The August 20, 2003 “ZIGGY” cartoon strip had Ziggy saying he’d
prefer more rest stops and fewer tollbooths on the highway of life. A variation on that attitude was expressed
in a little blurb in the TEXAS CPA some years ago: “Work – when we have it, we wish we didn’t. When we don’t have it, we wish we did. The object of most of it is to be able to afford not to do any,
some day.” Fortunately, I was never
without work very long when I really needed it, and never wished I didn’t have
work when I did, but I’ll confess I often looked forward to the day when I could
afford not to do any some day (if that should be my choice); daily routines
grew tiresome for both Arlette and me as our pre-retirement years wore on.
Having time to rest adequately, after years on the go, can’t be fully
appreciated until it is experienced.
Arlette and I haven’t been couch potatoes in retirement, for our
slowdown from full-time work has been punctuated with artistic endeavors, two
fifteen-month periods of employment, helping start a new church, working on
about thirty church-related construction projects, helping the kids and other
relatives in family and business matters when needed, and simply keeping the
home fires burning. But retirement’s
demands on our energies have in no way compared to those of the first
thirty-two years of our joint walk through life, the intensity of which I will
review briefly:
·
1950-53: For a time
I worked part-time for Dun & Bradstreet and graded for an accounting
instructor in addition to carrying a full course load at the University of
Texas. Later, during a year and a half
of thesis preparation I studied for the Practice part of the CPA exam and was a
full-time employee of the Texas Education Agency, so still burnt much midnight
oil.
·
1954-55: Preparing
for and teaching classes in Baylor's evening college while working days for a
Waco CPA firm kept me hopping. Tax
season meant six full days of work at the office each week; partners and staff
met at 6:30 on Saturday mornings during tax season to study the 1954 income tax
code, taking turns leading the study.
·
1955-70: My two
years at Convair-Fort Worth were relatively undemanding time-wise, but the
first ten or twelve years at TIMEX were six day a week affairs, with many
nights spent at the office. Most of
those late worknights ended by eleven o'clock or midnight, but in Abilene I
sometimes left the office as late as 3:00 AM, then returned by eight
o'clock. (I am an "afternoon and
evening person," so the late hours weren't particularly hard to take, but
I dreaded hearing the radio come on at six o'clock each morning; getting my
feet on the floor was often the most difficult task of my day.)
·
Arlette was kept busy with little ones, at all hours, for
the first nine years after they started coming along in 1951, then, in 1960,
when Marty started play school, she went back to college. Homework kept her up late most nights,
because family demands were unabated (I was working long hours during those
years, and wasn't always home in the evenings, so she often couldn't
concentrate on school work until the kids were abed). As an educator, Arlette always worked an hour or two at school
each day after her second-graders left, then brought work home. She cooked supper, then, after cleaning up
the kitchen (sometimes unaided), usually had to grade papers or make posters
and teaching aids – all while meeting needs of three kids and a husband. She continued dual responsibilities of
teacher and homemaker until the end of the 1982 spring term, just two months
before I retired.
As if the
above weren’’t workload enough, Arlette earned her Master’s degree while she
taught school. I noted in an earlier segment
that she received her M.S.E. degree from the University of Central Arkansas at
the end of the 1975 spring term.
Earning that degree involved many trips to Conway for evening classes
over a period of several years; until her last year at UCA (when she could take
I-430 across the Arkansas River), trips to Conway required driving eastward to
downtown Little Rock to cross the river, then turning north and westward for
Conway.
That I should consider time to rest as a major benefit of retirement,
particularly for Arlette after her nearly twenty-two years of simultaneous
careers of housewife and scholar/teacher, should come as no surprise. But too much rest can “make Jack a dull
boy,” so we’ve been glad for most diversions that came along, with the
exception of those made necessary by misfortunes of others.
