bobberdilly.com

12/30/2008
Robert Joy

Save this please.

The only person I could trust other than my lovely wife isn’t here any longer. He died. Bill Johnson, as far as I can tell, isn’t going to come back to comfort or sit down and explain things to me. Bill’s gone for good and therein lies my problem. If he would just get off his duff or out of his cell or out of the lake of fire or off his cloud and put down his harp and send some sort of creditable message, I wouldn’t be so melancholy. He’s there (Where ever the hell that is) and I’m here and he isn’t helping me in the least.

The church isn’t helping with all the warnings to be good and don’t commit sin (what ever the hell that is) and to do what my parents told me and to obey my teachers. To not steal and or covet my neighbors wife or to murder except for all the sanctioned exceptions to all the ten commandments. To not be a homo or crossdress and for god’s sake don’t be a goddamned liberal, what ever you do.

The church has a whole book of convoluted instructions on how to find myself in heaven, only if I followed each step carefully. Every preacher on the planet has a different interpretation of those careful steps, so I’m supposed to make sure I go to the right church to get the truth about the bible. Bill sure as hell hasn’t sent back any messages on that.

Then there are the nut cases that talk about dying and following the light at the end of the tunnel. There are those who claim they’ve died and they all walked down this long dark hallway and there was a light at the end of the tunnel. They all claim to have made that long walk and just before getting into the light they were snatched back to the land of the living. Then they all go on to write a book about it, get rich and start some religious cult. Funny how all those cults end up doing the same thing. The leader gets to wear all the nice clothing, live in a palace, comes out on the balcony once in a while for the minions to see him, before they’d whipped by the royal guards into returning to toil in the fields. They pick out their young daughters to brainwash into becoming pleasure brides for the leader.

To be perfectly honest… I don’t know what happens after people die and I’m pretty uncomfortable about it. Maybe I should have swallowed the religious bait and got myself all wrapped up in the Jesus thing. I could just go about life doing all the convoluted things I’m warned to do, so as not to end up in any of the bad places after I pass on. It sure as hell would be allot simpler than to be so confused and frightened as I am now.

I love being sixty-five. It’s the best time of my life, but then I have to sit and watch all my friends die. I hate that part. I guess the only solution is to get rid of all my older friends and just hang out with kids. Constantly keep kids around me, but then I’d come off as some dirty old man and that isn’t good and then what kid would want to hang around some old guy? It’s all so crappy and it wouldn’t have to be if some creditable person would come back from the dead and put the whole question to rest. So where the hell are you Bill?

Well… something really strange just happened to me. I guess I’m getting this message from Bill. I tried and I tried to save this message on my computor and it wouldn’t save. I went to “Bob” folder and I typed in the title, “Where the hell are you Bill?” and it wouldn’t save. I tried and tried several times and it wouldn’t save. I couldn’t get it to save in any file or folder. I couldn’t get it to save on the desk top. I’ve never had this problem before. I went to my Bob folder and eliminated some files as if to create some more space for it to fit and it wouldn’t save. Then I saved this article under the name, “Save this please” and it saved. I went back and tried to save it under my original name and it won’t save… Is this the message I’ve been waiting for from Bill? I’m taking all this serious for the moment… very serious!

12/28/2008
Robert Joy

Miracles

I have these strange happenings that I dare hope to explain. I’m sure everyone has them, so I don’t think I unique in this. Still I call them Miracles, because I believe the world is afloat with miracles and we’re surrounded by them, but we actually only see a smattering of them, because we’re just not tuned-in enough to witness properly.

Anyway this stuff seems to happen all the time and once in a while I catch myself encountering one and I’m always astounded by it. A week ago my friend Jay Arais came to town from Baton Rouge where he teaches at the University. He told me he’d met this woman from Great Bend. Well… anyway, it was a woman who once lived in Great Bend and he asked her if she knew me. She did know me and this turned out to be Sandy Chism. I hadn’t seen her in years. She was one of the ninth graders at Roosevelt Junior Highschool back in 1972. It was my first year of teaching and I was green as a goard. I’m sure I didn’t do the students much of a service that first year. I think I learned more than they did. In fact, I know I did.

Jay went back home and I got through Christmas and then yesterday after work, I stopped off at my own little watering hole at the Cornerstone Interiors for a glass of tea. No sooner than I walk in and put my stuff down at my favorite sitting spot, but do I see Sharie Chism (the sister to Sandy). Now that, in and of itself, is amazing, because, I mean it was just a few days before that Jay mentioned the name, Sandy. While I’m addressing Sharie, I hear someone else and there stands Sandy herself. That, I must say, simply blew my mind. I mean, I walk in that store just at that instant and on this particular day and it’s all come together and I have to believe in some sort of divine intervention… a Miracle.

