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Joseph E Bird

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non-fiction

margaritaville is not for everyone

nibbling on sponge cake
watching the sun bake

Sure, that’s one way to go.

His plan was to resign as Vice President of the largest engineering firm in the state and start his own company.

Then came the unexpected diagnosis: cancer.  The prognosis was not good.

He could have stayed put.  He had good insurance, made good money.  He would have the support of the entire company as he started his fight for life.  It would have been the easier path.  But Harvey Chapman seldom chose the easier path.

He left anyway.  He started the company from a spare bedroom in his house.

He landed a couple of projects and quickly hired some help.  It was hard, grueling work with long hours.  Add chemotherapy to the mix.

One evening he was going to an interview for another project, his young employee driving as he sat in the passenger seat going over his presentation notes.

“Pull over,” he said.

On the shoulder of the road, he opened his door and vomited.  After a couple of minutes, he put himself back in order and closed the door.

“Let’s go.”

They got the project.

It would go on like that for twelve years.  More treatments.  Bone marrow transplants.  Experimental procedures.  The company grew.  He bought a historic building and renovated it to house his thirty-some employees.  He ran 15-mile road races.  He got married.  At times he would feel great; other times he was kicking death away.   But he was always looking for the next challenge.

He pushed his employees hard.  Starting a company from the ground floor is no easy thing and he needed people to be committed.  But there was more to it than that.  He saw their potential.  He saw that they could do great things if they made the right choices.  As he had.

Not that he never made mistakes.  But the one choice he made over and over again that was always the right choice, was to live life above the common.  To choose, not necessarily the easy path, but the right path.  To sacrifice the moment’s pleasure, for the promise of a future with meaning.  He went through the Air Force flight training.  He didn’t have to.  He flew C-130s for the Air National Guard, even while he was running his company.  He didn’t have to.  He gave his employees generous bonuses and cared for their families.  He didn’t have to.

Cancer eventually won.  That was 22 years ago.  The company he started still bears his name.

I don’t know what his last thoughts were, but I know he had to be content.  It sounds cliche to say he fought to the end, but he did.  And not so he could go sip margaritas on a beach somewhere.  No, if he would have rebounded again, he would have been back at work, ready for the next challenge.

Ready to again live life above the common.

 

 

 

 

5

the race is not to the swift

shoes 1 for web

This morning one of my New York friends, Cat Bradley, was describing her first experience with mile repeats.  Yeah, you know what those are.  Run a mile at an elevated pace, recover with a slow jog (or walk) for a few minutes, then run another mile at an elevated pace.  Repeat.  For as long as you can do it.  Ahh, such fun.

Now Cat is young.  I am old.  I used to do those.  I still do speedwork and intervals when I’m able. But here’s the thing: my body won’t let me do what I used to do.  It’s one annoying minor injury after another.  Definitely age related.  My latest is a calf strain that’s kept me from putting in the miles.

Last Saturday morning I was at the church working in the garden with our spring work crew and a block away, runners gathered at the starting line. The gun goes off and the hoard runs past.  I so much wanted to be with them.  I love those times when you push yourself and see where you are, see what you’re made of.

And I will again.  This age thing has some benefits.  One, you learn patience.  I’ll be back.  I’ll do those long Sunday runs again.  I’ll do the intervals on my lunch hour.  I’ll run a few of those Saturday morning races.

I also know that I won’t be as fast as I was five years ago.  I won’t run as far as I did twenty years ago.  And the good thing is, I don’t want to.  I love running, but I also love writing, and playing my guitar, and being with my family, and having a relaxing breakfast on Saturdays.

Still, when you’re young like Cat, you have to do it.  It’s part of finding out who you are.

4

my friend, Chuck

The Gang
chuck, first row, far right.  me, back row, center.  so many years ago.

i’m a kid
riding my bike
near my house
and another kid
rides up and says
Hi.
I’m Chuck.

so many years ago.

i’m a teenager
riding in that
unbelievable green
GTO convertible
with Chuck driving
his father’s car
singing old Black Water.

so many years ago.

i’m in college
rooming with Chuck
and he’s up all night
recording music
on his reel-to-reel
driving me crazy
because he’s Chuck.

so many years ago.

i’m at Fat Daddy’s
Chuck is the DJ
and everyone
is dancing
and all the girls
want to dance
with Chuck.

so many years ago.

i’m standing
in the church
getting married
and Chuck is standing
with the others
and all the girls
smile at Chuck.

so many years ago.

so many years ago.

so many years ago.

i have moved
and live near the
very place on
the same street
that i rode my bike
and met Chuck.

so many years ago.

i am older
as is he
and we haven’t talked
in decades
and time
and distance
separated friends

so many years ago.

and then i hear
that Chuck
was in an accident
and his pain is great
and his recovery long
and it hurts
because he was my friend

so many years ago.

i am here
he is there
i’ll send him a note
i’ll say a prayer
and hope he will
dance again
as he did

so many years ago.

i write words
that seem shallow
and inadequate
to try to capture
the spirit that
he shared
with me

so many years ago.

so many years ago.

copyright 2018, joseph e bird

22

Finding Ricky.

