A Dead Elephant ... and vultures

"Class, I want each of you to write a sentence about a firemen," said the teacher.

Joey’s sentence said: "The Fireman climbed up the ladder and came down pregnant."

The teacher took him aside. "Do you even know what pregnant means?" she asked.

Sure," Joey said, “It means carrying a child."

That’s it.

That’s as far as I got in writing my history of Jacksonville’s Fire Department yesterday.

Then the project overwhelmed me. The joke was as far as I got.

Back in 1986 I began gathering materials for this history book. I wrote one version for the local Fire Museum, but that book is long out of print. Ever since, I’ve intended to expand and update my fire department history, but this and that interrupted the project and I put it on a back burner.

Not a wise move.

Now I face an enormous mass of notes, half-written chapters, files of photographs, and tangles of information — all of it accumulated; none of it organized.

OK. Ok, I know.

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

But here I stand, knife and fork in hand, and no idea where to start.

The dead elephant lies before me and I can’t tell whether to bite its ear or its ass.

But, I’ve made promises. Some few people expect me to produce this book.

I should know better than to ever make a promise.

But I did.

As Scarlet said, “I’ll think about that tomorrow”.

Meanwhile, I spent Thursday reading a murder mystery. Not a single fireman in 400 pages.

In the afternoon, my elderly friend Bubba, who lives on a meager Social Security check, came by to sit and talk.

Ours is a strange friendship. I’m a writer and my world revolves around books and reading and writing; Bubba can neither read nor write. But for some strange reason we hit it off and he stops by to talk fairly often. I find it difficult to carry on a conversation with a person who does not read, so I mostly listen and prompt him with questions. We both enjoy our talks.

I wrote a blog about Bubba and Dolly, his wife, in my February 7^th post, and about Dolly’s death in my June 27^th posting in the blog archives.

Bubba tells me that the life insurance company is still dragging its feet over paying for Dolly’s death; to this poor old man who can’t read, they cite fine print about this and that — section 18, clause 42, line 13, etc.

The mortuary duns him daily for the funeral expenses.

Not only that, but title mortgage companies hound him daily. These exploiters deface every telephone pole in Jacksonville’s poorer sections with signs luring the poor to sell their homes: “We Pay Cash For Houses”. These “businessmen” read Dolly’s obit and call Bubba continually saying that since his wife died he may want to sell his home and they have a great offer for him.

The Bastards!

And on top of that, some relatives in Bubba’s huge extended family seem to me to be lined up to spend a piece of Bubba’s insurance money whenever it finally does come through.

And since he has more room in his house now, already a niece and a nephew have moved in with him — rent free, of course.

It’s not that any one person deliberately determined to do this old man dirt; but they oppress him with thoughtless evils in their normal, everyday way of doing business.

Shudder for the souls of the thoughtlessly wicked.

The Scripture says, “Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate: For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoil them”.

I listened to Bubba’s woes as we sipped iced tea in our rockers — two old farts bitching. I urged him to get a library card so he can check out free VCR and DVD movies; I’ll go with him to fill out the paperwork.

Then our conversation moved on to higher realms as we shared chili and barbecue recipes.

Some things are more important that writing history — at least, that’s my excuse for not really working today.