jmcandrew1

“What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure? I think it is the hope of loving.”
Master Eckhart

THE EARLY YEARS

Six year-old Jonathan Stark walked slowly and carefully across the front lawns during the Cub Scout project.  With him were members of his Cub pack sauntering along in mostly obedient fashion following their scout leader.  They were picking up bags of food they had requested the week before for the “Cubs for the Homeless” drive.  The pack leader was a ruddy-faced rotund woman prone to intermittent loud barks as her troop tried to stay in line. Kari felt a compulsion to run the Cub Scout troop because nobody else seemed to want to. It was a trip down Barker, Cherry, Adams, Schultz, Stoll, and Monarch Streets and then along Ondorf, St. James, Haux and Park Avenues.  A vehicle drove down each street and avenue to collect the booty.  The pick-up truck was driven by Kari Bender’s husband Dirk.  His friends called him Razor because he was hardly ever clean-shaven. Dirk’s cigarette smoldered just a couple of inches away from his chapped lips.   Dirk played a conservative talk show on the AM radio called ”Clark Smitherton, America’s Patriot.”   He revealed what looked like an arrogant smirk when Clark talked about “the liberals” and how they were ruining America and the proud place America was meant to be.  The loud voice over the radio carried to the side walks and to the ears of some of the young scouts. The tone and anger seemed to bother young Jonathan, but he was far too young to put his feelings into words.  The course nature of the articulation over the airwaves seemed to pierce the quiet September morning.  
Jonathan’s mother Karen was a petite and intense looking woman who moved with her husband to Meadeville three years ago.  She felt that Meadeville’s pleasant countryside was the kind of peaceful and rustic atmosphere perfectly conducive to raising an upper-middle class family. Karen was also an artist who painted on canvass when she had time, but she rarely had time, because she poured so much energy into her family obligations.  Karen, college educated and prematurely gray, walked softly but carried a big stick.   Meadeville was incorporated in 1857 and was a railroad town for much of its history. To this day, the Railroad Inn has the best food in town.  Howard was the town to its immediate south, directly south of Lake Omaha. Howard was about ten times bigger than Meadeville’s population of 5611 people.  Back in 1970, Karen was confident her life and her two young boys would take her family on a journey of meaningful proportions.  Jonathan’s father Daniel was an all-state basketball player at Kirk City High School in central Wisconsin in the 1940's.  Daniel was a modest man of Horatio Alger type achievements.  He was in the top five of his class at the University of Nebraska Dental School.  He was a quiet, intense and complex man who loved his classical music (especially Haydn, J.S. Bach and Mozart) and sailing.  He never boasted about his accomplishments.  He was a quiet observer of life...a humble man.   Dr. Stark worked long hours but cared intensely (like no one would know) about his boys.   When Jonathan was in the elementary grades in the 1960's, his mother Karen took night classes at King Hill Community College to become a part-time nursing assistant.  In 1966, Jon’s little brother was two and a lot of work for his parents.  Murray was bigger and more muscular than his older brother.  Jon bore a bit of a scrawny build and was more of the bookworm type.  He was transparently shy and the opposite of pretentious. 
One of Jon’s favorite things to do with his father was to watch the TV show called “The 21st Century” with Walter Cronkite.  Jon studied the solar system in 3rd grade and memorized all the diameters of the planets and their distances to the sun.  The boy’s enthusiasm for space earned him an “A” for that unit in Mrs. Magnuson’s third grade classroom.  Jon and his father would talk together about how wonderful the future will be when new technology and scientific achievements “transform our lives in the decades to come.” (Later in life, Jon would be very appreciative of how positive his father was in encouraging a sense of wonder about the future and this fascinating world of ours.)
Dr. Stark sometimes nursing an after work Manhattan on the rocks or Bourbon in hand would often talk about young Murray being the jock, but no predictions were made overtly about Jonathan.  He was called “special” a lot.  He didn’t quite know what that meant.   How did he rank in the family scheme of things?   Murray already seemed to be possessed with a somewhat brash sense of self, while Jonathan was more careful, more introspective.  Then there was that word that always popped up on his report card, “conscientious.”   He didn’t have a full sense of what that word meant, and how could he at the tender age of eight?  His sense of self was still in serious question.  His self-concept had a lot of evolving to do.    Jon worshiped his father and felt his compassion strongly for the working man, for those less fortunate than himself.  He talked to Jon about his respect for those who would go to jail for justice like Steven Biko and Mahatma Gandhi.    He also talked a lot about the political courage and compassion of the late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  Daniel said he was deeply saddened by the death of JFK because he could “convey so much hope to so many people.”    He talked often about his idols who risked their lives and sometimes went to prison for their political beliefs.

