Marshall Ramsey

The cold front had brought the ducks in and blown the mosquitoes out. It was the best time of year in the small Mississippi town.  The old friends sat on the front porch and watched the sun dip beneath the distant row of trees.

“Sure is pretty.”

The tallest of the group spoke, paused and then took another sip of his drink. This was an annual ritual for he and his friends.  For 25 years they met on this night and remembered the man who had changed all their lives.

“Is that the best you can come up with, Shakespeare?  You can’t describe a sight this beautiful any better than ‘Sure is pretty?'” The slightly overweight balding man poked at his taller friend.

“Well, it is pretty,” said Stan Carmichael (the tall one) as he defended himself.  It was his farm where they were all staying.  He had become one of the South’s richest farmers. The 14 men sitting on the porch now lived all across the United States.

“I’d give anything to do it all again.” Mick Godfrey (the balding man) and an attorney in New York City said abruptly. “To play the game one more time.”

“Where did the time go?” Fred Durham, a red-headed accountant from Tennessee chimed in.

They were the surviving members of their high school football team. Cancer had taken Johnny Friese. A car crash had taken Joey Thomas.  The Gulf War had taken Sgt. Bill Winston.  A deer hunting accident cost Billy Franklin his life. Every year, they came to toast the memory of their fallen friends and their coach who had taught them so much.

“Wish Coach could be here to see this,” Mick said as he took another sip of his drink. “I hate that a man so wise had to die like that.”

“Alzhemier’s a bitch, ” Jerry Blount, a former wide-receiver and now judge chimed in. “I named my first kid after the man.  It’s amazing the difference a small-town football coach can make.”

The group collectively nodded.  As the sun set, lights appeared on the northern horizon.

“Lights are on.  It’s game time,” Fred said.  “Time to go.”

Out front of the huge farmhouse there were three limos waiting.  The Championship team of 1986 piled into their chariots and rode to the arena.

As the limos barreled down the gravel road, they remember the pillars that their Coach had taught them. They were pillars that they had built their lives on. They were the foundations for their success.

1. Have a plan.

2. Make every play your best.

3. Smile when you talk. Attitude is everything.

4. Don’t let your opponent inside your head.

5. Outwork your opponent.

6. Believe in yourself. If you don’t, no one else will.

7. Keep it simple.

8. Laugh at the things that scare you and you’ll be better off.

9. Have faith.

10. Give back to others.

“They seemed so simple when we were 18,” Fred laughed. ” But they got me through cancer.”

“They got me through law school.”

“And basic training.”

All the men told stories how the pillars had changed their lives.

The three limos pulled into the parking lot and then onto the track.  The friends all stepped out onto the field right as the pregame ceremonies began.  The conquering heroes waved to the cheering hometown crowd.

The principal introduced them. “We’d like to welcome the 1986 State Champions.  And with an announcement, here’s former quarterback Mick Godfrey.”  He handed the mic to the balding former player.  He had to wait a minute as the crowd gave them a standing ovation.

“Coach Lee Jones made in an impact on our lives. Sure, he was a simple football coach. But he was also a crafter of men.  Today the 1986 Championship team would like to announce three things.  First, We are paying off the stadium’s debt. It will forever be known as Coach Lee Jones Stadium. Second, we’re making a sizable donation to Alzheimer’s research.  Coach Jones’ memory deserves no less. And third, we have raised $4 million to create a scholarship fund so the students of this town can have the same opportunities we had. Coach Jones may not be with us anymore, but the Coach Jones scholarship will continue his legacy for years to come.”

The crowd in the stadium sat stunned.  These men, these former football players who had been known as football heroes twenty-five years ago, had yet another championship moment on their old playing field. From now on, they’d be known as heroes for a much bigger reason. Because champions don’t just win one game. They change the game for others. Coach Jones’ championship team had just changed the game for that small Mississippi town forever.

“Think Coach would be proud of us? ” Stan Carmichael whispered to Mick Godfrey.

“Yeah, we finally mastered pillar #10.”

The debit card’s stripe was hot.  Lola had run her plastic through so many machines that day that she swore she smelled the smell of it melting. It was Black Friday and she was trying to single-handedly fix the U.S. Economy.  So far, she was succeeding.

