Last of the Jims

I can think of three dates that determined the outcome of these 43 years I have spent so far on this wonderful green globe:

• 22 May 1997 I became a father.
• The weekend of 3-7 May 1991 Destiny thrust me into the great love of my life
• In January of 1984, just a few weeks shy of my 13th birthday, I moved from Amesville, Ohio, to Portland, Tennessee. 

Uprooted in the middle of 7th grade, I was planted in a new school, a new community. The experience marked me for life--my best friends and my boyhood were boxed up back at home--a place I tell my kids was "the Magical Land." My awkward teenage years and the longest chapters in the unwritten book, JD's Book of Blunders, would take place in a strange land of Tennessee.

A story from those first days in Tennessee came back to mind this week, when I learned that my classmate at Highland Elementary, James "Bobo" Ayers, had passed away due to cancer. Like me, he was 43.

I have always had a problem with my name. Growing up, my family called me "JD," which always seemed like a baby name to me. To make things worse, my mom tells the story that the name had been given to me while I was still in utero, given by a man who assumed I would be "Junior Dittes."

When I was ready for 1st grade, I came up with a plan. I was going to leave "JD" behind and become "Jimmy." I remember writing "Jimmy" over and over on my wide-lined, elementary writing book, curling the y's this way and that. It didn't phase my parents--nor did it seem to matter to the other seven kids in the one-room Adventist school I attended.

The Haunting at Edward Braddock's Grave

I am standing at a monument to General Braddock near Fort Necessity in Farmington, Pennsylvania. His face is etched into the panel. More than 250 years cannot erase the arrogance with which he tore a road through the wilderness from the Potomac River over the Alleghenies. I doubt that look was there when a force of French and Indians surprised his army near the banks of the Monongahela, turning them back on each other into mad confusion, just fifty miles from his goal: the forks of the Ohio River at present-day Pittsburgh.

They carried him here, 35 miles away, where Braddock died of his wounds and the only remaining officer, a 23-year-old George Washington, took over, hustled the soldiers about a mile further, and set up a fort to take on the pursuing French & Indians.

I remember the story. I wasn't even in school yet when my dad told it to me. We were walking in the woods at the time, exploring our new home near Amesville, Ohio. He told me how Indians hid in the trees, watched Braddock's army pass, and launched their attack. I pace around the monument. On my way back to the car, I pass this sign: "This is the spot where Major-General Edward Braddock was buried, July 14th 1755."

Washington had buried Braddock in the middle of the road they had built through the thick forest. Indians were known to dig up recent burials to claim scalps. Therefore, Washington's first order as commander was to bury the general and then direct every soldier and pack animal to tread the ground above him. It wasn't until sixty years later, that workers building the National Road (current US 40) unearthed the general's remains, reinterring them further up the hill, underneath the present monument.

These woods are haunted. I can tell that.

I follow the path. It ends at a creek, in woods so think and tangled, I think I can see Braddock's demise hiding in the shadows.

There is the trace of a path off to the right. I can see it. I have a sense for trails. I can see them when others can't, even in the dark of night. I have followed trails--and creeks, and sounds--since I was a boy.

I follow a trail. I see it winding through the ferns. I begin to run. I can't help it. I look down. I can't see my feet.

A Musical Autobiography

Note: I'm at the University of Pittsburgh for the summer, studying at a summer institute called "Voices Across Time: American History through Music." I'm writing this as a draft of my first project, to provide a "musical autobiography" of myself, using an experience I had through music.

I have always been steeped in music. I can't remember a time in my life where music wasn't important to me. My father is an accomplished pianist and organist who today earns his living playing for churches. My mother grew up playing the violin and planned--through the end of her freshman year of college--to be a professional musician. By the time I came into my parents' lives, you could say that music was part of my destiny.

I began taking piano lessons in first grade, and I continued--summer and school year--all through elementary school. I was not an exceptional pianist, but by the time I finished eighth grade, I could play well. It was the summer after eighth grade, that I faced an important decision about my future in music.

