Harrison

 

 

Harrison

                            

By john W. Vander Velden

 

     As I drove past the rubble remains of a house trailer, my mind returned to Harrison.  It was where the man lived when I came to this neighborhood in 1972.  I can’t say I really knew the man that shared my grandfather’s birthday.  But I guess I didn’t know my grandparents well either.  Distance and time, barriers that were never crossed, left my parent’s parents only the subjects of stories, made real by those they had raised.  But I had met Harrison…briefly.  And the stories about him gave flesh to the silhouette of a man I saw move about his yard.  Before he came to Marshall County he had been the chef at the Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island.  Surely the man had countless stories of those years, but I heard none.  One of his sons lived in the trailer right next door.  Bill and his boys started a business and kept an eye on Harrison.  August 15^th, 1890, was the day the two men lives began.  Now almost 132 years later little more than memories remain…and for me only brief glimpses of their incredible lives.  But with the disappearance of that old rotting tin box, will any give a thought to Harrison?  I wonder.  I have no idea where his descendants migrated.  Bill passed years ago.  His daughter moved into that other trailer and left in the mid eighties.  The property sold and the trailers rented, time has been harsh on the structures.  Bill’s trailer replaced with another and now the last earthly reminder of his father is being dismantled and hauled away as scrap. 

     But this post isn’t about Harrison, or my grandfather, or Frank either.  I met Frank in the early sixties. He was 96.  Frank came to visit the farm where his fortunes began.  I do mean fortunes.  He had amassed a financial empire, businesses, hotels in major cities.  By the late sixties and early seventies his high rise hotels in Miami and Chicago were torn down.  Now when you google Frank Morrison…zilch.  At least about that Frank Morrison.  The family sold the farm where it all began a few years ago.  They were too disconnected, I was told.  Disconnected from the land…I fear they were also disconnected from the man. 

     Thinking of Harrison and the others, I consider legacy.  What is it these men have left behind?  What mark did they make…really?  I’m sure the rubble strewn craters of the Morrison Hotels have found other uses.  They were after all prime real estate.  But the years have washed away the memory.  Legacy.  If we tie our whole being to some thing, grand or not, time will erase all traces.  That is unless we build some magnificent pyramid of granite, like those in Egypt.   

     So what should our legacy be?  How do we leave something that matters?  And should we care?  Whether we care or not is for each of us to decide.  But if we do care…then what?  The men of my father’s family each named a son after their father.  It seems that Gerard Vander Velden left a mark.  That is a legacy I believe I should take pride in.  As for me, I have no idea what scratch I will make on this world.  And no idea if that small mark will be remember in my passing.  I carry no pride in that regard. Best I live my life to the best of my abilities…Help others when I can…Be fair in all my dealings…Love my family and friends…Be true to GOD…and trust that my life will have mattered.  And if it does…that will be legacy enough…

 

(608 Words) 7-20-2016 (Updated 7-8-2022)

 

Move Forward

Move Forward       

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Where has our days of youth gone.  Those times when we frolicked woods and glen.  Hours spent wading in cold water of crystal streams.  Or watching our bobbers floating as we fished the neighbor’s pond on lazy hot summer afternoons.  Have they left us?  Are they no more than a memory? I long for those times, when melancholy seeks to drag me under.  No, they were not all pleasant.  Those joyful days had enough tears as well.  But the years sweep us along, and we it seems, but dust before that broom. 

There are events that drag me back to times past.  Dramatic moments that shake me to my core, and I wonder if others feel as I about time’s change.  With the sun’s rising a new day begins.  Each holds its promise…but when I feel dark, those promises seem empty.  When news of world, of family, of friends comes deep and dank, breathing in GOD’s beauty and promise is a difficult task.  Laughter and a stiff lip may hide a broken heart, but the heart is shattered all the same. 

