Adventure

Leaving our stories

October 9, 2014 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

I try to schedule field trips into my writing life as often as possible. Sitting at a desk and staring at a sheet of paper can dull the senses. It contracts you. The Out There gets lost in all of the In Here. It’s nice to get out every once in a while and wander about the world.

That’s how I found Archie’s store. Because when you are driving down a lonely country road and you happen across a dilapidated building masquerading as an antiques store and the sign on the marquee says Dead People’s Junk, you have to stop and look. You just do. Very often the places that seem too good to be true are true after all.

The creaky wooden door finally gave way with a hard push, ringing the bell that sat suspended over the archway. The old man behind the counter—“Name’s Archie,” he said, and then added, “You break it, you buy it, even if t’ain’t worth nuthin’”—offered me both a Coke and the general layout of the building. “Furniture’s in the back. Art—and I use that term loosely—is to the right. Guns are over by the far wall.”

I sipped and walked, letting my mind wander. Antiques are such because of their age and their scars. They have endured through the years, survived countless moves and deaths and threats of the landfill. And it is because they have endured that they are all rich in story. Antiques are a form of living history.

That’s what I was after in the land of Dead People’s Junk. The stories.

Like the kitchen table that sat stately and dignified in the corner of the back room. Solid oak, with the worn shine of countless years of meals and gatherings. The price tag made me wince and whistle a long exhale. 1927 was written on the tag beneath the dollar amount, as if to justify the value. I took a step back. This was not something I was interested in breaking.

But still, a part of me felt the price would be more than satisfactory if the story of the table was included along with the chairs and the center leaf. Two years after it was built, the stock market crashed. Then Hitler rose. The Japanese attacked. The bomb was dropped. Kennedy was shot. Interspersed between those were times both hard and soft, the ebbs and flows of the great tide that was life. Who had sat at that table through the years? What family had broken bread there? What joys did they share, and what sorrows? To me, those answers—those possibilities—were worth more than the quality of the construction or the grain of the wood.

I exercised my mind in that manner for about an hour, moving through the crowded aisles of castoff belongings. There was a rocking horse I imagined once belonged to a small boy who grew up to be deathly afraid of horses after taking a tumble from that wooden substitution on one long ago Sunday afternoon. A desk where a young lady once sat to write a Dear John letter to her boyfriend at war. An opulent set of china—Never Used, said the tag—that was an expensive wedding gift to a couple who chose a simple life over the extravagant lives of their parents.

I roamed and touched nearly every surface of every object, listening. I thought about the sign out by the road and wondered if that had been Archie’s idea. I wanted to ask him. But by the time I made it back around, he was asleep in his chair. His half-finished bottle of Coke sat by the cash register—an antique in itself. Orange crumbs from the pack of crackers he’d snacked on littered the front of his shirt.

I managed to leave without waking him and pointed my truck toward home. I was satisfied. In my opinion, no better field trip could be had.

But I thought about that sign again as I passed it and decided it was all wrong. That was not Dead People’s Junk. Archie’s store may have been filled with remnants of the past, but they also spoke to our shared future.

To a time when perhaps our own dining room tables will be stuck in the corner, and when people will come and touch them and wonder. That brings me a great deal of comfort. Because we leave more than our belongings to this world when we pass on to the next.

We leave our stories, too.

Showing us what we can’t see

September 15, 2014 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

I had no idea how far we’d walked—when you’re tromping through the woods with two kids, time drags on until it becomes irrelevant—but it was far enough that we were ready to turn around and go home. After all, it wasn’t as if we had a map to go by. All we had were stories.

“Maybe we should just pray,” my son said. My son, who announced last week that he wanted to be a preacher when he grew up. To him, praying is the answer to everything.

“I think God would rather we walk than pray,” I told him.

“Why, did you ask him?”

I didn’t answer. We pushed on through the brambles and found the river—at least that part of the story had been proven right—then decided to sit and watch the water. My daughter tried to spot fish, my wife tried to spot spiders, and I tried to figure out where we should look next.

My son, the future Preacher Man, looked into the blue sky peeking through green trees and said, “Our Father, whose art ain’t in heaven, Halloween be your name.”

