For the love of the game

For the love of the game.  It literally means to "play for nothing".   I'm reminded of this expression as I

watched  my 9 year-old-son play in his 4th tackle football game of this season.  His team is not very good.  

What I mean to say is that they are not very good by the standards of wins and losses.  They are currently 

0 - 4.  Four losses by a combined score of around 160 - 0.  I'm not exaggerating the score either.  Yesterday 

the sixty or so parents that were at the game screamed and cheered when we achieved our first, first down of 

the season.  

My son plays center or interior lineman on the offense and defense for his team.  They are not very glorious 

positions.  Caleb wanted to be a running back but he's the tallest kid on the team and weighs 2 lbs over the 

limit for a kid to carry the ball in his league.  He also inherited his father's speed and that doesn't help him 

much either when it comes to being a running back.  Not that Caleb complains mind you, exactly the opposite 

he relishes the challenges of blocking and tackling.  I've never heard him complain once this year  about 

anything, not the score, not the heat, not the coaches and not being at the bottom of a number of piles of 

entangled limbs and bodies after the end of a play.  Quite the contrary, he constantly talks about how great

it is to be a football player, to tackle, to block and to play the game every week.  He smiles and waves to me

occasion during the game and practices.  He truly plays for the "love of the game".  Yesterday his team was 

losing 41-0 and on the extra point Caleb tackled the kid on the one yard line.  He immediately got up, 

started jumping up and down, slapping his teammates on their helmets and pumping his fists.  Most of his 

teammates just walked off the field with their heads down but he truly celebrated just the moment.  It 

was glorious in his mind, as if he were Barry Krauss and he had stopped Penn State for the winning 

touchdown in the National Championship game.  In today's age of technology, nutrition, training techniques 

and the monetary awards for being a great athlete my son celebrates the moment for what it is....an 

opportunity to play for the love of the game.  I am humbled by my son who reminds his father to 

celebrate every moment, to cherish every opportunity and to do my best every day regardless of the reward.

You'll have to excuse me now, I've leaving shortly for my daily run of 6 miles, only today I'm leaving my 

expensive modern runner's watch at home.  I'm just going to run, give it my best effort and have a good time.

If you are around when I finish today don't be surprised if  I high five you, jump up and down with a big

smile on my face.  I didn't just win the Boston Marathon, I ran for the love of the game.  

Idiot Tax

I use to be for something I'm gonna call "idiot taxes".  It began with cigarettes and I actually thought it was a

good idea at the time.  You know what I mean, it's the tax that  is suppose to discourage you from smoking

and at the same time "pay" for all the smoking related diseases.  Like I said, I was in favor of this tax but I'm

beginning to rethink my support.  What made me start thinking (always a dangerous thing as my father would

say) is that San Francisco is adding an "idiot tax" to alcohol.  Now it's citizens will be paying an extra 3.5

cents per beer and around 4.5 cents for liquor.  It totals around 16.5 million dollars a year.  The city

decided that all of it's citizens should "share" the medical costs and police costs from drinkers who caused

trouble and those that can't pay their medical bills for alcohol related injuries, accidents and diseases.  Again,

you might think this is a good idea, but lets take it further.  Maybe we should  impose an idiot tax on cars, for

those drivers that drive without insurance or after drinking.  Then we'll idiot tax condoms for those that don't

use them to pay for venereal disease and uninsured pregnancies.  Let's also idiot tax soda and ice cream to

pay for weight watchers for everyone who overeats and needs to drop a couple of pounds.  Now I'm really

getting the hang of this I think, lets have an idiot tax for everything, that way we don't have to promote

responsibility and self control as a society.

I do have one alternative though.  Consider this,  Bill Haslam the republican primary winner for the Governor's

race in Tennessee spent 8.7 million dollars to win just the primary.  Let me repeat this, he spent 8.7 million

dollars to win a primary race for a position that will pay him 155,000.00 per year.  I say we just tax these

candidates every dollar they spend over their annual salary based on the 4 years they'll serve.  We'll call it by

the name I proposed earlier the "idiot tax".   Only now we'll know it's being paid by the right idiot.

