I TALKED TO A MAN TODAY

Someone posted this and I feel it is worthy to be read by all.

I hope and pray that everyone takes the time to read this and LISTEN to every word.

I talked to a man today who was 80 plus years old. I asked him if there was anything I could get him while the coronavirus scare was gripping America. He simply smiled, looked away and said:

“Let me tell you what I need! I need to believe, at some point, this country my generation fought for…I need to believe this nation we handed safely to our children and their children…I need to know this generation will quit being a bunch of sissies…that they respect what they have been given…that they’ve earned what others sacrificed for.”

I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going or if it was going anywhere at all. So, I sat there quietly observing.” You know I was a little boy during WW11. Those were scary days. We didn’t know if we were going to be speaking English, German, or Japenese at the end of the war. There were no certainties or guarantees like Americans enjoy today.

And no home went without sacrifice or loss. Every house, up and down the street, had someone in harm’s way. Maybe their daddy was a soldier, maybe their son was a sailor, maybe it was an uncle. Sometimes it was the whole damn family…fathers, sons, uncles…

Having someone you love, sent off to war…it wasnt less frightening than it is today. It was scary as Hell. If anything, it was more frightening. we didn’t have battlefront news. we didn’t have email or cellphones. You sent them away and you hoped and prayed. You may not hear from them in months. If ever. Sometimes a mother was getting her son’s letters the same day dad was comforting her over their child’s death.

And we sacrificed. You couldn’t buy things. Everything was rationed. You were only allowed so much milk per month, only so much bread, toilet paper. EVERYTHING was restricted for the war effort. And what you weren’t using, what you didn’t need, things you threw away they were saved and sorted for the war effort. My generation was the original recycling in America.

And we had viruses back then like polio, measles and such. It was nothing to walk to school and pass a house or two that was quarantined, We didn’t shut down schools. we didn’t shut down cities. We carried on without masks, without hand sanitizer. And do you know what? We overcame. We didn’t attack our President, we came together. We rallied around the flag for the war. Thick or thin, we were in it to win. And we would lose more boys in an hour of combat than we lose in entire wars today.

He slowly looked away again, Maybe I saw a small tear in the corner of his eye. Then he continued.

“Today’s kids don’t know about sacrifice. They think sacrifice is not having coverage on their phones while they are freely driving across the country.  Today’s kids are selfish and spoiled. In my generation, we looked out for our elders. We helped out with single moms whose husbands were dead from war. Today’s kids rush the store, buying everything they can..no concern for anyone but themselves. It’s shameful the way Americans behave these days. None of them deserve the sacrifices their granddads made.

So, no I don’t need anything. I appreciate your offer but, I know I’ve been through worse things than this virus. But maybe I should be asking you, what can I do to help you, Do you have enough pop to get through this, enough steak? Will you be able to survive with 113 channels on your TV?”

I smiled, fighting back a tear of my own…now humbled by a man in his 80’s. All I could do was thank him for the history lesson, leave my number for emergency and leave with my ego firmly tucked in my rear.

I talked to a man today. A REAL MAN, aN American man from an era long gone and forgotten. We will never understand their sacrifices. We will never fully earn their sacrifices. But we should work harder to learn about them..learn from them…to respect them.

This is it and I think the old man said it all. I will close with what I have said before That generation was and is the GREATEST GENERATION TO EVER LIVE and WE NEED TO KETCH UP. I can only imagine how disgusted they are when they see the conditions of this world that they gave life and blood to.

THE RED TAILED HAWK, MY INTERVIEW WITH AN APACHE INDIAN

Before I get started I want to share that this picture was done by Greg Hetherington. he is the proprietor of the Lakeview times. He puts pictures in my column every week.

It is no secret that I love the Native American culture. I love the songs and the drums. I love the headdresses and the long hair. I find their culture fascinating and very interesting. Imagine how excited I was when my husband came home last week and said his sub-contractor had a full-blooded Apache Indian working for him. My husband set up a meeting with him and I decided to take advantage of this rare opportunity and interview him. I hope all that read this will enjoy it. There are a lot of things that he said that I could not get on paper fast enough so I will share what I got and remember.

He was nice enough to grace me with an interview. His name was Melvin and they call him Mel. He was a soft-spoken man but I could tell he had a warrior spirit in him. He looked like an Indian he was dark and had dark eyes and dark long hair laying across his back in a braid. He comes from the Mescalero Tribe and was raised in Saffron Arizona. He was raised in a mining town surrounded by desert and canyons and even a mountain that he said provided winter. His dad split when he was five and so his mother raised him. He spoke highly of his mother. He said that women were queens and his mother ruled in the family. Instead of chiefs women ruled in the Mescalero Tribe (that is awesome). He explained now that his mother has passed and that his oldest sister is the princess of the family and when she passes this honor will be passed down to his brother’s wife. He shared what a fabulous cook his mother was and his favorite meal was Green chili and meat and Red chili and meat. He makes this recipe for his family today. He told me how to make it. He said he loves Rattlesnake meat and if he kills one which is very rare he will skin it and use the skins to make things and the rattles to make jewelry and of course eat the meat. He said no-one should kill a rattlesnake if it has less than nine rattles because it deserves to live awhile.

