JohnCr8on’s Snapshots

Spring Break Freshman Year

A spring break trip was a foreign concept to me.  I had never heard of such a thing until people started talking about it my freshman year at KU.

In high school, I don’t even remember the phrase “spring break.”  We had Easter break.  I can’t remember if it was a full week or just a few days.  It didn’t really matter.  We had track practice during the break and we weren’t encouraged to miss that.

Our freshman year at KU, the idea came up to go skiing.  I spent most of my time on Scott Focke’s floor at Ellsworth Dorm.  Five people on his floor, plus Scott, me and a friend of mine from a history class decided to go.  We drove as far as Atwood the first night.

Phil Priebe was one of the five from Scott’s floor.  It would be his first trip to Atwood.  Little did we know at the time he’d make many more.

One in our crew was from the East Bank of Israel.  He claimed he’d been a member of the PLO.  He spoke very little English so we had trouble asking questions to verify if his claim was true.  He made us all a little nervous but he seemed like a nice enough guy.

One person traveling with us, Rob, was surprised by Dad’s grey hair.  “I didn’t know your dad would be so old,” he said to me after Dad left the room.

My friend from history class, Brandon, spent his time in eastern Colorado looking for a place you could only see plains and no trees.  It kept him entertained for over an hour.

The ski trip involved most of the activities you would expect of 19 year-old boys.  There were a couple of pratfalls.  Phil and a few others did not heed Scott’s and my advice to wear sunscreen.  They spent our last day at the slopes sleeping in cars with badly burned faces.

A few of us spent our last day skiing the back bowls of Copper Mountain.  I hot dogged on a green slope as we approached the bottom of our last run and broke my leg.  I didn’t realize I had the stress fracture until several weeks later.

We skied through mid-week and then returned home.  Phil stayed with me in Atwood.  The others went on to Lawrence.  Phil’s and my adventure continued when we rode back to Lawrence in Bill Beamgard’s Dodge Dart (at least, I think that’s what it was).

Bill, with our blessing, decided to take Highway 36 rather than go down to I-70 for reasons I can’t explain.  We had not yet reached Oberlin when it started to snow.  It came down fast, wet and heavy.  A typical spring snow.

We topped a hill just west of Norton.  There was nothing Bill could do.  He slammed into a Trans-Am that had just rear-ended a stalled car in front.  The Trans-Am fiberglass shattered and scattered.  The Dodge Dart seemed just fine.

Inside the broken car was Brian Moore of Oberlin and Dawn Tonguish of Herndon.  Brian was a sports rival from high school.  Dawn was a fellow KU student who would go on to become an accomplished broadcaster.  We made sure they had help before we pressed on.

The snow came and went but the progress was slow.  We saw no other cars the rest of the day.  As we approached a hill near Belleville, the Dart took a rest.  It stalled.  Bill tried in vain to start it again.

We climbed out of the car contemplating what to do. No farm houses in sight.  No cars.  Just snow.  Phil captured the moment singing out, “Ahh Ahh, Kansas!”  The state’s marketing song of the time.

To our great relief the Dart started again.  We continued thirty to forty miles an hour.  We reached Ellsworth Dorm thirteen hours after leaving Atwood – twice the normal time.

We had no cell phones.  No one knew where we were.  We learned that the highways were being closed right behind the whole time we drove.  It was a major blizzard.  We were crazy to be where we were.

Even Mark Frame, my roommate at the time, was worried.  That’s when I knew it was bad.

There is no lesson from this story except that nineteen and twenty year-old boys are seldom the best decision makers.

It’s the last place we want to be.  It’s the only place we want to be… At the bedside of a dying loved one.

I have a friend who is preparing to say goodbye to his mother.  It could be a few days or many weeks.  It’s difficult to know.  She’s lived a long life.  But, at every age, it’s hard to say goodbye to your mom.

The bedside is a mixed blessing.  If you’re there, it probably means that the person you love is suffering, perhaps not spiritually, but certainly physically.  That’s never fun.

But, if you’re at the bedside, it also means the person you love has the opportunity to give you comfort before they go.  That is truly something to treasure.

That was my experience with both my parents.  I thought I was going to be with them so they would be comforted, loved in their final hours.  But, it really was the other way round.  I went to my parents’ beside to say, “I love you,” to be sure.  I also was there so I wouldn’t be alone when it was time for them to go.