This won’t mean much to anyone except my family. My apologies.

Today I read that the Kennedy Space Center is going to start displaying the Apollo 1 capsule as a tribute to the three astronauts – Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee –  who lost their lives in the launchpad fire fifty years ago. Around that time my family was living in Houston and my dad took me to the Johnson Space Center there to look at the rockets.

Today I went to Mapquest to see how long it would take to drive to the Kennedy Space Center.  13 hours, more or less. Then I checked Houston. 18 hours. While I was on Mapquest, I zeroed in on the old neighborhood. The apartments we lived in are long gone, but I recognized the streets. Japonica. Ilex. Redwood. Rustic Lane.

I thought about my Houston friends, and like I have done in the past, I searched the internet for clues of their whereabouts. Mostly I struck out. Then I found one. In an obituary in Louisiana.

Ricky.

the-band-3-for-web

He’s the one with the maracas.

I wasn’t sure it was him until I watched a memorial video on the funeral home website. The pictures of him as a kid were unmistakable.  The obituary said he lived in Louisiana for almost fifty years. That left little time for living in Houston, probably the few years that my West Virginia family lived there. We were all transients, apparently.

So many of our friends disappear and we never hear from them again. We wonder whatever happened to them.

Looks like Ricky lived a good life and had a loving family. Which is exactly what I hoped I would find.

 

4

We need to talk.

a glance of the eye, the innocent look
the curl of your lips, was all that it took

That’s the first two lines of a song I wrote a few weeks ago. The narrator is beguiled by a look, a smile. It’s a wonderful thing, even if upon reflection, it seems a little superficial. Though the moment may come and go, like so many moments in a lifetime, it might be the beginning of a relationship.

we talked without words, there was so much to say

In this case, it was just the beginning. They moved beyond the magical, natural physical attraction, and they talked. They had a real relationship. Because the conversation is the relationship.

In the case of the song, it was a romantic relationship. But the conversation is also the platonic relationship. The familial relationship. The business relationship. The political relationship. The faith-based relationship.

If you want a relationship, you need to have the conversation.

Years ago I had a friend with whom I had one thing in common: our faith. We had long conversations about the fundamentals and the subtleties of our faith. Because of that, we were friends. Our situations changed, however, and he moved away and we lost contact.

Twenty years later, the contact was restored. I quickly learned that we no longer had common ground regarding faith. But there were other things. He was (and still is) an excellent writer. So we had conversations about writing. The relationship was maintained. But over the past few years, we have come to realize that our viewpoints had diverged too far to maintain meaningful conversations about anything. Neither of us said it, we just quit talking. Which is ironic, because he was the one who first articulated that fundamental truth to me. The conversation is the relationship. I still consider him a friend, but we no longer have a relationship.

That kind of thing happens all the time. Maybe Chauncey Gardner was right. Maybe it’s seasonal. Spring, summer, fall, and finally winter, when things go dormant.

And then there are all of you out there in internet land, most of whom I will never meet. At various times, we have joined in conversation about many things: music, writing, faith. Any given exchange may be only one or two sentences, but over the course of weeks, months, and years, we get to know each other because we talk. Sure, it’s in bits and pieces, but we talk. And because of that, we have relationships.

Weird how you can have friends, yet never sit across the table from each other. Never see an expression of surprise or concern or contentment. Never know what their laugh sounds like. Never hear the sound of their voice, even while you’re having a conversation.

Maybe it’s not weird at all. It’s just good.

Here’s wishing for more of the same in the years to come.

Footnote: The author Susan Scott is credited with the concept of the conversation being the relationship. In her book Fierce Conversations, she discusses the importance of the conversation in all relationships.

3

They once lived here.

mountains

It’s morning, one hundred years ago.

The men are in the mine. Or working the tipple. Or loading the rail cars.

The women are at home with the children. Or teaching school. Or at the company store.

Deep in the New River gorge, coal mining began in 1873 in the remote town that bears the name of its founder, John Nuttall. For more than 80 years, families lived, worked, and died in Nuttallburg. By 1958, it was all over.