“This way,” I told them. “I think it’s over here.”

Which wasn’t true at all. I had no idea where it was or even if it was, but you know about men and directions. Besides, it wasn’t like we could pull over at the next gas station.

My daughter said, “Maybe we should just go home before we get eaten,” which brought more prayers from the little boy in the back.

I reminded them of the value of a story, of how the whole world was made of them and sometimes they’re true and sometimes they’re not, and how sometimes the ones that are not have more truth. And when you come across a story about an old home forgotten somewhere in the mountains, you have to go look. You just have to.

So we trudged on—me, my wife, my daughter, and the Preacher, who was now calling down the Spirit to keep Bigfoot away.

Truth be known, I didn’t think we’d find a thing. Though the mountains here are littered with the remnants of pioneer homesteads, their locations are masked by either wilderness or the foggy memories of the old folk. But the directions I’d received turned out to be pretty darn close. It wasn’t long until the woods opened up a bit into an ancient bit of clearing, and wouldn’t you know it, there was something up ahead.

Of course that something was hidden by a couple hundred years of changing seasons. Trees and bushes and plants had reclaimed the area that was once taken from them. All that remained to be seen was a bit of foundation. The rest was enclosed by an impenetrable wall of overgrowth.

“Let’s try to break through,” my daughter said, to which she received a chorus of no ways.

“I don’t want to go in there,” my wife said.

“I’m too tired to try to go in there,” I said.

“We should really pray first before we go in there,” my son said.

Simply going back was no longer an option. We’d found it now, and to leave without at least a look around simply wouldn’t do. So we looked. All of us. We poked and prodded for weak spots, we tried to peek into what had likely gone unseen for centuries. We stood on tiptoes and jumped and, once, even tried to make a human pyramid. But it was no use. The mountains would not give up their secrets that day.

“Hey,” my son said, “I see something.”

He was knee-bent, face almost in the dirt, peering through the undersides of thorns and thickets.

“Hey, wow.”

The rest of us followed. Knees bent, faces in the dirt, peering through the thorns, we found holes just big enough to peer through. What lay on the other side was nothing more than the remnants of a stone foundation, but to us it was Machu Picchu and Stonehenge and Easter Island rolled into one.

It was then that I realized what my son had done. The little Preacher Man, too little to jump too high or tiptoe too up, had decided to use his smallness to his advantage.

He’d gone to his knees.

“You can see more if you get on your knees, Daddy,” he’d often said. “If you stand up, you just see what you can. But if you bow down, God will show you what you can’t.”

Those words, profound as they were, had always gotten him a rub on the head or a squeeze on the shoulder. Nothing more. But then I knew just how right he was, and I wondered just how much I’d missed in my life because I’d been standing instead of kneeling.

Making a memory

August 21, 2014 by Billy Coffey 5 Comments

We are by the creek, my son and I, our backs against the grass and our feet in the water, looking first to make sure the snakes are gone and then to the two white wrappers between us.

“You’re first tonight,” I tell him.

“Orange,” he says, “because it’s like the sun.”

I hand him the wrapper on the left and look out toward the mountains. Sure enough, the sun looks orange. That means red for me. Good. I like red.

He opens the package and licks the popsicle inside. There is a satisfying smack on the end, followed by, “Aaah.”

We sit for a while and watch in silence, watch the robin searching for supper in the front yard and the bumblebee doing the same in the flower bed and my wife and daughter watering the hanging baskets. I don’t know what my son is thinking, but I’m thinking that sometimes you can be closer to someone when you’re not talking and just enjoying their company.

These post-supper trips to the creek with popsicles were his idea. The inaugural event was held on the first day of summer vacation. Seems like that was just yesterday, but it was almost two months ago. Time ticks faster when we’re having fun. That’s what my son told me the other day. Then he said he sat for five minutes and watched the clock and discovered it ticks just the same whether you’re looking or not.

There’s another lick and smack, but this one is followed by a sigh. I ask him what’s wrong.

“Summer’s almost over,” he says.

