So ya think you have a problem…

     

     In the Summer of 1959.  At the feather River Inn near the town of Blairsden in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Northern California.  A resort environment.  And I, just out of college, have a job that combines the night desk clerk in the lodge and helping out with the horse-wrangling at the stables.  The owner/manager is Italian-Swiss, with European notions about conditions of employment.  HE and I do not get along.  I think he’s a fascist who wants peasant employees who know their place, and he thinks I’m a good example of how democracy can be carried too far.  I’m twenty-two and pretty free with my opinions, and he’s fifty-two and has a few opinions of his own.

      One week the employees have been served the same thing for lunch every single day.  Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls.  To compound insult with injury, the cost of meals was deducted from our check.  I was outraged.

      On Friday night of that awful week, I was at my desk job around 11:00PM and the night auditor had just come on duty.  I went into the kitchen to gt a bite to eat and saw notes to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut are on the employee menu for two more days.

      That tears it.  I quit!  For lack of any better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman. .  I declare that I have had it up to here;  that I am going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him.   I am sick and tired of this crap and insulted and nobody is going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and wo does he think he is anyhow and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American and I don’t like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat it one day for crying out loud and the who hotel stinks anyhow and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never ever heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed that stuff to pigs.  Something like that.  I’m still mad about it.

      I raved on in this way for twenty minutes, and needn’t repeat it all here.  You get the drift.  My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk with a fly-swatter, the kicking of chairs and much profanity.  A call to arms, freedom, unions, uprisings, and the breaking of chains for the working masses.

      As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, watching me with sorrowful eyes.  Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman.  He’s got good reason to look sorrowful.  Survivor of Auschwitz.  Three years.  German Jew.  Thin.  Coughed a lot.  He liked being alone at the night job- gave him intellectual space, gave him peace and quiet, and even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to- all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted.  To him, a feast.  More than that, there’s nobody around at night to tell him what to do.  In Auschwitz he dreamed of such a time.  The only person he sees at work is me, the nightly disturber of his dream.  our shifts overlap for an hour.  And here I am again.  A one-man war party at full cry.

       “Fulchum, are you finished?”

     “No.  Why?
       “Lissen, FUlchum, Lissen me, lissen me.  You know what’s wrong with you?  It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.”

      “So what’s wrong with me?”

      “Fulchum, you think you know everything.  But you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.”

      “If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire- then you have a problem.  Everything else is inconvenience, Life IS inconvenient.  Life IS lumpy.”

       “Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems .  You will live longer.  And will not annoy people like me so much.   Good night.”

      In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed.

       Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes with truth so hard.  Years later I heard a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest describe what the moment of enlightenment was like and I knew exactly what he meant.  There in that late-night darkness of the Feather River Inn, Sigmund Wollman simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind.

       For thirty years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I’m ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks: “Fulchum.  Problem or inconvenience?”

       I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality.  Life is lumpy.  And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump.  One should learn the difference.  Good night, Sig.

Taken liberally   from  Robert Fulghum’s  book ”Uh-Oh” 

Fighting a heavy heart

“Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heartsick, (heavy-hearted)

but a sudden good break can turn life around.”

That’s me.

The first part of that statement.

Words are powerful so on one hand I do not want to give voice to the negative thoughts that bombard my mind

So I’ll tell you a story about someone else.

      Last  year I attended a teachers orientation @ the local community college.   There were 30 some of us. We were an eclectic mix.   An older teacher sat across the table from me.  The more he talked the more I felt sorry for him.  He had a pronounced lisp. Drove an old car.   He was a former jr high history teacher.  Long story short.  the guy was just getting by financially.  He did not radiate optimism.  I was embarrassed for him.   Had looser and failure stenciled on his forehead.

I’ve only been depressed (as far as I can tell) once in my life.

and I feel it coming on. 

My emotions are starting to flat line

I have lots to be thankful for, so I try to focus on that..but it hasn’t helped.

My friend Don is a lot worse off than I so I went to  see him yesterday.    His place was  a pit when I got there.  His wife is battling cancer, she recently left him, charged him with all sorts of stuff that is total nonsense.  He suffers from PTSD, is severely overweight. yea, compared to Don, my life is a cake walk..but that still doesn’t fix my heavy heart.

