THE WHITE COFFIN

Unlike a lot of folks, I was never too much a slave to phobias, except for one (you’ll have to stay with me to find out what that one is!). Sure, there have been a few things that at first I struggled with briefly, but somehow I’ve always worked through.

My first challenge was not really a phobia but sheer dread! At age 6, just about to start public school I had to have my tonsils removed. In those days the anesthetic of choice was a gas mask. It required the efforts and strength of five nurses to get that thing over my nose and face! That incident could have affected my response to physical medical interventions for life, but no, I now handle those things pretty well.

The exception to “pretty well” was when I had cataract surgery – I had a distinct hesitancy when in my imagination I could see that knife getting closer and closer to my eyeball! But no, I was anesthetized and didn’t know a thing; a huge shout-out to the anesthesiologist!

Another early-life instance was in elementary school. Fire drills were held from time to time, and when I stepped out an upper floor onto that little metal grid fire escape platform the ground seemed awfully far below.

Along the way I overcame most of this type of challenge, until the next real test! In the early – mid-80s I was heading up the Energy Loan Department at First National Bank in Fort Worth. When physical assets were pledged as collateral for a loan it was our policy to, when practical, visit the site of the assets to confirm the suitability as loan collateral. We had a customer who in addition to oil and gas interests, has coal mines in Kentucky. A couple of us bank officers decided we needed to confirm the working status of the mining operation, so we flew up to Kentucky (I don’t remember which city) then took a puddle-jumper plane to the mine site. I have never ever feared flying, but in this case the landing site was in a low valley between mountains. (These mountains are not like the Rockies, but still. . ....!) The pilot had to come in over the mountains, then immediately lose altitude to the valley runway. I was flying righthand seat; with the pilot handling the stick and rudder and me praying we made a perfect landing.

The real test was about to come! We were about to be introduced to our access to the mine. I learned a new term about coal mining: “low coal.” The coal veins are about three feet thick, so the miners cut into the mountain horizontally rather than a vertical shaft. The cut is only about three feet high, floor to ceiling, thus access for the mining crew is a six-foot-wide trailer in which they lie down, the trailer being pulled by a special tractor which is also just three feet high. The tractor driver is lying down, looking forward but alongside the tractor.

If you can picture riding such a conveyance, penetrating a mile underneath a mountain, with the black coal just inches from your nose, you may also picture how hard I was praying, “Lord, please get me out of here and I’ll never be under a mountain again until they fill over my grave!”

(This incident also appears in my blogs under the title “How Dark is Really Dark?”)

Eventually another big test presented a challenge.

I’ve experienced headaches for years but until the last two or three years they were less frequent and less intense. As frequency and intensity increased, I’ve consulted a number of medical providers from family care doctors to neurologists to oncologists, without success. We’ve run CAT scans, ultrasounds and MRIs; sometimes I fear exploratory surgery might be recommended; that might confirm what the last cat discovered – the cranium is empty!

But oh man - what a device they have for running those scans! When I checked in at the imaging lab, a figure in a white coat took me to the chamber (torture?) and told me to shuck anything metal – glasses, pen, belt buckle, etc. etc. Then they had me lie down (I expected shackles, but they were not immediately apparent) and put earmuffs on my head with the comment “it can get a little noisy in there.” After lying down, head on pillow, instructions (don’t move, take a deep breath and hold it until told to breathe normal, squeeze this little bulb to signal the operator just before you panic), with their foot on a switch, you are slid into the pizza oven. (Well no, it’s not brick; its hospital white.) Depending on the body site being scanned, the victim (oops: patient) will be transported into the white tunnel either feet first or headfirst. This is marginally better than the low coal mine – your nose is inches below a clean white surface rather than the darker-than-midnight coal face. Even so, it’s good to be caught up in your prayer life. Like the G I’s in a war zone, there’s apt to be some foxhole conversions here.

As you’re being transported, horizontally, into the white maw of the machine and they start the procedure, the “it can get a little noisy in there” becomes grinding noises, bumps and knocks as if the devil and his minions are intent on dragging the victim (oops! there I go again; the patient) out of what now appears to be a white coffin, contending with the med tech for your body! One is almost surprised when after thirty minutes or so, the tech reverses the bed and out you come! The archangel Michael wins again and your spirit rejoices, saying “Thank You Jesus!”

As many of you readers have surmised, my greatest challenge is claustrophobia. Sometimes but definitely not always I can subjugate the fear.

-30-

WRITING

I first described my introduction to blogging In January 2021. Jane and I had moved to Trinity Terrace, a high-rise retirement center in downtown Fort Worth in May 2020. I was not thrilled with giving up my place in the country, but Jane has subsequently (almost!) convinced me that it was/is our “destiny” – that it is in God’s plan for our lives; that without the move I may never have discovered a penchant for creative writing.

I think she is right!! One of the friends I gained early in our residence here is Ray Smilor. Ray quickly rose to a place on my Best Friends Forever list. Ray is a PhD, on the Executive MBA faculty at TCU, and is an international lecturer in business circles as well as educational. Ray employs blogs as an instrument in his professional life and is directly responsible for my taking up the practice.

Repeating some of the January ’21 introduction: several years ago, I had done some genealogical work and wrote a brief autobiography. Anticipating that the grandchildren might not find that to be interesting, I decided to feed it to them one story at a time: Voila, one story = one blog!