Happy Father’s Day
Robert Joy
5/24/2008

It was a Father’s day and I was all alone. I hadn’t really thought about it. Fathers day was just another day to me. The kids were in college and not living at home and… well, I didn’t think about it much.

It was Father’s Day and the phone rang. I answered it and it was my daughter Lisa. She said that they had just had a car accident and would I please drive over to Geneseo to pick them up. That really put the panic in me. I asked her what happened and was anyone injured and on and on and she told me everyone was alive and that they would live. No emergency, but they needed a ride home. Of course I went. I jumped into my big old chevy and took off for Geneseo.

I get there in about thirty minutes. It wasn’t that far. I pull up in front of the Geneseo fire department driveway and there stood the kids. Poor ole Geremiah had a make shift bandage on the bridge of his nose, Allison was complaining about a back ache and Lisa was uninjured. I loaded them in the car and started for Great Bend to take them to the Hospital, because Geremiah needed to have his cut looked after, even though he didn’t think so.

As we drove, Lisa related the story of the car accident. Geremiah was driving, Allison was sleeping in the back seat and Lisa (As usual as she is supposed to be) is snug in her seat belt with her eyes closed. Geremiah went to sleep at the wheel. The car went off the road and bounded over a small rise where the farmers have access to their fields. The car was buckled in the middle, but it didn’t roll over. The kids really got bounced around. Geremiah hit his face on the steering wheel and Allison was mashed up against the front seats and hurt her back. Lisa was totally unharmed, because she’d been strapped in.

It wasn’t far back to Great Bend, but it was a quiet drive. Allison was moaning in the back seat and Geremiah wasn’t feeling all that well. Lisa was up front with me and never says much anyway. We cruised along for several miles in complete silence until we got a little past Bushton. Then Lisa turned to me and said… “By the way dad… Happy Fathers Day!”

5/24/2008
Robert Joy
The Sandford stairs to hell

I was the warehouse man for the Great Bend Coca Cola and who unloaded the transport from Wichita, sorted the bottles, took inventory, kept the place clean and in operating condition. Some days the route salesman would get sick and I’d have to take their place. One particular day I had to make a run west of town to a small place with only an elevator to make the spot on the map worth naming it Sandford.

This was back in the day when coke came in returnable bottles. They were very unstable, in wooden shells and heavy as hell. The Sandford Grain Elevator took only the sixteen ounce bottles. The largest, heaviest and the most unstable of the lot. You could load, maybe three or four cases on a two-wheeler and even at that they moved, shifted and clanked together, making them very unpleasant to move around.

I got to the elevator and asked the man what he wanted and he gave me this unbeliveable list. I asked him where he wanted it all, because I hadn’t worked this stop before. He took me over, opened a door and pointed down a long flight of stairs that seemed to disappear into the black pit of hell. My whole body sunk. This place just ordered something like thirty cases of sixteen ounce bottles. I had to take all of it downstairs on a hand cart. (Thump, thump, thump!) I had to bring all the empties back upstairs (Thump… Thump… Thump!) to load them back on the truck (kerplunk! Kerplunk! Kerplunk!)

I wasn’t happy, but I was rarely happy in that job. I started unloading the product and putting it in cart high stacks. I dreaded the job of taking all this down that endless flight of stairs. Once I got started down; there would be no turning back. I’d done this before with much smaller orders, but not this size. I then hauled the product over to the top of the stairs.

I was standing there looking at the job ahead of me and trying to psyche myself up. An employee of the elevator crew happened to walk past. He joked in a cheerful voice… “Boy, I bet you’re really glad you don’t have to use the stairs to take that to the basement!”

I swung my head around like a character in a cartoon and said “What?”

And he answered… “I bet you’re really happy, we have an elevator for you to use, instead of those stairs!”

12/3/2008
Robert Joy
Why we lose at war!

If during the American Civil War, General McClellan had his way, we would still be fighting the South. McClellan had the most beautiful, disciplined, well equipped army in the world. It was superbly trained, fed and polished. He marched his beautiful army all over the place having wonderful little battles. When those wonderful little battles were completed, McClellan stood his beautiful army back to clean it up before going out on another tiny splendid little battle.

