Lee's Has Fleas And Color TVs!

Dad occasionally had to travel to various Banquet Foods plants scattered around Missouri. Once in a while Mom and Dad would pack up the entire family to go along on one of these trips.

We did some wonderful things on those trips; including a trip to one of Banquet's chicken processing plants.

I can still picture the chicken slaughtering operation and the various stations where the carcasses were gutted, plucked and cut into pieces. Almost all of the operations were done by hand in 1969, but I certainly don't have any recollection of the tour being gross or disturbing. In fact, it was one of the coolest things we ever did as a family! Somehow I doubt too many kids get to go on tours like that any more, but we did and it was awesome!

I was nearing my eighth birthday as we took the tour of the processing plant. I can remember that because we were in the hotel on July 16, 1969 - Mom's birthday - and we got to watch the Apollo 11 launch on the hotel's color television while we were on the trip. We stayed at Lee's Hotel several times through the years and it was always remembered by the lyrical line someone in the family - probably Debbie - came up with, "Lee's Has Fleas And Color TVs!"

Having color television was huge in 1969. We didn't have one at home, so it was a huge treat to get to watch a color television when we traveled. In fact, I didn't have a color television at all until I went away to college and started making a little money on the side by finding broken televisions, fixing them and selling them to other students in the Towers dorm complex at SEMO. Mom was convinced that watching a color television was certain to cause cancer where watching a black and white television was perfectly safe - as long as you sat far enough away from it. Far enough away in Mom's opinion would have required us all to have binoculars to watch the television, so it was an ongoing battle of just where we could sit when watching television.

In any case; Lee's had color TVs so it was awesome!

Now Lee's didn't really have fleas, as I recall, but on one of our trips they did have cockroaches! Getting up to use the bathroom overnight was an adventure. You might hear the crunch of a cockroach under your bare feet as you walked from the bed to the bathroom. You were virtually guaranteed to see them scurrying into the relative security of a dark corner when you turned on the bathroom light. Yes, Lee's was an adventure on that trip!

I distinctly remember Kim refusing to get out of bed in the dark. I'm quite sure she would have rather suffered through a bladder explosion than risk stepping on, or even merely seeing, a cockroach. Kim always was the prissy one in the family! I'm still not convinced that she wasn't somehow switched at birth in the hospital nursery because she is the only one who hated all of the fun things we did - camping, digging holes in the back yard, playing in lakes and rivers, going to camp, fishing, etc. etc. etc.

I'm sure Mom and Dad spoke to the hotel management and dealt with the cockroach issue, but I don't recall what ever happened. Having a cockroach problem is far more exciting to a nearly eight year old boy than having a cockroach problem cleared up! I suppose the lyrical description was born because it is rather hard to rhyme with cockroaches, so fleas were somehow substituted. To this day, "Lee's Has Fleas And Color TVs," still rings out whenever the topic of a business trip with Dad comes up.

Those were the days...

Tall Towers

I used to be slightly afraid of heights. I was never like my sister Debbie; who probably still won't go near the railing of her deck because it's about three steps off the ground. I remember going through Onondaga Cave as a kid. She refused to walk over the natural bridge. The only way we got her to continue the tour was to make her close her eyes and allow us to lead her over to the other side.

It wasn't even that high!

I had a healthy respect for heights, but I wasn't afraid of them. I pretty much credit my brother-in-law Chris with getting me beyond any fear. Chris was into climbing and rappelling. I kind of thought he was off his rocker for jumping off cliffs; but to each his own. I had no real desire to participate. That is, until he invited me and Mom's response was, "Over my dead body!!!" For some reason that I still don't totally understand; I suddenly had an insatiable desire to go jump off a cliff with Chris and readily accepted his invitation. It wasn't that I actually wanted it to be over her dead body; it's just that her words somehow motivated me to rebel a bit and go jump off a cliff - with a descender on the rope, of course.

It took a lot for me to actually step over the edge that first time.

And the second time.

And the third time.

Eventually, though, I came to really enjoy it. I realized that I had overcome any fear of heights while setting ropes for a group one day and hung out over the cliff face to shake a rope free from a ledge below. I was just hanging out there in space with the rope looped over my arm and my feet against the rock face. It was there that the thought hit me that I would have never done that just a year, or so, earlier.

I continued to play around with climbing and rappelling through college. It was while in college that I got to experience the real fun of heights. My landlord in college was a Cape Girardeau firefighter who had a side business doing tower maintenance for the local television and radio stations. John offered me a job helping him work on the towers.

My very first climb was a whopper! The local CBS affiliate, KFVS Channel 12, was having some transmitter issues and wanted to install a dummy load in place of their antenna so they could do some testing and tweaking. The FCC required that testing be done between Midnight and 6:00 AM, so we were going to go up the tower in the middle of the night. The KFVS tower was 1,776 feet tall. An elevator went up the first 1,500 feet so we would only actually have to climb the last 276 feet to the antenna.

