now knew where the fuse box was so it took him fewer minutes the next time he blew a fuse.

Not to be outdone in memorable moments, my side of the family contributed. My father’s aunt reached the top step of the porch, slumped and was helped into a bedroom near the front door where she peacefully passed away. This branch of our family, the Jex branch, is known for their faith, optimism, and composure in adversity. They showed it that night. They brought in the doctor, then the mortician, then carried my aunt’s last mortal remains to be prepared for her burial with the finesse of a smooth CIA operation. Most of the wedding guests were unaware of the back stage/front bedroom drama.

At my aunt’s funeral the next week they were profusely apologetic. I assured them that her passing added to the significance and the profundity of the occasion. We were made more grateful for marriage and families that continue beyond the grave.

In addition to their other accomplishments, the Jex family has a well developed sense of humor. So I felt safe adding, “Marriage and death are surely two of the three most important events in this life. I just wish someone in the reception line could have given birth to complete the trilogy.” I also told them that Dale offered his apologies that he didn’t get any film footage of their mother’s passing.

The poet Robert Frost famously quoted his New England neighbor saying, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Frost had misgivings about the absolute truth of that saying commenting, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.” The truth and wisdom of wall making is still open to (sometimes heated) discussion even at national levels.

Like neighbors, families also have fences, or walls, and 24 Christmases ago I was trying to keep ours intact in the face of an emotional earthquake we had gone through seven months before. Diane, my beloved wife of 26 years, the mother of our 15 children had died of cancer. This would be our first Christmas without her.

Further complicating the situation, we were about to receive a magnificent Christmas gift, another wife and mother. Like the verdant coastal plain of Israel from which her name is derived, Sharon would bring new life and beauty to our family. I was overjoyed and grateful. Some of our children were not so sure. Two of our daughters said, “Dad, you don’t need to get married again. We’ll take care of you.”

I reminded them that they had their own lives to live, and when the time came for them to start their own families I didn’t want to be an obstacle in their path.  Or maybe I said, “Sure you will until some handsome young man sweeps you off your feet, and then it’s ‘hey dad call if you need something.’”

I reminded them that their little brothers and sisters needed a mom, and I needed a wife. While I valued their input, I felt the final decision should be mine. But I wanted to launch our new family life with a clear understanding of our relationships.

I had prayed and pondered and felt guided in my decisions. My conviction was strengthened when a young woman I had never met came to my office. I don’t know how she found out about my marriage consideration, but she said.

“Let me tell you my story. It’s your situation only looking from the children’s perspective. Our mom died of cancer like your wife did. Almost immediately our dad went out looking for another wife. He dated a lot, and we missed having him with us.

One day he came home with a woman and told us they were getting married. They did. We didn’t get along well with his new wife. When we crossed with her we often went to dad. Dad usually sided with us. This left her alone. Even though I didn’t agree with her, I felt sorry for her situation. My point is when we needed dad he wasn’t there. When we didn’t need him he was. Their marriage didn’t last very long. My advice is don’t let that happen to your family..”

I thanked her. She left. I haven’t seen her since.

Later I called a family council and said,” I love each and all of you more than I can tell you. Next to Jesus and Heavenly Father, you and your mom are the most important people in my life. We have been through hard things together, especially the passing of your mother. I appreciate your being frank with me on your feelings, and even your fears. I will always support you and love you.

But there is something you need to know. If there is ever a conflict between you and your mother, I will be on her side. I will do this so we can build and maintain a strong marriage. You need that, so do I.

Sharon and I married, and our family is in the process of living happily ever after. We did hear some “new family blending” talk. “You’re not my Mom. I don’t have to do what you say. You haven’t paid your dues.” I don’t remember any of the children threatening Sharon with, “I’m telling Dad on you.” Sharon tells me she always felt my support. She also strengthened our marriage by not only loving and caring for me, and my family, but also for Diane’s family. To do so sometimes she had to ration the time and attention she gave to her own family. It was a conscious decision she made, and a powerful subconscious magnet pulling us together.

Sharon and I expected and were not disappointed when the children wanted to bang against the walls of our marriage and family. They have since told us that they were also secretly glad they couldn’t knock the walls down. Their world had been unraveled by the passing of their first mom. It was a source of security to them to know that this new family was as solid as the one they had known before.

Breaking down barriers between neighbors may well be a good idea. Building strong and loving walls around families always is.