All that remains are the ruins. You can still go there, but the trip itself is a harrowing descent down the steep hills that will burn the brakes of your car. And once there, the isolation is eerie. You can see the coal tipple and almost hear its noisy operation echoing through the valley. There’s nothing of the company store other than its foundation. Likewise with the houses that once grew from the hillside. Try to imagine the mothers and kids playing on the dusty paths as they scraped together a life that was as hard as the sandstone their husbands used to build the town. There was probably a doctor to tend to the illness and injuries, and a preacher to tend to those who didn’t recover.

Listen. Hear their voices. They once lived here.

tipple.jpg
From the tipple, the conveyor disappears into the forest, where the men of Nuttallburg loaded coal that would help power the country.
tracks.jpg
The natural process will not be stopped.

 

company store.jpg
All that’s left of the company store.
morning
And the sun still rises where children once played.

Over at True North Nomad, Lily Burgess writes about her adventures through wild and wonderful Canada. The other day she published a story about a ghost town in Ontario which reminded me of my visits to Nuttallburg.  Check out her work.

6

the band

the-band-3-for-web

the-band-for-web
My music career started early.

When I was 11, my family was living in Houston and I got together with the guys in photo and formed my first band. Ok, my only band. We had a name but I don’t remember what it was. The guys, however, I think about all the time.

From left to right:

Ricky Penton, guitar player, I think, in addition to maracas. His nickname was Pinto Beans.

Randy Crabb, singer, bongo player. I think those were my bongos that I got on a trip to Mexico. I liked his older sister, Cheryl.

Lance Berg. He’s holding a drumstick and a snare drum, so yeah, he’s the drummer.

In center front is Scott Bert, singer. Older brother of Lance. The Bergs were talented. Scott wrote our first original song, Made a Mistake. More on that in a minute.

In the second photo, the kid holding the Polaroid Swinger camera was me. The picture was taken on my birthday and the camera was probably a gift. I’m guessing my older sister, Adele, took the picture.

I was a guitar player.

The kid in the doorway with the cat-eye glasses is my younger sister, Sarah. She’s always been on the cutting edge of fashion. Not sure if she was a fan.

We played two songs, Little Red Riding Hood (which is the same chord progression as House of the Rising Sun, so if you know one, you know the other) and Wipeout. And then there was Made a Mistake, which consisted of counting by five until Scott purposely made a mistake in the sequence. Then the hook, made a mistake, made a mistake, made a mistake. About as bad a song as one could write.

And yet, this was the peak of my musical career. That tells you all you need to know about my level of talent. I still play Little Red Riding Hood and Wipeout occassionally, and since then and I’ve learned a few more chords. But I’m just a pretender, a hack wannabe living in the glow of those glory days in Houston. We played one gig, the big going away party for our family just before we moved back to West Virginia. It was a short set.

And I never saw the guys again. That’s the way it is in the entertainment biz. Fame is fleeting. Everything is fleeting.

Carpe diem.

 

2

and it was

and it was on nights as this

hot but not quite as hot

as it had been

a few brown leaves on the ground

promising those

cool nights

when the windows can open

 

and it was on nights as this

the voices of joe and marty

crackling over the radio

on the floor of the porch

my grandfather stretched out

on the glider

listening

 

and it was on nights as this

that I envied him

though I had no cares

I was just a kid

with my own radio

waiting for johnny or tony

to win the game

 

and it was on nights as this

I would stay up late

alone in my room

with the voices I knew

but would never know

their easy cadence

three up three down

 

and it was on nights as this

I knew my grandfather

would be smiling

content with his family

with his faith

with his gardens

with his life

copyright 2016, joseph e bird

2

Stories

Ever notice my profile pic? Looks like I could break out in song on a moment’s notice, right? When I was still on Facebook, I had the same photo on my Facebook page. One day an old friend, a very accomplished musician, saw my picture, stopped by my office and invited me to join him and his friends for their jam sessions. Sounds cool. But just because I’m holding a guitar doesn’t mean I’m good enough to join in with real musicians.

I declined.

There’s a lesson in that little story.

There are lessons in all good stories, even stories that are completely made up. Fiction, in other words. In fiction, we meet people, get to know them, and learn from their mistakes. We feel their pain, rejoice in their victories. Kind of like life.

I’ve heard people say they only read stories that are real. They mean history, biographies, and reference and self-improvement books. All good and beneficial. But by skipping fiction altogether, they’re missing nourishment for the heart and soul.

Same with art. And music. And dance. And poetry. And other forms that engage the right side of the brain.

Relying on feelings too much can get is trouble. But we risk missing out on so much if we live only in logic and reason.

“We dance for laughter,
we dance for tears,
we dance for madness,
we dance for fears,
we dance for hopes,
we dance for screams,
we are the dancers,
we create the dreams.”  — attributed to Albert Einstein

1

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