Good Investment

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Doc Arnett

We did it right this time, yessirree. Called up our electric company so they could mark the buried service line to the house. They said they didn’t have the equipment for that and gave me the 800 number to call. So, we called Kansas One Call to have them come mark all the utility lines in the area where we planned to dig and level for the patio. Their guy came out while Rich and I were running the tiller and he marked the water line, gas line and phone line. He first said I’d have to call the electric company to have them come mark their line. I told him I’d already called them and that they said that Kansas One Call would do it.

“No,” he explained with about all the patience you could expect from a guy who spends his days in triple digit heat marking phone lines, “It’s a private line. You have to call them.”

Then, he went on to explain further, “We’ll do it but the company charges ninety bucks just to come out and then twenty-five dollars for each fifteen minutes on top of that.” Being the astute scholar of human emotions that he must be and a careful scrutinizer of facial expressions and body language, he could see that there was no way I was going to pay them over a hundred dollars for a few minutes of work. And, on top of his incredible powers of observation, he also heard me say to Rich, “There’s no way I’m going to pay them over a hundred dollars for a few minutes of work.”

There was a brief awkward silence while the three of us stood there sweating in the shade of a hot morning. Then, the KOC guy said, “Well, I’ll mark it for you for twenty bucks.”

Now, folks, there are times when I can be so darn cheap you’d think I had “Scotland Forever” tattooed to my buttocks. But when twenty bucks can drastically lower the risk of cutting into a two-hundred-and-forty volt electrical line that could unleash virtually unlimited amperage to surge through all of your vital organs, that’s too good a deal to pass up.

It’s not as good as someone else paying the price of your sins and offering you the free gift of eternal life. Not anywhere that good. But it’s still a deal worth taking.

But you’ve still got to pay attention to what the man tells you.

 

H. Arnett

7/15/11

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Rescue Work

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Doc Arnett

Randa and I decided to take advantage of the late light last night after Bible study to continue the huge patio/landscape/flower garden/flood control project in the back yard, which is actually the side yard, but anyway, that’s a different discussion. “Flood control” is a bit misleading since it has nothing to do with the river; our house sits on a slight hill, well above the flood plain.

It has to do, rather, with basement flooding. The yard slopes toward the house from both the west and the north and the foundation back fill settled, significantly, over the years, creating low spots right against the house. Any time there’s a hard rain, or even a slightly ambitious medium-hard rain, we get water in the basement. Not inches of water, just a nice pool right around the clothes dryer or under the steps. Or, if the wind is at a particular direction and the rain at a very high rate, there’s a mysterious channel through the hollow terra cotta tile block foundation that lets water (and mud) flow in from the base of the door from the laundry room into the furnace room. I haven’t been able to figure out where exactly the intake point is but it is very easy to trace the output; there’s a nice reddish orange brown residue trace going rather directly from the base of that door to the floor drain conveniently located several feet away.

Thus, our motivation for the aforementioned project has an element of pragmatism as well as a healthy lust for aesthetic beauty. What it also had last evening was a dousing bit of humidity. Even though the sun had disappeared behind the trees and hills and it seemed rather cooler than it had a couple of hours earlier, my shirt was soaked with sweat within fifteen minutes of digging dirt away from the foundation around the northwest corner. After half-an-hour, I began considering connecting an IV drip to sustain my hydration needs. It wasn’t the most pleasant time for physical exertion but there was an element of compulsion: more rain in the forecast for last night.

The world and eternity are filled with consequences for waiting for a more convenient time to do what needs to be done. Eventually, the lack of attention and prevention allows even the foundations to be destroyed. Whether it is conservation or a conversation that needs to take place, postponement often leaves us with more work than it would have taken a day or two earlier.

Maybe today is the day for whatever it is you’ve been putting off? I might even come up with one or two items myself…

H. Arnett

7/7/11

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A Shovelful of Prayer

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Doc Arnett

In the morning after the rain,

fog settled in the hills and trees

across the fields and along the creek.

 

The first bit of sun

lit a fringe of rose

in the shroud hanging over the valley.

 

For weeks, the river has run

hard and heavy,

high on the levee.

 

Sheriffs and soldiers patrol the berm,

watching for sand boils

and signs of weakening,

 

knowing that the river

will turn the slightest breach

into headlines.

 

The heavy rains upstream,

snow in the Rockies,

and decisions made three states away

 

have kept the current roiling

through the trees

along the Missouri.

 

We know that we are undeserving,

no more righteous than those living

where the dirt barriers have broken

 

and turned farms and towns

and lives

into swirling brown pools,

 

but we still pray,

 

asking God to hold back the flood,

to spare Elwood and Wathena,

to keep the roads to work open

 

and keep safe the men

who walk on the levees

we are praying for.