If you’re curious as to what’s got me by the scruff of the neck  you can read this post

(Things have gotten crazier since I penned that.)

Physically, I am in good shape.

  I’m active, working outside- brain is not turning to mush sitting in front of a computer for hours

(I only mention that because in the past these have been contributing factors to a mid winter funk)

So I’m doing everything I know to stay on top of things  (guard my thought life, reach out to others, get physical exercise and eat right) and I’m not shaking it. 

 Long term disappointment can apparently do that to a person

I didn’t really want to be around people yesterday (Christmas / family get together)

Listening to what some of them  spent this year on gifts was disgusting. especially, when I was going around our house last night  checking the wattage of light bulbs, trying to think of ways to save a few dollars.  talk about humiliating.

Sorry if this post is a downer, but when I started this blog, one of  my goals was to keep it real.    DM

Finding my place in the pecking order

Caution:  The language in this post will be offensive to some,so proceed accordingly.

Picture of me and Uncle Dan-  That’s me on the right.

I approached Uncle Dan (not his real name) about a part-time job as a laborer on his construction crew last week.     I have been self-employed since 1990.  I am used to running my own crew,  bidding jobs, dealing with cash flow,  working with grumpy customers, etc. but I am not above flipping burgers or working for someone else to pay the bills.

I started on Tuesday. 

 I have worked with several of these guys over the years, so I know most of them.      Tuesday we began framing a 100 ft by 48 ft pole building w/ 16 ft high side walls.  The temperature in the mornings was single digit.  Welcome to Iowa in December

   Tuesday night I commented to my wife, things went pretty well that first day.

Day two (Wednesday)  Things on the crew started to feel more relaxed.    There was some  teasing, etc.  

 I was running the level while Uncle Dan  and Jordan (not his real name) attempted  to drive  steel stakes into the frozen tundra.   I say “attempted” because  we have   6 inches of frost  already and the stakes do not want to go in.  I could tell Jordan was getting frustrated .   When I told him to go ahead and put a nail in the brace, the wall was plumb, either he couldn’t hear me  due to the loud background noise of an engine running or didn’t understand what I’d said, so I repeated myself a little louder:

 “It’s good.  Nail it.”

   Jordan growled,  “You need to speak up you dumb F#@ker.”"

     I replied,  ” I said it was ready- and  you’re the  dumb f#@ker.”

My response took  him  (and me) by surprise. 

You could almost see the gears  turning in his head…. him trying to figure out what to do with me.

Side note- before I became a Christian, I swore  – a lot.  

 Just because I rarely swear or loose my cool now, doesn’t mean it can’t  happen.     

An hour later, Jordan and I were still working together. 

We were lifting 20 foot sections of wall with a machine.

I had been hooking them up to the  lift but Jordan thought he would give it a try.  He looped the strap around differently than I had been doing- Uncle Dan told him to take it off and do it my way.

  Jordan barked @ me for letting him hook it up wrong.

I looked at him and said, “Now if I would have corrected you, you would have been mad, so what am I supposed to do?

He again called me a “dumb f#&ker”  

 I replied,  “No- You’re the dumb f@*er”

That’s not a very “Christian” thing to say”  he said.

“Well, what you said wasn’t very  “Christian like” either,” I replied with a smile.

Another foot note-  I like Jordan.  There’s a part of me that feels sorry for him.  He has a lot of heart ache in his life…but in my mind, staying quiet was not an option…he was verbally challenging me, and I felt what was needed was for me to push back-  hard… talk to him in a way he could understand. 

 Sometimes people have this notion that just because you’re a Christian you can’t use “strong “language.     The fact is,  there are some really powerful , earthy word pictures throughout the Bible.  Not going to go and start quoting verses on you, but  if you  want some examples, let me know.

Later that afternoon, I went up to Jordan and told him I was sorry for calling him a dumb  fu_ _ er.  He apologized and said he was sorry for calling me  a dumb f_ _cker.

I’m cautiously optimistic that  this will be the end of it. (deciding where I fit in the pecking order) 

A rooster (like many animals)  can sense when you’re afraid. 

 The trick is to know when to do what.  It is the same way in dealing with people.  It takes wisdom to know when to keep your mouth shut and when to speak up.

Picture of me just after I caught all three of my dad’s roosters.