Marshall Ramsey

What am I thankful for?

Thankfulness.

It heals like cool aloe gel on a bad burn. It soothes and takes away life’s painful sting. It’s the power that allows you to regroup when facing ruin. It gives you traction when your life’s wheels are spinning. And it allows you to catch your breath when someone kicks you in the gut.

Thankfulness.

It’s Vitamin C for life’s cold. It’s calling the cops to shut down your pity party. Thankfulness changes your paradigm from “poor me” to “why not me?” It’s the secret power of survivors. It turns the worst moments into your best. It’s like the Enterprise’s shields when the Klingons attack.

Thankfulness.

This Thursday, we’ll sit down and gather for the feast. We’ll take a few hours away from our troubles and focus on what’s good about life. Our batteries will recharge from the fellowship, food and family. We’ll stop thinking of ourselves and be grateful for what we have and for what we once had. We’ll eat turkey, dressing and casseroles made with mystery ingredients. And for dessert, we’ll have stuff ourselves with football and pumpkin pie.

Thankfulness.

It’s what I’m thankful for

I don’t remember how old I was but it was around the time I had my six-year-old molars yanked. My dad and I were in the basement restoring his 1953 Ford Pickup. He was up under the hood, working on the engine when his hand slipped, crushing his fingers. What I heard next was a curse word — which was unusual for my dad.

I looked at him and said, “Isn’t it wrong to say that?”

My dad wiped his brow, held his throbbing fingers and said something that has stuck with me for the next 40 years. “I know. But I try to be good to people to make up for it.”

That’s my dad. Flawed yet at the end of the day, perfect. A perfect dad for me, that is. And I am sure my two sisters would agree.

His name is Dave Ramsey. No, not that Dave Ramsey, but he is that Dave’s uncle and the person he’s named after. And please allow me to tell you about him. We have a bad habit of only saying nice things about people when they die. My dad is 79 and is very much alive. I hope he knows I feel this way about him already. But this is what you need to know.

He’s ornery, funny, handsome, grumpy, smart, distant yet loving. When he’s on his A game, his wit is second to none. He’s a master salesman who could sell ice to an eskimo. He loves the Special Dinner at any Mexican restaurant (and will proclaim it to be the best meal he’s ever had), UT football, cheap beer, his cats, cars and his children. He and his neighbor owned a car garage for years — a place where I saw his generosity first time. He has been physically strong his whole life and waterskied at 78. He beat cancer 16 years ago; it hardly slowed him down. In his career, he sold cars, electronics, chemicals, fasteners and then in 1974, he switched gears and bought a gas station. I admire him for having he courage to change careers like that. Forty years later, I’m doing the same thing.

I can tell you his faults — because I have most of them. He yells when he’s frustrated and is stubborn. So am I. Sometimes he doesn’t finish a project. Nor do I. And like me, he worked his ass off at his job. He’d work long, long hours — but I always loved seeing his car when he’d come home. He’d always fall asleep in his chair. He still does.

Dad served his country with distinction. He was a corporal in the U.S. Army in the 101st Airborne Division. He also played college basketball and baseball. I sucked at both. I always wondered if that bothered him — that I was different from him. Yet he was proud of me as an athlete and loved watching me play football. Today, he is proud of me now for many other reasons. Once, after I spoke at the Millsaps Arts and Lecture Series, he told me, “You’re the only person I’ve known who knew what he wanted to do when he was eight years old and did it.”

It was one of my finest career moments.

A few years ago, I asked him about success. I always wondered if he was totally happy with the career path he took. He told me, “I see you three kids and know I’m the most successful man around.”

He had his priorities straight.

When his dad died, I saw him change. He hugged me for the first time at his funeral. Losing your dad will do that.

You learn from your parents until they are gone. He’s my textbook, good and bad, on being a father to my own boys (who call him Papa Dave). I’m lucky I still have both of my parents teaching me. And I know they both love me. They believed in my crazy dream. He and my mom have left me my inheritance early.

My cousin Dave Ramsey is wildly successful. But I will assert that my dad Dave Ramsey is, too. He has successfully given me a lifetime of memories.

And I just hope I’m as good of a dad as he has been to me.

Pretty regularly, I buy an unsweetened iced tea at the Whataburger on High Street in Jackson. And very regularly, I’m greeted with an infectious smile and hello by a worker named Fannie. I don’t know much about Fannie other than the fact that I’d hire her in a minute if I owned a business. In this age of mad fast-food workers (except Chick-fil-a’s ‘My pleasure’ crew), it’s pretty darn refreshing.

