Courage

Last evening I was talking on the telephone to one of my grandchildren in Utah. I mentioned to him that his grandmother and I had seen "Kung Fu Panda" on Saturday and that we had seen both the new Indiana Jones movie and "Prince Caspian" in the last two weeks. He complained that his parents didn't think he was old enough to see the second two but that he was looking forward to seeing "Kung Fu Panda" soon and, as soon as he was old enough, he would buy all the Indiana Jones movies and watch them in one day.

I told him it was probably good that he wait to see the second two as they could be a little scary in places. He responded with the seriousness of a judge: "Scary doesn't bother me. I'll have you know that I sleep on the top bunk!"

It was all I could do to keep from laughing, but I held it back, knowing he would have been devastated if I laughed. I also resisted the temptation to ask him if he was riding his bike without the training wheels yet. I was worried, though, that he was not and I didn't want to embarrass him.

Later I thought about the perspective of courage and how life's experiences can both reduce one's fear at things once found to be terrifying, and increase it for things for things about which he rarely even considered at one time.

When I was young, I was never afraid of driving in traffic or speeding in the process. I was never afraid of walking alone at night in the city because I was never really alone, or getting sick or getting hurt in a fistfight. I was never afraid of strangers. I was never afraid of the deep end or big waves or sharks in the ocean.

I was afraid, however, of both my mother and my father - although for very different reasons. I was afraid of getting a poor grade as I was sure it would ruin my future. I was afraid that everyone might not like me. I was terrified of being alone in the country where I was truly alone. I was afraid I would never please my parents. I was terrified when someone came close to learning the truth about my family and, therefore, about me.

Now I am older and I get nervous in traffic and when I speed. I feel nervous if I have to walk by myself in a city. I worry about getting some deadly disease and about what might happen if I were forced into a fistfight. I worry if the deep end is deep enough and I no longer surf or swim in the ocean... and not just because it is not nearby.

I am no longer afraid of my father - who is dead, but I am afraid for him. I am not scared of my mother, even knowing she is emotionally unstable and quick to rage. I feel sad for her. I wish I had not worried about my grades because I know now how little they really mattered. One of the most pleasant experiences in life is to be absolutely alone in the woods or on a stream. It is not only refreshing, but healing.

I no longer am concerned with pleasing my parents but only my God, who I do not fear in the way we generally speak of fear nor do I worry so much as to hide the experiences that came in a broken family. They helped make me who I am, for better, I think, than for worse.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of my memory, I remember being timid about sleeping on the top bunk. A fear I must have conquered as I had a set of bunk beds for my middle school years and alternated between the top and the bottom at my whim of the moment as I had no brother with whom I needed to share. My grandson has conquered that fear at a younger age than did I.

He remains a little timid about new things and I am as happy as I can be about that for, while he may take a while to enjoy some of life's great prizes, he would also be quicker to avoid its dangers.

I pray he will not only learn to recognize the Goliaths and the Bathshebas in his life but that he will know which one to fear and which one to confront and defeat. All of us, will meet our share of uncircumcised Philistines as well as feel the allure of a bathing beauty. Too often we run from the giants and to the woman on the roof. Too often Goliath walks into our camp unchallenged and Bathsheba accepts our lustful invitations. Both lead to personal ruin and great lessons which might be better learned by doing the right, rather than he wrong thing.

May we, like the servant of Elisha, have our blindness removed when we fear that we might see that they that be with us are more than be with them; that we might know of the angels God has posted to protect us when we love Him more than these...

Loyalty

Last evening Barak Obama claimed victory over Hillary Clinton in the Democrat Party primary.

As I listened from my office to the blaring speech on a blaring TV in another room, my thoughts turned to the idea of loyalty; what it once meant, what it means now and what it could mean in the future.