It was like going to a Wal-mart parking lot and getting scratches on a new car. Instead of saying, “Okay that’s the way it goes,” you take the day off and re-touch the paint job every time it happens. The Southern army was too poor to make any headway against the North and the army under McClellan was reluctant to get a ding in his beautiful army. Nothing was happening and the war was dragging on and on.. Finally Lincoln had, had enough, He grew tired of waiting for a victory and eventually sacked McClellan. He replaced McClellan with hard pushing, cigar chomping, man who was serious about the way to wage a war, General Grant.

Then the war really got ugly. The war got ugly the way wars really are ugly. Casualties went up. Grant went after the South like a rabid dog. He kept hitting the southern army over and over and never letting up. It wasn’t like in the old McClellan days and eventually the Confederacy couldn’t take the beating and surrendered. When it was over, the Union Army had been bloodied and nicked and dinged but the war was over with a victory for the North. War wasn’t a beautiful game any longer.

That’s what we have now. War is a game to us. Its like what we watch when we go to a football game. We want to send in as few men as possible, we build an army of specialists. We don’t want any of our guys to get hurt or killed, so we over-equip them. We spend more time getting the wounded off the battle field than we use to win the battle. We want to run things by remote control. We have these warplanes that are flown by people in air-conditioned rooms back in the United States with a hot cup of coffee, jelly roll and a joy stick.

All our weapons are so high tech, that they have to be crated up and brought back to the states to change a tire. It costs millions of dollars to repair the stuff. In the second world war, the country used equipment mass-produced in factories that were once equipped to make farm equipment or razor blades. The stuff was made to be used until it broke. It was either fixed in the field or scrapped, then replaced with a new one. The factories just kept chucking it out as fast as it was destroyed.

The French had their zillion dollar toy the “Maginot Line”. They could just stand behind their high tech wall and wear the Germans down. It didn’t work and they lost the war. The Germans thought they could just out Tech the Russians with bigger and better and more and more bigger and better. They just kept changing the designs while the Russians just kept chucking out the same ole thing by the thousands.

War’s not a business or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s this ugly, horrible thing that takes loved one’s away for good. It destroys a parent that a child will never know. It destroys a marriage, a life with permanent injuries. It kills poets, painters, great writers, great politicians and leaders. It destroys cities and sacred places. Its a terrible game the world seems to just keep doing and today its become this profit making institution.

So….. If we insist on doing it and doing it for no good reason and profit is not a good reason in my thinking… But who the hell am I? So I think war should be what it is… Terrible, ugly, horrible, destructive and to be gotten over, “Post haste!” No more parading around. No more long breaks to clean up the mess and repair the dings left over from battle. No more stopping the battle and dragging off the wounded and dead until the battle is won. No more expensive toys that need special care back in the states. No more video games, by remote control. War should be total, relentless, hard, ugly, deadly, sore, sleepless and should be fought to win. No more profit, no more grand temporary schemes to make the folks happy to go on shopping back home. No more clean little news reports of how wonderful things are going at the front. Just hard ugly deadly carnage until its finished, over with and won. And the public should see some of that ugly terrible carnage on the nightly news and maybe a whole lot of it, so they could be reminded that was isn’t some kind of game they support. That it isn’t something they support by going shopping for a magnetic ribbon magnet on the back of their cars that says, “Support our Troops!”

Every general should be a hard pushing, maybe not cigar chomping, but by god, right in the field and in the front of his men. By god, we need madman like U.S. Grant. Every general needs to be the sort of leader who won’t let his people sleep when they need to be marching to keep the enemy, themselves from sleeping or tending to their wounds and losses and to resupply.

I remember Vietnam. The goddamned war just went on and on, no matter how many troops were sent and how much money was spent and how much better the weapons became and how high the kill ratio was. American soldiers were the best in the world and still are. They are the best equipped, fed, bedded. The have it all, but just like in Vietnam they go to bed every night all snug behind a wall or barbed wire. (The vast, vast majority)

In Vietnam the enemy owned the night, the Americans owned the day. When the enemy was bloodied (and they were bloodied more than the Americans) they had to run for miles. They had to regroup, resupply, sleep minutes at a time, miss meals, leave behind the wounded and dead and do this day after day without a nice let up or nice R and R in Japan or Singapore. The enemy didn’t get big steaks and a nice movie every night before going beddie-bye.

After a nasty fire fight while the enemy ran, the American army sit down and swapped war stories, lit up a cigarette, had steaks and cold beer flown in for a nice party, counted the dead, calculated the casualty ratio, rotated back to base camp, resupplied, rearmed, tended to the wounded, put the dead in body bags and on and on and on. They did everything, but pursue the enemy. They did everything just in the same fashion George McClellan in our Civil war and both wars just went on and on.

