I’m no Rosa Parks, but my mom really made me feel like a second class citizen when I was 14. She would not let me sit in the front seat of her car, nor the back seat. I was banished to the very back cargo area of her station wagon, with the rear window wide open, almost hanging out of the window holding on for dear life as we rode down the highway back to our house. It all started at age 14. My wants came with dollar signs, for my never ending science and go-kart projects. My projects needed funding and I saw my parents as the banker and sponsor of my projects. I had come up with what I thought was a great idea, to be their groundskeeper. I would create these great spaces in our yard and they could supply the necessary plants and wages for me. I thought that it was a grand idea, but they felt otherwise. After a few more ideas on how they could hire me to be their employee, they decided that it was time for me to find some work. At age 14, a boy could only find work in more unconventional jobs, and one of these was farm labor. We had several farms around our town and one of the local farms had a farm market where we would pick up necessary items like milk and eggs. Matthews Farm was the name and my mom knew Mr and Mrs Matthews. I went to school with their two daughters and son. My mom came home one day and said, “If you want money, you will need to earn it. I’ve talked to Mr. Matthews and he has agreed to talk to you about working on his farm.” I was actually excited about the idea, seeing that my ideas to have my parents hire me was falling on deaf ears. The next day, my mom took me to Matthews Farm Market. Mr. Matthews was in the store as we found him near the checkout counter. “How are you doing there son? he said. “Fine sir.” I replied. “So, I hear that you would like to earn some money, is that true?” he asked. “Yes sir, I sure would!” I answered excited. “Ok, I do need some help tending our chickens. I’ll pay you $1 per hour. How does that sound?” he asked. “That would be great!” I said. My mind was already a-whirl thinking of all of the projects that I would be able to fund with the money. It was summer and I knew that $40 per week was enough to get my projects funded. It was 1969 and $40 would buy a 14 year old a lot of materials back then; of course even in 1969, $1 per hour wasn’t a whole lot of money, but it seemed like a fortune to me. School had ended several weeks earlier and I’m sure that my mom was ready to get me out of the house and now that I was pestering her for money every other day. I had projects that I needed to get started and she was looking for ways to solve both problems; to stop the constant pestering and to simply keep me busy. At the dinner table that night, I told my dad about my new job and all of the money that I was going to make. “That’s uh great, glad to hear it.” he said as he chuckled under his breath. He had been raised in the country and knew all about farm labor. Again, all I could think of was all of that green that I was going to earn. “Well, Mr. Matthews said you need to be there at 7AM, so make sure to set your alarm.” my mom reminded me. “I’ll be ready.” I said ready to start my first job in my new employed status. The only thing more green was how naive I was. Tomorrow would be the introduction to the work world, a world where I would never have a break in employment for the next 50 years. “Gill, you better get a move on or you will be late for your first day of work.” my mom shouted from down in the kitchen. I threw on my jeans, an old shirt and my tennis shoes. I headed down the stairs, grabbed a pop-tart and headed to the car. I sat in the front seat as my mom backed the car up and headed down our street. Mr. Matthews’ farm was only about 10 minutes away. Instead of turning into the farm market we headed down the lane between the two huge fields towards Mr. Matthews’ house. I had never been to his home, even though I went to school with his kids. We pulled up to the house and Mr. Matthews met us on the front lawn. “Good morning Gill, are you ready to work?” Mr. Matthews asked. “You betcha!” I replied excitedly. “Ok, well I think that you would work really well with our chickens.” Chickens. I imagined cute little chicks that I would throw feed on the ground as they peeped and pecked at the ground. What a great way to earn money. “Mrs. Trotman, Gill will be finished at 4. You can pick him up then.” Mr. Matthews reminded her. “Bye mom, see you then!” I said as I was eager to start earning all of that green. Mr. Matthews told me to follow him. There were all of these long building in this area of the farm. They looked to be a hundred yards long and were about 40 feet wide. I had no idea of why we were headed there, but figured all of the cute little chicks were inside waiting for me to give them their morning breakfast. As we got closer to the chicken houses, I began to get a whiff of this strange smell. It wasn’t the smell of nice dry sawdust that I imagined the chicks frolicking in, it was more like the ammonia that my mom used to clean the house with. Maybe it was a cleaner that they used to keep everything nice and clean. Mr. Matthews opened the door to the chicken house and my eyes grew wide as my mouth dropped open. There were rows of cages as far as I could see that ran all the way to the back of the chicken house. Each cage was attached to the other cage in a long row like a freight train with box cars attached as far as the eye could see. In between each row was a 4″ burlap belt that was moving toward the front of the chicken house where we stood. As soon as I realized what I was looking at, I covered my nose and my mouth. The smell of ammonia was not used for cleaning, it was the tons and tons of chicken poop that fell into a 12″ trough between each row of cages. I covered my mouth and nose. The smell made me gag and it was so strong that my eyes started to tear up as the ammonia smell overpowered my tear ducts. These were not cute little chicks. These were full grown hens, laying eggs in a egg laying factory. The combined sound of all of their clucking was so loud that Mr. Matthews had to yell to be heard over them. “Gill, what I want you to do is to clean up after these hens. Rufus will start the grader blade in a moment and scrape all of the chicken manure from the front to the very back into a hopper that is pulled behind the tractor. We take that manure and spread it over our fields as fertilizer. I shook my head to affirm, but had no idea how to clean up after 10,000 chickens. I could see Rufus in the back of the building flip a switch. As he flipped the switch, a grader like blade 8′ wide and 12” tall was tethered in the middle to a metal cable in the front of the blade and the back of the blade. The blade was perfectly made to fit into the rectangular