bobberdilly.com

10/30/2008
Robert Joy

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Dennis came to the singles’ gathering with a stomach ache. He sat there during the handwriting analysis guest talk and he moaned and groaned. He left the room a few times and came back. He wanted some attention, but he wasn’t getting much. I just wished he’d go home or to the hospital or just scream out loud, fall on the floor and make a horrible scene so someone would go to him and ask what the problem was and deal with it. I noticed Sylvia go over and talk to him a couple of times, but Dennis seemed to just brush her off with a motion of being alright. Like I said, I just figured, Dennis just wanted attention. He lived his life for attention.

He lived alone or maybe he lived with his mother, it really didn’t matter. He was this momma’s boy, with or without a real mommy, maybe his mommy was a rubber one he just blew up every night with a cheap tire pump. I really never knew, because Dennis wasn’t the type of person in which I was interested in becoming friends.

Dennis worked for the power company. He worked in the main headquarters and had told all of us he designed and redesigned sub-stations. Who the hell knew what a sub-station was? Dennis was a classical pencil pushing, high IQ’ed nerd with no friends, no real mother that we knew of at home, no pets that would live with him, and no prospects of having any of the above, but he had his work and the singles’ club.

I don’t think many people at the headquarters liked the guy, because the people at the singles’ club really didn’t like him. We tolerated him and I’m sure that’s what happened at work. they, like us, pretended to like him and tried to be somewhat civil… so the best he was ever going to have was a good long moan and people going to see if he was alright.

It’s during the snack time after the handwriting analysis program. Dennis isn’t eating or drinking anything. He still doesn’t feel good, but refuses to go home. He even refuses to go home with Nancy as she leaves early and offers him a ride. Hell, I’d taken that offer with or without the stomach ache, but not Dennis, he turns her offer down. That was the last best chance Dennis was ever going to have and he has a tummy ache.

Dennis tells us he ate too much.

Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches, to be precise.

Six, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, to be more precise.

Howard leans in toward Dennis and asks the big question. “Why did you eat so much?”

Dennis answers, “I wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so I took out my recipe.”

Howard interrupts with a question, “Recipe?”

“It’s the way I like my peanut butter and jelly, so I wrote it down so they would always be the same. My mother used to make them and I always liked them that way.”

Howard leans back with an “Oh?” on his lips.

“Anyway I made the sandwiches. My mother’s recipe makes three sandwiches. I ate them while I watched the Discovery channel. When I finished the last sandwich I was still hungry, so I went and made three more sandwiches. I ate them too and now I don’t feel good. I ate too much and my stomach hurts.”

“Why did you make three sandwiches? Why didn’t you just make one at a time? I asked him.

He answered, “Because the recipe makes three and I had to eat them so they wouldn’t go to waste!”

P.S.
A year later Dennis applied for a job, somewhere in Maine and got it. The week before he was to report to his new position and his new life, the singles’ group announced a going away party. (Big Mistake) We all said our goodbyes and Dennis, moved by our kindness, decided he had too many friends here in the midwest and called oof his move and declined the position in Maine.

10/26/2008
Robert Joy
Going Green

I was never a Hippie, but I certainly grew up at the time, so I absorbed the thinking whether I wanted to or not. In the 70’s and 80’s it was all about taking a step backwards. Not a giant step, but certainly a step that mattered. The thinking of the time was that our parents had just gone too far with everything and it was time to start taking care of what we had and to use what we had. The idea of driving ahead with more and more material goods was a ridiculous exercise in futility. Our stuff and our way of life was killing our souls.

The idea of helping our neighbors to succeed and they helping us was the way to go. To share if we have something to spare and the world would become this giant family each helping one another and thus the end of greed, power and all the reasons to make war. I thought this was what we were doing. I thought the idea was to become independent from foreign oil, especially Saudi Oil. To make cars fuel efficient, to clean up the oceans and try to reverse the trends we were destroying and to repair the fabric of our existence.

I thought that was what we were doing!

This year I went to the Barton County Arts building to attend the 2008 Earth Day celebration. About six other people chose to do the same. I went to the back room to watch a couple of films. The first film was on the death of the electric car. That was depressing. The second film was on “Green!’

