RRN Online Volume 354

March 15 '03

Volume 354

White Shirt Still My Favorite

I own a white shirt that's seen its better days. The band inside the collar, in the area where the collar buttons, is worn badly, and the collar itself is beginning to show some wear on the outside. The stubby whiskers on the Adam's apple of my neck have rubbed the collar band threadbare in much the same manner as a dripping faucet erodes the porcelain of a lavatory basin. Either action requires a considerable amount of time. Each time I wear the shirt, I imagine it the last time I will wear it, and each time I consider tossing it away, I relent and take it to the cleaners once more.

I've a closet full of ordinary white shirts, or I did before my last move when the bulk of them were carted off to a charitable organization. Of the several white shirts I kept, I only wear three of them. I don't know why I'm keeping the rest unless I think Jason or Brett might one day need a white shirt to wear to a dress-up function.

I don't know what it is about commercial cleaners, but they seem to shrink my clothes, especially those clothes made of cotton. The bulk of the white shirts that I've owned over the years were Oxford cloth cotton with button-down collars. As the shirts were laundered, the collar's size shrank. The collar shrank, also, causing the buttoned down area to tug awkwardly against the buttons that lay just beyond a comfortable reach to hold the tips of the collar.

I switched to wearing white shirts without button-down collars to avoid one problem, but after a year or two the collars shrank a couple of sizes, and I hung those shirts in the back of my closet. I've tried white shirts made of material other than Oxford cloth, but, generally speaking, they faired no better after being laundered a year or two.

The one white shirt that I've held onto is not ordinary. It has been subjected to the same chemical solutions, water temperatures, and stretched and pressed on the same apparatuses as my other white shirts, but it has never succumbed to "collar shrink," which should destroy anyone's theory that an expanding neck was to blame. The shirt is not exactly white, either; it's more of a cream color. And, while it is a cotton shirt, it is not made of Oxford cloth.

With one exception my favorite white shirt has its original buttons. Unlike most of its pals in my closet, its buttons have not crumbled like chalk in my fingers as I hurried to button them, nor have they been crushed at the cleaners.

I'm reasonably certain, there were other white shirts like it at the time someone bought it for me, but I've not found one since realizing its value. A label inside the collar provides a hint to its appearance, INDICORD. Row after row of narrowly spaced "cords" give the shirt an unusual, embossed texture, similar to corduroy.

As shirts go, white is pretty bland. Few people notice a guy's white shirt. I seem to get more compliments on blue shirts, coats, or jackets than any other color. With respect to all my other white shirts, I don't think I've ever had someone tell me they liked my shirt. However, I've had a number of both men and women comment on my favorite white shirt.

My favorite white shirt was first laundered in September of 1995. I suppose it owes part of its longevity to being one of several shirts in my "Sunday rotation," but perhaps it owes its long life more to Supervalu allowing employees to dress in business casual rather than the "coat and tie" attire of yesteryear. Either way, I'm glad I still have it. I will continue to wear it with a tie, but one won't find it on me with an open collar, because the frayed band inside the collar would expose the truth of an otherwise faultless, flawless white shirt.

The fact that I have difficulty tossing out a slightly frayed shirt tells a bit about my character. People are far more important to me than possessions. If something or someone has stood the test of time and dealt fairly with me, I'll do likewise. Just because something has surpassed it's peak of usefulness doesn't necessarily mean one should dispose if it. My friendships of a lifetime are similar, in that some have faded with the passage of time, but like my favorite white shirt, the rows that made the relationship unique are still visible and the desire to maintain is greater than the desire to discard.

Though the shirt is still useful to me as a Sunday shirt, I think I'll live long enough to see First Baptist dismantle every tradition some of us hold dear. I'm no prophet, but I feel the winds of change sweeping through the church like a March breeze. Church music, particularly hymns, has been on the slide for some time. Worship Wars rage throughout the land as congregations squabble over traditional and non-traditional services, and while the squabbling has not gotten serious at FBC, it's just around the corner. Church members are growing ever fonder of Sunday entertainment while neglecting enlightenment and education. It's only a matter of time until those winds further tatter the collar of my favorite white shirt, and as the changes become more pronounced, I'll have to discard more things that are dear to me than just an old white shirt.