Sad songs say so much

I love music.  I especially love a good sad song.  I've been accused in the past that I'd rather listen to


sad songs rather than happy ones and at times that has been true.  I do love a sad song.  I have around 3000


songs on my iPod and most of them are country and many of them are sad songs.  It seems as I've gotten


older I've realized you can't just call them sad songs. Even some of the songs that might sound like a happy


song really expresses  sadness of life's events as they unfold around us.  They express the emotions that


we feel at times when our words or hearts betray us.  Music will heal us when we don't feel like we'll ever be


whole again.  If you'll allow I thought I'd share some of the ones I love with you.


Two that immediately come to mind are Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven", he wrote it after the death of his


5 year old son it may be the most healing song I've ever heard.  The other is Vince Gill's "Come rest high on


that  Mountain"  both assure me that there's a heaven.   How could there not be with songs like that?


Then there are heartbreak songs.  We've all had our share of them.  Each of our heartbreaks are different,


sadness, loneliness, and despair all seem to surround us during these times.  Songs have always made it easier


for me through the hard times. Here are some of the ones I have loved or have loved me:


"He stopped loving her today"  George Jones  (a classic and maybe the best country song ever written)


"Being drunk's alot like loving you"  Kenny Chesney (drunk in love and drunk in loneliness is alot alike)


"How can you mend a broken heart"  Andy Gibb (he actually took his own life over a lost love)


"Annie's Song"  John Denver (if you know the story you'd realize this was a sad song)


"Tonight I wanna Cry" Keith Urban (actually Sarah's ex-husband wrote this with Keith)


Each of these songs and many others have soothed me when nothing else would help.  They always invoke


memories both good and bad.  I have several you've probably never heard of that you should listen to at least


once:


"Who wants to live forever"  Queen (who does?)


"It's not just me"  Rascal Flatts (if you've never felt this way you've never been in love)


"Bluer than Blue" Michael Johnson ("and when you're gone I can run through the house screaming and no


one will ever hear me"  <---now that's a sad lyric)


"I'm not your blue skies anymore"  Emily West (the title says it all)


I know that there is a time coming that will need a sad song.  There always will be I suppose.  Sugarland sings


a song called "The very last Country Song", it goes like this:

But if life stayed the way it was

And lovers never fell out of love

If memories didn't last so long

If nobody did nobody wrong

If we knew what we had before it was gone

If every road led back home

This would be

The very last country song

I don't think I have anything to worry about.

Be Careful What You Say....

“Be careful what you say it will come back to haunt you!”  I think I’ve heard this about a

million times in my life and for good reason.  I have always had the knack of saying

things that do come back to haunt me.  It started in my earliest childhood when I

claimed to be able to fly, jumped off the back porch, and promptly split open my head. 

My words are spoken often in haste and with no time to formulate an intelligent reply that

would be more palatable and more digestable for me. (Translated “I’ve eaten my share of

crow). 

This can be a handy ability and almost a super power.  I’ve always had a quick wit and

most of the time have an answer to everything, giving new meaning to the phrase “don’t

let the facts get in the way of a good story”.  I’m not the only person who shares this trait

and many of us who do are quite famous.  Here are some wonderful examples:

“640K is all the memory that anyone will ever need.”  Bill Gates (Currently we are making hard drives with a trillion bits of storage space)

            “Smoking kills.  If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.”

            Brooke Shields

            “Chemistry is a class you take in high school or college, where you figure out

            2 plus 2 is 10 or something.”  Dennis Rodman

            “And now the sequence of events, in no particular order.”  Dan Rather

            “You can’t just let nature run wild.”  George Hickey, former Governor of

            Alaska

And the winning quote is……

“There aren’t enough Indians in the world to defeat the 7^th Calvary.”  General George Armstrong Custard

You tell’em George!