I guess it isn’t what we’re doing!

The whole film was about reducing our dependence on foreign oil and the ways we are going to clean up our environment. All well and done, except for the fact “Green” isn’t what I thought it was supposed to be. My hippie mind has it all wrong. My mind wants to go back a step, drive less, walk more, turn off all unneeded lights especially at night, lower the light pollution in our skies, lower our electric bills, get the Arab oil off our backs and live simple.

Sorry hippie, but that isn’t want green’s all about.

Who the hell came up with the term “Green?” It’s such a wholesome word. So back to the earth, full of hope and full of all the things people have visualized for this poor over crowded, battered planet. The one thing all of us want for the earth and for the futures of our children, but with a twist. The problem with green is the fact that everyone wants a new, renewed, world with everything in place as it is now, but without the smog, the noise and the struggles between the East and the West over oil.

I don’t know about anyone else in the world, but America likes what it has and has no intention of giving any of it up. America has the Corporation Syndrome. Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow and on and on and on and never going back even an inch. Grow is good and not-growing is bad. America wants to have this balloon that will just keep expanding and never blow up no matter how big it gets. America knows how (well, maybe it thinks it knows how) to keep expanding and never having to bite the bullet or swallow the bitter pill.

I came out of the Earth Day film disillusioned. I was numbed by its clocked message. I went in expecting to see a world learning to do less with what we have. Doing more with what has already been done and not out making the mess worse than it is. Not making bigger electric plants to run our larger air conditioners. Turn the air conditioners down or off or open the windows on cool days or rolling down the windows in our cars and driving with one hand outside gliding in the air like in the old days. Making the old plants more efficient, by not demanding so much from them.

It’s so damned easy it scares me to think it might even work… Unscrew all the unneeded light bulbs, turn off the lighted signs at night and get rid of all those automatic night lights and automatic yard watering systems and on and on and on, but that’s not what green wants. Green wants more and more and larger and bigger and more of them. Green doesn’t advocate going back or simplifying. Green wants alternatives to the pollution we have now. Green wants a whole new set of pollutions that won’t be discovered to be harmful for a decade or so. Out of sight, out of mind.

Oh, the whole problem goes the short walk back to money.

The farm next to the farm that sold out its property to the wind powered electric company. Giant towers with giant blades that turn and swoosh around and around, powered by nothing but the wind and producing electric power without fuel. Green calls it free. Well, how the hell is free, free?

The farm next door who didn’t turn its land over to the wind mills is now in the shadow of those contraptions. They turn and swoosh day after day and the poor farm below gets nothing for the fact they’re right next door. This farm family is bitter. You ask them why and they will tell you the noise is maddening, the shadows from the towers are effecting the crops and the shadows moving off the rotating blades are causing the cows to get dizzy and the kids’ grades have dropped from straight A’s to C’s and on and on and on until someone screams for them to stop.

Then they go out and hired that lawyer advertized on television that promises giant payoffs in cases just like theirs, but before the case goes to court, the wind power company settles the matter by making an offer. The lawyer tells them to hold off and stand firm with the knowledge the company will come back with an even higher offer. They do and the offer is more than they could possibly make off of unrelenting toil, so they settle with the advice of their lawyer. The money is paid, the lawyer stands with his hand out and they get the rest. Then suddenly they are no longer bothered by the swish, the shadows and the kids get B’s and the family is all happy until the money runs out and the divorce is settled.

… and all this was made possible by cold hard cash, but by god it was green and no one is complaining that the horizon has become a swirling mass of three bladed monsters like in the movie “War of the Worlds.” Nothing has changed, but money has had its momentary soothing effect just like in a nice tube of Ben-Gay.

Now it isn’t going to stop with the horizon turned into a mass of spinning windmills. The ground will be covered by a layer of solar shields turning sunlight into molecules of electric current. Now there will be a series of lawsuits by people bumping their heads on the support beams and then there will be the people who say the cooling effect below the shields is detrimental to their nasal passages.