 

H. Arnett

7/6/11

 

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Just a Little Farther

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Doc Arnett

Being down to the next-to-last day of my vacation, I thought a break from all the landscape and ceramic tile work might be in order. Randa loves steak and I’m a willing co-conspirator in that line of subversive activity, so I suggested we splurge on a meal over at Saint Joe. It must have taken at least several nanoseconds for her to agree to my idea.

Just at the eastern edge of Wathena, we saw a young man walking beside the road, carrying a jacket in his hand. He didn’t have his thumb stuck out in the air and we were already past him before I felt a slight twinge of conscience. By the time my medium rare, fire-grilled prime rib got to the table, the hiker wasn’t even a twitch on my moral compass. It’s a bit freaky how much of the world’s needs can be pushed out of sight by a decent steak.

Sometimes, though, those needs push back.

On our way home, I saw the hiker again. He was still walking toward St. Joseph. Now, we were on the opposite side of the divided highway. Pretty good excuse, I guess, but nonetheless, I took the next exit and headed back toward the city.

It took us no more than two minutes to get back to where we’d seen the young man walking. No more than two minutes. He had disappeared. “What are the odds?” I asked Randa. “That guy’s out here walking for two hours and in the two minutes it takes us to turn around, he finally gets a ride?”

I swung off on the Roseport Road exit, the last one before Highway 36 crosses the river. As we finished the half-mile turnaround and were turning back up the ramp to catch the westbound lane, Randa spotted him. “There he is,” she pointed, “What’s he doing on this side of the highway?”

After several miles of walking with the traffic flow, he’d switched over to the other side. Maybe he wanted to walk across on the north side of the bridge. Maybe that would bring him into Saint Joe closer to where he wanted to go. I didn’t know what reasons prompted his move. I did know that we were on the ramp, a hundred yards away from him and headed in the opposite direction. I suppose I could have pulled over on the shoulder, got out of the car and run up the embankment and offered him a ride. I didn’t.

I just wished I had taken the opportunity I’d had two hours earlier when it would have been a simple matter to help the guy out. And, I wished that he’d waited another minute before giving up on getting a ride. One more minute. And now, I’m wondering how many times it might have been in my own life that I would have found my deliverance if I’d just waited a little longer before giving up.

H. Arnett

7/5/11

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Stray Cats

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Doc Arnett

There’s a certain part of a man that is particularly susceptible to puppies and kittens, a part of him that softens the whole man, takes him back to innocence and wonder, back to a joy and tenderness that often disappears way too early in life. My son-in-law helped me gauge that part a couple of weeks ago.

While he was here from Kentucky a couple of weeks ago, Eli wanted to check out the local non-catalogued inventory of indigenous people artifacts. Which is to say, he wanted to look for arrowheads. Knowing that one of our church brethren owns some farmland pretty close to here, I asked him if Eli and I could come over and try our luck. “That would be alright,” the farmer assented.
So, on a hot and humid Sunday evening, too late in the day for actually looking for arrowheads, we decided to go find the place. Between my unclear recollection of directions and a slight discrepancy between my odometer and the distance I thought the farmer’s wife had told me, I drove past their road. I slowed down and took the next left, which was only a few hundred feet past the road I should have taken.
As Eli and I made the turn onto the gravel, we saw a small critter in the grass at the edge of the road. At first, I thought it was a tiny baby fox. As I stopped the truck, though, I could see it was a kitten. She looked to be no more than four or five weeks old and had apparently been left there by someone with no desire to continue the relationship. We could hear her loud, plaintive mewing.
She crouched slightly as I approached her slowly but she didn’t back away. I reached down toward her, watching carefully to see if she flattened her ears and began hissing at me in that delightful manner that some cats have. She didn’t, a detail in no small way responsible for the fact that this abandoned cat is now playing with the printer wires while I sit here typing.
Another detail that has contributed to this little tiger-striped calico cat finding a home here is the way she sleeps on, around or beside us on the dual recliner while we’re watching TV. When she curls up next to my neck and begins purring loudly, the deal is sealed; she’s staying here. Watching her romp and play as she races through the room or comes crab-hopping toward my feet is just part of the benefit package.
We owe both existence and salvation to a God whose compassion greatly exceeds our merit. A God who saw us in our filth and sin and loved us anyway. Knowing that we sometimes scratch and claw and hiss at the very one trying to bless us, he reached down and lifted us to him anyway.
That part of a man that is touched by kittens and puppies is also part of the reflection of the Divine Image. When that part of a person has died, I’m not sure there’s all that much hope for the rest of him.
H. Arnett
6/23/11
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Quick Visit

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Doc Arnett

I wasn’t sure whether or not a short visit with Alexis’s family would be a good idea or not. The fractured skull she’d sustained in the collision between the four-wheeler and a pickup truck the previous evening had landed her in the intensive care unit. Her father, Barry, is in charge of grounds keeping where I work but I don’t know him well enough to know how he’d respond to having Randa and me stop by the hospital.

