Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Turning Age 65

It’s 3:00 am, March 23, I’m actually turning 65 today. There ought to be something profound to say so what is it? (first sign of Alzheimer’s)

I am by myself. My wife is with our daughter whose husband is gone by way of divorce. He was invited out because he loved his drugs and himself more than his wife and 4 boys. They are recovering and will be OK. Our son is in Oregon with the USCG. He has some family troubles, but it is well within reason. Life is never as perfect as we wished!

It is a good time for reflection. The computer makes typing go at the speed of light. Soft music is playing on the TV which is receiving a signal from a satellite flying in space high overhead. The moon is at it’s closest point to earth since 1993. It is full and bright. Spring officially came 2 days ago. My hemisphere is warming. Flowers are blooming. Breezes are blowing. Beautiful women are putting on their sunny clothes and removing the total cover of winter. March is a good month--at least the end days!

I am beside the Pamlico River in Eastern NC. I started my journey at a hospital in Greenville, SC. My father was Pastor of First Baptist Church of Liberty, SC. My mother and he had married in April of 1945. All the ladies of the church were counting the months to see if she was pregnant when they married. The townspeople were disappointed they didn’t have one on the Preacher. My parents were rejoicing at their first child being a boy. My mother was livid that church people are so judgmental.

Over the space of 12 years they would have another son born the following March 3, a daughter born 6 years later and another born 12 years later. So I grew up with a brother chasing my tail. For 20 days he rejoiced in being the same age as me. We have fun with that every year. I am the eldest and most of the time it was fun. All of us are well. My brother lost his wife to a rare cancer. My oldest sister got lung cancer, but has a good prognosis. My youngest sister has gotten super religion in recent years. I’m not sure which is worse: severe religion or severe cancer. My wife and I have added to the Scarborough / Williams clan a total of 9 grandchildren. Those children are all producing their own families so we are all grandparents now. We are the Baby boomers!

Life has changed over 65 years in the United States of America. Some things never change. 1945 brought the end to WWII with 2 atomic blasts to Japan. In the last few weeks Japan has suffered a terrible earthquake and tsunami. They have 4 nuclear reactors badly damaged with fears of meltdown. Such could send the reactor cores to the core of the earth, but, by the skin on their teeth, it seems to be under control. What would happen if the molten core of the earth suffered such an human assault? Could it explode? That would take care of all the predictors of the end of time for us humans! Our country is now at war in the Middle East. Nuclear weapons are all over the world. Terrorists hijacked 4 commercial aircraft and flew them into the World Trade Center / Pentagon / through passenger bravery the 4th did not hit its intended target, The White House. The Middle East and Japan were troubled areas when I was born and they still are now. Hitler and Germany had been conquered. The Japanese had been nuked. America was at the height of its world power when I was born. Roosevelt had died in office and Truman was my first President. I didn’t know much more than nursing my momma, dirtying my diaper, and developing my ability to make my hands and feet do as my brain told them. They didn’t always do as commanded, but I was trying!

Things have changed, but not really all that much with the basics: new babies born / old people dying / mankind trying to cope with---well, just being human as God created us.

So what can I say about change and life in my 65 years on this “3rd rock from the sun?” I have had 3 careers: Minister / Life Underwriter / owner of a Tree Surgery Company. I am the father of 2 children / husband of one wife / broke in a busted economy / living in the oldest town in NC / sitting beside the river where Blackbeard came to visit---and before him explorers came to the New World. Indians lived on the same dirt I occupy now. They had no clue there was another Old World across the ocean and people from that place would bring them dread diseases and conquest. The Pamlico tribes lived a life of gathering food / making babies / fighting other tribes / having a religion / knowing how to use the things of nature to survive and fight their own diseases. People are people who live, love, hate, eat, make babies, die. Life has not changed at its core from the dawn of mankind. A land bridge brought humans from Asia to America. They spread from the west as the white man had spread from the east upon sailing a dangerous ocean to escape from the bad things going on in England and Europe. The poor were being used. The rich were trying to get richer. Governments wanted all their people to be obedient and submissive. They were not!!!

If the earth were a movie attended for an entire year and watched by us, the presence of man in that movie would take place in the last 10 minutes! My time here would be a nano-second in comparison, but it has been interesting and it’s not over yet!

I am a citizen of the Southeast: born in SC / lived in NC / settled in Atlanta, GA, in 1953. It grew into the largest metropolis east of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The little caution-light crossroad of Clarkston is now engulfed with people. The same school which graduated 63 in 1963 now graduates some 400 each year. We were all “lily white” in my day. There was a beautiful Japanese girl, Patty Kato, in my class. In the 7th Grade someone called her a Jap and the teacher ate us up for using a term of prejudice. The black kids of that community attended their own school and churches. No one there was a foreigner. Now Clarkston is populated with people from India / Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and a large black contingent. Simple white folks from the mill village and working classes are now a conglomeration from around the world. Life goes on with people seeking a better opportunity.

