Category: Family

A Painful Reminder

Posted on by Pete Schloss

At about 9:45 a.m. on August 6, 2010, 25 miles north of Vicksburg Mississippi, John Bodie drove his small pickup truck south on Mississippi Highway 61. John is an older gentleman who bears a passing resemblance to the actor, Ed Asner. John is of retirement age. One of his joys in life is fishing. On this day he is pulling a trailer and his small green flat-bottomed fishing boat. The highway closely follows the course of the Mississippi River. It is a warm day, hot by usual standards, but only warm by the measure of the last few days. Highway 61 is a typical secondary highway in Mississippi, two undivided lanes of concrete and asphalt with only a narrow unpaved shoulder of gravel and debris. The speed limit is 65 miles per hour, but passenger cars, logging trucks and farm semis often push the limit a bit. As he navigates a long bend in the road, his attention is drawn to a line of similarly clad bicyclists. John’s pulse quickens as he maneuvers his truck and trailer into the oncoming lane in order to provide a margin of safety for the cyclists. He looks into his rear view mirror and is haunted by the face of the lead cyclist… it has been over 20 years. “Don’t let it happen to them.” he thinks, over and over. John begins to look for a place to pull off the road. He feels compelled to act by a ghost from his past… a painful reminder.

As I lead our line of cyclists south on Mississippi Highway 61 an older pickup truck pulling a fishing boat passed us on our left. This courteous driver had given us more room than most drivers, which was especially noteworthy on this well traveled but narrow stretch of highway. On highway 61 we are denied the refuge of even a small shoulder at the side of the road. A few minutes later I see that the truck, boat, and trailer have come to a stop on a flat area of grass far to the right of the roadway. The driver, a heavily built older man, wears loose fitting faded jeans, an equally faded western style shirt and a sweat stained wide brimmed straw farmer’s hat. He stands next to the driver’s side of his vehicle. He is flagging us down… I am the first to come to rest next to him. Is he in trouble? Is his scowl a sign that he angry with us? His face gives no clues. His wide tooled leather belt has multiple images of the Confederate “Stars and Bars” … I am apprehensive.

John addresses the cyclists. “I saw you all, and I just had to stop. You see, around 1987 I was driving my semi down this road, loaded with grain. I had a new canvas tarpaulin cover over my load. I saw a bicyclist who was dressed just like you all and as I passed him…” Here John hesitates, draws a deep breath and looks directly into my eyes. “Well, as I passed him, the cover and frame over my load tore off and struck that boy in the head… he wasn’t wearing a helmet like you all, but I doubt that it would have done him any good. He was struck in the head and he died.” Another deep breath and John’s eyes intensify their focus on me. “Please, please, please be careful.”

The driver handed me a simple white business card, “John H. Bodie, trucking”. He took my hand and held it longer than is common for most handshakes. I said that I would be careful… my words were repeated by the other cyclists. There was relief in the way that John’s brow relaxed and his hard eyes grew kinder. He got back into his truck and repeated to all of us, “Please be careful”. Another embrace of my hand through the open window of his truck, and we parted. John’s painful memory returned to his past and became a part of ours.

Peace Everyone. Pete Schloss

Tomorrow’s Purpose

Posted on by Pete Schloss

The old man floated in a field of stars at the boundary of his dreams. It was a wonderfully pleasant sensation that slowly dissolved with the arrival of morning and departure from night’s sleep. His eyes broke the crust that had formed upon them in the night. The stars that had surrounded him resolved into spots of light on faded wallpaper, projections of dawn through the moth holes of a tattered curtain. The serenity that had been his night gave way to the reality of a small grey one room apartment.

He lay for a moment organizing his thoughts. The tubular bed, once bright brass but now the patina of an old penny, was barely wide enough to accommodate the slow turn of his body. It creaked as he extended his hand toward the window that was the room’s only link to the sights and sounds of the street below. Sliding the curtain to the side the room exploded with Fall light that overwhelmed his senses. Sight slowly returned to eyes that drew focus upon his hand still holding the edge of the drape. The skin, once thick and full, had become paper thin and translucent. Light pierced his fingers like an x-ray, illuminating veins and bone. Beyond the hand he saw through the panes of dust etched glass to the street that ran before the storefront below. The park beyond was a network of sidewalks woven between the trees that cast their branches skyward.

