The Incredible Wealth of Scraping By

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Doc Arnett

Making my way across the freshly mowed grass in the last hour of daylight, I see Ben and his mom outside their tiny, rough apartment. Smoke drifts out from a small grill and Ben is bent over the front wheel of a small bicycle. He looks my way, straightens up and waves, “Hi, Doc!”

I am struck by the friendliness of his voice, having only met him once before and talked but briefly. I speak to Rose and then take a closer look as the fifteen-year-old tightens the nuts holding the wheel into the front fork of the bike. In response to my question, Ben replies, “Yeah, this wheel is pretty bent up.”

Finished with the straightening, he takes hold of the wheel and gives it a hard jerk. It should spin freely but stops after less than a full turn. “Let’s take a look at that,” I offer and he loosens the nuts. I hold the wheel and ask him to turn it. I cannot keep the axle bolt from turning, too. I know without looking that the bearing is shot but I look anyway, then show him the ruined sleeve. “Ahh, we’ve got lots of wheels,” he says.

Just then, the kid from next door comes riding up and Ben greets him, “I need that wheel.” Isaac gives up the bike with little argument. Maybe it’s not his bicycle; it’s often easier to surrender something when we understand it wasn’t ours, anyway. Within minutes, the swap is made and the one bike is ready to ride while the one that was being ridden needs another wheel.

On one level, I was amused by Ben’s calm, quick efficiency. I remembered how my brother, Paul, and I used to swap parts among the three or four old bikes that we had on the farm in the middle part of the previous century. And then, I remembered what it was like to know that swapping one old thing for another old thing was the only choice we had. That part wasn’t so amusing.

But there was yet another part to this. It is this other part that reaches down deep and makes me think that this kid just might have more of a chance in life than his present circumstances might suggest.

Ben has the ability to see the opportunities within a situation instead of resenting the lack. Even in his poverty, he has gained a freedom and power that often escapes many who experience greater financial fortune. And, by the way, people like Ben are more fun to be around, too.

H. Arnett
5/4/11

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Driving Rain

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Doc Arnett

The first sound of thunder came during that phase of slumber when we tend to think the rumble might have come from the power of imagination, some disturbing aspect in the crumbling edges of a dream. I had no such doubts about the second; it rattled the windows and shook the walls. The even rhythm of the rain was syncopated by harder beats as bits of hail fell against the flat roof right outside the west window of the bedroom.

I rose in company to more rumblings and flashings and looked out the window. It was still too dark for detail but I could see the lights of two tractor-trailer rigs pulled onto the shoulder of Highway 36. When I see the OTR truckers pulled off the road in a downpour, I’m pretty sure the red section of the weather radar is making its way through.

Checking the National Weather Service’s website a bit later confirmed the suspicion and revealed a pretty fast moving system. It had shifted east nearly thirty miles in the past forty-five minutes.

There are times in our lives when the storm moves through quickly, other times when it seems to settle around us and rain for months. Sometimes, we continue moving ahead, slowing a bit perhaps, but still focused forward. There are other times when we need to wait upon the Lord, praying that he will give us greater vision and wait for him to clear the way. It is seldom in life that we gain greater advantage by pushing blindly ahead, not compelled by faith and wisdom, but driven by the stubbornness of our own determination.

H. Arnett
5/3/12

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A Preparation of Peace

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Doc Arnett

I step out the back door into the pleasant air of morning. A dark blue edge shows in the sky, high and to the east, tracing the form of the passing storm front. The horses look up from the low edge of the paddock. They swing around and head toward me, heads bobbing in fast walk.

I carry the feed bucket toward the trough, pausing to shut off the fence charger before I slip through between the wires that keep the horses away from the dangers beyond.

They have lost the heavy scruff of their winter coats now. Even in the soft light of clouded morning, their hair shines with the buff of spring. They swing around, hooves hard against the soft ground, eager for feed. I watch carefully as I step between them, wary of any contention regarding which end of the trough either of them might choose to defend. Their ears hold forward, signaling a lack of threat to one another or any beneficent bystander.

As soon as the feed spills from the bucket, the chocolate Rocky starts in, taking a mouthful at a time. The black Walker waits for a moment, moves in beside him. I tap out the last bit of feed, bunched in the bottom of the bucket.

Beyond them, the grass lies wet and heavy, flush with rain and spring. The trees rise beyond the fence, the hills beyond them. All is green with hope and promise, all continuing the cycle of seasons. New corn sprouts and rises in fields tilled in trust, labor expectant of harvest.

I turn toward the house, walking on damp gravel, ready for the work of my day, believing that the Lord of Harvest will bless its yield.

