Marking Time: A Book of Collected Columns

By Vicki Williams

Vicki Williams has written a column for her local newspaper for over twenty years that has consistently been rated one of the paper's most popular features. Marking Time contains 87 columns that run the gamut from humor to slice-of-life pieces to philosophical essays about larger issues. She writes about people and pets, places and politics. Vicki has worked as a bartender in a rock and roll bar, a Mayor's secretary, a legal assistant, a machine operator in a factory and a transporter of prisoners, among other jobs, so her experiences encompass a cross-section of people - the movers and shakers; the cops, the courts and the criminals; the well-off and the down and out; the farmers tied to one piece of earth by love of the land and the musicians who live a gypsy life for love music.

These columns are reflections about a rural Hoosier county in all its guises. Nature and human nature, the celebrations of our history, the bonds of family, the generosity and the meanness. Vicki writes about her own struggles with life, warts and all.

Simply, Marking Time is about one person's effort to find beauty and love and laughter wherever it may be while also noting that there is darkness in the world as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vicki Williams
• Release date: Mar 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310155390

Vicki Williams

I turned to novel-writing after writing non-fiction for many years, primarily as a columnist. I wrote a syndicated column (political and social commentary) for King Features Syndicate for 10 years. My work has appeared in Newsweek, McCalls, Sports Illustrated, USA Today and many others. A Newsweek essay won an Indiana Presswomen's award for Social Commentary, then won at the national level. Three of my columns have appeared in textbooks.I currently write a weekly column for the Logansport (IN) Pharos-Tribune. I also write three blogs - one on writing, one on NASCAR and one on politics.During my work years, I was a bartender, a factory worker, a secretary, an insurance underwriter, a real estate salesperson and a plan administrator. I finally retired and am now living my dream as a full-time writer.I live in rural Indiana with my blond Pekinese, Channie, and my two cats, Paisley and Slate.

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MARKING TIME

Vicki Williams

Copyright © 2014 by Vicki Williams

Smashwords Edition

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 DAYS OF OUR LIVES

Come On ! You Can Do Something!

Rising

Mom Sweepstakes

American Labor - Short-changed

Veteran’s Day

Thanks in Red, White and Blue

Christmas has Changed

New Year’s Overload

Independence

Thanksgiving Wishes

January 1 - Who Cares?

CHAPTER 2 MOTHER NATURE KNOWS BEST

Spring - an MTV Girl

Mother’s Favorite Color

Chicken Lover

Drought

Invasion of the Lady Bugs

Take Off: Winter

Course in Beavers

Country Roads

Nature’s Palette

Second Chance

Season of Change

Rural Routes

CHAPTER 3 FRIENDS AND FAMILIES

My Two Mothers

My Husband, My Friend

Garden of the Heart

Who Are You Really?

Home Away from Home

Against the Odds

Music is Elemental

A Real Romantic

Dear Dallas

The Old’uns

Clone Mom

CHAPTER 4 WORD QUEST

Many Hats of Writing

I Versus You

A Scenic Tour

Stick With It!

Different Kinds of Writers

Words - Wonderful Eccentricities

Climbing the Mountain of Life

Stressed about Stress Talk

Writing Styles

Impossible?

CHAPTER 5 ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Give Me Land, Lots of Land

Traveling with Friends

The Perfect Trip

Las Vegas - A Modern Wonder of the World

Fast Food of Tourism

Taking the Long Way Home

Traveling Alone

I Love Motels

Fear of Flying

Choose Traveling Companions Wisely

Eating on the Road

CHAPTER 6 MAN’S BEST FRIENDS

Missing the Country

What Makes a Champion

Sebastian - Love, Sweet Love

Bertha, the WatchBird

Losing a Loved One

Irresistible Cocker Spaniels

Feline Unit

Annie Deserves Love Too

Mom Sweeps Up Sebastian

Open Letter to Readers

Cat in a Crate

CHAPTER 7 POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE

Babies First

Respecting God’s Creations

Perfect Past is a Myth

McVeigh and the Death Penalty

God: The Final Judge

Right (or Wrong) to Die?

What’s in a Name?

Will There Ever Be a Factory Aid I?

A Cheap Dream

Abortion - Share the Loaf

Search for the Right March

One for All and All for One

CHAPTER 8 WORKIN’ FOR A LIVIN’

Legend in Her Own Time

Respect for the Jobless

Old-Time Rock and Roll

City of Fences

Listening

Guide to Job Ads

Honoring Workers

Mourn the Missing Factories

Florida is Really Big

CHAPTER ONE

______________________

MARKING TIME

COME ON! YOU CAN DO SOMETHING!