The highways will be filled with electric cars running off of concoctions of banana tree leaves and coconut oil. Electric trucks with magnetic fields that cause people to loose their sunglasses as they pass on the highway. The rest of the amazon forest will be cut down to install solar panels, windmills and tree farms with long patches of shade with happy strawberries growing below. Eventually, thank god, long after I’m long gone, the whole surface of the planet will sport a whole new skin of all our “Green” devices to keep the system growing and growing and growing.

That’s when someone will discover what all that “Green” has been screwing up. Of course, some things will never change and one side of the population will start looking for alternatives and the other segment (the largest segment) will all yawn and say, “They’re just trying to scare us again, those Liberals! This is just a natural cycle that we can’t do anything about, but we do need to get ourselves out from under Iceland and their solar battery industry. We need to make our own or we need to come up with an alternative to feed and house our twenty-seven billion people.”

The hippie inside me says… “Just unscrew the light bulb, unplug the outdoor sign at night, walk the three blocks to work, eat a hell of a lot less at breakfast, dinner, and supper, drive smaller cars, or bicycles and maybe make some sort of effort to limit population growth to keep things around six billion people, but who am I? And most important, where will I be when I’m going to be needed to come out, point a finger and say, “I told you so!”

10/23/2008
Robert Joy
Are there any questions?

There is one rule you should never forget. If you are speaking to a crowd, Never! Never ask if anyone has any questions. And if you should accidentally do so, (and all of us are prone to do something stupid like that), please try to understand that you made that mistake and instantly make every effort to bring it all to a swift conclusion.

And here is the reason! The people in the audience will NEVER stop asking questions. Someone will have another question on and on and on. And for god’s sake, if you have any brains at all, never ask… “Are there any more questions?”

It was in January, 1967 at Ft. Bliss, Texas, United States Army base. I had been choosen by my family and neighbors to serve in our nation’s army by way of selective service. I know now why it was called that. They made the selection and I got to go to the service of their choice.

I sure as hell didn’t want to be there, but I had no say in the matter. The military was looking for fresh meat for the war in Vietnam and I was a prime cut. They sent me a paper telling me where to go and when to show up. They looked in my mouth, squeezed by balls and looked up my ass with a flash light. Prime Cut! Next! and the next thing I knew, I was in a nice green suit with a nice green baseball hat on my head.

They made us run everywhere and salute anything with gold braid on their hats. They made us eat fast and walk a jungle gym before we went to chow. They made us get up before the roosters and run outside to be counted like a herd of cattle. They looked at our smooth little faces to make sure we shaved our smooth little baby faces. It was a rite of passage to have the makings of a real beard even if you didn’t have one. They had roll call and sick call and if you had the guts to step out for sick call, they made you wish you were really sick, even if you were really sick. I would rather have had a massive heart attack than report for sick call. I’d want to just pass out on the parade ground and wake up in the hospital, than to volunteer to go through all that humiliating sick call shit.

Every day was different. That was the only good thing about being in basic training. Every day was different and some of the stuff was actually fun. Then one day we were expected to take this long hike out into the desert. This wasn’t so bad, because it was February and the weather in southern Texas was great that time of the year. Thank god we weren’t in Ft. Bliss during the summer.

It was going to be a long one and all we had to take along was one pair of clean socks in our back packs. No food, no entrenching tool, no weapon, no extra boots or anything else, but those pair of clean socks.

We hiked out into the desert and then we ate hot C-rations provided by the army at a place set up for us in the sand. Barrels of hot water with C-ration main course meals in them. We just had to pick one out and get the rest of the box of rations on a table and go over on a small hill of sand and eat. It was so simple.

Then we policed up the area and started back the way we came. About half way home the sergeant discovered that Bailey didn’t have a pair of socks in his back pack. I don’t know any of the ugly details but the sergeant found out he didn’t have his socks. Maybe someone dropped a dime on his ass, ratted him out… I just don’t know. Anyway the sergeant yelled at the guy with all of us looking on. Bailey was this loser that didn’t give a shit what the army thought and just wanted out.

I wish I’d had had that kind of guts. Bailey just took the shit and then he filled his back pack up with big rocks and carried it all the way home, because the sergeant told him too. Bailey had the balls to do it and keep on doing it and I’m sure without the slightest doubt, eventually got out of the army. You would think that’s the kind of folks the army would be looking for. They didn’t want people to have guts, they wanted people stupid enough to spill their guts.