Toby was Kari and Dirk’s oldest son and he boasted that he would someday drive a cement truck like his Daddy. He was also a bit of a show off and handled any opportunity for negative or positive attention like a true showman...a showboat.  He was known as the first grader who nudged and tested the other children, but he didn’t appear to be a mean-spirited kid who enjoyed making people suffer.  He bullied Jonathan frequently, but it was not malicious.  “Why are you so quiet?  Are you still a baby?”  He knew Jon was smart and deep inside was jealous of the intelligence he would never have.  When teased, Jonathan would give a pensive look and wouldn’t jump into any kind of retaliatory response.   It was a face incredulous yet covertly accepting.  Jon though it was better to be quiet than to tempt a bully.  In fact, “Never tempt a bully” had long been his motto.   He was learning to be quite good at playing along.

“As long as there is a soul in prison I’m not free.”
Eugene Debs
“I am lulled into a state of dreamlike lassitude by the warm stillness of a summer afternoon. With energy at its ebb, I am replete with the rainbow hues and musky scents to be savored in this oasis of greenery.”

When Jon was eight, his father felt the need to serve his community in a new and different capacity — to run for school board.  For a long time, he disapproved of how the Meadeville Superintendent of Schools Tim Oreilly seemed to be in secret collusion with the school board president on many of the critical education decisions yet to be made.  The administration and school board members wore buttons that said...”CHILDREN FIRST!” but, many people knew it really was the Superintendent Oreilly and the Tim Hanley agenda.  It seemed as secretive as the Nixon administration. Hanley was president of the school board, and was criticized by the public for seemingly going along with every big decision that was the brain child of Dr. Oreilly.  It was this factor that made the eldest Stark very nervous. He was nervous about so much power in the hands of so few in town.   Hanley’s brother owned Grand Junction Motors. The company bought 40 acres of school property at a good price in the 1960's and opened a car lot.  Environmental groups protested because a city park was supposed to go there, but Oreilly shot them down in the local newspaper, the Smith County Leader. He said the environmentalists were “pathetic tree huggers” and “misinformed idealists.” 
Two years later Jon, who could be classified by some as partially xenophobic, was almost out of the elementary grades.  The door to the classroom opened abruptly.  Jonathan’s 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Brumwell, stepped back in after consulting with someone in the hallway.  Eyes of students were studiously pointing toward the chalkboard, except for young Jon’s whose eyes were drifting on this windy spring day.  10 year-old Jon, with a somewhat pedantic glance, seemed wholly captivated by a bronze statue through the classroom window.  It was a robust bronze of the late Democratic Senator Harvey Stausen, a man from Meadeville who became a U.S. Senator through his brilliant speaking skills, his grit and stubborn determination.   He was portrayed by the statue in the midst of fiery oratory.  Stausen had also been an assemblyman and was mayor of the town before succumbing to the horrors of cancer. Whether he was at Norm’s Hardware Store, at a park dedication or a Chamber of Commerce meeting, Stausen had a smile for everyone he met.    The quote on a plaque at the base of the structure read, “Inspiring the hearts of men begins with believing in all people.” Jonathan was mystified by the saying and the brave and serious look on the statue’s face.  The young boy also wondered for awhile, why such a saying needed to be put on a statue, when believing in people should be common sense. Why must it be advertised on a sign? Yet he held a heavy reverence for that statue that he couldn’t yet comprehend.  The expression of compassion and bravery on the Senator’s face would be something Jon would remember often when down and out from time to time. It would give him a psychological lift throughout his life, especially when beset with a tragedy.  Gazing at that bronze statue sometimes gave him courage to face the day.