We were already in Saint Joe so it wasn’t distance or time that made me hesitate. “I’m not sure whether he’d want us to come or not,” I explained to Randa. “Some people resent it when someone they don’t know very well shows up at the hospital.” Since Barry is a big guy and toughened by years of hard work, I really didn’t want to do something that irritated him.
“I think we should go,” Randa responded quietly.
So, we went.
The waiting room outside the ICU is about thirty feet wide and sixty feet long. As we walked in, I saw Barry in a recliner, looking like he was nearly asleep. I’ve known the exhaustion of long hours waiting at a hospital but I hadn’t been through what he was going through. Intently attentive to his body language and facial expression, I approached him quietly.
He barely noticed me at first but then recognized me as I got closer. He stood up quickly and stepped toward me. We shook hands and hugged at the same time in that manner we have developed in our culture that lets us simultaneously attend to both manliness and affection. It sometimes seems a bit awkward but it is effective, nonetheless, a good compromise for guys who’ve been raised with less emotion than they felt.
It is also a good technique for letting someone know right away whether or not his visit is welcome. When such visits come from genuine caring, they usually are. A man whose child lies in critical condition will usually tolerate all of the support he can get. Especially if it comes from genuine caring and without solicitation of private information.
Our visit with Barry while his wife sat in the room with their unconscious daughter lasted only a few minutes. I suspect his memory of our simple empathy will last a bit longer than that.
H. Arnett
6/22 /11
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Closer Than We Thought

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Doc Arnett

I got a text message late Saturday evening telling me that a couple of young people from one of our local high schools had been seriously injured in a four-wheeler accident. The sixteen-year-old girl had suffered head trauma and the eighteen-year-old boy had broken at least one leg. I forwarded the message on to several people of faith that I know and asked them to pray.

At church the next morning, I learned that the girl had been life-flighted to the hospital and they were concerned about possible brain damage. I also learned that Cody’s grandmother was a teacher who retired from the college a year or two after I started working there. Then, I found out that Alexis’s dad is our head groundskeeper.
Barry and I are not drinking buddies or even non-drinking buddies but we do know each other. In fact, earlier in the week he and I had talked for a while outside my office building. What had been a relatively impersonal event suddenly became very personal to me.
When we have a direct connection to those whose lives have been touched by some tragedy, our response, both emotionally and physically is very different. We are much more inclined to place ourselves in their position and therefore feel their pain to a greater extent and respond with greater compassion and concern.
And I think that is very much a part of loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.
H. Arnett
6/21/11
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Progress

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Doc Arnett

I never had determination and opportunity coincide long enough for me to learn how to ride a horse well enough to say I could actually ride a horse. I did do a Rent-a-Horse trail ride in southern Missouri or Kentucky one time but that forty-five minutes in the saddle doesn’t really count. A tranquilized chimpanzee or well-balanced box of avocadoes could have done just as well as I did on that horse.

So, my foray into horse riding is actually quite recent and ole Moses, our new sabino gelding, is my current partner. He has a very smooth quick walk and allegedly has a very smooth trot or canter or something like that but other than a very brief, completely inadvertent moment, I have not been able to find that gear. Er, I think I mean, “gait.”

At any rate, Randa and I rode about three-and-a-half miles yesterday, she on the quasi-Arabian gelding, Shiloh, and me on Moses. There’s a gravel road nearby that goes up the hill beside the bluff just beyond the creek. We rode up that way, accompanied for a while by a couple of dogs, a Rottweiler and a black Lab/Airedale mix, and by a very enthusiastic flock of deer flies. The horses did a bit of snorting and head tossing but other than that did pretty well. I actually began to relax a bit. Keep in mind that in a very technical sense, moving from wide-eyed horror to mild terror is “relaxing a bit.”

After cresting the ridge and enjoying a few minutes of panoramic views of the green hills and fields of northeastern Kansas, we turned back toward home. The horses did right well for the most part, even ignoring the occasional clink of stepping on an aluminum can hidden in the grass beneath their feet. As we came back up to a small feedlot, things got a bit interesting.

The road runs about twenty feet above the low end of the feedlot and is on nearly the same level as its upper end. One of the heavy black heifers took great interest in our approach and the geldings took equal note of her. They turned toward her and stopped in the middle of the road, ears and eyes fixed on her. All parties present and accounted for, at least for that moment.

