March 28, 2005 – Spreading Goodwill

March 28, 2005 – Spreading Goodwill

On Sunday, I spoke to my dad and mom and learned that an organization called Reagan Ranch had sent them a VHS cassette of the ranch along with a request for a donation to their cause. My father has a new combination DVD-VCR device and he was having trouble getting the videocassette to play. My sister Y and her significant other P, a soldier stationed at an army base in the south—it has changed recently and I haven’t kept up—at my father’s request removed the DVD-VCR device and reinstalled the old VCR player-recorder that my father had used before. They reported that the old device would play the videocassette and my father made a mental note to view the video at some later time. This all took place as we began our phone conversation and I was getting a running commentary on the progress of the reinstallation. I asked my dad if he planned to send in a donation and he rightly recognized that this was yet another scam to extract what little retirement he and my mother had and no he wasn’t planning to contribute to their cause.

My sister’s boyfriend P is much like my father, probably more so than even I. Both men are shade-tree mechanics, who prefer to work on their own cars—in the case of P he also has an abiding affection for Harleys. P is also handy around the house and has an inherent love of being busy. My mom and Dad have a fruitless Mulberry tree in the yard that was overgrown. On one of his trips to visit my sister, P spent a good half-day trimming the tree back. Now he was fiddling with the VCR. When on duty, he’s flying in and out of trouble spots in the Middle East and Asia. He doesn’t talk much about his life in the service, preferring to isolate his world as a soldier and his life among the middle class, enjoying the normal life we all take for granted.

“What are your plans for the year,” I asked after we had dispensed with Reagan’s Ranch. “I want to take your mother and make the trip by bus to Mississippi (by which he meant Brooklyn),” he said. One reason was to get away from El Paso for a time, to see something new, to do something different. The two had made a train journey to Watertown, New York to visit the grave of their friend Charles Upton in June last year. The trip had been therapeutic for both of them: the increased level of activity, confronting new surroundings, solving different problems from those that have become routine around their house, all had been invigorating. The trip to Brooklyn, Mississippi stretches a total of 1186 miles along Interstate 20 through Dallas-Ft Worth and all the way across Louisiana to Jackson, Mississippi. There the journey heads south along Interstate 55, until Highway 84, west along 84 until it intersects Highway 41. There the trip turns south again on 41 and ends up in Brooklyn. In checking the Yahoo map for motels in and around Brooklyn, the closest Best Western is a few miles further south in the town of Wiggins, the Best Western Woodstone, $55 to $59 a night.

The old place that my father sold to his cousin is outside of Brooklyn along the Brooklyn-Janice Road, but that was not the reason for this trip. He still has aunts and uncles alive down there and he was hoping to find some pictures of his mother and grandmother among their collected memorabilia. I asked him if he had been in Brooklyn when he first hopped a freight heading west looking for work. No, he had hitchhiked up to Hattiesburg and caught the freight up their with the help of an old man also heading west by freight who befriended him. As soon as I asked the question he recalled that the two of them had found work in Texas City, Texas the scene of the massive explosion that killed 15 people and injured over 100 others on Wednesday March 23. He recalled taking a trip to Texas City, Texas in the Mid-1970s trying to find the swamp he and his older partner had spent months clearing with Caterpillar tractors, while working for an oil company construction contractor in the late 1930s. The refinery that exploded began production in 1934.

I asked him if he ever saw the old man who helped him after the two parted company in New Orleans when the Texas City job ended. My father had convinced the old man to buy a ticket and for the two of them to take the passenger train back to New Orleans, a journey of 360 miles. The old man who had yellow fever at the time finally agreed. And my father got the old man settled into his place in New Orleans, bought himself a car, and drove back to Brooklyn, a hundred mile trip. A few days after returning home, my dad came down with yellow fever and was treated by the doctor who had delivered him. The fever broke a few days after taking the quinine tablets the doctor prescribed. My dad saw the old man in New Orleans a few times thereafter when driving down to the Big Easy, but the trip he made after coming home from his service in the Army after the Second World War, the old man was no longer at his place and my dad never saw him again.

My father’s life has always contained good people who have provided him aid and assistance in time of need and he has returned the favor. His balance sheet of exchanged goodwill would be balanced pretty evenly if I were to judge.