I was bored. I practiced my exercises and the classical pieces assigned to me, but I didn't have a love for the piano. I was thinking very seriously about quitting. I was about to start high school. I felt like moving on.

I remember sitting at the piano in my living room, muttering. (I have since learned that muttering is about as natural to 14-year-olds as breathing, but it seemed really important to me at the time.) I put away my Beethoven book and pulled out a book of songs from the movie, "Snow White." It didn't take me long to learn the songs. As I was playing, "Some Day My Prince will Come," something happened.

I had a vision.

In my vision, I was playing the piano. There was a girl there, sitting on the bench next to me as I played. And she liked what I was playing!

It was a powerful vision, I must say. The girl, she sidled closer to me, so that our arms touched--from shoulder to elbow, no less. I can't remember what other fantasies might have moved my 14-year-old mind, but it probably also involved squinching my lips together at the end of the song and seeing hers--squinched up too--waiting to meet mine.

I should add that at this time in my life, there was nothing more confusing to me than teenaged girls. In reality, had one sat next to me, I probably would have been unable to play anything--not even "Chopsticks." But that shouldn't take away from the vision. I realized something about my music. I could benefit from this, I thought, this might be just the thing that will attract a girl!

One Welcome Dream

I had a dream last night, and I just had to tell someone about it.

What better person than both readers of 'Point Pleasant'?

The dream was about my grandpa. I just cannot describe how much I miss him, gone now for 3 1/2 years. Just thinking about him fondly seems like a privilege today, and waking up to thoughts of him this morning just turned my week around completely.

First, a little bit about dreams.

I know now that sleep is a pretty important time for the brain: it's when everything gets filed, and memories are sorted out and arranged within the various parts of the brain. It's like "defragmenting" a computer, and it's some pretty cool stuff that goes on in the brain, all while we sleep.

I also know enough about dreams and literature to understand archetypes and themes. One typical dream archetype is the 'unrealized known.' Within the dream, this is something that has existed in prior dreams but seems to always surprise the rational part of the subconscious.

For example, the college dream where I had to take a final exam for a class I hadn't attended all semester. The class was unrealized to my conscious mind, which had been using sleep to file away all the studying I had been doing, however it was a known entity to my subconscious.

One archetype that has popped up in recent years has been what I will call "the two-acre plot." It's a grassy, fenced field somewhere in the Portland area. (It's about the size of the old vacant lot that stretched between Grandma & Grandpa's driveway and Ms. Louder's house.) A few years ago, I dreamed about a horse that we'd been given. This grassy, fenced field suddenly came up--it wasn't mine, it belonged to the Ditteses--and we left the old horse there, grazing near an old barn that took up one corner of the two-acre plot.

Last night, my dream took me to the two-acre plot. As my rational sense insisted that this couldn't be real--no Dittes had paid property taxes on this land--I entered the barn and began to dig around in the corner.

I do a lot of digging around with Dittes stuff. After I moved into Grandma & Grandpa's house, I found all kinds of priceless artifacts. In the study I found the letters Grandpa had sent to Grandma from his posts overseas during World War II. In a closet I found an old .22 pistol. In the attic I found an old painting by Ronnie McDowell, one of the first he painted of old Richland Station after he got back from Vietnam--and one that I donated to the history room at the library two years ago.

In the barn at the corner of the two-acre plot, I found a box with a bunch of rolled envelopes. inside. I opened the brown paper around one of the envelopes, and a small piece of paper fell into my hands.

It was a blank check.

It was a blank check with only two names on it.

Next to "pay to the order" I read the name, "J.D." The date and the payment were blank, but on the signature line I read, "A.G. Dittes."

Grandpa! I turned the check over. Written on the other side was a message, "You can use this when you need it."

I'm not sure about the rest of the dream. I left the box in the barn, and I think I made a visit to the dream version of Farmer's Bank, but before I could make a withdrawal, Jonah climbed into our bed and woke me up.