Both my parents, while physically helpless, were completely in control of their final hours on earth.  They knew how much time they had.  We followed their lead.

*             *             *

Only a few friends had the opportunity to say goodbye to Mom.  She was stuck in a hospital bed in Denver.  Doctors talked about months.  Mom knew it was only a matter of days.  So did the nurses (including Joni) who were charged with her care.  They let us know.

Joni and the kids stopped by Mom’s room early in the morning on Emma’s fifth birthday.  They would go on to Atwood that day to celebrate Emma’s day with the Mickeys.  “We’re coming to say goodbye because we may not see you again,” Emma announced to Mom as she walked up to her bed.  We shifted uncomfortably the way one does when a child speaks out loud the truth everyone knows.

Several visitors stopped by that day – Lisa Reuber from Atwood and extended family who lived in the Denver area.  We laughed with Dad’s cousin Jeanne who lives within miles but we seldom see when she quoted her own father, “You can count on Creightons to be at weddings and funerals but you won’t see them much in between.”  We had just been to Jeanne’s wedding a few months before.

There was a moment in the afternoon when there were no visitors.  Alec and I sat in the room watching M*A*S*H.  We bought videos of the first few seasons to pass the time.  Mom was “resting her eyes” as she liked to say.  Dad was in the hall.

“Get your father,” Mom said unexpectedly and with urgency.  He came into the room.  We all stood at her side.  She squeezed his hand and nodded her head.  She fell into a half-sleep from which she never really returned.

Early in the morning, just after dawn, we heard Mom speak.  “Love so much,” she called out three times.  “We love you,” we said in return.

“Morning paper,” she said faintly.  I ran to the nurse’s station and found a copy of the Rocky Mountain News.  We read her the day’s headlines as she had read books to us so many morning’s in our youth.  Reading together was the appropriate goodbye.

*             *             *

Dad’s illness – pulmonary fibrosis – was long.  Anyone else might have succumbed long ago.  But, Dad was the model of health.  More fit than people half his age – except for his lungs.

Like Mom, Dad and his nurse knew when the end was near.  Dad spent his last days at home just as he wished.  He spent his days downstairs and continued to sleep upstairs at night.  He wanted to do things the way he always had.

The stairs become more than he could do.  An electric chair was installed to move him up and down.  Karol Ruda, his hospice nurse, stopped by to help us move Dad upstairs.  For a moment at the top of the stairs it was more than he could bear.  He left us but only for a moment.  I walked Karol to her car and she told me matter of fact, “It won’t be long.”  She knew Dad was ready.  She wanted to make sure we were, too.

A hospital bed was installed downstairs the next morning.  We helped Dad move and that’s where he’d stay.

Karol stopped by again the next night.  Dad was having a difficult time but his spirit was the same: confident.  Life and death is what it is from his point of view.  Karol, as a hospice nurse, felt the same.  As Karol prepared to leave Dad mustered, “Thanks a lot, Karol.”

“You’re welcome, Bob.”

“I probably won’t see you again,” Dad said.

“I think you’re right, Bob. It’s been a real pleasure to know you.”

“It’s been a pleasure to know you, too.  I really appreciate it, Karol.”

They talked in a manner as if the entire situation was completely routine.

Dad asked me to call Alec and have him drive to Atwood that night.  It was eleven p.m. but Dad did not want Alec to wait.  He did not think he would make it through the night.

But Dad rallied.  His strength, such that it was, returned.  We had a good day.  Lavina, Alec and I each had our turns to talk.  Dad told us he loved us more times that day than he had his entire life combined.  “That gets easier to say the more you say it,” he observed in a curious sort of way.  ”I’ve had a good life,” he said with genuine conviction to ease our fears.

Together, we watched several episodes of the West Wing.  Dad checked the news, his heart rate and pulse-ox several times, too.  He was fully engaged and keeping stats to the end.

My support network was gone.  The Mickeys, Joni and Emma were in Kentucky for Coy Mickey’s funeral.  He passed suddenly and unexpectedly that same week.  The Mickeys did not have our good fortune to say proper goodbyes.  Joe, Ada Grace and I were together in Atwood – with Dad, Lavina and Alec.

Dad still felt strong, in a relative sort of way, at eleven this night.  Alec and I went upstairs to sleep, exhausted from our previous night’s vigil.  Lavina stayed with Dad, pulling the couch to the bed.

