July 2020 – Mostly From Memory

Nice Things

My sister came over to the house the other day to help make zucchini bread, because I planted to much zucchini. We hovered around Sarah’s KitchenAid mixer like little kids at a science experiment.

“Is it going to sling zucchini sludge all over us?” I asked as she fired up the mixer.

“No. This is a nice thing.” She said matter of factly, and with a bit of discovery in her voice, as if we-not having grown up with nice things-had just had our first encounter with one.

My family used to play this game called Scattergories. It’s a trivia game where a letter die is rolled and each participant has to come up with an answer-that begins with whatever letter is rolled-for a list of twelve questions in a set amount of time. If your answer is unique you get a point but you do not get a point for duplicate or blank answers.

I’d like to take a paragraph to point out that I just explained how to play a game in two sentences-albeit they might be considered run on sentences. Even so, Think about the last time somebody tried to explain to you how to play a board game. There were 35 people crammed in a living room. Everybody was talking so loud at once that the music blaring in the background would have been indistinguishable save for the two musicians singing along at the top of their lungs. A kid was tapping you on the knee and the least concise person in the room was giving you instructions on a game you didn’t want to play cause you were more interested in the cocktail weenies on the paper plate that you had to hold because the dumb game was taking up all of the space on the coffee table. But you couldn’t have reached the coffee table from the bar stool you drug from the kitchen anyway. The next time in you’re in a situation like that, I hope you think about me.

Anyway, in Scattergories one of the categories is Items You Save Up Buy. I think this is the best way to describe nice things. You tend to treat things that you save up to buy a little better because they are dearer. I saved up to buy a proper guitar for years. Several times, just when I had enough money set aside, I would decide on a whim to reallocate that money for something else. Like a radiator for a Honda Accord, or tires, or a baby carseat. When I finally had enough money to buy the guitar I was so anxious to make the purchase before there was an emergency that I developed a case of the shivers.

I suppose that there are even nice things that rich people save up to purchase. Yachts and airplanes, that sort of thing.

Most of the people I’ve known that had nice things weren’t necessarily rich, they just didn’t have any kids. Or at least any boys. Boys are much to rough to coexist with nice things. Zach and I broke the heads off all the wooden ducks in the living room while wrestling. That was Mom’s idea of nice things: wooden ducks. She had about five wooden geese and ducks in the living room. Some folks are just born with class.

At least once, every mother has probably said to their children in exasperation over a broken lamp or busted window, “Your Daddy works hard so we can save money and try to have nice things, but y’all are barbarians and we can’t have nice things.”

I remember Zach putting a dent in the top of Dad’s brand new Mazda truck with a softball. Dads can give a completely different “Why can’t we have nice things?” speech. It’s just as passionate as a Mom’s speech, but it is usually the audience and not the orator that is moved to tears.

“When you have three kids that’s about all you have.”
Perry Wells

I’m not saying that you can’t have nice things and kids, I’m just saying that most people can only afford one or the other. It’s a tough choice for many people. Children are expensive. It may even be cheaper to not have kids and just have nice things. Just ask your parents. How many times have you been to someone’s house and sat down in the recliner only to be warned that the recliner doesn’t work because Kid A broke it using it as a diving board, and that they didn’t notice that it was broken until they got back from the emergency room. That’s the funny thing about nice things, people tend to hang on to them after the kids have already broken them.

The fact that my parents didn’t follow through with those threats of death after I had just broken something lets me know that they chose keeping me over having nice things.

Nice things are fleeting. The classiest vehicle on the market will be old and out of fashion when the new model rolls out next year. I quit trying to keep up with the phone innovations back with the iPhone 6. Furthermore, these things are guaranteed to expire.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Matthew 6:19-21

“Children are the only thing that you can take to heaven with you.”

Ultimately nice things are not important. It’s easy to forget that when you’re daydreaming about the next thing you’re saving up to purchase and how happy it will make you. It won’t make you happy. If it does make you happy it won’t last. One day it won’t even matter to you. If you don’t believe me, just visit a thrift store or better yet, the dump. Both of these places are jam packed with junk and trash that someone not to long ago probably saved up to buy.

There are still some nice things I’d still like to have. Perhaps a proper digital camera to take better quality bad pictures for the website store. Maybe I’ll get one some day. I’m not really worried about it. These days I’m more excited about meeting our third child in October.

Rising to the Occasion

Rising to the occasion is doing what needs to be done no matter how hard, uncomfortable, unpopular, or frightening the task at hand may be.

I’m sitting here awake. I just got up from a dream where a few of our kids ( I don’t know who was there, but it felt like church family) were swimming in a river. Somehow, they got on top of a submerged wooden playground that was traveling downstream way too fast. I grabbed a fishing rod and snagged it. It was the most powerful pull that I’ve ever experienced.

I lost the lure when the line snapped. Sarah and some other mothers come to me alarmed about the children. I look down the river and they’re going away fast, almost out of sight.