To say that the elevators in towers are small would be a vast understatement. There was enough room for us to load all of our equipment into the elevator and that was it. We climbed on top of the elevator, hooked our safety belts onto the elevator frame and started the ride to the top. The ascent took a long time and the view of the lights in surrounding cities was spectacular!

We climbed off the elevator and unloaded our gear upon reaching the observation deck at 1,500 feet. We rigged lines to the dummy load so we could climb to the antenna and then pull the load up behind us.

Up we went. The wind was whipping around and the temperature was significantly colder than the near ninety degree heat on the ground. We did our work and waited for the engineers to radio from the ground that they had completed their testing so we could unhook the dummy load, reconnect the antenna and begin our descent.

It was exhilarating, and I was making $10 per hour; which was great money for a college student in 1984!

I was hooked!

I did several other climbs before graduating from college and moving on. Some were easy daytime climbs and some were difficult nighttime climbs. The worst was going up an icy tower in the middle of a snowy night in an attempt to find a nitrogen leak in the transmission line. John decided that we would climb no more than 300 feet in the ice and snow since we had to physically climb to inspect the transmission line instead of riding an elevator. Fortunately we found it less than 300 feet from the ground.

I kind of miss the excitement of those climbs. Of course, I was much younger then - and in much better shape - so it was easy work. The combination of arthritic knees, asthma and protruding midsection, to put it politely, make it impossible for me to do that any more.

But every once in a while I think I would like to sit on top of one of those elevators again and ride up to an observation deck over 1,000 feet in the air just to get to be up there again.

Tears

I rarely cry. It's not from some "tough guy" mentality, but because there aren't many things in my life that make me cry.

I cried on an August night in 2007. Diane and Matthew and I had just said our goodbyes to Joseph as we drove away from Bob Jones University after dropping him off for his freshman year. It broke my heart to see him standing alone behind the dorm; waving until we drove out of sight.

I cried again Friday. This time my tears were triggered by the sight of Matthew shaking hands with Dr. Jones on the FMA platform as he received his diploma.

There were other occasions for tears through the years, but these two seem to bookend a stage of our lives. A stage that opened with Joseph's freshman year and closed with Matthew's graduation.

The circle has closed.

We drove away from Bob Jones University the first time with a mixture of joy and sorrow. Joy because we were so excited for Joseph. Sorrow because we were leaving him behind; and, with it, his childhood was truly over. At the time, the sorrow seemed greater than the joy.

We drove away from Bob Jones University for the last time with a mixture of joy and sorrow. Joy because we, as a family, have made it through. Sorrow because it was the last time. This time, the joy was greater than the sorrow.

Diane and I have made the drive to Greenville a number of times over the past six years. The highways have become so familiar that I know the curves and hills through the Cumberlands and Smokies well before we get to them. My corny jokes about some of the exits and cities we pass have become comfortable; rather like an old shoe, with everyone knowing it's coming and sometimes even trying to beat me to the punch.

Each trip brings reminders of special moments on previous trips. Memories like our trips to the National Whitewater Training Center on the way to drop Joseph off the first couple of years; and the laughter and excitement of riding through the whitewater rapids.

Memories like getting "The World's Best Pizza" from the pizza shop in the Flea Market in Kodak, Tennessee. The atmosphere was strange and the pizza was far from the world's best.

Or memories like my mad dash through the mountains to pick up Joseph after his sophomore year. For whatever reason, Joseph's storage barrel had not been picked up. That meant he (I) had to find a way to get his barrel to the storage facility before 6:00 PM. We were not going to be on campus in time, so I had to pick it up a bit as we drove through the mountains in hopes of getting there in time to get his barrel taken care of. Fortunately, he found a friend with a car who could get it taken care of for him. We still talk about that almost every time we hit a particular place on the mountain road.

I suppose we won't be reliving those memories in the same way any more.

Diane and I are moving into the next stage of life; one where our children are grown and independent. Whether they continue to live with us for the foreseeable future or not is largely irrelevant.

They are grown.

It seems hard to believe that our boys are college graduates. It seems hard to believe they are so grown up. They are, though, and they have made us proud.

So Proud!!!

Need I say more???

Dukes of Hazzard Class!

Now, without trying to be crude, you must understand that I rarely ever have to stop while on a trip to empty my bladder. It's a far cry from when I was a kid. I even flew nonstop from Chicago to Tokyo without using the aircraft's lavatory. I can just "hold it" for a very long time.

A very long time doesn't take into account drinking five Powerades while on a trip to celebrate Matthew's Graduation from Bob Jones University. We were planning on stopping for lunch about an hour up the road, so I figured I would just "hold it" a while longer. Little did I realize that we would spend one-half hour sitting in a construction stoppage. It became a much bigger deal in a hurry.