I heard the seven o’clock whistle and climbed out of bed, doing my best not to disturb Joe and Ada Grace.  Alec heard the whistle, too.  We both made our way downstairs.

Dad loved the Atwood whistle.  It sounds off at seven a.m., noon, one o’clock and six p.m.  It helped Dad keep his much loved daily routine.

There was a time, when Dad was the Atwood mayor, that the town council considered shutting the whistle down.  The mayor is a non-voting member of the council, except to break ties.  The vote on the whistle was deadlocked three to three.  Dad cast his sole vote as mayor to, “Let the whistle blow.”

Many years later, “the whistle returned the favor,” as Irv Hayden said at Dad’s funeral.  It roused Alec and I out of our slumber just in time to join Lavina at Dad’s side.  He squeezed our hands.  We squeezed his.  We said goodbye.

*             *             *

Saying goodbye to a parent is difficult to describe to someone who’s never had the experience.  There is little to say to someone who has.  They know.  I can imagine this is how women feel about childbirth.

I can only say I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to be at Mom’s and Dad’s bedside.  They were my parents to the very end.  They gave me comfort and strength at their most vulnerable moment.  It is a strength I cherish and which helps me embrace death as a normal part of life.

av-a-tarˌ [av-uh-tahr, av-uh-tahr] –noun

Emma designed my new avatar. I am using it as my “face” for making comments on WordPress and on Twitter.  It’s a little hard to see on Twitter but we can work on that.

Emma imagined this as more of a logo. When the early drafts were developed, neither of us knew the term “avatar.”  I had no idea the term originated from Hindu mythology.

This logo/avatar was originally conceived on the beaches of Los Cabos, Mexico.  Emma spent time each day etching in the sand.  She called me over one afternoon to show me her work. 

“This is your new logo,” Emma reported. 

I didn’t know I had an old logo but I thought this one looked cool.  I asked Emma to turn it into a logo I could use when we got home.  I only discovered recently that rather than a logo it makes a decent avatar.

The main elements of the avatar are the same as Emma first sketched in the sand – the C wearing sunglasses, four hairs sticking out in back (I’m not sure what Emma’s trying to tell me.  The KU colors and John Cr8on were added when Emma transferred her idea to paper.

Emma loves design. She spends many evenings sketching clothes ideas, making jewelry, crafting greeting cards or creating magazine covers on the computer. 

I first noticed Emma’s fondness for design when she was in the fourth grade.  I walked into her room one February night and discovered her hard at work on a project of some sort.   Colored pencils were scattered about her bed spread. She was folding into fourths a piece of paper from the stack at her side.

Emma loved to doodle and draw from an early age. I assumed she was doing more of the same.  It was getting close to bedtime so I asked her to wrap it up.

“I can’t Dad,” she replied. “I’m under a lot of pressure.”

Emma is a normal kid and likes to lobby for a later bedtime but this tactic was new.  “What do you mean,  pressure,” I asked.

“I have to finish 12 more Valentine’s cards by tomorrow,” she replied.

“I thought you finished your Valentines.”

“These aren’t for me,” Emma explained. “I’m making these for my company.”

Now I was confused. “What?”

She handed me a card from her pile and continued to explain, “I have a card company and I’m selling these to my friends.”

I examined the card. The front was covered in hearts and flowers. The inside included more hearts and a bit of verse.  The back of the card is what caught my attention.  Centered on the back of the card was a tennis shoe with large laces. The word “Shoelace” arced over the top. The words “Greeting Card” formed a half-circle underneath.

“What’s this,” I asked.

“That’s the name of my company,” Emma responded without looking up.

“You’re company?”

“Yeah, I have a greeting card company and that’s my logo.”

“That’s really cool,” I said with enthusiasm.  Having grown up with a lawyer the next words were out of my mouth before I thought through the implications, “This looks a lot like Shoebox Cards.  It might be a copyright problem.”  I know.  Let the kid enjoy her moment.

“That is where I got the idea,” Emma admitted with some concern.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said trying to tamp down a late night break down.  “These cards are really cool.”

“So I can stay up later,” Emma asked hopefully.

“Thirty minutes.  Then you’ve got to get some sleep.”