We will soon be at the beginning of a shiny bright New Year but as usual, we’ll still be facing many of the same old dingy problems.

I know so many people, good people, who get bogged down in thinking about the vastness of the problems, they forget to be part of the solution. I sometimes wish I had the power to assign them New Year’s resolutions. I would very carefully match the personality and position of the resolver to the resolution.

You, I would say, "you love animals. You’ve done pretty well this year financially. Your resolution is to spay or neuter one dog and one cat this year. Millions of unwanted puppies and kittens are put to death in America annually. By fulfilling your resolution, you will deny the gas chamber several generations of victims in the years to come.

And you. You and your spouse are such loving people. You did a such a great job raising your own children. You have that big old house with the extra bedroom. Did you know that in our county (as well as most others) foster homes are desperately needed? One problem with removing children from abusive or neglectful homes is that there aren’t enough places to put them. I know it is tough to have them come and then go again but you can open your heart to some of them, perhaps the memory of sharing your home and your love for even a short while will have a positive effect on their futures.

What a beautiful new car. Lucky you. Your resolution is to put it to good use by volunteering a few hours a week to help deliver hot meals to shut-ins or to take cancer patients to their chemotherapy treatments or to transport battered wives to a safe house.

Yes, being a widow can be lonely all right but you’re fortunate your husband left you in comfortable circumstances. If you made a friend in a nursing home who has no family, you would both benefit. My friend and I go out to lunch as often as we can manage. He enjoys being out in the world and away from institutional food and I’m grateful for the wonderful stories he has to tell about his and America’s past. He was one of our first espionage agents during World War I. Not many people know that about him now.

You say you haven’t much money to donate to charity? Money isn’t always what is needed most. I’ve seen the wonderful handiwork you do. There are groups that meet to make crafts and toys to deliver to nursing homes, hospitals and orphanages on holidays. Your resolution is to join them and contribute your skills.

And you. I don’t know you but I know there is some problems you are especially qualified to help solve. I know that someone out there needs you. You might be a voice of hope at the other end of a crisis line for desperate teens. You might be the shoulder a disabled veteran needs to lean on. You might be the conduit of accomplishment for an illiterate person. You might be some young person’s Big Brother or Big Sister. Your words on a sheet of paper might be the means of brightening a lonely soldier’s day.

It is human nature to want to do great and wonderful things. We would all leap at the chance to be Bono’s, visibly leading the cause of saving the Ethiopian people from famine, and being knighted as a result. But failing that, we either scorn or overlook the smaller needs we can fill and so we don’t do anything at all.

Your resolution doesn’t require you to save the world. It only asks you to touch a life. It takes all of us to save the world."

THE QUALITIES OF RISING

Rising is the word for the Easter season, beginning with Jesus rising from death and the tomb to be resurrected into heaven on high. For Christians, this is the most holy connotation of the term arisen but overall, rising seems to be a positive word more often than not. More things that rise are good than things that fall.

Spring is filled with risings. The temperature rises, causing the spirits of humans to rise in direct proportion. Plants rise out of the ground to bring joyful color to the earth. Sap rises in the trees so that they offer up umbrellas of bright green. Kites rise on spring winds and creeks rise, fed from April showers.

Rising brings the thought of new growth and not only to living things. New homes rise on subdivision streets and new factories rise in industrial parks. We notice as these structures grow taller from foundations to side walls to roof peak. There is something satisfying about seeing a new thing, something that has never existed before, make itself slowly known as it rises, brick by brick or board by board or stone by stone.

Babies struggle to rise - often, as with baby horses, on tottery legs, to reach the warm source of their nutrition. The heads of baby birds rise above the top of the nest to yell for food. The elegant butterfly rises from the dreary earthbound cocoon to take off high into the air.

Things that rise are generally more graceful than things that lower. The billowing sails of boats, for instance, are more appealing as they rise than the same sails being taken down and folded. Eagles and hawks and turkey buzzards rise high into the sky to cruise in wind-powered circles.

When animals are happy, you can usually tell by the body parts that rise. When Caesar the Pomeranian doesn’t feel well, his curly, fluffy tails droops, his foxy ears flatten against his skull and his head hangs. Let Mom offer him a chewy and his tail goes up like a banner, the ears lift into perky points and his head is held high.

Usually, people prefer things that rise - the income of working people, the GPA of college students, the poll numbers of politicians, the stock prices on Wall Street. Of course, some things are better low, such as unemployment and interest rates (unless you have a lot of investments and prefer high interest rates).