Don't Blink

Don’t Blink.  It’s a song made popular by Kenny Chesney.  The lyrics remind us that

time goes so quickly that before we know it life passes us by.  I have been reminded

of it twice this week.  Once by a cousin’s blog and then on a facebook post by my oldest

and best friend.  My friend and I shared a cradle together in church when we were 4

months old according to his mother and mine.  Once in kindergarten we snuck away from

the church to see a robin’s nest full of baby birds in a local neighborhood.  He fell out of

the tree we were in, scraped his leg then ran off and left me to find my way back.  We

played football,  baseball, cowboys and indians.  We camped in our backyards sneaking

off to wander around the town in which we lived and once went skinny dipping at a

neighbor’s house in the middle of the night ( I cannot confirm that their dog ran off with

my underwear).   We shot each other with BB guns or  roman candles when we could find


them using metal garbage can lids as shields.


Occasionally, I’m sure we even exchanged blows although I can’t remember a specific

incident.  We went on band trips during high school and I can never remember us not

being friends.  He sat at the funeral home for three days when my sister died and I will

owe him that forever.   We have stayed in touch in our adult lives and commiserated

or celebrated life’s events.  He married another high school friend late in life, 


had his first child and introduced me to a side of him I never knew.   This week

his little girl put on tap shoes for first time and my son put on his football helmet for the

first time.  We spoke about it over the phone.   Don’t blink my friend, don’t blink…..