I ask him how he knows that, and he answers that he saw the newspaper last Sunday. There was a back-t-school ad mixed in with the comics section. He says seeing that made him feel like he did the time he ate chili and then ice cream after.

“I want it to stay summer forever,” he says, “like on Phineas and Ferb.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I’d like it to stay summer forever too, and offering up some cockamamie wisdom about how all good things must come to an end would only depress the two of us more. Instead, I start singing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Partly because I have to say SOMETHING, but mostly because it’s nearly impossible to sing and be depressed at the same time.

He joins in halfway through. When we finish, the lick/smack/sigh is replaced by lick/smack/smile. Much better.

“Dad, can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I tell him.

“Are we making a memory?”

I bite down on my red popsicle and think. “I reckon so,” I tell him.

The smile is bigger now. It’s the sort of smile you get after you’ve been carrying a very heavy something for a long while and can finally lay it down.

He is silent again, but not because he didn’t hear me. He’s too busy to talk. He’s more concerned with doing the one thing children always excel at and adults usually fail miserably—being in the moment. His eyes are bugged and his breathing is deep, steadying himself against the picture his mind is taking.

The cool water flowing over his hot toes, the orange sun peering from the peaks of blue mountains, sounds of robinsong in the trees and frogs in the woods, the sight of his mother and sister and the gentle mist of hose water over purple and white flowers, orange popsicle leaking down his fingers, the bright sky and the warm breeze, the first star of the night and the knowing that for this one instant, the whole world is peaceful and good and right.

He is living this moment, and when he is done he will tuck it into a secret place in his heart and keep it safe. He will tend this moment and nurture it and keep it whole. Alive.

And on some cold and distant January day that promises little more than spelling tests and word problems, my son will sit in his small desk at school and pull that memory out. He will look out the window and see bright skies rather than somber heavens and green leaves rather than bare trees. He will hear robinsong and taste orange popsicle and feel cool water running over hot toes.

It will be winter then and he will be at school. He will know then that the world is not peaceful and good and right, but he will gain strength knowing it once was and thus may well be again.

All because of the memory he made with me on this summer night, here by the creek.

Believing in the Maybe

August 18, 2014 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

My daughter and I are standing in the middle of a one-lane dirt road deep in the woods. Locals call it the Coal Road, the story being that generations ago coal from the mountains was transported through here by some sort of rail. I’m not sure if that’s true or not—something about that doesn’t seem right—but it’s the Coal Road nonetheless, maybe like big people are often nicknamed Tiny or Slim.

It’s peaceful here on the Road, though during summer nights and autumn weekends the local teenagers come here to drink and, in words my grandmother would once whisper, “Know each other in the Biblical way.” The thirty thousand acres leading from the Coal Road into the mountains are both unspoiled and wild. Mysterious, too. There are plenty of stories about this wood and the spirits that are said to inhabit it. And as someone who’s tromped and trampled through much of it over the years, I can say at least some of them are true.

But those are other stories for other times, because at the moment my daughter is on the prowl. On a mission. Strapped to her narrow waist is a fanny pack that Scooby and the gang might call a Clue Kit, and right now she’s using a magnifying glass to inspect some rather strange footprints in the dirt.

“This is something, Daddy,” she says. She moves the magnifying glass from the ground and stares at me with it. One of her eyes looks like a giant brown golf ball. “This might be him.”

I offer a serious and grave nod as if it might just be him, even though I’m pretty sure what my daughter is looking for would not be wearing a size eleven hiking boot. She takes the small digital camera from her fanny pack and snaps off a couple pictures. “Okay,” she says, “let’s keep going.”

We move from the Road to the trail—this one about three miles and leads to a large reservoir, but I don’t think we’ll go that far. The day is hot and she knows there are snakes. My daughter doesn’t like snakes. I figure if I can come up with a few more clues, that will satisfy her.

Included in the fanny pack is the book that started all of this. I can’t remember the name, Monsters of the South or Unexplained Monsters of Virginia, something like that. My daughter likes her ghost stories, so any book that includes Monsters or Unexplained in the title is fair game. Her grandmother says such reading material is a little too Devil-like, but I don’t mind. I like Monsters and Unexplained, too.