There was a time I was a loyal democrat. I was absolutely loyal to the party when the party principles were absolutely loyal to mine. Then abortion on demand was legalized by the courts and the waters were muddied a little and my loyalty to the party weakened some. I still could not align myself, however, with Republicans. It just wasn't in my bones as my Americanism has always been more defined by Benjamin Franklin than by Thomas Jefferson. I am and am for the working person. When Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, he really meant all white men of high birth to counter the popular notion that kings were given divine rights not offered to others, not to suggest that common laborers, merchants and teachers were as privileged as was himself or others, like George Washington. When Franklin made such statements, however, he meant them to apply to everyone (with the possible exception of women - but even that is questionable), including black men and Indians.

Now I see elitists taking over the party and really losing the connection with the people. Bill Clinton might have been the last of the common men to hold the highest office in the land.

Obama pretends pretty well, but the only people he is convincing are African-Americans because, in my opinion, his race offers them a kind of hope they have never before had in the nation; but he clearly has never shared their struggles.

I am surprised there has not been more backlash from that community over his abandonment of his church. First he slightly distanced himself from the good Rev, Wright but he didn't abandon him, then, after a visiting minister grabbed the media attention, Obama flushed 20+ years of loyalty down the toilet in the name of political expediency.

Any thinking person living in Chicagoland knows Father Pfleger to be a media-grabbing nutjob who doesn't represent the majority of the Catholics in the area. His parish does a lot of good, but he is eager to shout his goodness from the street corners rather than following Christ's admonition to do good secretly.

I have a lot of respect for Rev. Wright, even if I don't agree with him on many things. Unlike Obama, Wright didn't change to expedite a politically smooth road for Obama. He didn't apologize for being who he has always been. While I don't think the pulpit is the place for much of his rhetoric, it's only because my Mormon culture makes me see such things as inappropriate. I do know one thing. I know what it's like to be abandoned by people that were thought to have been friends when my life didn't fit well into theirs.

I was thinking about one of them yesterday and I was saddened that I couldn't call him and have a "remember the good old days" chat. He was my favorite companion in the mission field and the best man at by marriage to Deb in 1972. He was always an example to me of someone who could resist temptation and make good choices all the time. I thought he was a friend, but it turned out that my definition of friendship was different from his.

I have not read anything about Rev. Wright throwing Obama under the bus. Have you?

So Wright isn't as smooth or universally appealing as is Obama, but he is loyal.

I thought then about all those super delegates who once blew the trump of victory for Hillary Clinton that were found sharpening their knives and waiting for her back to become exposed.

Truly, there is no such thing as loyalty when it comes to politics.

So, I am going to vote for John McCain who, among them all, has demonstrated his loyalty to both men and the nation in ways Obama can't even imagine.

I would have likely voted for Obama until he dumped his friends to placate bloodthirsty voters.

I would also invite my friend in, were he to show up at my door in need, even after he slammed his in my face all those years ago... but that's just me.

Newton's Third Law

One of my most vivid memories is my first home-run.

I was 10 and playing shortstop for the Orioles sponsored by the 14th Infantry Division - The Golden Dragons - at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. It was the second game of the season and the last inning of the game.

Since I started playing in Little League just after my 8th birthday, I had always maintained a good batting average which was only topped by my on base percentage as I was walked or beaned almost as often as I hit for bases. At that game in June of 1961, I had been at bat three times before the final inning and had hit a single, a double and a triple, although not in order. When it became obvious I would bat a 4th time, my coach taught me about hitting for the cycle.

I had never heard of the phrase, let alone the event. My coach, a former minor league player, told me he had never witnessed anyone hit a single, double, triple and home run in a single game - the cycle - in his entire life. At that time, I was 10 and he was an old guy; probably all of 25.

I have since learned that in the history of major league baseball, there have been only 277 times a player has hit for the cycle, beginning in 1882 until this moment. Only 23 players have done it more than once and only 3 players have done it three times. I did not know it in 1961 on that sultry Hawaiian afternoon that I was about to join a very exclusive club.

The coach's final words were "Don't think about it; just hit away."

Easy for him to say...

I swung at three pitches, missing the first two. As the third pitch was being delivered, I decided that three hits that game were enough and that a strike-out wouldn't kill my average. I decided to really, really strike out and swung harder and faster than I had ever remembered swinging the bat before... CrrrRRRackkk!