Marine Corps Lougie

As many of you know I am a former Marine. I served my Country proudly and it was a life changing experience. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience but I wouldn’t take a million dollars to do it again either. Now for those of you who are squeamish should stop reading here, actually you should have stopped reading at the title probably. This story goes back to boot camp where I first experience both real excitement and real terror. Let’s visit that time.
Its spring of 1984, late February or March I guess, but regardless spring had already started to make the trees and flowers bloom and to give me my first sinus infection of the year. I know it was a Sunday afternoon because it was Parent’s Day on the island. That’s Parris Island of those of you that weren’t Marines. It is where they train us Devil Dogs to protect and serve. The Sunday prior to your “graduation” is when they allow your parents to visit you, tour the island, and see how Uncle Sam has transformed their sons and daughters. On this particular day while all this was going on my platoon, Platoon 1042, was practicing drill on the parade deck. This is where the drill instructor takes his platoon in formation, marching them back and forth across the mile wide /deep parade deck (picture a large empty parking lot) teaching them to turn right, turn left, about face (turn around) and all the intricacies of marching. This of course, with 18 year old boys who generally can’t remember which is their left and which is their right when asked to turn in that particular direction. It was hot, I’m thinking high 80’s with lots of humidity on that day and my sinus infection had morphed into bronchitis where I could feel it rattling around in my chest. After several hours of marching-stopping-yelling, marching-stopping-yelling, then marching some more I wasn’t feeling so great and out of nowhere I had a deep chest rattling cough. At that precise moment out of my mouth flew a giant lougie!
Now there are many things that you want to do while marching in formation at Parris Island with your drill instructor watching on Parent’s Day but unfortunately “hocking a lougie” is not one of them. Immediately, and I mean perhaps before “it” hit the parade deck my drill instructor was screaming, “Halt, Halt everyone @&&^%$ Halt”. I will tell you it turned some of the parent's heads. Rushing up to where I was in formation (luckily for the rest of the Marines I was on the outside rank) we had the following conversation, that is if you can use the word conversation to describe one person screaming at another person that is standing at attention:
Drill Instructor: Recruit White did I just see you hock up a Marine Corps lougie on my parade deck?
Me: Sir yes Sir!
Drill Instructor: Let me get this straight, you actually just hocked a lougie on my sacred Marine Corps parade deck? The same parade deck that thousands of men who gave their lives in the service of their country marched across?
Me: Sir yes Sir
Drill Instuctor: You maggot, in the Pit right now!
Me: Sir yes Sir
Well off I ran to the "pit". The pit is the Marine Corps version of a large sand box. Its probably 50 yards long and 30 yards deep, big enough to have a 50 Marine platoon standing in it at one time. When you go to the pit it's not just to stand around in, the pit is strictly for "incentive PT". Incentive PT (PT + physical training) is just fancy words for exercise until you are about to pass out. Apparently my "lougie" had really incensed my drill instructor and he began to scream different incentive PT exercises to me, "bend and thrust, jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups, leg lifts (a particularly evil exercise in which you lay flat and elevate your legs approximately 6 inches off the ground and hold them there). This went on for approximately 45 minutes. I was dying. The rule governing incentive PT that I found out later is that a drill instructor cannot provide more than 20 minutes of incentive PT in one hour. Apparently my drill instructor had forgotten this rule. Then came the most dreaded command for any Marine in the pit, "make it snow, recruit, make it snow" This particularly insidious command requires the recruit to run in place reaching down to grab handfuls of sand and throw them in the air above his head. Now I don't have to tell you the effect this has on someone that has been sweating in almost ninety degree heat and 80 percent humidity. In mere seconds you are covered in sand, it's in your hair, inside your camo uniform, your boots, your underwear, your....you get the picture. Here's the rub if you'll pardon the pun, you only get one shower a day there and this is right before lights out, so you go the rest of the day in this condition. It is miserable! Try this tomorrow. Put on a dress or a suit depending on who you are, run 5 miles, roll around in the sand and spend the next 12 hours at work without a shower. You get the picture.
What the drill instructor didn't notice and quite frankly I had gone into sort of a dazed state from lack of oxygen, is that every parent from that was visiting the island on that day had begun to gather to watch this experience. I can't be sure how many of them there were watching because I could only look straight ahead but by my count it was close to 50 or 60 parents with their Marine sons. This spectacle prompted him to immediately stop my "incentive PT". It might have been the several mothers that had begun to weep and wail while watching or it might have been my weeping that stopped him. Regardless I wish to thank all those parents now and to ask their forgiveness for not being more gracious to them at the time (I hope they'll understand). Where were we? Yes, my drill instructor then ordered me back into formation. You might have thought it was over at this point but trust me it was just beginning. When I got back into formation (oh and if you want to be unpopular with your fellow Marines, just have them stand for 45 minutes at attention while you are being worked in the pit) the drill instructor approached me again:
Drill Instructor: Recruit White did you hock a lougie on my parade deck?
Me: Sir Yes Sir
Drill Instructor: PICK IT UP!
Me: Sir? (imagine a voice that sounds like Pee Wee Herman when he's out of breath here)
Drill Instructor: What part of "Pick it up" did you not understand?
Me: Sir recruit understands Sir
Drill Instructor: Then pick it up.
Needless to say compared to picking up a lougie, hocking them up is a breeze. I will spare you the ugly details but I did mange to get most of it off the parade deck.
Drill Instructor: Now put it in your pocket!
Me: Sir (again imagine Pee Wee Herman)
Drill Instructor: Are you stupid? What about "put it in your pocket" do you not understand? Did you go to school growing up? Are you a moron? Did you mother marry her brother? (I think there were more insults, but I can't write them here and I think you get my point.)
Me: Sir yes Sir
I then placed the scraped up, nasty sticky, sand covered lougie in my pocket. Then as if nothing happened my drill instructor turned barked a command and off the platoon marched. I was grateful thinking the incident was over for me. I was sadly mistaken, but that's for my next blog entitiled; "Recruit White did you hock a lougie on my parade deck this morning?" Sigh......

"I wish you knew my father"