pit where the chicken poop had fallen. The blade scraped the chicken clean as it made it’s way down the long row. I noticed that about 1/3 of the way down, there was so much chicken poop that it started to ooze over the side onto the cement walkway which was about 2′ wide between each long row of cages. I had never seen chicken poop before. Chicken poop wasn’t nice and dry, it was soft and wet. These chickens sort of just squirted their poop into the deep trough and 10,000 chickens I quickly saw could generate a hell of a lot of poop. “Now Gill, Rufus will be the one to operate the grader blade, your job is to come in here every day and use this scraper here, and to scrape the chicken poop that oozes on the walkway back into the trough. There are 3 walkways in each hen house and we have 4 hen houses. This should keep you busy each day. Welcome to the farm!” he smiled as he handed me the scraper and left. As soon as he left I said “Shit!” and quickly realized that I wasn’t swearing, just realizing what I would be handling 8 hours per day. The scraper was your standard 5″ metal scraper on the end of a wooden handle. I slowly proceeded down my first aisle scraping the wet chicken poop back into the trough. After about 50′, I couldn’t make out the sidewalk as the chicken poop totally covered the sidewalk. I scraped and scraped. I hadn’t brought gloves and after dropping the scraper a few times, quickly realized that I was going to have to get some gloves before tomorrow. My nice clean Converse tennis shoes were now sort of a gray color, covered with chicken  crap which made it very slippery. How could these chickens have pooped all of this in one day. By this time, I was on my first row, halfway down the middle of the long chicken house. I could barely breath, the smell was making me gag. The only green I was seeing was the color in my face as I started to feel rather light headed. I was going to have to do this all day. The smell was nauseating and the noise was deafening. I finally made it to the back of one of the rows and noticed some movement towards the front of the hen house. I made my way back to the front of the hen house to start on the next row and noticed an older black lady sitting on a stool in front of one of the rows of chicken cages. There was a square tray between two of the rows where she sat and the 4″ burlap belts ended at opposite corners near the front of this tray. She sat on her stool, with all of these plastic trays and metal racks behind her. Reaching under the tray, I saw that she flipped a switch that started the burlap belts rolling forward. On these burlap belts were all of the eggs that the hens had laid the night before. The cages were slanted forward so that when a hen laid an egg, it would roll onto the belt, waiting for the operator to turn on the belt to begin the collection process. As the eggs started to move onto the tray, she quickly took the eggs and placed them into the 30 egg tray. She quickly filled up the tray, placed it in the metal rack and grabbed another 30 egg tray. Her hands moved swiftly and precisely so as to not have to turn off the power to the belt and stop the flow of eggs to the tray. She was a swift machine with the dexterity of a dealer at a Vegas blackjack table. After a few minutes she looked up at me with a grin, then returned back to her task as to remind me that daylight was burning and I wasn’t moving. I took my scraper and started on the next row. After a couple of hours, I was done with house #1, 3 more to go. After the second chicken house, Mr. Matthews came to get me and told me to take lunch. “How’s it going?” he said with a smile, knowing that I had come not expecting to do what I had just spent all morning doing. “Well, it really stinks in there, but I think I’m doing pretty good.” I said with a shrug. “Good, now go eat your lunch. Make sure to get back to work in 30 minutes.” he said as he walked back to his pickup. “Yes sir.” I said as I went to sit under a tree and eat my sack lunch. As I sat down, I realized that I hadn’t asked where the bathroom was. How the heck was I going to wash my hands. At home I didn’t always bother to wash my hands before lunch, but I hadn’t been shoveling chicken poop all morning either. I wiped my hands on the cool green grass, trying to wipe my hands as clean as possible. I made sure to hold my sandwich with the wax paper wrapper and not my hands. How could I have been so naive as to think that I was going to play with cute little chicks in nice dry sawdust open areas? Lunch seemed like it only lasted 10 minutes before everyone started heading back to their different jobs. I stood up, stretched my back and picked up my disgusting metal scraper and headed to hen house #3. At 4PM, I had just finished scraping the wet gooey chicken crap back into the last trough in hen house #4 when I opened the door to see my mom’s Ford station wagon rumbling down the dusty farm lane towards the place where she dropped me off. As she pulled to a stop, I opened the door to get in the front seat where I had sat that morning. “What is that smell?” she yelled. “Oh my Lord, you smell like you fell into a sewer and you look like you fell into a sewer. What is all over your clothes and look at your shoes. It looks like you are wearing shoes made out of crap!” she said in disgust. “It’s chicken poop.” I said rather dejected.  “Well, you are NOT going to sit in my car looking and smelling like that!” she shouted. “Where am I going to sit?” I asked. “You can open the rear tailgate and sit in the cargo area with the window totally down. Make sure you hang your feet out the window.” she commanded. I opened the tailgate, climbed in and gingerly shut the tailgate and swung my feet out the back of the car. I couldn’t even stand my own smell. My mom turned the car around and headed down the dusty road. The dust came in the back of the car and stuck to my new gray chicken poop shoes. “Oh my Lord, I have never smelled anything so bad!” my mom yelled to the back as she covered her nose and mouth with her free hand. When we returned home, I was not allowed in the house. I had to go through the garage and shed my clothes. I had to run to my room in my BVD’s and put on some clean clothes. My mom made me take my clothes and shoes outside to the garden hose and rinse everything off. I then took a shower and tried to rid myself of the strong odor as well as the poop that had worked it’s way into my un-gloved hands. That night at dinner, my dad said with a grin, “Well, how did your first day of work go?” “It’s a pretty “crappy” job dad.” I said as I was almost laying down on the table exhausted and disgusted. “Well, it will be good for you.” he said as he started to laugh. He knew what I was going to face the night before and felt sort of a kinship to another farm laborer. As the summer wore on, I slowly moved my way from chicken poop scraper to egg collector. After many weeks, I slowly acquired the skill necessary to collect eggs off of the burlap belt without having to stop it. When needed, I still had to scrape chicken poop, but I had passed the necessary initiation and didn’t quit. It was a long hot summer, but I gained a lot of respect for farmers. Now, I am a dad and have seen my kids take on their first summer jobs. They had all heard this story, but it gave me an appreciation that no matter what I do for a living, I won’t have to take shit from anyone!    

