Hugh Hollowell

My Brother Jimmy is a proud Papa now, with Mr. Carter James (see below) having been born on the 24th of June. Here he is from a few days back.

Last night, I had this dream…

My brother Jimmy and I were riding around Memphis in a mid 1980’s Green Oldsmobile. We stopped at this coffee shop and hung out for a bit, but when Jimmy got up and went to the restroom, I left him there and went driving again.

I remember I had to be at work soon at my job (in the dream) at Target, so I started driving there. It is now pouring down rain, and I remember wondering how Jimmy was going to get home, since he had left his cellphone in the car. I decide I will go to work, drop off the wet-vac I am lugging around, then go back and get him. (I have no idea why I have a wet-vac, but it is pouring down rain…)

I get to Target, half an hour early, still lugging the wet vac, and realize I have on Navy blue pants, not the Target regulation Khaki pants. I drop off the wet-vac in the back room by the time clock and then run out the door to get Jimmy and change into appropriate pants, while dodging the boss so he does not see me in the wrong pants.

Anybody think this means I am going to win the lottery?

I was just sitting here, reading over some of my past posts ( my insomnia is acting up) and realized it is just over a month since I started this blog.

25 posts later, it is still a blast. I have blogged for years, but never just for fun. It was always to market a business, to gain an audience, to increase my profile. This blog is just for fun.

It is my stress release valve as I deal with hard issues I am having to face right now. I have found old friends through it and people who care about me can keep up with me.

This is just a note to say thank you for reading and I hope you stick around.

When the urge strikes me, I write short stories. Mostly they are drawn from my life and events I have witnessed; however, they may be slightly embellished and the names changed to protect the guilty.

********

Our preacher was from the old school; he believed in hard preaching, potluck dinners and the Democratic Party. However, lately there had been some grumbling from the congregation about Brother Gene, with some hinting he was out of date, and the Sunday attendance (and worse, the Sunday offering) was beginning to suffer.

Being a good Methodist, he was a subscriber to The Advocate, the house organ put out by the Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church, and one day, he saw an ad for an upcoming conference that would put the sizzle back in your sermons, or so the ad said, anyway.

He was gone over the 5^th Sunday that month, leaving us in the hands of a young Seminarian from Emory University. The story of that weekend is one I am not yet ready to tell as some key players in that story are still alive and are given to litigation – it not costing them anything since their oldest child is an Old Miss Lawyer.

Anyway, Brother Gene came back from the conference all recommitted and glowing with piety and Vitalis. That next Sunday he was just waving his arms and almost vibrating with the power of the Holy Ghost and whatnot, going so far as to introduce some new songs (I hesitate to call them hymns, as by definition you can not clap along to a hymn) that were definitely not in the approved Cokesbury Hynmal.

That Sunday, after the hand-clapping music and the new liturgical dancers that he brought in, he called the children up for the children’s sermon, which in our church took place a few minutes after the offering hymn and before the main sermon, where the preacher would call the children up to the front of the church and gave a mini-sermon, relating to the main sermon, but somewhat more simplified.

The scripture reading for the day was from the Gospel according to Mathew, the beautiful story of the first miracle performed by Jesus, namely being the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Canna. The children all gathered around his feet as he sat on a chair kept in the closet off the stage for just that purpose.

As he told them about the turning of the water into wine, he illustrated it (the conference had emphasized the use of visual aids) with 2 pitchers, one clear (showing it to be half full of water) and one made of yellow ceramic.

He held the clear one (with the water) in his right hand and poured the water into the yellow pitcher in his left, while telling how the porters in Jesus’ time had poured the water into the jugs, then he told how they had poured it into a glass (he then poured the yellow pitcher back into the clear one) . . .

“How in the hell did he do that?” one old farmer exclaimed from the back of the room.

Apparently, the yellow pitcher had some Kool-Aid placed in the bottom of it, for when the water was poured back into the yellow jug it had turned bright red, thus drawing oohs and ahhhs from the children and the expletive exclamation from the previously mentioned farmer.

“Just how in the hell did he do that?” the farmer repeated, now on his feet and scratching his head.

