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Dee, in my Bible study group said to me yesterday, “I consider you a close friend …” – which touched me – he is a close friend. I’ve been in this weekly group, meeting every Wednesday at 7am, for at least 10 years. Among other things it’s a touchstone, a reference point for the week. When I joined, teaching was handled by the founders, Jim C. and Chuck H. Later we shifted to rotating leadership. Little by little it seems I’m learning something about the Bible and this faith. But for me – and this is difficult to put into words – the primary benefit seems to be general – kind of a midweek grounding and fellowship in a religious (and sometimes spiritual) context. Photo: Most of the men in our Bible study group, 2007 at Bryce’s ranch

When I realized sometime in September that I wanted to get back into the mountains I began walking 4-6 days/week. I’m definitely getting stronger and in better condition. And I’m enjoying the walking here in Old East Dallas. In one direction there is a somewhat wooded area down by the Santa Fe RR tracks. Near there is Hollywood Heights, an area of gem-like tudor cottages, many with wonderful landscaping – including some with cottage gardens (part of the inspiration for my cottage garden). In another direction is the area where we first moved to this part of town in 1968: Oram, LaVista, lower Greenville – still hip after all these years. There are at least some hills or inclines in every direction and in every direction there is something new.

Something new? This is an amazing thing about Old East Dallas. After all these years, there is always something I haven’t seen before – a small stained glass window in a door, a beautiful arch, a craftsman detail – even an entire house I’ve not noticed. It’s the same for Leslie – and both of us look all the time, too. We live in a fascinating part of town, where most of the homes are 60-90 years old, so are well-crafted, unique and graceful. Alas, the developers are buying up old structures and building new homes – heavy structures, at best marginally appropriate to the community, and sometimes (you cretins) actual snout houses with garages fronting onto the street. Argh. Our immediate neighborhood has been successful in achieving a protected status. Thanks especially to Karen C., Ed M., and several other activists. Developers out!

One snowy, icy day before Christmas (around 1970) Leslie and I drove in our little yellow VW bug to the Ross Avenue Sears to get a Christmas tree. It was a bitter cold “snow day” when most businesses and schools were closed and we were so happy to be off work. We got a great tree and drove back home with me holding on to the tree so just the trunk was dragging along the icy street.

We’ve had a lot of good snow days in the years of our marriage.

So here we are in a memorial service for Meredith, a woman who died way too young from inflammatory bowel disease. Her parents, Marcus and Pat are in my Sunday school class. Some of the class stalwarts are on these several rows where I’m sitting: Jim and Adelle, Chuck and Roselynn, Carol, Liz, Jim and Jane, others across the way on both sides of the sanctuary.

Ahh, a baby girl with rosy cheeks is across from me.

I wonder why I feel so sad? I didn’t know Meredith and am not close with her parents – we sit near one another in our 300 member class and I’m always happy to see them – they seem to be fundamentally nice people. That’s all and I guess it’s enough. Of course it’s The Great Sadness.

There are 5 or 6 goths, wearing black, pale and pierced on the back pew. I hope they’re connecting with this …
Come to me,
all of you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.

Spiritually these are desert days for me – I have nothing left to give except to those I love. Otherwise I’m kind of going through the motions – just doing what I do – I’m tired.
I am tired
I am weary
I could sleep for a 1000 years

The baby girl has a big voice. Fat little legs. Rosy cheeks. She’s got it all. If there’s a baby (God willing) at my funeral, babbling, fussing, doing all that baby stuff, then don’t take her out (and none of those don’t interrupt me looks from the minister – give me a break – he doesn’t get it, does he!?) – let her babble and fuss – give you joy.

Oh God our help in ages past
Our hope for years to come
Be Thou on guard while life shall last
And our eternal home

When I was in high school there was a small record store in the little strip shopping center near my home off Walnut Hill and Marsh Lane. In those days record stores had little listening booths for people to check out records. Somehow, maybe through the woman who owned the store guiding me, I found the first Bob Dylan album. It was a whole new dimension from the “baby, I love you” that was the only popular music option at the time and it had a profound, but indefinable effect on me.