Now let me tell you about that ball field.

The diamond, backstop, dugouts (that's what we called them but they were really only benches) and bleachers were located on one corner of a large parade field located in the center of the base. This meant there were no fences that would facilitate a walk-off home-run. Lot's of speedy players turned doubles into home-runs because they could outrun the outfielders. I was not a speedster. My top speed has never been faster than pathetically slow and on that afternoon, with the heat and humidity, I had settled for one double and one triple that others would have turned into home-runs.

My last at-bat, however, produced the hardest hit ball in my short baseball history and I was able, by only a few seconds, beat the throw from the cut-off man to home plate.

I had hit for the cycle.

My dad was there but he didn't really understand what hitting for the cycle was, nor, apparently, did anyone else except my coach.

My dad was proud, of course, because I had actually hit a home-run. The rest of my team did the expected cheering for the run and the families in the bleachers either cheered me or booed me, depending on the team to which they were loyal. My coach, though, actually had a tear in one of his eyes as he thanked me for allowing him to witness such a sacred event. I was ten and thought he was a little queer.

I finished that season as the league's MVP. I hit 31 home-runs (all the others were produced on fields with fences) and closed the season with a batting average of over .800. I also managed, as a substitute for a pitcher who got the flu, to pitch a no-hitter after which my right shoulder has never, to this day, been the same. The Orioles won the state Little League championship.

It was a great season where I learned a lot about baseball but turned into a cocky, little punk.

The next season, we had a different coach as our old coach had served his time in the Army and went back to his dream of playing in the Bigs. I don't think he ever did but since I have long ago forgotten his name, perhaps I am wrong. I had a good year but not as good. I made the All-star Team and our team won the base championship but we lost to a team from Wahiawa in the first round play-offs.

I played baseball every summer until I graduated from high school but never came close to my best year; the year I hit for the cycle. My dream of playing pro-ball was never even approached, although my best friend in 9th grade, Leon Roberts, went on to a successful career that started with the Tigers when he made the show and ended as a Kansas City Royal before becoming a manager in the Minors.

So what's all this have to do with the title of today's entry?

I learned, at that third swing at my last at-bat in that game in 1961, that the harder I swung the bat, the farther a ball would travel assuming a solid hit was made. I later learned that it's easier to hit a home-run with a fastball than it is with any other pitch. Then, finally, in 9th grade, I learned why. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction... Newton's Third Law of Motion.

I have also learned that Newton's Third Law can also apply to things having nothing to do with motion, but rather, with emotion.

In yesterday's entry, I wrote of a the tension that generally accompanies the close proximity of me to my oldest son. Some may have taken my words to mean that it is my son who creates the tension and that I didn't enjoy being with him because of the anxiety. Nothing could be further - or farther - from the truth.

I love him with all my heart and look forward to seeing him whenever it's possible. Any pain he feels, ever, I inflicted. Any distance he feels that is between us, I created. Any anger he might ever feel I caused. I was never a good father to him and, at times, I wasn't a father at all.

If I could shoulder his pain and remove his burden, I would gladly do it.

While I have changed and repented of my evil past, I began that process after he had left home. He has never experienced the fruits of either my repentance or my affection as a repentant father. I can and have, talked to him, but we all know how cheap talk can be.

Frankly I owe him a debt, I doubt I can ever repay but I can continue to try.

Some may think, because of my entry yesterday, that I am not looking forward to his upcoming visit. They are wrong. I wish, in fact, that he could stay longer. I wish he would want and be able to join me on the trout fishing camp in July. I wish we were neighbors. I wish, with all my heart, that we were friends. I love him. I respect him. I honor him. He, unlike me, has never been anything but a great father.

I wish him every happiness and pray daily for his life to be filled with joy.

I am hoping that the terrible at-bat that wounded him, took place in a field where there are no fences; where there are no walk-off runs from which there is no chance for a tag-out at home plate. I want him to catch me there and tag me out.

I want him to love me as much as I love him, but more than that, I want him to be happy.