I don’t know how long that hike was, but my legs were tired and my feet hurt right up to the nubs. I was sleepy, hungry, dirty and all I wanted to do was take a hot shower and die into the bunk. The sergeant lined us up between the barracks and started on a long spiel of everything we were expected to do the next day. The shit went on and on. Every goddamned detail, every moment recorded and filed. My feet were burning up. My back hurt from lugging those socks all day long. I was thirsty and I wanted to sleep. The sergeant went on and on like a parrot being fed peanuts to perform.

Then I could hear that subtle pitch change in his voice that he was about to stop talking and release and send us upstairs to our barracks and off to beddy-by. He wound down and then he said it! I didn’t want him to say it. I only wanted to hear the words. “Company. A-Ten-Hut, Company, Dismissed!” but he didn’t. Instead he asks, “Are there any questions?”

There was a silence for a moment. I’m praying that no one heard him ask that question. I asked god a simple request, “Oh god, If you are indeed god, please don’t have had anyone to hear what the sergeant just asked. Please god stiffle anyone somehow… give him a mild heart attack or a stroke. Have him struck dumb for ten minutes… but please merciful god, if indeed you are the one and only god, please have no one answer this question.”
Then I hear, “Yes! What is it trooper?”

“Shit,” I say to myself, so loud the guys next to me look my way. “Shit,” I thought so loud that my feet hurt even more. Then a voice from behind me. It’s a guy named Farmer.
“Awwww… Yeah Sergeant, sir, I didn’t hear all that you were telling us about what we were going to do tomorrow.”

“Don’t call me sir, son! I work for a living!” barks the sergeant.

“Aww… Yeah, sergeant, but like, I didn’t hear what you said we we’re doing tomorrow.”

“Pull yer head out of your ass, son. Now listen up, because I’m only going to tell you one more time.”

And the sergeant tells us all over again what we’re going to expect to do tomorrow. The whole damned thing over again. Jesus Christ… I thought I was going to die. I needed to take a piss so bad I was doing a dance. My feet hurt, my back ached, I wanted to just die and the sergeant went on and on… And when he finished, he did it again.

“Are there any questions?”

“Jeezesussh H. Kerist!” I said again to myself so loud everyone around me looked in my direction. Even the sergeant looked over toward me wondering who said something. Lucky for me he was interrupted by a hand going up on the second row.

“Sergeant, I was wondering if we were going on any more hikes tomorrow, because I have a blister on my big toe and I think I should go to sick call and have it looked at,” asks a guy named Marlo. This really pisses the sergeant off. He plows through the first rank and goes nose to nose with Marlo. “What the hell do you think we’re going to do tomorrow, son?”

Marlo shrinks back and stutters out, “Well, er… I was just wondering if I should have it looked at sergeant!”

“Get this son! If you go on sick call tomorrow you may as well call yer momma and tell her you won’t ever be coming home and it won’t have nothing to do with Vietnam. I told you what we were doing tomorrow, twice. Did you hear me say anything about a hike to anywhere, except maybe, where I’m going to put my boot?”

“No, sir!”

“Don’t call me sir, son. I work for a living!” All the sergeants have to say this and they never fail to do it.

The sergeant straightens back up, re-cocks his smokey bear hat, puts his hands on his hips and says, “Now loosen up. I’m only going to tell you one more time. If any one of you cockroaches asks me again what we’re doing tomorrow, you’ll be on K.P. so long you’ll think it’s your chosen career.”

Then, he tells us again everything we’re going to do tomorrow just as detailed as the first two times. I can feel the pee going down my leg. Not at full blast, but it’s dribbling. Then he finally finished. There was a moment of silence as the sergeant waited presumably for the next asshole to say he didn’t understand what he just said.

“Well it’s about time you numbskulls got it in yer heads. Yer the worst bunch of cockroaches I’ve ever had and if I wasn’t so tired, I’d have the lot of you in forward leaning rest position for the next hour. Now are there any more questions?”