After Clarkston I finished Emory University with a degree in Psychology. I was going to be a PhD Psychologist. I had preached to my teddy bears just like my daddy, but I had seen him brutally treated and fired. I watched him initiate a ministry to the Fulton County Juvenile Court as well as a new mission church. He refused to become bitter nor stop being a minister. He calling was real and lasted to his final day on this earth. He was my idol and hero. He lived what he preached and insisted I do the same along with my brother and sisters. He has such high ideals. He was the son of a dirt poor Tenant Farmer. He hitch hiked to Mercer in Macon, GA, from the farm near Athens, GA. His great grandfather was reputed to the be wealthiest man in Madison County as the official “brewer of spirits” for Federal troops stationed there before the Civil War. He lost everything and my grandfather, Charles Newton Scarborough, played with chests full of worthless Confederate money. He died a premature death and daddy had to drop out of school and run the farm. His ideals were un-stoppable. They were deep in debt, but in 3 years they became solvent with his spendthrift and hard management. He literally went from rags to riches in his lifetime. He left mother comfortable with an investment portfolio and her own retirement. That money has been split between us 4 children now. Some of us are secure. Others are still struggling. I am a struggler, but I am happy.

Daddy was obsessed with getting far away from poverty. I have done OK, but I have tended to be more generous and have very little in riches. I am rich with friends and people I have helped along the way. I am the example of the American Golden Dream becoming a nightmare. I was told if you got a good education (graduated a year early from High School), worked hard (I cut grass from age 10 to save for college and worked as a trim carpenter, Nurses Aide, Director of Juvenile Rehabilitation with the Wake County, NC, Juvenile Court), and be honest = success.

Well, honesty in Baptist church ministry got me fired twice. Honesty in Insurance kept me from being the “best salesman in the company,” but I did OK. Hurricane Floyd ruined my insurance business so I started a company to cut and heal trees. It did great for 7 years until the “Recession” hit in 2007. For me it was a “Depression” since my earning suddenly became 30% of what they had been previously. I lost my house, but was fortunate to have the Bayview Cottage as a result of early distribution of my inheritance. We went from a 3 story brick home on 4 acres of land with a beautiful artesian-fed pond in the woods. It was our dream home. It is “Gone with the Wind” along with my private retirement savings. I have had it proved to me that dishonesty wins / telling people what they want to hear from the Pulpit is safe / chucking and jiving in money management makes you a member of the Million Dollar Roundtable (for some).

In every field of work there are some who are crooked and “succeed” while there are others who are the “real deal” and may or may not succeed. I have known both honest and dishonest people throughout my life. I will still stick with doing your best to be honest. At the least, you sleep good at night and die with a clear conscience!

It is almost 5:00 a.m. and time to draw this treatise to a close. Reading about other people is most interesting to the one writing it, but gets tedious for those having to read it. Camus in “The Plague” had Jean Paul Clemence utter a famous sentence: “I have had one great love in my life---of which I was always the object!” Rudyard Kipling wrote “IF” which has been a source of inspiration and guidance. Tielhard de Chedan wrote: “Life is either a daring adventure---or it is nothing!” Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind---and your neighbor as yourself.” Those tidbits come to mind.
Man, age 65 sounded so old back as I grew up!

My granddaddy Williams was in his fifties when I found him to be the “best old man I knew.” He loved his farm, mules, cows, children and grandchildren. I remember the smile on his face as he drove into the yard at noon for lunch riding his mule-drawn cultivator. He could do wonders with that implement and 2 mules. He was a master farmer and the first County Agent for Pickens County, SC. He turned gullied red clay hills into productive farm land. He came within a hair of going under during the Depression, but his wife’s family, the Kays, loaned him enough to survive.

My daddy became 65 some years after I got married at age 23 in 1968. He was always the apple of my eye and my greatest source of man inspiration. He failed as a big church preacher, but he ministered with integrity throughout his life. He was gossiped about in his second church because he went to a Roadhouse and ministered to a prostitute who had a botched abortion and almost died, had he not taken her to the hospital. They called him to comfort her in death, but he did things to assure her a future life.

I have worked hard with the same integrity of my forefathers. I have succeeded in some things and failed in others. I had a stroke at age 50 from burning the candle at both ends and in the middle to be successful. After that experience working hard as both a Life Underwriter and Minister, I decided it was time to take better care of myself. If I’m tired, I take a nap. If people aggravate me, I will tell them where to stick “it” in more certain terms. I have learned you don’t have to be nice to everybody nor take it from anybody.

Just do your best and trust God for the rest. Be glad when you have a good wife and children who bring you joy and pride. Especially be glad and grateful when your grandchildren are born healthy and are getting big enough to push in the swing and ride a go-cart and bike. If they love to hunt and fish, be even more grateful. I am blessed with 5 boys and 1 beautiful girl as another generation grows toward adulthood.

Be glad we live in a free country where eventually right prevails over wrong. Our country has failed in Viet Nam and with the assassination of men like JFK / MLK / RFK. War and killing is a bad way to “win the peace” Money is far better spent on medical research and job training than trying to control other countries and nations. We now must find alternative resources for power as oil runs out. Maybe we don’t have to travel so fast and do such much to be happy. I can walk into Bath and have my basic needs met right here beside the River. My grandkids love it and that is what is most important!

Let’s see----when will I be 100!!!! It will be fun as long a I am loved and respected by people I love in return. I am a millionaire more times over than I thought: Health / no wealth / plenty of stories to tell / a God who loves and forgives me / people I can love!