Conversations with Rev. Timothy Claude Dodgeson, born in Jasper County, South Carolina on September 2, 1912, recorded April 1 – 21, 2008 at Azalea Cottage, the Cottages at Brushy Creek, Greer, South Carolina. Recorded with a Sony ICD-P520 Digital Voice Recorder (256 MB), transcribed by the interviewer and transferred to CD, available on request at wylie.tom@gmail.com. Rev. Dodgeson was a reverend and high school history teacher in the piedmont area of South Carolina from 1934 to 1977.
I would have gladly been a reverend or minister or even a priest without anything before my name except mister but the job and the public want to know, “Is that man a man of God?” and somehow a little something before the name convinces them that if your title says you’re a man of God then you must be. I never believed it myself, not in the whole concept of man of God and I never got into the ministry because I thought of myself as being especially close to God or anything like that. I got into it because I guess like a lot of other people who go into politics or charity work and who see how the people in those jobs are so bad at what they do that I thought, “I can do better than that.” I always was a good speaker, like my mother was a good speaker, and I liked a good story and had passing social skills. That was about all I needed to be a reverend and if some people thought I was a good one it was more because I could tell a story and not just about the Bible, but about most anything. If you can get people to listen to you then you can have an impact on them and you can even make them angry with you as long as they still want to listen to you. And they will come back for more even if it is so they can be angry. Maybe especially for that for some. I’m like that with the Bible, even. For me the Bible itself was always like that. Even now I can’t read more than a page without having to put the book down and not because it’s so deep that I have to come up for air, but because it makes me so angry. But I still want to read it and I do read it. Have you seen the Bible in big print? It should be something you can’t take out of the reading room. But, no. I never believed in anything I had to say from the front of the church like the congregation did, but I knew I could stand up there and talk about things that mattered and tell stories and do that job better than most, and I think I was right. Some would say I was a hypocrite and they might be right but I never said I was holier man than anyone or even a better one. I was just a better preacher than anyone I knew could have been.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Conversations with the Reverend 1
Conversations with Rev. Timothy Claude Dodgeson, born in Jasper County, South Carolina on September 2, 1912, recorded April 1 – 21, 2008 at Azalea Cottage, the Cottages at Brushy Creek, Greer, South Carolina. Recorded with a Sony ICD-P520 Digital Voice Recorder (256 MB), transcribed by the interviewer and transferred to CD, available on request at wylie.tom@gmail.com. Rev. Dodgeson was a reverend and high school history teacher in the piedmont area of South Carolina from 1934 to 1977.
There is only one thing that you need to know about the presidents of this country and that is all of them. You need to know all of them if what you want is to impress people and make them think you know more history than maybe you do and you don’t need to know much more than their names, though if don’t know that Washington was a general and that Lincoln freed the slaves then the rest of knowing the names might be a waste of time. You need to know a single basic thing about the important ones and even the ones of no count, like this president now being the son of his father, which is all you need to know about either. But learning the big list is not difficult though it does take you some time. Takes some people some more time than others. You need to group them, you see? First off you have the first five that is a lot of only what some people can remember. They would be Washington and Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Getting that far is easy for anyone and brings you up quite a ways in American history because all but Adams of those five served two terms. Washington got started in 1789 and Monroe finished off the group in 1825. I’m talking the actual time each was president, you understand? Not the election that brought each one in as president. But if you know the first five by election dates that’s fine, too. It’s the same thing but less accurate. That’s how a lot of people do it, though, maybe because four can go into the election years, and five and 10 and 20 into a lot of them. But then you have your next two, the first being John Quincy Adams, who was the son of the first. Neither served a second term. Then there’s Jackson. Now Jackson is the first president after Washington that you really have to know. Washington was the first and Jackson the seventh. Seven presidents. Most people find seven anything easy to remember and Washington and Jackson served two terms like all the others except the Adams. They didn’t have any family luck in that matter. Then up to Lincoln in 1961 there’s not a lot you have to remember because you had a long stream of presidents who didn’t do much, just let the country grow and let things slide with the races and the Indians until things came to a head in 1961 with Lincoln and the Civil War. I always had a memory device like kids use to remember things like Roy G. Biv for the