Stays in my pocket since last week.  It costs $1.07.

What it does for me is take me out of myself for a second or so.  If I toss it high enough, I am lost in its trajectory for several seconds.  I sometimes bounce it off a wall.  When I get a chance, I toss it back and forth with Nita.

I suppose it is ineffable how the rubber sphere takes me back to the solid red versions I had as a child.  My new one is yellow with orange stripes.  As a child I was seldom without a ball of some sort.  I remember bouncing a basketball from my house on West Church street to the outdoor basketball court at Saluda Elementary.  I would shoot at one goal and then another and take the long way home bouncing all the way.  My knuckles swelled to twice their correct size.

I returned to ball throwing a couple of decades ago at Northwestern High School.  I think I found my first ball and jus started tossing it to relieve tension.  For a while tossing it at my door between classes as I monitored upstairs A-hall became a habit.  I would just lean against a wall and toss.  Inevitably a student would smile and become involved in play.  I loved catching a student looking my way so that I could toss it over.

Sun watches me now as I toss it outdoors but I know better than to allow her to have it.  Her tail begins to wag just seeing it come out.

When a ball is in the air, the mind goes to it and it only.  I seem to stop time and step out of my self momentarily.  Every other thought becomes secondary.  The aerial suspension forces my concentration on the pending convergence with my hands.

I like skipping out of myself.  Were I in Congress, I would like to toss one to an angry Republican so that we could come together for a brief spell.

 

 

I rarely lose my temper these days.  I think I am too old to let myself get worked up.  Today was an exception.

For the second time a neighbor’s pit bull put its teeth into the side of my dog Sun’s neck.  Sun did what she did about two years ago.  She remained still, only growling a bit.  She seems to know not to fight in general and not to fight from such a position.  I stepped back the full length of the leash.  The female of the house realized what her dog was doing and hollered “Brindle” repeatedly and came running.  She picked up the smaller white dog and continued hollering as she retreated with the small dog.

Her hollering brought the man of the house out.  About ten feet short of the street scene he was able to call Brindle off.  We were on the side opposite of their home and aligned with the home that comes before becoming aligned with their house.  We were more than fifteen feet from an imaginary street zone that would have fronted their house.  Just like last time.

The sun was out on this freezing day and Sun and were taking our usual short block, one-mile walk afternoon walk.  I was enjoying the blue sky and the melting snow.  Just like the last time, the attack was a bolt from out of nowhere.  I should have looked as I rounded the corner to glance toward the house as I usually do.  I have intercepted my dog-walking on occasions when I saw that the pit bull was out, a rarity.  It is usually to be heard barking indoors.  If I see the dog,  I turn around.

What caused my mini-volcano to emerge was the lack of contrition or apology.  As I began to move away, I stopped to complain loudly about their not controlling their dog.  “I have right to walk down the street!” I hollered.  Then I kept on going for three or four sentences. “What kind of citizens are you?” came out as a scream.  I think I said something about dangerous pit bulls in my third utterance.

The lady went ballistic on me.  I countered with “What if my dog or I had been hurt?”  (Sun was fine.)  Because Sun was not injured, she saw no wrong.  Neither the lady or the man expressed regret.  I think that is why I was so angry.  They should have been apologetic.

The man said what he said he had said last time.  “If you would just let your dog come play with Brindle, all would be fine.”  I walked away speechless.  I do not remember his saying that last time when Brindle attacked when I was walking with Brian Nakosone and Sun.  Today’s episode was nearly a carbon copy of last time.

I do not plan to bring Sun into their yard or even close on the street.  I have no appetite for a dog play date with Brindle. A hundred yards later brought me to the corner and Ragin Lane.  My thoughts were centered on my rare outburst.  I rarely lose my temper, but I am glad I did.  I hope some his close neighbors witnessed the little street theater that I acted out.  Losing my temper felt strange but therapeutic.  Maybe humans are designed to lose tempers from time to time.  I used to pretend to lose mine with a class at school.  Doing so seemed to wake them up a bit, though any teacher who regularly loses his temper would not last long in teaching.