A year or so later I left home, hitchhiking first to Grand Saline, then to Baton Rouge, where I ended up in jail for “investigation” – described in another unposted document and then working for months as a cook in a Toddle House at the bottom of the bridge that people would take going from Baton Rouge across the Mississippi River to the honky-tonks on the other side and coming back drunk, “Yeah, let’s stop at the Toddle House.” From Baton Rouge I went to Colorado where I moved around among Estes Park, Boulder, Fort Collins, Georgetown, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Utah for about a year and a half over two years. I was rock-climbing and hanging around with other climbers and various drifters. I recall being in a bar on the main street in Estes and hearing Like a Rolling Stone on the jukebox. Once again it was a completely new thing that spoke directly to me – in terms of my general and specific situation and circumstances at the time …
hanging out
… scrounging your next meal

How does it feel
To be on your own
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone
Whew! All those things were happening with me – hanging out, scrounging meals, on my own, anonymous, Like a Rolling Stone. And it was fine.

Some of my friends and I had long hair before very many people had long hair – other than the slackers hanging out at The Sink in Boulder. One of my climbing partners, Bob B. and I were called, “Buffalo Bill (Bob) and his Indian Friend (me)” because of our long hair and general appearance. There was a documentary on Bob Dylan (No Direction Home) that came out a year or so ago. Looking at him singing Like a Rolling Stone I was amazed at just how hip we really were.

For a few months one winter Bob and I lived in a tiny cabin on the edge of Georgetown. The cabin had no electricity or running water and was heated with a coal-burning stove that the one time we used it, produced terrible noxious smoke, so that we never lit it again. There was a permanent “glacier” we called it on the floor between the bunks where we slept in our sleeping bags. The ice was about an inch thick in the middle.

Bob’s girlfriend was Toby T., who had gone to my high school in Dallas. She was a year or two older than I and I think had been popular in high school. In Colorado she was hip, kind of a drifter herself and probably drank too much. She was really sweet and kind. Sometimes she would stay with us in the cabin or sleeping in the place where we worked.

We worked in a restaurant called the Holy Cat. Bob was the bartender and I was the waiter. The owner was a fairly nice guy and I’m sure we were a burden to him – but we were who was available to work in his restaurant. I think we got maybe a dollar an hour, if that, tips, lift tickets for Loveland Basin, and room and board. Sometimes we would just sleep on the floor of the bar in front of the huge fireplace. Climbers and others passing through would stay there with us. Judy C., later a famous singer stayed with us one night and we sang the night away. It was a good winter, but we lost our jobs when Layton K. came up from Boulder and said, “Come on, we’re going to climb in the desert” – and away we went to Arches National Monument and Fisher Towers. That was the first time I’d slept in the desert – in the winter, cold, stars in billions. Photo: Me, Kor, Bradley on the summit (first ascent) of the Argon Tower in Arches National Monument – we’re perched in the tiniest space imaginable with 400-500 vertcle feet falling away on all sides.

Only a few years after I left Colorado I learned that Toby had died – so young.

Our local slick, upscale magazine, D Magazine had a cover story titled “The Mexican Invasion.” I wonder if they’ll print my letter to the editor:

Mexicans. Today I was at the library and ran into a young Mexican woman I know. For more than a year she volunteered at the mission clinic where I also volunteer. She told me she got married a few weeks ago. Her husband is Mexican – and he is a Marine, back from Iraq and headed for Afghanistan. It reminded me of when I was in the Marine Corps long ago and learned some serious lessons about honor from a man named Cruz – a Mexican Indio and a man among men.

I went to the big immigration march in 2006, carrying my Marine Corps flag in honor of Cruz and all the other Mexican Marines. A young man, also a former Marine invited me into the Cathedral Guadalupe.

All this self-righteous, deeply offended blathering on about, “But they’re illegal,” makes me sick.

1/3/2008
2008 began with a great 3.5 day backpacking trip to Big Bend National Park with Jeff – and more (God willing) to come. Photo: Pinnacles from Boulder Meadow, Big Bend