One of the children, his back to the congregation, turned his head over his shoulder, rolled his eyes at the idiocy of the question, and said “It’s a miracle”.

A story I learned a long time ago that has influenced my life heavily.

Once upon a time there was a king who had a pet donkey. This donkey was his pride and joy and the donkey followed him everywhere.

Now, this king had a trusted adviser who had failed him. In fact, the crime the adviser was so serious, that the king had sentenced him to death. After the adviser received the sentence, he bowed his head and then a thought popped into his head. Raising his head, he said to the king:

“Oh Sire. You are wise beyond words and I accept your decision. It is a pity, however. I have only recently learned the secret of how to teach Donkeys to talk. Had I but 12 more months, yon Ass could speak as plainly as you or I.”

The king said “I do not believe you, but I have nothing to lose. You have 12 months to live in the castle and teach in the stable. At the end of that 12 months, if the Ass can talk, you will go free and additionally, I will reward you beyond measure. If, however, as I suspect, the donkey cannot talk, then you will die the most horrible, most prolonged death I can imagine.”

The man was set free. When he arrived home and told his wife, she called him a fool.

She said, “You had the chance to die quickly and painlessly; now you will die a horrible death and bring shame to us all”.

The adviser said, “Nonsense! I bought 12 months of freedom. Much can happen in a year. The king might die. The Donkey might die. I might die. Or… the Ass might talk!”.

A friend and I were talking about this last night. We are both aging gen Xers and were reminiscing over such things as we remember from childhood and, as it always does, cartoons came up.

Let me get this straight: Popeye was a Sailor Man, right? And there is this kid running around who he is taking care of and raising, but who is not his? And he claims the kid came in the mail?* Am I the only one that thinks maybe Popeye is covering up?

Ahhh, it was a much simpler time then.

*I actually found out he allegedly came in the mail from wikipedia, so it must be true, right?

[current as of 04/2008] 