I’ve appropriated terminology from the King
James Version of Luke’s gospel for the caption of this segment; at verse 21 of
chapter 14 Luke quotes Jesus as having said, “Go out...and bring…the maimed,
the halt, and the blind.” Those words
appear in a parable wherein an invitation to a feast was extended to all types
of people, including the maimed, halt (an archaic term for the lame, or
crippled), and blind; it didn’t deal with caring for them, but I think He would
have commended (commanded?) care for people in those conditions. Retirement has allowed Arlette and me
several opportunities to be helpful in such situations:
Mother’s
major problem was pain from polymyalgia rheumatica, a
connective tissue disease, but the condition was undiagnosed for nearly two
years, during which she was dependent on morphine-based medication for relief
from severe aching over much of her body; Dr. Anne Roberts, a Bolivar native returned
to practice medicine in her hometown, diagnosed the disease, then prescribed
Prednisone and other helpful medications.
Arlette
and I shared the caretaking responsibility with Twila and Hugh until Mother
entered the Missouri Baptist Home at Ozark on May 6, 1996. Twila and Hugh, living next door, were there
far more than we, but in 1995 I was in Bolivar part of all twelve months; that,
of course, could be possible with only six visits.
Mother placed
her assets in a revocable trust (with Baptist Home as the trustee) when she
entered the care facility; costs of her care were deducted from her
account. She wouldn’t have been
expelled from the Home had she outlived her assets, for costs of her care would
then have been borne by Missouri Baptists.
On the other hand, funds remaining in the trust at her death would be
distributed to beneficiaries of the trust.
That arrangement, available to anyone who has been a member of a
Missouri Baptist church for at least one year, is the best senior-care system
of which I am aware.
Mother
remained at the Baptist Home until shortly before her October 7. 2000 death
(from an abdominal obstruction) at Doctors Hospital in Springfield. Several months after her death, Twila and I
were each sent checks for one-half the value of assets remaining after payment
of (1) her final expenses and (2) a bequest of 10% of the trust balance to the
Missouri Baptist Foundation (as per her instructions).
While sorting through old photos, Arlette
found the first one ever made of the two of us together (at a 1949 Halloween
carnival); we had wondered for forty-five years where the picture had
gone. I hadn’t liked the photo, so had
hidden it in a chest of drawers in our first apartment, but couldn’t find it
when Arlette asked about it. Neither of
us knows how her mother acquired the photo; Arlette thinks I may have given it
to her (inasmuch as I didn’t like it), but I have no memory of doing so. The photo has since been used in (1) a July
25, 1999 Brownwood Bulletin spread
about our family’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the day
Arlette and I met and (2) a “how they met” piece in the October 3, 1999 issue
of the Arkansas Democrat/Gazette.
Arlette’s
mother came to Little Rock with us after the sorting/discarding decisions were
completed, spent a month getting “built up” physically for a change of
residence, returned to her home for a few days, moved to the Texas Masonic
Retirement Center in midsummer of 1995, and resided there until her death March 2,
2002.
·
At least one
opportunity for helping the lame/halt/blind arose outside our circle of
relatives when (while doing church outreach one day during the mid-‘90s)
Arlette and I met Don Davis a
day or two after his stolen car had been found in Helena; he had no way of
going after the car, so a day or two later we took him to get it. We learned that none of his immediate family
lived in Arkansas, his health wasn’t good, and he sometimes needed assistance
with maintenance problems he couldn’t handle alone.
Don
often called me (over the next several years) for assistance with carpentry and
plumbing repairs on his mobile home; he couldn’t handle those tasks because he
had a bad back, was afflicted with emphysema, and (he later learned) had more serious
lung problems. We helped him find a
newer car when he needed one, and I sometimes carried him to medical facilities
when the nature of his treatments prohibited his driving. He always offered payment when I helped him,
but I didn’t accept anything other than occasional gasoline money, telling him
my time wasn’t worth anything – and, besides, friends were supposed to help
each other; he, however, got the last word, for he left written instructions
that I was to receive his television, VCR, and microwave oven at his death.