Today is Father's Day and many of you will celebrate it with your father, some of you will not be able to visit with your father, but will celebrate the memory of him. This has been on my mind lately, since my father is getting older and not always in the best of health at times. I've thought many times in the last several years about life and frailty of it and I've come to the conclusion that "I wish you knew my father".
My father was born in Flushing, New York, 1 of 3 children. He was the youngest of the three and was raised there by Grace and Russell, my grandparents. He enlisted in the Air Force in the early 60's and met my mother on the beaches in Florida. He told me the story the other day that after he met her that he got on his Indian motorcycle and rode all night from Pensacola to Sylacauga, Alabama. He said it was raining and he would ride awhile until the rain caught him and he would stop under an overpass till the rain passed and he'd get on his way again repeating this process all the way there. He tells me that his financial situation was such that when he arrived in Sylacauga he actually slept propped up on his motorcycle until the town got to stirring around and then he asked where she lived and paid her a visit. Now I don't know, but I'm not sure many men would go to that length to see a woman they had just met and didn't actually know her address. By the way, they will be married 50 years in December. I wish you knew my father.
They married while he was in the Air Force and they traveled to Japan where they had my sister Lisa and a bought their first furniture, a console stereo with an record player and radio. They had no chairs to sit on so they and their friends would sit on the floor and bed and listen in the evenings as their entertainment. The stereo is still resides at their house. I once saw Patty Duke buy the same stereo on a TV episode that was filmed in black and white. They eventually were transferred back to the states and I was born at Eglin Air Force Base. My mother eventually moved back to Birmingham because my father was sent to Thailand as the Vietnam War began to heat up and eventually after 8 or 9 years of serving his country my father got out of the Air Force as a Buck Sargent and returned to Birmingham, Alabama. He got a job with Drummond Coal where he started working at the coke oven (a process that requires superheating coal to around a bizillon degrees and then cools it quickly). He once told me that he wore long johns in the summer because they helped keep him sweaty and more cool during work. He once helped my bother-in-law lay sod in 90 degree weather drinking a cup of coffee while the rest of us were about to pass out, we were all in our twenties at the time! He worked there for a couple of years and then was in a bad car accident. He was out of work for 18 months, he had over 20 operations during that time to repair his right leg, chest and face where he suffered the most injuries. I remember the first time he was allowed home and he went to sit down on the toilet and his repaired femur snapped and back he went to the hospital. Eventually, he returned to Drummond Coal and the first week on the job a piece of railroad tie was kicked up by a coal car and hit him in the face. He required several more operations and I'm told has mostly wire and very little bone in his facial area. He recovered and went back to work. He mananged to work there for 1 month shy of 40 years when he retired several years ago. I wish you knew my father.
Of course I've skipped many things during this time. He and my mother had two more children, both girls. He coached baseball for me, softball for my sister, worked the swing shift for around 20 years while doing this. He became a deacon in the local Baptist Church and I can't remember a Sunday we didn't go while I was growing up. He lost a daughter to suicide when she was twenty and without hesitation adopted her 5 month old son and raised him. Bobby is twenty-one now and hiking the Appalachian trail. My father is recognized by almost everyone who knows him because he has had a handlebar mustache for around 30 plus years. I've never met a man or woman that didn't love him or respect him. I wish you knew my father.
Around 6 years ago he and my mother were driving back from a high school basketball game where they lived and their car was struck by a drunk driver. It nearly killed both of them and they probably only lived because they were rescued by an incredible man that pulled them both from their burning car. My father sustained two broken legs, burns to his face and multiple other injuries and was life flighted to the hospital. I met the state trooper that worked the accident and he told me that my father might be the toughest man he ever met. When I asked why, he told me that when he got there my father was laying on the ground saw the state trooper, rolled over, took his wallet out of the back pocket of his pants and handed his license to the state trooper. I wish you knew my father.
If a man is measured by his friends, then I can tell you that after the accident they came out of the woodwork. They brought every meal for my parents for one month, every meal. The church men showed up on a day's notice to build a ramp for them be able to get in the house in their wheelchair. They had hundreds of people visit them and I do mean hundreds. My father has had 5 or 6 additional surgeries since the accident, several resulting in a couple of strokes, a period of time where he went blind and a seizure disorder that affects his life. Yet, when I call and ask him how he's doing his reply is the same, "I'm in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in." I wish you knew my father.
I'm very thankful today that I can post a blog that says I still talk with my father and tell him I love him every time we get together. I hope you had a father alot like mine growing up, loving, hard working, a good provider and a faithful husband. If you did I am sure you understand how I feel today and if you didn't "I wish you knew my father."