Getting up in the morning, once a fluid and unconscious movement for him, had become a daily challenge that began with the act of grabbing the headrail of the bed with one hand and slowly pushing his body to vertical with the other. Legs extended over the side of the bed as knees audibly creaked the first bending that took his feet to the floor. The arches of his feet were like the rusted leaf springs under a tired old truck, function diminished by thousands of miles of road and the burdens that they had carried. His feet had tread uncounted millions of steps, carrying a body that was once large and powerful, but now shrunken and fragile. The pain of placing his feet upon the cold linoleum floor gave way to pressure as he slowly stood with the uncertainty of a man on a tightrope.

Taking a moment to steady himself he surveyed the room. Overhead was a single unshaded porcelain fixture with sockets for three lightbulbs but now holding only one. It was an accommodation to the economy that an inadequate retirement income thrust upon him. Across the room was a small painted wood table and a single bentwood chair. They were the only furniture that he owned save for the bed. The chipped surface of the off-white table revealed colored layers of paint that gave hint to its age like the rings of a tree. A counter with white sink and hotplate served as his kitchen. Separate hot and cold water spouts were pitted chrome with crazed porcelain handles that bore “H” and “C” respectively. They mocked him daily as corrosion had long made them inoperable. The drain still worked and a walk down the hallway outside his door to the communal bathroom served the sanitary needs of his body and gave him access to water for his pitcher.

He stood at the sink and faced the faded mirror above it. He plugged the drain with an old rubber stopper that was secured to the sink by a length of string. He poured tepid water from the pitcher into the sink to continue his morning routine, preferring the privacy of his room to the running water of the bath down the hall. The sink in his room served for washing his face, brushing his teeth, and the alternate day task of shaving. Today was an even numbered day. Shaving would be his purpose tomorrow.

Peace Everyone. Pete Schloss

Burial Rites in the 21st Century

Posted on by Pete Schloss

I had just turned to the 57th page in the book of my life when my Father closed the cover on his. I was ready for his death. He had been ready for it much longer. Over the years, MS had eroded the quality of his life to the point that once when I asked, “How are you Dad?”, he merely replied, “Waiting…”.

The funeral was traditional. Mercifully the casket remained closed and I was spared the well-meaning but misplaced comments about how “peaceful” or “natural” he looked. The established formula for a funeral and burial had been followed with the gathering of family and of his friends whose numbers were reduced by the attrition of 87 years. I had not given much thought to the purposes of those rituals until a few months later when I was confronted with the task of burying him a second time.

In the middle of doing something unrelated, Dad appeared before me. He was not alone. To his right was Bill, and to his left was Dan. This was not some ghostly apparition but there he was. Reflexively I reached out to touch him, but I knew that he could not and would not answer. There was no longer any meaning attached to him being there. It was left for me to bury him again.

The contrasts between his first internment and this second unexpected one were stark. Then, I had been surrounded by those who had shared his life. Now I was alone. Before, there had been well ordered preparations. Here, I was caught unaware. The disposition of my father’s body had been accomplished by strangers who were experts of their trade. Here, I knew that I could not delegate the closing of this “casket”.

It was silly of me to hesitate, but sentiment restrained my hand. I compelled myself to touch Dad in a way that would forever take him from my eyes. A bit of ironic cruelty was inserted into the moment as I was asked whether I was sure I wanted to do this. “Yes Dad…”. I touched him a second time and he was gone. It was as if he had never been there. No monument or marker would be erected, he just ceased to be. Bill and Dan were now shoulder to shoulder as I closed the cover of my cell phone, deleting him forever from my list of contacts.

Peace Everyone. Pete Schloss

The Coffee Pot

Posted on by Pete Schloss

July 7, 2010: We are 12, but not Apostles, we are bicyclists. We are 4 more, but not a Mathew, Mark, Luke or a John, we are support drivers. For nearly 40 days, like apostles or disciples, all of us have been cast into a unique mobile community, a bicycling commune. We have over 60 more days ahead of us. We have sacrificed our comfort… sharing rooms with former strangers. We have sacrificed our privacy… the “ladies’/men’s room” is in the bushes on THAT side of the road. We have compromised our sleeping habits, and our eating habits. We share our physical aches, and our emotional ones. The forge of our condition has tempered us into “family”.

I have pondered the inevitable times that we would be called upon to bring “others” into our fold. Segment riders, people who wholeheartedly embrace our undertaking, but because of work, family, or other considerations, are unable to assume the obligations of our entire coast to coast journey. What a challenge to suddenly appear, bags and bicycle in hand, among 16 people who have evolved their common experiences into understandings that need no words. We read the shrug of a shoulder, the furl of a brow, the shuffle of a step, as a melody in another member’s day. Sometimes our emotions sing the same song, sometimes another, but almost always with harmony. We are a chorus. Enter the “stranger”, the unknown voice.