Don died July 23, 2002. He had left his burial policy, car title,
and other important documents with me for safekeeping, so I was involved to
some extent with final arrangements, and even said a few words at his burial:
I
am reminded on occasions such as this, which occur ever more frequently as
relatives and long-time acquaintances grow older and pass on, that no matter
how many years we may spend upon this earth, the important thing about those
years is not in their number, but in the relationships we’ve established with
our Creator through the Lord Jesus Christ.
With that in mind, I’d like to read excerpts about relationships from
several passages in the apostle John’s record of the acts and words of Jesus
during His earthly ministry. John said,
speaking of Jesus (John 1:12), “…as many as received Him, to them He gave the
right to become children of God, even to those who believe on His name.” John quoted Jesus as likening Himself to a
shepherd over His flock (John 10:9,10,15,28), “I am the door; if anyone enters
through Me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture…I came
that they might have life, and might have it abundantly…and I lay down My life
for the sheep…and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and
no one shall snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” John noted that, as Jesus talked about His impending return to be
with His Father following His death and resurrection, He said the abundant life
would extend beyond the grave and throughout eternity (John 14:2-3,6): “In my Father’s house are many dwelling
places; … I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive
you to Myself, that where I am there you may be also…I am the way, and the
truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” On that same subject, at another point (John
11:25-26) Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in
Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall
never die.”
I asked Don’s daughter Sandy, when she and
her husband were in Little Rock after her dad’s death, if they couldn’t use the
items Don had said I should receive.
They said they would leave the microwave oven in the furnished mobile
home (they had renters for it) if I didn’t mind, but wanted me to take the VCR
and television set; I picked the two items up from the renters, and we use
both.
I often reply, when asked how I’m doing, “Not bad, considering old age
and other infirmities;” I’ve been fortunate in being healthy enough, to this
point, to be flippant. While Arlette
and I haven’t totally escaped incapacitations during our retirement years,
we’ve been sidelined only temporarily when so beset.
Arlette’s inability to
operate from her starboard side didn’t stop her artwork. She did several paintings with her left
hand, one of which was about as good as any she has ever done; she gave it to
Dr. Thomas Binzer, the physician who set her arm at Granbury’s Hood General
Hospital about midnight on that Friday before Christmas. (That she could do good “off-hand” paintings illustrates my contention that artistic ability is born in the
artist, that it can only be developed, not acquired.)
Fortunately,
except for those relatively short-lived incapacitations, Arlette and I have,
for the most part, been able to live normal lives (with the assistance of
modern medications). She fell backwards
off our back steps several years ago and fractured a vertebra; the ongoing pain
triggered by that accident is pretty well controlled by medication. She took Crestor for cholestorol control for
a time, but discontinued it after suffering intolerable side affects; I’ve
taken Lipitor for that
purpose for the past few years, and have taken medication to control blood
pressure for most of
my retirement years.
I’ve forgotten the name of the first blood pressure
medicine prescribed for me, but, after it became ineffective, I was given
Prinivil, which worked fine at controlling blood pressure, but
ultimately (after several years) caused me to develop a deep cough that kept me
awake nights. Arlette urged me for
weeks to see our doctor, during which I told her I would go see him if my cough
ever bothered me as much as it did her; after a number of nights on the couch,
hanging my head over a vaporizer, coughing almost continuously, I visited the
doctor, he switched me to Hyzaar, and my cough disappeared after a few weeks.
The March 12, 1994 rotator cuff injury mentioned in the previous
segment occurred during a three-on-three basketball game (involving son-in-law Gregg, grandsons Drew and Travis, two
neighborhood kids, and me), when I broke toward the basket to receive a pass
from Gregg, but was tripped, causing me to tumble into the edge of our concrete
driveway. I kept playing for another
forty-five minutes, although I couldn’t raise my arm over my head. As the day wore on I realized I couldn’t
even lift my right arm away from my body.
