So, Noah is 13 years old, as you already know, and that seems to change everything. Noah sits in the front seat now, he’s had his mom cut his hair short, with the declaration that he will never grow his hair long again, he is eating chicken, he has started an online class called “Unity”, where he is learning computer coding and game designing, and now he is getting rid of his bunk bed for a bed with a game computer desk attached at the end. These are all sudden changes as a result of turning a teenager. Noah feels that he needs to step up to a more mature level and leave the childish things behind. This is all on his own, and comes as a big surprise to us, his parents. Yes, he is still a child and continues to struggle with many things still attached to his immaturity, but still, wow! We’re amazed at the steps he is taking.
Mentally Ill
Seen anyone walking down the street, bent over seemingly talking to no one, or an imaginary someone, or something? Maybe they are drunk, or on drugs, or maybe a mental illness that they have no control over. “It is estimated that up to 20% of the homeless population may have schizophrenia.” Symptoms may include hallucinations, and delusions, often causing a disconnection from reality.
A large percentage of the homeless are also afflicted with bipolar disorder, a mental health condition characterized by extreme mood swings, such as intense highs and intense lows. Whatever the cause, homeless people can be both scary and sad as their behavior can range from harmless to extreme violent. In either case, these people need help, and should never, ever be left alone, without food, shelter, and no one to care for them. There is no excuse for the richest country in the world to have no compassion, or leftover love for the helpless homeless. Our hearts should cry out for these people. I see daily commercials asking for help for homeless, neglected cats and dogs, but nothing for the homeless, and neglected people in our neighborhoods and streets. What is wrong with our society?
Mr. President, fix this problem NOW.
Getting Old Sucks!
I shouldn’t complain, but it’s the nature of people, and I’m a people. At the age of 70 I try to live like I’m still young, but it’s no use. When you’re young, and it comes to working out in order to stay in shape, or get into shape everyone knows the motto, “No pain no gain”, but that changes when you get old. When you’re old working out is painful. The pain never goes away as you get into shape, because you don’t get into shape anymore. No matter how much you work out it’s always painful and you just continue to steadily lose ground. You don’t get faster or stronger, just older and sorer.
When your young and dumb, and you are hard on your body, older people will tell you that, “You will pay for that someday”. You’re told that your body will suffer for the abuse you subject it to, you blow off those warnings. It’s easy to do because your body recovers quickly, and you’re strong, and very dumb. Let’s face it, experience counts for a lot in life, but experience only comes from time, and time is aging, and then it’s too late.
Hell, what are you going to do, live forever? Some things in life just can’t be avoided. I’ve lived through at least six car accidents, some very serious. I used to break horses for a living and had several horses buck me off, rare over backwards, landing on top of me, kick me, and stomp on me, breaking several bones over the years. What are you gonna do? There are countless fights where I was hit with boards, branches, ropes, cables, feet, and fists. More broken bones. I’ve tangled with a bear, badger and a bull… still here. I’ve worked in mining in central Alaska, the Barring Sea on boats, and logging in Washington State. More broken bones. When I was a child I played football as a running back, wrestled at the varsity level, and participated in field and track. Again, as a child a raced horseback in the Inchelium suicide race. As an adult I ran in Five K races and marathons. I was married five times and helped raise six children. This and I’ve only scratched the surface of what I’ve put my body through. I should not complain, but I’m a people, and people do what people do, we complain.
I take high blood pressure medication. Good Lord, how could that be?
Today I had to see a doctor about nerve damage in one of my legs, more pain. Yet, on a bright side he marveled at how in shape I am. Particularly my lower legs, due to going to the gym and walking more than two miles almost daily. He said to keep it up. More pain.
I guess the pain when you get older just tells you that you’re alive, and in some ways maybe that’s a good thing; the pain that is.
My Drummer Boy
I watched Noah as he slowly walked towards the school building, heading for his first class of the day, Band. Band is one of his favorite classes, he gets to beat on a drum. My little drummer boy.
It was sad to watch his slow walk. Overall, Noah does not like school, the reason is simple, Noah does not think that school likes him. He walks like a prisoner resigned to the gallows. My heart wrenches for him. He looks so alone. I don’t want him to feel the way he looks. At the same time, I am terribly proud of him. It was his decision to attend public school, versus home schooling. He goes despite the obvious dread.
In all the times I have dropped him off at school his step has never changed. He is never excited to be there. The reminds me of this every day when I wake him to get ready to go. “I don’t want to go to school,” He says, and I say, “I know.” Yet, every day he gets up, gets ready, and makes that sad, heart-breaking walk to the school building. Once upon a time he used to turn and look back to see if I was still there, he no longer does. Now he walks as one all alone, knowing that he is alone, and somewhat fearful of what the day will have in store for him. My heart is with him in all his fear and loneliness. I can’t wait to come back and pick him up.
“How was your day, Noah?”
Good Friday
What does Good Friday mean to you? To many it marks the day Jesus was crucified, followed by three days and then his resurrection, Easter Sunday. Odd, a day that represents the crucifixion, the suffering, and the death of Jesus, the son of God, is called “Good”. The goodness obviously comes from his resurrection three days later, but really, I think that the day could be called many other things besides “good”.
For Jews this day marks the Passover, the day of freedom from Egypt. In short, Good Friday is a holy day for many millions around the world.
Good Friday is sometimes referred to as Black Friday, a name I could more relate to when at the age of nine years old.