Last evening my wife wished out loud that I would be less inclined to write such personal feelings in this blog. I considered her request but determined that it's really good to reveal my warts, my sorrow and my joy. If I offend or anger, I apologize. It is not my intent and I hope, someday, all who read this will understand that I am merely drawing a caricature of myself that highlights my weaknesses with the hope others, who might be tempted to do things I have done that bring sorrow, might think twice.

Anticipation

In a little over a week, my oldest son and his family will be visiting Deb and me. I am looking forward to seeing my oldest and youngest granddaughters, the second of whom, I have never met. I am also happy I will be seeing my son, even if our meetings are always awkward, at best as he continues to both irritate and lick the wounds I inflicted when he was young. It will also be good to see his wife.

Visiting with him always comes at a price. I am forced to measure every word so as not to "offend" him. I do this less for him than for my wife as I refuse to be responsible for causing a rift between those two.

Thus the upcoming visit will be both enjoyable and emotionally arduous.

In a little more than a month, though, I will be leaving for the trout fishing camp-out attended only by men or men almost as 14 is the youngest allowed on the trip. We figure if a 14 year-old breaks his neck, cuts off a finger or drowns, the men have no real culpability as no one is there to babysit. The Indiana/Illinois group will include:

Myself - Committed

Joe - Committed

Al - Half-way Committed

Travis - Maybe Committed

Charles - Checking his calendar

Colton - Committed

Brayden - Likely

Ross - Committed

Hector - Committed

Hector's 14 year-old son - Committed by his father.

The Michigan crew includes:

Bret - Committed

Andy- Committed

Lance - Maybe

Scott - Maybe

We will rendezvous in Paw Paw and travel north on 131 to the Deward Tract where we will camp as near the river as we can.

This is the place the Manistee is born; where the water is crystal clear and the trout wild.

While we all hope to catch fish, I am not sure that is the main purpose for the excursion.

Everyone going is a Mormon so we don't have to worry about things said or done that make us feel guilty. Guilt born of either weakness or too much strength. As Mormons, we all have a common headwater. There will be no shortage of conversation and in those conversations bonds will be formed that will last forever.

Where we are going there is little to no cell phone signal and only an occasional modern toilet. In the process of this "roughing it", we will all leave the world we worry about to its own devices as we create memories that will sustain us until the next time.

My one regret is that none of my sons will be going. One because of distance and expense and the other two because they would prefer being somewhere else - although they can both use distance and expense as an excuse.

In spite of that regret, my plan is to wallow in outdoor indulgence as I forge new and deeper friendships. I also plan to sleep in and nap between casting flies, feeding myself and solving the problems of mankind in our small council of men as we exchange ideas around a campfire.

I will write a lengthy report after I recover from the adventure.

Myth Busters?

Yesterday, as I was reprinting an entry I wrote years ago during my first attempt at blogging, I came across the following comment offered by someone I don't know:

"Quanah died 23 Feb 1911 and Mah-Cheeta-Wookey died 02 Jan 1914. I ahve [sic] reviewed all of the Kiowa-Comanche Agency census files, one each year from 1894-1937. All of Quanah's children and all of the orphan Indian and white children are accounted for. None were taken by any of the missionaries. According to census files 1900-1920 and Rodney's WWI draft registration - Rodney Herbert Yarberry was the son of John Milton Yarberry (1854-1945) and Cynthia R England.

Uh-dah (Comanche for thanks)

Jim Yarbrough

Member/researcher Quanah Parker Historical Preservation Society"

Now, I am reasonably certain that Mr. Yarbrough had the best of intentions here, even if I can't imagine what they were. Still, why would anything think it proper to make an attempt to destroy a family legend just for the sake of accuracy?

I ask this question given the fact that in the blog I stated clearly that the Parker references were part of "family legend".

Since Rodney Herbert Yarberry was my grandfather, I think I might already know the facts, as boring as they might be. The facts, however, are not all that great a story.