Because the pain was never intense, I assumed (1) I was just banged up
like an old cowboy thrown into a corral fence, and (2) the injury would soon
heal.
Three months passed, but I still couldn’t move my arm away from my
body, so in mid-June I visited Dr. Ken Martin.
He suspected a torn rotator cuff, and sent me to Dr. Henry Lile, a
radiology consultant, to confirm his suspicions. Confirmation received, Dr. Martin scheduled surgery for August
11, the earliest date both our schedules would accommodate. He repaired the rotator cuff and
arthroscopically removed calcium built up in the shoulder joint. He had difficulty reconnecting an atrophied
(and torn away) muscle from my arm to the cuff, but solved the problem by
grooving the bone enough to allow him to stretch the muscle to meet the cuff.
I couldn’t use my right arm for several weeks after the surgery. I wore an abduction pillow between my body and my partially raised arm
day and night for about three weeks; I was forced to sleep on my back,
something I wasn’t used to. The six
months of therapy following surgery was the most painful part of the whole
experience, but by the time therapy was completed I could again reach upward
with my right arm.
I can (and do) play basketball again, but can’t put the
ball up as easily as was possible before the injury. I can’t throw baseballs (or rocks) smoothly. Also, I can’t serve a tennis ball as well as I once did, probably because I can’t bring my arm
quite as straight over the top; I was never great at serving, anyhow, so the
world hasn’t lost a seniors champion.
Some might say old age is responsible for my athletic
shortcomings nowadays, but I continue to attribute them to effects of the
rotator cuff injury. Regardless of my
age, I’ve continued to participate in sports (e.g., Marty, Drew, Travis, and I
played basketball – in temperature exceeding 100 degrees – on the day before
Arlette and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, twenty-five
days before my 74th birthday.
I think the rest of the family thought we were all crazy, and probably
knew I was).
I’ve continued playing basketball with neighborhood kids; Arlette and I laugh about her answering the
doorbell to have kids ask, “Mrs. Miller, can Mr. Miller come out and
play?” A recent such inquiry occurred
Sunday afternoon, February 13, 2005; I told the three boys I’d play, but I’d
have to quit in time to get ready for church.
I should have stopped sooner than I did, for my legs got tangled up with
those of two of the boys as we vigorously pursued a loose ball; I hit the
pavement hard – head, left shoulder, and knee.
My head bounced, it and my knee were scraped, and my shoulder was
rendered partially inoperative; the knot on my head didn’t look too good, and I
could barely move my arm, when I went to church Sunday evening.
The soreness dissipated in the weeks after the tumble, and
I can again move the arm normally, but perhaps I am too old to be playing
basketball. Do I have sense enough not
to?
Arlette and I have been on hand at, or soon after, the births of our
last five grandchildren (Stephen/Drew/Kristen/ Alyssa/Jeffrey). We even managed to be on hand during Travis’ early days, even
though he was born in 1981, the year before we retired; Arlette took a week of
personal leave and I took a week of vacation.
I was working again (at Oakley’s) when Stephen and Drew were born (in
December, 1983 and April, 1984, respectively), but was able to take time
off. I was a week late getting to
Siloam Springs after Drew’s birth, but Arlette went there immediately, to care
for three-year-old Travis while his dad was at work. A lively little boy, Travis provided amusement:
·
When Arlette laid out his clothes the Wednesday morning before I
arrived (while Terry was still confined to the hospital), Travis told her he
couldn’t wear the shirt she had selected.
She thought the cartoon characters on it were cute, so insisted he put
it on; he sort of grinned and complied.
She took him to play school, then to choir, supper and Wednesday evening
activities at church – his regular routines.
When bedtime came he told her he didn’t have to change shirts to go to
bed. Her “Why not?” evoked a big laugh
and the comment, “Because I already have my pajama shirt on!” He had waited all day to have a laugh at his
grandmother’s expense. She said,
“Travis, your mother is going to kill me for letting you go around all day in a
pajama shirt,” at which he laughed even harder.