I understand that events of the passed two years have placed me in this funk.  When the complexities of life have me longing for a simpler time.  But were those days of youth less tumultuous?  Really?  I didn’t think so at the time.  Life it seemed then hinged upon one thing or another.  On things that now we know were frivolous.  Perhaps it is still so.  Perhaps the things that drag us to emotional depths are really insignificant…in the long run.  But looking at the things that came recently, I can’t believe there is anything frivolous about them.  My world has been quaked…emotionally that is.  Time will, with its passing, bring a clearer perspective.  On that I am sure.  But now the dark tunnel surrounds.  Now I do my best not to be trapped by the mire and to climb upward.  Effort is needed.  Effort requires strength, and strength requires energy.   

It’s the last part I have trouble with this morning…energy.  So I must draw a breath, take just a moment to notice the wonderful day I have been given, and go on.  Grit my teeth and go on.  Drag my self forward and go on.  Today is a gift.  I would insult the Giver if I did not whole-heartedly enjoy all that it offers.  To look up, draw a breath, and march forward facing the wonder as well as the challenges. 

That must be the goal I set for today.  To move forward.  “Baby steps” perhaps but “baby steps” in the right direction is progress none the less.  Life has always had changes. And though these recent changes have been dramatic.  Though my world seems to have become unhinged.  I will look for blue skies and star filled nights and understand a bit of my place among all the grandeur of the world…and beyond.  I will accept that my task remains unfinished and move forward with new energy.  I will move forward…I will…oh yes, I will! 

(512 Words)                6-25-2016 (Updated 7-16-2022)

Clouds and Disappointments

Clouds and Disappointments         

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

For part of my childhood we lived in central Florida.  My parent both came from large families, and family meant a great deal to them.  So each year we loaded up the 59 Chevrolet Biscayne and drove the 1100 miles to Northern Indiana.  The two long days within the white Chevrolet offered a view of the country I could never have imagined.  But I remember a particular morning on our first return when the winding mountain road led up and up.  I remember seeing the clouds, in the distance, low enough that the mountain’s higher points lay blanketed.  I stared breathlessly out of the windshield from my perch in the back seat as we climbed higher and higher moving closer and closer to clouds.  Until that morning I had only seen clouds very far above my head.  For I like any child had looked up, scanned the sky, watching the “great white sailing ships” move across the blue.  Or observed the gigantic dark tumbling masses build on gray wet days.  Clouds were big…real…but most of all, far away.  But that day…that summer morning we would drive into a cloud…a real cloud…so close…It would be all around us. 

I am not certain what I had expected.  I know my anticipation grew with each second.  But I remember the disappointment when our white car entered the fog…  Fog!  How could this be?  Clouds majestic.  Clouds ominous. Clouds special.  But common fog, the stuff you walked through to get to the school bus on cool damp mornings.  Fog! 

Dad explained that fog was a cloud…a low flying one.  But it didn’t help, I had been crushed.  My first life experience with clouds was nothing…nothing new…nothing grand…just driving up into a fog.  I knew fogs…but clouds…well  

I understand clouds better now.  Perhaps the disappointment of that summer morning helped my scientific mind recognize what others had difficulty in seeing.  But it hasn’t helped me, much, with disappointments.  Too often I set a mental image of a thing or an event, only to be brought down by reality…it is only fog.  Too often my senses soar as I approach a grand event or meeting, or whatever, only to be shaken down to reality by…fog.  But fog has not stopped me from dreaming.  Fog has not stopped me from trying to accomplish things others felt certain beyond their reach.  Fog reminds me that things are rarely what they seem and almost never what I think they are worth.  But fog also reminds me that one morning years ago I first drove through a cloud.  That clouds might not have been what I wished they were, whatever that might have been, but I penetrated the great gray mass all the same.

We have expectations.  We will be disappointed.  But we should not give up dreaming, just because they might not come out the way we thought they might.  No, I still look at clouds. I still try to see familiar shapes in their puffy masses.  But I know clouds better…what they are…what they feel like.  Perhaps the childhood magic is lost, but clouds are clouds…They are more than the damp fog that surrounds on some early mornings.  Fog may be clouds that courageously ventured too near the earth.

Some might say I set too high an expectation that morning. It was doomed to fall.  I have fallen may times since.  But high expectations are the only way to reach lofty goals.  Yes, disappointments are a price we all pay, but clouds taught me long ago…it is a price I pay willingly!