We noticed a highway information sign for The 49 ER Fuel Center truck stop at an approaching exit. I had never heard of this particular truck stop; it certainly wasn't a TA, Love's or Pilot, if you get my drift.

I should have kept on driving...

The Dukes of Hazzard were high class compared to this truck stop. The analogy is appropriate because we were within a few minutes of Hazard, Kentucky.

I should have known better...

My Mother raised me better than this...

The General Lee would have been a luxury car in this lot

A car parked beside me as I was getting out of the car. Now that, in and off itself, was not anything particularly out of the ordinary. The fact that it was a no parking area made it a bit more interesting.

I approached the door just as a woman was coming at the door from the inside. Since my Mom always taught me that you hold the door for a woman (I hesitate to call these women Ladies), I opened the door for her to exit before I would enter. The woman from the car beside me blasted through the door without a word; nearly knocking the woman coming out of the building over. The poor woman just looked at me with a rather shocked expression before laughing, thanking me and going on her way.

The building was completely filled with the haze and odor of cigarette smoke. To the right was a restaurant of sorts. A hallway to the restrooms was on the left. I thought the "Woman In A Hurry" might be having a restroom emergency, but that was quickly proven to be false when she turned to the right and made a beeline for a"back room" behind the restaurant.

The restaurant was equipped with tables and chairs from 1950's. The Formica-topped tables had metal legs and metal banding around the table top like the old kitchen table at Nana and Papa's house when we were kids. The chair backs and seats were covered with cracked vinyl and the legs were probably once chromed but now just pocked and puckered. The clientele sat, looking bored, as they ate their food in the smokey haze.

I made my way down the hall to the restrooms. There were not Men's and Women's restrooms; just two individual bathrooms. Both were in use when I arrived, so I had time to look around the dark hallway while waiting for one of the rooms to open.

The rooms were under raised about six inches from the hallway floor and were quite obviously under construction. The room was walled with concrete board screwed to the walls with no mud or paint. The floor was covered with a cheap vinyl floor covering.

The room looked as if it have been under construction for some time.

Probably years.

I was pleasantly shocked, though, to notice that the restroom was immaculately clean.

As I made my way to the exit, I noticed a Video Poker room along the hallway from the restroom to the restaurant. The room was packed with truckers at the dozens of machines; smoke filling the air.

There were two women working behind the counter; either one of whom could have beaten Leon Spinks. Okay, most women could have beaten Leon Spinks, but you get the point. I couldn't get out of there and back to the car quickly enough.

My first words upon getting back into the car were, "No restroom emergency; however great it may seem, will ever be serious enough to stop here again."

Diane and Joseph reported the woman who had busted through the door came rushing back out with whatever treasure she had purchased in the "back room." She tripped on one of the concrete parking lot curbs; swearing as she caught herself and her "treasure" before climbing back into her car and driving away.

Now I fully admit that I have, on very rare occasions, been known to exaggerate ever so slightly to make a story more interesting. This restaurant, and the story as a whole, require no exaggeration. Really!

I could not have made this up if I tried.

The Lazy Crew

It seems like a lot of people have a, "Do the least amount of work to get by," attitude. You don't survive long in a film and video production environment with that kind of attitude. In fact, you won't make it through a single shoot. Pretty much everyone I worked with had the exact opposite attitude; we came in early and worked late and did whatever we needed to do to make sure the production exceeded our clients' expectations.

That being said, there was one particular instance that we totally and completely violated that code. John was our boss. He was part owner of the business and we ultimately answered to him. He rarely came back into the soundstage or out on location other than to do a bit of schmoozing with the clients. Every once in a great while, though, he would decide to direct a shoot for a particular client. It wasn't normally a big deal because we were all used to dealing with directors and producers and their little idiosyncrasies.

John was a little different, though. He had a purely film production background and always wanted very complex lighting set ups. He was often rather difficult to please - to put it mildly. We learned our lesson on one particular shoot and pretty much carried our education forward on any shoots John directed.

I do not even remember the original client, but each evening John would tell us what he wanted for the first shot in the morning and it was our job to have it ready when he walked in the door. I was salaried so John didn't really care how many hours he worked me and I didn't really care how many hours I worked. Hey, I was single, without a girlfriend at the time and would only go home to my cat at the end of the day anyway.

The entire crew would arrive a couple of hours before we planned to roll tape. We carefully set up the lighting, ran the power and prepared the set according to his direction. John would roll in shortly before the client was set to arrive and take control of the set. We quickly learned that, no matter how much time and attention to detail we had put in on the set; John would come in and change virtually everything.

It didn't take us long to figure out that this was John's normal pattern. While none of us were afraid of working long, hard hours; we weren't naive, either, and didn't want to work long, hard hours only to have our hard work trashed.