·
His excitement about a new little brother was revealed as we listened
to a sermon on our car radio while he, Arlette, and I returned to Siloam
Springs after a visit with his mother at the Rogers hospital. The radio preacher mentioned the name
“Andrew,” and Travis exclaimed, “He said Drew!” We laughed and didn’t try to correct him – we were surprised that
a little boy who had just turned three was even listening to the radio sermon.
Arlette and I have both been free, and on hand in San Antonio, at the
times of, or immediately after, the births of Kristen in 1987, Alyssa in 1991,
and Jeffrey in 1995.
◊◊◊
Although we’ve never lived in the same town with any of the
grandchildren, each of them has spent time with us in Little Rock, and we’ve
taken all of them camping at various places in Arkansas and Texas. One summer (1990) we took Kristen, Drew,
Stephen, and Travis (their ages ranged from three to nine) camping on the
Buffalo River. The kids all slept on the RV couch (the only
bed in our small RV other than our cabover space); two had their heads at one
end of the couch and two had their heads at the other, with their legs a mass
in the middle. The system worked better
than might have been expected, except once when all must have turned over at
the same time in the same direction; Stephen and Drew fell off the bed onto the
floor, but neither woke up. I climbed
down from our cabover bed, lifted Stephen back onto the couch, and put Drew on
the bed with us. Neither boy remembered
anything of the incident the next morning.
◊◊◊
Kristen spent a month with us the summer she was eight (1996). We left San Antonio on a Saturday afternoon,
then camped that night and Sunday at the Blue Hole Campground in Wimberley; while
there we visited briefly with Carolyn and Homer Swartz, attended First Baptist
Church on Sunday, and Kristen spent most of that afternoon swimming in the Blue
Hole.
We came northward from Wimberley to Tolar, to visit a couple of days with
Ruth and Virgil. The five of us went to
Acton one afternoon, to see old sights and marvel at recent changes. Our tour included a visit to the Acton
cemetery, the older parts of which look much as they did when I was a kid, and
in which were buried many relatives, including my dad, both sets of
grandparents (Miller and Grammer), at least two great-grandparents
(Great-Grandmother Goodwin and Great-Granddad Stribling), two
great-great-grandparents (David Sloan Stribling and Joanne Hodges Stribling), several
great-aunts and great-uncles, plus some cousins. I don’t know how many relatives of Stribling ancestry are buried
at Acton cemetery, but a list thereof would be impressive.
Kristen skipped frivolously about when we
first reached the cemetery, as any lively child might, but, after we showed her
several graves of deceased relatives, she started walking in rectangles, around
all graves (without any adult prompting).
We eventually reached the grave of David Sloan Stribling, our oldest
ancestor buried at Acton. I counted for
her, on my fingers, the generations from Sloan Stribling down to herself; I
started with him, then came his son James, James’ daugher Bess (my grandmother
Grammer), plus the generations still alive at the time – my mother, myself, Marty
(Kristen’s dad), and, lastly, Kristen herself, who represented the seventh
generation. Kristen’s reaction to the
genealogical summary was, “I want to be buried here.”
The rest of us thought that quite humorous, coming from an
eight-year-old.
We came on home a day or two later. While in Arkansas Kristen attended Immanuel
Baptist’s Vacation Bible School and we took her camping on Greer’s Ferry
Lake. She greatly enjoyed
swimming/diving in the lake and roller-blading the asphalt drives of the
campground.
◊◊◊
Jeffrey, Marty’s youngest (born March 9, 1995), first camped with
Arlette and me when he was three (August, 1998). Arlette and I were in the San Antonio area (with our RV parked at
Guadalupe River State Park) after having attended a reunion of ‘47/’48/’49
Brownwood High School graduates. When
we went into town to see Marty and family the first evening, Jeffrey decided
he’d like to spend the night and next day at the park, so returned with us to
the campground that evening. He
provided us with a couple of laughs before we took him home late the next day:
·
Arlette and Jeffrey decided they would go with me when I
took the RV to the dump station to empty our gray water holding tank; Jeffrey
looked back to the living area as we drove along (he was riding shotgun) and
exclaimed, “Our house is coming with us!.” Although he had been inside the RV numerous
times when it was parked in his driveway at home, he apparently had thought it
was a trailer like the one belonging to his other grandparents.