Even weather is more interesting when things are rising. They may be more dangerous then but Mother Nature’s moods are most spectacular when rising is part of the equation. We are in awe of the rise of rivers during a flood; of the rising of the wind and tide in a hurricane; of the lava rising in an active volcano; of the earth’s tectonic plates as they heave up in an earthquake; of the whirling winds riding against the skyline in a tornado; at the mounting height of snowdrifts in a blizzard

When humans want to pay homage, they naturally build up as evidenced by the heaven-seeking spires of cathedrals, the upward march of blocks in a pyramid, the giant stones of Easter Island and Stonehenge, the towering skyscrapers of modern day commerce (though whether we should consider money-making as sacred as we do is another question).

Although height-challenged people like myself hate to admit it, tallness is considered more desirable than shortness in humans. Parents used to hope for their sons to grow tall and now they wish for their daughters to do the same. Along with rising height, we desire for our children to have high IQ’s and high self-esteem and high agility.

And whether we Hoosiers like it or not, mountains are more compelling than flatlands - the higher the peaks, the more wondrous they appear silhouetted against the horizon. When Bryan and I went on a transport, it was thrilling to see the Rockies begin to rise off in the distance and to watch them jutting ever taller as we drew near.

Even the rising of the most mundane pleases us; the rising loaf of homemade bread, the cake in the oven as it bakes, the onion tops in the garden. We want the rate of modem speed and the bytes of memory in our computers to rise and the number of channels we can receive on our television to become every higher. We want our vehicles to be high performance but, of course, also to get high gas mileage.

Most athletics center around height rather than depth. How high can the high jumper jump, how high can the ice skater leap, how high can the gymnast kick, how high will the football rise between the goal posts? Skiers and steeplechasers and mountain climbers and surfers - all are on an ultimate quest for height.

Even our vocabulary reveals our attraction to upwardness. Drug users say they engage in taking narcotics to get high. This the same reason, drinkers have a highball or two. Appealing men are called tall, dark and handsome. Many people look for a lifestyle that allow them to join high society or to live high on the hog or in tall cotton. Of course, sometimes the economy turns on them, leaving them high and dry and that isn’t so good. Even kings and queens are called Your Highness. Intellectuals are labeled high-brow which is another term for superior. We have high hopes of being higher in the pecking order than the next person (if we get too high, sometimes our neighbors think we are highfalutin or high and mighty). Someone who is making their mark is called and up and comer or a rising star. The best part of a performance is called the highlight. Being in high school is better than being in elementary school. Even our best roads are called highways.

We even start our letters and conversations on a high note by saying hi.

And so, as we begin the reason by confirming the sanctity of rising, I hope you experience many more highs throughout the year.

THE MOM SWEEPSTAKES

When I was young, I used to assume that all Moms were pretty much the same.

Moms stayed up all night baking cookies if you forgot to tell them until late that you were supposed to provide the treats to your room the next day. Or, at the very least, they got up and went out to find an all-night store where they could buy a couple dozen cupcakes. One way or another, they made sure you weren’t humiliated.

Mom let you drag home kittens and puppies and then didn’t complain (much) when they naturally inherited most of the chores associated with keeping a pet. They let you claim the dog as yours even though she, and the dog himself, knew exactly who he really belonged to and who made sure there was food in his bowl when he was hungry and who let him out to go potty at regular intervals and who took him to the veterinarian to have his shots updated.

Mom stood in the kitchen peeling potatoes and flouring pork chops within minutes after coming home from work. This didn’t bother you when you were a kid because you assumed that Moms never got tired like regular people

You also assumed that Moms always had money because if you nagged hard enough or begged long enough, she would come up with it even though she said at first she couldn’t. In your heart, you believed she always had a secret stash she could turn to at any time and it was just a matter of convincing her to get into it. (What you didn’t know was that if she did have a secret stash, it was put back for the new washer she desperately needed but then decided she could wait a little longer so you could have your Nikes).

Moms helped with homework, struggling with math problems they hated when they were in school themselves.

Moms delivered your papers if you were tired or sick and let you keep all the money anyway.

Moms took you to see The Jungle Book though she’d much have preferred The Bridges of Madison County. Moms took you to your first AD-DC concert even though she vastly preferred Willie Nelson. Mom’s read you Charlotte’s Web even though she was eager to dive into Mary Higgins Clark.

Moms put a million miles on the car hauling you to various practices and school functions and if you volunteered her services to some of your friends, she picked them up and dropped them off too. Moms alternately roasted and froze watching you as you played warm weather/cold weather sports even when you were first starting to play and were really, really bad. Even if you played 10 games and never hit the ball once or ever got a basket or came in last in every race.

