Hear the Bell?

One day early this week when I was on my way to work, I encountered an unexpected obstacle to my normally easy commute.  My regular exit off US Highway 65 in Springfield was backed up, making getting onto Chestnut Expressway from the south slow and difficult.  I decide to take a side road south to Cherry Street, where I found the reason for the traffic snarl. A train was stopped on the tracks at the Cherry Street crossing, meaning that it was also blocking traffic flow on Chestnut.

I was of course annoyed by this unexpected hindrance, and my immediate concern was how it affected me.  I had to find a way to work.   I tuned into the local traffic report and heard that a pedestrian had been hit by the train and killed at the crossing on Pythian Street north of Chestnut. This disturbing news immediately raised lots of questions. Who was the victim? What was that person doing on the track?  Was it an accident, or maybe suicide by train?

Hearing that news made me feel a little ashamed that my first concern had been how the snarl-up impacted me.  I hadn't really considered that someone might be injured or even dead.  Now I was struck by the thought that some unidentified fellow human had met with a violent death, and as a result hundreds of my fellow commuters and I were having a different kind of morning drive than we had expected.

Later at work, everyone was talking about the traffic issues and the news that someone had been killed by a train.  One person said that the victim should have been able to hear the train and get out of the way if they wanted to.  That reminded me of  a story about my great-grandfather, who was also killed by a train.

A couple of years ago, I met my second cousin Paula Baird from Texas. Paula is a genealogist, and her mother Shirley and my mother are first cousins. Paula and her mom came to visit us at Mom's house in Oklahoma. Paula and I share a set of great-grandparents, James and Martha Lake, who were the grandparents of our mothers. As we were visiting, we discovered that we both knew the same story of how Jim Lake died.  Great-grandpa Lake had a habit of walking home from town on the railroad tracks.  Since he was deaf, this proved to be a very bad habit, because in 1927, when he was 70 years old, he was struck and killed by a train he did not hear as he was walking on the tracks.  When I learned that Paula also knew this story, that it was also part of her family culture, that she had heard it from her parents and grandparents the same as I had, I felt a connection with her that I might not have otherwise felt.  It became clear to me that besides being cousins, we were connected in ways that might not be immediately apparent.

In a previous blog, I wrote about how my grandsons are connected in unexpected ways to my dad, whom they never knew.  When I learned about the fatality on the tracks in Springfield this week, I again felt a strange sense of being connected with other people in mysterious ways. What was the victim's story?  How did he come to die this way?  Might I someday face a similar death? Because someone we did not know died in a horrible way, my fellow commuters and I were faced with not only traffic challenges, but yet another reminder that, although the details of our lives may be very different from others' experiences, ultimately we all share our humanity and we all share our mortality.

In his John Donne's famous "No Man is an Island,"  the poet expresses this bond we share in life and the idea that when one of us dies, all of humanity is reduced.  When the funeral bell rings, it rings for all of us.

"Larrapin" and Other Down-Home Expressions

My dad passed away back in 1999, about four years before my oldest grandson was born. For a long time, I resented the fact that he never got to know any of my grandsons and they would never know him. 

There were lots of things about Dad that made him memorable.  When I was a boy, he sometimes seemed larger than life to me, with his army uniform and forceful personality.  I have written before  about some of his verbal eccentricities, and foremost among those were his folksy expressions.  Some of these originated in his native east Texas, and I remember some of the my older relatives using similar sayings. He had also picked up other expressions during his years in the Army.  Soldiers often have an interesting way of talking, and sometimes "interesting" means not appropriate for polite conversation.   A few of his family-friendly expressions are still common among the Fouse clan.

If something was really tasty, even better than delicious, Dad would say that it was "larrapin'."   This was from Texas, and is common to the southern US.   If there was something that he didn't like, he would add it to his list of top things he hated, and then recite the whole list, "hot tea, cold coffee, wet toilet paper, second lieutenants, and  (whatever the new thing was).  This was clearly an Army saying, and I heard him say him it a thousand times, always followed by his hardy laugh.  

Many of his sayings from Texas stemmed from his rural roots, and some of those didn't mean much to a kid who had never lived on a farm.  For example, if someone had got a really lucky break, when

good fortune came to that person though no effort or skill on their part, he would say, "Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then."