·
We didn’t let Jeffrey play in the river, because several
people had been afflicted with a disease (the name of which I don’t remember)
that summer after swimming in Texas lakes and rivers; we told him he’d better
do his swimming in his pool at home. He
accepted the disappointment with equanimity, but said to himself as we departed
the park, “Jeffrey, I’m sorry you didn’t get to swim in the river.”
◊◊◊
Greer’s Ferry Lake, just north of Heber
Springs, is perhaps the grandkids’ favorite camping place in Arkansas; they
love swimming in the clear, blue water.
Travis, Drew, Kristen, Alyssa, and Jeffrey have camped there with us. A particularly memorable time was in June, 1999
(Alyssa and Jeffrey were along) when a freakish cold front arrived about the
same time we did. The kids insisted on
swimming every day, turning blue in the process; we kept a campfire going the
entire week, mainly for warming up after cold swims.
Alyssa and
Jeffrey spent about three weeks in Arkansas during that 1999 visit. Besides taking them camping and to Vacation
Bible School at our church, we took them to Missouri for a couple of days, to
visit Twila, Hugh, and my mother. On
the return trip we stopped to let the kids play along the Buffalo River at the
US 65 crossing. I showed them how to
skip rocks across the water, but Jeffrey started throwing toward Alyssa as he
aimed in the general direction of the river.
I told him to stop throwing at her, or I was going to “pop” him. He asked, “What’s a ‘pop,’” then
threw a rock which hit Alyssa in the back of her head; I instantly “popped” the
seat of his shorts with my bare hand, whereupon he exclaimed, “Oh, that’s what a
‘pop’ is!” Fortunately, Alyssa hadn’t
been hurt badly, we could laugh at his “learning,” and he ceased throwing in
her direction. (Asked at Christmas,
2002 whether he remembered the incident, Jeffrey said, “My bottom is still
red.”)
◊◊◊
The grandkids have, of course, attended church with us when visiting in
Little Rock – first at Calvary Baptist, then Pinnacle/Immanuel West, and, since
1998, Geyer Springs First Baptist Church.
GSFBC, with its large sanctuary, choir, and orchestra, catches the kids’
musical attention. One Sunday evening,
soon after we moved into the new GSFBC sanctuary, Jeffrey asked as the worship
activities started, “Where are the angels?” He missed the robed choir, which doesn’t
usually perform on Sunday evenings.
◊◊◊
The 2001/02 school-year was Jeffrey’s first. After school was out, Jeffrey asked Arlette where his present
was. Arlette asked, “What present?” Jeffrey answered, “My graduation present.”
“Graduation from what?”
“First grade!”
I suppose his graduation from kindergarten the previous year led him to
expect similar “commencement” celebrations after each year of school.
◊◊◊
I posed a series of riddles one day in June, 2002 while Alyssa and
Jeffrey camped with Arlette and me at the Rocky Point Campground on
Wright-Patman Lake, south of Texarkana.
To the question, “What is black and white and read all over?” Alyssa,
10, correctly responded, “A newspaper.”
To the next riddle, “Round as a biscuit, busy as
a bee, prettiest little thing you ever did see,” Jeffrey, 7, quickly answered,
“Grandmother.” I’m not sure the
expected answer, “A watch,” ever broke through the ensuing laughter. Arlette laughed with the rest of us, and
said, “We’ll have to send that to Mature Living’s ‘Grandparents Brag
Board.’” (I submitted the story to Mature
Living, but heard nothing from its editors.)
Time for Family/Relatives/Friends