I have had my share of dirty jobs over the years. Working on a farm, you get dirty and stinky, but at least you can wash it off at the end of the day. When I had just gone through a tough time in my life at around 22 years of age, recently divorced and out of work, I decided to try something different. I spotted an ad in the newspaper for a fossil fuel analyst. It looked like a rather lofty position and it didn’t really require any experience which I thought was odd. I called the phone number and scheduled an interview. The location was a small white building in Norfolk VA, off of Monticello Ave. I entered the building and was met by a gentleman in a dark blue lab coat. His name was Pat, a mild mannered guy that asked me a series of questions about how detailed I was and the generic type of questions. I really didn’t get a chance to look at the lab. He thanked me and I left not thinking that I would hear from him. In a few days, the phone rang and it was Pat. “We interviewed several people and decided that we would like to hire you.” he said. “Great, when would you like for me to start?” I asked. “Next Monday at 8AM” he replied. It was that simple. I reported to work the following Monday and was assigned a navy blue lab coat. This is pretty cool I thought, no experience and now working in a lab. Pat showed me around the lab and introduced me to his assistant Kevin. The lab equipment was rather industrial I thought. There were several triple beam balances under glass covers and other strange pieces of equipment under a sort of large range hood. The whole lab had this whole smell like an old freight train yard. “What do you test here.” I inquired. “We test coal.” Pat said. “Coal? Why do you need to test coal?” I asked rather naive. “Well, coal comes in all kinds of different grades; steam coal, coal for making steel and a host of other uses. Coal has a certain amount of sulfur in it. If it has too much, then it isn’t good for certain customers who may need coal with a low sulfur content. Customers overseas buy coal by the rail car and each car has to be tested to be sure that it is of the type that they agreed to pay for. It’s sort of like making sure that the diamond you buy is of the highest quality and not one with occlusions and discolorations. One train car load of coal can cost easily $100,000, so the buyers are willing to pay us to test each car load that they buy.” Pat explained. “Boy, I never thought of coal like a diamond. I thought all coal was the same, just black chunks.” I admitted rather shyly. After the nickel tour, I was taken into the back room where there were small glass containers of coal grains, about the size of ground coffee. All of the containers had labels with numbers on them. I was taken to a coffee mill and told that I would be hand grinding the coal into an even smaller powder. Pat had handed me over to Kevin to show me how to do my first task. “You take this bottle that has a sample of coal and pour it into this old coffee grinder.” It was a square wooden coffee grinder that I had seen in antique stores. “You grind this by hand until you have ground the entire bottle, you then pour it back into the bottle and place it over here for the lab.” Kevin instructed. I began my work, grinding and grinding and grinding until my arm was about to fall off. Boy was this antiquated or what! This was my job for the first few days. After Kevin and Pat felt as though I had payed my first dues, I was taken into the lab. The odor I had smelled when I first arrived was explained to me. It was coal being heated up and turning into coke. “This is the Geisler Plastometer. This device slowly heats up the coal in a small metal crucible which is inserted into a container of molten lead. A stir rod which turns, as the coke starts to form, stops the stir rod and the point at which this happens is recorded hear on this graph that is attached to the plastometer.” Kevin explained. Your job is to clean the old coal that has turned into coke from these small metal crucibles.” Kevin said. The container that had the coked coal in it was hard to remove. They gave me a knife and then I was to polish it with a round wire brush. Well, this was my second chance to pay my dues. Now I was beginning to see why this job did not require any experience. After a few weeks of grinding coal and cleaning out metal coked crucibles, I finally met the manager, Mr. Shepard. Mr. Shepard was an old school kind of guy who felt that unless you paid your dues and did so with a great attitude, you were not worth talking to. I didn’t see much of Mr. Shepard. I wanted to pass all of these duties so that I could do some of the other tests and not just grind and clean. I actually enjoyed working in the lab, even if it was as a lowly lab rat. One day after arriving at work, Kevin told me not to put on my lab jacket. “They are short a man to pulverize coal in the collection building and they are looking for a “volunteer”. A “volunteer” I thought. That’s a strange way of assigning you to another building. “You see, Mr. Shepard believes that you should jump at the chance to volunteer to cover in the pulverizing room. It’s rather strange, but he doesn’t assign people, he offers the “opportunity”.” Kevin explained. “What does the job entail?” I asked rather curious about why “volunteering” was such a big deal. “Well, you are in this small room, you wear a respirator, three layers of clothes and coat your hands and face with Vaseline.” Kevin said, looking at me for a reaction. “Vaseline? What the heck? Three layers of clothes. What kind of job is this that someone would want to “volunteer”?” I asked with a shocked and rather incredulous look on my face. “Well, it’s Mr. Shepard’s way. Do you want to “volunteer”?” he asked. I looked at him, still shocked, but didn’t reply. He waited for my answer long enough to where I was starting to feel uncomfortable. “Sure, why not.” I finally said. “Well, go in the locker room and make sure to put on three layers of clothing and grab a respirator. I’ll meet you outside.” Kevin said with a grin. After putting on three layers of clothing and grabbing the respirator, I met Kevin outside. It was June and already 90 