This morning was different, though. You could almost see the black cloud hanging over her head. I don’t what was going on, but SHE was not happy about it. I felt like I was in some kind of bizarro universe.

I took a second, paid my money (she automatically knows what I want and still tries to up-sell me!) and said all I could say:

“Every morning I come in here, you make my day. I appreciate you, your smile and the great service you provide.”

Her face lit into a smile.

I wasn’t much of a gesture on my part. But if I gave Fannie a few seconds of happiness, my debt to her is partially repaid.

Was walking across the street yesterday in Jackson, Mississippi and my right foot fell into a pothole. Trying to avoid twisting my ankle, I stepped quickly to the right — and fell toward another bigger pothole. I stumbled and fell head-first into it.

My body dropped uncontrollably. As my arms flailed, the light of day began to fade. Blackness covered me like an inky quilt.

Then mysteriously, I could see again. A weird green light illuminated a strange world.

I noticed relics from the past: A 1963 Pontiac. A 1953 Corvette. A skeleton of a horse and a buggy.There was even a Civil War cannon. I saw Jimmy Hoffa playing cards with Amelia Earhart who was wearing one of Elvis’ jackets. As I fell, whole cities of gold appeared perched on cliffs of Yazoo Clay. Their broken foundations made them look as distorted as a Dali painting. Broken water pipes squirted water into the air, creating massive fountains that squirted streams of water joyously across the green sky. A giant, dormant volcano loomed in the distance. It was a giant underworld filled with millions of small, black holes.

Each hole was a tunnel to a different time. I could go into the 1941 tunnel and warn the President about Pearl Harbor. Or I could head into the 1967 tunnel and see myself being born. As I fell, I took inventory of each time on each tunnel. Then I saw the one I was looking for — and I flapped my arms to push my way toward it. The guard scrambled as I was sucked into it. Time and light bent like a kaleidoscope. I felt my whole existence being sucked back in time.

I emerged from the tunnel and was standing right in the middle of Pascagoula Street, just seconds from when I stepped into the pothole. I looked down, avoided twisting my ankle and walked on to my car.

The moral? Watch out for potholes in Jackson, Mississippi. They’ll either twist your ankle, suck in your car or take you to a wormhole back in time.

Reacting to some bad news, my oldest son, who is wise beyond his years, said “I don’t know why life does this.”

I paused for a minute, not really being able to give him a good answer because honestly, I don’t know either. I just said, “It’s just life. You have to seize the blessings that much harder to survive stuff like this.”

It’s a trite answer but the best I could come up with in a pinch. Life sends storms. If the storm hits you, you hang on. If it hits someone else, you don’t make it about yourself. You help them.

This Thanksgiving, I have so much to be thankful for. And I’m going to seize every blessing I have.

About midnight last night, Pip the dog had to go out. Not sure why — she had been out at 11. Maybe she heard something? Who knows. All I know is that I let her out and waited for her to do her business.

She did her business alright. I heard her raising hell one bark at a time.

I ran in and got my phone (my source of a flashlight) and found her attacking a juvenile opossum. It was tucked into a corner of our fence, hissing and standing on a soccer ball. Of course, my first thought was “Aw, it wants to play a pick-up game of soccer with Pip,” and then I thought, “Chris McDaniel is haunting me.” Then I thought a little more logically, “I had better get between this dog and this hissing opossum or one of them will get bitten badly.”

Of course, I put my pink, fleshy legs in danger. That’s what kind of guy I am.

I yelled a few choice profanities (seemed appropriate for the occasion) and got Pip to back off. She is a terrier. She is bred to kill varmints. She was doing her job and doing it well.

Finally I got her herded into the house. I, of course, sent out the picture of our hissing, soccer-playing marsupial out to the internet. Pip was back in her native environment (our bed) and I faded off to sleep.

But if there any youth soccer leagues who want to be the “Fighting ‘Possums,” I got your mascot. Give me a call: 1-800-Opossum.

There are two hidden taxes in Mississippi: Cracked windshields and Yazoo Clay. Cracked windshields is a discussion for another day. But Yazoo Clay? It’s like building your house on chicken manure.

If you’re not familiar with Yazoo Clay, it is a VERY expansive soil. If it rains, the clay expands. If it’s dry, contracts. The Yazoo River’s name is said to mean, “River of Death.” That means Yazoo Clay means “Clay of Death.” Death to your life’s savings. Death to your foundation.

To fix your foundation, you have to dig a hole and pour money in it. Then you cover it up. And that’s no guarantee the damage is truly fixed. You could have to dig another hole and pour another truckload of money.