She pushed a 90-year-old woman out of the way to get to the last 19-inch LCD HDTV and triumphantly put it in her cart.  A kid who was didn’t get out of her way fast enough felt the pain of the shopping cart running over his toes.  She had heard about the woman with the pepper spray. Seemed amateurish to her.  She would have used a Taser.

“Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men, my butt,” she thought. “Move out of the way so I can get a toaster for a buck. Christmas is about survival of the fittest.”

She looked around and saw that the landscape was picked over. If the three Wise men had shopped at this Mall, the baby Jesus would have been lucky to have ended up with a Snuggie and a set of insulated glasses.

Lola had tried to explain to her husband that what she was doing was like deer hunting. The Mall was like deer camp.  Her hunt involved big bucks and she was looking for a trophy.  Her husband had rolled his eyes; he normally did. But he wouldn’t be complaining on Christmas morning. Oh no.  Ho ho ho and been replaced with Mo’ mo’ mo’.

This was what Christmas was about to her. Buying stuff. In bulk. And on sale.

She walked out to the car and put another rounds of shopping bags into her trunk. Looking into the massive well filled with bags, she began to hum, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”  And then she said to herself, “Oh Kris Kringle, I’m beginning to tingle.”

As Lola walked back to the Mall, she noticed an olive-skinned man with a beard and ratty clothes.  He approached her (making her nervous of course) and held out his hand.  “A little something for the poor for this season.”

Lola gripped her Mace with her right hand as she clutched her purse with her left.

She felt fear.  Black Friday didn’t refer to the day of shopping. It was the condition of her heart at that very moment. “I’m reacting like anyone else would in the same situation,” she thought.

The man just stood there and looked at Lola. Lola just stood there and looked at the man.  She nervously fumbled the Mace in her hand as she stared at his piercing eyes.  Seconds seemed like hours.  And then he broke the silence.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Lolo looked at the man for a minute and felt her grip loosen on her Mace.  She also felt a sudden wave of peace that loosened her heart.  A sense of what the Season was really about washed over her. She looked at the man and said, “Walk with me.”  Her words even shocked her.

Lola burned up her card once again. This time she wasn’t buying stuff to be buying stuff. She bought the man a meal. And then a nice new winter coat. (both on sale, of course).  As the stranger walked out of the Mall, he shouted, “Merry Christmas, Lola.”

“How did he know my name?” she wondered as she followed him outside.

As Lola walked out into the Mall parking lot that cold Black Friday night, she noticed the stranger had vanished. And in his place was a brilliant bright star in the Eastern sky.  For the rest of her life, she’d call it what it was: The Black Friday Miracle.

Howdy! Thanks for stopping by — I think you’ll find all kinds of stuff here on this blog.  It’s the one place where I can let my mind go.  Needless to say, I hope you enjoy it.  If you look to the right and toward the bottom, you will see a blogroll. It’s a collection of some of my favorite short stories.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did writing them.

Monday’s Prayer: In this Season of Giving, remind me to give my best at all times.

Stars twinkled as the red pickup skidded into the gravel parking lot of Papa Noel’s Christmas Tree Emporium.  John McDaniel stomped the emergency brake and stepped out of the truck. He looked at the picked-over selection of trees and his face betrayed his total disgust. It was Christmas Eve and McDaniel’s heart just wasn’t into it. In fact, it wasn’t much into anything any more.

He walked through the dried-out, overpriced trees until he found the very worst one he could find.  There, in the very back of the lot, was a six-foot Scotch pine.  It had to be the most crooked tree McDaniel had ever seen. “Perfect,” he thought, “just like everything else in my life.”  It was so crooked that it reminded him of the Scoliosis exams they had to go through in Middle School. This tree would get the embarrassing back brace for sure.

McDaniel wouldn’t be there at all if he had not been nagged.  In fact, what wasn’t he nagged about?  The tree was the perfect metaphor for his marriage.  Bent. Dried out. And dying.

He paid Papa Noel $25 (he refused to pay full price) and he and the teenager sales assistant threw the tree into the back of his truck.  Needles rammed into his arms like he was being humped by a porcupine.  If they had jabbed into his heart, it would’ve been appropriate.

He tipped the kid, buckled his seat belt and slammed the truck into gear. Back to Hell, he thought. Merry #$%# Christmas. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Blue Christmas played on the truck’s stereo.  “Yeah Elvis, you’d have a Blue Christmas if you were married to my wife.”  His taillights faded as he headed back to his unhappy home.