I noticed a new set of cards a couple of months later.  And, a new “company” – Heart the Earth.  She had tested the idea of Carnation Your World, but that didn’t stick.

Logos appear in many places.  Heart the Earth produced our family Christmas letter this year.  And, when the kids made me a Father’s Day t-shirt – painted with lady bugs on the front – Emma covered the back with a number of “sponsor” logos just like a road race t-shirt.

Who knows where our children’s youthful interests will lead.  As parents, we wonder is this just doodling or the beginnings of a career path.

For now, we just let her have fun.  And, I’m keeping my legal concerns to myself.

“Some people say heaven is a place where everyone gets along all the time.  That sounds really boring to me.”

My Dad said this to me in the last days of his life.  Dad enjoyed life on earth very much.  He liked the messiness just as much as when things were smooth.  If it was interesting, he was interested.

That’s one reason my Dad enjoyed politics so much.  He enjoyed the give and take.  He found conflicting points of view to be more interesting than when everyone agreed.

Bob Dole was one of his favorite politicians.  He admired Dole’s service to Kansas.  But, he also enjoyed Dole’s acerbic sense of humor.

My Dad enjoyed cutting humor in general.  He didn’t enjoy in your face trash talk.  But he did enjoy pointed critiques and satire.  I don’t know that he enjoyed Don Rickles very much.  But, he found Bob Newhart very entertaining.

One of his favorite authors was Joseph Heller.  He would laugh and laugh when he read Catch-22.  He was one of the few people who read Heller’s other books, too.

He enjoyed the company of people whose sense of humor was prickly and off-color, people who pointed out hypocrisies in society – his brother John, Bob Day and KU and lifelong friend Al Frame.  He enjoyed getting these friends riled up.  There’s nothing he enjoyed more than when Al got on roll.  Dad was a wonderful audience laughing as Al beat the proverbial horse senseless.

As Dad entered the last weeks of his life, we had the inevitable conversations.  “Who would you like to speak at your funeral,” we eventually asked.

Among his responses he said, “And, Al Frame if he promises to offend someone.  I wouldn’t want some boring talk.”

Al did not offend at Dad’s memorial service.  Instead, he talked about “Small town friendships. The only kind I know.  In small towns,” Al explained, “We see each other every day.  So we form friendships based on real familiarity.”

Al went on to say, “It does not matter what religious beliefs we may have or what political beliefs we may have.  In a small town, what matters most is the friendship itself.”

Al took the occasion of my Dad’s memorial service to remind us all where we should focus our attention.  We should focus on the care and affection we have for one another rather than our disagreements.  It is this attitude and these types of friendships that enable people like my Dad and Al to say, “I’ve had a good life.”

In an effort to not completely disappoint our family, and honor my Dad’s request to offend, the night before Dad’s memorial service, Al’s son Mark sent us an email.  The email contained the text of John Cleese’s eulogy for Graham Chapman.  Mark attached a note, “Dad (Al) plans to say something like this.”

I laughed thinking of the many late night conversations among Creightons and Frames.  My Dad would have laughed, too.

The following video contains much love and affection and, please be warned, a few curse words.

Our team might still be reigning champion of the Lake Atwood Days canoe races.  I can’t verify this. So, for now, I’ll assume that we are.  Please don’t notify me if I am wrong.

A Full Lake Atwood

Several years ago my brother-in-law Phil Priebe, nephew Taylin Hein and I spontaneously entered the three person canoe races at the Annual Lake Atwood Days.

No one liked our chances to win.  Not even us.  The competition included three high school Boy Scouts who had just returned from a weeklong canoe trip in Nebraska.

But, Phil and I had raced together before in the Manhattan to Lawrence race upon the Kaw.  Could we regain our college form?  Or, would our college form be an even greater handicap?

This was a good year for Lake Atwood.  The entire lake was full.  There was a good three to four feet of water.  Plenty for canoe races.

We made it to the finals.  So did the Boy Scouts.  They were rightfully feeling a great deal of confidence.

The course was short and simple.  The starting line was near the boat ramp.  Teams were required to paddle about 100 meters to the west, circle the buoy (aka Fr. Damian Richards), and return past the starting line.

The race began as everyone expected.  The scouts opened up a large, early lead.  Our goal was to be respectable.  We just tried to keep our canoe strait and paddle in unison.