The life-stories of course are all non-fiction, but to make them interesting I needed to refine my vocabulary. I had spent my thirty-five-year career in technical and business pursuits and my old vocabulary reflected that. Imagine my own surprise (and Jane’s) to find that I had a whole “other” vocabulary! In one of my early compositions, I described a country meadow as “verdant with spring grasses interwoven with bright flowers.” I had never imagined that as an engineer I could do that! In another case, the wife of another engineer {also residents here}, after reading my Ode to St. Valentine, stated “I didn’t know an engineer could be a romantic.”

Over these past two years plus, both my audience and my selections of subject matter have expanded. I’ve written personal stories, book reviews and historical essays. I don’t play bridge (as many residents here do), I don’t play golf; creative writing has saved my sanity. In addition to the afore-mentioned writings, I have started a book of fiction. This has been a whole new experience. Creating the story means creating a list of characters, strangers to me at first but given a persona through my own imagination. When asked about the book, I reply very simply “it’s a story of tragedy and redemption.” I’m cautious about describing it fully – the ending may be different by the time I get there!

"A DISEASE IN THE PUBLIC MIND" - Book Review.

Dear Reader:

At least some of you have faithfully followed my ‘blogging’ and know that I’ve mostly written stories from my life, along with some history (‘Migrations”). I started out with the intent NOT to politicize but I have come to realize life is not apolitical. If I wander into that minefield and your politics differ from mine, indulge me for the content that does not offend you.

I learned to read at a very young age. In school it was not infrequent to get caught in class hiding a novel inside the textbook. Especially in my adult years I have typically read 40 to 50 books a year. Now that I live in a ‘retirement’ center (more on that later) I exceed that number. I read among many genre but have generally leaned toward historical novels. Many of the books I’m currently reading have led me to have an interest in political science. Though I had a fruitful career as an engineer, I fantasize about “when I retired from that world why did I not go back to school and pursue another career” perhaps in Political Science.

Recently I’ve gotten into the plethora of books being written about the state of the nation – on both sides of the aisle everyone has an opinion; some are more thoughtfully espoused than others. Some deal more explicitly with current considerations; in some the authors attempt to go back and point out how events 150 years or more ago set the stage for today. In literature and most other walks of life ‘cancel culture’ is eliminating most all expressions that are not “woke.” In many (perhaps most) purportedly non-fiction books one must read diligently to determine the authors’ biases. This seems contradictory to the term ‘non- fiction’ yet ‘facts’ are often seen (or reported) differently by different observers. Without too much generalization this seems particularly true in history books – my observation is that victors write books while vanquished just try to get their lives put back together. Thus, the books we read/study (including textbooks) promote the biases of the winning side. In this context most of the histories (especially including textbooks) of the American Civil War reflect the Union perspective, promoting the almost universally held view that the Civil War was entirely about slavery. Read on!

“A DISEASE IN THE PUBLIC MIND” sub-titled ‘A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War.’

Book by Thomas Fleming

This internal, infernal war has been referred to by many names: The Civil War; The War Between the States; The War of the Rebellion; The War of Northern Aggression; perhaps more. Whatever you call it a war by any name is a tragic thing. How exponentially more tragic when a nation’s people war against each other. I ran across this book in the Trinity Terrace library. I’ve long been a student of Civil War history and was curious to read this author’s take on ‘A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War’ (author’s cover note).

The inside fold of the dust cover further expresses the author’s theme:

THE ONLY NATION IN THE WORLD TO FIGHT A WAR TO END SLAVERY?

By the time John Brown’s body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, Northern Abolitionists had made him a “holy martyr” in their paranoid campaign against “The Slave Power.” Their hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. Abolitionists were convinced that New England, whose spokesmen had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leaders of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern “slavocrats” like Thomas Jefferson. (Of the first six presidents of the new nation four were from Virginia; of the first fifteen [before Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky] nine were from the South.)

This malevolent envy exacerbated the South’s deepest fear: a race war. Thomas Jefferson’s cry, “We are truly to be pitied!” summed up their irrational dread. For decades, Northern and Southern extremists flung insults and threats at each other, blinding both sides to the possibility of a peaceful solution, despite Abraham Lincoln’s best efforts to achieve one. Only a civil war that would kill a million men could save the Union.

In this riveting, character-driven history, one of our most respected historians traces the diseases in the public mind – the distortion of reality – that destroyed George Washington’s vision of a united America and inflicted the tragedy that still divides the nation’s soul. Like most major historic events, the causes of war are complex. If one today believes that the cause of the Civil War was simply “slavery” it will be easy to criticize Fleming. Going beyond the plethora of public-school history books, Fleming cites example after example of how extremist rhetoric in both North and South drove each toward violence and no-compromise political positioning. Additionally, Fleming presents much background on events troubling the ‘public mind’ – the Haitian Revolution, secession threats in both North and South, nullification threats in the South, actual nullification of the Fugitive Slave Act in the North, etc. etc. The book should prove to the honest student that the causes of the war were entirely complex and demand honest re-examination.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fleming, Thomas: A Disease in the Public Mind

Marche, Stephen: The Next Civil War: Dispatches from 7the American Future

Perry, Imani: South to America (Subtitle: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation).

Richardson, Heather Cox: How the South Won the Civil War

Walters, Barbara F.: How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them

Walters: Civil Wars, Insecurity and Intervention

Walters: Reputation and Civil War

Walters: Committing to Peace