I awoke with a real sense of peace and contentment. I've wasted too much time worrying about money of late. Watching Jenny face the challenges of raising the public and private funds to keep her clinic running has probably gotten to me--I think that's what my brain was sorting out last night. My mind is too full of things I want but cannot afford right now.

That's why the blank check meant so much to me. It wasn't about how much money would repaint the house or pay for a summer road trip; it was about the limitless gifts that Grandpa had given me and the priceless impact he had on my life.

So much of what I have is the result of a blank check I got from Grandpa. I'll name a few:

• the house I live in was purchased by him 60 years ago and sold to me (at a generous discount) in hopes that my children would grow up here in the same way his children and grandchildren had done.
• a work ethic like no other
• great taste in women and the strength to choose a bride who was intelligent, beautiful and spiritually discerning, just as he chose when he married Grandma
• a mind that reaches to the stars and playfully considers their mysteries
• lessons in humor as the glue that can connect me to those I work for--and with

Priceless. It's funny, I think back to the box in my dream now, and I wonder about the other envelopes. I didn't examine them in my dream, but I imagine now that they were addressed to my cousins, aunts, uncles, father, children and nephews. I'm sure the all contained blank checks.

I'm pretty sure that the two-acre plot will pop up a time or two in future dreams, but I doubt I'll get another look at that blank check or recognize Grandpa's signature.

If I had the chance to actually hold it in my hand again, though, I know what I would write in the payment box.

I'd write "Thanks."

I couldn't ask for--or even imagine--a dime more than the sum of all that he's given me. I remember. How could I want more?

A Soldier's Memorial

I spent the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend cleaning up my study. This is something I do just once ever three or four years (or roughly twice as often as my 2nd-least-favorite chore, cleaning the garage).

As I was organizing the files, I came across this picture.

I have a number of military men in my family tree. My family research is thick with the military files of my Grandpa Dittes, who was an Army MD in Australia & New Zealand during World War II. I have the flag that draped my Grandpa Mooney's casket when he died in 1981, recognizing his service in the Navy during World War I.

I also have this postcard--a link to an army man about whom I know very little.

The postcard is addressed: Familie Gotthold Dittes, Delikatessen Geschaeft, Broklyn (sic) New York, Amerika. It's amazing, the spare address. My great-grandfather, Gotthold Dittes, indeed owned a grocery story in a German section of Brooklyn. His wife, Anna Katherine Funk Dittes, was a cook who ran the deli.

It is signed, "Schwager und Brueder," leaving me with no certain first name. I know his last name, of course. The man in this picture is my great-great uncle. His last name, like my great-grandmother's, was Funk. He was one of 10,000 young men from the city of Ulm to sign up for the imperial German Army during the opening years of the Great War.

I read the card closer. It is difficult because of Fraktur, the German form of cursive that makes some of the letters quite difficult to make out. I'll try my best.

"Muensingen, 6/6 1915." Muensingen was the site of the Duke Albrecht Barracks, a training site for soldiers ready to ship off to the Front. During a break from training, my great-great uncle had gone to a photo studio to have this card made. Observe his well-groomed mustache--I doubt it looked so nice once he made it to the trenches. His uniform is crisply pressed, his bolt-action rifle looks ready. Does he look fierce? Not to me, he doesn't.

I can make out little else from his note. He wants my great-grandparents to see his picture as a soldier "bild als Soldat." I find the word, "family." My German isn't good enough to read the whole note, much less peer between the lines at his thoughts.

In 1915, the war still seemed winnable for all sides. There had been heavy casualties, but the bloodbath of 1916 was still in the future. Here in the States, my grandparents were still speaking German in their deli and in their home. Gotthold had arrived just ten years earlier, Anna had come in 1901. My grandpa was just three years old.

Perhaps it's because it's Memorial Day, but I wonder how the war went for my great-great uncle. My cousin, Frank, has told me that my great-grandmother exchanged letters with family throughout the war--or at least until the United States entered the war against Germany (I'm sure familial communications were hampered by this fact). He has told me that Anna's three brothers served in the German Army and that all three survived.

