Blog 446 – 10.26.2016

Last week famous folk singer and poet, Bob Dylan, won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his legendary early song The Times They Are A Changin’ Bob wrote and sang, “Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly agin’. So get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand.” It is a sad fact of life that many of us fight change and find ourselves left behind. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can always lend a hand if we choose.

I had two wonderful opportunities to do just on Sunday. I walked from my motel to the town section of Mineral Point, Wisconsin hoping to try a Mexican restaurant that I had scoped out the previous day. As I was walking down High Street passed the Mineral Point Opera House, I looked over into the park. There on a bench I saw an older fellow with one of his boots and socks off sun bathing his bare foot and ankle. He was also wearing a green baseball cap with ARMY in bold black letters. I walked over and asked him if he was in the Army? When? Vietnam? When? Then got to use my standard line for Vietnam vets, “Welcome home, Brother.” We Vietnam vets received no welcome home parades when we came home. I suppose the only group of military vets less thought of are the Korean War vets and that is because their war was so short and was eclipsed by both the Big War before it and the Vietnam War after it.

I had a great time visiting with my brother, hearing his story, and getting to share part of mine. The foot sun bathing thing was because he heard and believes the sun has healing power and was drying out some poison ivy he had on his foot and ankle. He believed it was working. I suspect that sunlight does cleanse, disinfect, and heal. There is so much talk about the harmful effects of exposure to the sun that we forget that like the rain that so many also bad mouth we couldn’t live without it.

The Mexican restuarant was not open but my new friend Larry said that if I was looking for a good meal I should try the place at the top of the hill. So back up I went. The cafe was packed and they had opened up the party room, the Kiwanis meeting room, to handle the over flow. The large long table in the center was full of church folk bubbling with lots of interesting conversation. I found one of the small two person tables off to one side, seated myself, and placed my order when the waitress came. I enjoyed my meal and the conversations nearby. As the church folks finished their dinner one of the folks, a lady, turned around in her chair and apologized for their loud conversation. I said, “No problem I enjoyed listening.” The man next to her said that they eat there every Sunday and I was welcome to join them. I said I’d see them next Sunday. The lady invited me to come visit their church if I got the urge. I said I would if I got the urge.

But the real shiny event of that dinner happened just a few moments latter as two ladies negotiated the tight space between the big long table and mine. The first lady was helping the second lady, an older lady with a walker. The walker was too wide to pass through so the older lady turned it side ways and pushed it through to the first lady. That left her the backs of the chairs of the people seated at the big table to hold on to with her right hand but nothing for her left hand. Not wishing to be presumptuous I raised my right arm flexing the muscle and holding it parallel above the table creating a hand rail for the lady if she chose to use it. One of the churchmen got up offering to help her but spying my arm she said, “No, I think I’ll use this man.” When she gripped my arm and felt the flexed muscle in my forearm she uttered a gleeful and almost flirty, “Oh my.” The church folks chuckled and that made both of our days, I think. And all I had to do was to lend a hand, actually in that case an arm.

• Do you sometimes feel like the world and everyone is leaving you behind? You have a choice to make as Dylan’s song pointed out – you can get out of the way or you can lend your hand. Lending a hand is a lot more fun. Just ask Larry or that sweet older lady still thinking sexy thoughts and why not? It is nice to have warm thoughts on these cold Wisconsin nights.

You friend and fellow traveler,
David White