Good Friday, March 27, 1964 started out as a great day, after all, it was the last day of the school week. There were several other reasons to feel good about this day, it was sunny, but cold, after all, Anchorage, Alaska is still cold in March, with plenty of snow still on the ground. Easter Sunday was three days away. Life was good on Good Friday, and then it wasn’t. At 5:36 P.M. I was just arriving at the back door of our home, after visiting with friends in our neighborhood. I was just reaching for the door when the ground began to shake, it was like huge waves of shaking. I tried to stay on my feet but soon realized that I couldn’t, so I just sat down on the ground right where I was standing. The shaking seemed to go on for ever ( I would later learn that it went on for over four minutes.) I had never experienced an earthquake before, and didn’t realize at that moment that that is what was happening. While sitting on the ground I began to wonder what was causing the ground to shake so terribly. My mind raced for some explanation. My brother and I slept in the basement, near a large furnace, we often imagined our fate should it ever blow up. Is that what had happened, did the furnace blow up? Mom and Dad were at work, but my brother and two sisters were in the house. I became frantic in my imagination, were they alright? The ground had not stop shaking when I jumped up and through open the door. I was nearly knocked over by our three dogs bursting out the door, Lady, Beauty, and Vicky, two Siberian huskies and a Doberman Pincher. they had been shut inside the mud room. The mud room was located at the top of the stares that led down to the basement, while another door led into the house. I couldn’t see anything looking down into the basement but darkness. After the stampeding dogs got past me, and with the shaking nearly stopped, I reached the door leading into the house proper. I through open that door and yelled, “Is everyone OK?” No answer came back to me, just silence, and a scene that I would never forget. Behind that first door was the kitchen, what was left of it. There was broken glass everywhere. Everything that was in a cupboard was now on the floor. I continued through the kitchen and into the living room, still hollering for my siblings. Like the kitchen the living room was a shambles, even the T.V. , with an open, built in stereo had fallen onto it’s face, nothing was upright. All that could be seen in a flash, but still no answer from my brother and sisters. The front door to the house was located on the far end of the living room. The door was flung wide open. I made my way through the ruble and out the door where I found my sisters and brother standing in the snow. Out of fear they had fled the house so rapidly that they didn’t have time to put on shoes, and were now huddled together, crying hysterically, not knowing what was happening or what to do, too afraid to return into the house. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
It is strange what children think when faced with a disaster that they don’t understand and can’t begin to . To us all we could see was our home. We had no idea that we had just experienced the largest earthquake recorded in history, nor the extent of the damage caused through out the state and beyond. To us it was just our home. Moments after I joined my siblings a neighbor came running across the street. Out of breath, the man ask if we were alright, we assured him that we were, but now we had a much larger concern. In unison we told him that we were going to be in so much trouble from mom and dad when they get home and see what a mess the house is. We did not believe him when he said that they would understand and not be upset. As we turned to go back into the house, the sky had clouded up and a lite snow began to fall.
That was the beginning of Good Friday, 1964, and there would be no Easter Sunday for us or for anyone in the State of Alaska this year.
The Aftershock
It is important to note the sheer power of this earthquake. It was measured at 9.2-9.3 megathrust, equivalent to “400 times the total [energy] of all nuclear bombs ever exploded” until that time. It raised the land over 30 feet in some places. In addition it was followed by over 560 aftershocks and a tsunami wave run-up that was as high as 170 feet. The primary quake lasted for an astonishing four minutes and 38 seconds.
Meanwhile
While I and my siblings were experiencing the quake so were our parents. Mom worked in some capacity for the State of Alaska. She was a secretary, that was all that I knew about her job. Dad owned his own car shop, where he repaired cars and also built cars that he and mom raced on the Alaskan circuit. Mom had gotten off work at 5 p.m., and had stopped at the shop to visit Dad on the way home. The shop was only a few blocks from where we lived. At the time of the quake Dad had a car on a hoist about seven feet in the air while working underneath it. Mom was standing under the car talking to him when the car started rocking back and forth. Mom attempted to get out from underneath the car but was knocked in the head by the swaying car, knocking her to the ground back under the car. She got up only to meet the same fate. On the third attempt she was able to escape the swaying car with Dad and they got out of the garage. Strangely the car never fell off the hoist.
My memory is completely lost as to mom and dad’s arrival home, despite that lack of recollection I am certain that we were not in trouble over the state of the house, which must have been a great relief. I would have remembered if it were otherwise.
Other than the house being a complete mess, it was relatively undamaged, shaken but not broken. Many homes were uninhabitable, but somehow most of our neighborhood was unscathed. Still there was no water or electricity, so we were packed up and hauled to some friends of mom and dad’s, where we all stayed for a few days. To us kids it was now just one big adventure, a long sleep-over. They had children our age, so life was great. During the day we, (kids) would all walk around the neighborhood and look at all the damaged homes. We had no sense of how devastating the situation was because we were relatively untouched by the gravity of the disaster. Many lives were lost and the city was all but destroyed, with some downtown buildings completely swallowed by the shifting, and raising and falling of the ground, words and pictures can’t really describe how bad the destruction was.
What You Don’t Know
At nine years old I understood, kind of, what I was told about the earthquake, yet I didn’t really see what I was told, so I don’t think I really knew what had happened. I didn’t see death, and I didn’t see much of the destruction. I recall that when I first felt the swaying of the quake it reminded me of one of those nickle, (now fifty cent), rocking horses that you find in front of grocery stores, a fun ride, so I sat down and enjoyed it, until my little brain began to wonder what really was happening. I wasn’t in the house, so I didn’t share with my siblings the fear of seeing everything falling at the same time as the feeling of the ground moving, that which caused them to flee the house in terror. I never felt that, ever. That being said, the fact is, I was in the middle of the second worst earthquake ever recorded in the history of the world.
Find this in My Biography page
Sky Valley Messenger 