Moms let you drive her around when you got your beginner’s permit even though her heart was in her mouth the whole time. Then she let you go off on your own when you got your regular license even though giving you this dangerous independence terrified her. She tried to impress on you the seriousness of BEING CAREFUL even though she knew you were so excited, you weren’t hearing a word she said.

Mom’s heart broke with every heartbreak you suffered and exulted with every triumph you celebrated.

This is what I thought about all moms when I was young. I loved my mother, of course, but I took her for granted. I figured, you’ve seen one mom and you’ve seen them all. Since I’m middle-aged now and have worked in various capacities that brought me into contact with the not-so-good moms or even very bad moms, I understand how lucky I was to have the mother I had.

In America, having children is the ultimate right. The cops go on about the Second Amendment, the Right to Bear Arms, and how they, along with the N.R.A., believe it is being infringed upon. Other rights and privileges are conditional. You have the privilege of driving only as long as you maintain a safe driving record and have insurance. You can have pets only so long as you don’t let them run loose and you keep them quiet so your neighbors don’t complain. You have to take a test to get a driver’s license and a degree to practice law or medicine or hair styling.

But you can have kids any time, any place, as often as you want. There is no age requirement. You can be 13 and if your own parents or some other adult is willing to help you, you can keep your child. Want to have a baby when you are 60? If you can find a doctor who will artificially inseminate you, having that baby is your right.

There is no competency requirement. You can be mentally disabled, physically disabled, emotionally disabled and the right to have babies is still guaranteed to you.

There is no education requirement, no classes you have to attend to make sure you understand at least the basics of caring for a baby before you have one.

There is no financial responsibility requirement. You can have no income at all and still feel that motherhood is your calling, you can have 10 kids if that is your choice.

There is no habitual offender law to forbid you from having babies even though you’ve shown you don’t take care of the ones you already have. If the Welfare Departments take some for neglect and/or abuse, you can always have more. We will take your driver’s license if you drive drunk but we will tolerate letting you raise your kids drunk.

The standards for parenthood are so low that your children can be usually dirty, often hungry, barely have a roof over their heads, but unless the system believes that they are in some immediate and dire threat of death, your right won’t be revoked.

So there are Moms and then there are Moms. I now consider myself so fortunate to have lucked out big time in the mom sweepstakes. If you did too, Mother’s Day is the perfect time to let your Mom know.

AMERICAN LABOR - SHORT-CHANGED

I spent my Labor Day holiday lounging around the house, writing a column about how much more labor-intensive my life is when Mom isn’t here. Upon reflection, I thought I should write something more serious about Labor Day.

Heaven knows, American labor gets short shrift enough as it is - in most large newspapers, which have a prominently labeled business sections, articles about working people are, at best, an afterthought. On television channels, which feature many business programs, I’ve never seen a program called Labor Line or Labor Talk or Labor Today.

To the American media, unless working people are striking or getting laid off, they are the invisible majority. They throw us a bone once a year - there, we covered your little Labor Day parade, now we have to get back to fawning over Donald Trump.

So, how is American labor doing? Well, it all depends on what your basis of comparison is. Workers are doing fine in some ways. Thanks to the booming economy of the last few years, the 102nd month of the longest peacetime expansion in our history, most people can find a job and real wages are beginning to rise after a long period of stagnation. (*Note - this column was written in 1999 and the situation for working people has deteriorated greatly in the intervening years). They won’t be allowed to rise too fast though because when labor asks for increases in line with the profits of their companies, the stock market goes hysterical and Alan Greenspan starts to hyperventilate.

At the same time, Al and the Wall Street boys evidently don’t think the skyrocketing salaries of corporate executives exert the same kind of inflationary pressures on the economy as the wages of machinists because they simply smile benevolently when presented with statistics such as these:

In 1980, corporate executives made 42 times what the average factory worker earned. In 1990, it was 120 times. Now the CEO’s of the top 365 American companies earn 419 times what the average factory worker makes.

According to data analyzed by the Institute for Policy Studies, if production workers had received pay increases at the same rate as corporate executives, their average salary would be $110,399 today instead of what it actually is - $29,267. If the minimum wage had grown at the same rate as CEO pay between 1990 and 1998, it would be $22.08 instead of $5.15 an hour. Do we remember the dire warnings we received from the business community and many politicians the last time Congress raised the minimum wage? How it would practically plunge the country into another Great Depression? Guess they were