Pit bulls are dangerous.  Their defensive owners are dangerous.  In a skinny minute I would put my dog down if it were malicious.  A dog is an animal.  People should not be threatened by the malicious breed. In November an elderly man was attacked by two pit bulls belonging to two separate owners in York as he decorated his yard for Christmas.  He spent about two weeks in the hospital and faces more surgery.  Mayor Eddie Lee conducted a hearing to try to enact an ordinance governing malicious dogs.  It went nowhere as pit owners came out 100 strong to defend their breed.

Rare is the day when there is not a story about a murder in the Charlotte area.  Rare is a week without a story about a pit bull attack in our area. Guns are tolerated.  Pit bulls are tolerated.  I just do not see how so many can be blind to common sense.  Putting pit bulls and guns ahead of citizenship is not rationale.  What goes on in their heads?  I suppose Brindle was cuddled and given a treat.  I am OK and Sun takes aggression in stride, but lunatics inhabit suburbia.

 

One of my best compositions is about the houses I have lived in.  I wrote it about ten years ago and have it and other autobiographical compositions stored in my computer and printed out for storage in my fire box.  My thinking is that someday someone might want to access what I was like, what I thought. (My first blog entry, Why I Created danielforrest.org explains that in more detail.)

In thinking back through all my houses, I traveled back into my self and came to realize who I was in those spaces.  Will remembering myself through offices work?  I am not sure but I have private reason for choosing the subject.

I have done some thinking on the subject from my viewing of Mad Men.  It is a superb television series that springs from its office setting.  Don Drapper and all of the characters were who they were in large part through that office work setting.  Of course, being a large advertising agency in NYC in the 1960s meant that offices were hierarchal: size, placement, and decor mattered and related to status.  Copywriters and women did not have offices.

Mars Inc. comes to mind, too.  The largest candy maker in the world has an open office design without hierarchal designation of any sort.  The CEO does not even have a special parking spot.  I could go on about this giant confectionary company that arose out of supplying candy that would not easily melt to WW I soldiers, but its office philosophy is part of is excellence.

As a small boy I reported to work at C.B.Forrest and Sons at the corner of West Church and Main Streets downtown Saluda.  My regular job was to make suit boxes up and fill the two bins on either side of the triple mirror in the suit department.  They were dove gray with a medium blue C.B. Forrest logo.  I knew I was done when both bins were full as high as I could reach.  For that work I received a quarter.  If my father Harold was not too busy, he would walk over with a customer to chat me up.  I remember looking up at him in to see the yellow tape measure that always hung around his neck and crossed over the starched white shirt that he came home at lunch to change fresh at lunch daily.

The store office area interested me but I knew better than to linger in that tight space just inside the Church Street entrance.  A huge walnut desk with dozens of cubby holes and filling cabinets formed the wall to the store.  Once inside the space the only way to see out was to look down into the women’s department.  Most likely Mrs. Edwards would be watching me.  Sometimes, though, she would be busy with a customer and I would stare at the massive desk piled high with invoices.  It was a fascinating one-person space to a ten-year-old boy.

To move me on Harold or his father C.B. would show up and out the door I went to contemplate what to do with my new wealth.  Part of it would be invested in Mars Inc. for sure, but leftover change would go far in the Five and Dime across the street.

At thirteen I went seriously to work at the Red and White Supermarket two doors west up Church street just past Truman Trotter’s barber shop.  Its office there, like the slightly bigger one in the new store we moved into three years later, was about the size of two sheets of plyboard raised up off floor high enough to require a two-tread step for entry.  It overlooked the cash registers. I do not recall every entering the space but I do remember standing near the step to collect a brown perpendicular pay envelope that held something like twenty dollars for my week’s worth.  Johnny Wheeler and I would be rush out on Saturday nights to get into Simon Wolf’s wee dry goods store to consider the purchase of a garment like a sweater.  Simon was one of those merchants who stayed open past 9 p.m. to capture the remnants of the Saturday crowd.  Hard to believe that I aspired to be a clothes horse!

Certain office spaces from Saluda come to mind.  I will never forget Mrs. Nelle Taylor’s office just past the school office at Saluda High School.  I would go into the main office when required to do my turn at daily devotion with a big silver microphone held up to my chin, but I never spent time there.  Mrs. Taylor’s office was just down the front hall adjacent to the main office  before the first classroom.  It was about ten-feet wide and had an outer and inner area.  I went into the inner area twice.  Once to be told that my dad killed himself and once to receive a talk about college applications.