Hugh…

1. …weighed 10 pounds and 11 ounces at birth, and was just over 24 inches tall.
2. …once performed 72 dead hang pull-ups.
3. …has two brothers, both of whom are handier with tools than he is.
4. …was raised a Methodist, although he mostly reads Catholic authors.
5. …thinks most denominations are much more about the members than they are about God.
6. …dislikes Mimes and Carnies.
7. …wore a size 10 shoe in the 9th grade, but now wears a size 9. No idea what that’s about.
8. …was baptized as an infant in a church that had his Grandfather’s name on the cornerstone.
9. …loves email, walking in the woods, and anything to do with water.
10. …did not learn to swim until he was 18.
11. …likes chamber music, hair bands, jazz and delta blues.
12. …prefers dark chocolate to almost anything.
13. …likes poetry that rhymes, except when it shouldn’t.
14. …had for his first car a 1971 Ford Torino (think Starsky and Hutch, only his was green)
15. …reads 2-3 books a week.
16. …was born by cesarean section (him and MacDuff).
17. …got high smoking corn silks at the age of 9.
18. …actually knows people who go by the names Tater, Scooter, Junebug and Hoss.
19. …hates video games, television and talk radio.
20. …was clinically dead for almost 4 minutes when he was 18 months old.
21. …was most influenced as a teenager by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
22. …currently finds inspiration in the writings of Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day.
23. …speaks English and a very poor sort of Texican.
24. …came very close to dying by incineration in March of 1998.
25. …placed 12^th in the nation in an extemporaneous speaking contest, in which he talked about how to instill a work ethic in young people of today.
26. …can not remember any of the suggestions he made in said speech.
27. …prefers piano to guitar.
28. …loves New York City and New Orleans.
29. …is a self-taught speed-reader.
30. …overhauled a manual transmission by himself at the age of 18.
31. …wrecked truck that said transmission went in at the age of 21 (but it had nothing to do with the transmission).
32. …thinks the best Southern writer since William Faulkner was Peter Taylor.
33. …would not give two figs for Robert Penn Warren.
34. …really wants to write a novel, but doesn’t, because he has no idea how he would end the thing.
35. …has helped deliver 4 babies, one of them in the pouring rain and one in the back seat of a 1972 Buick Electra.
36. … took a year of Hebrew because of a girl. (Shalom, ya’ll)
37. …once considered moving to Great Falls, Montana because of a girl.
38. …lived 8 months in an underground house…because of a girl.
39. …joined the Baptist Church (briefly) … because of a girl.
40. …once went deep sea fishing in 10 foot swells in advance of a Hurricane.
41. …caught more fish than anyone else on said trip (not getting sea-sick helps).
42. …graduated Marine Boot Camp in the middle of the pouring rain.
43. …watched the girl he had recently asked to be his girlfriend die in a ditch in the pouring rain.
44. …got a black eye at the homecoming game because he had reported another student for cheating on an exam.
45. …only owns four pair of pants.
46. …had ADD before it was cool to have ADD.
47. …rarely worries, even when it would be good to worry.
48. …has three favorite movies: The Godfather, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Mary Poppins.
49. …is not a morning person, unless your morning starts around 9am.
50. …sleeps less than 5 hours a night in the summer, about 6 & ½ in the winter.
51. …wishes he could read Latin.
52. …regrets not taking the girl to the prom that he had asked after he found out she was pregnant with someone else’s baby.
53. …once seriously considered entering the Clergy.
54. …now realizes he was called to Ministry, but not to the Clergy.
55. …would rather read than do almost anything.
56. …really gets off on classic crime fiction.
57. …does not mind crowds unless he is with children, in which case he gets freaked out about losing the kids.
58. …once had his hand sliced open by a box cutter when he was attacked in a parking lot.
59. …drinks an obscene amount of coffee every day.
60. …once wrecked his car and blamed it on a dead cat.
61. …had a girlfriend who left him because she discovered she was a Lesbian.
62. …gained a girlfriend who had thought she was a Lesbian (different girl).
63. …cringes every time he hears the words “like” and “you know” used in conversation.
64. …worries about kids these days.
65. …wanted to own a used bookstore since he was 12.
66. …owned a used bookstore before the age of 30.
67. …wants to see every Vermeer in the world with his own two eyes before he dies.
68. …agrees with Truman Capote that the Beat writers were not writing, they were typing.
69. …once flew so often that the employees in the China Wok on the second floor of Concourse C in Atlanta International Airport thought he was an airport employee and regularly gave him a discount.
70. …had a Grandfather who was shot down behind enemy lines and stayed hidden from the enemy for 21 days until he could get rescued.
71. …had a Great Grandfather who was gassed in France in WW I
72. …had another who flew planes over Europe at the age of 17, also in WWI, and came home from the war to be a barnstormer.
73. …hates boredom.
74. …feels intensely protective of the women in his life.
75. …has a recurring nightmare in which he is a salesman in a credit jewelry store.
76. …loves to cook.
77. …was once called a ’serial monogamist” by a girl he wanted very much to go out with.
78. …was confused when she thought that was a bad thing.
79. …hates to wash dishes.
80. …prefers cats to dogs.
81. …wishes he were more organized, but thinks it is not effective to worry about it.
82. …wishes he was handier than he actually is. His brothers wish so, too.
83. …refuses to drink dark liquor or gin.
84. …was the arm wrestling champion of Independence, Mississippi.
85. …strongly wishes he was better about keeping in touch.
86. …misses the 1980’s.
87. …prefers travel by train over all other options.
88. …would dig his own well before he would drink Perrier.
89. …believes his favorite author is Ernest Hemingway
90. …thinks his favorite novel is “A Movable Feast“.
91. …dreams about living in the country again, but loves the city too much to do it.
92. …learned to drive on a three-cylinder tractor.
93. …likes wearing suits, but hates occasions when you need to wear suits.
94. …has a strong distrust of organizations, movements and –ism’s.
95. …has a birth defect that affects both pinkies: one won’t bend, the other will not straighten.
96. … is prone to lethargy, with random, unpredictable bursts of extreme hyperactivity.
97. …once broke a ceiling fan with a cat, a piece of string and a sheet of paper.
98. …was very shy growing up. Nobody believes this now.
99. …prefers to wear sandals whenever possible.
100. …believes Love Wins.