Sap Rising Yard Work 2003 Begins

Last Saturday was my first venture into yard work for the 2003 season. A week earlier, I saw my neighbor, Bill Knight, was working to reduce his illeagnes shrubs to a more manageable size, as I stepped onto my deck to check on some catfish fillets that were thawing inside my converted-oil-drum smoker. We spoke, and he asked if I knew when the shrubs were last pruned. He seemed astonished when I told him the former owners had trimmed them about a year ago.

I mentioned that I had been considering doing some yard work but had not felt like doing it, which made it sound as though I had not been well.

"Have you been sick?" Bill asked.

"No, not unless you count an abscessed tooth," I responded. "Actually, I've not been in the mood for working in the yard."

"Just what is this stuff?" Bill asked, as he used a bow saw to trim the larger limbs and pruned the smaller ones with hedge shears.

"I'm told it's a type of illeagnes, but it must be a different variety than mine," I responded, pointing to the line of shrubs along the property line behind my house. "Mine don't lose their leaves in winter."

"I'd never noticed the similarity," he said.

"I need to prune mine back, as well. If I let them grow too much, it's hard to battle the kudzu on the drop-off on the other side of them." I elaborated.

The outside temperature was in the upper forties and had been dropping most of the day. So I didn't tarry long after our brief neighborly exchange, rather I sought refuge in my sixty-eight degrees warm living room where Barbara was fine at that temperature, and I eventually got warm after wrapping up in a sofa throw.

There's something about tree sap rising in the warm days that signal a hint of spring not only for the natural world but for me as well. I may have been a tree in a former life, because I can almost feel the sap rising in me. However, I get the urge to cut something. Maybe it's because, I like to keep the home place looking respectable. With blooms of clover here and there along with a few hardy weeds greening up they combine to give the lawn an uneven look that only a good mowing will fix.

I purchased two new mower blades for the John Deere a few weeks earlier and waited on a dry Saturday to get them put on the Deere. It's easier for me to drive the Deere over to Melvin May's shop and pay him to replace the blades than it is to tackle the chore without the necessary tools and hoist. As it happened, last Saturday was dry and warm with afternoon temperatures near seventy degrees, so I dropped off my mower around 10:00 a.m. thinking Mr. Melvin could get to it that same day. He told me he had just recently had gall bladder surgery and wasn't supposed to be doing strenuous work, but he had someone coming over Monday to help him and he'd get me fixed up then. I thanked him and left. I don't know if someone came over to help him earlier than he expected or not, but five hours later he delivered the Deere to my front yard.

At the time Mr. Melvin arrived, I was well under way with an illeagnes project of my own. Using a chain saw and a heavy-duty, gas-powered hedge trimmer, I had whittled a section of the ten-foot tall shrubs down to somewhere between knee and waist high. The easy part is in cutting the limbs. The real fun is untangling the cut ones from the rest, piling them up, and hauling the cuttings to the road for a City work crew to chip and haul away.

In pruning the shrubs, I revved up the chain saw like Marcel Ledbetter of Jerry Clower fame in hopes of rousing Jason from his extended sleeping session, but it didn't work. At times I had both engines running (one idling and one cutting) just to make extra racket, but that didn't work either. However, Merilese, my five-year old granddaughter came out and offered her help. She worked hard in helping transport the limbs to the road. She took a smaller load, of course, but she made a trip every time I did.

About the time I had cut all I had the strength to cut, Rayanne and Katherine came outside, so I put Rayanne on the back side of the shrubs handing me the limbs that had dropped on that side. Eventually Jason and Brett showed up as well and while there wasn't much left for them to do, I made them a job. I surely didn't want them to feel slighted in the family work project.

As best I can figure, it'll take two more Saturdays for me to complete the illeagnes project, but once the shrubs are trimmed back they will be easy to care for until the end of summer, at which time, I'll let them go wild until next March.

After the illeagnes limbs were taken to the road, I used the Deere to mulch the leaves and small pieces that were left, then proceeded to mulch the rest of the yard. Merilese, I'm told, loves to ride the mower with Pops, her other grandpa, and she loves riding with me as well. The thrill of riding on the Deere alongside her granddad may be a passing fancy for Merilese, but I have the feeling she's got some of my sap in her veins, and she'll one day be a yard-worker, too.