 

(611 Words)    5-17-2016       

Secrets

Secrets                   

By John W. Vander Velden

 

We all have secrets. 

Those things hidden away in dark corners.

We keep them in locked boxes

Within locked boxes,

Buried as deeply as we can.

Doing our best to eliminate their memory from our mind. 

But they remain

Ghosts from our past.

 

Among their many forms,

Embarrassment and guilt seem most common. 

Unknown to others, they hold us prisoner

With cold dark tentacles that reach from times long ago.

They threaten to leave some visible scar,

Marking us for all to see.

 

There are those best forgotten…

Moments from the past.

Clumsiness, bad choices, illnesses, and all the rest

Whose only power is what we give them.

 

Why do we fear them…Secrets? 

Are they not reminders of our humanness?

Has our dread detoured forward progress?

Though we grow out of our yesterdays,

Are we defined only by what we have dealt or done?

Have we forgotten,

That past’s actions do not describe present life?

 

We all have secrets,

That gnaw from the shadows.

Hidden failures left behind,

But not forgotten.

Secrets that retain power.

Release can only come by…

Dragging them, kicking and screaming,

From their dark places

Into the light!

 

For we all have…secrets

 

(203 Words)  4-20-2016

 

Stripes

Stripes                

By John W. Vander Velden

 

The flag flies over our land, stars in a field of blue, and stripes of white and red.

 

Years ago there were those that acted upon an untried dream.  They risked all…their homes…their families…their lives…in the hope that a new thing was possible.  Pain and sacrifice the price willingly paid to a future unborn.  Ordinary men and women…shopkeepers…business owners…farmers…stood together demanding only justice…a fair shake, but they began a social experiment not yet complete.

We are heirs to those bold, who together changed the world.  We are the next to carry the dream yet unfulfilled.  Shall we not look forward toward the possibilities…rather than dwell upon past mistakes?  Shall we not move boldly seeking the very things our forefathers yearned?  Shall we not strive to make this nation a beacon of hope in a dark world? 

We owe future generations our best.  To build upon what we have been given…given by those that have stood before…stood facing boldly what must have seem insurmountable odds to give us freedom.  Freedom purchased with hero’s blood and whip’s stripes on defiant backs.

(190 Words)                6-14-2013

To Stand Together

 

 

 

To Stand Together

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

 

The world news and political views that ooze out of our televisions make it is easy to fear the future.  In chaotic age, perhaps it is a time for looking back.  Few see the significance of knowing the past, but was not this country founded amid tumultuous times?  Have we not, as a nation, faced many difficult situations and endured?  Yes, we face new situations, but did not our fathers and their fathers face troubles that none other were forced to confront. 

 

Today we find ourselves bombarded by heated rhetoric.  Hateful divisive words that promise solutions but in truth only points fingers.  Words intended to put one against another.  This has never been the solution.  Fueling mistrust and anger only increases the fire.  Fear and hate cloud our vision and stand between us and understanding.  Should we not look deeper…to see that within each is a shared heart. Yes, each of us are unique…special in our own way, yet there is a common thread...the things we all share. So on this our nations’ Birthday let us remember the things we share.  We are more than Democrats or Republicans, more than Conservatives or Progressives, more than race, more than first generation or those that can trace their heritage to the Mayflower, for we are all Americans.  And though there has always been differing opinions, and free discussion, we are united by who we are…not what we are.  Challenges have come before.  Challenges will come throughout all time.  But if we stand together, face the difficulties before us, then we will, as we have in the past, defeat those challenges.

 

For though there are those that wish to divide, putting some against others, we are brothers and sisters that share our country.  It is the people that make up America…all of them!  And if we stand together, face all challenges that stands before us, success will be within reach.  Time has taught that the task has never been easy. Each generation has been required to give some of themselves for the future yet unborn.  Let us move forward, shoulder to shoulder, giving our best, respecting one another, supporting our neighbors, family, friends, and strangers, take up this fight that demands sacrifice, patience and a common purpose.  It is time to stand together! 

 

(383 Words)  7-2-2016