Then, the heifer reared up, snorted and charged toward the fence like an angry bull.

I cannot fully account for what happened next. I felt a surge of great power underneath me. In one instant, Randa and I were sitting on top of two horses standing placidly in the middle of a gravel road. In the next instant, the two horses stood halfway up the opposite ditch bank. How a pair of eight-hundred-pound animals can jump sideways and do a one-hundred-and-eighty degree spin in mid-air in that span of time is a bit of a mystery to me.

That Randa was still on her horse wasn’t much of a surprise; she’s been riding since she was three years old. That Doc was still on his is a spectacle almost beyond explanation. I’m quite sure that it was not sheer athleticism and cat-like reflexes. But whatever it was, my survival has significantly bolstered my belief that I may actually learn how to ride a horse.

I would never have wished for that experience and will not actively solicit a similar one. But I definitely profited from it. It seems very much like the way that we develop the capacity to survive the testings of this life, and grow in confidence that the hand that sustains us is stronger than our faith.

H. Arnett

6/13/11

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Good Help and Good Company

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Doc Arnett
He expected Kansas to look like the postcards or the pictures from the sixth-grade geography textbook: miles of flat farmland with winter wheat waving in the wind. He didn’t expect to see these green hills, these fields of curving rows planted along the contour. He didn’t expect to find the lines of trees along the creeks or the miles of woods or the bluffs. About the last thing he thought he’d find out was that northeast Kansas looks this much like central Kentucky. But, Eli came anyway.
I’d asked my daughter and her apprentice plumber husband to come out last year and help restore the house’s waste and water systems to working condition. Of course, being the magnanimous and generous person that I am, I was also going to let them bring my grandson, too. That trip didn’t work out and so we’d lived here for these nine months without benefit of either guest bathroom being in working order. It wasn’t much of an ordeal, actually, but certainly not terribly convenient when we’ve had company. And, there was the matter of the un-installed whirlpool tub, daily holding out its promise of delightful relaxation and soothing therapy.
And now, thanks to Eli, that tub is considerably closer to fulfilling its promise. It seems possible that by Saturday night, we might actually be able to use it. We’re already using the new dishwasher that “we” installed yesterday.
Fact is, I could do all of this plumbing work by myself, taking it step by step, and slogging my way forward. Sooner or later, I’d get it done. But the stuff that I’d have to spend an hour or two figuring out, my son-in-law already knows how to do and does it better than I would. And there’s the added benefit of having Susan and Daniel out for a visit at the same time. Which, truth be told, might be a real big part of the benefit plan.
In some rough manner of comparison, this whole plumbing thing is a bit like the difference between trying to make our own way through this life and in allowing God to direct us. Instead of fussing and fumbling our way about, we have his leading. And then, on top, there’s the joy and comfort of having his Holy Spirit within us.
H. Arnett
6/3/11
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A Very Convenient Truth

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Doc Arnett
I pretty much knew as soon as I walked up to the sabino gelding that he would be going home with us. It wasn’t that he indeed looked very much like the pictures Shelley had posted on Craigslist but that certainly didn’t hurt. As I reached to pet his head, he didn’t jerk away. He just stood there, letting me rub the side of his face, under his chin, between his ears. I stood beside him, and patted the opposite side of his neck as I pressed my face lightly against the side of his muzzle. He just stood there, calm and gentle.
I couldn’t help thinking of that line from Jerry Maguire: “You had me at hello.”
Of course, Randa and I still went ahead and rode him and went back three days later to bring the Tennessee Walker/Missouri Foxhound cross home with us. On the way home, I thought I might name him “Moses” because he seemed so meek. But I figured everyone else would think, “That’s a dumb name for a horse,” so I kept it to myself.
With his distinctive gray and white coloring and gorgeous long mane, we tried to think of names that matched his looks: Shadow, Cloud, Stardust (yeah, I know…), Silver, Moonglow, Puzzle, Jigsaw and on and on. One or two of them sounded like they’d work until I stood out by the corral and actually tried them out on him.
After a week with no success, Randa finally had an inspiration. “Why don’t we quit trying to name him after his looks and name him after his personality?” She asked or suggested. Well, actually, it was both, a suggestion in the form of a question, which seems more polite. “He’s so gentle and meek, why don’t you call him ‘Moses?’”
Now friends, I’m not going to suggest that God helped us name our horse but I will tell you that when Randa said that, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Whether there was some supernatural sharing or not, I’ll leave alone.
But I will say that something like that ain’t entirely common, either. And that right there is reason enough to be grateful for such.
H. Arnett
6/1/11
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