Then I had a thought. I wondered how accurate the information offered by Mr. Yarbrough could possibly be with regard to the children of Quanah Parker since so much of Quanah's life is a mixture of hyperbole and legend? The claim is made, for example, that he never lost a battle against the white man. I guess his surrender to General Mackenzie after being threatened with extermination doesn't count as a loss.

He is credited with starting the North American Church Movement, famed for its use of peyote in its rituals but his son White Parker, became a Methodist minister which, in my mind, underscores the possibility of a Methodist connection to my grandfather's father.

One source claims Parker had 5 wives and another is adamant that he had 8, still another claims 7 and yet another claims he had 6. All of these sources make claims of being experts on the life and genealogy of Quanah Parker. All of the sources state he had "at least" 25 children. This means that 25 have been accounted for but clearly leaves open the possibility of other for which there has been no accounting.

So, with all due respect to Mr. Yarbrough, his claims are really no more provable than are mine and mine make a better story...

So, perhaps the family legend was invented by my mother to create some sensation of celebrity in her life; a life marred by dysfunction and mental illness; an early life of an abusive, alcoholic father and a vicious mother. She, perhaps, finds some value in being an Indian princess.

I want to offer my thanks, though, to Jim Yarbrough, for his eagerness to correct the record. I should be grateful because it's quite likely Jim and I are distant cousins since the name "Yarberry" is a derivation of Yarbrough. Of course, if that's true, and since he is related to Quanah though Cynthia - Quanah's mother, perhaps my mother is a princess after all.

I promise that the next time I wrote a story about the Yarberry clan, I will include a tale of the snivelling mythbuster, Cousin Jim.

Of Comanches. Methodists and Strangite Mormons

Written originally on Wednesday, December 21, 2005. In the original entry I made up names I did not know for the sake of the narrative. I have since learned them and they are correct here.

Quanah Parker was an active polygamist. There is historical proof he had seven wives and, at least, twenty-five children but my mother's father and his brother claimed to be the twin sons of his 15th wife. But they also claim to be the younger brothers to White Parker whose mother was Mah-Cheeta-Wookey, Quanah's third wife. The second claim has more historical substantiation as Mah-Cheeta-Wookey died in 1902 and left the care of her remaining small children to her oldest son White and his wife Laura Clark who began as Methodist missionaries to the Comanche Nation in 1914.

Family legend attests that a Methodist preacher named John Yarberry and his wife Sarah (Gambel), en route from Benton Country Arkansas to the Colorado territory in 1854, adopted two sons of Quanah and Mah-Cheeta-Wookey who had been left in the care of White and Laura. There is no record of the boy's Indian names but their adoptive names were Thomas, and John Milton Yarberry, my great-grandfather. He was older than Thomas by 4 years.

As the boys matured, John Milton Yarberry was said to have headed to Colorado looking for a man who was "borrowing" his name. A man going by Milt Yarberry had been a rather notorious gunfighter in Southern Colorado and New Mexico and had been hired in 1880 as the first town marshall for Albuquerque. After shooting to death, an unarmed citizen, the city hanged old Milt on February 9, 1883. Before John left, however, he married Cynthia England in Beton Arkansas in 1870. He took her with him and they eventually settled in Avondale, Colorado where my grandfather, Rodney Herbert was born on October 1, 1896.

My grandfather married three women, although he was not a polygamist. His first wife was Helen Fulton. They were married in May of 1915 and had three children, Robert, Rebecca and Helen. His second, an Indian woman known only as Tillie - as far as anyone knows they had no children - and finally my grandmother, Leota Winona Park (Miller). Together they had two children, but the first died young and the second was my mother, Roxana Lee who hates the name Roxana and goes by "Lee".

Grandpa inherited two stepdaughters, however, my Aunts Eileen and Nadine - known to all as "Denny".

My grandmother and grandfather met when their two husbands decided to meet weekly to play cards with the wives. Apparently Helen fell in love with Mr. Park and Mrs. Park, Leota, fell in love with Rodney and both couples divorces and remarried each other. They continued playing cards together until my grandmother died in 1955, when I was four years old. The whole thing caused quite the little stink in Pueblo, Colorado which, while pretty wild, was not all that progressive in their thinking!