You can tell which homeowners have had the work done. They cry a lot. And they walk with a limp.

I bring it up because it is a pretty good metaphor for life. Life can be Yazoo Clay. And it can wreck your personal house if you don’t take care of your personal foundation. Your personal foundation is what you stand for — your beliefs. Many times you live with the cracks, the shifting, the dropping and rise of the floor. Doors won’t close and windows break. But you ignore it. Because the price of fixing it is too great. But then something happens to make you take action — the damage causes major problems. A pipe breaks. Or you have to sell the house. Life’s like that, too. A major life event happen and you decide it’s time to fix your personal foundation.

Like your home’s foundation, fixing your personal foundation is painful. But you do it anyway. You do your research, you choose the method to fix it and you get busy. Because you can’t rebuild until you suck it up and do the work.

Success requires a good foundation. I know. I’ve lived with a lot of cracks for a long time. But now, I’m working on fixing it. I hope someday my life is as level as my house.

P.S. I can’t say anything good about windshield cracks. But if I had three wishes, I’d make dump trucks cover their loads.

The giant Kay’s Ice Cream sign meant we were almost there. It was a giant ice cream cone– and was the unofficial gateway to Maryville, Tennessee, the town where both sets of my grandparents lived. My sisters and I had been in crammed in the car for two and a half hours as we drove in from Georgia. Excitement, anticipation and hunger built as we drove into town. We went past the high school and then came to a split in the road. Right and it was to the Marshall house on Wilson Avenue. Straight and it was on to the Ramsey house on Sevierville Rd. Awaiting us were hugs, casseroles and elderly relatives who ate like locusts with thyroid problems. I could see the snow-capped Smokey Mountains in the distance. I still can when I close my eyes.

It was Thanksgiving. And I’m so thankful for those memories.

I can hear the gravel of my grandparents’ driveway. I can see the white picket fence at my other grandparents’ home. I can taste the pies and pickles. I can remember plucking packs of gum from my Uncle Frank’s coat pocket. Seeing him was always a treat. I loved seeing my dad’s brother and sister when they were in town. I’d cheer when my dad’s cousin Charlie and his wife Barbara would pull in from Florida. I’d take a nap on the floor in front of the TV broadcasting the Macy’s parade. I remember the smell of my grandfather’s aftershave. He’d be waiting for us in his chair by the front door. I can’t drive by their old home on Wilson Avenue now without seeing him there waiting. Or at least wishing he was.

I know I’ll see him again. I’ll see all of them again. Someday.

Forty years later, we’ll make another trip to grandma’s house. But it won’t be to Maryville. That chapter is closed. I hope my boys have the same fond memories of Thanksgiving I have. And I hope they’re hanging on to them as tightly as I am hanging on to mine.

It’s easy to misplace Thanksgiving between Christmas and Halloween. Some say it is forgotten. I guess that’s easy to believe in this screwed up, narcissistic world we live in. But it will never truly be gone. Nope. Because you can’t lose something that’s buried so deeply in your heart.

Take a slightly dried-out six-foot Scotch pine, add sun-hot, big-bulbed red lights with aluminum reflectors, hang tinsel (that usually ended up being pulled out of the cat’s butt) and wait for the impending house fire. That was our Christmas tree growing up. God be with anyone who tried to poach a present. The needles would impale you like 1,000 rabid porcupines.

I get festive just thinking about it.

And why wouldn’t I? I used to lie on our living room couch, bathed in the tree’s light’s red glow as I’d spend hours dreaming about my Christmas morning. All the packages had been inventoried. The annual present census decreed by Caesar Augustus was complete. I knew who was getting what and where. There was no room in the inn — there were too many gifts.

There was something magical about Christmas back then. And I’m not really sure what.

Maybe life was simpler back then. Maybe. All I know is that Christmas of my youth died when I was in college. My university exams would wrap up around December 22, leaving me very little time to move back home and shop. I felt the joy slip from my grasp as I’d rush around, picking up last minute presents like “Georgia on my mind” ashtrays. And I haven’t slowed down since. Somewhere along the way, stress replaced wonder. Christmas became more about presents than presence.

I’ve been told Christmas is for the children. Lord knows I’ve done everything this side of bankruptcy to make it fun for mine.

That’s worth repeating. Christmas is for the children.

Hmm. That’s good advice for all of us to remember: Make it for the child in all our hearts.

So this year, I’m going to ask Santa for a childlike heart. I will lie on the couch and stare at the lights. I will shake the presents and do my inventory. But I will skip the dried-out Scotch pine. My puncture wounds from 40 years ago are just now starting to heal.