The scouts rounded the buoy well before we did and we lost sight of them, since our backs were to them now.  We approached the buoy and started to veer off course.  That’s when we experienced Divine intervention.

We were headed straight for the buoy.  A collision was imminent.  The water was about chest deep on Father Damian – the buoy.  He tried to evade us but it’s hard to move quickly in chest deep water.

Father Damian grabbed hold of our canoe and spun us around.  He gave us a push back toward the start/finish line and simultaneously straightened our course.

When we looked forward, we noticed the scouts had run into trouble.  Perhaps they had grown over confident.  I don’t know.  But, they had moved to close to shore and got hung up in the rocks.  They were stalled.

We paddled harder thinking we might have a chance.  We might even have broken a sweat.  We moved past the scouts just as they freed themselves from the rocks.  We were too close to the finish line for them to recover.

Victory was ours.  We lifted our hands and ours in the air savoring the moment.  Guided by the hand of a Father fleeing in self-defense, our win must have been pre-ordained.

We returned the next year to defend our title.  But, alas, there was no water in the lake.  We would continue as defending champion by default for another year.

Lake Atwood is once again full of water, or so I am told.  Perhaps our team will return to defend our crown.  Or, perhaps, it is better to retire as champions.

The Spy Who Loved Me film poster by Bob Peak

Roger Moore is the only James Bond those of us born in the mid-60s to early 70s ever really knew.  Moore made his first appearance as James Bond in 1973.  The movie was Live and Let Die.  Paul McCartney was singing with Wings. I was not quite nine years old.

Moore reeled off a series of tween and teen favorites: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974); The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); Moonraker (1979); For Your Eyes Only (1981); Octopussy (1983). Tweens and teens of the 70s and early 80s remember Bond skiing off a cliff and parachuting to safety; the tenacious Jaws; Grace Jones and co-stars such as Barbara Bach who married Ringo Starr and made Caveman. We were curious about those women in silhouette in the opening musical sequence.

Movies played four times at the Jayhawk Theater in Atwood – once on Friday, twice on Saturday and once on Sunday.  Then, they were gone.  Silas Horton and I saw new Bond movies two or three times.

Moore reigned as Bond until 1985’s A View to a Kill.  I was nearly twenty-one. Yes, Sean Connery made a reprise as Bond in 1983’s Never Say Never Again. But by that time he was the competing Bond, not the franchise.  He was the USFL to Roger Moore’s NFL.

Ten to fifteen years old are the prime years to become a Bond fan – to become an action movie fan.  When you’re eight, ten and twelve, the movie is more important than your date.  During those years, Roger Moore was the only James Bond for those of us in our early forties.

If people my age are completely honest, they will admit they didn’t know Sean Connery had ever been James Bond until they were much older.  Perhaps our parents mentioned something about Connery as Bond.  Perhaps we saw a magazine article.  But, we’d never seen a Connery-Bond movie.  Not in the 70s.

We did not have a multitude of cable movie channels playing old movies.  There was no Bond Marathon weekend on AMC.  There was only one old movie a week, after bedtime on Saturday nights.

We did not have VHS machines until the very late 70s.  No Blockbusters or Netflix.  Not even a local video rental store.  The earliest VHS movies cost seventy or eighty dollars. 

In short, old Bond flicks were nowhere to be seen.

Roger Moore’s version of Bond was far campier than the contemporary Bond.  Moore’s Bond made no pretense of being serious.  He did not have a dark and mysterious past.  As far as I know, he had no past at all.  He’d always been James Bond in a three piece suit.

He was upbeat, over the top and unapologetic for having fun.  He was Austin Powers before Austin Powers.  Moore’s Bond movies didn’t try to be anything more than a fun ride – like a new roller-coaster at an amusement park.  Perhaps not as much fun later in life, but not meant to be.

So, admit it, forty-somethings.  You sang along when Sheena Easton sang “For Your Eyes Only.”  And, you loved Roger Moore because he’s the only Bond who could pull off Cannonball Run.

I have thought a lot about my multi-great Uncle Edmund since joining school board.  I receive many articles discussing what students should do after high school.

Uncle Edmund is a man I met only a few times in my life. He also gave me advice that changed the course of my life.