That book led to another and then to another, and then finally to an internet search that lo and behold revealed that Bigfoot himself—or at least one of his kin—had been spotted here in the unspoiled and wild and mysterious wood along the Coal Road back in the 1980s. I don’t remember hearing such a story, but I’m inclined to believe that anyone could see anything here given enough moonshine. I didn’t tell my daughter that when she suggested we take a lazy Saturday afternoon and turn it into an Unexplained Monster hunt, I just said okay. I’d never hunted a monster, and we were due for some daddy/daughter time. Besides, there wasn’t much else going on.

“Look at that!” she says. “There’s a clue.”

And it is, though the marks on the old oak in front of us are a clue that a bear has been by rather than a Bigfoot. I tell her to take a picture. She does. I leave out the part about the bear. That would scare her more than a Bigfoot.

We find other things on our walk—deer hair that is really Bigfoot hair, the chatter of squirrels that are really Bigfoot giggles, and a small hole in the rocks that just might be a Bigfoot home. All are studied and pictured and cataloged in the small notebook in her fanny pack. By then it’s noon. We’re both getting hungry and we’re both sweating, signs that it’s time to head home.

We drive the old truck over potholes and washed-out dirt road, the sun shining through canopies of leaves. It’s been a good day. A great one. We’re making memories.

“Daddy,” she says, “I really don’t believe there’s a Bigfoot. But I like to believe in maybe.”

I nod and smile and rub her head, satisfied that our trip here to this ancient and (some would say) haunted wood has revealed something to us both.

Because she’s right, my daughter.

It’s always good to believe in maybe.

Carnival world

July 7, 2014 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

Nothing cured the torpid state of a small town quite like a carnival, and our small town was no different. It was the event of the summer here, one that is part high school reunion, part gossip convention, and all fun.

Every year a few hundred souls gathered for three nights in the parking lot of the Old Schoolhouse Restaurant to ride and play and eat, knowing that much of the proceeds will go to the local fire department.

Ahead of me were the rides. The slide and the Ferris wheel and the swings and a jumble of semi-legit games of carnie skill. Behind me, around the corner, were fire truck hangars filled with hungry people searching for dinner in the form of barbecued chicken.

I was appropriately between the two, straddling the same line at the carnival that I tended to straddle in life, the one between play-and-scream and rest-and-gawk. It was a precarious spot, and I often tried to play both sides. Which is why I was both nodding in agreement with the man beside me who says people really should grow up and licking cotton candy off the corner of my mouth.

To me, the carnival was all about catching up and touching base. There were people I see only at the carnival, mountain folk who somehow summoned the strength to come down from the hills and partake in some revelry. But they never lingered. Town life was too close to city life for their comfort.

To my kids, though, the carnival was all about the rides. And there were plenty of rides. Slides and swings. Tea cups and moonwalks. And the granddaddy of them all, the Ferris wheel. Both my son and my daughter erupted in spasms of glee at the sight, a veritable smorgasbord of hyperactive indulgence.

“Can we ride, Daddy?” they asked.

Yes.

Because if there is anything I knew for sure in this complicated world, it was that a body could learn a lot about living from carnival rides.

For instance.

The swings were first. Rusty and worn from endless turns in the summer heat, but still perfectly tuned for their assigned purpose: to spin people around and around through the air at varying speeds. My kids whizzed and zoomed, waving their tiny arms as they passed. Fun, yes. And also valuable later on. Because sometimes in life they will feel as though they’re going around in circles, but that’s no reason to feel frustrated. You can still laugh and wave.

The tea cups were next, which were in amazing shape considering the fact that I found “Pam Luvs Doug 6/9/68” carved into the engine cover. I wasn’t worried, though. Tea cups don’t spin around in a circle ten feet in the air, they jerk and whirl close to the ground. As I watched physics inch my children closer together with each turn of the gears, I found another future lesson for them to tuck away: when life begins to pull and turn, it’s best to stick close to the ones you love.

Fifteen minutes in the Moon Walk proved yet another point—there is an inherent desire within each of us to soar. To break the bonds of both gravity and common sense and rise just a bit higher than the rest, if only for a moment. And though we are earthbound and destined to spend our share of time in the dirt and mud, those precious few moments in the sky are well worth the effort.

