The Pull Of The Land

Charlie’s Lament and Chironjas

January 18, 2022January 18, 2022 Richard Barnes

“I knew I wasn’t young any more, but it never came to me I’d gone so far down the hill. Long as a man’s young he can take trouble in stride. Time is with him no matter how bad a jam he’s in. Then one day it slaps him in the face. It’s not with him any more, it’s workin’ against him. His friends fall away . . . scattered, or dead, or just changed. His kids are grown up and gone from him. All the old principles that he anchored to, they’ve come a-loose; nobody’s payin’ attention to them any more. He’ an old grayheaded man livin’ in a young man’s world, and all his benchmarks are gone.” — Charlie Flagg in Elmer Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained

My youngest son and I had finally decided that the best way to reach and pick the chironjas (orangelos) was to extend the ladder as high as it would go, place it beneath the clusters of citrus, and reach up with the fully extended pruner pole. This required us to locate the ladder’s footing as best we could on the steep shoulder on the edge of the jungle precipice. The tree is one we had obviously neglected to have pruned over the years. Not only is it impossibly tall, but it grew on the edge of a steep bluff.

The chironja, a cross between an orange and a grapefruit, is thought to have originated in Puerto Rico. It is very juicy, can be eaten in sections, like grapefruit, or squeezed for drink, like oranges. It is popular in our household, especially at breakfast.

I climbed the ladder, intending to step onto the second to last step as I had done so many times heretofore. However, this time, especially as I raised the extended pole, I felt myself swaying just a bit, but “up there” that little bit was magnified into more than prudence would allow. So, I stepped down one level and harvested what I could, regretting that I could not do what I used to do.

Nevertheless, we figured it out and, between my sons and I, the chironjas will have been harvested in the next few days. Plus, the tree will be pruned, we now being in waning moon.

As I descended the ladder, I remembered having read in The Time It Never Rained, “Then one day it slaps him in the face”. The fact that time is not on your side can become very clear by means of an everyday action such as climbing a ladder. Those more wise among us know that time is really never on our side: we are encouraged from early age to “number our days”, and although most do not, yet in the lives of many, they do come to that point when reality becomes impossible to ignore.

A friend tells of the time he was “slapped in the face” as to his encroaching years. He was about to do something that he had “always done”. One day, he could not. He says it was an almost one-day-to-the-next thing. After the initial, momentary shock, he recognized that those particular days were over. And now it was up to him to make the remaining days — which can be many still! — count.

Beyond the physical activities that are naturally curtailed, there remain what Charlie Flagg called “the benchmarks”.

By God’s grace, those will remain, because the principles and ethics that are moored on Eternal Truth will outlive us all. My prayer is that they will endure in the lives of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on to a thousand generations. Our offspring will do the right thing in the end, “if they’ve been brought up in the proper way”.

After Charlie uttered his lament, Manuel, the boy, now a man, who came to respect and love Charlie, replied, “The good benchmarks are still there, Mister Charlie.”

Yes, the good benchmarks are still there, and they will be there till the end of time.

Grapefruit, left, Chironja (Orangelo), right

I Remember

January 13, 2022January 13, 2022 Richard Barnes

A friend sent me a note this week which I’d like to share with you as encouragement as well as challenge. If you have children or grandchildren, do your best to inspire them to love God and country.

That is easier said than done, of course. But reminiscences like those of my friend are a good starting point.

He alludes to the “shacks around Caracas”. For more on that, see my series on “ranchitos” beginning here: Ranchitos I.

Here is his letter:

Dear Richard,

Thanks for the info about Venezuela. It’s sad to see a beautiful country taken down by evil men. The people are the ones who suffer. I remember all the shacks in the area around Caracas and that the city was noted as the pick pocket capital. I know I lost all the Upjohn travel money I had to a gang of pickpockets. It makes me worry about the US and the direction we are headed.

I remember life in Kalamazoo when I would walk to school and to church, about 6 city blocks; we had no car. We would see the little flags with the blue and gold stars in the homes of individuals with sons in the war. But I still remember Sundays as a day of rest: no lawn mowers, no sports, no car washing. But the sound of church bells announcing the start of church services. There were 3 large churches in our neighborhood, and we attended the farthest away. We walked there 3 times a Sunday, rain or shine, seeing all our friends on the way.

Now, no church bells; they may offend someone. It’s all about sports, baseball, golf, basketball, football, and only one church service on Sunday.

And political corruption.

Are we headed in the same direction?

God bless you and yours.

J.V.

Looking north on Burdick St., Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1950s

Looking east on Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1950s.

(Although I found photos of individual Kalamazoo churches in the 50s, I was unable to find any panoramic prints that showed at least several of them in one photo)

The Twelve Days of Christmas

January 7, 2022January 7, 2022 Richard Barnes

For our family, today, Epiphany (or Día de Reyes) marks the end of another Christmas season. We have celebrated the past few weeks through today with gratitude and rejoicing. Most of our children were able to be with us for at least a time in December and/or thus far in January. We know, in these modern times when people tend to atomize, thereby forsaking the critical need and importance of family, it is a privilege to spend time together, to pray together, to worship together, to work and play together in multi-generational groups.

