An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

Some of life’s lessons are truly hard to learn and this was never made more clear to a sixteen year old youth than on the local baseball field in smalltown Illinois. But, before I get into that story; let me begin by saying, I truly enjoyed spending the hot, lazy, summer afternoons of my youth in smalltown with the old men who hung out in front of Ed’s Department Store chewing tobacco and telling lies while they waited for the afternoon mail truck to arrive. I often sat and savored that country flavored homespun wisdom flowing out of the mouths of Jim the Mailman, Cooch the Barber and Doc the Dentist, like a long drink of cold water on a hot July day. But, I, like most young people my age had not fully developed a real appreciation for the wisdom of those old men; but that all changed one Sunday afternoon down at the baseball field. I was the catcher for the smalltown team and while catching a game of baseball with our high school basketball coach on the mound, I learned a lesson I have never forgotten. He threw a particularly sharp breaking hard slider that skidded off of the back edge of home plate, careened up and hit me in a particularly vulnerable spot just below the belt line where the legs join the upper torso. I wasn’t wearing a protective device that was designed to prevent injuries to that particular area of my body, and as I lay writhing on the ground in unbearable pain, understanding of the old timers sage advice; “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” pulsated throughout my aching body. I might have been a little slower than some kids my age before that dastardly pitch, but I can truthfully tell you, I was quicker than most by the next one. Lightning didn’t have to strike me twice. No sir! Once bitten by the d-u-m-b- b-u-g was enough for me. I continued to play baseball for a number of years after that day, and most of it was pain free because I never again left that $2.00 ounce of prevention lying in my equipment bag in the dugout. OTBP

“Pastor Pearl”

After living on back street in smalltown for a few years, we moved upon a hill in the middle of town. This was a good move for us for two reasons. One, we moved to a place where the backwater that invaded our town each spring didn’t reach, and, two, we had indoor plumbing for the first time. That meant I didn’t have to pump water, or take baths in the number three wash tub, and I didn’t have to use the outdoor privy unless I wanted to. It just so happened that our home upon the hill was located right across the street from the front door of the smalltown Baptist Church and that brings me to why I am writing this short story about Pastor Pearl who was hired along about that same time.

There was one thing about Pastor Pearl that still sticks out in my mind above all others. He could preach his congregation so close to the fires of hell that I could feel the heat of it across the street on our front porch. Now at that time in our little community no one had air conditioning, therefore they kept the church windows and doors open to let in any breezes that might be blowing during those Sunday sermons. So I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must have been for a lot of them folks inside that church. Our house across the street was surrounded by trees on three sides so the front porch was always in the shade but there was many a Sunday morning after the church service was over that I went in for dinner only to discover that my face was flushed and the hair on my head was singed.

Pastor Pearl wasn’t a bad fellow as people go, and some people might even say he was a good preacher, but to make a long story short, “he scared the hell out of me”, as well as a lot of other folks in town and I guess that’s why his congregation dwindled a little rather than grew during his tenure at the smalltown Baptist Church. Now my daddy was a fearless man and hot-headed as all get out, but even he didn’t go near Pastor Pearl when he was wound up and preachin’ good. I’m not rightly sure how long Pastor Pearl was at the smalltown Baptist Church, but it wasn’t a long time. As I recall, their next preacher was a little calmer when he preached and as far as a young boy of thirteen could decipher, I think the congregation was a lot happier and a little more relaxed after Pastor Pearl left town. As I recall, they were once again almost friendly to those of us in smalltown who didn’t attend church on a regular basis. OTBP

“Miss Wilma”

One of my favorite people of all time is Miss Wilma. Miss Wilma was my teacher in the little three room elementary school I attended back in smalltown. She walked with a cane because she had been born with a birth defect that caused her to be bent forward at the waist. Despite her physical frailness, Miss Wilma had a passion for children and took great delight in helping them prepare for a brighter future. I heard her say many times, “It’s not where you come from in life, but it’s what you choose to do in preparation for the future ahead of you that’s important.”  Though I had teachers before her, I credit Miss Wilma for giving me an insatiable desire to learn. She taught me how to do longhand math,  how to read and write and to understand that it is what people do, it’s not what they say, that determines whether a person is trustworthy or not. That last lesson was a difficult lesson for me to learn because I was a little rascal of a boy so to speak, but Miss Wilma understood me perhaps better than any other person I have known. Despite my shortcomings, she never gave up on me and treated me as if I was a perfect child. I had an opportunity a few years later to tell her face to face how much I appreciated the love and patience she showed  me during my learning years.  A few short years after our face to face meeting she went home to be with her Lord.

Since leaving smalltown behind, I have traveled across America from one coast to the other and have made a couple of observations concerning changes in education that I am not altogether convinced were good ones. Call me old fashion if you like, but one such change I observed was the invention and later subsequent use of mechanical devices for the advancement of scholastic skills in our modern day classrooms. I’ll bet some of you older people have noticed too, that many young people who seek solutions to math problems using a mechanical device that does the thinking for them have a difficult time making correct change.

The subtracting of a lower number from a higher number without the aid of a mechanical device with a digital readout seems to confuse them. It is my belief, “the skill of mental calculation was lost during the transition period between doing math by longhand and learning to use mechanical devices that does the thinking for us.”