I began college as many people do with a utilitarian mindset. What major will lead me to a good job at a good salary? I began with plans to be an engineer. By the end of my freshman year, I knew that wasn’t for me. I enjoyed finance and statistics so I turned next to the business school. I was cruising along through my sophmore year satisfied with my choice. Then, out of the blue, I received a letter from Uncle Edmund.

Uncle Edmund was a former business school professor, teaching in a prominent MBA program. Seems he heard through the family grapevine that I was in business school as an undergraduate. He was not impressed.

His letter was short and to the point. It went something like this: What are you doing? If you are going to be a professional of any note, you will have to go to graduate school. Why in the world are you pursuing a professional degree at this time in your life. You are missing your last opportunity for a liberal arts education.

Uncle Edmund’s opinion carried weight in our family. I took his advice to heart and I looked into what it would take to switch to a liberal arts major. It was the best thing I ever did. I fell in love with economics, which led me toward public policy. I took classes in South African History and learned about a part of the world I’d barely heard of before, gleaning lessons of human tenacity I still think about today. I took literature classes and Western Civilization, which gave me the opportunity to read classics I would have completely missed. I had the chance to study with a history professor who ripped my essays to shreds and motivated me to stretch myself. I entered subject areas that were far outside my comfort zone. And, for the first time in my life I experience the joy of serendipitous learning – discovering things I did not know existed.

Liberal Arts is not for everyone. And, there is a need to be a bit utilitarian when it comes to investing in college.  I understand that. And, thank goodness we have people who stick with the engineering. But, I also learned that it’s easy to get caught up on a practical track and miss out on a lot that education and the world has to offer.

I still earned a business degree. I was far enough along that with an extra semester I earned two degrees.  I also left college with with an education I never imagined was possible because it didn’t seem the sensible thing to do.

I appreciate my Uncle Edmund.

*     *     *

Also published here at www.johncreighton.com.

Jimmy Greason and my mom taught me what it means to be a next door neighbor.

Jimmy was an interesting neighbor with an interesting personality.  He cared deeply about our family. He could be very abrasive.  He took great interest in my brother Alec and me.  He mostly talked about himself.  He told wonderful stories of the history of Atwood. I dreaded going to his house to hear them.

Jimmy and his brother Kermit lived in the house just to the east of ours.  Their house was tiny, like several on the block.  It had a small front room, three small bedrooms (I think or was it two), a kitchen and a screened in back porch.  The yard, which I mowed, was a tangle of weeds.

Their brother John Frank had his own place, the Little Ponderosa, just west of Highway 25.  I noticed that John Frank often slept in his brothers’ house, in the afternoons.  I didn’t think it a bit strange as a boy.

Kermit was the long-time, much loved Rawlins County Clerk.  Jimmy had been a pharmacist and proprietor of Greason’s Drug Store.  My mother-in-law, Betty Mickey, worked there at one time.

I have little memory of the drug store.  He retired when I was very young.  Even though he was our neighbor I always thought of Greason’s as the other drug store.  We did all our business at Currier’s.  I have only one memory of being in his store.  I was walking downtown on my own, perhaps to my dad’s office, and decided to go in.  It was dark, crowded by large booths and dirty.  I turned on my heels the moment I entered and did a quick exit.

Jimmy is remembered by many people for many things. I remember him as a man who seldom left his house; a passionate fan of the Kansas Jayhawks, and a piano player.  Most of all I remember he suffered from emphysema.

Jimmy loved KU as much as, if not more, than anyone I know – as much as my Grandpa Creighton, as much as Irv Hayden, as much as Phil Priebe.

Jimmy was notorious, at least in our house, for never hearing the fourth quarter of a KU football game.  As we all know, KU sometimes struggled in football.  Jimmy listened to all the games on the radio.  The volume was so high we could listen in our kitchen, too.  At some point each game, Jimmy would curse loudly.  Then, we’d hear a crash followed by silence.  If I went to his house later in the day, as I often did, I would find his transistor radio lying on the floor.

One of Jimmy’s great disappointments, at least one of which I’m aware, was the time he was snubbed by John Riggins, the great Jayhawk and Washington Redskins running back.  Riggins was going to attend an event of some sort in Atwood and stay with Jimmy and Kermit.  They spent time and money to get their house in order, which was always in a state of disrepair.  New concrete was poured on the front steps, the crumbling back porch was rebuilt and the interior was almost sparkling – almost.