The unseen playground has picked up speed. I hear the concerned voices raised around me.

Out nowhere, my friend and some other men have grabbed boats to go fetch the kids.

Now my friend jumps into the swift water and rescues Wesley and the other children from the runaway playground.

I catch up with them on the shore about a mile down river past the bridge where my line broke. The hero of the situation walks out of the water straight faced, not expecting any reward. He just did what needed to be done.

Thank God for people like this.

I’m writing this in the middle of the night because I need to remember it. Sometimes you have a dream and you know that you shouldn’t have finished off all of the weekend’s leftovers before you went to sleep, but sometimes you know that there was something more in a dream. I think this was a case of the latter.

I remember being worried about labor when Sarah and I were expecting our first child. It’s like war, no amount of training can prepare you for the real thing. A friend at church laughed at me when I told him I was concerned about not passing out. He said, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll rise to the occasion.”

I suppose that’s what happens a lot in life. We are constantly faced with difficult situations and we either rise to the occasion and win, or we don’t do anything and lose. Even if we don’t lose, inaction rarely brings a desired outcome. Some of us wait for a hero to come and fix everything, and while it is a nice thought, it hardly ever happens.

Rising to the occasion is doing what needs to be done no matter how hard, uncomfortable, unpopular, or frightening the task at hand may be. It doesn’t take much talent to rise to the occasion, just a lot of courage.

I wonder if David felt like this when he showed up at the battlefield with bread and cheese for his brothers only to find a stalemate with men cowering under the taunts of the champion of the Philistines. In spite of the ridicule and belittlement from his own brothers David rose to the occasion and slew Goliath. Not because of any reward-he didn’t receive one-but because he understood that there was a cause.

Most of the things that I am most proud of where the hardest things I’ve ever done. I will not promise you that rising to the occasion will be fun, easy, or even enjoyable, but I firmly believe that you will not regret it.

Gardening Tips: How to Get Rid of Zucchini

“Don’t leave your window down when you go to the Warehouse Discount Grocery. Somebody is liable to put a sack of zucchini in your car.”

As many of you know, I was volunteered to grow a garden this Spring. It’s been doing pretty good. Except my zucchini. They’re out of control. I’d like to share a few of my tips for getting rid of zucchini.

1. Take it to Church.

People at church have a hard time saying no. Even if they don’t like zucchini, they will smile and be nice. This is a good place to get rid of zucchini. Problems can arise though. People will start to notice you bringing in a grocery sack full of zucchini and they may start to avoid you.

2. Covert Charity

Before you start to lose friends at church, I suggest getting rid of zucchini through random acts of kindness. Nothing makes a thing so fun as knowing you’re not supposed to be doing it. Putting a sack of zucchini in someone’s car without getting caught is one of the most thrilling things about gardening.

You can also set a sack of produce on someone’s door step in the middle of the night. The danger in this is they may use a different door and might not discover the zucchini until they have turned bad-the zucchini, not the people. (I could have reworded that sentence to make it more clear, but I’m feeling rebellious today.) That is the paradox of gardening: you grow things you don’t particularly like and you don’t want them to be wasted.

A sack of Zucchini on it’s way to an unsuspecting family’s doorstep.

3. Sell It.

It is possible to sell your vegetables. You can put up a little booth in your front yard with a hand painted sign that may say something like, “Fresh Vegetables For Sale”. The font should be a bit shaky, similar to the “E995” signs you see for people selling cackle-fruits. That way people know you are genuine country folks and are therefore trustworthy. You may get more traffic if you misspell zucchini. The problem with a booth is you have to always be home to make the transaction, and you may end up having a lot more conversations than you are prepared to have. You would probably have to rely on the honor system.

The other option is to sell your vegetables at the Farmer’s Market. You need the right salesman though. No one wants to buy vegetables from a guy in his early thirties. You need an older man in overalls that is prone to falling asleep in his lawn chair as your sales rep. Or a cute little kid.

4. Eat It.

This is a last ditch effort to get rid of zucchini. I’ve listed a few creative ways to serve zucchini because you can only eat so much zucchini bread before needing to go up a pant size. I can provide recipes for the sincerely interested, but I cannot guarantee that the finished product will be edible.

Zucchini Au Gratin
Zucchini Ice Cream
Zucchini Pie
Zucchini Pizza Crust
Zucchini Ricota turnovers
Zucchini Pesto Patato Salad
Zucchini Baked Potatoes
Zucchini & Sausage Omelettes
Zucchini Tacos
Zucchini Soup
Zucchini Fricassee

Now I made up most of those recipes on the spot. Aside from zucchini ice cream most of those sound pretty appetizing. The key to eating zucchini is using a little creativity. If you have 4o lbs of zucchini you won’t be upset if one or two recipes turn out to be a dud.

Anyway, I hope your garden is growing well. If you don’t have a garden I hope your neighbor’s is doing well. If you don’t have any neighbors…just come to church with me. I’ll bring you some zucchini.