This one originated from the fact that hungry pigs will dig in the dirt with their noses looking for food, such as roots, insects, and also acorns.  Since I never lived on a farm, I did not know this about hogs until Dad explained the meaning behind the blind hog adage.  That was just one of the old sayings about hogs that Dad used. 

A few months back, our oldest grandson Corban was at our house right before supper time.  Dana asked him what they were having at their house to eat that night.  He replied, "Dad said we're just going to root-hog tonight."  Without knowing it, Corban was quoting his great-grandfather, whom he has never known. 

When I was a boy, if no one was going to cook the evening meal, Dad would say, "OK, everybody it's root, hog, or die around here tonight."  Again, this goes back to pigs digging in the dirt to find food, as my father explained it to me. So on those nights, we knew we were on our own for supper. Peanut butter sandwiches or leftovers were on the menu, and we could serve ourselves or go hungry. 

When my son (Corban's dad) and daughter were kids, I used the same expression to tell them to fend for themselves.  When my son grew up, he said it to his kids in the same circumstances. Now my grandson, three generations removed from our rural roots, uses a piece of it ("root-hog") as a verb for what he does when the kitchen is closed.  

It reminds me of a story I heard once about a woman who cooked pot-roast in a unique way.  She would cut the roast in half and cook each half in a separate small pan. When her friend asked her why, she explained that that was how her mother had always done it.  The friend still wondered why, so the woman called her mother and asked her.  Her mother told her (for the first time) that it was because she had never had a pan big enough for the whole roast. 

When Corban said he was going to root-hog, I laughed out loud.  A piece of my dad was being expressed by my grandson, who never knew his great-grandfather, but carries some of his genes, and sometimes says things he used to say.  So, although my grandsons never knew my dad, they know their parents, and they know me.  We all knew Dad and were shaped by who he was and the things he said. 

How much of what do, think, and say is impacted by those who came before us, whether we knew them or not, without our even knowing it?

My great-grandparents, Jim and Martha Lake, and family, circa 1902

Some More Reasons Why

Recently my wife and I binge-watched Netflix's original series "13 Reasons Why."  It's the story of Hannah, a teenage girl who kills herself.

The viewer is told from the outset that she has committed suicide.  Before she dies,  Hannah records a chronicle of her struggles and the things that she says are the 13 reasons why she chose to end her life.  Each of those reasons involves someone she knows and how that person contributed to her desire for death.

The show is well written and well acted, although sometimes Hannah comes off as a bit over dramatic.  However, it is a story about young people, so a lot of drama is probably not surprising. It is also often hard to watch, including lots of f-bombs, depictions of the characters' cruelty to one another, two rape scenes, and the graphic depiction of Hannah's actual suicide.

It is the kind of show that gives the viewer a lot to think about.  When a person kills herself or himself, how much blame do other people bare?  Why would someone ever make the choice to commit suicide?  Is there anyone I know who might be suffering the way that Hannah did, enough to want to die?  What are the signs of such overwhelming pain?

I don't intend to try to answer those questions, but rather to suggest some other reasons why Hannah ultimately died at her own hand, reasons that she does not recognize herself.

Those reasons involve the way Hannah sees her life and the people in it.  She unfortunately has some toxic thought habits, habits that more than a few people share, whether or not they are suicidal.

One of Hannah's toxic habits is believing that she knows what other people think about her.  In several situations, Hannah decides what someone else thinks  without discussing it with them.  She projects what she believes they are thinking and allows that projection to color all her interactions with that person, including events that might otherwise disprove her beliefs about the other person's thoughts. This way of thinking distorts Hannah's perceptions of her life and adds to her suffering.

The other toxic habit is related to the first.  Along with thinking she knows what people think of her, Hannah cares too much about the opinions of others.  She gives others too much control over her own happiness by making their opinions too important to her.

While it is true that Hannah is the victim of much mistreatment and cruelty at the hands of others, she also allows what happens inside herself to contribute greatly to her
suffering.  By falling into these toxic thought patterns, she contributes to her own suffering.  It is not an exaggeration to say that she is as cruel to herself in her own mind as others are in the real world.

Most of us probably would never consider suicide. But how often do we allow our thoughts to make us miserable?  How often are we guilty of allowing our own inner voice to mistreat us and diminish us?   If you are like me, your answer is perhaps too often.  What are we going to do about it?