In some vague ways I see an office here or there at Newberry College or USC Columbia.  I put myself through college with my own earnings and the $8,333.00 split of my dad’s insurance money.  Rarely did I enter into an office at college and most were closets stacked with books occupied by professors who reluctantly took time to initial a document that I had to have signed.  I used one college handbook–I wish I had it back–to matriculate through three years of USC.  It had my notes and was to me a kind of Bible that I studied.  I remember showing sections of it to Nita.

No office comes to mind in my time in the U.S. Army and South Carolina National Guard, but in 1972 I became a teacher at Rawlinson Road Junior High School on West Main Street in Rock Hill for ten years. Its office is clear in my mind decades later.  I usually arrived an hour early to find principal Mike Pinson at the secretary’s desk typing the daily memo on a purple ditto master sheet, which allowed no room for mistakes.  Never did he fail to break his concentration to cheerily greet me.  Without doubt I never encountered a better educator on any level than that hard-driving red-head who gave up a career in chemistry to help children, including my son Chris.

Across from the narrow main area which was fronted by a store window type display that always showcased some club or school activity as smartly as a Belks window, was the nurse’s station with a tiny bathroom.  Straight down the hall a visitor came to three offices on the left and one big room on the right, the ISS room (in school suspension area lovingly lorded over by Mrs. Isom) on the right.

Mr. Pinson rarely set foot in his office during the day.  His rule was to teach one class for some teacher every day, drop in on others, and constantly move about.  Occasionally he would call me into his office to witness.  I hated that.  Striking an adolescent with a wooden paddle required an outside adult to be named on the yellow discipline form.  He made the witnessing short by nodding as soon as it was over and saying, “Thank you, Mr. Forrest.”  I always signed quickly, avoided speaking and staring in order to keep the embarrassment brief.

My classrooms at Rawlinson Road for ten years and at Northwestern for more than two decades were my offices for most of my work career.  I usually was free to use them during my planning period but I was rarely totally alone.  Study hall students with English problems visited most days.  I do remember enjoying the degree of privacy that my classrooms afforded me and missed that alone time when I taught Adult Ed at the Career Development Center and English at York Technical College.  My office in those places was the hallway or any unlocked, unoccupied room that I found.

I remember Superintendent Jeff Savage’s office on East Main Street in Rock Hill vividly from my visits there being in the mid 1970s.  It was on the left-hand side of the ground floor of what had been a large two-story home.  To get to it one moved past a receptionist into his private secretary’s office and then into Mr. Savage’s office.  Befitting a man of his girth and position, he was to be found sitting behind a very big dark desk.  He did not get up when I went in there with my friend Scottie Edwards to say that the pay raise proposal was inadequate and class sizes had grown too large. “You are crazy as hell, boy,” I remember him saying to me in one meeting.  I shakily held my ground and he came to explain his position which had to do with how the York County delegation and York County Superintendent had his hands tied in regard to purse strings.

Inspired by the power of our newly created Rock Hill Education Association, we respectfully marched on by winning over County Superintendent Williamson and the delegation members including Sam Mendenhall, Bob McFadden, Coleman Poag, and Sammy Fewell. I addressed the board that year and in later years to ask for smaller classes and more money.  We played our part in making Rock Hill District #3 one of the highest paying districts in the state.   In later years when superintendents became slippery public relations experts, I came to admire Savage’s bluntness.

Nita and I lived at 1281 India Hook Road when Chris was in high school and Danielle was attending Richmond Drive Elementary School.  I attempted to establish a home office there by placing boards across the coat closet to create a desk.  I sat in there with the door closed and did some work.  We kept our records in there.  It was a bad office because it was windowless, ventless, and too small.  I do not like remembering it because I made one of the worst discoveries of my life there.

Now I sit in our office area in my home on 728 Ragin Lane.  It was originally a carport for the first owner and then a solid black and orange office for plumbing supplies big enough for storage and a secretary who helped Bill Bufford keep records and make sales.  With Curt Shoaf’s invaluable help, we turned it into a bedroom for Danielle for the first few years of our rehabbing this old 1955 ranch home.  Upon my retirement my first big project was to tear out the drop ceiling, build shelves, and paint. I enjoy my time here because I have windows, space, and privacy.