degrees with about 80% humidity. Three layers of clothing wasn’t feeling good right now. “Let’s go to the collection building and I’ll show you what to do.” Kevin said as we walked down the street headed for a big metal building. In the building were a bunch of guys standing around these larger containers of coal. I think that Rufus was black, but I wasn’t sure because of all of the coal dust all over his face and hands. “Rufus, this is Gill, he will be your backup to pulverize.” Kevin said. I waved a hello to Rufus as Kevin escorted me into this tiny dark room. The room was about 8′ x 8′ and was lit by this small fluorescent fixture on the ceiling. There was coal dust all over the walls, ceiling and the floor. The ceiling was only about 7′ tall and there was NO air conditioning. On a small workbench was a machine that looked like a sausage grinder to me. “Well, it’s time to grease you up like a pig at a county fair.” Kevin said with a smile. “Take a big handful of this Vaseline and smear it over all of your hands and face. If you don’t put it on thick enough, the coal dust will actually soak into your pores and it will be next to impossible to get it out until it finally decides to come out with your perspiration.” he continued. “Now, take this cotton face mask and cover your face as well as put on these rubber gloves. Next, put on the respirator.” he concluded. I could barely breathe. I felt like my face and hands were coated like a baby’s bottom and with three layers of clothing, in a metal shed with the sun baking the roof, the sweat started pouring off of me, soaking my clothes one layer at a time and I hadn’t even started to work. “The first thing that you do is to take one of the sample bottles here and place it next to the pulverizer. Then, take this air hose and blow out all of the remaining coal dust from the previous sample that is in the pulverizer.” Kevin instructed me as he took the air hose and blew out the pulverizer with high powered air. The blast of air blew the coal dust all throughout the small metal shed. Where just a few seconds before, I was able to see everything in the room, the blast of coal dust created a thick black fog that made it so dark that I could not even see my hand in front of my face. The fluorescent light was no help whatsoever. It took a good 30 seconds for the air to clear before I could make out the glow of the fluorescent light. “Now that you have the pulverizer clean, pour the new sample into the grinder and flip this switch. It will grind the coal into the size of granules that we need in order to test it. After you grind it, pour the newly ground coal back into the sample bottle and place it in the completed bin here. That’s about it. Shampoo, rinse and repeat. Have fun!” Kevin said as he walked out the door and closed it securely. What had I gotten myself into? Look at all of those sample bottles. Oh well, I better get started. I can’t imagine what that fine coal dust would have done to my lungs if I had not worn the respirator. The sweat was running down my back as I pulverized the next sample. It must have been over 100 degrees in that small room. After 3 hours, I was finally finished with all of the samples. I opened the door and the first thing that I did was to rip off the respirator and the cotton face mask. Next, I pulled the latex gloves off of my hands. The perspiration that my hands had produced filled the fingertips of the latex gloves. “Hey brother, looks like you have joined the hood!” Rufus yelled across the building. I had no idea what he was talking about. The walk back to the lab seemed like a long one. I was drenched in sweat and still wearing my 3 layers of clothing. I walked in the back door to the changing room and slowly took off the first two layers. When I went into the bathroom to wash my hands, I looked in the mirror. I looked like a raccoon. Except where the respirator was on my mouth and nose, my entire face was black as coal, no pun intended. No wonder Rufus said what he did. I took the hand soap and tried to clean my face and hands. I looked in the mirror, not a bit had been removed. What the heck I thought! How will I ever get this stuff off. I walked into the lab and Kevin looked up from what he was doing and just smiled like a Cheshire cat. “Welcome to the club!” he exclaimed. “How in the heck do I get this stuff off?” I asked. “Well, the only thing we have found that works is to go home and scrub yourself with Lava soap.” Kevin shared. Kevin told me that I was done for the day and to go home to clean up. Now, I knew why the guys from the collection department looked the way that they did when they would come into the lab. Did these guys get all of this stuff off of them each day I wondered. After I got home, the first thing I did was to take off my coal colored clothing and shoes. I was surprised to see that the coal dust had actually gone through my socks into my feet. I turned on the water to the tub and took the rough bar of Lava soap and started to scrub with a wash cloth. After about 30 minutes, I figured that I had gotten most of it off, but when I looked in the mirror, I realized that I had only touched the surface. I scrubbed and scrubbed with that rough soap until my skin was red. It took almost 3 days for all of the coal to work it’s way out of my pores. Kevin explained that I should have put the Vaseline around my eyelids as well, the more the better. Eventually, I was able to actually perform some real experiments in the lab. I actually created several automatic procedures and tools to eliminate the archaic way that they cleaned crucibles and ground the coal. I configured a motor on a stand that connected to the coffee grinder so that this process was not performed by hand any longer. If there was a way to automate or simplify processes, I would invent something that would help. Mr. Shepard liked to do things the old fashioned way, but Pat and Kevin love my inventions. From time to time, they still needed “volunteers” to pulverize coal and found out that if I did not “volunteer” first, then I would be seen as a loafer and would be sent back to cleaning equipment. It was a hard and dirty job, but I did enjoy working in the lab and coming up with ways to improve our daily tasks. I also realized that a job title, fossil fuel analyst, means more to people than what they actually do. Eventually I had to leave because they barely paid more than minimum wage at the time and I got tired of going home to eat potted meat sandwiches, which was all that I could afford at the time. Titles are nothing I realized, it’s what you do that matters and if what you are doing makes a difference in others lives.