The only exception is… We didn’t have a U.S. Grant in Vietnam, nor have had one since. America declared victory in all the big offensives in Vietnam and we’re doing that now in Iraq. The goddamned body count is the standard for our victories and yet we lose all the wars and they just keep going on and on and on until we decide to just leave. Fifty eight thousand dead to the enemy dead at over a million in Vietnam and just look at who won that war!

I’m going to keep with my old resolutions that have worked so well for me the past two years.

Resolutions:

I’m going to lose another five pounds, then I’m not going to do that any longer. 45 pounds off is enough.

I’m going on with my letter writing project of a handwritten letter to someone every day for the year.

I’m going to try to keep my big mouth shut. This one has always failed. I try, but it just flops open and I catch it when it’s too late. I have, however had the best success with it so far since I’ve been at work as a dish washer. I have a job that needs my attention and I have curtailed the all the extra chatter… Though I do alot of humming to myself.

This year I’m going to add another one to the list. Tonight Marcella read to me an ad from the newspaper that was using resolutions to sell their products. One of the resolutions was: Resolve to have a thicker skin. Well, that’s what I want from now on. I need to just take more stands and do as I want instead of being pushed into things I’d rather not do. The Words, “No Thank You!” are to become the new addtitions to my vocabulary.

12/15/2008
Robert Joy

Wow! Someone actually learned something in my art class.

This is not something that happened today. In fact it happened last year sometime, but it bubbled up in my random thoughts today and I decided it was worth putting down on paper.

I taught junior high art for a mere nine years before the profession finally burned me out. I left and I never looked back, nor did I ever regret having left. Still I’ve often wondered if I’d made even the slightest difference with anything. I’m sure there are former students that hate my guts, as surely, I do theirs. I hardly think of those times or run onto any of my fellow teachers I once worked with. Truthfully, I don’t miss any of it at all.

Still those little reminders pop up now and then. I’ve had the opportunity to meet with former students that have recognized me and come up and say, “Hi, Mr. Joy! Do you remember me? Usually I don’t and why should I? They were once thirteen and fourteen years old and now they’re running in their forties. I hardly know any of them. Anyway they eventually tell me their names and some of them ring a bell and some don’t. Still, they remember me so I at least I play along.

One day I was pumping gas at the Kwik Shop and this large fellow in about the forty year old range came up to me and said, “Hi Mr. Joy! Do you remember me?” And of course, I didn’t, so he proceeds to tell me his name. The name rings a familiar bell and I do form a sort of picture of him as a eight grader.

“Hey Mr. Joy, I would like you to meet my kids!” He turns and motions for his children to come over and meet his long lost art teacher. “Hey Kids! This is my old art teacher from Roosevelt. This is the guy who taught me how to make a bow tie out of a dollar bill!”

Now that impressed them. I can see their eyes roll back. I can see the wheels turning and I can almost hear them thinking. “Yeah this the guy that taught our dad how to fold bow tie from a dollar bill. We’ve seen him do it a million times everywhere we go. In fact, he made sure we know how to fold a dollar bill into a bow tie and we’ll be showing our children how to do it and this will go on and on forever, and all because of this guy!”

Well! I actually ended up teaching someone something. They learned something in my art class that they never forgot. I guess I did have a tiny impact on someone in those nine memorable years.

I’ve came across former students that said they liked my class, but this the only person who ever stated the fact that he learned something from me and remembered who’d taught it to him. Wow! That made me feel like those nine years of teaching art, actually produced something other than frustration.

12/3/2008
Robert Joy
Growing one’s own food!

It’s happened before; I do go to church on occasion. It’s rare, I admit, but it isn’t completely unknown to have had it happen. I usually go with Marcella when we’re on a trip out of town. I tag along on Sundays. I watch the people coming in and where they sit and I look at the inside of the church. I get up when everyone gets up and I sit down when everyone sits down. I drop my dollar into the basket as it comes past me. Sometimes I fold it into a little paper bow tie. I let the people out and then go back in the row when they get up for communion.

I haven’t been stuck dead by God yet and I’m pretty sure God isn’t going to get upset with me over the greeting part I don’t care for. I hug and kiss my wife when the que is given for the congregation to turn around and shake hands and we’re supposed to say, “Peace be with you!” Or ask, “God forbid; who let you in here?” I’m just not very good at greeting people on “que”, like that. I am sort of shy when it comes down to it. I’m not good at doing things because every one else is doing it or only because I’ve been told to do so. I only turn around if I’m trapped and when I can’t ignore the fact. I’m just not happy in those situations.