Reader Response Reader's Weigh In

Reader comments are always welcome. If you have an opinion you would like to share, space will be made available in this newsletter for your comments.

Re: War Clouds; February 15^th, Volume 347

Killing people--except in self-defense, i.e., having reasonable grounds to believe the person you kill is planning to kill you and that there is imminent danger that he will kill you--is wrong. Killing civilians in war is also wrong but killing civilians in Iraq as we are going to do during this war is not only wrong, it is foolish. Killing people simply because they happen to live in Iraq will make many more people throughout the Middle East want to kill us solely because we live in the United States. A war with Iraq, therefore, will put our lives even more at risk than they are now.

I am concerned about how the war will affect the people who live in Iraq, and I am concerned about our military personnel, but I am more concerned
about my own well being. Though I am relatively safe in Tupelo, Mississippi, I should be able to visit New York City or Washington, D.C. without worrying about vengeful relatives or friends of someone we kill in Iraq picking that day to take their personal hatred out on us in such a way that I end up being killed. I resent being placed in such a position when
our leaders have failed to provide us with any grounds to believe our lives are in imminent danger from any person who lives in Iraq.

Jerry Young, Tupelo, MS

Re: Volume 349

I found the article in RRNews of March 1, 03, Creative Reading, very interesting and thought provoking. Being a reader who is always reading at least one book and one who listens to book tapes when driving or working outside, I am one who wonders how people who don’t read survive.

Discussions among friends and fellow readers on recently read books, brings out new thoughts on characters, plots and motives of the writer. Every reader I discuss books with has a different idea of both content of the book and intent of the author. So, believe it or not, I think we can agree on this matter.

I not sure if it was your intent, but Bodock Beau’s "Why did the Chicken Cross the Road" in the same issue, even though a spoof, is the perfect example of how differently we all see things.

Thanks for writing. Claude Jones, Pontotoc, MS

Re: A Monkey's Uncle; March 8^th, Volume 350

I share most of your thoughts the clear and the ambivalent one on the inclusion of "under God". I didn't miss it when it wasn't there. When we start adding things like that we are acknowledging our anxiety about change and loss of control. That was done when the world, at least your world and mine, was more homogeneous.

Today, when Christians want to put up the Ten commandments in public places and prayer at graduations and force court rulings they are creating laws that I am afraid will back fire on us in the future. Christianity will not always be the majority faith in this country, just as whites will not be the majority in about 20 years.

I think ACLU - while I agree with many of its stances -- are doing the same thing by focusing on the individual. Law after law about individual freedom eventually destroys the community. If we don't look at the big picture it can come back on us, and lead to the losing of liberties.

Gerard Howell, Lexington, KY

Bodock Beau The Lighter Side Of War

There may not be any such thing as a new joke, since a plethora of old jokes seem to get recycled and updated each year. Consider the following as a good example:

Once upon a time (allegedly) in a nice little forest, there lived an orphaned bunny and an orphaned snake. By a surprising coincidence, both were
blind from birth. One day, the bunny was hopping through the forest, and the snake was slithering through the forest, when the bunny tripped over the
snake and fell down. This, of course, knocked the snake about quite a bit.

"Oh, my," said the bunny, "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I've been blind since birth, so, I can't see where I'm going. In fact, since I'm also an orphan, I don't even know what I am."

"It's quite OK," replied the snake. "Actually, my story is much the same as yours. I, too, have been blind since birth, and also never knew my mother. Tell you what, maybe I could slither all over you, and work out what you are, so at least you'll have that going for you."

"Oh, that would be wonderful" replied the bunny. So the snake slithered all over the bunny, and said, "Well, you're covered with soft fur; you have
really long ears; your nose twitches; and you have a soft cottony tail. I'd say that you must be a bunny rabbit."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you," cried the bunny, in obvious excitement. The bunny suggested to the snake, "Maybe I could feel you all over with my paw,
and help you the same way that you've helped me."

So the bunny felt the snake all over, and remarked, "Well, you're smooth and slippery, you have a forked tongue, and no backbone. I'd say you must be French."

Contributed by Ken Gaillard

Lisa B. Rolik shared the following picture of a blonde protesting the war.

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