Tom, was a stranger. He arrived in time to join us for the long and challenging ride from Rawlins to Riverside, Wyoming. That day’s ride saw us persevere over rough and narrow roads, through thunderstorms and hail, with headwinds and crosswinds gusting to over 50 miles per hours. There was no time for small talk, and no polite social graces were exchanged. At the end of the day, no one was in the mood to “welcome” anything other than a hot shower, a cold beer, and a warm bed. That night, our accommodations consisted of rough-hewn log cabins, likely built in the early 20th century.

At 5:30 a.m. the next morning I reluctantly stuck my head out the warped doorway and through the shredded screen door. I was looking to see if there was some sign of another day of hell-weather. The sky was ambiguous, but the scent was not. My nostrils were assailed by the rich pungent aroma of fresh roasted coffee. There was real caffeine in the air. Not the thin hint of the tepid dark imitation that is served up by most drip machines, but coffee with the raven darkness of abused motor oil. Tom, like the Pied Piper, was calling all of us coffee loving “rats” out of our lairs with the melody of his brew. He stood upon the dew sodden grass, illuminated by the early hint of dawn with a large, old style pewter espresso coffee pot in hand. I and the other “customers” lined up at his bidding, cups in hand. The tribulations of the prior day were forgotten, and Tom was instantly “one of us”.

The next few days gave me pause to consider the genius of Tom’s foresight. It occurred to me that anyone entering into a social order has a limited number of options with regard to the established group. One may ignore the group, not rejected or rejecting, but never accepted either, a non-person. One may choose to identify oneself to the group by emphasizing the distinctions and differences that exist between the individual and the group. This is a recipe for non-acceptance. There is also the less malignant, but no more effective, “I am one of you, but what makes me unique from you is…”. Then there is the “coffee pot”. The foresight to think of the others, to strive to embrace what we have in common, what we share, what we understand.

In our cycling group, we are not lawyers, clergy, doctors, business persons, social workers, retirees… we are people, we are family. Among us we strive to be “we”, “us”, and “our”, never “them”, never “they”. This is how it should be in the human family. It makes it so much easier to help and be helped, to accept and be accepted. Coffee anyone?

Peace Everyone! Pete Schloss

The Nine Dollar Haircut

Posted on by Pete Schloss

July 12, 2010 was hot riding into Smith Center Kansas. No, not just hot, but HOT! So hot that the roll of my bicycle tires gave the continuous sound of separating Velcro on the sun-beaten asphalt. So hot that colors appeared bleached by the arc-welder brightness of the midday sun. So hot that… well, you get the point, and after 60 miles on the bicycle, so did I. Christine and I went into the old downtown to seek a diner.

Downtown Smith Center is not dead, but like many small town historic business districts, it is not well. The two and three story brick and stone buildings harken to a time when a name and year of “birth” were prominently displayed at the top and on the cornerstone. There was the Shite Building, 1888, and The First National Bank building, “Founded 1886, Erected 1930”. That was a tough year to build a bank, but The First National Bank had apparently weathered the adversities of the Great Depression. Faded paint indicated some of the long-gone businesses. Much of the former commerce has been replaced by antique and second-hand stores. The bank facade informed us that it was 2 p.m. and the temperature had fallen to 101.

We ate at the Second Cup Café, where $6 can still buy you tenderloin with all the trimmings, and a piece of homemade pie… Apple, with Maple flavored crust, fantastic! A patron asked if we were with “the cycling group”, and after a pleasant discussion with her and the café owner, she smiled and gave us a $5 donation and a “God Bless You”. We left the café and were again assaulted by the wall of heat. Across the street I saw a small faded barber’s pole mounted next to the door of a timeworn storefront, “Paul’s Barbershop”. It had been over 6 weeks since my last haircut, and curiosity got the best of me. I crossed the street to peer in the window. Over the years, the glass had lost its clarity, etched by countless dust storms. I shaded my eyes against the glass in order to see within. I beheld not just a barbershop, but a living “barbershop museum”, with one of our cyclists, Jeremy, in the barber’s chair.