We are not unmindful that, although many also share this joy of “being home for Christmas”, many others do not or are unable to and we try hard to not take this privilege for granted.

My father would often tell me of the last Christmas he spent with his own father, not knowing that it would be the last; and how important it is to be appreciative and to make every moment count.

It is wonderful and instructive — and fun! — to celebrate the 12 days from Christmas Day through Twelfth Night (Epiphany Eve). This gives us many opportunities to “compartir” with friends and loved ones and family; and to consider, during meals, family discussions, outings, and other activities, the Great Truth of the Incarnation, its continuing impact on the world, and the Ultimate Victory in Christ.

We wish you and yours the very best in 2022.

The Time It Never Rained

January 6, 2022January 6, 2022 Richard Barnes

“Charlie blinked and looked off toward the barn, toward Manuel. “I never thought it would wind up like this. I thought we was all fixed here for life.”

Lupe shrugged. “God has His reasons. He knows that when we have our bellies full, we don’t bother much with Him. He knows that we stop and listen to Him only when the trouble comes, so once in a while He sends trouble. Maybe He says to Himself, those people down there they think they are too big to need God any more…. Someday when all the people learn to pray again He will make it rain.” Lupe looked down. “I will pray, Mister Charlie.”

The Time It Never Rained, Elmer Kelton

Texas has produced fine literature over the years. Her earliest works were in Spanish, with English taking over in the 19th century. As with all fine literature, Texas works apply universally — across other states and countries and generations.

(Of course, this post does not at all deny that the above also applies to good literature from other states. In fact, I would encourage readers and friends to investigate the literature of your particular state or of a state you might be interested in. You are likely to find some real treasures.)

Although I am in Puerto Rico as I write this, reading Elmer Kelton transports me to West Texas in such a way that, even as I sit midst bright, deep, tropical green jungles, I can feel the dry, hot wind blowing from the west and see the swirling dust boiling from behind my vehicle as I take a short cut across an unpaved road southwest of Midland, Texas, in a dry spell.

As for universal themes, Kelton’s novels deal abundantly, lyrically, beautifully, and poignantly with them, most prominently, that of men or women, however imperfect or scarred, who seek, sometimes desperately, to remain true to their roots and principles in the face of rapidly changing times and values.

There are other Texas authors who also do this well — Tom Lea’s The Wonderful Country comes to mind. Not to mention fine works of non-fiction, such as Walter Prescott Webb’s The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense. But I’ll restrict my comments to Kelton’s novel quoted above, as that is what I am currently reading.

Charlie Flagg is a decent man, a rancher determined to do whatever it takes to salvage his ranch during the terrible west Texas drought of the 50s. With a slow, elegiac, spare pace and narrative, Kelton draws you in to the life of the ranchers and cowboys as they toil with hands and brain, ideating creative solutions to lack of grass and then lack of funds to buy feed, as the drought wears on, relentlessly, year after year. Lupe and his wife, Rosa, have lived and worked on Charlie’s ranch for many years and by the time of the quote above, their three children had been born there.

Kelton manages to show that Charlie loves his son, Tom, but the reader sees that Lupe and his family are more valuable to Charlie than his own son, who lives for rodeo and whose wild, irresponsible ways eventually catch up with him. By the time of the above-quoted scene, Tom has sobered up and looks on with quiet, dawning understanding.

And Mary, Charlie’s wife, is a constant: sometimes as irritant, sometimes as encourager, but always a support and comfort whom Charlie loves and respects.

So we are confronted with a man, Charlie Flagg, who is fighting for his life, the only life he has ever known, as a killer drought consumes all before it and kills the dreams and life investments of neighbors and friends who have to fold and move away, never to return. As if that is not trouble enough, Charlie has also to deal with his stern banker, his devil-may-care son, relationships with Anglos and Mexicans, overbearing government agencies who insist that he take aid he has never taken before and refuses to do so now, and much more.

In other words, the novel presents us with the realities of life and how men and women deal with them.

For Texans who lived during that time, this has to be a very hard novel to read, as the images it evokes are powerful and wrenching, although, ultimately, deeply moving.

For all, especially the young, regardless of state or country you come from, it will grant an appreciation of your grandparents and great-grandparents’ determination to work and live for the future that they knew God had prepared but which they, perhaps, would never see. But you and I have.

And, it was all worth it.

“Time and memories — so many good things and so many bad — but strange how the bad things seemed to fade so that you remembered mostly the good. Maybe that was one of life’s main compensations, having those memories with the rough edges blunted down and the bright parts polished to a diamond gleam….”

The drought extended from about 1949 to 1957, with several of the years being the driest in 600 years.

Papaito

December 31, 2021December 31, 2021 Richard Barnes

I asked Pedro, “How is Eileen?”

“Eileen is doing well,” her husband replied, “Just sad.”

