More and more these days I find myself having to take an extra second or so to call some things to mind ... things like someone’s name when I can see their face clear as day, and have even known them for at least a couple of lifetimes.
Most of the time the “missing” information will eventually come, but then there are the times when something will come across my train of thought that hasn’t been there in a long, long time. And when that happens, I’m overwhelmed and mystified by it all, wondering: “Where did that come from?”
Not too long ago, I was on the way to town from my house, not speeding but clicking along at the posted speed limit. I’m sure I was multi-tasking, although sending text messages isn’t something I do behind the wheel even before the law was passed.
But more than likely I was thinking about where I’d been, where I was going, and what was still waiting for some attention. And maybe I was lost in another time and another place, but still doing, I think, an admirable job of staying on the road and not running over anyone or anything.
As I approached a curve to the right, the reflex response was almost instant — I slowed down to a more appropriate speed so as not to take the outside line and have a close encounter of the worst kind with anyone who might have been traveling the opposite direction. And from out of the blue, it came to me — I remembered the instruction my father had given me when he was teaching me how to drive almost 60 years ago.
“When you come to a curve,” he’d say, “slow down before you get there. Don’t wait until you’re in it to slow down. Some folks do and that’s when you have wrecks.”
Where has that specific memory been all these years? And what made it show up that day?
I wish I knew.
That event, of course, then put me into the state of mind to remember some other things the old gentleman told me — and my brothers — through the years.
Some of it was advice and some of it was words of wisdom or survival. For instance, our dad would try to teach us something, and if the process wasn’t going well and we were inclined to throw in the towel, he’d say, “You’re not going to learn any younger, son.”
Later on, after we had supposedly learned that particular task but weren’t paying attention to how we were carrying it out, or if we were just goofing off or asking all over again how to do it, we’d hear, “I’ve told you fortyleven blue million times.”
It was from my dad I learned what a big word “if” is. On more than one occasion he remind me that “If a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his rear end on the ground.”
He also tried to instill into us the understanding that “the world doesn’t revolve around you,” and that we should keep the car — and life in general — “between the while lines (or ditches).”
On the practical side he told us we could run an engine “all we want to without gas, but don’t ever run it without oil,” and that when it came to cutting the strings to open a bag of feed for the hogs, we should “get the single thread to you and cut the right-hand corner.”
And in what was about as good a piece of fatherly direction I ever got, he’d say: “Don’t wish your life away, boy.”
I don’t think I have but the years I’ve had surely have gone by in overdrive.
I think my dad knew that would happen.
He probably knew — or hoped — I’d remember some of those words of wisdom.
Wonder if my next generation will do the same?
Bob Wachs is a native of Chatham County and retired long-time managing editor of the Chatham News/Chatham Record, having written a weekly column for more than 30 years. During most of his time with the newspapers, he was also a bi-vocational pastor and today serves Bear Creek Baptist Church for the second time as pastor.