I think most of you will agree the mechanical method of solving math problems is quicker than the longhand method because mental calculations require thought, and thinking requires time, and since a lot of people today say, “they don’t have time,” leads me to believe, that a lot of people have pretty much quick thinking for themselves.  OTBP

“Growing up in America”

I grew up in America during a time when families were large and most every family had four or more children. That was in a bygone age before abortion became legal and the family shrunk to less then two children per family. According to present day national statistics there are now 1.11 children per family in America not counting the illegal immigrants that are swamping our country and keeping that magic number of children at 2.1 per household that is needed for a country to survive another fifty years. In my particular family there were nine children and I was eighth in the birth order. Back then every mother I knew with the exception of a few who were teachers or secretaries worked in her home caring for her family. I was fortunate that my mother worked in the home.

I called our home, “Mom’s University” because that is where each of her nine children received their education in manners, responsibility, and how to treat others. It was during the evening meal and around our supper table that most of mom’s teaching took place because that was the time of day when every family member was present. No one in our family missed supper and the time mom spent teaching her children right from wrong. My mother didn’t have a teaching degree or a PhD in Education like most people must have today to prove they are qualified to teach in their field of expertise, but she was the smartest person I knew. Where did my mother get her unique teaching abilities? At her mother’s knee, just like her mother had before her. Back then family values were passed down from one generation to the next. Mother’s didn’t depend upon public television to teach their children how to read, count, or share. They took that responsibility upon themselves and the older children assisted them.

I took my daughter on a trip back through time last Father’s Day and visited all the houses I lived in during my childhood that were still standing. After visiting the last one, I asked her, “Did you find any one thing all of these houses had in common?” She was quick to tell me, “They were all very small.” Which was true. I never lived in a big house during my childhood. Most houses were small and families were close back then. No one I knew had their own room to escape to if we didn’t like what was on the radio or television. We went outside and invented a game to play to keep ourselves amused. We didn’t have air conditioning to cool the house in the summer, or a thermostat to turn up the heat in the winter if the house was too cold. Most people didn’t have indoor plumbing, they had a number three wash tub to bathe in and when nature called we used an outdoor privy some fifty feet from the house. Somehow we all managed to survive our meager surrounding and grow up to become responsible adults. In the summer we went barefoot and wore shorts and took our baths in the local swimming hole and no one thought we were strange. And on those long winter nights we slept three to a bed to stay warm – and on the really cold nights we added another blanket or two on the bed to ward off the cold wind that blew through the cracks between the weather boarding. The next day we added an extra layer of clothing before we went outdoors to play or do our chores.

We were tough kids and patriotic to the bone. We loved to fight, baseball, and mom’s apple pie. We were taught to be respectful and on parade days when the American flag went by, we stood up straight and watched it until it turned the corner out of sight. We respected our teachers and recited the Pledge of Allegiance everyday before classes began in classrooms where we were taught how to think for ourselves. Every boy owned a GI Joe toy soldier, a cap pistol and holster, and a BB gun. We didn’t shoot out too many of our friends eyes with them and the whippings we received on our little behinds with those willow branches cut off the tree in the yard did nothing to harm our little egos. We were America’s youth and damm proud of it! OTBP

“Zeke”

Shortly after my family moved from next door to Mr. and Mrs. Rolley to another small town in southern Illinois; I met a person who would be my best friend for many years. His name was “Zeke.” Zeke wasn’t his real name of course. He didn’t like his real name because his dad had the same name and Zeke and his dad got along like hot grease and water. One day out of the blue someone called him ‘Zeke’. He liked the name so much it stuck. Zeke and I hit it off right away and were like two peas in a pod. We liked the same things, chased the same women when we got older, and even fought with each other over the least little thing, but we never stayed angry with each other for very long and it wouldn’t be long before we would be best buddies again. We were wild and carefree kids by nature and didn’t care who knew it or liked it. It seemed like most of the young people liked us well enough because we were never without company for very long. I can’t say the same for the older generation because they never knew what we would do next. My parents generation called us “rebels” and “hell on wheels” an “accident waiting to happen”.

When things became mundane in our little town which was most of the time, Zeke would go to great pains to create some excitement. This often resulted in his dad receiving a late night phone call telling him, “Zeke did this”, or “Zeke did that”, “you need to come down here and get him before he gets into real trouble.” His dad would crawl out of bed and go get Zeke, take him home, whip his butt, and tell him not to do whatever it was that Zeke did that time. The older generation couldn’t see it, but the only problem Zeke had was he believed life was his castle, and he lived every waking moment of his life filling every room with laughter and joy. This sometimes irritated my parents generation because they had forgotten they had once did the same kinds of things. Now that they were older and past the fun stage of their life and had become critics of his antics instead of enjoying the pranks he would do.

Zeke may have been funny to our generation, a headache to my parents generation, but to me he was a great teacher in his own right. He may not have known he was teaching those of us who were observers of people and studied why people do the things they do. I learned from Zeke that you don’t have to settle for the better off forgotten mundane things life throws your way. With a little creativity on your part you can grab the bulls in life by the horns so to speak and change any situation into a meaningful experience that will be long remembered by your family and friends. OTBP