rainbow and it was, “Jack van Buren Hated to Poke Two Fine Pudd Butts.” You might not know what a pudd butt is, though. That is J for Jackson, van Buren for van Buren, then Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Filmore, Pierce, Buchanan. You can use any other sentence. I don’t know why I settled on that one. I think it was just the first I thought up. Then you have Lincoln. Lincoln was killed in office and in terms of the small things you need to know that he was killed in his second term so that strictly speaking he was a two term president, only he died in his second, like McKinley. But Lincoln then Johnson, just like Kennedy then Johnson, who was his VP. Both shot, both Johnsons. Then you had Grant and Hayes and you should be able to remember that last one easily enough. Now in terms of numbers you have Washington 1 and Jackson 7 and Lincoln 16. After Hayes you have the GACHC group of Garfield, who died in office, shot, and then Arthur Cleveland Harrison and Cleveland again. Did you see the movie Unforgiven? We watched it at the old home about 10 years ago. You did? Then you can remember Garfield as the president who was shot, who English Bob was making fun of on the train. You remember that? I can remember just about everything there ever was in a Clint Eastwood movie. And of course you want to remember that Cleveland was president twice. Now for the next five it should be easy for you. Your name is Txxxxx W. Hxxxxxx. If you add mister to the beginning then you have M and R for mister and TWH for your name, and the presidents you want to know are McKinley, Roosevelt for “r”, Taft and Wilson and Harding. All the rest I remember very well because I remember when they were president so I don’t have any trouble with them but I reckon for you that might not be the case. If you want to go up just to WWII and until you were born then I can’t help you much in a way to remember them. Just that there was Harding and Coolidge and Hoover. Harding died in office as did every president who was elected in a year that ended in a zero all the way up to Reagan, who just got shot but didn’t die. That would be Harrison in 1840 and 20 years later Lincoln, then Garfield in 1880, McKinley after him, then Wilson and Roosevelt and up to Kennedy. So, Harding died and then Coolidge was Silent Cal who let things be and the depression hit hard just after Hoover was president, so people tended to blame him. After Hoover you have 12 years of Roosevelt and World War II, then he died and Truman dropped the bomb and like I say after that since I lived through it I never put together any way to think of remembering them because I didn’t have to.
There is only one thing that you need to know about the presidents of this country and that is all of them. You need to know all of them if what you want is to impress people and make them think you know more history than maybe you do and you don’t need to know much more than their names, though if don’t know that Washington was a general and that Lincoln freed the slaves then the rest of knowing the names might be a waste of time. You need to know a single basic thing about the important ones and even the ones of no count, like this president now being the son of his father, which is all you need to know about either. But learning the big list is not difficult though it does take you some time. Takes some people some more time than others. You need to group them, you see? First off you have the first five that is a lot of only what some people can remember. They would be Washington and Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Getting that far is easy for anyone and brings you up quite a ways in American history because all but Adams of those five served two terms. Washington got started in 1789 and Monroe finished off the group in 1825. I’m talking the actual time each was president, you understand? Not the election that brought each one in as president. But if you know the first five by election dates that’s fine, too. It’s the same thing but less accurate. That’s how a lot of people do it, though, maybe because four can go into the election years, and five and 10 and 20 into a lot of them. But then you have your next two, the first being John Quincy Adams, who was the son of the first. Neither served a second term. Then there’s Jackson. Now Jackson is the first president after Washington that you really have to know. Washington was the first and Jackson the seventh. Seven presidents. Most people find seven anything easy to remember and Washington and Jackson served two terms like all the others except the Adams. They didn’t have any family luck in that matter. Then up to Lincoln in 1961 there’s not a lot you have to remember because you had a long stream of presidents who didn’t do much, just let the country grow and let things slide with the races and the Indians until things came to a head in 1961 with Lincoln and the Civil War. I always had a memory device like kids use to remember things like Roy G. Biv for the rainbow and it was, “Jack van Buren Hated to Poke Two Fine Pudd Butts.” You might not know what a pudd butt is, though. That is J for Jackson, van Buren for van Buren, then Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Filmore, Pierce, Buchanan. You can use any other sentence. I don’t know why I settled on that one. I think it was just the first I thought up. Then you have Lincoln. Lincoln was killed in office and in terms of the small things you need to know that he was killed in his second term