“Office” brings up endless ideas.  I think that iPhones are a kind of new office and I think workers who have the benefit of privacy to concentrate are more productive.   I have only recently had the luxury of a nice office; it is important to me because I can isolate myself and think in here.  Work space matters.

 

 

 

The good news is that the Senator Mitch McConnell standstill will end.  Legislation will move.  As promised by their leader, the Republicans attempted to shut down government for all eight years of the Obama administration.  They succeeded in doing so for all but the first two years.

Even if I do not like what passes, I will enjoy the legislature doing something.  I believe that most citizens conflate the legislature with the administration.  President Obama took most all of the blame for government problems when, in fact, most were caused by the Republicans who controlled both the House and the Senate and attempted to thwart any policy put forth by the White House.  Now that the Republicans own the government lock, stock, and barrel, the voters will have to blame  problems on the GOP.  They will have to stop criticizing and legislate.

I also think that the underlying smoldering racism that the Republicans created when they took the South in 1968 after the Democrats were blamed for the advances in Civil Rights under Lyndon Johnson came to a head during the Obama years.  Now the pimple is popped.  Republican racism will be be out in the open.  Hiding a problem is not healthy.  Democrats are seen as soft on welfare.  The Republicans will be forced to show what has never been addressed: lingering racism.  The passage of Civil Rights reforms was a giant step but white criticism of African-Americans and Hispanics will now show itself more clearly in how the Republicans govern.

Passing laws and uncovering racial tension could be good in the long run.  What worries me is that Trump has never worked in the public sector for others.  His business is private.  I do not think he will be able to work well in the public sphere.  He has the equivalent of a board to answer to now.

His policies in regard to privatizing education, eliminating progress on the environment, and expanding nuclear arms could put the United States into the kind of jeopardy it faced going back to WW II.  Our imperfect democratic system has spoken and I am so worried that I wake up in the wee hours of the morning with dark thoughts.  I predict that within six months a considerable backlash to Trump will develop and the country will move back toward a more moderate center.

 

 

 

Today’s weather is mostly sunny with a high near 70.  As usual I took Sun for a walk.  Being Christmas, I took advantage of the low traffic volume and walked up Ragin Lane to Fewell Park.  Not a person was stirring.  Sun and I had the entire park to ourselves.   We circled through Fewell Estates and came home to do a few chores.

I started a ham baking in anticipation of Elle’s arrival tomorrow.  We are spending Christmas alone but Elle flies into Charlotte at about 5 A.M. tomorrow and flies out on New Year’s day at about 6:30 A.M.  Chris and his family will come to visit on Tuesday, December 27.  I will add a turkey to the ham for our lunch that day.

To keep myself out of the doldrums on this beautiful day, I went for a bicycle ride, though peddling is hard on my neck.  I rode down Ebenezer Road to turn off on Grady Drive to see the lights that Nita and I had seen last night.  Except for a lady and two matched white dogs I saw no one which led me to Cherry Road and Rock Hill Homes.  I wanted to see some kids playing with Christmas toys.

My total people count jumped to 21 as I weaved in an out of Rock Hill Homes’ curving streets.  For sure I saw close to 10 children engaged in play.  The three young teens playing basketball in the street would not acknowledge my greeting but they were young and black.  An old guy like me must have seemed strange.  Just after passing them I saw a girl of about ten with a new bicycle.  Her brother, I suppose, was driving his radio controlled car under it on the sidewalk.

I liked best seeing the kid about 14 self-consciously playing with a drone toy.  He turned away to keep it going or to be cool but I felt I knew he was enjoying seeing the contraption rising in the sky even if he was supposed to be too big to enjoy such a toy. Find my way out I came across the sound of Latin music booming from a Chevy Tahoe with all doors opened. In the doorway of the block home a few feet away I saw a young man talking to a women.  I hoped it was his sister or young wife and that they were admiring the sound quality.  I could hear the music a block away as I saw two young girls running away from two small dogs impending their walk toward their mother who was on her phone.

I turned into Shadow Brook subdivision to finish out my ride and saw four people walking in the distance.  Catching up to them, I confirmed my suspicion: Frank and Linda Stewart were out walking with their daughter and her husband.  I walked and talked with them for awhile.  Seeing other people outside cheers me.

 

 

Christmas Essay 2015