“Holy shit!” Why in hell did he have to say that? What’s wrong with this idiot. I guess he doesn’t have to pee as bad as I do. I guess he doesn’t have sore feet and an aching back.” I’m thinking I should just start screaming it out loud on the remote chance the sergeant will be on my side and agree with me. I don’t. I just stand there silent on the outside and pee my pants.

The idiot next to me, Wilson, raises his hand. The sergeant is nose to nose with him in a flash. The sergeant has a look in his eye waiting for Wilson to ask what we’re going to do tomorrow. I can see drool coming from the side of the sergeant’s lips. I can see the sergeant’s fist in a clinch ready to punch Wilson into the next century.
“What is it, Wilson?”

Wilson is shaking all over. He wants to answer the sergeant, but the man is making him so nervous he can’t get the words to come out. The sergeant moves in closer and grabs Wilson by his shirt collar and pulls him in closer.

“What is it, boy? What do you want to ask the nice sergeant?

Wilson is paralized with fear so the sergeant drops his hand and steps back. “Well, Private Wilson. Do you or do you not have a question for your favorite sergeant to answer?

“Yes, sir!” to which the sergeant had to respond, “Don’t call me sir, son! I work for a living.”

“Yes, sergeant!”

“And what is it, Private Wilson?”

“Sir… I mean sergeant, I was wondering if I could go to the P.X. and call my parents for some money!”

The whole platoon laughs out loud. The sergeant straightens up and calls everyone back to attention. He walks back up to Wilson, puts his head right next to Wilson and responds. “What’s the problem, son? Doesn’t the Army pay you enough to handle all your bills? We ain’t got no girls for you to buy so why the hell do you need money?”

Someone down on the end of the formation laughs. I laugh under my breath. I know why he needs money. He needs it because the guys in the barracks have threatened to give him a good ole G.I. party if he doesn’t pay up his gambling loses.

“No is the answer! and when you hit that barracks you all have just thirty minutes before lights out. No goddamned midnight card playing in my barracks. If I catch anyone gambling in my barracks, I’m going to write his ass up and he’ll be spending three more months in our special little basic training camp for screw up like Wilson here. No, goddamn it, Wilson, you can’t call your mommy for money and don’t ever ask me that question again!…any more questions?”

Now, I didn’t give a shit. My right trouser leg was all wet. I was tired beyond caring. I’d given up. I was broken. At this point I was now a part of the army. I would throw myself on a grenade or charge the enemy with my stubby little bayonet, just because some idiot officers wanted me to do it. “Go, boy!” just like the hunters do their dogs. I’d leap up and run into a lake of ice cold water fetching whatever anyone wanted me to fetch. I was the kind of soldier they wanted.

From that day forward I cringe whenever a speaker ends his two hour talk with, “Are there any questions?” and just like in basic training, some idiot has a question and the next has another question and the next and the next…and the next…
The end

10/18/2008
Robert Joy
Black Ice, Dark Matter

I guess this is what happens if you walk far and way to much, early in the morning.

They call it black ice. The car skids and lands in the ditch and the driver is not smart enough to equate the freezing temperature with falling rain with ice and has an excuse. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t know there was anything there, but I guess it was there all the time and I guess I’ll just have to call it Black Ice.”

What the hell is so hard about it? It’s the same ole ice that’s been around forever. It’s caused by freezing temperatures making water into a solid. Just because it happens to be on a black surface or a light surface or a brick street doesn’t change its nature.

People, like fish live in a sea of matter and particles. They don’t see the air or the water, they just know its there, because they can feel it on their faces or fly a kite in it and they breathe it. They just can’t see it, but we or the fishes for that matter, call our atmosphere, black air or water. Why then is the mystery of Black Matter and Black Energy such a mystery? This is the new thing in the field of physics and astronomy. The stuff that holds and repels everything in the universe.

Everything out there is found right here on this planet and in this solar system. If there is Black Matter, then that matter is all around us and all we have to do is think harder about the so called mystery. We should just get out of our cars one of these days and take a look at the Black Ice on the road. We’d discover it is just the same ole frozen water we’ve seen everywhere. It’s just ice and it isn’t black, mysterious and out to kill us.