While Memorial Day is an American celebration, this picture brings me to another conclusion. It makes me think of the soldiers on all sides of a given conflict. Their shared concerns for families and loved ones behind the lines.

It makes me glad to have grown up in a family with a unique perspective on the two greatest conflicts of the 20th Century--whose deep ties bridged the gaps erected by emperors, generals and dictators.

What Forrest Sees that Some Don't See

A few weeks ago, I had some time to write about the history found at Tennessee's state capitol, namely the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a man who fought against the United States and preferred to see Republicans hung.

I didn't have time to point out the greatest irony of Forrest's statue. It is the fact that it looks unwaveringly upon this bronze relief, commemorating Tennessee's ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The primary figures in this relief are of African origin, freed slaves, now legislators and citizens under the newly ratified rights. There is no Nathan Bedford Forrest shown here.

Let's review for a moment these key amendments, which established rights for former slaves and finally brought the Constitution into line with the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and reiterated in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

The 13th Amendment abolishes slavery throughout the United States.

The 14th Amendment establishes the rights of all men, regardless of race or prior state of servitude to vote or be counted in a census, correcting a clause originally written in the Constitution that identified slaves as being 3/5ths of a person for the purpose of citizenship and census. It also bars folks like Forrest, who had served under America's enemies, from holding federal office.

The 15th Amendment states that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

These amendments marked a fundamental change in American governance--a change bought with the blood and sacrifice of tens of thousands of Union soldiers. Yet they are at the key of misunderstandings that plague Southern states like Tennessee to this day. A large number of Americans remain willfully ignorant of their meaning--or at least fail to apply that knowledge in political discourse today.

Nathan Bedford Forrest would understand. He would know that the legislatures that ratified these amendments in Tennessee and throughout the South were made up of Republican imposters--transplanted Northern "carpetbaggers," freed slaves, and craven Southern "scalawag" sympathizers to the Union cause. He would recognize that Southern states were forced to ratify these amendments as a condition for returning to the Union and removing occupying federal soldiers.

But as Forrest's Klu Klux Klan riders stormed through the South, restoring the dominance of the conservative Democrats, these three key amendments became ever more entrenched as law. Many key provisions--voting rights for African Americans, for example--would be delayed in the South for another 90 years, but they would come. Inexorably, they would come.

One of the key provisions of the 14th Amendment states:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Can you hear the ghost of Thomas Jefferson in those lines? When the United States had been just an idea, written on paper as a declaration to the King of England, Jefferson had written that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator to certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

When the time had come to ratify the Constitution twelve years later, these sentiments were left on the cutting room floor. The states were not unified. There was much opposition. Compromises needed to be made.

Certain citizens needed to remain "alienable," namely enslaved persons whose unrequited toil and hardships drove the economy of southern states. To live in the "Land of the Free," especially in the proximity of enslaved people, one needed "alienable rights," too. In fact, to make sure that the federal government didn't overstretch its bounds, the founders inserted the 10th Amendment into the Bill of Rights, stating that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

I have heard a lot about the 10th Amendment in recent weeks, especially in the wake of the historic Health Care Reform passed by Congress just three weeks ago. As Nathan Bedford Forrest's political heirs came to terms with their outrage over this expansion of federal power, many advocated the 10th Amendment as their bulwark against this legislation. Indeed it is the basis of a possible suit by a group of state attorneys general to block the implementation of the bill.

Yes, it's totally bogus.

Read the 14th Amendment again--the one that fixed the Constitution and banished forever the "peculiar institutions" preserved by the 10th Amendment. It gives the federal government huge leverage over the states to enforce laws--particularly those relating to the "privileges or immunities of citizens." Where did the federal government get this power? On the battlefields of Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia, that's where.

Jenny and I have been watching the PBS Documentary, "Eyes on the Prize," this week. It's a gripping look at the civil rights movement that established the 14th Amendment as the law of the land. It's mind boggling--to us--to see the opposition that such simple acts as seeing a 1st-grader walk to school or enrolling in the University of Mississippi could have been met with riots and outrage.