“It will be a great party, just imagine, camping by the river, a campfire, food, beer and lots of laughs!” These are the words I remember as I drove my beat up Chevy station wagon to Mr Green’s farmhouse. Right, a great time, where were you now? What was I going to say. I had to think of a plan, a story that sounded believable. My brother wanted his tent back and it was up to me to retrieve it, along with our sleeping bags and other things we had hauled down to the river bank weeks before. How was it that I was in this predicament anyway? Where were my party buddies? With the threat of by brother telling my parents, I had to retrieve his tent and the family camping equipment. I tried to remember the last time my brother even went camping. Why did he need his stupid tent anyway. I always loved the location of Mr. Green’s farm. It was on the Nansemond River. He had 100’s of acres surrounded by trees, right on the edge of the river. There was a line of trees at the river’s edge. From that spot, there was a drop off of about 50′ down to the sandy beach. It was a really quiet spot. Many times I would drive down to the edge of Mr. Green’s farm, but as soon as I crossed the road onto his dirt road, out of nowhere he would appear in his pickup truck. You couldn’t even see his house from the road. How did he know when anyone crossed from the county road onto his property? It wasn’t more than 30 seconds when you would see his truck come barreling down the drive to stop the unknowing visitor. It always went something like this, “You do know that you are on private property, don’t you? What do you want?” he would say. Well, that’s about as far as you got. You never made it any further. He was a grumpy old man and didn’t want anyone on his land. “You are better at talking to people than the rest of us. You go talk to old man Green and ask him if we can camp on his beach.” Bill said. “Right, I’m sure that he is going to let a bunch of teenagers party on his beach. He won’t even let me down his stupid dirt road.” I said. “Come on, it will be a blast. We will set up the tent in the afternoon, bring all of the sleeping bags and get things ready. At night, we will bring the beer and food. You will think of something to tell him. All of the other guys are looking forward to it.” Billy pleaded. “Ok, I’ll think of something.” I said. “Sweet!” Bill said. “I’ll go and tell the guys to get everything ready.” Now the fun part. What in the heck was I going to tell old man Green. It had to be a doozie. Think, think, what would convince you to let a bunch of teenagers camp on your beach? I racked my brain. I just couldn’t imaging what would work. For most of the day, nothing came to mind. At the last-minute, when it was getting late in the day, I finally came up with my “story”. Somehow I knew he would fall for it, but I had to make it believable. I wasn’t on bad terms with Mr. Green, I was just a guy who liked to come visit his farm, if it was only from a distance. I had my story and was ready to see if I could sell it to him. I drove down the state road rehearsing my lines. It was important that I sound sincere. Rounding the last turn, his dirt road came into view. I rambled onto his property and sure enough, within 30 seconds, Mr. Green came hauling ass around the corner, a dust cloud being churned up behind his Ford pickup. He skidded to a stop in front of my Chevy wagon, blocking my path. He swung the door open, jumped to the ground and approached my car. I knew that I had to get out of my car and approach him as if I was expecting his inquisition. “You do know that this is private property, don’t you son!” he said. “Yes sir, I do. I actually wanted to talk with you.” I said, building up my nerve. “Yeah, well what do you want?” old man Green asked. “Well, you see sir, I’m the president of my church youth group at St. Andrews Lutheran Church. Our youth group wanted to ask if you would be kind enough to allow us to use your beach down by the river for a youth campout. We have admired your beach and thought that it would be a wonderful location for us to simply get together, have a little campfire, roast marshmallows and sing Kumbaya. The kids are a great group of girls and boys that would simply love to use it to pray and sing.” I said. Mr. Green’s whole demeanor changed in an instant. “Why that sounds like a wonderful time. I’d be pleased to have you young people use my beach as a place to do such wonderful things. Just make sure that you clean up after yourselves and NO funny business. I don’t want a bunch of drinking and smoking going on!” he warned. “No sir, these are a fine bunch of kids. I’ll personally watch over them and make sure that they leave your beach as clean as when they arrived” I promised. “Ok, when will you be needing to use my beach?” he said. “Well, we were thinking about tomorrow night.” I replied. “That’s no problem at all. Enjoy yourselves.” he said. With that, I took my leave. I climbed back into my old car, backed down the drive and headed home. I did it! He fell for it. The guys were gonna’ be impressed! “Party, party!” Bill yelled after I told him the news. “I can’t believe that he fell for it, man you are good. What the heck did you tell him?” he asked. “I just told him that us church boys wanted to sing Kumbaya on his beach.” I said. “Well, whatever you told him, it worked. I’ll tell the rest of the guys to come over tomorrow afternoon to pack up all of the gear so that we can haul it down to the beach.” Bill said. The next day was going to be tricky. My brother had asked for a tent for Christmas and Santa had brought him this big green canvas tent that would sleep 4 people. It was his pride and joy and sneaking it out of the garage wasn’t going to be easy. I would have to wait until he was busy, then sneak it into my car, along with sleeping bags and the rest of the gear. I went into the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboard looking for chips, snacks and anything else that might go with beer. I wasn’t a big beer drinker, but Bill was. Beer was Bill’s department. His dad had quite a stash of booze in his house, so it wouldn’t be hard to sneak out 2 or 3 six packs of beer and Bacardi’s along with the usual Coke chaser. The plan was to meet up at the end of the neighborhood and take the tent and sleeping bags down to the beach. We all arrived at 4PM, piled into my station wagon and headed down to the beach. As we headed onto Mr. Green’s property, there was no sign of Mr. Green. Whatever method he used to tell who was on his property told him that I was the same guy that had met him the day before. Surprised, I continued down the lane until I reached the row of trees that lined the edge of the property. The beach was below this line of trees. We all jumped out, opened the back of the station wagon and hauled my brothers tent along with our sleeping bags down the hill to the beach. “Wow, this is a really cool place!” Jim said. “Yeah, I