You see… Maybe I would feel different if the priest would just come out and walk along the front of the whole room of people and maybe go down a couple of the rows looking at people and not saying a word. Maybe, he’d walk along and try to pick out some soul who simply appears to need directions or something like finding the way to the rest room or best of all… maybe, finding God!

The priest would just stop or walk up to them and with a flick of his wrist, nicely “shoo” the person out of the seat beside them. The priest would then sit down and say, “Hi!” Maybe he would start by asking questions in a very low, private manner. Maybe he’d ask, what is it that they might be needing at the moment? Maybe he’d ask what he, as a priest, might do to assist them in their needs.

This priest would not be a preacher and not be looking over their heads, not preaching to rows of heads, not telling the world what to do. He’d be a guide and then if someone wanted to go up to the altar and pass the communion, that would be okay. If another wanted to go upstairs in the loft and sing, “How great thou art!” that would be okay and if everyone else in the congregation decided to sing along, that would be even better. If another wanted to go up and cover the walls with strange drawings of animals and hand prints, that would be the best of it all. If they choose to handle deadly snakes and no one else was hurt or endangered, then: What would god care?

You see, the church, like so many other institutions, is becoming a business. Like farming isn’t farming any longer. Farming is a business. They don’t even call it farming any longer. Farms don’t grow food. Farms have “Cash Crops!” Farms aren’t even called farms any longer. They’re called “Agri-Businesses!”

Hunting isn’t hunting any longer. It’s a business ran for profit. Hunters don’t hunt, they harvest! The same is happening to religion. Religion is starting to resemble one of those corporate fast food chains that have to keep introducing new products to keep up with the competition.

The church buildings no longer resemble the artificial cave they were constructed to represent. They’re beginning to look like school buildings with pea green walls or bank lobbies devoted to drawing in customers for the purpose of making money and maybe churches should just become empty caves again! And maybe they’ve actually always been the caves and groves of trees, lonely hill tops and morning sunrises, and that we’ve just played along and been tricked along with the game, that we’ve forgotten how to recognize them.

At this point in the service, the priest stands up from talking to that person and goes back to walking the aisles and rows looking for others to assist on their journey to god.
Some of these seekers will wait for the priest to recognize them or they will just rise on their own. They will simply leave this church or wander to the back and into the darkness. Wander back to the back, to get out of the noise or up to a bare wall or up the stairs into the choir loft.

In this way, the church becomes what it needs to be…. A place where one can come directly to god. To confront god nakedly and do it without the expense of some religion or intercession or expensive dangerous psychotropic drug (which is also another form of business).

Sure! Why not have corporate church for those who simply need some distraction or a Big Mac with fries and at the same time: Why not provide a means for those who seek God on a more personal basis. Religion as a spiritual thing is like farming, when its sole purpose is to be there to grow one’s own food?

I am not a godless person. I don’t go to church… well, unless I’m on vacation and Marcella goes and then I tag along. I look at the church. The ceiling and walls and I check out the people. I usually don’t sing, because most of the music is dull. I loved it more when I was a kid and the songs were all the old classics. Today they don’t seem to sing those any longer. I guess they just don’t want to seem old fashioned. They’ve went from little house in the dell and How great tho art to really dull stuff that is long and stuffy and I just don’t relate to it at.

Marcella doesn’t harp at me. She just goes every Sunday and I stay home.

I believe in god. I just don’t believe in the one that seems to be in vogue these days. He’s too small for my liking. My god loves everyone (without exception) and doesn’t judge them and pass laws against them. My god is so vast that nothing exists outside. Everything is within. My god talks to me all the time and I talk to her in kind. I trust her.

The other day, I wanted to stop at Great Bend Office Products, Inc. to buy a new shaffer fountain pen. I had a bunch of other stops before that and in the normal way my head works, I couldn’t remember where else I had to go. The thought of OPI had just slipped away. I could feel it in there bouncing around, but I just couldn’t bring it to the surface again.

I decided to stop off at my favorite store in Great Bend… The Goodwill. I headed in that direction and completely forgetting the other place I had to go and couldn’t remember. At the corner of Main Street and Broadway I passed a truck with OPI on the sides and the memory came back. Sure… that happen’s to everyone! I believe that and I believe god passes out Miracles all the time and I’m in the constant process of trying to see as many as possible.