Yet when I see President Eisenhower sending the 101st Airborne to Central High School in Little Rock, or when President Kennedy sends US Marshals to Oxford, Mississippi, I am seeing the 14th Amendment in action. Those who opposed integration in the 1950s and 60s--just as those who oppose health care or national standards for education today--belong to a pre-14th mindset. They have not come to terms with a federal government that has claimed these rights for 140 years.

Now this is not to say that there is no place for conservatism in American politics. President Eisenhower was a conservative who acted more out of a concern for the breakdown in law and order in Little Rock than any liberal utopianism. There needs to be accountability in government and good management--and true conservatives are well equipped to bring this.

But it is to say that when inequalities exist, We the People can and will step in to stop them. America's health care system is broken, it is a problem too big for individual states to solve. On the horizon, climate change is too big a problem to attach piecemeal, state by state. A poor education system isn't just Tennessee's problem or Indiana's problem, it is a national problem, and the 14th Amendment gives We the People the right to step in and make it right.

That's what I see, anyway. And that's what Nathan Bedford Forrest sees in Tennessee's capitol, whether he likes it...or not.

A Long Distance Merry Christmas from Grandpa

I must admit that the Christmas Season hasn't caught on with me yet. We had a great Advent service at church this week. I hear Christmas carols every time I turn on the car radio--and I don't turn them off as I did before Thanksgiving.

Today I even took my mandolin out in the hall at school, but all I could play was "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Is that even a Christmas song? It certainly didn't feel that way.

I have been busy with Christmas things--picking out gifts, preparing Christmas cards. That's all on pace (or ahead of pace). One project I took up was scanning in my Grandpa's war letters. Between December of 1941 and September of 1943, he sent my Grandma hundreds of letters and telegrams, sometimes twice a day. She saved every one.

Tonight I was scanning letters from their first Christmas apart. I found this handwritten letter, and I just want to share it. Those of you who knew Grandpa and loved him like I do, will quickly recognize him and miss him all the more (he died three years ago).

Modoc, Cal.
Christmas Eve --'41

My dearest Elinor,

This is a little note to tell you that I still love you very much and that I will be home tonight. It was impossible for me to make any arrangements to come during the daytime. I will be lucky if I get in much earlier than we did the last time. The boy that drove the car in is Liutenant Binkley, the new medical officer. He knows Dybby quite well from the Hollywood Hospital.

I hope you are having a better X-mas Eve than we are. We are having another terrific sandstorm here, with the tent practically being blown away. Since you are not with me, it makes little difference what the weather is. We did have 3 wonderful days together, and will have many more.

I was glad to get Lt. Binkley to drive the car in tonight, because of the danger of the car freezing up out here. I will have a few hours in the morning to rush up to March Field again to transact some very necessary business.

I hope you had a pleasant and grand time on X-mas Eve and day. I am sorry that world events prevented our being together this year. Better luck next year, Babe!

Well, Elinor, be nice. I will be home tonight (Christmas night). Hope you are well and happy.----

Mucho Love o -----------Al

Those of you who don't know him will recognize in his spirit a little glimmer of Christmas. I know that when I lived far away from Tennessee, how fond I was of the song, "I'll Be Home for Christmas." Perhaps we will all realize how fortunate we are, thanks to the effort--ages ago--of men like Lieutenant Albert G. Dittes.

A few notes.
1. From the tone of the letter, Grandpa will come down to Glendale (where Grandma lived) on Christmas Day. I checked on the maps. Modoc is almost 700 miles away from Glendale, up in the northeastern corner of California, near the borders of Oregon and Nevada. That must have been quite a trip in the days before interstate highways.
2. I'll check with Grandma about the details of this visit. If you want to see why Grandpa was so lovesick, just look at her!
3. I got these letters before Grandpa passed away, and I remember asking him, "Why did you tell Grandma, 'Be nice!' Did you think she every wouldn't?" Grandpa just gave me a funny grin, and I realized that he couldn't help teasing her--even from hundreds of miles away.