From there we made our way to the slide, a gigantic monstrosity of molded plastic that sat a good two stories off the ground. The line was long and the drop was steep, but both children refused to budge. When they climbed those rickety steps and flew down upon those moldy burlap sacks, they screamed and I smiled. Them because they had overcome their fear to magnificent results. Me because I knew life was made for the bold rather than the timid.

The Ferris wheel was the best ride and therefore reserved for last. The flight down the slide had emboldened them to tackle the even bigger ride to the point where they requested a go with just the two of them minus mom and dad.

And things went fine, too. Until the ride stopped with them perched at the top. Flashes of panicky children and flaying limbs shot through my mind but were disproved by the sight in above me.

Rather than terror, my kids were in awe.

Spellbound by the sight of the crowd below and the mountains ahead. Of robins and blue jays flitting past their heads.

I didn’t have to teach them that lesson. They taught me. That sometimes, many times, life can become a bit dull around the edges. The view below can seem drab and worn.

Which is when you need to look up instead of down. Over instead of around. Because life is not only a matter of attitude. It’s a matter of perspective as well.

Over the next horizon

June 16, 2014 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

"The Wanderer" image courtesy of google images — “The Wanderer” image courtesy of google images

I’ve read that when it comes to compensation, benefits, work environment, and time off, college professors have the best job in the United States. And since I spend so much of my workday around them, I can’t argue with that assertion. The ones at the college where I work seem happy, are productive members of their community, and have enough extra time on their hands to string together words no one understands to publish books no one reads.

Still, I was curious. Did these people know they had the fortune and blessing to have the nation’s best job? That all of their hard work had paid off to get them the lifestyle of a lifetime? I wasn’t sure. And to me, it felt like something they should know if they didn’t. So I took a few days and asked around.

Two math, one music, three English, a history, and four philosophy professors later, and I was convinced of two things. One was that they knew exactly how blessed they were to have their particular occupation. The other was that it didn’t matter.

Because while all eleven enjoyed their work and got plenty out of it, in their heart of hearts they would still rather be doing something else.

One math professor expressed a lifelong desire for crab fishing, and the other just wanted to run off to Bora Bora. The history professor admitted that she’d always wanted to open a florist shop. Two of the philosophy professors wanted to be farmers, and the other two missionaries. All three English professors wanted to be famous authors rather than ignored ones. And the music professor? “I’ve always wanted to be a bounty hunter,” all one hundred and twenty pounds of him said. (And it’s okay to laugh at that. Because I did).

Those little confessions didn’t surprise me.

Despite what we say about being happy with where and who we are, deep down we’re never where we should be. No matter how hard we chase after our bliss, it always remains just a few steps ahead. Close enough to see, almost close enough to touch, but not quite. There to both inspire us to keep going and taunt us because we haven’t gone far enough.

Psychologists say this difficulty in finding what makes us happy is inborn. As much a part of us as the desire to love and be loved. I want to disagree with that and say that faith can bring us both happiness and a sense of place in this world, but the truth? I have faith, have a sense of happiness and place, but there are still many times when I look at my happy life and think there’s more out there. More happiness. More better.

Whether this makes me any less of a Christian is something I haven’t figured out yet.

There’s a lot to be said for being content with what you have, a sentiment echoed by people from the Apostle Paul (“I’ve learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am”) to Thoreau (“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone”) to a country song I heard on my way into work this morning (“…I look around at what everyone has, and I forget about all I’ve got…”).

Wise words, all. And true. Yet here I sit, still wanting more anyway. More dreams, more happiness, more peace.

I suppose we’re all stricken with wanderlust. Deep down we’re all explorers who cannot rest until we reach the next horizon, if only to see what’s there and what’s beyond. The ocean we’re all adrift upon is vast, it’s waters deep, and it’s wonders breathtaking. And though we sail onward, ever searching, our spirits whisper this truth:

We are meant to sail upon the waters of another ocean, where the seas are calm and the winds are fair. And that our happiness now is but a shadow of the happiness that awaits.