My mother is the family genealogist and has determined to follow the Yarberry line since the Parker line is pretty muddy before Quanah's mother (who had been kidnapped by indians when she was a child and raised with them). The Yarberry line wades through the generations and melds with the England line which eventually takes us to a serf with an unpronouncable name before it stops cold.J

John Milton, a great uncle, became the state superintendant of schools in Colorado as did his son.

My grandfather became a raging mean alcoholic who spent 9 of the last 11 years of his life in the Colorado State Hospital for the Insane from whence he walked away boarded a bus and arrived on our doorstep in Killeen, Texas in 1957. I was six years old and had never met him.

I was very afraid of him from the stories my mother told. When he arrived he was clean and sober and, although my mother told him he could rot in hell, my father invited him to live with us. Mom eventually pretended to forgive him and he spent the last two years of his life sharing a bedroom with an obnoxious me. He has various and sundry grandchildren spread out over the nation but I was the only one who he ever got to know and I count is as a special blessing to me.

His was the first funeral I ever attended and his remains now lie many miles from anyone who even heard his name, in a cemetary in Lampases, Texas.

My mother and father each joined the Church in 1953. She was married to my birth father and lived in Pueblo, Colorado (also my birthplace) and he, married to his first wife, lived in Kalamazoo when he wasn't stationed somewhere in the world. They both went immediately inactive and each got a divorce. They would not meet until 1956.

In that meantime, my mother decided to attend the church where her former in-laws went because she knew it was somehow associated with the Mormons. She went once and there she saw some long-bearded men with chaw-stained lips, preaching a weird religion while they made the women-folk sit in a section apart from them. These were one of the last enclaves of Strang's followers who had escaped from Beaver Island in Michigan and started a few branches of that church in Colorado. It was this connection of which I learned years later, that sparked my interest in studying the life of King James and found him to have been an extremely fascinating man.

My father, after his divorce, returned to the church in which he was raised. It was my Nana's church and the church in which I preformed my first musical solo for money (Nana paid me 10 bucks to sing 'Rock of Ages' when I was 9). She belonged to what Joseph Smith once described as the second-best church. She was a Methodist.In 1956, my father went TDY to Fort Carson, Colorado and my mother had moved with another single mother, to Denver where she worked in a Woolworth store by day and did some modeling in the evening. Her roommates best friend was a the sister of my father's first wife, who remained a close friend of my dad's even after the divorce. She thought my dad might be a good catch for my mother's roommate and hooked them up. The roommate was nervous about meeting a GI on a first date, so she invited my mother along. So my mother and dad met in a Colorado honkytonk and in that same honkytonk, 6 weeks later, after they had become engaged, they discussed religion for the first time. This is how my mother tells it:

"Bob (my dad) said that since we were going to be a family, we ought to have a church. I was smoking a Lucky Strike and drinking gin when I told him he wouldn't believe what I was because I wasn't a good one. I told him I was a Mormon. His eyes widened and he smile that famous Bob Quantz smile, took a drag and said I would be more surprised to learn that he was too."

Bob left for Germany but returned a few months later and he and my mother were married in Dallas, Texas, in route to Fort Hood, Texas is what turned out to be a stolen Studebaker with a curly-headed brat in the back seat. Once at Fort Hood, as Providence would decree, my father's CO was the branch president. Dad and I were playing catch in the street in front of our house one Sunday morning when his CO drove up and strongly suggested that my dad get his wife, himself and me ready for church and be there in an hour.

We went and never looked back. Bob adopted me a year later, just weeks before I was baptized and then we were all sealed in the Hawaiian temple a few years later. So from my mother, I inherited a legacy of drunks, outlaws, preachers and wild indians; from my birth father (who remarried a Mormon, became active, had 8 kids and was just released as a temple worker in Ogden) a foggy connection with the early LDS Church and from the man who raised me.? Well, that's another story.

I Found the Old Blog!

I am adding here, now, some older stories from my first blog.

I will try to edit them to make things more current when speaking in the present.