As a boy he loved to run through the desert and play in the canyons and he said one day he was out in the desert and saw a coyote. He quickly told me that coyotes there are nothing like they are here explaining that they are much bigger. He looked at the coyote and the coyote looked at him. The next thing he knew the coyote followed beside of him until he went home and they both went their separate ways. He said the Mescalero tribes loved all animals even snakes and only killed what they needed to survive. He said they were nomads and traveled, his exact words were “boogied” lol. They never stayed anywhere long so they never lived in tepees only huts that they could assemble quickly and take down quickly. They were not social and stuck tightly together. I asked if any Indians still live in tepees today in Arizona he said the Hopi Indians live in huts.

I asked him what his favorite memory was as a boy and he told me that he and his brother shared a room that was painted blue and he was asleep one night but he said he was asleep but also awake and had a dream where he was on the ceiling looking down at the room. He said he never saw his body only the room and how amazing his window looked from the ceiling. I did not expect this type of memory but he had this experience four times by the time he was five so this stood out to him and he wanted to share it. I asked him about his Father and he said his uncle told him his dad was a six-foot Apache who took the Apodaca name. I asked him if any of the members of his family-owned headdresses and he said no that the Apaches did not have them they dressed light as they were nomads that never stayed long anywhere. They did wear some decorations but nothing complicated. He also said that when people find out that he is an Indian they say Oh yeah my great-grandmother was an Indian. He said he does not say anything but it gets on his nerves because it is simply not true. I understand this because people in Kentucky do claim this and I do not know why. I asked him if he or any other member of his family have Indian relics passed down from generation to generation. He said his mother had turquoise trinkets and rings. He said he had a hammer with a big heavy head made out of rock that he loves he said they would grind meat and pound out bones with this tool.

I asked him what his spirit animal was and he said it was the Red-Tailed Hawk and the Wolf. I asked him if he ever had any visions and he said he had two and explained. They would go into a sweat hut and smoke peyote which is a hallucinogen and they would go on a trip. He said his first vision he was high up in the sky flying, he never saw his body but felt as though he was the Red-Tailed Hawk. He said the view was extraordinary up there. In his second vision he said he was running through the woods either hunting or searching for something and again he never saw his body but felt that he was a wolf so these are his spirit animals. He had a tattoo of the Red-tailed Hawk on his chest. He also had a tattoo of a full moon and inside of the moon was a pot leaf. He has always had a connection to the Hawk ever since. He said he was out one day and there were tall poles standing here and there and he had the urge to look up and knew he would see the Red-Tailed Hawk and sure enough he did. This has happened to him several times and the last time he called for it, he did the call which was so cool and it cocked its head and looked at him as if to say I remember you.

I asked him if he knew any dances and he said the Apaches only danced for two reasons one was for war and the other was for celebration. I asked him if he knew the dance and he said yes but he was to embarrassed to perform it and I understood that. He jokingly said “If I did the dance I would have to fight one of these men” he had a sense of humor which I appreciated. I asked him if he had a knowledge of medicinal plants and he said yes that his mother would collect from a bush in the desert called “The Good Weed” and she would make tea out of it and rub it on them whenever they felt bad and they would feel better. I asked him what he thought of our world today and I will quote him “It is fucked up” I agree. I then asked him if he could change anything today what would that be I think he misunderstood and thought I asked him if he could change the world what would it be. He said He would like to improve technology to the point of defying gravity so that we could move a whole city and put it anywhere we wanted to, and he would like to invent a magnetic shield to protect everything from harmful rays.

I closed the interview by asking him if he always braids his hair and he said only when he works and he took his hair down for me and it only accentuated that he was a true Apache Indian. We shook hands and that was the end. He told me he and his wife were going to move back to Arizona he is in Ohio now and does not like it. I told him we had lots of land here in Kentucky lol. I really appreciated the time he gave me and I will never forget my interview with an Indian just as I will never forget when I got to dance with Indians at the Serpent’s mound last year. My nephew shares the same love I have for the Indian culture and the people. He was with us at the Serpents Mound and we are going to take him to Fort Ancient for his birthday he will be sixteen this month boo hoo. Fort Ancient is where the Hopewell Indians had their village. When we go I will write about our adventure. He said a lot of things that I am sure were lost looking back in retrospect I wish I would have had a recorder to capture everything he said but this was a good interview and I hope all of the lovely readers of this paper enjoyed it, I know I did.

Another Day, Another Page

By Kimber Renee