Riggins never showed.  Jimmy was deeply hurt.  My mom never forgave Riggins.  When Riggins led the Redskins to a Super Bowl victory, some Jayhawk fans celebrated.  My mom offered a few choice words.

By the time I knew Jimmy, he didn’t feel well most of the time.  Emphysema contracted from years of chain smoking was consuming his small body.

I seldom heard Jimmy play the piano.  I’m told he was good.  The piano was the most prominent piece of furniture in his house.  The stand-up piano always covered in sheet music, keyboard open, ash tray on the side full of butts as if Hoagy Carmichael had just played.  (I knew Hoagy as Stoney Carmichael from the Flintstones but that’s for another time.)

Occasionally, on his good days, Jimmy would play a Ragtime tune for his audience of one or two – Kermit and me.  Even on his bad days, Jimmy would tell stories – often the same ones over and over.  He told many stories about Atwood.  He was, after all, almost as old as the town itself.  His family was among the earliest  to settle in Rawlins County.

I was a young boy.  I was not a good listener.  Sadly, I remember few of his history lessons.  The story I remember most came from his drug store days.

“The teenagers who came into the drug would play the same damn song every day,” he declared in a cranky way as if it happened only yesterday.  “Every day, it was that damn Raggmopp.  Over and over again, I’d hear R-A-G-G-M-O-P-P Raggmopp.  I took the record out of the juke box, out to the alley and smashed the damn thing.”

Jimmy called our house three or four nights a week, if not more – or so it seemed to me.  I dreaded his calls.  It meant he was having a bad day.  The emphysema was getting the best of him.

My mom sent us over to help straight away.  No negotiations.

When I arrived, I refilled the coffee can with water and replaced it on his furnace stove.  It was Jimmy’s homemade humidifier.

Jimmy found relief when the gunk in his lungs was loosened up.  That was next on the nightly routine.  I would sit on the couch and work the vibrator over his back.  He was always quiet at first.  As his chest loosened, he’d begin to tell his stories.

I would gather up the day old – sometimes three days’ old – coffee grinds and egg shells out of the kitchen sink, bag them in a grocery sack and take it to the garbage can just before I left.

It was not an eight, ten, twelve year-old’s favorite way to spend an evening.

We don’t choose our neighbors.  We have to deal with whoever moves in.  We can accept them for who they are or wish they were someone else.

We are lucky in Longmont.  We have neighbors on both sides who embrace us for who we are – the good, bad and annoying, which I can imagine is a bit.  I like to think we do the same.

That was our relationship with Jimmy Greason.  He accepted the nuisances of young children living nearby – balls and stones hitting his house, shouts and screams interrupting his rest on uncomfortable days.  He never complained.  He never chased us off.  I felt as though his yard was also ours.

My mom insisted that we return his tolerance with help when we were able to lend a hand.  I am sure I complained more than I should.  But I’m thankful that she did.  I learned a lot about being a neighbor.

My town is so small…  How small is it?

Didn’t that type of joke become popular on the Gong Show?

*             *             *

I am spending the week with a group of people from all parts of the country – Washington, DC; Las Vegas; Cincinnati; Louisville, KY; Detroit and Battle Creek, Michigan.

As tends to happen when you spend an extended period of time with people, small talk turns to hometowns.  Some people in the group believe that they are from small towns. Battle Creek, after all, has a population of just over 50,000.  The city folk certainly think that’s small.

In this group, only I know the “truth.”

I pepper people with Atwood facts to give them perspective about a real small town. (Even casual acquaintances in Longmont will tell you I’m always at the ready to talk – bore people with? – Atwood stats).

·         Population 1,300 give or take.  About 3,000 in the county.

·         More people lived in my college dorm than in my town.

·         44 in my high school graduating class – though Natalie Ruda has been able to boost those numbers with her effective networking with former classmates.

·         The town is roughly 8 blocks by 16 blocks – plus the lake and the golf course.

·         My dad would round the circumference of two or three times on his morning run.

·         The nearest town of 10,000 was more than two hours away – Hays.  Remember, I lived in Atwood when the speed limit was 55.

·         Denver is the closest town with a population of more than 50,000.  At this point in the conversation, I sometimes have to remind people from the coasts that Kansas and Colorado are boarder states.

·         It took me seven hours to drive to the state college – again, the 55 mile an hour speed limit.