so that strictly speaking he was a two term president, only he died in his second, like McKinley. But Lincoln then Johnson, just like Kennedy then Johnson, who was his VP. Both shot, both Johnsons. Then you had Grant and Hayes and you should be able to remember that last one easily enough. Now in terms of numbers you have Washington 1 and Jackson 7 and Lincoln 16. After Hayes you have the GACHC group of Garfield, who died in office, shot, and then Arthur Cleveland Harrison and Cleveland again. Did you see the movie Unforgiven? We watched it at the old home about 10 years ago. You did? Then you can remember Garfield as the president who was shot, who English Bob was making fun of on the train. You remember that? I can remember just about everything there ever was in a Clint Eastwood movie. And of course you want to remember that Cleveland was president twice. Now for the next five it should be easy for you. Your name is Txxxxx W. Hxxxxxx. If you add mister to the beginning then you have M and R for mister and TWH for your name, and the presidents you want to know are McKinley, Roosevelt for “r”, Taft and Wilson and Harding. All the rest I remember very well because I remember when they were president so I don’t have any trouble with them but I reckon for you that might not be the case. If you want to go up just to WWII and until you were born then I can’t help you much in a way to remember them. Just that there was Harding and Coolidge and Hoover. Harding died in office as did every president who was elected in a year that ended in a zero all the way up to Reagan, who just got shot but didn’t die. That would be Harrison in 1840 and 20 years later Lincoln, then Garfield in 1880, McKinley after him, then Wilson and Roosevelt and up to Kennedy. So, Harding died and then Coolidge was Silent Cal who let things be and the depression hit hard just after Hoover was president, so people tended to blame him. After Hoover you have 12 years of Roosevelt and World War II, then he died and Truman dropped the bomb and like I say after that since I lived through it I never put together any way to think of remembering them because I didn’t have to.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Cornered
The old man stood in the corner of the hospice room, his wife’s head raised in the bed before him, his daughters and son in chairs and on the bed and standing to wait to say goodbye to their mother. His wife talked in a loud thin voice asking not to sell the house and the man as he always had thought to himself that she talked too much and said, “Don’t hog the trough, Mary”but she talked and he looked at his shoes cramped into the corner where the wheels of the bed were tight against the hospice room wall. The son asked “Mother! Who is buried in the backyard?” as he took a picture again and more with the blinds closed against the sun for the light of day hurt her eyes, and the youngest daughter asked, “Who are the pets buried in the backyard?” She listed the names and the oldest daughter said “asshole” at mention of the old man’s favorite gray, shot by a neighbor now dead and the old man said, “Don’t talk like that, Mary Gene” and Mary Gene looked at the others and said, “I’ll talk anyway I like.” I guess you will, the man thought, and to his dogs run down in the road by a Model A when he was 12 years ago, that same year his father died and his mother whipping more often after that, once cornering him out in a piano box where he sat smoking tobacco cigarettes with his friend and once more and something about an outhouse. The middle daughter leaned hunched over the bed and he had fed his kids well, worked hard at that, and there would be hunched over enough in their lives, he knew, before the hunching slacked and there was just a bed to lie in. And little of that had much to do with food. He knew that, the door opening as everyone was talking and a hospice administrator asked when could the family meet for a meeting and the oldest said, “Tell them to go stuff it” and the son said, “Tell them to sit on a sharp nail” and the youngest said, “You are awful” and the old man saw in the escalation and remonstration the traits he had struggled with when there was time to struggle with the like that those traits were now of his own. Then the youngest said it was time to leave and everyone gathered behind the head of the bed, the old man, too, and the camera went to the nurse who fumbled the shutter and jumped each time the flash popped up to flash and pop and the old man wondered why the flash made no light the oldest saying, “I’m seeing things. Are you?” The youngest gathered up a leather bag and coat and kissed the old woman and said goodbye, the others waiting their turn and they lingered in the door way and left with side steps saying goodbye more. When they had left the door still open slowly shut and when it clicked the old woman lifted her hand and pointed a crooked finger at the door, the hand shivering at the door and the finger pointing at the corner where the man stood and he thought maybe now they could talk but the old woman let her hand down to the hospice blankets and turned her face to look at the bedside table and shut her eyes.
Stupid Chinese Sayings, with Commentary 7
Thunder and rain at night.
Growth comes with a shock.
Expression and duration
Appear in the first moment.
Growth comes with a shock.
Expression and duration
Appear in the first moment.
Hmmm.....sounds like somebody better take it easy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)