H. Arnett
5/2/12

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A Higher Compliment

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Doc Arnett

It is not in the accolades of easy friends
that we gain the higher ground,
nor in the shallow flattery of those
fixed upon their own ends.

It takes the hard words, softly spoken,
to bring to bear the smoothing edge
of iron against iron,
to hone away the dulling shard.

We need the close acquaintance
of those we trust,
the occasional friction
that rubs through the rust

of corrupting change,
returns the keen surface
that keeps us sharp to our work,
faithful to our purpose.

From these, then, whose word we know
carries the weight of honest love,
we take genuine encouragement
in the compliment of correction.

H. Arnett
5/1/12

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A Closer Witness

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Doc Arnett

There is no notion of sky this morning,
just a low-lying grayness that closes in,
shutting off the sense of anything
beyond the near bluffs and hills
just past the creek.

The dark of yesterday’s rain
and the heavy of this dawning’s dew
still shows in the gravel of the driveway
and the pitted concrete sidewalk
from the patio to the garage.

Some would say it is the start
of a gloomy day,
something heavy and dreary,
perhaps some sort of retained sadness
seeping from the sky into the heart.

I suppose it could be,
that sort of prophecy often eases
into its own fulfillment
and I am not one prone
to finding lift in the heaviness.

But I have noticed the way
that this sort of light,
spectrum filtered by layers of cloud and mist
causes the colors of trees and grass to deepen,
an incredible sense of spring
impossibly green in the low sheen
of mornings such as this.

Sometimes, I think,
the Lord has to dim the call of distant beauty,
the broad expanse of the world beyond,
so that we may marvel
at the droplets on the rose
hanging delicately over the low stone retainer.

H. Arnett
4/30/12

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Reflecting on Fifty Years of Change in Societal Beliefs

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Doc Arnett

The westward bend of the Bradford Pear this morning
lends a bit of belief that the cool has come,
a rendering from the east to separate
the least and greatest temperatures of April.

Two days ago, I stood at the counter
of Triple L Tires and joked
that surely when the temperature hit ninety
it was time to swap out the snow tires.

Now a forming of gray clouds and a chill breeze
makes me believe the frost warning
forecast for the beginning of next week
might be something more
than the perennial pessimism
of a place where I once saw a foot of snow
come after Easter
and have heard that it can snow in May.

Some folks say “it’s only weather”
and I’d say that most days
it is sort of trivial conversation
but then again, I guess tsunamis and hurricanes
are weather, too.

With that sort of view
and in a place where tornadoes take towns off the map,
it’s hard to blame a man for keeping an eye on the sky.

H. Arnett
4/26/12

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A Hard Spring

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Doc Arnett

This must be the strangest spring that I have ever seen: ninety in March, cool and rainy in the early part of April, followed by several hard frosts, and now ninety again for the past two days. This morning brings a gorgeous dawning, clear skies and pleasant temperatures, more moderate, more seasonal.

This is a place of seasons, distinctive and progressive in a normal year. The locusts usually bloom in May but began a month early this go-round, a fringe of white just starting to show on the branches three or four weeks ago. Then the near-freezes came, putting things on hold and they held, that fringe, dull and pale, caught in some sort of time warp. The latest warmth sent them surging forward. The hills of Doniphan County seemed wrapped with bright white stoles, thickets of locusts in the full flush of their blooming.

A thousand miles away from here, in an even more unusual spring, my sister has gone through six weeks of radiation therapy. She has endured the tethering to the clinic, going every day, five days a week, held by the routine. She has endured the discomfort and the pain, the wrestling away from the things she would normally do. In spite of being unable to use the usual crème treatment for the burning of the skin, she has held up remarkably well. Nearly to the end of the series, the staff suddenly remembered an alternate product for those who can’t use the usual. It brought immediate relief, a bit more tangible than the relief of their repeatedly telling Freeda that they could hardly believe how well her body was holding up to the treatments. “Most people don’t even make it this far; they’ve burned so much and are in such pain they just give up.”

Giving up has never played much of a role in her life and I suspect that she’s had more prayer support than most of their clients. Last night, after church, they had a celebration. Those of you who have joined me in praying for her were included, even though unknown. Your lifting has raised her up. We both thank you for it.

Because of that, I believe that Freeda will be able to get back up to the mountains she loves in time to see at least the last phases of spring along the Blue Ridge Parkway. And in that returning, I believe her celebration will sound a stronger chorus, resonating with the bark and blooms of the Appalachians, a full resounding with all that God has made and done.

H. Arnett
4/26/12

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Neighbors

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Doc Arnett

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed an ambulance over at the old apartment building near our house. At the time, I thought I should go over a while later and see if there was anything that we could do for the family. I guess yesterday was a while later.