The universe, I am stopping with the universe, but the possibility of more universes certainly existing is very possible. The universe is made up of particles. A giant balloon of particles. Charged like miniature magnets of positive and negative. One end propelling and the other end attracting. There general nature of particles is to pull one another together. It is in their nature to clump. These clumps form matter we call atoms and those atoms clump together into matter we call Elements and we name them names like, Gold, Iron, Carbon, Oxygen, etc. and those clumps clump together to create Matter we name, Water, Rocks, Trees, and People, etc.

Everything loves to clump.

The problem with outer space is the amount of space. These particles are so small in comparison to ourselves that they rarely get close enough to attract one another and creating an element. And if they happen to, it is also very likely they will be the victims of collisions by another particles and thus become broken apart again. This goes on all the time a quadzillion times a second. It’s a wonder, there is even matter at all, but it does manage to survive and grow to gigantic size.

Thus the Universe of galaxies, stars and planets.

The Hubble telescope has reveled to us that there is such a thing as stuff floating around in the vast void of space and that it is not a void. That the whole universe is filled with something like when a bath tub is filled with nice clear water. When we get in to take a bath we see the ripples caused by our entry. Wow! There must be something in that void. Black Water! What is it? It isn’t just nothing as we first supposed. There must be something out there, because it isn’t around us here. If it were here around us like air or water, we’d be able to touch it and feel it on our faces. Wow! Black Matter.

There was never a void. We’ve know from the radio signals we’ve been receiving for years that those signals are riding on a wave of something. We know that our rocket motors are pushing against something when we try to return from space. We float around on something when we send up shuttles, space stations. It’s not just a big black hole of absolutely nothing.

It’s a sea of particles. A sea of everything that makes everything here on earth. Its the same thing that forms a leaf every spring and a rock under pressure at the center of the earth. It’s a sea of energy, pushing and pulling and is simple energy trying to clump while under constant bombardment and being un-Clumped. There is nothing Black and invisible about it. If you want to look for the origin of the universe, look at the palm of your own hand or a leaf of the tree in your own front yard.

Some of my friends think its crazy I’m washing dishes at a cafe. I can just see it in there faces when I mention it to them. They think I’m not living up to my potential and wasting my talent. What the hell is that. I’m tired of living up to someone elses standards. I like what i’m doing and I’m old enough to do as I please. I am living up to my potential, in fact I’m way beyond my potential. I’m soaring. Maybe some of the other older people I know, should go out and wash dishes. I think people should go on the inside of things to find out what makes things work. They like me at Diane’s Diner. I’m practicing, keeping my big trap shut. I haven’t perfected it yet, but I’m getting better every day.
I just wonder why some of those very intellegent women keep doing the waitress job, but I don’t ask. Maybe they are doing it for the same reason I’m doing it. Maybe its satisfying for them. Not everyone on this planet needs a college education to make a living. Look at all those big CEO’s that just killed their place of business. Maybe some of those people would do well to see what it looks like from the bottom. Maybe they’ll get their chance!

Sunday might be a day of rest for the rest of the christian world, but not at Diane’s diner. Since I’ve started there three weeks ago I found out what its like behind all that food. I started at 8:00 this morning and I worked unstopping until 4:45 to help serve those on the day of rest. I came home just beat. This is the second sunday I’ve worked and this one was harder than the last.

There are dishes there all around the washer when I come to work and they don’t stop coming. The only way I know it is no longer breakfast is the plates stop having eggs on them and it turns to the chicken. You’d think there would be a sort of drop off between Breakfast and dinner, but I can’t feel one.

I don’t even look at the clock. I don’t have time and besides that would only make the work day worse. Truthfully I like the job. Its been a great cure for my daily depression. Maybe I’m not as depressed in the evening, because I’m too damned tired to be depressed.

I used to work for Mission Orange in Garden City Kansas when I was just a kid. This story is not historically accurate, but it does convey my feelings about the Job. I am sorry that the best boss I ever had, took his own life. This story is dedicated to Dave Elsey owner and one of the greatest men I have ever had the honor to know.

the-mission-orange-i-remember.pdf

Here is a story I wanted to write, but was side tracked by the banking melt-down and the Bail-out.

the-trifling-story-of-frank.pdf