never knew that this place even existed.” Mark said. “Yeah, it’s one of my favorite places, even though I never make it more than 50 yeards down the dirt road before getting stopped by old man Green. Let’s get the tent set up so everything will be ready.” I said. We spent the next hour driving the stakes into the ground, setting up the poles, stretching the new canvas over the frame of the tent. We laid out the sleeping bags on the bottom of the tent. Next, we built a pit for the campfire and lined it with rocks. Man, this was a great place. I had actually been to the water before. One of my friends was friends with the McCarters who had horses. The McCarters knew old man Green. We used to ride the horses bareback to the beach and wade into the water while riding the horses. Since Mr. Green loved horses, he never even bothered to ask who we were. I guess the McCarters had done this plenty of times before and just figured we were part of the family. I never understood how they let Jimmy simply go to their barn any time he wanted, put a bridle and bit on the horses and take the horse out to wherever he wanted to go. We had finished setting up. We were ready for the coolest party to begin. “Let’s meet up at your house at 7PM tonight.” I said. “Great, I will bring the party supplies!” Bill said. I knew that party supplies meant booze. Everyone piled into my car and we all went home. At dinner, I told my parents that I was going to go spend the night at Bill’s house. “Fine, just behave yourself.” my mom said. “Of course, I always do!” I grinned. After dinner I packed a sweater and a coat, just in case it got cold. I headed over to Bill’s house. Mark and Jim were already there. Bill had the beer, Bacardi and Coke in several grocery bags by the garage door. We simply put them in the back of the station wagon, everyone got in and headed down the road, out of the neighborhood and into the cool autumn air. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. This was a perfect camping night. We finally go to the end of the state road where Mr. Green’s property was. Slowly, as if we were trying to sneak onto the property, we turned off the lights of the car, the road only illuminated by the light of the moon, I let the car simply idle down the sandy road in the direction of the beach. Without much sound, we slowly parked the car and all piled out of the car, carrying the goods down to the beach. Why were we so quiet? We had permission. We all knew why we were quiet. We had hootch! We were not choir boys and we were going to sing Led Zepplin, not Kumbaya! “Let’s get the fire started.” I said. I knew that if we didn’t get the fire started, the batteries in our flashlights would die soon enough. It was pitch dark out here. There wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere. The stars in the sky were brilliant. The river lapped quietly at the shore. It was so peaceful, so serene. It seemed a shame to disturb the quiet. “Hurry up!” Mark said. “I’m hungry and need a beer.” We found some kindling wood and lit the fire without too much effort as the fall weather had been dry and the wood caught fire without hesitation. It wasn’t long before we had quiet a nice fire going. “Crack open the good stuff.” Bill said, and with that he went straight for the hard stuff, the Bacardi Rum, chasing it with his usually bottle of Coke. We each opened a can of his dad’s Schlitz beer. I thought to myself, this stuff is pretty nasty, but at least it is wet. I needed something to go with the salty pretzels that we had managed to abscond from my mom’s kitchen. After a few beers and half a bottle of Bacardi, we told stories and lies of things that never happened but wished they had. After a few hours, I think we did sing a chorus of Kumbaya, but not sure that the angels would have approved of our version. The evening was beautiful, the stories were flowing and the booze was gone. I climbed into the tent ready for a good nights sleep, but nobody else followed. “Hey, aren’t you guys gonna’ crash? I brought all of these sleeping bags.” I inquired. “Naw, I’m not really big into camping and I’m not feeling too good.” Bill said. “Yeah, I told my folks I would be home before midnight.” Jim admitted. “Well I’m not going to spend the night out here all by myself with nobody to talk to.” I said. “We need a ride home.” they all said. “Great, so much for our great camping trip. We dumped water on the fire to put it out and realized that nobody knew where their flashlight was. We cursed at the roots and brush that barred our way as we lumbered up the hill towards the car, the stars being our only light. After a little while of crawling on all fours, we made it to the car. Everyone piled in and I cranked up the old Chevy, keeping the lights out. We headed down the dirt lane, trying to be as quiet as possible. The crickets seemed louder than my car. We hit the state road, turned on the lights and headed home. I dropped everyone off, grunted an annoyed goodbye and drove home. I parked the car in the driveway. My parents weren’t at home. They usually headed to town on Saturday nights with my brother in tow. With no one home, I simply climbed the stairs, got into my PJ’s and climbed in bed. I was exhausted and disappointed that my buddy’s had bailed on me. Slowly, I drifted off to sleep, the smell of campfire surrounding my nose. “Oh crap!” I jumped from my bed. It was morning. I had totally forgotten about the tent, the beer cans, the empty Bacardi bottle and trash on the beach. I had promised Mr. Green that I would clean up our mess, that the youth group would pack up their s’mores, hot cocoa and equipment and leave his beach as pristine as we had found it. I skipped breakfast, headed to my car and sped down the road to Mr. Green’s beach. I didn’t dare turn on to his driveway. I stopped the car down the road and snuck to the beach by the edge of the property. Like a snake, I slid down the hill to the beach. “Oh no!” I said to myself, everything was gone. My brother’s tent, all of the trash, the beer cans, Bacardi bottle and snack wrappers, all gone. We had been found out. Slowly, I drove home, thinking of what I was going to tell my brother when he looked for his tent. What was I going to tell our church youth leader when he got the call from an angry Mr. Green asking what kind of youth group our church was sponsoring. Think, think. I had to think of what I was going to say. I pulled my beat up Chevy in the driveway and turned off the motor. I shook my head, really shaking my head at myself and the mess I had gotten myself into. “Where did you head off to in such a hurry?” my mom asked. “Oh, I wanted to run down to the beach and make sure that we had cleaned everything up at the campsite.” I told my mom. I had told her that Mr. Green had agreed to let