As I was taking a load of my dirty clothes down to the basement, I felt a sudden conviction that I should follow through on that idea.

As I walked across the pasture, I surveyed the parking lot. None of the vehicles I saw seemed to be less than ten years old, with most being closer to twenty or more. Though the exterior of the converted stock barn has been painted in recent years, the sixteen or so apartments show some signs of un-restored abuse.

The screens have a ragged look and the frames are dinged and scraped. The entries have no covering; there is just a small slab of concrete outside the door. As I walked to the apartment where the ambulance had parked, I felt a heavy sadness, a deep sense of intense needs and oppression. As I neared the door, a forty-ish woman and a teenage boy stepped out from their door at the next unit.

She was smoking a cigarette, talking on a cell phone. As I knocked on her neighbor’s door, she called out, “They’re not there; they’re around on the other side, drinking.” As I hesitated, I heard her say to whomever she was talking to, “After you get the beer, come on over here.” Walking closer, I could see the details of leathered skin, frayed hair and the dullness in the eyes that often belies a hard life uneased by a few diversionary habits.

“Is this the apartment where the ambulance came a couple of weeks ago?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Grandpa had another one of his spells,” she responded. I introduced myself and told her that my wife and I go to church just over the hill here. “I thought maybe it might be someone that needed some prayer.”

Her face softened instantly and she nodded her head quickly. “Oh, he sure does.” Even though the elderly man is not actually her grandfather, he’s dealing with depression, breathing problems and heart problems. I asked for his name, then met Rose and Ben. She thanked me and then went back inside her apartment as if she suspected I might soon want to ask about her spiritual condition.

We live in a world more open to prayer than to the gospel. Perhaps, responding to the first might help pave the way for the second.

H. Arnett
4/20/12

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Well-Grounded

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Doc Arnett

Stepping out of the car at First and Main in Fort Scott, Kansas, carries some notion of time travel; the brick street, old brick buildings and Courtland Hotel’s huge glass windows make it easy to imagine stepping into the morning a century ago.

It is not that I am nostalgic about the beginnings of the Twentieth Century; I have no desire to land in the swirling fevers that followed the Civil War, Bleeding Kansas or the age of excess that preceded WWI and the Great Depression. I do, however, like to see the occasional downtown that does not look like an architectural junkyard. I like to see fine old buildings deliberately cared for, restored and preserved. I like to see such visible appreciation for what has stood some test of time, a notion that even brick and mortar need some attention over the years.

There is something in such awareness that transcends the contemporary, that speaks of things more solid than fad and fancy. These buildings have survived the changes of style and the currents of politics. They have withstood the onslaughts of wind and rain, extremes of flood and drought. Over the decades of thrift and flush, and the ebb and rush of settlers and travelers, tourists and traders, they have held to the shape of the architect’s mind and the builders’ hands.

They are not unlike lives founded on faith and shaped by obedience.

H. Arnett
4/23/12

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Bailout

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Doc Arnett

On the better nights, traffic is light, I am tired and my mind is clear. Or else, my mind is so fogged I can’t sort one thought from another and there’s some sort of numbing that keeps any one thing from drumming out whatever is needed for sleep. On these nights, I rest well.

On the others, there is this frustrating lift and swell of the sounds of truck tires and engines and the occasional irritation of a high-revving motorcycle screaming its twelve-thousand rpm’s through my much too rare REM’s and making it less than difficult for me to imagine becoming a character in a B-grade movie that involves dark streaks of face paint and ridiculous amounts of remote-detonated explosives.

The more acceptable, and at least currently, more likely solution is to finish remodeling the master bedroom. They, Randa and I can move our sleeping quarters back from the highway side of the house to the other side, which is far better insulated from the noises of the road and the rages of externally induced insomnia. I suppose too, that soft earplugs and some sort of suitable white noise generator might be options worth considering.

On the other hand, being a privileged person in a privileged society, I believe there are other options. I could contact my elected officials and propose that this section of the highway should be re-routed in such a way as to eliminate any irritation to me and inflict it upon my neighbors. They, of course, should also bear the entire financial burden of my relief. I don’t think it would be too difficult to generate any number of reports demonstrating tremendous social and economic benefit to the area, even though that is utterly beside the point.

I can’t help wondering, though, just how well that sort of thinking is going to hold up when I have to stand before my Maker and give an account of how I expected those less blessed than me to furnish the comforts of my life. Hmmm… maybe I should quit yammering and start hammering. He was a carpenter, too, you know.

H. Arnett
4/19/12

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