A friend in Venezuela had not heard the news and when informed, replied, “¡Qué año tan fuerte ha sido este!”

In the summer I wrote about two childhood friends who had passed away earlier in the year (Lizbeth and Cyril). Their passing had saddened me.

And now the passing of my cousin, Max (“Papaito”) Albert Barnes has added bleakness to the melancholy occasioned by my friends’ preceding departures. Maybe the old adage, “Blood is thicker than water”, helps explain why this hit me a bit harder.

But I think it is more than blood.

Perhaps it is that all three marked my childhood.

Ultimately, none of us chose where we were to be born or who our parents were going to be. Darwinists credit the doctrine of selection; Christians credit the doctrine of election.

But neither Darwinist nor Christian can seriously claim that he had anything to do with where or with whom he came into this world.

Papaito had a wonderful sense of humor but you would have been unwise to have sold him short when it came to serious matters. For instance, in early 1969, a few months after our uncle’s murder, he and I were talking about our uncle as we arranged moving boxes in the garage. He stopped to take a break, taking a seat on a bike, “Is our family all that special?” he asked.

“Huh?” I replied, rather dumbly.

“I mean, we talk about our family as if it were something special. But is it really? Don’t all families believe they are special?”

I responded, unthinkingly and immaturely, “Of course we are special! How many families have a grandfather who descended from the Pilgrims and was the first to leave Massachussets and go to Cuba to the war? And then marry a Spaniard and then his children go to Venezuela, etc. etc. etc.?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he concluded, but not with too much conviction.

In retrospect, I now can see that he was onto something true and that my reply had completely missed his point. What he was inchoately reaching for (and what I was too immature to catch) was not so much that we are more special than others, but, rather, that we are to be grateful for what went before. What came before us helped make us what we are and we are to improve on that and forward that heritage plus our improvements to the following generations, just like our parents and grandparents had done for us.

We do not worship our fathers and mothers or the long line of folks that preceded us; we do honor them, however. We tell our children stories about that past and their duty to honor likewise and build and live up to a good name so as to progress in the true sense of the word.

To worship the past is to stagnate; to honor the past is to progress.

In that sense every family is special.

Papaito was way ahead of me there, whether he realized it or not.

In the case of my cousin, my two friends and other children, we all “met” in El Pao thanks not to any overarching plan of ours, but to the will of a sovereign God. Some arrived a bit sooner while some left later. But that’s where we met and that’s where we and our families formed bonds that, for some, prevail to this day.

And those bonds extend to our families and friends outside of El Pao. For example, in my case, although they visited once or twice, my cousins in Miami did not live in El Pao. And yet, the cords that were knit in that camp extended to them and from them to me. The same goes for my cousins and friends who lived in Venezuela but outside El Pao.

At the end of the day, what will survive — even into eternity — is not the car you drove or the house you built or the lands you visited, but rather the bonds you forged. The family, loved ones, brethren, people whose paths you crossed in life.

Including during childhood.

What did you want to be when you were a child?

We tend to smile — I know I do — when hearing that, or a variation thereof.

I always found it difficult to answer that question when posed to me in childhood. (In later childhood the difficulty was in admitting what I really wanted to be.)

I’ve heard it said — by professionals and laymen alike — that what you were inclined towards in childhood in regards to making a living or making a life, most likely, generally speaking, is what you were meant to pursue.

That, in capsule form, illustrates the lasting power or impact of a boyhood and girlhood which included a blessed home, a caring family, a faithful church, decent brethren, friends, and more.

This is not to dismiss those who came after who also had a major influence on your life (see Unvisited Tombs, for example). Nevertheless, oftentimes, when folks are asked to name important mentors or sources, one seldom hears about people or events in their nonage.

No, I am not a Freudian. My allusions to the springtime of life have nothing to do with that.

They have everything to do with gratitude to the Lord for the parents and grandparents He gave me; for the home and extended family He lent me; for Miami — not the city so much as the family and loved ones that awaited me there year after year; for El Pao; for my church and brethren in the labor camp; for cousins, such as Max (Papaito); for childhood friends such as Cyril and Lizbeth and more, some who have passed away, a few with whom I stay in touch, and others of whom I’ve long lost track.

They all had an immeasurable and lifelong impact on me. And I am a debtor to them.

Yes, like my cousin Eileen (Max’s sister), I too am sad. Not in the sense of those who have no hope, but rather in the sense of saying farewell. Not as an “adios”, but as an “hasta luego”.

As this year 2021 ends, I extend my sincere and heartfelt condolences to Papaito’s surviving wife, Isabel, and sister and brother (my cousins Eileen and Michael) as well as children and grandchildren and loved ones and more.

I wish for them and for you a wonderful and prosperous 2022.

My simple yet genuine thank-you to Papaito for fond childhood memories and learning experiences.

“… or ever the silver cord be loosed …. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God Who gave it (Ecc. 12:6a-7).”

May you rest in peace, Max (1952 – 2021).