us camp on his beach anytime we wanted. Another lie. I was getting deeper and deeper into this mess with no way out. The next day after church, my brother was busy with his friends and had no need for his tent, so I was good for now. At church, nobody mentioned a word about receiving a call from Mr. Green. That afternoon I expected that my parents would receive a phone call, but they never did. The days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. Summer turned to fall and fall turned to winter. I had totally forgotten about the whole incident. Life was back to normal. I was in the clear. I was working on my old Chevy when my brother came up behind me, “Where is my tent!?” he asked. “Uh, I don’t know. Why would I know where your tent is.” I lied. “It’s not in the garage where I put it and you would have been the only one that used it. I’m going to tell mom and dad that you lost my tent.” he threatened. “Ok, ok, I borrowed your tent.” I said. “When did you borrow it?” he asked. “Well, last summer. My friends and I wanted to camp out on Mr. Green’s beach.” I admitted. “Last summer! Where is my tent now? I want my tent! I’m telling dad.” he yelled. “Wait, wait, I’ll get back your tent. Give me a couple of days.” I pleaded. “I need it this weekend for the church youth group outing.” he said. “Ok, I’ll have it before then.” I promised. “You better!” he threatened. What was I going to do? My brother Drew was actually going to a youth group outing and needed his tent. I really felt guilty now. I had taken his tent without asking, lost it to farmer Green and now I had to produce his tent. I didn’t have the money to buy him a new one and I didn’t want for my mom and dad to find out about our wild party and the lies I had told Mr. Green. I had to come up with a plan. What was I going to tell Mr. Green? Think, think. I had to get out of this mess. Well, a lie got me into this mess, so I was either going to have to come clean or come up with an even better story. “Aha!” I said to myself. I had a plan. It was Friday. I had to get my brother’s tent back! I made the long drive to Mr. Green’s farm in my parent’s car. I stopped the car. I opened the glove box, took out my necessary tools. Slowly, I applied Vitalis to my hair. I slicked it back, with a nice part on the right side; next I took the fake mustache out of the package which I had purchased earlier that day from a novelty store. I carefully applied it to my upper lip. “Yep, that looks about right.” I told myself. The shirt that I wore was a button shirt. I buttoned all of the buttons, all the way to the top. I looked like a complete nerd. “This should do it.” I convinced myself. I put the car in drive and drove down Mr. Green’s lane. This time, for some reason, Mr. Green didn’t meet me as soon as I crossed his property line. I made it all the way to his house, which I had never seen before. I got out of my parent’s station wagon, slammed the door and waited for someone to come out of the farmhouse. Sure enough, Mr. Green came out of the back door, through the screened porch and made his way to me. “Can I help you?” he asked. “Yes sir. You see, my name is Jeffrey Willis from St. Andrews Lutheran Church in Churchland. I’m the new youth group leader.” I told him as convincingly as I could. Before I could continue, Mr. Green jumped in, “That no good youth group president that you sent down here trashed my beach; told me some lies about having a youth group meeting and singin’ some songs around the campfire. I went down the next morning to find my beach a total mess, beer bottles and trash everywhere. What kind of youth group are you running anyway!?” What was I going to say? He was still hot under the collar about being lied to. How was I going to convince him to give back my brother’s tent? “Mr. Green, you should be upset, being lied to and all of that. I would feel the same way. We don’t condone that kind of behavior at our church, believe me! The youth group president that caused all of this is no longer with us.” I fibbed. “Good, I hope you kicked him out of your church!” Mr. Green retorted. “Actually, Mr. Green, he died in a car accident a few weeks ago.” I said as my story started to form in my head. Mr. Green’s face looked astonished and his whole composure changed. “I’m really sorry to hear that, even if that boy did cause me quite a mess.” he said as he rubbed the back of his neck pondering what to say next. Before he could continue, I said, “The reason that I am here is to find out if you know what happened to the tent, you see, the tent belongs to the church and they need it for a real camping outing that I will be leading.” Mr. Green walked over to one of his outbuildings and said, “Well, that morning, after I picked up all of the trash, I took down the tent and folded it up and brought it here to my barn. I wasn’t going to ever give it back, considering how they lied to me and everything.” He opened the door to his small barn, went in to the back of the barn and sure enough, up on the shelf near a bunch of boxes and old mason jars there sat my brother’s tent. “There it is, all of the part are there.” he said. I grabbed the tent, the stakes and all of the tent poles, glad to finally have them in my possession. “You know, it was a terrible thing, the accident and all. The family is really dealing with all of this pretty bad. I’m really sorry for what happened, but promise that it won’t ever happen again.” I said. “Well, that’s quite a shame.” Mr. Green agreed. “What type of farming do you do anyway? I love the smell of the soil and a hard day’s work.” I said, as if I had grown up on a farm myself. “Well, you know, I pretty much grow soybeans for part of the year, then change to corn every now and then. Hey, would you like to see my tractor?” Mr. Green grinned. “Sure, is it a Deere or a Massey?” I asked, not really knowing what either of them would look like, other than all John Deere tractors are green. “Come on over to my implement barn and let me show you!” as he put his arm on my shoulder guiding the way. I didn’t care what he wanted to show me, now that I had my brother’s beloved tent back. “I’d love to see it!” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster as he led me on a personal tour of his farm. “Now this here is where I keep my tractors……………” Life was good once again.