Of course, the tree was a disaster and was met with immediate scorn. His wife, Laura, simply hated it.  “What a pathetic tree. Can’t you do anything right?”  McDaniel cringed.  He thought of Charlie Brown Christmas. Laura would be Lucy and he would be the Blockhead. “I knew you’d hate it.  You hate everything I do.”

A trail of needles went from the truck to living room. They wrestled the tree up into the stand and sat it up in the corner of the front room.  This was their 20th tree together and by far their worst.

He carried the box of ornaments from the attic and dropped it at Laura’s feet.  “Here.” Breaking glass caused her eyebrows to knit down to her nose. “Good job.” she said sarcastically.  They were the last two words said for the next three hours.

A white box full of blue balls sat on the back of the couch. “Blue balls,” he thought. “How appropriate.”  It wasn’t exactly like he and Laura were cuddle buddies these days. He began to hang them on the tree’s twisted branches.

Up next were the ornaments from their trips. There was the sailboat ornament from their honeymoon to the Bahamas. That was so much fun.  He remembered her smile. Her laughter. Her in her bikini.  Then there was the state ornaments from all the places they had lived.  Their first home in Missouri. And then Oregon and then Mississippi.  He remembered when it was just them against the world.  “So many memories,” he thought.

He then picked up the ornament of the baby boots.  He clutched it next to his heart and felt his eyes begin to water.  They had lost the baby seven years into their marriage and honestly, she had not been the same since. They had not been the same since.  More than the baby had died that day.

He wiped the tear from his eye and picked up another ornament.

It was her fifth grade picture on a glass ball.  “Man, she was a cute little kid,” he thought.  The smile. The innocence. Looking forward to a good life.  She deserved better than what he had been giving her.

There were the shoes from when they ran the marathon together. The ornaments from their college.  The ones painted by her grandmother.  The ribbons from his parent’s first Christmas together. And then the angel from their Christmas together.  All shared memories. Their memories.

Piece by piece, ornament by ornament, they pieced their life together on that crooked tree.  It was the canvas for the picture they had painted together. They plugged in the lights and stepped back.  Silently they reflected on all they had been through and all they had.

Like the tree, their marriage wasn’t perfect. It was bent. And dried out. But with all the ornaments on it, it wasn’t dying; it was beautiful.  It was their tree.  Their memories. Their life.  They stood there and looked at the tree and at the lights reflected in each other’s eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said to him. “Merry Christmas to you, too,” he said back.

And on that warm and foggy Christmas eve, a crooked tree and a broken marriage became beautiful. It was their 20th tree and their most beautiful.

Sometimes heroes are just people who handle everyday crappy things in extraordinary ways.

I had hiked the Smokies with him. He was an athletic snowboarder for many years. He’s only a few months older than I am.  And last Friday, I was feeding my brother-in-law Adam breakfast.

Life is not fair.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease is a thief. It steals your body away from you while leaving your mind trapped within what remains.  It’s as close to Hell on Earth as I’ve ever seen.

But if the ALS thinks it has an easy fight on his hands, it’s sadly mistaken. Adam has faced this with an amazing inner-strength.  And my sister, who I consider to be the smartest person I know, is quickly becoming the most wise person I’ve ever met.  I’m not saying both haven’t struggled — who wouldn’t? But my respect for both has risen off the charts.  They are playing a crappy hand of cards with amazing skill.

Both have secret weapons in their fight, though. Adam and Stephanie are blessed with the finest friends and co-workers (there is a very blurry line between both groups) I have ever seen.  (and they both have great families, if I say so myself). When my sister invited people to come over to meet with the nurse on how to help take care of Adam, twenty-seven people crowded their home. His friends built a track to help get him into the bathroom.   A coworker takes him to work everyday and his friends at work help him continue his successful career as an engineer. Today, Adam’s friends took him to a Atlanta Falcon’s game. It’s as close to It’s A Wonderful Life as I’ve seen in person.

Adam loves my sister with his whole heart. What else could a brother ask for?  Well, to be honest, one more thing: A cure for ALS and soon. Because right now, a good man is facing a struggle that he doesn’t deserve. That no one deserves.

My sister is lucky to be loved by a man like Adam. And Adam is lucky to be loved by my sister.

I hate the day that ALS cut into their dance with all my heart.