So we came up with a plan. Each evening, John would lay out his plan for the first shot of the next morning. We all listened carefully and finished wrapping up the work for the day. The next morning, the entire crew would show up on set shortly before we expected John and randomly throw lights up in a pattern roughly resembling what he had spelled out the night before. He was going to come in and change it, anyway, so why should we go to great lengths to do it any other way?

Without fail, John would come in and complain about the lighting and pretty much change everything. We dutifully made all of his requested adjustments and often ended up with a setup much closer to what we would have set up if we had taken the time than what it would have been changed to if we had done it ahead of time.

That plan worked fine for us!

I don't think John ever caught on to us.

I Think We're In Harlem...

My sense of humor has always been just slightly off. I have been known to take great pleasure in keeping those around me slightly off balance. People who know me well attribute this to the fact that I am slightly off kilter myself.

I do not argue with them.

There may be no better example of my slightly warped sense of humor than an incident that happened while on a church mission trip with Joseph to New York City several years ago. Now I hate big cities. Despise them! My idea of a wonderful place to visit is some remote lake in the northwoods. Joseph, on the other hand, was in his element in NYC. I was convinced that they were going to use his face on the front of the new, "I Love New York," shirts. My face would appear on the, "I DESPISE NEW YORK WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING," shirts.

To give a bit of background; Joseph was going to NYC with a teen group from our church. The Youth Pastor called me one day to tell me that an anonymous donor had given money to cover the cost for me to go along as a chaperon. I was not very excited about the thought of going to NYC, but I went along to help.

Our group was comprised of 42 people and we stayed at a facility known as The Angel House in the East Village. The area around The Angel House was not a bad area, but it certainly wasn't Park Avenue, either. We occasionally heard gunshots at night. That didn't really phase me, but it gives you an idea of the kind of area we were in.

Our group was involved in many missions activities; distributing literature and doing concerts at various parks and locations around the city. Joseph even got to sing a solo during a mini-concert the group put on in Times Square! We also did some sightseeing while we were in town. We took the boat past The Statue Of Liberty and spent several hours at Ellis Island.

We also went to Ground Zero. While I am glad I went; I found the experience to be extremely emotional. I imagine that I will go back to the memorial and museum if I ever return to New York City, but the sights of the massive hole in the ground and the visible damage to the surrounding buildings were quite stressful. Many tributes still clung to the chain link fence they had built around the site; each one a grim reminder of a life that was snuffed out on that fateful Tuesday morning.

Our activities on one particular day had us taking the subway back to the station near The Angel House quite late in the evening. Two of the women in our group struck up a conversation with a young woman on our train. The women shared the Gospel with the young woman; who was very interested in continuing the conversation further. She got off the train at the same station our group disembarked in order to transfer to yet another train to continue toward our accommodations.

The women continued their conversation on the platform with the rest of the group hanging around the stairs that would lead to another platform where we would catch our next train. It became obvious as the conversation continued that we needed to split up the group to get them back to The Angel House since it was now approaching Midnight. I volunteered to stay behind and escort the ladies back to our accommodations whenever they finished their conversation. The rest of the group took off for the next train and returned to The Angel House.

I waited and I waited and I waited some more. The conversation continued for quite some time. The time really wasn't a concern except for the fact that the train we needed to take back to the station nearest The Angel House was no longer running by the time the ladies wrapped up their conversation.

The motto we lived by when I was in EMS was, "Adapt, Improvise and Overcome," so that is what I did.

Although the specific train that would take us directly to the station nearest The Angel House was no longer running; there were still trains running throughout the system so we would just have to modify our return journey through a couple of previously unnecessary stations.

No big deal.

At least for me.

The two ladies were a little unsettled by this time. The walk from our final station to The Angel House was a number of blocks. The streets of the East Village are still quite busy in the wee hours of the morning, and the ladies felt a bit intimidated. I really wasn't bothered because my attitude has always been that people don't bother you if you look like you know where you are going and know what you are doing. Don't be cocky, but don't look timid, either. Just behave like you would in any other situation.

We arrived safely back at The Angel House around 2:00 AM. Now The Angel House is a pretty secure building and you can't just walk into the building in the middle of the night. I had a cellphone, of course, so the solution was right there - call the group leader and have him come down and open the doors and outer gate from the inside.

My call was answered with a rather concerned, "Where are you?"

So, all that is background to finally get to the point where my rather warped sense of humor came into play. Without skipping a beat, I replied, "I'm not sure. I think we're in Harlem. The trains weren't running any more and I thought we got on the right train to get back, but..."

There was a very brief moment of panic as my words sunk in. Even my warped sense of humor couldn't let that go on for very long, though, before I laughed and told him we were standing outside the building.

Even he thought it was funny then.