·         I only had to make three left turns from my house in Atwood to reach my fraternity house in Lawrence – okay, that’s not really relevant but I think it’s kind of cool.

All of this begs the question, why?  Why do I want people to understand Atwood’s size?  It’s remoteness?

It’s a point of pride.  I like people to know I’m from a place that is unique.  A place some people can’t even imagine.

I confess, my pride is stoked in part by a small chip that’s been sitting on my shoulder for nearly twenty years.

When I attended grad school, I perceived and experienced a disdain for people from rural America.  Not all of my classmates to be sure.  But, the disdain – or perhaps disregard is a better word – for rural Americans popped up from time to time.  (It’s a good reminder to me that even small, unintended insults can have a lasting impact. I know I’m guilty, too.)

One experience to which I took mild offense was unintended.  The person thought she was offering a compliment.  “You’re pretty smart for a person from such a small town,” she remarked.

“Did you really say that,” I asked?  She’s a good person and we’re still friends.

On another occasion, I was in a campaigns and politics class.  Our professor showed commercials from a variety of candidate and issue campaigns.  One ad featured a man from rural Tennessee.  He stood in a thicket , wearing overalls.  He belted out the punch line of the ad in a thick southern drawl, “They can have my gun when they pry off my cold, dead finger.”

Many of my classmates burst out in laughter.  The professor, chuckling himself, had to intervene to restore order.  I overheard classmates mock the man in the ad doing very bad southern impersonations.

A classmate who grew up in rural Wisconsin was so offended he picked up his books and left.  “I’m outta this place (the class not the school),” he whispered to me as he exited the room.  I understood.

The chip on my shoulder is almost gone.  I rarely feel its weight.  But, the pride in Atwood remains.

Very few people grow up in and are shaped by a town like Atwood.  I’m proud to let people know.  I do so every time I have the slightest opportunity.

Who knew that the Space Shuttle launched late Sunday evening?  I didn’t.  The event would have passed by my radar screen entirely if not for my nephew’s Tweet (on Twitter) indicating that the launch was imminent.  He aspires to be part of the space program some day and pays attention to these sorts of things.  So few of us do.

This event is the latest reminder of how much the world has changed since I was a child.

One of my earliest memories was watching the Apollo 11 crew land on the moon.  I thought it was the middle of the night.  I looked it up and it turns out Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon at roughly ten p.m. Central time – I guess that’s like the middle of the night for a four year-old.

I have vague recollections of standing on the couch in our living room.  Our black and white TV was covered in “snow” – a term to describe television reception my children have never heard.  I have vague visions of images on the screen: a grey moon; Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bouncing in their white suits, mirrors covering their faces.

Neil Armstrong was known by all school children.  I can’t name a single astronaut today.

When we played on trampolines, someone would inevitably bounce on their knees and call out, “Kneel,” then flex their biceps and conclude, “Arm strong.”

Words derived from the space program were part of our lexicon.

My children think of Tang as merely a powder one pours in water to create an orange drink.  They have never known it as the drink of astronauts.  We begged our mom to buy Tang because it was a space drink.  (As a quick aside, did you know that the person who invented Tang also invented Pop Rocks?).

I loved Space Food Sticks.  Chocolate was my favorite but I would tolerate peanut butter.  My guess is there’s a reason they’re not sold any more.

The space program was an integral part of our popular culture.  Case in point, I Dream of Jeannie.  Most sitcoms of the day worked astronauts into their story lines.  I vaguely remember an astronaut landing on Gilligan’s Island.

Silas Horton had a Lego’s to make a moon car.  I attempted to create an astronaut costume one Halloween – I think it consisted of long underwear, a box painted white that I attached to my back and a five-gallon ice cream carton painted silver, cellophane for a face mask.

Later in the 1970s, came the Space Lab.  We would scour the newspaper for times when Space Lab would be passing over head.  At the appointed time, we ran to our front yard – light or dark – and searched the sky.  It was never more than a small light racing through the sky but it was exciting.  It felt as though by catching sight of this dot in the sky you were part of something important.

The space program in the sixties and seventies (at least for much of the 70s) was about much more than going to space for those of us connected with it only through the TV and looking into the sky.  It was symbolic of our nation doing great things; accomplishing what had not before been done.  That’s why we embraced the space program from the Walter Cronkite to the snack bar.