But he is not the REAL Santa I protested! I can’t believe that my mom was trying to take me to see the fake Santa at Mid City Shopping Center in Portsmouth VA.  For years, my mom would take my brother and I to Miller and Rhodes in Richmond VA to visit the real Santa Claus; of course there was always the local mall Santa, but he was just Santa’s helper. The real Santa required a trip to Richmond, about and hour and a half away where we would wait in line for what seemed hours to see the Snow Queen and Santa. Thanksgiving was over and it was time to put up the Christmas decorations. This required getting the big box out of the attic and watching my dad go through each and every light bulb, trying to get them to light. My dad refused to buy new light bulbs. He would flick the light bulbs with his middle finger until the filament would re-fuse itself and light. His finger would grow numb by the end of this exercise. Back in those days, we used what I called the mongo light bulbs for the outside of the door. Our family color was blue. We would put up the Christmas tree, but my mom, being an artist was meticulous about the decorating of it. She would take the tinsel and separate it so that she only would allow one strand to be applied in only the most appropriate locations. It seemed to take 6 hours to decorate our tree. Many of the times, we had to rob branches from the back and drill holes in the trunk to arrange them so that they filled in bare spots in the front. I remember one tree that refused to stand upright. My dad had to use fishing line to tie it to two corners of the walls to keep it from falling over. There was also the felt NOEL door hanger that was hung on the outside of the front door that I believe my mom made. Every window had to have a candle in it as well. Decorations back then were simple. Nobody tried to outdo City Hall with their personal Christmas display. One Saturday after Thanksgiving, my mom would inform us that today was the day that we were going to visit the real Santa in Richmond. My brother and I knew what was expected. My mom laid out our Sunday best to meet Santa. Unlike Sunday mornings, we didn’t argue when it came time to get dressed in all of these fancy clothes. My mom would get all dressed up as well, wearing her long dress coat with the fur collar. The drive to Richmond seemed like it took an eternity. We could tell we were getting close when the tall buildings would appear in the distance, outlining the city. Finding a parking space was always a challenge as downtown Richmond, our state capital was a flurry with holiday shoppers. I remember that this Saturday, there was a light snow falling which made the whole experience seem magical. Thalhimers was directly across from Miller and Rhodes. Both stores were anchors for this block. Thalhimers had a water fountain in the atrium that flowed out of some sort of statue. The water seemed to be scented with perfume, but even with all of it’s beautiful displays, Santa was across the street at Miller and Rhodes. We parked the car and all bundled up, my mom took us across the street into the store. We had to go upstairs to see Santa. Santa’s village was decorated to look like the North Pole. There was fake snow everywhere with gingerbread houses and elves to direct the kids and parents towards the line to see Santa. The line seemed to wind around Santa’s village for miles. I remember waiting to see Santa, preparing what I was going to say to him. This made the time go by faster. Eventually, we could make out Santa, sitting in his golden chair. Every child was dressed in their best outfit. After what seemed like and eternity, there were only a few kids waiting before me, but the line behind me still wound through the store for what seemed like forever. We were up next. First, the beautiful Snow Queen met us and talked with us for a moment, to ask how we were doing. I just stared at her in amazement. She was in this beautiful satin dress and seemed to be from some frozen part of the world where all is good and sparkly. Santa motioned to me and my brother, “Come on over boys, my how big you are. How are you Gill and Drew?” My mouth dropped open. Santa knew our names. This WAS the real Santa. Typically, Drew got to sit on Santa’s knee since he was the younger. Santa asked what we wanted and all I could do was to stare at him. Nothing came out of my mouth. I was frozen. He knew my name. Santa motioned to the Snow Queen, and before I knew it, a camera flashed, my brother was set down and we were on our way headed down the line to meet my mom. “How was it? Did you tell Santa what you wanted for Christmas?” she asked. “Uh, yeah.” was all that I could manage to say. She led us around Santa’s village and of course she had to do some shopping until we could go to Santa’s Palace where we would have lunch with Santa and the Snow Queen. I don’t remember what we ate or the ride home. I was still mesmerized that Santa knew my name. He was the REAL Santa. Years later, one of the Snow Queens wrote a book about her experience at Miller & Rhodes. There were only a few Snow Queens. Most of them were college age girls who looked forward to playing this part that they would return each Christmas to see the wonder in the eyes of all of the children. I found out later, that it was the Snow Queen that had a hidden microphone in her outfit and that her greeting to us before we sat on Santa’s knee was to inquire as to our names. Santa on the other hand had an earpiece to hear the names that the Snow Queen would find out from us. I never put two and two together. It was a magical experience for those of us that lived in VA and would make our pilgrimage to Richmond each year. I would eventually discover who Santa really was, but I think I was the only kid who was in the 5th grade that still believed in Santa. My parents did a great job keeping the magic alive as my dad would hook up fishing line all through the house to some bells outside. He would yank the string behind the couch to make the bells ring which would cause absolute fear in me and my brother. Eventually, the indoor malls took over and the downtown slowly eroded as many downtown areas do. You would never know that the area used to be a bustling activity of Christmas shoppers and young children on their mother’s coat tails going from store to store. Miller & Rhodes and Thalhimers are no longer there, just empty boarded up 6 story grand old brick facades of what used to be. I have so many great memories of our trips to Richmond to visit the real Santa. I felt very privileged to make the trek each year. I kind of felt sorry for those kids that only had the experience of the mall Santa. Back at school I would tell everyone how I visited the real Santa and my friends, who had figured out who Santa really was would simply roll their eyes and go, “Sure, you met the real Santa. Ha! I can’t believe you don’t know.” I would always walk away wondering, “Know what?” while scratching my head. Oh well, the magic of Christmas isn’t meeting the real Santa, but the one who was born, that is the reason that we celebrate this time of year. My brother gave me the best present a brother could ever give, he introduced me to someone better than Santa, Jesus Christ, and guess what he knows my name!