We entered the shop. It was a “three chair store”, each of which was a creature of cast iron, nickel, porcelain and leather dating to the late 19th or early 20th Century. Jeremy was in the center chair, but what immediately drew my eye was that the chair to the left was a fully functional barber’s chair in miniature. It was the perfect size for a 5-year-old and elevated to the perfect height for Paul the Barber. This tonsorial “throne”, fit for any young prince, differed from its larger brothers only in the absence of the long leather razor strops which hung from the full-size chairs. “Atmosphere” in the shop was provided by a mahogany encased, single dial radio that still used vacuum tubes. The counter displayed bottles of men’s grooming products such as Vitalis, Krew-Kut, Hask Hair Tonic, and other brands that I had thought long extinct. Behind the counter was a very old ornate white and chrome cash register, the kind that shoots little metal “tombstones” up at the sound of a bell to announce the amount of the transaction. I would soon learn that the register remained in use. Then there was Paul, the shops sole proprietor.

I suspect that in Paul’s younger days he might have been 6 feet tall, but 7 decades and bending over countless heads of hair had taken their toll. As he focused his attention on cutting Jeremy’s hair I noticed a tremor in Paul’s hand that seemed to stop just at the moment the clippers reached their destination. Barbers are observant, and Paul was no exception. He seemed to read my mind and commented in a matter of fact manner that he had suffered a stroke but was able to pursue his calling after only 6 months of recovery. Paul was confident of his skills to the point that he made jokes, “If I make a mistake, the hair will just grow back” … “If you want your cut fixed you can always ride your bikes back here”. Paul and I were amused, but I sensed that Christine preferred that I leave my hair to other hands.

Paul put the finishing touches on Jeremy’s hair-cut, and with practiced mastery removed the barber’s cape, shaking the clinging hair to the floor. “That will be nine dollars”, Paul announced. Jeremy and I both must have displayed a micro reaction because Paul then followed up with, “I could do it cheaper, but only if you fellows pay my bills.” It has probably been over 30 years since I had a $9.00 haircut, and here Paul had assumed we were suffering sticker shock!

My turn in the chair. Paul went to work as a craftsman should, with calm practiced confidence. We talked as he cut. “So, you fellows are Catholic. Well, I’m Lutheran, which is kind of watered down Catholic, you know, not as complicated.” He stopped and chuckled. “Was a time there weren’t many Catholics in this area, but there are sure a lot of them now”. He was making a matter of fact observation. There was no animus meant.

I asked Paul for a recommendation for a dinner restaurant. “Well, I prefer to eat at home with Mom (his wife), but I suppose if I had to eat somewhere else it would be Duffy’s, downtown here.” Later we ate at Duffy’s, and Paul’s recommendation was spot on.

I learned that Paul and his wife had celebrated 50 years of marriage in June. They had two daughters, a son, and one grandson. This was his second barber shop and he had been cutting hair in this shop since 1962. He confirmed that the chairs, register, and fixtures predated his arrival by decades. Paul became serious. “There have been a lot of people who have offered to buy my chairs, cash register, and other things.” He continued, “Mom” and me talked about it, but it’s just not right, the shop is my business, my life.” Paul just couldn’t see parting with it piecemeal. With sadness he remarked that in front of the shop there once stood a tall barber’s pole that was as old as the shop itself. About 8 years ago some fellows passing through town wanted to buy it. Paul politely declined to sell. “I was in the shop Saturday, and by Monday the pole was gone. Someone stole my barber pole”. Paul didn’t blame “those fellows”, or anyone else. He just remarked with sadness, “Maybe someone just needed it more than me”.

“What do you think?” asked Paul. “About the barber pole?” I replied. “No, the haircut! Is it ok?” I smiled and looked in the time worn wall mirror. There was a white skinned border that now separated my bicycle tan from my shortened hairline. “Paul, it looks great!!!” Paul beamed and said, “That will be nine dollars.” I gave him a ten… “Please keep the change”. His smile broadened, broken only by the word, “Thanks!”

As I left the shop I considered that my ten dollars had purchased more than a haircut. I had enjoyed a moment in the life of a very good and extraordinary man. Smith Center had the fortune of Paul’s good will for over 50 years and “Mom” had enjoyed his love and company for over 50 years. How rich the community, and how rich was his family. My 15 minutes in his chair were priceless. I wish that I could take my grandchildren there. You know… the experience of that small tonsorial “throne” fit for a young prince or princess. I wonder if children’s haircuts are also nine dollars. Let’s see, that would be $90.00 plus the tip… What a bargain!

Peace Everyone! Pete Schloss

A sad update to my reflections on Paul…