Throughout his early school years, Jonathan was quiet and compliant and resisted the opportunity to call undue attention to himself.  He got good grades (especially in math and in science), but was not in any sense of the term an over-achiever.  He was more of an appeaser than a challenger, a bit like his mother.  He was ultra-careful and the opposite of boastful.   Jon felt a very powerful bond to his mother, and to his father whom he knew to be a very quiet, complex man (possibly a genius,) seemed distant a little bit too often. His love for his father was enormous but spiritually obtuse.   Jon had wished he was closer to his father but there was a psychological barrier there that he could not articulate. Over the past couple of years, Jon grew further from his Dad psychologically, as Dad got more involved with the school board, and mentally more distant.  It was something Jon knew was happening, but could not articulate in his mind.  There were all those meetings. Did he have to go to so many meetings?  It seemed like there were too many of them.   Dad grew more aloof over the years, and was continuing to favor Murray’s sports prowess rather than his conscientious first-born son.  Daniel’s aloofness, close to the austere, could be masking an emotional fragility.  

THE COLLEGE YEARS

We now move ahead eight years. Our main character has graduated from high school. 
Jonathan rode with his parents to Orientation Weekend at Tilden College–a quiet rustic ride, 40 miles from Meadesville.  Dr. Daniel Stark, now with a gray mustache and gray goutee, looked a little nervous and out of place. He glanced at Karen, with that somewhat hard to read look. Karen with her half grey hair blowing near the half opened car window said, “Where have all the years gone?” The now 17, almost 18 year-old Jonathan was wearing fragile wire-rimmed glasses, gazed at the pristine Glidden countryside.  A sign said, “Home of the Glidden Ghosts, 1976 WIAA State Football Champions.” Jon’s attention wasn’t on the sign, but it was more in touch with the serenity of the rustic countryside. The journey would take the Stark family vehicle through Glidden then on to Clayburg, then a straight shot down County “AA” to the outskirts of Tilden, population 4122.  It was a little smaller than Meadesville, but not much.   The smell of the atmosphere on this breezy afternoon was full of the benevolent scent of flowers of all colors and sizes, millions of gramineous molecules adrift toward their random destinations.

The family’s dark green Ford was freshly washed.  Daniel always liked freshly washed vehicles.  The Grand Junction Motors sticker on the back of the vehicle was glittering in the summer sun.   It was a windy and sunny day.  The pastoral rural landscape revealed scenes of rural America.   The white picketed palisades, the immaculate silos and the cluttered farm house yards were all part of the scenery.   Wide-eyed and impressionable Jonathan had a copy of Time magazine on his lap. That was his mother Karen’s favorite periodical.   He liked the writing and he felt it was a good way of keeping up with world events. At least he felt informed.  Molded by shy elementary school years, Jon always felt more comfortable with a world of ideas than a world of people. Human relationships were still very scary for Jon, and he had virtually no experience with the opposite sex.    He hated to take any risks at all with his life. He also had little experience with alcohol, but sometimes did drink to give into social pressure, appeasing the crowd when necessary.   Jon’s mind wandered to past memories of his Dad.  It was assumed by some in the family that Jon had inherited much of his reserved nature from his kind-hearted father, but also got his intelligence and sensitivity to people from him.  He also had some of Uncle Gerald’s sense of humor. (Gerald was capable of ultra-pungent satire, especially when it came to his politics.  Occasionally he was enamored with a sense of guileful enthusiasm and his thoughts would take off in interesting directions.     Jon loved that part about his uncle, that his thoughts would go in such fascinating and sometimes unpredictable directions.) Jon’s father showed a kindness to folks, no matter what their lot in life.  He had remembered the barber that his Dad would take him and Murray to when they were preteens and junior high-schoolers.  Glen Rayson was described as a “real” person. He was very folksy and also had a racist streak.   Jon, while getting his hair cut, would often wonder why his Dad would befriend someone like this, more unsophisticated and unrefined in many ways than his family, in many ways an ignoramus. It was an understatement to say that Rayson was rough around the edges.

Margaret Lathrop from “Reflections of Summer”

How do I cultivate true love. My wife is depressed and we are going through struggles with my 12 year old son. Also have a son who is autistic in the midst of placement legal battles. Hard to find true love in your partner in such a turbulent atmosphere. Any words of advice???

Want to be free to be a Unitarian but wife insists I should be Lutheran. What do I do without breaking up the marriage??? I love my wife very much, but we are different in our spiritual outlooks. Unitarianism makes most sense because they don’t have that many rules and money is not as important to them it seems.